The Mersey Angels

by Sheila Riley

  ‘The shore has been covered in barbed wire to stop any invasion,’ Ruby said, remembering with fondness the spectacular twilight sunsets she had once captured on canvas. ‘Our brave Tommies can picnic nearer the house in the sand dunes, or maybe grow vegetables in the walled garden…’

  ‘There is so much to organise,’ May said. ‘I don’t know where you get your energy. If it is all the same to you, I will have a short afternoon nap.’

  ‘Take as long as you like,’ said Ruby, ‘after all, this is your home.’

  ‘I tend to forget this is mine,’ May said, looking round the spacious but cosy lodge that was complete luxury compared to the parsimonious conditions Giles forced upon them.

  ‘Your ideas to involve May in your plans seems to have done the trick, my dear,’ Archie said later when May was having a lie down. ‘The colour has certainly returned to your sister’s cheeks.’

  ‘I don’t think she is strong enough yet, to nurse the sick and wounded, though,’ Ruby replied, ‘she is much happier doing the practical things, like teaching local ladies to sew blankets or knit boot socks.’

  He knew the middle- and upper-class women, who were clamouring to nurse the sick and wounded, were not even close to being prepared for the sights they would eventually see. For them, the romance of tending military men in need of succour was the be-all and end-all. Ruby knew what she was letting herself in for and did nothing to shy away from what she saw as her duty.

  ‘Remember when the Prince of Wales paddled in the sea,’ Ruby asked. ‘I even walked with him along the sand dunes, do you remember, Archie?’

  Archie nodded. ‘He loved to watch the horses exercising for the Grand National. Your father spared no expense.’

  Ruby was quiet for a while and then, taking a deep breath, her mind made up she said, ‘And none shall be spared now.’ Standing at the lodge window that permitted plenty of light into the cosy room, Ruby looked out on the exclusive, panoramic view of the vast sea beyond, now lined with rolling coils of barbed wire to fend off marauding invaders, and watched a pewter sky meet the silver sea. ‘Our boys will have everything they need, a clean bed, a warm hearth and a full stomach to help ease their pain.’

  On days like this, she tried to banish memories of the loneliness she felt as a motherless child, who was not just a sister but also a mother and a protector to May. And in return, May had raised her daughter. What a crazy mixed-up life she had lived.

  ‘Care to share?’ Archie asked and one thing Ruby knew she would never regret was the years she and Archie spent as man and wife. She had found solace and all-consuming love in the arms of her father’s groom. Archie, the man who was accused of being out of her class, was more of a nobleman than some of the so-called luminaries she had met. Archie was the gentlest man she had ever known.

  ‘If you look at the seascape with adventurous eyes, my love,’ he said, slipping his arms round her slim waist, ‘you won’t see it as stark, or lonely.’

  They both watched the waves crashing over the tarry stones at high tide, knowing that when the water came right up over those large flat cobbles that lined the shore, nobody dared venture into its strong undercurrents.

  ‘I love you so much, Archie. I do not know what I ever would have done without you.’

  ‘You would have married a rich man and grew bored.’ Archie laughed.

  15

  ‘Ma won’t be so quick to stick her nose into my business when I’m a married man with a kid of me own on the way, will she?’ Fancy your own mother telling your expectant sweetheart she deserved better. Jerky Woods was unable to keep the outrage from his voice. He had a forty-eight-hour pass for him and Lottie to marry the following day. Then his platoon were being sent overseas the following Monday. But if he had anything to do with it, the army were going to be one man short come marching time. ‘What kind of a mother doesn’t love her own flesh and blood?’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Lottie, relieved he sounded cheerier. Jerry might be a bit thoughtless sometimes, keeping her waiting when they had a date for the music hall or, occasionally, not turning up altogether. But things had altered now and once they were married, Lottie imagined she would change him. Jerry would provide for her and the child. He would show the doubters that they were wrong.

  ‘I’ve fixed everything, I got a special licence to marry first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘How did you do that?’ Lottie asked, full of blinkered admiration as they walked out of the train station and onto busy Lime Street, bustling with omnibuses, horse and carts, and motorcars.

  He put his arm round her thickening waistline and manoeuvred her across the busy road towards the beautiful gardens that surrounded Saint George’s Hall. ‘I said I was being sent abroad, and my girl was in a delicate position, if you get my meaning.’

  Jerky’s words made Lottie feel ten feet tall. She liked it when he called her his girl, and in her head, she thumbed her nose to the cynics.

  ‘You’re not really being sent abroad next week?’ Lottie couldn’t bear the thought of her man being sent overseas.

  ‘You bet your life, I’m not,’ he answered. ‘I have no intentions of going overseas at all - ever!’

  Anna, about to finish her afternoon shift, knew Ashland Hall was considered the best auxiliary hospital in the North West and that Ruby was paid the sum of one pound, four shillings and sixpence per week by the war office for each patient. The money covered treatment, food, and anything else her boys needed. Nothing was too good for Ruby’s heroes, Anna thought when she saw Ruby come onto the ward armed with a basket of apples from the orchard and a large supply of Blighty, a new weekly magazine which served the servicemen’s humour.

  ‘You, Ellie and I have been invited to Lottie’s wedding – tomorrow morning,’ Ruby said, after dispatching a magazine to each bed and heading towards the exit.

  ‘Tomorrow!’ Anna and Ellie chorused as they left the ward and headed toward the staircase. The last thing Anna wanted was to see poor Lottie getting hitched to that conniving ne’r-do-well who had made her life a misery in days gone by.

  Anna knew none of them were looking forward to the wedding. Not because they didn’t like Lottie. They liked her very much and did not want to see her rush headlong into a marriage she would one day regret.

  Nipper Woods felt himself being lifted from the stretcher and was told he was on the final leg of his long journey from France. Given a jab of morphia and having been out cold for most of the trek, Nipper did not find the jaunt uncomfortable, until he was transferred from the hospital train at Aintree Station to a waiting ambulance.

  ‘Do you think we could nip into The Old Roan, Nurse?’ asked a cheeky wag, who was soon given short shrift by the ministering ambulance nurses.

  ‘You will do no such thing, Corporal. Visiting public houses and drinking alcohol is strictly against Matron’s rules.’

  In moments, they were on the road and Nipper drifted into a welcome sleep.

  Accustomed to the relentless rumble of bombardment, the boom of explosions and the dying groans of pals, Nipper could now hear only the gentle thrum of the ambulance engine rumbling through quiet roads and had no idea where he was. For months, he had known only the rural countryside of France and Flanders, where every living thing had been trampled and obliterated into the mud and trenches and shell holes. Being injured was a blessing, he thought. At least it got him off the battleground.

  He had been collected by a band of female volunteers who smelled clean and fresh, making him even more aware of the putrid stench that still clung to his clothing aware that his wounds may have been tended but his clothes were something else entirely. There were too many soldiers in need of treatment or triage at least, that there was no time to worry about a spot of mud on your khakis.

  Inhaling the fresh scent of soap as they had put him into an ambulance, Nipper had asked, ‘Where am I?’ His throat was dry, and his tongue felt too big for his mouth. The voice did not sound like his.

  �
��You are in good hands – that’s where you are, Soldier.’ The voice was gentle yet had an unmistakable air of authority. And Nipper thought that he must have died in his sleep and gone to heaven. Which wasn’t so bad after all, he decided.

  ‘Don’t worry, Soldier,’ said a female voice. ‘Your war is over. You’re going to Ashland Hall Auxiliary Hospital.’

  The words were like music to Nipper’s ears. Feeling no pain after another jab of morphia, he did not have the energy to wonder how long it had taken to bring him home to British Soil, ensuring his fighting days were over.

  Nipper was aware of the hushed, almost reverential tones of busy women and realised he had been relocated from a world of men and was now surrounded by a soap-scented circle of women.

  The smell of disinfectant mingling with heavy-scented freesias permeated the ward and gave Nipper a strong sense of contentment after seeing the horrors of hell unleashed by men in France and elsewhere.

  The maternal tone of the medical staff was a comforting reminder of his life in Queen Street with his Ma, especially when he overheard the other patients talking fondly of their own mothers, sisters and sweethearts.

  ‘Women nurses are one thing,’ Nipper heard one of his travelling companions say, knowing many of the men had already had their wounds dressed by women back in field hospitals and ambulance trains, ‘but women doctors is something else entirely.’

  Nipper was unperturbed about being treated by women; they were much gentler than those hairy-arsed medics back on the battlefield. And suddenly, without knowing why, the thought brought stinging tears to his eyes and Nipper was glad his head and face were covered in bandages.

  None of the patients had been treated by a woman doctor in civilian life. The idea of women giving medical aid to men was unheard of; plainly it was because they had the inclination to make grown men cry.

  ‘Women doctors should not be employed into the army,’ another patient said. ‘I mean to say, like, some of us have wounds in places even our wives haven’t seen.’

  ‘I heard tell, a woman doctor gave Toddy the unpleasant results of his encounter with a French dancer. Apparently, she had left him with more than a reminder of her foxtrot.’

  ‘I expect he’s taking home a lot more than is good for him,’ said another soldier, who obviously came from the Welsh valleys. ‘I expect he’ll have a lot of explaining to do when he sees his missus.’ There was a ripple of laughter round the room and Nipper surmised there were quite a few servicemen installed in this particular establishment.

  ‘I’m convinced we’ve been sent here to die, Taff,’ another voice sounding about the same age as himself, Nipper thought, taking in the sounds of a busy ward. ‘Why else would the army dispatch us to a place run solely by women.’

  ‘And not just any women,’ Taff answered in mock-conspiratorial tones, ‘but suffragettes! Former enemies of the state?’ The reputation of some of the VADs went before them.

  ‘You’ll have the young’uns running for the hills, Taff,’ Nipper heard a nurse saying.

  Then there was a bit of a commotion and the young lad, sounding most indignant, cried, ‘Here! What you playin’ at?’

  Nipper could hear the young man’s indignant voice clearly. He was obviously in some distress and he wondered what on earth was going on to make the soldier so shocked.

  ‘Right, soldier,’ a broad Scottish voice said, so close Nipper could smell a mixture of disinfectant and lavender now, and this one also sounded like she was taking no prisoners. ‘Let’s have a good look at those beautiful baby blues, shall we.’

  Nipper felt the bandages being loosened round his head and when they were removed, he held up his hand to block the light that temporarily blinded him. Slowly, he opened his fingers and pepped through, allowing a bit of light into his eyes at a time.

  ‘They’re more of a cocoa colour, to be honest,’ she said with a grin as Nipper took in the blurred vision of rust-coloured frizz in a white coat and a stethoscope looming into sight. Behind her he could see two nurses waving soap, towels and a bath chair. Nipper soon realised that all the commotion was coming from the bed opposite.

  As his eyes adjusted to the light, he could see the panic in the young soldier’s eyes when the VAD nurse tried to remove his vest.

  ‘I’m not ’avin’ this,’ the young soldier said clearly, making the other male patients smile. ‘I’m puttin’ in fer a transfer!’

  ‘Not before you’ve had a bath you’re not,’ Doctor Bea’s determined voice sailed across the room as she peered into Nipper’s eyes, ‘and you will not sleep in one of my clean beds until you have been bathed either.’

  ‘Consider yourself told, Private,’ the nurse smiled to the soldier who had accompanied Nipper from France and helping him into the bath chair, she marched him off to the bathroom at the end of the ward, where she left him to undress in private, calling through the rapidly closing door. ‘Deposit your uniform in the sack, which is here, outside the door. It will be taken away, fumigated and laundered ready for when you are fit enough to leave us.’

  When he came out of the bathroom a good while later, Nipper noticed the young private was all pink and shiny and smelled much better than he did when he went in. And looked much more cheerful after his long soak.

  ‘Maybe I was a bit hasty when I said I wanted a transfer,’ he said to nobody in particular. ‘I think I’m going to be happy enough here.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it, soldier,’ the VAD said, briskly coming on to the ward. ‘You will be pleased to hear that nobody wants to leave Ashland Hall when they get here.’

  ‘Too right,’ said another male patient. ‘When you’re feeling up to it, there’s a billiard table in the games room.’

  ‘And the library is stuffed with lots of lovely books,’ said Taff. ‘You’re lucky to be here, you need a letter from God to get in here.’

  16

  Father O’Connell looked down his elongated nose and took in the congregation of just seven people. Standing at the golden-curlicued altar rails was young Charlotte Blythe who had been coming to Saint Patrick’s since she was born, with her poor departed mother, God-rest-her-soul.

  Lottie’s husband-to-be, a rather cocky jack-the-lad, called Jeremiah Woods was fidgeting uncomfortably, as if he expected a sudden calamity to befall him. This young man was going overseas, so he had been told, and was on special leave to marry Charlotte and, given the evident bulge in the front of her dress, was not a minute too soon.

  The young doe-eyed bride was obviously besotted, given her adoring expression.

  God bless her and save her, thought Father O’Connell.

  The pale blue chiffon dress, which Izzy had rescued from the bag of unclaimed pledges, had seen better days, but she had managed to remove the creases by hanging the dress over a boiling kettle. The steam also killed any fleas, or ‘hopping lodgers’ as Archie used to call them, that may have been lurking in the seams but, unfortunately, did nothing to hide Lottie’s imminently expectant arrival.

  Father O’Connell breathed deeply and let out a silent sigh. He was not given to the liberalised view of some, who believed pleasure must be taken as and when it was offered given that some of these young men may not see another home leave. Nevertheless, he felt that Charlotte might be better off without a husband like this one.

  Dressed in the uniform of The Pals Regiment, Woods looked reasonably decent, unlike his best man who wore a pair of grey flannel trousers that looked like they had been slept in, an off-white shirt and grey tie that was almost obscured by a too-large waistcoat and brown corduroy jacket that had seen better days long ago and he wondered why this man was not in uniform as Woods looked nervously behind him towards the large wooden church door.

  If he dare try a hasty retreat before he makes an honest woman of this poor girl, Father O’Connell thought, I am prepared to initiate my famous seminary rugby tackle.

  ‘At least the boozer will be open when we get out of here,’ Woods said slyly to his pal, and F
ather O’Connell’s glare left him in no doubt of his intention. Woods shifted uncomfortably and the priest noted that his friend looked equally uneasy in the House of The Lord.

  ‘Do you take this woman…’ Father O’Connell was not surprised when the best man gave the groom a timely nudge.

  ‘Sorry, Your Honour, could you repeat the question, please,’ Jerky Woods said, while Lottie stared, embarrassed, at the feet of the statue of the Virgin Mother on the alter.

  Father O’ Connell said a silent prayer for the Good Lord to keep a special eye on Charlotte, for the sake of her poor departed mother, a devoted and regular churchgoer before she died.

  Anna rolled her eyes. Jerky Woods, true to form, was making a show of his mother and his future wife. Where did he think he was? In court! Your Honour indeed. She viewed the ceremony with an ominous feeling of foreboding. Lottie was worth ten of Jerky Woods, a bully and a coward, who took after his indolent father where drink was concerned. She imagined Lottie would have to struggle or want from now on if she had to depend on him to look after her. And she would stake her life on Jerky Woods being the worst husband a woman ever had the misfortune to marry. He would sell his mother for the price of a pint, she was sure.

  She wondered how Jerky Woods had managed to wangle leave to marry when her Ned, and more than likely her beloved and much-missed brother, Sam, were fighting for their King and country.

  ‘Jerry’s expecting orders to go overseas,’ Lottie said later, when they attended the wedding breakfast over the shops. The wedding breakfast was a sit-down affair for the few people who had been invited and the pristine white tablecloth was obviously one of Ruby’s best, as were the crystal glasses and fine silver cutlery.

  Izzy, after asking Ruby’s permission to borrow the fine items, looked proudly across the table as her son got up to make a brief mumbling speech and the most ungrateful expression of gratitude to everyone for coming.