Daughters of the Mersey

by Anne Baker

  ‘Mum, I adore this bodice.’

  ‘Well, I could do you the bodice on a full skirt. That one is all swathed round the hips, it wouldn’t suit you at all and there’s a lot of work in it.’

  ‘All right,’ June grudgingly agreed. ‘I saw some green satin downstairs that I like.’

  ‘It would make up well in wool and you’d get more wear out of it. I’ve got a nice blue material. I’ll show it to you when we go down.’

  June said nothing. That was the best thing to do with her parents. They offered her choices but it was all a façade, they always wanted to choose everything for her.

  ‘Why don’t you pop in and see Pa while you’re this close?’ her mother suggested. ‘He talks about you a lot, wondering how you’re getting on. How do you like nursing?’

  ‘It’s all right, though it’s mostly domestic work so far. They don’t allow me near medicines or wounds yet.’

  ‘That’ll come. You could stay and have supper with us tonight. I’ve made a casserole.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum, I’ve planned to go out with some of the girls tonight. We’re going to the pictures to see Margaret Lockwood in The Lady Vanishes.’ She’d seen that on the placards as the bus had passed the Plaza. ‘I can only do that on my nights off.’

  ‘Of course, pet. So you’re making friends with the other girls in your group?’

  ‘Yes, they’re very nice. There’s one I really like called Mary O’Leary. She has the next bedroom to mine. I’m going out with her tonight.’

  June found it a struggle to get away and she had to agree to her dress being made up in that blue wool which Mum said would be warmer for her. As if being warm was more important than looking smart. She took the bus to the top of Grange Road and went round the big shops looking at the goods on offer. Not that she had any money, so she couldn’t buy anything, and it didn’t look as though she’d have much in the future. Her salary for the first year was £3.10/- a month, plus her keep and her uniform, but she had to buy her textbooks and her shoes and stockings out of that.

  When it started to rain she went to Ralph’s rooms. She loved being here on her own, it was almost like having her own place. It was well past lunchtime and she was hungry, so she made a pot of tea and a sandwich from what she found in the larder. He knew she’d be here and had promised to leave work as soon as he could.

  The wind howled round the house during the afternoon and it was raining more heavily when he came home just after five, bringing a gorgeous chocolate cake. More than anything else, June enjoyed the time she spent with him in his rooms.

  By eight in the evening they were getting hungry again. It was stormy by then and they could see the big trees in the park tossing furiously but that didn’t stop Ralph taking her to New Brighton for dinner. After all, he could drive them from door to door so they needn’t get wet, though the canvas roof was saturated and June felt an occasional cold drop fall on her head.

  They were soon seated at a table in the restaurant window. The rain was gusting against it and blotting out any view but it didn’t matter, Ralph was on good form, laughing and joking. He was so much fun. They shared a bottle of wine and the food was much better than that in the hospital.

  When they left, the storm was at its height and in the blackout June couldn’t even see the sea as they drove along the promenade, though she could hear the full tide thundering against the sea wall and the boom and suck as torrents of water crashed over on to the road.

  The windscreen wipers couldn’t cope with the downpour. ‘I can barely see the road through this.’ Ralph was peering nervously out and his unease put June on edge. ‘A good job there’s not much traffic about.’

  June shivered, it was a wild night to be out. After they’d crossed Poulton Bridge and were coming into Birkenhead’s dockland, Ralph spoke again. ‘That big pub looks closed. The customers must have gone home early.’

  ‘What time is it?’ June tried to see her watch in the light from the dashboard. She usually aimed to be back at the nurses’ home before they locked the front door but she wasn’t too worried because her room was on the ground floor and she always took the catch off the window and left it fractionally open so she could squeeze her fingers in and push it up. As they neared the St James’s roundabout, they could hear the piercing shriek of police sirens over the noise of the storm.

  Ralph turned the car carefully into Laird Street and June felt panic streak through her as she saw multiple headlights racing towards them, one set on their side of the road.

  As she felt Ralph try to swerve to avoid it she let out a scream and her heart bounced into her throat. A split second later came a violent jerk as their car was rammed and then the earsplitting scrape and tear of metal and splintering glass. June felt as though she was being twisted and her head wrenched from her body. An almighty force catapulted her through the air. She felt a searing pain before she blacked out.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, THE telephone disturbed Steve as it rang in the hall outside his study. He stirred and stretched on his bed, knowing he’d fallen asleep again after Leonie had brought him his morning tea. ‘Damn,’ he swore.

  By now she’d have gone to work. He couldn’t rush to answer it, he still felt half asleep. It would surely stop ringing before he reached it. He let his head fall back on the pillow and waited for the annoying noise to stop. It took a long time. Probably it was somebody wanting to speak to Leonie.

  About an hour later it started ringing again. Steve had his false leg strapped on and was almost dressed but he’d heard Mrs Killen come in and start to Hoover. He knew she’d answer it.

  He heard her call, ‘Mr Dransfield, somebody from the hospital wants to speak to you.’

  He sighed, that must be June, but what could she want this early in the morning? Perhaps she was ringing to say she’d come and have supper with them tonight.

  He’d got to his feet but Mrs Killen was hammering on his bedroom door. ‘They say it’s important and can I get you to the phone.’

  ‘All right, I’m coming.’ It made him irritable to be rushed. June knew he couldn’t cope with that. He snatched up the phone, ‘Hello, June,’ he said.

  A brisk authoritative voice answered. ‘I’m Sister Jackson, speaking from the General Hospital. Is that Mr Dransfield, father of Nurse June Dransfield?

  ‘Yes.’ He was abrupt. ‘Who else is likely to be here?’

  ‘Oh!’ Her shocked gasp told him she wasn’t pleased at being spoken to like that. ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news for you, Mr Dransfield. Your daughter has had an accident.’

  ‘What sort of an accident?’ he demanded. This woman was upsetting him.

  ‘She was a passenger in a car involved in a crash, and was brought in here shortly after eleven o’clock last night.’

  He took a deep breath. That didn’t seem likely. ‘Is this a joke?’

  ‘Of course not, Mr Dransfield.’ The woman was affronted. ‘Nobody would joke about a thing like this.’

  It sounded a serious accident. ‘Well, I don’t think it can be my daughter. Was it a man driving the car?’

  ‘Yes, I believe so.’

  ‘June doesn’t know anybody who has a car, and she’s one of your nurses, surely she’d have been in bed by that time.’

  ‘Mr Dransfield,’ she sounded as though she was drawing on the patience of Job, ‘it is your daughter. There is no doubt about that and I must ask you please to come to the hospital to see us. As she’s under age we need a parent to sign a consent form. She might need an operation.’

  Steve could feel himself shaking, ‘But I don’t understand. What’s happened to her? Is she badly hurt?’

  ‘She has multiple cuts and concussion, together with a deep gash on the head.’

  ‘But what was that you said about an operation?’

  ‘Mr Dransfield, if you could come in and speak to her doctor, he will explain your daughter’s condition to you. Speaking generally, after trauma the bra
in can swell and surgical intervention may be required. Please come in and sign a consent form so that we can treat your daughter if, in her case, it proves to be necessary.’

  Steve couldn’t get his breath, he couldn’t cope with this. Not June! How could this terrible thing have happened to her? ‘I’ll ring her mother and let her know,’ he choked out eventually. ‘She’ll come and see you.’

  There was no way he could go out on the bus this morning. He definitely wasn’t up to it. He was shaking all over and his brain had turned to mush. He couldn’t even think of the number of Leonie’s shop.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Mrs Killen pulled a chair behind him and pushed him on to it.

  ‘No, I feel terrible. Something’s happened to June. Can you get Leonie on the phone for me? She’ll have to go to the hospital to see her.’

  Leonie was equally shocked. She blurted out something of the problem to Ida and asked her to hold the fort until she got back. She grabbed her coat and ran the twenty yards along the road to the bus stop. Some distance away, she could see a bus lumbering towards her.

  She was worried, not only about June but about Steve too, he could hardly get the words out to tell her what had happened and he couldn’t remember of the name of the sister who had rung him.

  She, too, found it hard to believe June had been out in a car with a man. June didn’t know any men and she hadn’t been at the hospital long enough to get to know a man well enough to go out with him. And last night had been so stormy. A tree had blown down in next door’s garden.

  Leonie didn’t like hospitals. The smell of disinfectant brought back searing memories of visiting Steve when he’d been injured. She was directed to the nurses’ sick bay – a side room on Ward 3. She found Sister Jackson sympathetic when she told her Steve was an invalid. She was efficient, too, and the consent form was produced for Leonie’s signature.

  ‘This might not be needed,’ she said, ‘but we should have it ready because we don’t want any hold-up if it is.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She has quite a deep cut on her head. She’s had seventeen stitches in it.’

  Leonie gasped, that sounded horrific. ‘Seventeen stitches?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m afraid they had to shave off her hair on that side.’

  ‘Oh dear! She’s very proud of her hair, she won’t like that.’

  ‘The good news is that when her hair grows again any scaring won’t show.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘She’s been unconscious for most of the time and hasn’t been able to say much so far, but she’s drifting in and out of consciousness this morning.’

  ‘But she will get better?’

  ‘We have every reason to suppose she will, but the outcome is never certain. We have to hope, Mrs Dransfield.’

  ‘I don’t understand how she came to be out with a man in a car in that awful storm.’

  ‘We understand it was her boyfriend.’

  ‘But she doesn’t have a boyfriend. Do you know this man’s name?’

  Sister was looking through the file she’d made for June. ‘He was brought here too, of course. You’ll find him on Ward One. His name, yes, I made a note of it. His name’s Ralph Harvey.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ Leonie burst out, but then paused. ‘Hold on, Ralph . . .?’

  ‘Harvey.’

  That could be Elaine’s brother, couldn’t it? Leonie was frowning, ‘Yes, I think I know who he is.’

  ‘I’ll take you in to see her then. I arranged for somebody to sit with her so we’d know when she came round.’

  Leonie followed her into a side ward. It contained two beds but only one was occupied. A nurse was sitting by June.

  ‘Thank you, Nurse Coates. Nurse Dransfield’s mother is here now and will stay with her for a while.’

  Leonie sat down on the chair she vacated. June was lying flat without pillows and her eyes were closed. Her skin was the colour of tallow, with numerous red grazes. Her arm was attached to a drip, her fingers were bandaged and she had a large pad of cotton wool taped to one side of her head. What made June recognisable was her long golden hair spread out across the sheets.

  Leonie couldn’t stop her sharp intake of breath. Her daughter looked really ill.

  The sister checked her drip. ‘This is just to keep her hydrated while she’s unconscious.’

  Leonie reached for her daughter’s free hand. It felt cold.

  ‘Speak to her, it might help to bring her round.’

  She nodded but once she was alone with June she was overcome with anger. Elaine liked to throw a party once in a while and Leonie had met Ralph Harvey on several occasions at her house. She remembered him now, he was usually the life and soul of the party but surely too old for her daughter. Leonie was ready to blame him for causing June’s injuries and present suffering. And how did she come to be out in his car in last night’s storm?

  She tried to talk to her daughter. ‘June, you told me you were going to the cinema last night with the nurse who has the next bedroom to yours.’ June was breathing deeply but not even the smallest muscle on her face moved. ‘Why did you change your mind?’

  Leonie felt frustrated. There was so much she didn’t know about what had happened. The only way she’d get to the bottom of this was to have a word with Elaine’s brother. She went back to the sister’s office to thank her and tell her she was leaving.

  She asked to be directed to Ward One and found it without difficulty. The ward sister was a woman well past middle age, with a firm manner that brooked no argument, developed over many years of coping with patients drawn mostly from Birkenhead’s tough dock workers. She seemed rushed.

  ‘Mr Harvey already has visitors. Our official visiting hours are Wednesday and Sunday afternoons between two and four. Can you not come back then?’

  Leonie felt like crying. She explained who she was and why she wanted to speak so urgently to him. The ward sister relented and patted Leonie’s arm. ‘Nurse Dransfield’s mother? All right, but please don’t stay long. That’s Mr Harvey’s bed over there, with the screens round it. The police are interviewing him.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘The accident. You’d better take a seat outside the office until they go.’

  Sitting still and waiting frustrated Leonie even more, but at last the two uniformed police officers walked out. A nurse removed the screens and beckoned Leonie forward. Elaine’s brother looked very sorry for himself. He’d lost the look of self-assured debonair confidence she remembered and was propped up on pillows with his arm in a sling.

  ‘Do you remember me? I’m June Dransfield’s mother,’ she said briskly, pulling out the chair near his bed. ‘We met at Elaine’s house. I didn’t realise you knew my daughter. I want to know how she came to be in your car last night.’

  ‘I took her out for a meal. I’m very sorry.’ He paused. ‘How is she?’

  ‘Unconscious.’

  ‘You haven’t spoken to her?’

  ‘She isn’t capable of speech. I told you, she’s unconscious.’

  ‘Oh dear, I was hoping . . . They told me she had lots of grazes, I hope they aren’t on her face. June will hate anything like that.’

  ‘They’re all over her.’ Leonie didn’t intend to make things easy for him. ‘She told me she was going to the pictures with another nurse. Why did she change her mind? Did you persuade her?’ Leonie swallowed hard, she’d failed to persuade June to share the casserole with her and Steve and that hurt now. ‘Where did you take her?’

  ‘We had dinner at the Queen’s Hotel in New Brighton.’

  Leonie gasped. He’d taken June out to New Brighton for dinner? ‘You must have known it was dangerous to drive in a storm like that.’

  She could see he was getting angry too. ‘The accident wasn’t my fault. You saw the police officers here. They told me there was an attempted robbery at the Midland Bank last night. The bank had had a new security alarm fitted and the police
knew there were intruders on the premises. They disturbed them and they might have got away if they hadn’t crashed into me. It seems the police were chasing them. So you see I’d have got June back safely but for that and nobody would have been any the wiser.’

  Time stood still for Leonie as her mind flashed back to something Elaine had told her ages ago. She’d been confiding her worries about Steve when Elaine had confessed that her brother worried her. His marriage had failed and he’d become a rather wild bachelor about town.

  Leonie could hardly spit the words out. ‘How long has this been going on? It isn’t the first time June’s been out with you, is it?’

  He sighed heavily. ‘Well, you’ll have to know now. Not only have those wretched robbers put us both in hospital but they’re going to cause us no end of other problems. No, it isn’t the first time. I’ve been taking her out for the last couple of years, possibly more.’

  That took Leonie’s breath away. That must mean June had been keeping him a secret for all that time. She’d thought her a normal happy teenager but she’d been secretive, devious and telling lies. She felt sick. ‘What exactly has been going on?’

  He shrugged and then winced. ‘I’m very sorry. I should not have allowed her to keep secrets from you and her father. You must blame me.’

  ‘I do,’ Leonie said through clenched teeth.

  ‘I love June. She loves me. We want to get married, but as she’s under age, she’ll need your permission.’

  ‘Over my dead body,’ Leonie retorted. ‘You’re saying you took up with June when she was only sixteen? And you encouraged her to keep it secret?’

  He had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Yes, I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s a bit late to apologise, isn’t it? You look much older than her. How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-three.’

  ‘Old enough to know better.’

  ‘I don’t know why it always comes down to age. People can fall in love at any age.’

  ‘I’m horrified. I can’t believe it. Elaine said you’d been married.’

  ‘Yes, I was married for seven years but I was divorced long before I met June.’