‘Come with me,’ said Mr Scriven to Pammy. ‘Now.’
Pammy jumped up out of her seat and followed him out of the room, with Sister Antrobus trailing behind. Pammy could hear the crackle of the starch in Sister’s dress as she moved. She knew that she was in dreadful trouble. Her earlier bravery had almost deserted her and she felt herself weakening in the face of the opposition lined up against her. Now that Mr Scriven had joined them, she wasn’t sure what she would do. Maybe they were right. Had she been over-emotional?
Mr Scriven stood under the central green glass lampshade in the sluice room and picked up one of Branna’s buckets. He placed it under the sluice sink tap and began to fill it with water.
‘You see this?’ he snapped. ‘If that baby breathed and lived, when I put it in this bucket of water it will float. If it didn’t, it will sink.’
‘It was a he, sir,’ whispered Pammy.
‘What?’
‘It was a he. He was a little boy.’ Pammy saw a vein in Mr Scriven’s neck twitch and pulsate and she thought he was about to explode. Instead, he placed the bucket on the floor.
‘Is this it?’ he asked Sister, who nodded an affirmative.
Pammy was aware that someone else had joined them in the room, but her eyes remained fixed on the bundle of towelling.
Without looking at the child, he took the towel to the bucket and plopped the dead baby into the water, where it floated, face down. Pammy could hardly believe what she was seeing. She was incredulous.
Mr Scriven looked startled. For a split second, he hesitated before he snatched the baby back up and wrapped him in the towel. ‘See?’ he said. ‘He sank.’
‘But he didn’t,’ Pammy whispered. ‘He didn’t sink. That’s not the truth, sir. He floated.’
‘Take it to the incinerator,’ said Sister Antrobus.
‘But...’ Pammy faltered. She was frozen to the spot. ‘I can’t, Sister,’ she muttered. Her mind was reeling at what she had just witnessed.
‘I did not ask for a reply. I gave you an order. Do as you are told.’ Sister Antrobus was almost shouting again. She looked to Mr Scriven for confirmation that this was what he wanted and he nodded back, the expression on his face cold and unmoved.
‘I shall take the waste product to the incinerator myself, Sister,’ he said coldly.
Sister Antrobus looked humiliated, and she blushed red. She had been late on this fateful day, and now it would appear to Mr Scriven as though she were losing control of her ward and her staff. There was a moment’s silence, broken shockingly by Matron, who, unbeknown to Pammy, had stood silently in the sluice room and witnessed the entire scene. ‘You are a disgrace to nurses everywhere.’ Her words sliced through the air. They were full of menace and sent a chill of fear running through Pammy. ‘Get out of this hospital, pack your belongings at Lovely Lane and be out before this evening. You will never set foot in St Angelus again.’
Pammy tried to move, but her legs had turned to jelly.
‘Get out of this ward and this hospital. Do it now. I shall send you an official dismissal by post.’
‘But Matron, it was a baby boy. Don’t you understand?’ Pammy’s voice wobbled. Her words petered out and she realized that somewhere in Matron’s eyes there was a gleam of human kindness, but not for Pammy. Not for the nameless little boy who had just died in her arms.
‘If that baby goes anywhere, I’m calling the police.’ As soon as she spoke those words, her knees began to shake.
She was already trying to work out what she would tell her parents, but she knew instinctively that they would understand. They would even praise her actions. At home in Arthur Street, a welcome would be waiting. That thought emboldened her.
‘You are a liar,’ she screamed at Mr Scriven. ‘A liar, do you hear me?’
She had nothing to lose and was beyond containing her anger. With tears pouring down her cheeks, Pammy took her cape down from its peg in the cloakroom. Her eyes searched for Branna, but she was nowhere to be seen. Feeling very alone, she wrapped her cape around her and shivered. She would have liked to say goodbye to Staff Nurse Bates, who was tending to their patient. They would never see each other again, and Pammy wanted to say thank you. But they would never let her, and anyway she felt a need to be out of this place and in the fresh air. The condemnation of Sister Antrobus and Matron and the coldness and anger of Mr Scriven were all too much for her. She had never been shouted at like that by anyone in her life before and the experience had been deeply upsetting. She had barely eaten since her snatched breakfast, and as a result she felt weak. Her emotions had been assailed by events and she still could not comprehend what she had witnessed, although she was sure she would never forget the image of the floating baby or the deep blue eyes staring up at her.
She was on the verge of storming back into the office and shouting that Mr Scriven was a brute. Her mind screamed out, rejecting the reality of what had occurred. Putting the baby in a bucket of water to test if he had lived had been the last straw. Pammy began to shake. Her arms were crossed defensively and she felt her fingernails digging deeply into the skin of her forearms. The speed of events had left her speechless and tearful. Could she have got this all wrong? In the world of hospitals and surgery, of medicine and nursing, the world she had chosen, how could a baby be born and breathe but be condemned and written off? But Pammy was her mother’s daughter, and even as she doubted herself she thought of Maisie and asked herself what would her mam do. In a flash, the thought gave her strength. Pammy had seen her entire community, women with a dozen children each, fight to save the smallest scrap of a life and if her mam were here she would have done the same as Pammy. Her instincts had been right.
She felt weak with relief and the tears almost cascaded from her eyes. Pulling her cape around her for warmth and protection, she opened the cloakroom door to leave. Then she heard Branna’s voice, and turning towards the ward she saw that the doors were wide open. Branna was standing outside the cubicle with her arms folded, and her words clear for all to hear. It looked as though she could be the second person to be dismissed that day on ward two.
‘Is anyone here going to tell Elsie what her missing girl Martha is doing in that bed?’
*
In the school of nursing, Biddy picked up the telephone. Another minute and she would have been gone. Her bag was packed, her scarf was fastened and she had been heading for the door.
‘’Tis always someone wanting something,’ she muttered as she picked up the handset. She recognized the voice right away. It was Dessie.
‘Biddy, where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to call you all day.’
‘We haven’t had no phone all day. You know that, for pity’s sake. ’Twas you what organized to have the new phone put in. I haven’t been anywhere but here.’
Dessie had spent his whole day running up and down to Maternity with gas bottles. The requests were never-ending, and Jake had disappeared. Dessie could hardly believe it. There had been no word, not a message from his mother or another of the lads, nothing. He banged his fist to his forehead. ‘How could I have forgotten?’ he said.
Dessie didn’t bother to argue with Biddy. Not least because she was right. He had ordered the new telephone system to be installed in the school of nursing. It was a measure of how frantically busy he was that he hadn’t remembered that fact.
All day long he had been trying to call Biddy each time he was anywhere near the lodge.
‘I have news, Biddy, and it isn’t good. Are you sitting down?’
Chapter twenty-five
Biddy ran down the entry as fast as was physically possible with a wicker shopping basket in one hand and a seven-pound bag of King Edwards in the other. By the time she reached Elsie’s house she was out of breath and had to set both down on the floor in front of her before she could push open the back door.
For a brief moment, she stopped and smiled as it dawned on her that she had completed the journey without embarrassment.
Biddy, you have to know that almost all women who give birth to a large number of babies in rapid succession suffer with your problem.
Emily had taken her to Dr Jackson’s clinic. It had been an uncomfortable experience and she had thought that the ring he had placed inside her would surely fall out, but it hadn’t. He told her that it didn’t work for everyone, but maybe life wasn’t always that bad, because for Biddy it had.
‘Elsie,’ she roared, almost falling in through the door. ‘Elsie, I’m nearly dying from lack of breath here. Where are you?’
Elsie’s neighbour Hattie had been bringing in her washing. She was Welsh. Biddy didn’t like the Welsh. She thought that every English person who claimed the Irish were dirty should visit the home of a Welsh woman first.
Hattie wore a blue floral housecoat and a red and green paisley scarf, worn like a turban, to cover her wire curlers.
‘Get them feckin’ curlers out,’ Biddy had jibed at her during the war. ‘Jerry’s using them to get a signal for his bombers, so he is.’ She only said it once. The following morning, after the worst bombing of Liverpool, Hattie whipped out her wire curlers with their holding spike antennae and put them in a box under the bed. She did not put them in again until VE day.
‘What you yellin’ like that for? There’s no one home. She’ll be down the bingo, either that or still looking for their Martha. Not settled, she hasn’t, since Martha went missing. Told me she was calling on Josie’s mam. What news have you got then?’
Hattie was peering over the wall between her back yard and Elsie’s. She took the stub of a roll-up ciggie out of her apron pocket and lit up, expecting to be standing around for at least five minutes to chew over Biddy’s news. She squinted as the blue smoke rose upwards and tears stung her eyes in protest.
Biddy was tempted to share. To tell Hattie that she knew where Martha was. It took every ounce of her willpower to keep her own counsel. ‘Just tell her to come down to mine when she gets back, will ye? Tell her I have something for her now.’
Hattie wasn’t going to let her away that easily. ‘Why don’t you tell me what it is and I’ll pass a message on? I’m reliable, me.’ Hattie crossed her arms and leant on the wall. ‘You wouldn’t be running like that if you didn’t have something important to say. I haven’t seen you run that fast since New Year’s Eve in ’forty-six when you realized your Mick was in the pub with yer purse. Generous man your Mick.’
Biddy blessed herself, remembering the night. ‘I shouldn’t have bothered running and put my heart in danger like that. The bloody purse was empty by the time I got there. The bastard.’ Hattie smiled. This was more like it. She knew mentioning their Mick would distract Biddy.
Due to its close proximity, almost everyone who lived in the community worked at the hospital in some capacity or another. Hattie was a night cleaner who nursed a deep resentment that after all these years she had never progressed.
‘What is it? Go on then, tell me,’ she said. ‘You know me, I’m the very soul of discretion I am. I’ll tell Elsie as soon as she gets back. I might even go up to Josie’s to fetch her for you, if you like, seeing as how you’re all out of breath. Course, I’d ’ave to know what it was I was going to fetch her for first though, obviously.’
Biddy looked down at her shopping bags. It was no good. Elsie wasn’t here, she needed to get word to her and what better way of doing it than telling a woman with a gob the size of the Mersey Tunnel. She took the path of least resistance.
‘Tell Elsie to come down to mine as soon as she gets back. Tell her I know where Martha is.’ With that, Biddy picked up the potatoes and her basket and trotted out of Elsie’s gate, and back up to the entry to her own house.
‘Biddy,’ shouted Hattie, throwing her cigarette over the yard wall into the cobbled entry. ‘Biddy!’ But there was no reply. Hattie decided there was nothing for it. Placing her washing on the pulley in the kitchen and hoisting it up to the ceiling, she left via the front door and began knocking on doors to spread the word. Biddy knew where Martha was. Now all they had to do was find Elsie.
‘What a day this has been,’ Biddy said to her welcoming cat. ‘If the Holy Mother told you herself what had gone on, you wouldn’t believe her.’
Letting the cat out and placing the kettle on the range, she began to unpack her shopping. She watched the cat through the kitchen window as he leapt from the roof of the outhouse up on to the entry wall.
‘Find Elsie, would ye?’ she said to him. She often talked to the cat, believing she got more sense out of him than from most people.
*
As soon as Biddy had put the phone down on Dessie, she had made her way to the classroom where Emily Haycock was teaching a class of final-year students, and gestured frantically through the glass in the door. Emily had frowned but, realizing that it must be something serious for Biddy to disturb her, said, ‘We will finish early today, nurses.’ A murmur of appreciation had swept around the room.
Biddy didn’t wait for the students to leave.
‘Something bad is happening on ward two. I think your Nurse Tanner may need your help.’
Biddy had no need to say another word. Emily didn’t even wait to collect her cape. She was off and down the stairs as fast as her feet would carry her.
Chapter twenty-six
The hush which had descended on the Lovely Lane home was unnatural. Even the knitters were subdued. With Celia Forsyth away on holiday they were not obliged to discuss the latest pattern or argue the merits of stocking stitch or moss stitch, and their comments were confined to ‘pass the wool’ or, ‘dash it, lost count again’, over the clickety clack of their wooden needles.
Sister Haycock had arrived with Nurse Tanner and the two of them were presently closeted in a small downstairs study room. When the door had closed behind them Pammy had thought for a brief moment that Sister Haycock was going to hug her. She was certain the nursing director had reached out for her hand, but of course she hadn’t. It was just her imagination. Emily asked her to go over and over again the events of the afternoon. She let Pammy cry as she gazed down on the girl’s now unkempt and flowing hair, her red bloodshot eyes and swollen red nose and thought, I’ve got this, Maisie. I’ve got her back for you. My turn to help your family now. It also occurred to her that one day soon she would have to face the past and turn to the future. Doing that would mean having to knock on Maisie’s door.
‘I’ve let everyone down,’ Pammy sobbed. ‘Me mam, me dad, you, Mrs Duffy, everyone.’
Emily let Pammy cry it out, and handed over her own handkerchief. ‘Look, Nurse Tanner, everything always appears worse at night, especially on a wet and miserable night like tonight. Listen to that wind. There’s a storm brewing out there.’ She was trying to divert Pammy’s thoughts, to lift her out of the well of despair she had fallen into. ‘I know Matron was harsh and Sister Antrobus was worse, but that was tonight. Matron has agreed that we can go back to her office tomorrow to talk about this. You haven’t gone yet, Nurse Tanner. As far as I am concerned, you are still a part of St Angelus and I will do everything in my power to keep it that way. Let’s pray for a miracle. Matron’s word is law, but perhaps we can persuade her to change it.’
‘I think it was all a bit of a shock, to be honest,’ said Pammy, as she wiped her nose. ‘I’ve never seen an abortion before. I don’t suppose I would have, with them being illegal. He said he had to do it, because of the carbolic. Said she was blistered and burnt. But he did something very odd. He injected straight into her uterus through her abdominal wall. Staff Nurse Bates said the drug was only supposed to be given intramuscular by the drip. She said that a side effect of the oxytocin – that was the drug he gave her – was that her uterus could have ruptured.’
Emily retained her composure. That was a piece of information to be filed away.
‘What would you have done, Sister Haycock, if you had been me? Some of the nurses were turning up their noses at the girl, you know, and that’s something e
lse. We didn’t even know her name. Mr Scriven said it was Jane Smith but we knew that was a lie.’ Pammy’s voice began to rise.
‘There, there, don’t get upset again. The other nurses should have known better. Whatever one’s religion, it has to be left at the ward door in cases like this. The moral position would be to ensure that abortion is available free on the National Health Service for all women in the early stages, to prevent cases like the one you saw on ward two today. Women should not have to resort to visiting butchers in back streets.
‘You hold tight, Nurse Tanner. I need to think. Things always seem better in the morning. And, remember, pray for that miracle.’
*
Dana and Beth had colonized the far corner of the sitting room, and when Pammy returned to join them they absorbed their tearful friend into their midst while she recounted events. ‘Look after her,’ Sister Haycock mouthed to Dana as she popped her head round the sitting-room door before she left.
‘He refused to accept that the baby had lived and said it hadn’t and that I was imagining it, but I know it did. I saw it with my own eyes,’ Pammy said.
Dana blessed herself and gasped, ‘The poor little mite.’
‘Why did she have an abortion in the first place?’ asked Beth. ‘Did you get to find out?’
‘No, not a word. We didn’t even have any name or address or anything.’
‘Well, that’s most odd. If you ask me, something is very untoward there,’ said the stickler for standards, Beth.
Dana looked thoughtful. ‘What did Sister Haycock say when she came to the ward?’ she asked. ‘What a stroke of luck that was altogether. Imagine. She just chose that moment to pop in to see Sister Antrobus. A few minutes later and it would probably have been too late. See, there is a God. You must pray to him tonight, Pammy, to say thank you for sending Sister Haycock to the ward for ye.’
The Angels of Lovely Lane Page 35