Each area of the hospital, except those where patients slept, was scrubbed by an army of night cleaners, who shuffled along on housemaid’s knees with metal buckets and brushes. They worked from dusk until dawn for five shillings a shift. St Angelus gleamed brightly and smelt strongly of Lysol, a smell so distinctive it struck fear into the hearts of the weak and anxious.
*
Martha O’Brien was the maid in the consultants’ day sitting room at St Angelus and therefore, to anyone of any significance, was entirely invisible.
Martha knew it was her own fault.
That’s what they would say, anyway. She had broken the rules. What did she expect? A person of no consequence. Laying the fire, clearing away the newspapers, plumping up the cushions and preparing the consultants’ lunches for one o’clock on the dot. That was her job. She was meant to serve tea, not sympathy, they would tell her. But she had done it because she had felt sorry for him, not because she knew what the effect would be. If she had known, she would have run a mile in the opposite direction as fast as her legs would carry her, or better still, just kept her mouth shut. She had watched him, day after day, sitting in the chair, troubled and worried, and had wondered what it was that ailed him. It wasn’t until Mr Mabbutt popped in for a cuppa and goaded him that the mystery was revealed.
‘So, there are to be two consultants on gynae. Well, that’s something. Yours will be the only department in the hospital with two firms.’
Mr Mabbutt, the orthopaedic surgeon, was addressing Mr Scriven, the obstetrician and gynaecologist. Mr Scriven shuffled in his chair and turned the page of the newspaper he was reading so sharply that it almost ripped. Martha knew all their names and what they specialized in, and given that she was a bright girl and they talked a lot when they met in the sitting room she knew far more about their personal lives than they might have imagined. Apart from Dr Gaskell, who had been at St Angelus for so long no one could remember a time when he was not there, Mr Mabbutt and Mr Scriven were the two longest-serving consultants. The reverence in which they were held by every nurse and doctor in the hospital conferred a godlike status upon both men.
They played golf together on Thursday afternoons, when they had finished their rounds on the private wing, otherwise known as ward five. Once a month, they also took turns to host a dinner, for other hand-picked surgeons, aspiring doctors and their ambitious wives. Due to the length of his tenure and his position on the hospital board, Mr Scriven was regarded as the senior consultant, second only to Dr Gaskell, who was chair of the board. Dr Gaskell sat on the regional TB committee and was respected and revered by all, and his word with regard to St Angelus was law. Mr Scriven had reach, undoubtedly, but not long enough to ensure that the board consulted him before deciding he must share the base of his power and source of unceasing adoration, otherwise known as ward two.
Neither man batted an eyelid while Martha wheeled over the tea trolley, or even appeared to notice her as they waited for a cup and saucer to be placed in their outstretched hands. There were nine consultants at St Angelus and Martha had only ever needed to be told once how many sugars they took, or how they liked their tea. Martha took her job very seriously. She dressed with care, her apron and frilled cap always spotlessly clean. Her long dark hair was coiled carefully and tightly into a bun, with every strand tucked neatly under her cap.
‘Anyone would think you were the one operating yourself, you’re that fussy,’ her mother Elsie often shouted as she left the house to catch the ten past six bus every morning. It was true: Martha was as proud of the sitting room as her ma was of the parlour back at home.
Mr Mabbutt had collapsed into the comfortable brown leather armchair in front of the fire, opposite Mr Scriven, who, much to Martha’s dismay, still wore his wraparound operating robe, instead of the day suit he wore for clinics and ward rounds. There were two theatres on the top floor of St Angelus, and the two men had been operating simultaneously before finishing for the afternoon, leaving the registrars and housemen to deal with the post-operative checks on the wards.
Mr Scriven’s gown remained gruesomely spattered with blood. None of the other doctors arrived to take their tea in blood-spattered gowns and Martha lived in hope that one day, maybe, one of the consultants would find the habit as offensive as she did and mention that he might like to be a little more respectful towards the room she spent her life polishing and cleaning and making comfortable. Not that she had ever said anything; that was not her place.
If only she had remembered just where her place was. How different things would be. She sometimes wondered if he was showing off when he strutted through the door wearing his theatre gown, when the other consultants took such care to remove their own. She was only a maid, but it seemed to Martha as though Mr Scriven liked to impress, or rather needed to impress, and even someone as humble as she was a worthy audience of one.
Educated by the nuns at St Chad’s, she had learnt well and was a clever girl. Following the war, there were only the two of them at home and so the need to secure work with regular hours and pay was uppermost in her mind when the job vacancy arose. Both her da and her brother had been lost in action and Martha felt a strong responsibility to start earning for her mam and their home as soon as she could, even though it meant abandoning her dream of attending the new secretarial college in town and becoming a secretary in one of the shipping offices.
There were moments when she stopped scrubbing and cleaning and knelt with a cloth in her hand, letting the mixture of gloopy pink Aunt Sally and dark green Lysol drip on to the floor. With a sigh, she imagined herself setting off to work in the morning carrying a handbag, smartly dressed wearing kitten heels and a swing coat, on her way to run a smart office down on the waterfront. She felt no resentment. She and Mam were happy and Jake Berry, her childhood sweetheart, also worked at St Angelus, as a junior porter. Not that they were a couple officially. No, Martha would not allow Jake to assume that. Besides, they had only been on two dates since leaving St Chad’s and they had been nothing more than to take a turn around the lake in Sefton Park on a Sunday afternoon after the roast dinner. On the last occasion, Jake had taken Martha’s hand and slipped it through his arm.
‘You will be my girl soon, won’t you?’ he had said. ‘You’re seventeen now. We could walk like this every day.’
Martha’s blushes were saved by the musicians on the bandstand striking up a tune. Instead of replying, she gave Jake a shy smile and his arm a little squeeze. It was enough for Jake, who felt as though he would burst with pride, having by his side the girl he had adored since they were both children playing out on the street in rags and tags and shoes with holes.
Martha poured the consultants’ tea and listened closely. She knew Mr Mabbutt’s tone well. He hadn’t finished with Mr Scriven, she was sure.
Mr Scriven fixed a rigid smile on to his face. ‘Yes, Matron told me last week, after the board meeting.’ Martha could tell that he was trying his best to sound casual. ‘I can barely manage the numbers being referred to my clinic as it is. Emergencies are arriving via the receiving ward in their droves. The women in Liverpool are producing more babies than St Angelus can deliver, along with all the associated problems that can present later, as you know.’
Martha had read as much herself in the Echo, so she knew that wasn’t a lie. Babies were booming in Liverpool. However, after a year of observing Mr Scriven at her leisure, she could also tell this was not a conversation he was enjoying.
She placed the cup and saucer on his upturned palm, but he neither acknowledged her nor said thank you as he picked up the spoon from the saucer and began to stir.
Mr Mabbutt appeared to have spotted a weakness and was openly enjoying himself. He was not about to let the wriggling Mr Scriven off the hook.
‘Hmm, that’s as maybe. Still, not sure I would like it much. My ward is my ward. Sister and the nursing staff know my ways and how I like things done. No, it wouldn’t do for me, I’m afraid. Besides, we have all th
ese new mad keen doctors now. The chaps who interrupted their training to fight in the war. The board favour them, of course, and they’re flying up the ladder. Dr Gaskell’s own son is one of them. He has an impressive war record, so I hear. God, no. I wouldn’t want one of those hungry types working alongside me, trying to jump on my back and take my ward out from under me.’
Mr Mabbutt gave a fake shudder and then grinned. Mr Scriven struggled and failed to smile back. Mr Mabbutt had beaten Mr Scriven at golf four weeks on the run. This latest piece of information was yet another move on the chessboard in the battle for superiority and the unspoken acknowledgement of the position of senior consultant under Dr Gaskell. Mr Scriven took a long and carefully controlled breath. He knew perfectly well that his colleague had not yet finished taunting him.
‘We are busy too, you know. They have allocated me an extra registrar and a houseman. It seems even the working classes are buying motors now. Just operated on a young lad with bilateral femoral shaft fractures from a scooter accident. Reckon there’s going to be a lot more of that in the future. I wonder why they didn’t just increase the size of your firm? Why bring in a new consultant? Regardless of how busy you are, it makes it look as though they don’t trust your opinion, or the quality of your work.’
Bang. It was a direct shot and had hit its mark. Mr Scriven flinched.
He drank his tea to delay answering, because he had no idea what to say. He had asked himself the same question. He almost gave a sigh of relief as the call bell rang. Mr Mabbutt looked up at the consultants’ alert board on the wall and saw it was his light flashing just as the telephone rang. He leapt up from the chair, splashing his tea all over his knee as he did so.
‘Yes, on my way back up,’ he barked down the receiver before slamming it down. ‘Right, that was a short break. My last one is throwing an extended rigor in the recovery room and the anaesthetist can’t raise his blood pressure out of his boots. Neither houseman nor theatre sister is happy. Poor lad, he’s only sixteen. I feared he might not survive the shock. I didn’t even touch the fractures. I was saving them until he was stable. All I did was sew up what cuts I could manage. l must have cleared half the dock road out of his wounds.’
He picked up his cup and swallowed what remained of his tea. As he walked towards the door he couldn’t resist a parting shot. ‘Anyway, do you know if you will be sharing a team, or will the new chap have his own housemen and registrar?’
Even in the midst of an emergency, he was not going to allow his advantage to slip away. He stood holding the door open, waiting for a reply.
‘His own, of course. I told Matron I can’t spare any of my team. We’re working flat out as it is.’
‘Ah, that’s even worse, if you ask me. Competing teams on one ward, who needs it?’
His words hung in the air as the door swung shut.
Martha may have worked at the hospital since she was fourteen, but she was far from stupid. Mr Scriven had attempted to present a brave face to Mr Mabbutt, but Martha could tell he was both seething and miserable. She noticed that his hair, which a year ago had been grey only at the temples, was now grey all over. He had taken to wearing glasses, and she had thought it strange that, if anything, the dark glasses and greying hair had added to his attractiveness.
‘Bastard,’ she heard him mutter under his breath.
Without being asked, she refilled his cup and put two arrowroot biscuits on a plate for him. ‘Nothing like a cup of tea and an arrowroot biscuit to cheer you up,’ her mother had said every time an air raid was over and they slipped back into the house after a night in the shelter. It had seemed to work for her mam.
Mr Scriven was deep in thought. Leaning forward now in his chair, elbows on knees, fingers interlinked before him, he tapped his straightened index fingers repeatedly against his pursed lips.
‘A penny for your thoughts,’ she said, as he automatically reached up to relieve her of the tea.
And that was when it happened. The moment when she crossed the line, broke the rules, set in train the events which would destroy her world and everything she knew in life to be good and true. Those words, that impulsive moment of caring and compassion, would be responsible for pain and deceit, secrets and lies, and, the very worst of all, a death.
Chapter two
A village on the outskirts of Belmullet, County Mayo, Ireland, earlier, in the summer of 1951
‘Dana, would ye wake up, sleepy head, and come downstairs and see Daddy. Your letter has arrived, look. He will be late for work if he doesn’t leave soon.’
Dana blinked furiously. Her mother had pulled back her bedroom curtains and bright sunlight streamed into her room, replacing the damp rainy gloom of yesterday, and so many days on the windy west Atlantic coast of Mayo.
‘What time is it?’ she asked, as she put her feet out of bed on to the small bedside mat, avoiding the cold linoleum. A slithering notion of fear combined with excitement slipped into her belly.
It was here. The letter that would confirm whether or not she had been accepted for nursing training at St Angelus in Liverpool. If she had, her dreams had come true and her prayers been answered. If not, she would have to accept the offer of a place at a hospital in Dublin, and this she definitely did not want to do. Daddy had made it clear that if she trained as a nurse in Dublin, she would be expected to travel back to Mayo on her days off and holidays to help her mammy on the farm. Dana loved her parents, but being the only child had severe drawbacks.
‘It’s half past seven and would ye look at this letter, two weeks it’s taken to get here. ’Tis a disgrace.’ Dana’s mother waved the brown envelope up and down as though she were furiously fanning her face. ‘The war is long gone, and they are still blaming the Germans for post our donkey could deliver faster with his legs tied together. Come on now, quickly, I want to make the eight o’clock mass and Daddy’s going into town in the van.’ With that, her mother bustled out of the room and down the stairs, shouting, ‘Noel, listen to me, don’t be moving now. You’ve to wait until Dana comes down and opens her letter. Stand around the table now, both of ye.’
Dana pulled on her dressing gown, looking out of her bedroom window across the never-ending miles of mist-soaked bog. ‘I won’t miss you one bit,’ she said to the wet, rolling earth. ‘I want to have a life of me own, I do, and I do not want to marry flaming Patrick O’Dowd.’
As if on cue, she heard the click of the yard gate and, pressing her face against the window to see who it was, saw Patrick striding across the yard. As though he sensed her at the window, he looked up and raised his hand in greeting. Dana feebly raised her own in return.
Patrick disappeared beneath her window to make his way in through the back door. ‘Bloody nosy Mrs Brock.’ Dana cursed the postmistress under her breath, as she slipped off the dressing gown and put on her slacks. She must have told him I have the letter, she thought, and he realized what it would be. How else would he know to be here?
Now fuming, but determined not to show it, she pulled a sweater on over her head and made her way down the stairs into the kitchen, where she knew the family committee would be waiting. Her grandmother would have known before she did that the letter had arrived. Mrs Brock had antennae that spread as far as Sligo.
Dana had to play out the next twenty minutes very carefully. She knew she was blessed, in as much as her mother would not miss mass for the world, and her father had to go to town to pick up the newly arrived fertilizer before it sold out. He had spoken of nothing else over supper the previous evening. Her entire plan had been to think one step ahead of her father at all times. To anticipate his arguments and to be ready with a reply that he could not challenge. It was all so easy. He was a simple man, driven and motivated by religion and morals and some very strict rules, inherited from Dana’s grandmother, who was now sitting in her chair by the fire. As for Patrick, he was the son of her father’s best friend on the neighbouring farm. He was so familiar to her he could have been her brother, and he
spent so much time on their farm he might just as well have been.
As she opened the kitchen door, the entire family was standing around the kitchen table, waiting. Her mother smiling, her father frowning, her grandmother gurning and Patrick looking as though his world might be about to collapse.
‘I need the bathroom,’ she said with a smile as she stepped into the room. ‘God in heaven, would you look at you all, ’tis like a firing squad. Just give me a minute.’
As she ran outside, she grinned. Five minutes down. Only fifteen more to play for, once she got back inside.
‘I’m not sure letting her apply to Liverpool was a good idea,’ said Patrick to Dana’s father, scrunching his cap around in his hand.
‘Don’t ye be worrying about that, Patrick,’ said Noel. ‘She will never get in. What girl who ever went to school in Belmullet ever made it to St Angelus in Liverpool? ’Tis all a dream. They only occasionally take a girl from the Notre Dame convent in Galway, although God knows why. You know what they say about that school, “Notre Dame, push a pram”, so many of them get pregnant once they reach Liverpool.’
Patrick gave a leering grin. This was man talk. He had known Mr Brogan all his life and accorded him the same respect he did his own father.
‘Look, I had to agree,’ Noel continued. ‘I have to keep a steady ship here, as the only man in this house. Dana’s mammy, she has the devil in her sometimes so she does, and if I didn’t handle things in a very superior and clever way altogether, those two would run rings round me. I have to give in on occasion, for a peaceful life now. Calm yerself, ’twill all be fine. She will never get in in a hundred thousand years.’
He picked up his mug of tea from the table and drank deeply to avoid having to say more. Damn that Mrs Brock. She must have got word to Patrick that the letter had arrived before he himself had collected the post. He was not as confident as he had sounded. His Dana had always been a smart girl.
‘There’s no surprise in that,’ he told his wife, when Dana won the maths prize at school. ‘All the Brogans won prizes when I was at school.’
The Angels of Lovely Lane Page 3