Snow Angels

by Nadine Dorries

  Unfair, she knew. He was never grumpy. He looked down at her outstretched hand now and took the black leather gloves from her, began to ease them, a finger at a time, over his hands.

  ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s just such a surprise, Mrs Tanner calling around here. I wonder did Matron know?’

  She felt embarrassed, didn’t know what to say to the man she had been married to for all the years she had been on autopilot, the perfect doctor’s wife. ‘Well, I didn’t ask and she’s hard to say no to, Mrs Tanner – you try it,’ she said and finished her words with a nervous laugh.

  ‘Will you be all right?’ His expression was concerned, his eyes asking a question she did not know how to answer. ‘I know only too well how difficult Mrs Tanner is to refuse. You don’t have to go, though, not if you don’t want to.’ He studied her face, looking for a clue.

  She set her jaw and looked him in the face. ‘No, I do. I mean, I will. I’m going to go. I want to.’ She sounded as though she meant it and, as she spoke, she realised that, actually, she did, in one way. In another, she was terrified and he knew it.

  ‘That’s nice,’ he said as he smiled at her, his eyes lingering. She tightened the corded belt around her dressing gown and he bent down and picked up his battered Gladstone bag as she presented her face and awaited his kiss which he dutifully dropped onto her parted, papery lips. They had once been full and yielding and his kisses had once meant more than just goodbye.

  ‘I was asked to help with something else too and I agreed. I said I would be happy to help Sister Theresa make decorations for the Christmas tree on the children’s wards next week. I thought we would send a few to Dr Teddy’s sister-in-law, Nurse Victoria. Oliver said that she is due to have her baby just after Christmas and I’ve knitted a matinee coat for it, so I’ll send that, too. If I’m not going to have any grandchildren of my own, I may as well knit for someone else’s. Sister Theresa called only hours after Mrs Tanner. Such a coincidence. If you hadn’t got caught up on the ward and come home before bedtime I’d have told you all about it.’

  ‘Doris…’ He looked flabbergasted. It was as though a different woman was seeing him off to work. A stranger.

  ‘What?’ she asked defensively. ‘I’m not chained to the kitchen sink, you know. I’m not totally incapable.’

  ‘No, no, my darling, of course you are not. Helping with the tree, making the cakes… that’s a jolly good idea. You make the best cakes I know.’

  ‘Really?’ she asked with an edge to her voice that even she wasn’t aware she possessed. ‘If that’s the case, why do you eat so many of Mavis Tanner’s?’

  ‘Right, I’m off,’ he said wanting to end the unfamiliar conversation as she reached to open the door. Her job. A small cog in her unchanging and long-established routine. She had stood waving him off to work, once with a belly full with a child, which in turn became a toddler on her hip, a small boy holding her hand, a little man running out of the door at the same time as his father to get into the front seat of the car for his lift to school.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked when the door stood open and she folded her arms and pulled her dressing gown tight across her chest to ward against the sudden drop in temperature.

  ‘I’ve got a clinic, straight after the ward round, and then Sister Horton has asked me to give a talk on the latest antibiotic therapy for the treatment of chronic bronchitis in paediatrics. I want to explain to the nurses about the importance of maintaining consistent antibiotic levels in the blood with the new drugs. Do you know, I happened to be on a ward the other day and it occurred to me that the drug round took over an hour – and that’s not good enough for those on the new therapies. The drugs need to be given on the hour. I’m going to talk to Matron about it, see if there is a way the more time-sensitive medications can be given as they should be.’

  Her mind was drifting towards the banana bread she had put in the oven. The habits of wartime had never left her and she still lived by the mantra, ‘waste not, want not’ and had never knowingly put an overripe banana in the bin.

  ‘And when that is done,’ he went on, ‘I’m having a working lunch in Matron’s rooms along with some of the other consultants to talk about the new wards that are being built. Just the usual, darling. Is it lamb chops tonight?’

  ‘If I was the sort of woman predisposed to jealousy, I would feel rather envious about the amount of time you spend with Matron.’ She knocked the invisible dandruff from the shoulders of his wool worsted coat, deflecting the true meaning behind her words. She had witnessed their obvious closeness and Matron made her feel inadequate, stupid, like a little woman who knew nothing. She also knew that it wasn’t Matron’s fault that she felt that way. Matron, the career woman, the professional who spoke to doctors as though they were delinquents in need of a firm hand, had been the other woman for all of her married life.

  ‘Your mistress in blue,’ she had once joked, in the days when they did joke about such things, when there was still a sexual frisson, a reason to behave in the coquettish, teasing manner he appeared to enjoy, the days when she hurriedly applied her lipstick as soon as she heard his car turn into the drive. The days when her hair was thick and curled, her breasts as full as her hips, her eyes bright and blue and interested in life. That had been so long ago…

  ‘Here, tuck your scarf in,’ she said as she pushed the checked scarf down inside the front of his coat. He laughed and dropped an uncustomary kiss onto her nose, guilt settling on his face.

  ‘You know you’ve never had to worry. I have always been quite safe with Matron. We both know she has never been interested in men.’

  Doris raised her eyebrows. ‘So you often say – and I have always believed you. I was never worried that you were going get up to no good with Matron.’

  ‘What is it then?’ he asked. ‘What does worry you?’ His expression full of concern.

  ‘What it is, is lamb chops. It is Wednesday, is it not? It’s always lamb chops,’ she said. He frowned, about to say that wasn’t what he meant as she well knew, but he let the subject drop. If he didn’t leave he would be late for his first ward round. ‘Do you think you might see our son today and remind him he’s supposed to be here this evening for supper too?’ She moved the conversation quickly on from Matron and relief flashed across his eyes. He was as married to St Angelus as he was to his wife. His guilt stemmed from the fact that he knew his wife had spent far too many evenings and weekends alone when he should have been at home; but when Matron called, he could never resist. They shared an all-consuming passion for the good of St Angelus, its staff and patients.

  ‘Oh, damn and blast, I forgot to say… Oliver asked if he could bring Teddy home with him tonight and I said yes. Sorry, I forgot.’ He gave her a pleading look and she smiled.

  ‘Well, it’s a good job you remembered now before I went to the butcher’s. I had better make a nice pudding then. Those boys, they love their puddings.’

  ‘Those boys love food,’ he replied with disdain. ‘They can’t keep up with them in the doctors’ sitting room. Elsie swears they have hollow legs. She also swears Oliver hasn’t stopped growing yet.’

  Given that Elsie fed Dr Gaskell as often as Doris did, she assumed she must be the third most important woman in his life… or was that her? Did Matron and her housekeeper come first and second? He certainly spent more hours with them than he did with her.

  ‘So don’t you let whoever is volunteering on the WVS tempt either of you with Mrs Tanner’s cakes today or you are going to have to be measured for a new suit,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I only bought this one a few years ago.’ He looked affronted. ‘Our son is operating in theatre all morning but I will make sure I get a message to him, though.’

  Their only son had followed in his father’s professional footsteps – medical school and straight to St Angelus. He had chosen surgery and the life of a bachelor, much to his parents’ despair. ‘Mrs Tanner won’t tempt me. I’ll be as good as go
ld,’ he called back as he half lifted his hat into the air and strode down the path towards the garage where the gardener had already opened the doors and his pale green Humber stood ready to transport him to St Angelus and yet another busy day as one of the most prominent chest physicians and surgeons in the North-West, a living hero on the dockside streets and a man who spent more waking hours of the week in the company of Matron than he did with his wife.

  As was their custom, Doris Gaskell stood in the cold and waved until the car turned right at the end of the drive and became swallowed by the privet hedge. She looked up into the grey sky and sighed, remembering Oliver as her little man, recalling a memory of him waving to her at the end of the drive. How her heart had leapt as he dropped his satchel onto the gravel and ran back. ‘One more kiss, Mummy, but don’t let anyone see.’ She took a deep breath. How she had longed for more children, but her husband was always so tired, often away on one course or another, reading case notes or papers into the night, long after she had fallen asleep. Yes, his reputation had come with a huge personal cost. She sighed again, closed the door and hurried back inside to the warmth of the kitchen fire – and to find the brown glass bottle within which lived her little friends, her helpers, the pills that carried her through the day until the evening when her sought-after, popular, God-like husband returned.

  Chapter 5

  He had brought her breakfast to her room on a tray. ‘I thought I had better come and see if you were all right after your funny turn last night. Here’s a bit of tea and toast and porridge.’

  He held the tray before him and it occurred to her that he was the one who looked nervous. She held the door with her foot and took the tray. ‘Thank you.’ Just the two words, no further information given.

  ‘Did you sleep well? Do you feel any better this morning?’

  ‘I do, yes. Thank you for your kindness.’ She had eaten her meal almost in silence and given him scant information the evening before. The food had made her feel stronger, better. ‘I will be leaving for the day, shortly,’ she had said.

  ‘Right, well, tell you what, let me make you up a few butties to take with you for your lunch.’ She had made to protest, but she was speaking to his hand at first and then his back as he walked away. ‘No, I won’t take no for an answer. We look after our guests.’

  Eva put her sickness down to the crossing from New York. She had spent most of her days in the cabin and thought it was probably sea sickness, but now, on dry land, nothing was improving and the dull ache in the pit of her belly was still there. Just as it had been for months.

  She slipped out of the Seaman’s Stop unseen and heard Melly’s shouting in the kitchen, ‘Since when do we make butties for guests? Are you going soft in the head, or what?’ She closed the door behind her and did not hear Malcolm’s reply. She knew exactly where she needed to be and her first day out and about was spent in the central library. It had taken only an hour for the assistant to find her the newspapers she was looking for.

  ‘Oh, you’re lucky,’ she had said. ‘They don’t go into the archives until January. We keep them out the back for a year at a time. All the papers from October, you say? Well, that’s easy enough.’ The assistant gave Eva a curious look. Why would anyone want copies of the Echo which were that recent?

  Eva had anticipated her question. ‘I’m tracing my family and I want to check the births, marriage and deaths. We were told an uncle died here in October, but we don’t know the date. I travelled over to see what I could find out for my mother, his sister. They were separated during the war,’ Eva said.

  The assistant’s expression turned from one of doubt and curiosity to one of complete understanding. ‘Oh, I see, yeah, we get a lot of that. Are you from America, then, only you don’t sound like a Yank, but we do get lots of them wanting to check the hatched, matched and dispatched. No, you aren’t a Yank, I’ve heard enough to know that. The Yanks, they come in here and they say, “I’m looking for a Mrs O’Hara, she’s a relative of mine, would you know her?” Honest to God, it cracks me up every time. They expect me to know who she is, where she lives and what she had for her tea last night.’ The assistant gave up. She was getting nothing out of Eva. ‘You go to the café next door, love. You look to me as though you could do with a hot meat pie and cuppa and I’ll have the Echoes up here for you in about half an hour. At least you aren’t asking me for the impossible. The last fella who was in here asked me did I know any of the guests at his grandfather’s funeral because he was trying to trace his family. He thought that because I get all the papers here every day, I went to the funerals, too.’

  Eva managed a smile and headed out towards the café. In her bag, the sandwiches Malcolm had given her crackled in the brown paper they had been wrapped in.

  *

  The librarian had been true to her word; the Echoes were in a neat pile on a table waiting for her when she returned.

  ‘There you go, queen, did you find the café? You look a bit better.’

  Eva smiled. ‘I did, thank you.’

  ‘That’s good. Today’s Echo has just come in; it’s next to the pile if you wanted to have a look. We always get the first copy off the press here. I’m going to make meself a cuppa and there’s a lot to go through there so shall I bring you one back?’

  Eva looked at the girl, open-mouthed, and didn’t know how to respond. The kindness of the people in Liverpool was something she had forgotten. That, combined with their inbuilt curiosity, would be her undoing if she wasn’t careful. The librarian didn’t wait for a reply.

  ‘Go on. I’ll bring you one over. Sugar?’

  Eva nodded and gave a rare smile. She would have to be on her guard. If she said the wrong thing, she could end up in prison and from there she would be no use to anyone. The pains in her belly were low and deep. She had learnt from experience that they would stay that way; she would be safe today. As the tea landed at her elbow, she pushed what she had been reading aside so as not to give anything away and hurriedly opened the first edition of the day’s Echo; it fell onto the jobs page. As she had thought she would, the librarian looked straight at what she was reading.

  ‘Three weeks before Christmas and people still advertising for jobs. I’ve just had the matron from St Angelus on the phone, asking me to put a notice on the board. Half of her cleaners have gone down with a cold and she’s looking to take on temporary night cleaners. She wants me to put the word out. I said to her, “Matron, it’s not long till Christmas, you won’t get anyone now.”’

  Eva thanked her for the tea and watched as she pinned the notice on the board. Then she waited for the librarian to leave her desk and wrote the number for the job advert down. She had learnt all she needed to know from the newspapers, not least, that the police had been looking for her and, for all she knew, probably still were. As she left the building, the librarian was now busy stamping books.

  ‘Looking for a job are you, love?’ she asked.

  Eva decided to be bold, and front it out. ‘Yes, I’m going to call St Angelus about the temporary night cleaner jobs. Is there a phone box nearby?’

  ‘Oh, St Angelus is smashing and Matron’s lovely. Tell you what, come here and use my phone, but don’t tell anyone.’ She handed the black Bakelite handset to Eva. ‘I know the number off by heart; our Madge works on the switchboard there.’

  Five minutes later, as Eva was heading up to St Angelus and a job interview which she had every intention of making sure she got, the librarian picked up the phone and spoke to Madge. ‘She’s a right funny one, something about her… harmless, though, if you ask me.’

  *

  It had been almost a week and Gracie’s delight at having been taken on at the nurses’ home as the housekeeper’s assistant was only tempered by the fact that, no matter how hard she tried, nothing she did was good enough in Mrs Duffy’s eyes, so she was delighted to arrive at work on Monday morning to a note from Matron telling her that, due to a rampant cold having laid off half of the cleaning staff
, she would be required to leave the nurses’ home at midday and make her way to outpatients A block, a routine she would be expected to follow until further notice.

  ‘Mrs Duffy doesn’t want me at the home,’ she told her mam when she arrived home that evening. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she told Matron to put me somewhere else in the afternoons. Honestly, Mam, Mrs Duffy hates me.’

  ‘Don’t worry, queen,’ her mam had replied. ‘Once she gets to know you she will be fine – and besides, who wouldn’t be delighted to have an extra pair of hands to help them, especially at her age?’

  Gracie looked miserable and her mother’s heart tightened with the pain of it. Her daughter still looked like a child and, at only fourteen years of age, she was still a child, doing a woman’s work. Her mouse-brown hair hung in two neatly tied pigtail plaits and the parting in the middle was clean and severe. Gracie redid her plaits twice a day, once before bed and once every morning and her plump cheeks and big brown eyes emitted an aura of innocence. But, despite her appearance, Gracie was smart and her determination to find work to help her mother feed a house full of kids was a testament to her sense of responsibility. How her mother would have loved to have said, ‘Stay at home. Let’s find you a job you love,’ but with a husband who was allergic to hard work, that option was but a dream.

  ‘Anyway,’ her mam said, ‘her gain is my loss. God, I do miss you being here to help me. Mrs Duffy has no idea how lucky she is in this world. Ask her, does she want to swap with me for a day?’

  ‘Oh, Mam, I’d rather be here. She does hate me and I don’t know why. I try really hard. There isn’t anything I can’t do and haven’t been doing here to help you since I could walk. I swear to God, she hasn’t smiled once and she bites my head off all the time.’

  With considerable force her mother plunged the washing under the water in the huge copper boiler using a pair of wooden washing tongs. The steam made her face sweat and her clothes damp. One of her husband’s shirts stubbornly floated on the top, puffed up with air and soap suds, the arms out at the side, resembling a man drowning in Omo.