‘Well, what’s her name then?’
‘Now that I do know. Her name’s Eva. Mind, it is about all I do know. A proper secretive one, she is. But that’s all right by me. I like people who don’t gossip.’
Biddy sipped the foam off the top of her drink. ‘Hmm, I don’t, they’re no use to me,’ she replied.
‘Anyway,’ Malcolm said, ‘I have other things to worry about, Melly has given her notice in. She’s taken the right hump to me taking in a female guest. Says she doesn’t like the fact that she’s being expected to cook for someone who is no better than she thinks she is.’
‘I know what she means,’ said Biddy.
‘Well, I’m glad you do, Biddy, because I haven’t a clue. I’m not worrying, though, I’m sure she will change her mind. So there’s a bit of gossip for you.’
Biddy looked shocked. ‘Malcolm, that’s not gossip, it’s your life. Different altogether. What I like is a proper bit of gossip. Now, if Melly had left you already without a word of warning and was off down to the docks, looking for a bit of business, that would be gossip – and don’t go raising your eyebrows at me, you know she’s done it before. It’s how you got half of your customers here when you first started, or did you think it was just a coincidence that they were all such good friends of Melly’s?’
Doreen blushed as Biddy threw her head back and laughed. ‘Come on, Malcolm. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of gossip. What is there to talk about if you don’t have any? Now, where is that Eva’s accent from – it’s not from around here, is it?’
‘I don’t know and I’m not asking. All I know is that she’s lost, Biddy, and I don’t think she’s well, if you ask me, which is why I’m feeding her up too. She says she’s visiting someone at the hospital, but I think it’s a doctor she’s seeing because she’s definitely not well.’
‘Do you want me to do a bit of sniffing around?’ said Biddy.
‘No, don’t do that. It’s not my place to enquire – that is none of my business. Truth be known, I’m enjoying having her here. She ate with me last night and I’m thinking that whatever it is that is wrong with her, it can be helped with a good feed and a bit of looking after; and it’s nice to have someone to talk to. I’m thinking that when she realises I’m here to help she will tell me all I need to know.’
Biddy knew only too well what he meant about enjoying company over a meal. The suppertimes and evenings and hours at home lasted twice as long for her as they did for those who had husbands and company, of that she was sure.
‘Well, you be careful, Malcolm, that’s all I’m saying.’ But Malcolm was in his own world as he sipped on his stout, ignoring his favourite cake on the plate, a small smile lifting the corner of his lips. She studied his face as she picked up her own glass and thought to herself that it was the first time she had seen him this way since he came home from the war. Mr Grumpy had disappeared and she wasn’t quite sure who had taken his place.
‘Drink up, Doreen,’ she said to her silent companion and was alarmed to see a look of acute disappointment settle on Doreen’s face as she stared into the roaring fire.
Chapter 10
‘Oh, get us,’ said Pammy as the train pulled into the station and they passed a man in a peaked cap, standing on the platform with a piece of cardboard in his hand which had written on it in bold black letters, Nurse Brogan and friends. ‘There’s a welcoming committee. Or a man in a peaked cap, anyway.’ She was standing at the window, with her head as far out as she could manage, clinging onto the window frame. Her dark hair was loose and fell over her shoulders, in contrast to Beth, who wore hers in a bun on the nape of her neck, exactly as she did when she was in uniform. ‘Did you know Victoria was sending a car for us, Beth?’
Beth had placed her bag on the overhead rack above the seat and stretched up to pull it down. She couldn’t reach and, slipping off her shoes, stood on the velvet-padded seat rather than ask one of the other girls for help. She grabbed at the rack with one hand as she aimed for the bag with the other. Beth was as proud and independent as she was organised and efficient.
‘Oh, come here, shortie,’ said Pammy as she reached up and lifted the bag down with ease.
‘I did know she was sending a car, actually. And you would too, if you’d bothered to ask me, Pammy.’
‘I knew too,’ said Dana, grinning. Her red hair appeared to shine even more so on a dull morning such as this was. ‘But that’s all right, Pammy, don’t you be worrying yourself now – it’s what we are all here for, to make your life easier.’
‘I always thought that was my job, Dana,’ said Beth. ‘Seriously, Pammy, one day you will write something down or make a list – and when you do, it will be as if you can see for the first time.’
Pammy shook her head. ‘Honest to God, Beth. I don’t have to make lists and things, because if I did, you would have nothing to do. Now, stop your moaning; and Dana, don’t you dare start going all Beth on me. Isn’t one of you list makers enough? Let’s get off this train and into that car.’
Victoria was waiting at the window of her front room as the car pulled up and could barely contain her excitement as she ran to open the door almost before it had stopped.
‘I’ve been that impatient, waiting,’ she said as the girls clambered out. ‘It’s just too long since I last saw you! Come in and tell me all the news.’ Victoria linked one arm through Dana’s and the other through Beth’s. ‘I do love living here, it’s so peaceful, and being married and huge with child, but gosh, I do miss all the laughs, and Mrs Duffy – how is she?’
Lunch passed in a babble of chatter, each finishing and interrupting the other’s sentences until suddenly the pace and ferocity of the chatter calmed along with the cutting of the cake as their eyes, fixed as one onto the triple-layered elderflower-flavoured buttercream-filled Victoria sandwich cake.
Ten minutes later, sated, the silence was broken. ‘I have never in my life heard of such a thing as an elderflower buttercream,’ said Pammy as she licked the sweet-smelling butter from her fingers. ‘It’s gorgeous. Can I take the recipe for Mam? She’s always looking for new ideas for the WVS. Mind you, it’s all about the mince pies, just now, with Christmas just around the corner.’
‘You can, if Mrs Hunter lets me have it,’ said Victoria. ‘She brings a recipe book in with her and then takes it home at the end of each day. She’s so protective about her recipes. Those kind of women always make me laugh. It’s like a power thing, they have to be the only ones with the secret knowledge, like it was invented by MI5. My mother, she would stop whatever she was doing and write a recipe down for anyone, so it’s all alien to me. I have missed you lot,’ she sighed. ‘Though I have to be honest, I do not miss the seven a.m. bedpan round on men’s medical.’ They all groaned and screwed up their faces at the memory.
‘Well, that’s a revelation and a half,’ said Beth with a wry grin.
‘Do you miss us though?’ Pammy leant forward with her elbows on the table, her hands cupping her chin.
‘Do you miss nursing?’ asked Dana.
‘Oh, I do. I really do, all of you and nursing too,’ said Victoria. ‘I miss the patients, Dr Gaskell, Matron – just the smell of the place, even. I am adjusted, though. I thought the days would drag with me being here, Roland at work and me not working, but I have so much to do every day, they are just flying by. Add to that, the fact is that I just pass out fast asleep every afternoon for well over an hour.’
‘How are you feeling for the rest of the day, then?’ asked Beth. ‘Have you had your bloods checked? You aren’t anaemic, are you?’
‘The doctor says not, but he didn’t actually check my blood. He says he can tell by my eyes. I told him I thought that if you could tell by my eyes, it was pretty extreme, as in I would be very anaemic by that point. He didn’t seem to agree. He’s the kind of doctor who doesn’t like to be told what’s what by a woman.’ They all groaned in unison.
‘If you are having a girl, Vic, I hope that will have
all changed by the time she is our age. Men can be so pompous and just downright… downright…’
‘Wrong, is the word you are looking for,’ said Victoria.
‘Yes, that’s right, wrong – and yet we believe every word that comes out of their mouths, don’t we?’ Dana held out her plate for the slice of cake Victoria was offering and the others held their breath. Dana had said very little since her return about her break-up with Teddy, even to Victoria, who would have become her sister-in-law and, as the house had been left to both the boys, might also have been the one hosting in the vast kitchen they were now sat in.
‘Well, they aren’t all wrong,’ said Pammy tentatively. ‘My Andrew is wonderful. He’s never said or done anything I haven’t agreed with. To be honest, he just does as he’s told and he never argues.’ Pammy had been dating Dr Anthony Mackintosh for over a year and was madly in love.
‘Now, he may, but just like a worm, one day he will turn; all men do,’ said Dana and there was a sharp edge in her voice.
‘Well, my da hasn’t and me mam says all men behave as long as you don’t come between a man and his footie.’ The three girls stared at Pammy, not knowing what to say. Her hands flew to her mouth. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, Dana. Your Teddy, he didn’t even like footie, did he?’
Beth groaned. ‘Will someone throw Pammy a shovel?’
To their immense relief, Dana laughed and buried her face in her hands. ‘Pammy, if I hadn’t come back to finish my training, I would have come just for you to make me laugh again.’
Pammy looked relieved. ‘Seriously, Dana, none of us have wanted to say too much in case we set you off crying.’
Dana picked up her almost empty cup and sipped on her tea. ‘I’m done with the crying. Honestly, I’m over it. Oh, I’m not saying that your brother-in-law is my best friend, Victoria, and that I wouldn’t slip arsenic in his tea if he was here, but my heart has stopped aching and I have stopped crying. I don’t wake up consumed by anger any more and I have realised that the best thing for me now is not to wallow in the past, but to look forward to the future.’
Beth looked like she was about to cry. ‘Dana Brogan, I am very proud of you. That is exactly what you should do.’
Victoria remembered Roland’s words before he had left for work and felt her heart sink. There was no way she was ever going to be able to broker a reconciliation between Teddy and Dana. She would not insult her friend in that way and yet she felt sad. She thought of Christmas and christenings, birthdays and summer parties. Apart from Aunt Minnie, the girls before her were all the family she had. She decided to change the subject because she could see that Dana had had enough of talking about the past, but she was not going to ban Teddy from the discussion. He may have been the most stupid idiot ever to walk the earth, but he was her brother-in-law and she did love him.
‘Anyway,’ she said now, ‘Teddy brought me some ferrous sulphate tablets and I’ve been taking those one a day. They do make me a bit sickly, though.’
‘How far is it to the hospital?’ asked Beth.
‘Over half an hour – and that’s another battle I’m having with the GP. He thinks I should be having the baby at home and Roland won’t hear of it – he wants me to be wherever there’s medical staff and equipment at hand. He’s such a fusspot and Teddy, being the doctor in the family, has told Roland, no home birth for my sister-in-law.’
If Dana was at all bothered by the mention of Teddy’s name, she wasn’t giving anything away.
‘What a pity you don’t live nearer to Liverpool – the new maternity ward at St Angelus has opened and we could all have been there and helped,’ said Beth, who looked excited at the mere prospect.
Victoria rose to fill the kettle again, but, ‘Here, let me,’ said Pammy and took it out of her hand. Victoria sat down gratefully in the chair.
‘I’m afraid you would have to fight Aunt Minnie off. She is coming back to Bolton from London in time for Christmas and the birth – and on the subject of Christmas, listen: Matron’s drinks party gave me an idea. I want to throw a Christmas party, but I need everyone to be free on the same night, so I was thinking, the Saturday before Christmas, what do you think? If it’s not your off duty, you have time to request it.’
The girls looked up, excited. ‘Gosh, I’ve never been to a proper Christmas party,’ said Pammy as she refilled the pot and placed it back under the tea cosy on the table. ‘I mean, we’ve had parties in the church rooms and Father Christmas comes to the bingo hall for the dockers’ kids at the bottom of our street, but nothing posh like this in a big house. And the house is lovely, Victoria. What will we wear? Oh, girls, I wonder if there’s time for Mam to make us all something?’
Victoria watched Dana the whole time Pammy was talking. ‘Dana, I know what you are thinking – and if you won’t come because you know Teddy will be there, then I won’t have the party.’
‘What?’ said Pammy in a voice loaded with acute disappointment. ‘Dana’s over all that now, she just said. Got his comeuppance, he did, didn’t he, Dana?’
They all looked at Dana who smiled and they could see it was genuine. She was not upset. ‘Victoria, you have your party, sure, don’t be worrying about me. I’ll work. We can’t all be off, can we?’
It appeared as though Victoria hadn’t heard as she said, ‘You can all stay here and Roland will make sure everyone is back for the following day. Dana, I’m not listening because I refuse to allow you to let anyone stop you from enjoying yourself and you just said yourself, you are looking forward, not back. In fact, Beth and Pammy, you come with Teddy in his car, but Dana, can you get the two days off and be here the day before? I need someone to help me deal with Aunt Minnie or she will just take over.’
Victoria looked at Dana, challenging her to take the final step to freedom.
‘Actually,’ Dana said, ‘Sister Horton said that we will all be off the weekend before and working all over Christmas, now that they have married nurses. They are allowed to have Christmas off because they have children and husbands. It’s like single nurses are orphans and don’t have family.’
‘Doesn’t seem very fair to me,’ said Pammy.
‘It means we can all come to the party though,’ said Beth. ‘There is an upside.’
Dana took a deep breath; she actually liked Victoria’s Aunt Minnie and it did mean she wouldn’t be the only single woman in the room and she was closer to Victoria than anyone else at St Angelus, but… ‘Vic,’ she said in a pleading voice.
‘Vic nothing. Tell you what, come and help me the day before if you don’t want to be here on the night and I will make sure we get a car to take you back to Lovely Lane. Dana, I’ll be thirty-four weeks-ish by then, I need you.’
They all saw the moment Dana relented. Her shoulders dropped, her face relaxed and a smile crept to the corners of her mouth. ‘Oh, all right then – as long as you let me go back to Lovely Lane if I want to.’
Victoria clapped her hands in glee. ‘Fabulous, all settled. Oh, my gosh, let’s start planning. I’ll get a pad and pen.’
As Victoria waddled out of the room, Beth asked the others, ‘Do you think she’s taking too much on? She’s huge.’
‘That’s why I said I would come,’ said Dana. ‘I’ll do all the running around and make sure she sits down.’
‘Phew,’ said Beth. ‘Now all we need to do is see if your mam can make our dresses in time, Pammy – and hide the arsenic in case Dana has a change of heart when she sets eyes on Teddy.’
Chapter 11
Ida Botherthwaite glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece before she leant over the fire and applied her pillar-box red lipstick in the mirror. Her wire curlers were lined up along the mantelpiece and errant orange hair escaped the wire prongs like springs from a broken mattress. This was one of only three occasions a week when Ida removed her curlers. Bingo on a Thursday, the pub on Friday night and for mass on Sunday morning. She slipped the top on the lipstick and it clicked shut with a satisfying snap. An orange l
ine, resembling a minor country road on a map, ran all the way under her chin. A pronounced demarcation between the area of her body to which she had applied Coty foundation, in her preferred shade, Sienna, and that which had none. She sniffed at her reflection and buttoned up her coat, glancing at the clock again. It was four minutes past seven. Bertie was four minutes late and she had to leave at seven fifteen on the dot. That was her routine and there was nothing Ida hated more than a change in her routine. She heard the latch drop on the back gate, the gate click shut and her husband walked up the yard with the Liverpool Echo tucked under his arm. Order had been restored.
‘You’re late,’ Ida said as he walked through the back door into the kitchen.
‘Stop your moaning before you start,’ he replied as he hung his cap on the back door. ‘I had to collect my winnings from the bookies, didn’t I?’
As if a magic fairy had waved her wand, Ida’s mood changed. ‘What, you won today? How much?’
Bertie grinned and took a brown envelope from his pocket and placed it on the table. ‘I only went and won ten quid, didn’t I.’
His wife snatched up the envelope deftly before he had the chance to blink. ‘That’s two weeks wages for me,’ she said as she glared at him.
Bertie could have kicked himself for telling her and lunged to snatch it back. He was remarkably successful and, his manhood restored, he suddenly felt overcome with generosity. ‘You can have ten shillings,’ he said as he extracted a note from the envelope.
‘And the rest, Bertie. You have a son with a bad back and he won’t get to enjoy his Christmas if I don’t get any money to him.’ She stood, feet solid, arms folded, face set to ferocious.
Bertie looked from her to the envelope, then over her shoulder to his dinner keeping warm on a pan of boiling water. The house was filled with the smell of Ida’s buttery pastry, baked to perfection and containing his shin of steak, slow-cooked all afternoon in onions and potatoes before it was popped into the pie crust.
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