Coming Home to Liverpool

by Kate Eastham

  ‘I’ll get you a sip of brandy to celebrate,’ offered Alice, jumping up from the bench.

  ‘I just don’t know how you do it, Eddy,’ marvelled Maud, ‘out there on your own, with all sorts coming your way. You must have to think on your feet.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Eddy, running her hands through her hair. ‘It can be exhausting, but it’s such good work.’

  ‘I brought a sip of brandy for us all,’ said Alice, reappearing with three glasses.

  Maud was about to say her usual, ‘Not for me, thank you,’ but then she thought better of it. ‘Cheers,’ she said as they all chinked glasses. ‘Here’s to us, back together at last.’ She coughed a bit with the first sip, and Eddy slapped her on the back, but she managed to get the rest of the brandy down and it gave her a lovely warm glow. ‘Oh, I know what I was going to tell you both,’ she said, putting an arm around Alice on one side and Eddy on the other.

  ‘That nurse of Miss Fairchild’s, she knows Nancy Sellers.’

  Maud felt as if she’d dropped a stone down a silent well. She sensed both of her friends freeze, then Eddy stammered out something about Nancy, here, there and everywhere, and who’d have thought it, not seen her for ages.

  Maud narrowed her eyes and looked from Eddy to Alice. She knew there was something that she wasn’t being told.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she said, meeting Alice’s bright blue gaze.

  Alice gave a tight smile, her face flushed bright pink. ‘Oh, nothing more than usual. It’s just that … I saw her a few times when I went back to the wards and was finishing my training. She was still trying to cause trouble … you know what she’s like.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  ‘Well,’ said Alice, ‘you know those romantic entanglements that Eddy was hinting at.’

  ‘I was … I was hinting at them, wasn’t I?’ gabbled Eddy.

  ‘Well, apart from Jamie, there was another man I was involved with. I fell for him very badly indeed, but he didn’t tell me he was married. Nancy found out and she took a great deal of pleasure in letting me know.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Maud, wanting to believe that this was all there was to it. And as Alice continued to tell of her various romantic entanglements, Maud could have been fully convinced. But as she sat between her two dearest friends on that bench in the backyard, with the light beginning to fade, just as surely as the moths came to tap at the lamplight in the small window beside the back door, so her nagging, nudging thoughts would not let her settle on one story. She knew there was more to it, and she knew that her friends were hiding something from her.

  5

  ‘The good nurse can often only answer, if examined how she nurses, “With brains and heart, sir, and with training and practice.”’

  Florence Nightingale

  Maud wore her district nurse’s cape and hat with pride as she walked towards the Blue Coat School early the next morning. She was surprised to see passers-by doffing their caps or calling out a cheery, ‘Morning, Sister.’ It was disconcerting, even though Alice had told her it might happen. And she wasn’t sure whether she liked it or not. But she could see Alfred grinning beside her as he carried his bag of books.

  To distract herself she thought of Harry and wondered what he might be doing. It seemed odd, thinking of her husband going about his usual business all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. She had an image of him in his dark green jacket, walking down Broadway with a bit of a swagger, the dog trotting by his side. And as he got closer to the port, he’d be exchanging banter with some of the men and buying merchandise to sell on to the shops in the city. She’d asked him many times about the detail of his work but never really got a full answer. He always managed to slide instantly into some other conversation and then tell her one of his stories and make her laugh. She never really knew what he was up to and wished now that she hadn’t agreed so readily to him staying behind in New York. It would have meant a great deal to her and to Alfred for Harry to be with them now as they walked towards his first day as a boarder at the Blue Coat School.

  Glancing at Alfred, steadfast by her side in his blue uniform jacket, she felt a stab of grief. She would miss being able to see him every day and she had to force herself to smile when he grinned up at her.

  Their goodbye in the impressive courtyard at the front of the school was brief; a uniformed man was standing at the door and as soon as he saw them he came down the steps to escort Alfred inside. Maud was ill prepared for the pain that tightened her chest and made her breath rasp as she gave Alfred one final hug. She found tears stinging her eyes as she tried to say some hurried words, promising that she’d be up to see him as soon as she had an afternoon off – and she would, of course, make arrangements for him to come with her to meet Harry on the day of his return – all the while speaking firmly to hide the waver in her voice.

  ‘That’s all right, Maud, I won’t be worrying,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve lived here at the school before, I will be just fine.’

  ‘Of course you will, I know you will,’ she said, blinking back tears.

  And then he was gone, walking away with just a single glance over his shoulder before disappearing inside the building.

  As Maud stood alone at the bottom of the steps in the now empty courtyard, she felt bereft. Gazing up to the impressive walls of the historic brick building, she saw the stone-cast cherubs above the windows and felt their ornamental faces seeming to look down at her, passing judgement. She slipped her handkerchief out of her sleeve and wiped her eyes. Then she lifted her chin and looked back up at them. They were just ornaments, and she couldn’t work out if their stony expressions were happy or sad, but at least they marked the use of the building as a place specifically for children. That must count for something, she thought. She always worried that Alfred might come to harm at the hands of some person in authority. She’d never been able to shake it off – not since she’d heard the stories that Alfred had told, very stoically, about his early life in the workhouse and then as an apprentice to the chimney sweep who had later tried to sell him on, just to make some money. Maud had had lengthy discussions with Harry about Alfred’s safety if they returned to Liverpool. In the end, they’d agreed that it was very unlikely that the sweep would threaten the boy again. But feeling the separation from him now, Maud had to fight off the uncomfortable feeling that prickled at the back of her neck that something was lying in wait for him or for her, or maybe for both of them.

  She took a deep breath to calm herself and then she looked across to the ancient parish church that sat opposite the school. With its octagonal tower and soot-blackened walls, St Peter’s was a landmark in Liverpool. She remembered her grandmother telling her that she’d attended services there as a child, and Maud seemed to remember that the church had been built in the early seventeen hundreds when Liverpool was no more than a small town, set amongst green fields. It was hard to imagine that her crowded, smoky, ever-expanding city, full of grand buildings, had once been a quiet, rural place.

  Strange, thought Maud, as she walked across School Lane and in through the church gate, my grandmother used to watch the children from the Blue Coat walking in line across to St Peter’s and filing into their special pews up in the gallery.

  Maud glanced up to the church clock and her pulse began to quicken. ‘I need to get going,’ she murmured to herself, ‘I don’t want to be too late for my first morning at work.’ She could imagine Miss Merryweather already tapping her fingers impatiently on the polished wood of her desk. And that sense of the hospital waiting sent a ripple through her body as she walked towards her work – she could almost smell the disinfectant of the wards.

  As she made her way up Brownlow Hill towards the Infirmary, the street was busy. One carriage came so close to the footpath that Maud felt the swish of the wheel as it brushed by her. And there were street sellers with their stalls at the side of the road, and women and children milling around. It was a good job that she could step lithely around her fellow
pedestrians or she would have been delayed.

  Just as she was approaching the final stretch, Maud noted a child with tousled red hair up ahead and took a second to recall where she remembered her from. It was her visitor to the backyard – Sue Cassidy. She called out to the girl but her voice was lost in the hubbub of the crowd. She picked up her pace so that she could reach out to her, say hello. She could see the girl’s head still bobbing along in front. She was moving fast, dodging her way through the busy street. Then Sue stopped dead in her tracks and Maud began to gain ground, keeping her eye on that head of tangled red hair. She was almost there, half a dozen strides away, when Maud saw the girl clutch her head with both hands and shout something inaudible amidst the rumble of carriage wheels and the sound of horses’ hooves. Then, to Maud’s absolute horror, the girl darted into the road, right in front of a horse and carriage.

  ‘Sue!’ Maud screamed, her voice instantly drowned out.

  What came next was the terrified shriek of a rearing horse, followed by screaming and shouting. Maud’s heart contracted for a split second, then she lifted her skirt and ran, pushing her way through the people on the pavement. The whole street had come to a standstill. Maud looked past a woman who stood frozen at the side of the road, her hand over her mouth. Maud gasped when she saw Sue lying, bloodied, on the ground. And there, next to her, was a small boy with bare feet who lay clutching a dusty loaf of bread. Both casualties were unconscious.

  A coachman in full grey livery had got down into the road, along with the driver of the carriage.

  ‘Let me through,’ shouted Maud, her heart thudding in her chest. ‘I’m a nurse.’

  Maud’s instincts led her first to Sue, who had a pool of blood now forming around her head. Glancing across to the boy, even as she assessed the girl, she saw the driver kneel down by the side of him.

  ‘Is he breathing?’ she shouted.

  The man nodded.

  ‘Stay with him,’ instructed Maud, shutting out the sound of a woman who had started to weep and the frenzied snorting and stamping of the horses around her. As she inspected the extent of Sue’s injuries, somewhere in the distance she heard the sound of a policeman blowing his whistle and shouting, ‘Stand back, everyone!’

  It was easy to see the source of the bleeding. Sue had a gash on the left side of her face, stretching from her forehead, skimming past her eye and down her cheek. Maud could see the white glint of bone. It was deep.

  She pulled out her clean handkerchief and pressed it to the wound, her hands instantly covered with blood.

  ‘I need more clean cloths,’ she shouted. ‘Anything. But it has to be clean.’

  The passers-by that surrounded her looked at each other frantically, appearing helpless. Then the coachman in grey livery handed her a linen handkerchief.

  Maud took it without a word and pressed it to the wound on Sue’s face. It was soon soaked through with blood, but now other people were catching on, too. They began passing their handkerchiefs and then a tea cloth from the bread stall at the side of the road. Maud soon had a compress on the wound and the bleeding under control. Sue was still unconscious so Maud checked her limbs carefully with her free hand. She couldn’t detect anything that felt obviously broken.

  The coachman crouched down in the dust of the road. ‘I can put pressure on there for you,’ he said, ‘if you want to go and check the boy.’

  Maud went straight over to the boy, who lay covered in dust, as if asleep, the loaf of bread still tucked under his arm. She knelt down beside him, her eyes scanning his body. He was breathing but his skin was white. Maud gasped when she saw the mark of the carriage wheel right across his body. She felt a stab of pain as she realized that there would be too much damage inside his small body to repair. There was no hope for the tiny child. When she saw the frozen expression on the driver’s weather-beaten face, she knew that he too understood the consequences of the boy’s accident.

  ‘He ran right out in front of me,’ said the driver, holding back a sob. ‘Right in front of me. He must have grabbed the bread off that stall. And then the girl came straight after him, she tried to pull him back. There was nothing I could do.’

  Maud put a hand on his arm. ‘Just stay with him,’ she said.

  The coachman was doing a good job applying pressure to Sue’s wound. He seemed unfazed by the amount of blood that covered his hands. ‘We need to get moving right now, up to the Infirmary,’ Maud said firmly.

  ‘I’ll take over from here, Sister,’ said a policeman with a red face, pushing his way through. ‘I’ll organize transport for these two up to the workhouse infirmary.’

  ‘No,’ said Maud firmly. ‘No. They are going to the Royal Infirmary.’

  ‘They’re just waifs and strays, Sister, no need to concern yourself,’ replied the constable.

  Maud stepped in front of him with her teeth gritted and her right hand balled into a fist at her side.

  ‘As you well know, Sister,’ said the policeman, frowning, ‘they don’t accept riff-raff from the streets at the Infirmary. The only place they can go is the workhouse.’

  ‘I work at the Royal Infirmary,’ she said, feeling the quickening of her pulse as she tried to control her anger, ‘and that is where I am taking these children.’ Then, turning her back on the policeman, she leant down to speak to her helper. ‘It isn’t far. Can you manage the girl, if I carry the boy?’

  ‘Of course,’ said the coachman, instantly slipping his arms beneath Sue and lifting her up from where she lay in the street.

  ‘Right,’ nodded Maud. ‘We need to get moving.’

  ‘Now, Sister—’ tried the policeman once more.

  ‘I need to move these casualties to the hospital,’ she called over her shoulder as she stooped down towards the boy. ‘I happen to know the girl’s name. She is Sue Cassidy, and her mother works as a flower seller on the market. I want you to get word to her and send her up to the Infirmary. And you need to try to find out who this boy is, and if he has any family.’

  Not waiting for any further discussion, Maud murmured to the driver, ‘I’ll take him now,’ and she slipped her arms carefully beneath the boy and lifted him up from the ground. Her heart almost broke when she felt the slightness of his starved frame and saw his small face, white beneath the muck, with a bubble of bright red blood forming at the corner of his mouth. She could feel him still breathing but his body felt broken in her arms.

  Maud almost ran to keep up with the coachman as he strode ahead at some pace, easily carrying Sue, without any regard for the blood that was undoubtedly soaking into his grey livery.

  As soon as they reached the door of the Infirmary, he stopped and waited for Maud to catch up. ‘Follow me,’ she said breathlessly, knowing exactly where she was going – straight to Alice and Sister Pritchard on Female Surgical.

  As they ran down the corridor, Maud could feel her heart pounding in time with the sound of their echoing feet. She caught the familiar carbolic tang of the hospital and it somehow reassured her. As soon as they were in through the door of the ward, she saw the tall figure of Sister Pritchard further up the ward. ‘We need some help,’ she cried, and Sister came running.

  ‘Maud?’ she said, as soon as she recognized her, but there was no time to ask any more questions.

  ‘These two ran out in front of a carriage at the top of Brownlow Hill. I know this girl, her name is Sue Cassidy. She has a nasty facial injury and she’s been unconscious since the accident. This boy is breathing but he has the mark of a carriage wheel across his body.’

  Sister Pritchard glanced at the boy in Maud’s arms. The fleeting look of sorrow was unmistakable in her eyes but she was already giving instructions. ‘Well, we are a female ward but small boys are also welcome. See those two beds there, next to each other,’ she said firmly, turning to point towards the bottom of the ward. ‘Put the boy in the corner bed, it will be quieter, and the girl next to him.’

  As Maud walked with her helper, carrying the children
in their arms, she saw the line of female patients in beds down each side of the ward look in their direction. One or two crossed themselves.

  ‘Nurse Sampson!’ called Sister, and Maud saw the shock on her friend’s face when she popped her head out from behind a set of wooden screens midway up the ward. ‘I need you to finish up there with Mrs Jenkins and come here directly, we have two new admissions. Find one of the probationers, Nurse Latimer, and ask her to go and locate Mr Jones and inform him that he’s needed in theatre on Female Surgical as soon as he’s finished up what he’s doing. And send the other probationer, Nurse Devlin, down here to me.’

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ called Alice.

  Maud settled her boy carefully in the bed, the dirt from the street instantly smearing the spotless white bedding as she slipped him between the sheets. There was more bright red blood now at the corner of his mouth, and she wiped it away with the flat of her hand. Then she pulled up the top sheet to cover his body and gently tucked it beneath his arms. With his grubby face belying the deathly whiteness of his skin, the boy looked as though he was peacefully sleeping. Maud noted that his breathing was very shallow. And when she picked up his wrist to check his pulse, it was barely palpable.

  She heard Sister Pritchard directing the probationer, Nurse Devlin, to stay with the boy, quietly telling her that there was nothing else that could be done for him. As the young nurse, a slender girl with wide grey eyes, slipped by her, Maud gave her a grateful smile for what she was about to do. When she turned back to Sue’s bed, she could see the tension in Sister Pritchard’s thin body as she leant over to check her patient’s breathing and pulse and then, as Maud had done earlier, feeling up and down her arms and legs for any sign of a fracture.

  Straightening up, Sister looked across at Maud. ‘You’ve done well. We’ll leave your makeshift dressing in place for now, it’s doing a good job of staunching the bleeding. I’ll just add some clean lint on top and a bandage to keep it in place.’ And then, with a wry smile, she added, ‘I knew you were coming back to join us, Nurse Linklater, but I didn’t expect you to be rescuing injured children from the streets of Liverpool just yet.’