‘The bedpans,’ squealed Pammy. ‘Was there ever a job as foul?’ But before anyone could answer her she had spotted a group of doctors and medical students in the distance, also leaving the back entrance of the hospital and heading towards them, down the lane. ‘Don’t move,’ she said, putting up her hand to fix her hair. ‘We need to get friendly with a few of these doctors. We all want a night out, don’t we? I reckon it won’t do us any harm to meet a few of these chaps. I recognize one from our ward today, really lovely he was. Stall, girls, stall. Dana, tie up your laces, go on, get down on the ground.’
‘Not on your life,’ said Dana, who dared not look to see if Teddy was among them, but could feel her heart beating wildly. She hadn’t seen him, but she had sensed he was there; she just knew. ‘Get down and tie up your own laces.’
‘All right, don’t then,’ said Pammy, ‘but don’t move.’
The girls pretended to chat, Pammy laughing far too loudly as they surreptitiously turned round to face the doctors. As they approached, Dana recognized him and she was sure he had spotted her. She felt as though she had entered a world of her own. Her mouth had gone dry and all she could think about was the smile on his face and the feel of his strong hands on her waist as he had lifted her up and into the dirty linen basket.
Beth began to complain. ‘For goodness’ sake, do we have to hang around here? I would quite like to get back to Lovely Lane. We all have studying to do tonight, you know. We’ve got to fill in the worksheet Sister Haycock has given us for each night. It would be a disaster to miss the first one. Hello? Is anyone listening to me?’
No one was. Pammy was in a state of high excitement. She had complained lately how dull their evenings were. Twelve weeks of study and the confinement of the PTS had almost driven her crazy. They were all on days for the next month. Pammy badly wanted a night out.
‘Here’s our chance, girls,’ she whispered. ‘We’ll ask this lot if they have any idea where a bunch of bored nurses can find some fun.’
‘That’s a bit forward, Pammy,’ said Victoria. ‘Maybe we should wait until they ask us.’
‘Are you kiddin’? I’m not asking them to marry us. We haven’t been out in months. I’m going to crack up if I have to spend another night in with a mug of Horlicks. I’ll just drop it into the conversation all casual like. Watch me.’
‘Listen to you, you mean,’ said Beth. The doctors strode on and soon covered the ground between them.
‘Nurses!’ shouted one young man with dark-framed glasses and a short mop of equally dark and very curly hair. ‘What a good job we bumped into you. We’ve all been wondering whether or not the new intake would be a good bunch.’
‘We are,’ said Pammy. Nothing was going to stop her from having her night out.
Dana had seen him at once. In a cloud of flapping white coats, he stood out from the rest. She wished her heart would slow down, that the colour she knew had risen in her face would subside, that she would remember how to speak when he reached her. He had broken away from the rest of the group. She clasped her hands to stop them shaking and swallowed hard.
He was grinning in that boyish way she remembered from the first night they met. Even when he had scooped her up and dropped her into the linen basket, her heart had beaten wildly. Now and again she had stolen a delicious free moment to relive it in her mind. She had almost torn herself apart wondering whether she had been too brusque. Played too hard to get. Had she let her Irish pride come before a lonely fall? His hair flopped over his eyes and bounced up and down as he walked. With each step, her heart beat faster. Was this an illness? He had filled her thoughts and the scenario of events from their first meeting had replayed in her mind like a film reel. She had laid her head on her pillow and imagined what it would be like if Teddy’s head were on a pillow next to hers. If she could slip her hand across the sheets and touch his body, if he answered when she whispered his name. She had felt foolish today, trying to play hard to get. He had probably seen right through her. Thank goodness she had a second chance. Don’t blow it this time, she thought.
She swallowed again as he approached. She forced herself to give him the biggest, most welcoming smile. Even her lips trembled.
He was almost upon her when she took a tentative step forward to greet him. ‘Hello,’ she said. But he didn’t hear, and her mind screamed in confusion as he strode straight past her to Victoria, threw his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek.
Dana’s heart almost broke in two as she watched Victoria reach up and wrap her arms around his neck. Then Victoria kissed him back and whispered breathlessly, ‘Teddy, I’ve found you at last.’
*
Emily Haycock decided that the moment had come. She had to have the conversation she had avoided for so long.
‘Biddy, will you stay and have a cup of tea with me?’ she asked when Biddy popped her head round the door to say goodnight.
‘That tea on the tray? It’s cold. Why would I want to drink that? Oh, I see. Is that just your way of getting me to make a fresh pot when I’m on me way out of the door? Would you get the cheek of you.’ But Biddy had already placed her bag on the floor and taken off her coat.
Five minutes later she returned to Emily’s office, bearing the tea tray and a smile. Biddy thought that Emily was dreading returning home alone. If only she knew, Biddy felt the same.
‘They’ve all gone in the kitchen and I had to do it meself, so think yourself lucky,’ she joked. ‘I’ll tell you what, this intake of nurses, they’re a funny lot. They’re a bit cheekier than the last bunch. Do you feel as though things are changing? People, I mean, not things. I’ve been here a long time and I’ve never known such a perky, happy group of girls.’
‘I think they are, Biddy. I think the more probationers we try to recruit from the same background as the majority of our patients, the quicker the change will take place. I want some of the nurses in St Angelus to say bath, not barth.’
Biddy handed Emily her tea.
‘Biddy, can we have that chat now? The one about your incontinence? Because I’d like to help.’
Chapter sixteen
Supper was over and the nurses of Lovely Lane were sitting around in the lounge, watching the new black-and-white television.
‘Ssh,’ said Lizzie to the room in general. ‘It’s news about the new Queen.’ She leapt out of her chair and turned the dial of the fourteen-inch TV as far as it would go.
Mrs Duffy bustled into the room, pushing the drinks trolley in front of her. ‘Draw the curtains while you are up please, Nurse,’ she said.
As Lizzie looked for the cord down the side of the dark green velvet drapes, she stopped short. There he was again. Over the past two weeks, she had seen a young man lounging against the park bushes on the opposite side of the road on at least four or five occasions. At first she had thought he was waiting for the bus. Now, she was more suspicious.
‘Mrs Duffy,’ she said, without turning round, ‘who do you think that young man is, opposite the house? He’s been there every time I’ve closed the curtains for the past couple of weeks.’
Mrs Duffy came and stood next to her. ‘Where, dear?’
Lizzie moved aside a little to give her room, and then exclaimed, ‘Oh my, he was there just a moment ago. He’s gone now.’
‘Maybe he was just waiting for the bus?’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘Do you want me to mention it to Dessie? See what he thinks?’
‘No, no, don’t be daft,’ said Lizzie. ‘He looked harmless enough.’ She drew the curtains together and took one last peep, just to be sure. Maybe he had just been waiting for the bus after all, she thought.
‘Is it the news, girls?’ Mrs Duffy said excitedly as she pushed the squeaky trolley against the wall.
‘It is, Mrs Duffy. Don’t worry about the drinks; we’ll help ourselves. Come and sit down and watch it,’ said Victoria, patting the seat of the empty chair next to her.
‘I can’t let you serve your own drinks after the way you nurses h
ave worked all day,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘I can do two things at once very well, Nurse Baker, and often do.’ Victoria, anticipating the rejection of her offer, had already stopped listening and returned her gaze to the television.
From the far corner came the clatter of steel on steel. It was the knitters. This group had been organized by Celia Forsyth during the first week of PTS. Dana loved knitting, having been taught by her mother as soon as she could hold a pair of needles. She would have loved to join in, but felt inhibited by the fact that Celia Forsyth was the organizer. She had tentatively mentioned her interest to Beth.
‘I love to knit,’ she had said. ‘I’m not as good as my mammy, though. She makes beautiful cardigans and jumpers. She knitted like crazy to kit me out before I left. Went mad she did because she only had a few months’ notice.’
‘Well, why don’t you join us then? Take no notice of Celia. She may have organized the group, but she doesn’t make the rules. There are no laws as to who sits in the knitting corner.’
‘Are you joking?’ Dana laughed. ‘I’d be dropping my stitches every five minutes. Your one, she hates me, though I’ve no idea what I’ve ever done to deserve it. She put a note under everyone’s door inviting them to join the circle. Under every door but mine, that is.’
Beth had already worked out that she had made a big mistake, being friends with Celia. The loudness of Pammy drove her to distraction and she had thought that forming an alliance with Celia was her best bet, but she had seen that whereas Pammy, Victoria and Dana had been genuinely delighted when she won the PTS prize, the smile had not quite reached Celia’s eyes.
Tonight, Celia had herded her knitters, armed with their tapestry bags and needles, into the corner where she planned to deliver a lecture on blackberry stitch and to discuss the merits of a pattern she had seen in a magazine. Lizzie noticed some of the knitters straining over their yarn to see the screen in the corner of the room, and was sure they would much rather be sitting around the television with everyone else. All anyone could talk about was the new Queen Mother and her daughter, the Queen.
A nurse sat in front of Celia, holding a skein of wool in her hands while Celia wound it into a ball. As the nurse leant over to get a better look at the television, Celia dropped the ball of wool and snapped, ‘Nurse Skeet. Sit up.’
‘That one will make Matron one day,’ Pammy whispered to Victoria.
‘Let’s hope we’re far away when that happens then,’ Victoria whispered back.
‘My mother is posting me patterns so that we can knit some new clothes for the dolls on the children’s ward,’ said Celia in a deliberately loud voice, in order to do battle with the television and to irritate Lizzie. ‘I will of course first check with Matron that it will be acceptable for us to do so.’
Almost everyone ignored her. Many had discovered that ignoring Celia truly got her goat. Pammy had turned her attention back to studying Evelyn Pearce’s book on anatomy and physiology for nurses. Terrified of making a mistake on the ward and landing herself in Sister Antrobus’s bad books, she had glanced at the theatre list for the following day and written down what operations were being performed, by whom and in what order. She didn’t want to look like the first ward placement idiot she felt herself to be if someone asked her a question or spoke to her in acronyms.
Beth had moved slightly away from the rest of the knitting circle and was deep in a book, her needles lying idle. She was the most studious of the bunch, but could quite easily be jollied along into laying her work down. Some of the girls were dozing in their chairs, after a hard day on the wards. It was as much as some could do to keep their eyes open past supper but tonight, like Victoria, the majority were glued to the news.
Pammy lifted her head from her book and looked around the room for Dana. ‘Have you seen Dana, Vic ?’ she whispered. They often used their Christian names between each other, as long as no one outside their group could hear them. If Pammy had spoken in tones of any volume, she would have addressed her friend as Nurse Baker. First names sotto voce and titles in regular tones had quickly become the accepted norm.
Victoria appeared not to have heard her question, so Pammy repeated, ‘Do you know where Dana is? Is she sick, or what?’
‘I haven’t seen her since we walked home. In fact, one minute she was there, the next she was gone,’ Victoria replied. Pammy looked thoughtful.
‘Nurse Brogan isn’t feeling very well,’ said Mrs Duffy, interjecting. ‘It’s an exhausting ward, male surgical, having to lift those men up the bed all the time. She’s gone to catch up on some sleep.’
‘But she wasn’t at supper,’ said Pammy. ‘If she doesn’t eat, she won’t be able to haul anyone up the bed.’
‘Don’t you worry about Nurse Brogan,’ Mrs Duffy replied. ‘I’ll take her a drink and a biscuit up when I’ve finished in here. Sister Haycock is coming down tonight to have a chat with you all, see how you are getting on on the wards.’
This was no longer a terrifying prospect to the girls. Sister Haycock was everyone’s favourite sister by a country mile, and she often popped in during the evening to have a drink with them on her way home. They got to ask her as many questions as they liked. She always had time to listen and almost always made a point of asking Pammy how she was getting along.
Lizzie dived out of her seat and raised the volume on the television even louder. ‘Shh,’ she hissed as she collapsed back in her seat. The tinny and hissy voice of the announcer filled the room.
‘If I told our kids we watched the telly every night, they’d all be around here, Mrs Duffy,’ said Pammy.
Lizzie spotted an opportunity to save Mrs Duffy a job and walked over to the fire to poke it back into life, lifting the scuttle to pour on a few coals.
‘Well now, that makes me very sad,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘Maybe we should invite them around one morning when they are not at school?’
‘Would you not need Matron’s permission for that?’ Celia Forsyth’s voice cut across the room and silence fell. Victoria noticed that Mrs Duffy’s face flushed with colour as she stammered out a reply.
‘I hadn’t actually thought of asking Matron, It was just an idea...’
‘And a very kind one Mrs Duffy, said Victoria. I had never even seen a television until I came to live here.’
‘We don’t have one, and I don’t know anyone in our street who does,’ said Pammy. She was smarting at the kindness of Mrs Duffy’s thought and the embarrassment she suffered as a result of Celia’s comment.
‘Well, my father says that everyone should have one, said Beth. ‘I find it fascinating that we can actually see and hear Churchill. Such a great man. Daddy says everyone will own a television soon because people want to know what the government is up to. So many people love Churchill.’
‘There’s no argument there,’ said Mrs Duffy. ‘He was a great man during the war, was Churchill. We would never have got through without him.’
The television was now showing a picture of a smiling Queen Elizabeth standing next to Prince Philip.
‘See? Everyone should be able to see those picture,’ said Beth. ‘Not just the lucky people like us.
‘Well, wouldn’t that be wonderful,’ said Mrs Duffy, who loved the Queen almost as much as she loved her job and her nurses.’
‘No, it wouldn’t,’ said Celia Forsyth. ‘My father thinks that the masses owning televisions will bring about nothing but trouble. Could even bring the government down, he says. It will be the end of Churchill. The government will never let it happen.’
Victoria’s mouth fell open as she saw Mrs Duffy walk towards Celia with her drink held out. She saw it happen in slow motion, but by the time she had registered the impending disaster it was too late to shout a warning. As Mrs Duffy reached over to pass Celia her drink, her eyes turned towards the television screen, the cup slipped from its saucer, sailed through the air and discharged its contents all on to Celia’s lap, where they splattered all over her newly completed white matinee coat.
>
‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ Celia shouted, shooting up out of the chair and throwing the knitting on to the floor. ‘You stupid, stupid old woman.’
There was an audible gasp from the assembled nurses, and, for a moment, time seemed to stand still before Pammy and the others jumped up to help, not Celia, but Mrs Duffy. Celia looked as though she were about to burst with rage.
Mrs Duffy began to apologize. ‘I am so sorry. I will replace the wool and redo the knitting for you. All the time you have spent on that little coat, and it’s so beautiful, too. I am so sorry.’
Celia Forsyth knocked Mrs Duffy’s hand away and stormed out of the room, dripping cocoa. Not one person other than Mrs Duffy had looked at her.
‘I wouldn’t put up with being spoken to like that, Mrs Duffy,’ said Lizzie, as she helped the housekeeper to clean the chair. ‘I think that Nurse Forsyth needs to be sent to Matron for her rudeness. It was an accident, for goodness’ sake.’
Mrs Duffy’s voice trembled. ‘I can hardly send her to Matron, can I now, when it was me who spilled the drink and ruined her hours of hard work. No, it was my fault. Of course she’s angry. I would be angry if someone threw a cup of hot cocoa all over me and ruined my knitting. No, it was all my fault.’ Mrs Duffy held the matinee coat in her hand, looking distraught. ‘I will try to wash it as soon as I’ve got the dishes done.’
Pammy thought she saw Mrs Duffy’s eyes fill with tears as she collected the empty cups and moved the trolley out of the room. The girls looked at one another with expressions of disbelief. The only sounds were the fire hissing and the coals shifting in the grate.
‘Well, that was a bit out of order.’ Victoria broke the silence. ‘That little madam needs to get her comeuppance.’
‘She certainly does, Nurse Baker,’ said Lizzie. ‘I think some of us need to work on that. Her day will come, you mark my words.’ Lizzie had known Mrs Duffy for over two years and they had become close. Just at that moment, Lizzie could have followed Celia to her room and thumped her. ‘You lot, her so-called friends.’ Beth and the others in the knitting corner looked up, their needles lying redundant in their laps. No one had the nerve to continue knitting. ‘One of you had better run up those stairs and tell her not to come back down here tonight, because if she does she’ll have me to deal with. And now I’m going to help Mrs Duffy, who looks after us all every day, to wash up the cups. Is anyone coming with me?’
The Angels of Lovely Lane Page 24