Snow Angels

by Nadine Dorries

  Madge opened the door and peeped out into the party. ‘Ah, God love her. Sister Horton looks so tired. In the short time they’ve had that baby, she’s aged ten years.’

  ‘Tell me what new mother doesn’t?’ snapped Biddy. Biddy’s life was devoted to Sister Horton and the school of nursing and, more lately, to the addition to Sister Horton and Dessie’s family, baby Louis.

  ‘Who’d have thought it, eh?’ said Elsie. ‘Nurse Davenport not long married with a bun in the oven and Sister Horton and Dessie with their own adopted baby boy.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, though: there’s no way that bun wasn’t already in the oven before they were married,’ said Madge. ‘What did Mrs Duffy say, Biddy? Does she think that? If anyone knows, she will. She looks after them all. If the nurses were talking at the home, she would have heard it, surely to God.’

  Biddy looked enraged. ‘Are you kidding me? I don’t know and I won’t ask Mrs Duffy – you know what she’s like about her precious nurses. You ask her on the bus tomorrow, Elsie. And if it was or it wasn’t, it makes no difference; it changes nothing, does it? Whose business is it anyway but theirs? It’ll be here soon enough and nothing anyone has to say will change that.’

  Madge held up a glass to inspect it for smears. ‘Oh aye, I’m not going to argue with that, and she won’t have been the first or the last – and I’ll tell you something else: you can tell it’s a little lad she’s carrying. I saw them all in the café at George Henry Lee’s a few weeks ago, buying baby clothes. It was just after Nurse Brogan got back from Ireland and very excited they all were, although Nurse Brogan wasn’t herself at all. Due at the New Year Nurse Davenport is, but she was that big she’ll be lucky to get to Christmas without delivering him.’

  Elsie turned the dripping tap off and Biddy said, ‘Talking about little lads, I’ll just go and check on Louis. He’s in the pram in Matron’s bedroom, flat out he was when Emily and Dessie brought him in.’ Biddy undid her apron ties as she spoke and hung it over the rail of the cooker to dry.

  ‘Let me take those sausage rolls out there, Elsie,’ said Madge. ‘You go with Biddy and both of you put your feet up for five minutes while you check on Louis; me and Jake can manage for the next half an hour. You can’t go until he does anyway, ladies, because you aren’t walking home on your own.’ Madge disappeared through the door and Elsie picked up the glass of sherry and handed a half-full one that had come back into the kitchen to Biddy with a wink. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and check on him and put our feet up like she said.’

  Madge blinked at the sight before her as she walked into Matron’s sitting room; just as Jake had anticipated, Mrs Mabbutt had fallen backwards, straight onto the sofa, but she didn’t seem to mind as, bright-eyed and flushed, she allowed half the men in the room to reposition her into a sitting pose and asked Jake to top up her glass as she straightened first her skirt and then her pearls. She saw Dr William, deep in conversation with Emily Horton, heads together, whispering. Madge knew from patching his calls through to the school of nursing that Emily had asked him to visit the hospital to give a talk to the probationer nurses about the role of a GP and how district nurses assisted in the community. He also ran the dermatology clinic at St Angelus on a Thursday afternoon. Everyone loved Dr William, and none more than his wife who stood adoringly at his side. Madge moved towards Matron with the tray, but as she passed she heard Emily Horton say, ‘Well, of course, but the best person to do that is Mavis Tanner. Leave it with me, I’ll have a word with her.’ Madge’s ears pricked up, her gossip antenna had not been dulled by the late hour and as she placed the tray on the sofa table she pretended to be rearranging a pile of small serviettes. If they were discussing Mavis, it was obviously her duty to eavesdrop. Mavis Tanner was a key member of the St Angelus Mafia and a close friend. No one had noticed Madge, not even Mrs Mabbutt, who was now beginning to doze with her glass, tipped threateningly towards her generous bosom, held precariously in her hand. Madge leant over the boucle sofa, removed it from Mrs Mabbutt’s fingers, and placed it on the side table next to her as she strained her ears over the chatter.

  ‘It’s important this is kept very confidential,’ Dr William was saying. ‘The reasons why, I mean. If you could invent something plausible, I would be very grateful. Obviously, Dr Gaskell has no idea and it’s not my place, or that of anyone else to tell him – and certainly, Mrs Tanner must not know.’ Emily nodded her head and looked thoughtful. ‘Obviously, under normal circumstances, I couldn’t agree to withhold information, but this is different; and besides, I’m just asking someone to help out. This is not a medical intervention, it’s more a social one – and helpful for Mrs Gaskell.’

  Mrs Gaskell? Madge was confused. They were talking about Mrs Gaskell and Mavis Tanner in the same sentence. No one knew Mrs Gaskell. She was as unknown as her husband was a legend on the dock streets. Mmm, Madge thought, spotting Mrs Gaskell in the corner of the room, standing next to her husband who was deep in conversation with Matron, maybe it was time she got to know Mrs Gaskell. She picked up the tray and headed over to the corner window herself.

  ‘Mrs Gaskell, would you like a sausage roll? Biddy made them herself.’

  Matron, who was perched on the windowsill, leant forward to inspect the offering and made an exaggerated show of sniffing the plate. ‘Well, well, they smell delicious,’ she said; and, Madge noticed, it was as though Mrs Gaskell was invisible. Madge had spoken to Mrs Gaskell and Matron had not even cared to wait for her reply.

  Dr Gaskell took one of the sausage rolls. ‘Golly, they do,’ he said, without offering one to his wife first. He rarely, if ever, brought his wife to any social functions and was usually the man by Matron’s side.

  Madge had willingly volunteered to help out at Matron’s party, it being a special place to gather information and gossip and it looked as though it was about to pay off. ‘It’s lovely to see you here,’ said Madge to Mrs Gaskell. ‘We don’t usually see you, do we, Dr Gaskell?’

  Mrs Gaskell flushed and Dr Gaskell placed part of his sausage roll into his napkin and, ignoring Madge, helped himself to another. His wife looked to him for reassurance, received none, and flushing, turned back to Madge. ‘Ah no, well, I thought now that Oliver was living in the doctor’s residence, it was time for me to get out a bit more.’

  Madge could see she was uncomfortable answering her question. Everyone knew she was oblivious to the antics of her son Oliver, the wild boy doctor of the hospital who, so far, had only specialised in breaking the hearts of probationer nurses.

  ‘Mrs Gaskell, go on, you try one before your husband demolishes the lot,’ she said proffering the tray again. ‘Matron, would you…’

  ‘Oh, I will, Madge, thank you,’ said Matron, lifting one of the sausage rolls. ‘Is Elsie coping in the kitchen? And more importantly, is the little prince, Louis, behaving himself?’

  ‘He’s been flat out the entire evening, loving your bedroom, I would say. Not a peep out of him,’ Madge replied.

  Dr Gaskell snorted with laughter. ‘Who would have thought when that little lad was admitted into casualty that he would be sleeping in your bedroom in his pram at your Christmas party, eh?’

  Matron shook her head in disbelief. ‘I would have had you certified if you’d told me that; he was in such a bad way, almost starved to death.’

  Madge looked from one to the other, neither were addressing Mrs Gaskell. ‘Did you hear about the case, Mrs Gaskell?’ Madge knew she was stepping over the line between staff and guest. Matron turned to Dr Gaskell’s wife, as though realising for the first time that she was there and then she glanced at Madge with an expression of mild curiosity.

  ‘Er, yes I did hear,’ Mrs Gaskell said. ‘It was on the news. An awful, dreadful case of abandonment and neglect. He was found in a garage in a house, wasn’t he?’ Dr Gaskell looked at his wife as though she had grown an extra head. He had given up long ago trying to encourage her to speak at social occasions. ‘I have nothing to say,’ had b
een her rejoinder for years. ‘It is your world, not mine. No one is interested in what I have to say, they are all so clever.’.

  ‘Yes, quite. He was almost dead by the time he got to us,’ said Matron. ‘The police still have no idea who the parents were. This time last year it was and not a sign of his mother. The neighbours in the street said that the couple who lived in the house were extremely secretive, kept themselves to themselves and, apparently, had fled in the night.’

  ‘Yes, I saw the plea for his mother to come forward on the news. They said they thought she might need medical help because there was no record of the birth anywhere.’

  ‘Quite. There were traces of blood on the bathroom floor, apparently. It looks as though she had him at home in unusual circumstances. I mean, lots of babies are born at home, but their births are registered. Not this one, though.’

  There was a moment’s silence while they all visualised a lonely woman, secretly giving birth and then hiding her baby in a pram in a garage. Mrs Gaskell broke the silence.

  ‘My husband did tell me he is being adopted by Sister Horton and her husband, Dessie, isn’t that right, darling?’ She turned to Dr Gaskell and Madge thought that she was sounding more confident, now that she had warmed up. It was obvious to Madge, a perceptive woman, that Mrs Gaskell wanted her husband to continue the conversation, to relieve her of the burden of commenting or passing an opinion alone, to back her up, endorse her words. Her eyes held his face, gently pleading. Madge was taken by her manner and her voice and found herself staring at her. It was timorous, faltering, as though it had been an effort to speak. Madge wondered why she didn’t do something with her hair which was white and straight, her face, touched only by a powder that made her complexion look pale and dry.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well remembered. The very lucky young man is in the process of being adopted and he’s always about, isn’t he, Matron? And Sister Horton is still working here.’ Dr Gaskell bit into the puff pastry of his sausage roll and covered himself in an explosion of buttery golden flakes. He had passed the conversation on to Matron as though it were a baton.

  ‘He is indeed always about. Sister Horton is very lucky. The head of children’s services has allowed her to continue working here during the adoption process – and why not, I say. In this case, with his medical needs, there was no better solution. The whole thing was such a dreadful affair – the house where he had been found was rented in a false name and there was no paperwork, the neighbours knew nothing, and there was no trace of anyone. The neighbours said that the couple who had left the house were foreign and too old to have children so it wasn’t theirs. There was a live-in help, but the neighbour said she left the house six months earlier, so it couldn’t have been hers either. So someone looked for an empty house and dumped little Louis in the garage. It was a complete mystery – just thank goodness he was heard and Emily and Dessie fell in love with him.’

  ‘Goodness me, Matron. You are becoming a thoroughly modern detective in your old age and a modern matron too.’ Dr Gaskell laughed as he spoke.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Matron, having the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Wasn’t I the one who pushed for married nurses to be able to work? Don’t get me wrong, if children’s services had said that Sister Horton had to give up work to adopt, she would have had to make the choice – adopt Louis, or keep her job. Thankfully, it never came to that.’

  Madge didn’t want to overstay her welcome; taking her leave she made her way into the kitchen to fetch a fresh plate and circled the room, offering out the devils on horseback, bites of prunes wrapped in bacon, pierced with a cocktail stick and drizzled with golden syrup, to the sound of oohs and ahhs. She had heard the recipe on the radio the previous week. Lyle’s syrup had not long returned to the shelves in the shops in some abundance and was flying through the tills. It was three weeks to Christmas and she could smell it in the air. The happiness and anticipation, the sherry and the sugar, the cloves and cinnamon. She sighed as she spotted Dr William and his wife sitting on a hard-backed chair talking to one of the other GPs and his wife. Matron had placed Dr William next to the gramophone and he was laughing as he bent to carefully place the stylus on the beginning of a spinning record.

  ‘This takes more skill than removing an appendix,’ he laughed as there was a slight scratch before the strains of Bing Crosby singing ‘White Christmas’ filled the room. Matron’s Christmas tree, always the first to be erected and decorated, twinkled in the window. It shone down over the car park and the main entrance to the hospital and out onto the Dock Road. ‘I want the hospital to be a welcoming place at Christmas, not the terrifying place it is for the rest of the year,’ she was known to say when she was asked why hers was always the first tree to be lit. ‘Half of Liverpool still think this place is a workhouse.’

  In the reflected light, the crystal glasses filled with the golden sherry shone. Chatter, laughter and pre-Christmas excitement filled the room. Madge patted her hair. No, not a single man in the room.

  ‘Right, back to the kitchen for me, then,’ she said, and with a sigh she turned away from the life she wanted to live to the life she had. No sooner had she run a fresh sink of hot water to soak the sticky plates she had carried in, than Emily and Dessie caught up with her.

  ‘Time for us to go,’ said Emily. ‘We’ll just fetch Louis from Matron’s bedroom. Has he been good?’

  ‘He has, not a peep; but then, when was that little lad any trouble? Who would have thought it, eh?’ Emily tied her headscarf tight under her chin. ‘Have you seen that rain?’ said Madge, inclining her head towards the window. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he wakes up once you get him out there, so keep him covered.’

  ‘Bet you he doesn’t,’ said Dessie. ‘A bomb could go off and that lad wouldn’t wake.’

  ‘Aye, well, let’s hope that one is never put to the test, shall we?’

  The door opened again and Jake appeared. ‘Come on then, Dessie, I’ll help you carry the pram down the stairs before Mrs Mabbutt passes out altogether and I have to help her husband with a fireman’s lift.’

  Dessie frowned. ‘Tell you what, I’ll get Emily and Louis home and then I’ll come back to help, shall I?’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Jake taking his coat down off the back of the door. ‘Dr William and I have got it covered, he’s going to help me, should help be required. You never know, she may surprise us all and make it out of the door all by herself. She’s been known to see off a bottle’s worth of port and lemon at the doctors’ wives lunch, so I’ve been told and she wobbles out of the door all by herself then.’

  Dessie looked relieved. ‘Well, as long as Dr William is there to help. What an asset he is to the hospital.’

  ‘Oh, he is that,’ said Madge. ‘I’m registered at his GP practice and he’s a lovely doctor too,’ she said. ‘I thought my heart would break when Dr Marcus died because I didn’t think they would ever find another to replace him. But Dr William does the skin clinic here on Thursdays now and Doreen told me that the patients and the nurses just love him in outpatients too.’

  ‘Right, let’s go,’ said Dessie. ‘Thanks for everything, Madge. Where’s Biddy and Elsie?’

  ‘They’re with Louis,’ said Madge, and they pushed open the bedroom door to find Elsie on one chair, her shoes kicked off, fast asleep and Biddy sprawled out opposite in the other in the same state of repose. ‘I don’t know about Mrs Mabbutt, it’s your mother-in-law and Biddy you’ll be carrying home,’ said Madge to Jake.

  ‘Poor things, they’re wiped out,’ said Emily. ‘Thank goodness Louis was no problem.’ She took the handle of the pram and carefully swivelled it around as Dessie secured the elastic over the hooks at the side of the hood to make sure no rain could get inside the pram once they were outside, then with Dessie at the front and Jake on the handle, they expertly carried the pram down the stone steps to the outside of the hospital and gently laid it back down onto the cobbled pathway. All three of them peeped over the canopy cov
er to check on the little boy.

  ‘God love him, and God speed home, you two. See you in the morning at eight, Dessie,’ said Jake, one hand held up in a salute of farewell as he jumped the steps two at a time to go back into the light and warmth as Emily and Dessie set off on the ten-minute walk to their terraced house. The wheels of the large Silver Cross pram glided seamlessly over the cobbles as they strode with their heads bent down, their gaze never leaving the face of their baby boy. Neither noticed the passing bus or the face of Ida Botherthwaite, a night cleaner at the hospital, pressed against the glass, watching them as the bus passed. They were proud parents, two people with a history of loss and despair who had found love together and total happiness in their joint love for their adoptive son.

  Only one of them knew that they were living a lie.

  Chapter 3

  Mrs Duffy, housekeeper at the Lovely Lane nurses’ home, age unknown and advancing, had been discussed at the highest levels following a recent decision made by Matron to recruit more nurses from Ireland. New wards were being built to meet the post-war demands of a burgeoning NHS. Along with the new wards, the decision had been taken to expand the nurses’ home and build out into the large garden.

  ‘I wonder if it’s time for us to politely suggest to Mrs Duffy that it’s time to retire,’ one of the board members had said at a recent meeting.

  Matron sat up in her chair and tumbled her pencil around in her hand in mild agitation. ‘It’s up to Mrs Duffy to decide when she wants to retire,’ she said. ‘I certainly shan’t be suggesting it. What would be far more useful would be for us to take on a maid to help ease her burden, someone to learn under her. No one, young or old, should be expected to run the place alone when the new rooms are occupied. We will value her knowledge and experience more than ever then. She’s a stickler for order and routine – and that’s no bad thing today. We know that whoever trains under Mrs Duffy will be well taught.’