‘Our Lorraine? Do us a favour, Maisie. She’d get beaten up if she went to school talking like Victoria. You don’t want our Lorraine talking posh.’ Stan lowered his voice to a whisper so that Victoria couldn’t hear. ‘We used to beat up the lads from Waterloo Grammar when I was a kid, for talking posh, like. They were sitting ducks for us, when they were waiting for the bus. Mind you, can’t beat them up for talking posh now. They all live in big houses over the water and work in banks and go out for fancy lunches and drive cars and things.’ He began to chuckle.
Maisie sighed. ‘And that, Stan Tanner, is my point. That is exactly why I want our Lorraine to do better, so she doesn’t grow up into a senseless blockhead like you.’
Before Stan could answer back, Maisie stooped down to retrieve the Yorkshire pudding, perfectly risen in its large enamel dish.
Both Maisie and Stan walked into the front room and the sight that greeted them made Maisie’s heart melt. The table was set, cutlery laid, earthenware dishes piled in the middle. The small fire was roaring up the chimney and on the burnt and tattered fireside rug lay the youngest Tanner boys. Tired of waiting, they had settled back down, their faces buried in comics. Victoria was on the chair nearest the fire, with Lorraine perched on her knee as she painted Lorraine’s nails. Dana and Pammy had been on the settle and jumped up as Maisie and Stan walked in.
‘Look at me nails, Mam,’ said Lorraine as she flashed her fingers in Maisie’s face. ‘Don’t they look lovely?’
Maisie laid her dish on the table and moved Lorraine’s hand further away so that she could examine it properly while at the same time instructing Dana and Pammy to lift the trestle over to sit on.
‘Well, they do look nice. I get it all over me fingers when I try.’
A collective gasp went up from the girls and there was a rush to the table by the boys. A smile of pride crossed Pammy’s face as they all took their seats, ready to eat.
‘Oh, Mrs Tanner, you are simply the tops!’ said Victoria.
Maisie shot Stan a warning look. He grinned and raised his eyebrows.
Dana couldn’t take her eyes off the pork and almost licked her lips. This was the nearest she got to the roast dinners her own mammy served at home in Ireland. It was all here, in Maisie Tanner’s house. A Sunday at the Tanners’ was one of the few days Dana stopped feeling homesick and guilty. Having promised her mammy she would visit home lots, she had managed it only once and the guilt sat heavily with her every single day.
‘Now, you have to eat up, all of you,’ said Maisie. ‘But you can’t stay and listen to the radio tonight. You won’t believe this, it’s snowing again, and despite what clever-clogs Stan says, it looks like it might stick. Are you all in early tomorrow?’
‘I’m on the children’s ward,’ said Dana as she gratefully lifted up her plate to accept a huge slice of pork and a large helping of Yorkshire pudding. Yorkshire pudding was cheap to make and came with every roast, regardless of the meat. The more Maisie could cram on the table, the happier she was. Sunday was the day she pushed the boat out.
‘Take as much as you want, love,’ said Maisie. But Dana held back, even though she could quite happily have eaten the lot.
‘Victoria and I are on male medical together,’ said Beth. ‘I called into the office to look at the off-duty for next week. There are four of us on tomorrow, and Staff Nurse told me there’s a new probationer from Mayo. Dana, you might know her, she’s called Bridget Moran.’
Dana had her mouth full and was unable to answer.
‘But the big news is, Mam,’ said Pammy, ‘that there’s a new assistant matron starting and the third years say she’s going to stir everything up. I’m not looking forward to that.’
‘How do they know that if she hasn’t started yet?’ Maisie asked.
Pammy had loaded a roast potato into her mouth, so Victoria answered for her. ‘Well, because Matron is so busy, she leaves most of us trainee nurses to Sister Haycock and Sister Ryan, and they are just dotes. But the rumour flying round is that the new assistant matron looks like a hawk and has the charm of a dragon. She is by all accounts absolutely beastly and I’m not sure who has even met her yet.’
‘We’ll just have to make sure we do everything by the book. No calamities.’ The other girls fell quiet for a moment as Pammy had the good grace to look sheepish. Pammy was the architect and executor of all the calamities that occurred in Lovely Lane.
‘What do you think, Stan?’ said Maisie.
Stan hadn’t understood a word Victoria said and so instead he replied, ‘It’s lovely this, Maisie,’ nodding his head at his heavily loaded plate.
‘The thing is, Mam, it’s like a big family at St Angelus. Everyone gets on with everyone else. There are no dragons and we don’t want one now.’
Everyone fell to polishing off their dinners and soon the only sound in the room was that of munching. Even the boys were quiet as they ate.
During the clearing up, Stan picked up the Saturday Echo from the night before and read out the headline. ‘Eh, Maisie, I see they got that fella who left that young girl for dead in the entry. Caught him in Durham, they say. A vacuum-cleaner salesman, he was. It says here he tried it again with another young girl in Durham and they think he’s done it before as well. I don’t know what the country is coming to. What did we fight for, eh? Not for animals like him to make the streets unsafe for our girls. I didn’t put my life on the line for the likes of him, that’s for sure.’
‘She worked at St Angelus, that girl, Da,’ said Pammy as she stacked the dirty plates. ‘She was an administrator in casualty. I’m not sure if she will be back after that. Not sure I could.’
‘I had to take her down to theatre,’ said Victoria. ‘She was admitted to ward two. She was a right mess, the poor thing. I saw Matron actually cry.’
‘Cry?’ the girls all said at once.
‘Matron’s allowed feelings,’ said Beth. ‘Just because she gets the job done, doesn’t mean she’s not human.’
‘Oh, I know, Beth, but you wouldn’t think she’d cry. She’s hardly soft, like, is she?’ Pammy was surprised. She’d had her own run-ins with Matron in the past and Matron had far from cried then. It was Matron who’d made Pammy cry.
‘Doreen, her name was,’ said Victoria. ‘Used to see her coming in through the back gates sometimes. She’s one of Dessie’s protégées. He’s always looking out for someone, is Dessie.’
‘That’s right, love,’ said Stan. ‘Says here her name was Doreen. Gives her address and everything, says she worked at the hospital. What a shocker. She’ll be tainted for life now, poor girl. Used goods and all that.’
Maisie gave a sympathetic tut and shook her head, but she didn’t say anything.
‘I wonder if your Matron will give her her job back. A lot of employers wouldn’t, not after something like that, you know.’ Stan closed the paper. ‘You girls take care going home now, do you hear me? Mind you, it would be a foolish man who tried to take advantage of you lot. You’d terrify the living daylights out of anyone up to no good. You lot scare the life out of me.’
The kitchen filled with noise. Pammy complaining that the boys never had to wash up. Dishes clattering as Victoria and Beth washed and dried. Maisie taking a crumble out of the range. Stan fiddling with the radio while outside in the dark night, the snow silently fell.
8
Dana had awoken early and was immediately aware that something was not quite right. Her window looked out on to the street and as she lay in her bed, puzzled, trying to work out what was unusual about the morning, it suddenly dawned on her. Lovely Lane was completely silent. There was no traffic. No buses. No footsteps or voices. No park-keepers shouting or dogs barking. Nothing. Just an eerie silence on account of the snow.
She snuggled back under her eiderdown but found it impossible to sleep. Being a farm girl and used to rising just after dawn for farm duties and milking, she still found it difficult to sleep past 5 a.m. The air in her room was cold and she sus
pected the fires hadn’t been lit yet. The only sources of heat in the nurses’ home were the large fire in the hallway, the small but fierce fire in the sitting room and the large stove in the kitchen, which also heated the morning room, two steps up from the kitchen, where the nurses ate. Three times a day, the lads who worked for Dessie at the hospital would come by and stock up the fire baskets and scuttles. The maids raked out the ashes first thing and, thanks to a strict timetable of duties, the fires burnt all day long through the long winter months. But today, with the snow, it seemed likely there wouldn’t be any buses, in which case neither the maids nor the Lovely Lane housekeeper, Mrs Duffy, would be able to make it in.
Dana quickly washed and dressed and made her way downstairs. Breathing a sigh of relief as she entered the main hallway, she discovered that the coal scuttle and log basket had been filled by the porter’s lad the previous evening. He must have come round after she and the girls had returned from the Tanners’ house, before the snow had got too heavy. She sparked the fire into life by blowing on the old embers, which were buried under a blanket of ash, then screwed up Saturday’s Echo, which Mrs Duffy always left in the basket. She heaped on the kindling from the bucket, then added the coal and the logs.
More than a little satisfied with her efforts, she stood and watched as the flames licked up the chimney. I reckon I’m going to be everyone’s favourite this morning, she thought as she tiptoed over to the window to the side of the front door. She was filled with excitement at the sight that greeted her. Unable to help herself, she tripped up the stairs to wake her friends, starting with Pammy, whose room was halfway up.
‘Oh my giddy aunt,’ squealed Pammy as she flew to the window. ‘Are we the only ones in the house? Mrs Duffy will never make it in, we’d better get cracking.’
‘I’ve already lit the fire,’ said Dana. ‘I’m going to wake Beth. Bet you anything you like, she will be downstairs and organizing the kitchen before you can say sausages.’
Dana was right. The smell of toast cooking and the sound of a kettle whistling soon filled the home as Beth laid the table with cups and hummed as she worked. There was nothing Beth loved more than a challenge and being in charge.
*
As housekeeper at the nurses’ home, Mrs Duffy’s first duty of the day was to ensure her nurses were well fed before they began a long shift at the hospital. Seeing as the Crossville buses stood abandoned at the pier-head depot, looming like a row of green, snow-capped ghosts against the River Mersey, she had no choice but to walk the two and a half miles from her home to Lovely Lane.
The streets were soft and quiet, the snow as yet sullied only by the most conscientious members of the city’s workforce, who slipped and stumbled their way to work in their inadequate footwear. Mrs Duffy made as much haste as she was able. Where and when she could, she grabbed hold of shop windowsills and dustbins to steady herself. The back of a bench took her safely on to a bus stop and then she found a low stone wall. She dropped her handbag twice as she slid and slipped and almost fell. It was treacherous underfoot, but Mrs Duffy had responsibilities, and despite the weather and her age, she was resolute that she would arrive at the nurses’ home in time to meet the provisions van from the St Angelus kitchen. It supplied her with everything she needed to feed her nurses their breakfast and evening meal.
What will they do if I’m late, she thought as the cold bit through her gloves and into her fingers. They will freeze this morning. No fire. No breakfast. Poor lambs. As she slid her way through the streets, she couldn’t stop worrying. What if the van doesn’t arrive? I have nothing in the kitchen. Goodness me, they have poorly patients to care for and they can’t do that on empty stomachs. I have to get there. They’ll starve without me.
Finally, she turned the corner into Lovely Lane and was mighty relieved to see the familiar black van of the under-porter, Jake Berry, partly covered in snow, parked on the street outside the front door of the nurses’ home. At least she thought it was the street – the snow was so deep, it was impossible to tell where the road ended and the pavement began.
Jake had left the noisy engine running and as Mrs Duffy approached, a huge lump of snow slithered off the heated bonnet and on to the road with a soft thud.
‘Morning, Jake!’ she shouted. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes, I can tell you. I was worried I wouldn’t make it in time to catch you. I wasn’t even sure you would get here yourself. You’ve done a grand job driving that van, God bless you. I’m right out of bread and bacon, heaven only knows what I would have given them for breakfast.’
‘I’m a sight for sore eyes? What about you! How did you manage? I thought I’d be handing the bacon over to the nurses to cook themselves.’
‘And that, Jake, is exactly what I was dreading. God alone knows what state I would have found the kitchen in. There’s no one to wake them. They will all still be sleeping in their beds. What a mess this flaming snow is.’
‘I’ve left my Martha in bed,’ said Jake. ‘I told her: let the fire warm the house a bit before you get up. Stacked it up, I did, and left the door to the stairs open so the heat would get up to the bedroom. I took her a cuppa and some toast with her knitting bag and that is where my princess and our baby will stay until the fire is roaring.’
Jake had been promoted by Dessie from porter’s lad to under-porter just around the time that he’d married Martha, who, until that point, had worked as the maid in the St Angelus doctors’ sitting room. A job secured by her mother, Elsie, Matron’s housekeeper. At St Angelus, the staff looked after their own.
Jake opened the doors to the back of his van and pulled out a wooden tray loaded with everything Mrs Duffy had asked for on the list that she’d sent back with the van the previous morning. ‘Bread, bacon rashers and butter coming up first, is that right?’
Mrs Duffy bit down on the woollen fingers of her snow-encrusted gloves and pulled each one off with her teeth. Having freed one hand, she scrabbled around for the gaoler-sized bunch of keys in her holdall. ‘How’s the baby coming along then?’ she asked, stalling for time as she fumbled. She’d almost run out of breath from the effort of trudging through the snow and her words staggered out on the end of long gasps.
‘It’s coming along nicely, thank you. All good so far.’ Balancing the large wooden tray, Jake spun round and kicked the doors of the van shut with his heel. ‘We haven’t told too many people. Martha says it’s too early yet, so I just do as I’m told. As long as she does the same and stays in that nice warm bed, everything should be well in the world. Wouldn’t you say, Mrs Duffy?’
He could barely see ahead of him as he held the tray out in front of his chest and picked his way to the short flight of stone steps leading up to the front door. The snow was so deep, it was difficult to tell where one step ended and another began. Mrs Duffy smiled to herself as she located the keys. She extracted them from her bag with a flourish and a smile, like a magician producing a paper bouquet.
There was not a single person on any of the dockside streets, down on the docks, or working in St Angelus who did not know that Martha Berry was expecting a child. But only a very small number of people knew it was most definitely not her first child, and in a community where gossip spread faster than chickenpox, that was nothing short of a miracle.
Mrs Duffy followed Jake and held on to the stone balustrade as she took the snow-covered steps one at a time with great concentration. ‘I don’t know how you got the van here. God in heaven, I don’t. There’s not another thing on the road.’
‘I can take no credit for that,’ shouted Jake over his shoulder. ‘It was Dessie. Would you look at the van – he’s wrapped chains round each of the wheels like a hairnet. Worked like a dream, it did. I could hardly believe it. Have you ever heard the like? Says he learnt it in the army. He’s been at the hospital all night, working on all the trucks and carts. He’s going to run out of chain soon.’
‘The poor man, he’ll have no fingers left.’ Mrs Duffy tutted as she shook her h
ead. ‘There’s a reason why that man returned a war hero, and that’s the truth,’ she said. She admired Dessie as much as everyone else who knew him. ‘I doubt there is much that could put our Dessie’s nose out of joint. A bit of snow wouldn’t stop him in his tracks, despite the cold. Not with what he must have been through. It must seem like nothing to him.’
‘Do you think, Mrs Duffy, that if Dessie wore all his medals at once, he would be able to walk?’
Mrs Duffy was laughing so much at the image of Dessie staggering under his medals that she didn’t see Jake take a tumble. What she did see was the tray flying up in the air, and the packs of bacon and the bread spiralling and turning. Then came Jake, landing with a thud on to his back at the bottom of the steps.
He blinked and as soon as he’d recovered from the shock, began to laugh. Mrs Duffy, reassured that he was not seriously hurt, began to laugh again too.
‘I knew that would happen,’ he yelled. He was laughing so hard, he couldn’t stand up.
Mrs Duffy tried to pick her way through the deep snow and back down the steps to help him, but she was laughing so much, she could barely move. And anyway, she was frightened to death that she would end up the same way.
‘No, no, you stop where you are,’ Jake shouted to her. ‘I’ll get meself up.’ His legs scissored uselessly on the slippery snow. Just at that moment, the large wooden door to the nurses’ home was flung open and Jake’s shame was deepened by the sight of a group of St Angelus nurses staring at the two of them. They gasped in shock at Mrs Duffy, almost bent in half as she clung to the stone balustrade of the steps, and Jake, lying on the floor making snow angels as he flapped his arms and legs.
The Children of Lovely Lane Page 11