As he pulled away, he looked down into Martha’s flushed face.
‘Don’t tell anyone,’ he said half shyly, ‘but that was me first kiss. I don’t think there will ever be another like it, even if you let me kiss you every day, Martha O’Brien. Was it your first too?’
He looked intently into her face. Jake was in love with Martha and he wanted her to know it. He wanted to marry her and he had to fight every instinct he had not to ask her there and then. Martha’s eyes filled with tears.
‘Eh, what’s up? Didn’t you like me giving you a kiss, then?’ He put his arms round her and buried her face in his chest, holding her tight. Martha could feel the coarse cotton of his porter lad’s coat against the side of her cheek and she was glad that her face was hidden, so that Jake could not witness her shame. She breathed in deeply. He smelt of fresh linen and Wright’s coal tar soap. How could she tell him that it had not been her first kiss? Mr Scriven had robbed him of that.
Jake pushed her gently away from him, his face creased in concern.
‘Of course it was my first kiss,’ she said as she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands.
Embarrassed by her tears, she could feel her face burning with the shame of the memory. She had dreamt of this moment and now, here it was, it had happened. Jake Berry, the best-looking boy in Liverpool, had just kissed Martha O’Brien. She would never tell him that it had been Mr Scriven who had pawed her with his impertinent hands and slobbered with his wet mouth all over her face. She would banish that memory from her mind and never think of it again. It would not affect her. It would always be Jake who kissed her first, as far as she was concerned. She would banish both the memory and the moment to the wilderness. It never happened, Martha thought to herself. It never happened, it was all in my mind. All I have to think is that it never happened, and it didn’t.
Jake grinned at Martha, and she grinned back.
‘Where’s me second?’ she said cheekily.
Jake beamed from ear to ear and pulled her towards him again. Martha smiled. Mr Scriven could not rob her of this. Of this tenderness. Of Jake’s eagerness or this, her second kiss.
*
Nursing Director Emily Haycock lived in a bedsit. It was an upstairs room in a terrace house just off Lark Lane. The room was dull and depressing and the only thing of any beauty to speak of was the view out of the window and across the park overlooking the lake. This morning, the inner window was coated in a thin layer of ice, which obliterated the view and made the room feel smaller and more dismal than it already was. A grey gloom hung in the air and Emily shivered as she struggled to wash herself all over from a bowl of water she had fetched from the grey and chipped stone sink in the bathroom. The lodger in the next room had an unpleasant habit of impatiently banging on the door and pressing his face up against the opaque glass to see who was inside, and Emily had now taken to scuttling across the brown and cracked linoleum on the landing to bring a bowl back to her bedroom.
There was no electricity this morning and so she couldn’t even make a hot drink on her Baby Belling. As she dried herself down, she swore that the time had come to find new lodgings. Things were becoming progressively worse and the landlady refused to do anything about the damp patch that had appeared underneath the windowsill. On at least two evenings this week Emily had had to light the candles because the electricity had suddenly gone off, plunging her into darkness. When that happened, it reminded her of the war, and that was the last thing she wanted. Emily had her own demons to live with.
As director of nursing, she wore her own clothes for work, with a white coat for protection when she visited the wards. However, she missed her sister’s uniform. Life was so easy when she didn’t have to give a second thought to what she wore. Fastening the buttons on the cardigan of her caramel-coloured twinset, she peered closely at herself in the cracked mirror hanging over the blocked-up fireplace. The silver had long since degenerated and peeled from the back. It was so grey and mottled she could barely see her face in the glass, but she could see her blonde curls as they bobbed and bounced on her shoulders.
‘Thank you, God, for my natural curls. See, Mam, I did eat all my crusts,’ she whispered to her reflection. Her shoulder-length hair took minimum effort to pin up at the back, before she was ready to place her hat on top and brave the air outside, which felt warmer than it had in her bedsit.
She bought the Daily Post on the way to work and on the bus searched the ‘room to let’ adverts from top to bottom. The trouble was, most of the people advertising rooms requested a ‘professional gentleman’. There was no way Emily Haycock could get round that one, unless she knocked on the door anyway and was given enough time to persuade the owner she was a safe bet and a professional to boot. She had tried it twice and had been enraged by the attitude she had encountered.
‘We prefer not to take ladies,’ the last one had said, and then she had whispered, as though anyone else could possibly have heard on the busy road, ‘We don’t want any gentleman callers traipsing in and out, do we?’
Emily wasn’t sure if she was expected to answer the question and stared in dismay at the woman who had black stumps for teeth, and was wearing a greasy wraparound apron. She could think of no response, other than to turn on her heel and walk away. She didn’t trust herself to enter into conversation with someone who questioned her morals. She had given up so much to become a ward sister at St Angelus and then to work her way up to sister tutor and director in charge of the school of nursing. The unfairness in the implication that she would behave in any way improperly almost made her cry with the pain of it.
Emily closed the paper with a sigh. In the recent past, ward sisters had lived within the hospital grounds, but the war had changed all that. Today, in any case, she had other things to think about, and the fact was her funds were limited. She had obligations to meet and one particular obligation, her uppermost priority, always came first and left her little in the way of choice when it came to her own living conditions. She had a duty to honour. A commitment and a promise to keep, and for as long as was necessary that was exactly what she would do. If it meant that she had very little to live on at the end of each month, so be it.
Making a circle on the steamy window of the bus with her leather-gloved hand, she peered out into the cold grey morning. As they turned the corner of Church Street, she noticed that the Christmas display was still lit up in the shop windows. The man next to her and the woman on the seat in front were both smoking, and Emily held her newspaper over her mouth to stifle a cough. Thoughts of the new intake, and of what the day ahead would hold, filled her mind. The first week was always the hardest. Once that was out of the way, she decided, she would put every effort into finding somewhere respectable to live, closer to the hospital to save on the bus fare. She stood and pulled on the plaited brown cord above her head to ring the bell to let the driver know she wanted to alight.
*
Dessie stood and watched as the last laundry baskets disappeared through the back door of the ward block. The whoops of the porter lads as they raced each other to be the first across the yard had made him smile, just as they did every morning. Looking over towards the school of nursing, he saw that someone else had been watching.
‘Morning, Sister Haycock.’ Dessie removed his cap and replaced it quickly as the cold air stung his scalp. He felt the familiar sensation of his heart constricting at the sight of Sister Haycock. There was something about her that made him want to remove his porter’s coat and wrap it around her. If ever there was a woman who confused him, it was Sister Haycock. She had flown up through the nursing ranks and been the talk of the hospital a year ago when she took up her new post, and yet whenever she spoke to him and he looked into her eyes he saw pain. He felt that she was vulnerable, lonely, and sad. Just like him.
‘Morning, Dessie,’ Emily shouted in response, and to Dessie’s delight, she began to cross the yard towards him. ‘It’s such a cold morning.’ Dessie felt his heart quicken
as she approached.
‘How are you, Sister? You have a new intake of probationer nurses today. Are they here yet?’
‘No. I’m sure you’ll see them arrive through the back gate.’ They both looked towards the hole in the wall, where a beautiful pair of wrought-iron gates had stood until they were removed for the war effort. ‘The porter lads will let you know, I’m sure. It is always such a source of amusement for them on the first day.’
‘I’m sorry, Sister. I’ll give them all a good warning when they return from the laundry delivery. They should behave. I always tell them to be respectful to the nurses.’
‘Not at all, Dessie. I think it helps the new girls to have a bit of fun as they arrive. They always give as good as they get.’
Dessie rolled his eyes, remembering the probationer nurses from the previous intake, who had locked two of the porter lads in the furnace wood store for ‘a bit of fun’.
‘They do that. Some of them break the hearts of the lads the moment they arrive.’
Emily and Dessie smiled at each other, and for a moment her sparkling blue eyes, watering in the biting January wind, seemed to peer into his heart. Save me, Dessie almost whispered to himself.
‘Dessie, I wanted to ask you a favour.’
Dessie almost didn’t hear what she was saying. He was made speechless by her closeness, and this morning she looked so beautiful, his heart ached.
‘I have a friend who is in lodgings that she isn’t very happy with. She is close to Sefton Park and she, er, she works in one of the offices on Water Street. She needs to move closer to town and asked me did I know of anywhere. I don’t, but when I saw you I thought you might know of something that was available. She just needs a room; lodgings in a house, maybe? She’s a very professional and respectable woman.’ If Dessie did know of any suitable lodgings, she could make an excuse to take it for herself.
A frown crossed Dessie’s face. ‘There is still such a desperate shortage of housing. I feel for your friend, I really do. If I hear of anything I’ll let you know.’ For a split second, he saw fleeting disappointment in her eyes and felt confused, but then, as quickly as it arrived, it was gone.
‘Thank you, Dessie,’ she said in a voice not nearly as bright as it had been just seconds earlier.
As she walked away, Dessie thought of Jake and how lucky he had been in securing his house. It was difficult for people on the outside. The dockside community was almost locked to outsiders. Jobs, houses, lodgings, were all passed along to their own.
As Emily reached the door of the school of nursing she turned back to wave to Dessie, who struggled to tear his eyes away. She raised her hand before she stepped inside and he raised his own in response, then remonstrated with himself. Pull yourself together, lad. There’s a rich and clever doctor waiting somewhere for a woman as beautiful as Sister Haycock. It was true she was no longer a girl, but as far as Dessie was concerned, that was her attraction. She will never look twice at the likes of you, he told himself, then slipping his clipboard under his arm and straightening his cap, he marched across the yard to the porter’s lodge.
*
Once in her sitting room, which was attached to her office in the school of nursing, Emily could have wept with gratitude to discover that her maid, Biddy, had already laid the fire and the flames were licking up the chimney. She removed her hat and coat and hung them on the coat stand before turning to the fire and rubbing her hands together. She looked through the door at her tidy office. Even she knew how incredibly well she had done to have been awarded the position of director of nursing. She had been in the post for almost a year, and it had not been the easiest year as she struggled to make her mark and assert her authority with Matron and the board. It was a relief that Dr Gaskell, chairman of the board and the oldest member, was her biggest supporter. Without him, life would have been so much more difficult. Of course, Matron was still the boss, but the new reforms in Liverpool meant that Emily was responsible for the delivery of all nurse training. Warmed through now, she took the rubber bag from inside her own, extracted the wet pair of men’s pyjamas and laid them over the wide single radiator in her office. Satisfied, she folded the bag away and sat down at her desk. Biddy had never asked and Emily had never explained. She was prepared, though, because one day Biddy would say something and she knew, when that day came, she would not be able to lie. Her secret would be out. She sometimes wondered if that wouldn’t be for the best. Then she dismissed the thought as quickly as it arrived. No one would ever be able to say that Emily Haycock had been helped to reach the position she held. She had done it on her own and that was the way it would stay.
She shuffled her papers for the first lesson together, carefully counted them out into twenty-one piles, and then checked again that each pile contained the correct number of sheets before securing it with two paper clips and adding it to the stack in her leather wallet. She herself had personally typed out the information sheets for each of the new probationers, detailing the basics of the anatomy and physiology they would be required to learn, absorb and regurgitate over the following twelve weeks, until they sat their first exam at the end of the preliminary training school, known to all as PTS.
‘Thank the Lord for carbon paper,’ she muttered to herself, as she zipped up the wallet.
She wrote the words The Epidermis on the front page of her notes for this morning and checked off her tick list to ensure that she had covered every point she wanted to teach the probationers that day.
‘Time for a cuppa before you head into the classroom?’ Biddy popped her head around the door and then glanced over to the radiator. There was a moment’s silence. Biddy left this moment free every time it happened, just in case Emily wanted to explain. Biddy would never ask. She would not push Sister Haycock to tell her what was going on, not until she was ready. Until she was, she would give her those few seconds and if she didn’t fill the gap, well so be it. One day, maybe she would.
It was a long time since anyone had addressed Bridget Kennedy by the name she was christened with. She was Biddy to everyone at the St Angelus school of nursing, even to her boss, Sister Emily Haycock.
‘I’d love one, thank you, Biddy. The new intake aren’t due here until ten. Sister Ryan is walking them up from Lovely Lane to the school.’
‘Ah well, they will all be in a good mood by the time they get here then. Bet you anything you like, she will pull that old trick of hers again. Scare them all half to death and then ask Mrs Duffy to bring in a tray of tea and bourbons before they walk up the way. She’s wasted that one. She should have been on the stage.’
Emily chuckled. ‘Tell you what, Biddy, I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of Sister Ryan and that’s a fact. She’s a good help to me in running the clinical side of the school. I couldn’t manage without her and there is no sister in this hospital who could teach the practical skills of nursing better, but still, I wouldn’t like to cross her.’
‘Oh, I agree with you there, me neither, Sister Haycock, because sure, I know she would come off worse and I wouldn’t want to hurt her feelings now, or spoil the fearsome reputation she has built up around here.’ Fearsome my fat backside, Biddy muttered to herself as she placed a sheet of paper on Sister Haycock’s desk. ‘Here you go, Mrs Duffy dropped this through my letter box on her way home last night. ’Tis the list of the new ducklings who will be waddling on their way up here right now I’ve no doubt. They all arrived, safe and sound. No last minute dropouts. There’s a Brogan on there, I noticed. That’s a good name, Brogan. My daddy’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s niece married one. We all went west for the wedding. Lasted days it did. Farmers they were, you know.’
Emily smiled while Biddy reminisced. If there was one thing Emily had learnt as a ward sister in a Liverpool teaching hospital, it was that the Irish never stopped yearning for home and talking of events that took place in a country they might not have visited for years.
Reminiscing was like cool salve on a burning wound
of homesickness.
‘I wonder who will be the first to faint on mortuary day on Friday?’ said Biddy, moving on. ‘We’ll run a sweepstake in the kitchen, once we’ve had a good look at them. Let me know if you want to put a threepenny bit on, but you have to do it today, mind. Can’t have you, with the inside information, making a bet at the last minute, can we? Mind you, if you don’t want to be doing the sweepstake and you fancy tipping me off, that’s allowed. You can always do that.’
Biddy lifted the scuttle to throw a few coals on to the grate. The school was mainly heated by a noisy stove, located in the basement and fed by a porter’s lad. Emily turned her head away sharply. When Biddy bent down, the smell, if you were unfortunate enough to be behind her, was often none too pleasant. Emily was very sure that Biddy had an incontinence problem. Soon, she would tackle it with her in a sensitive way, but not today. She looked around her immaculate office.
The cleaning of the school was Biddy’s responsibility as housekeeper, and the maids worked under her ruthless daily inspection. The dark wooden floorboards shone, and reflected the daylight from the gleaming windows. Emily thought that it must be a source of great sadness to a woman with such high standards of cleanliness not to be in control of her most personal hygiene. It was hardly surprising, though.
Biddy had confided in her that she had ‘lain in’ seven times and delivered big strapping babies, but despite their healthy appearance only five had lived past infanthood. Emily knew that was not an uncommon scenario in 1930s Liverpool among the Irish immigrant population. Emily would get today out of the way and then think how she could approach the subject and help Biddy. The first priority would be to let Biddy know she wasn’t the only one to suffer and that it was a common problem among women who had delivered a number of babies, especially infants with a big birth weight. It was a silent cross many women had to carry and few thought to seek help for.
The Angels of Lovely Lane Page 13