She extracted a photograph from the drawer and gazed at the whitewashed cottage by the sea. It had always been her wish to retire to a nice little cottage in Cornwall. Just like the one she and James had honeymooned in. For a brief moment, she was lost in thought as she dreamt about waking up to the sound of the sea lapping against the shore. The telephone rang out and made her jump as she hurriedly stuffed the photograph back in its place and slammed the desk drawer shut.
‘I have the Acme cleaning agency on the telephone, Miss Van Gilder,’ said Madge.
‘That will be all,’ she replied and then waited for the telltale click indicating that Madge had moved on to her next call.
Madge sat back and took in the large frame of her switchboard. She did indeed pull her own plug out, but then she slipped the jack plug and long wire out from the board, pulled it down and slowly reinserted it into the light marked Asst Mat. Miss Van Gilder was entirely unaware that the click could only be heard when Madge left the conversation, not when she joined it.
Madge moved her headphones into a more comfortable position and turned down the volume on the bells. There were only three lights on and no requests to page doctors; the switchboard activity this morning was light. She picked up a pen and paper and prepared to write. But even she was shocked by what she heard next.
‘Mother? Mother, are you there?’
Madge sat upright. For a moment she thought she had inserted the jack into the wrong point. She bent her head and stared. No, she was right, it was the assistant matron’s office. She heard the irritated response.
‘For goodness’ sake, Luuk, stop that at once! Do not call me “Mother” on the telephone.’
‘Why not? No one can hear us. I heard the operator go and there is no one in my office. Is there anyone in yours?’
Miss Van Gilder, forever suspicious, glanced around her. Luuk was right. They were alone; she could relax.
‘Luuk, you missed out ward seven in your proposal. How could you have been so stupid? I want to take this to Matron, convince her it’s the right thing to do, and I can only do that if the numbers are correct. Then I have to take it to the board to have the money approved. Do it this morning, please, and get it over to me right away.’
‘Darn, sorry, Mother. I tried to get on to ward seven, but I remember now, it was chaos. I planned to measure up, but all hell had broken loose – there was blood everywhere, doctors running, people crying, a young nurse asking me did I know where she should take a drip stand to – and so I left it. Look, I will hazard a guess, does it have the same number of beds as ward four?’
‘It does. There is no need for you to come back, just get on with it, please, and have it with me as soon as possible. I need my twenty per cent. The NHS is throwing money at contracts like this one. There’s no one checking and they are leaving it to the matrons to decide whether or not they are value for money. And the boards have even less of an idea, most of them having hardly set foot inside a hospital, which means the contracts are getting passed unchallenged. So, please, I don’t want any raised eyebrows. Just get on with it.’
‘Yes, Mother, right away. I will bring it over myself.’
Miss Van Gilder hesitated. She wanted to tell him not to bother and to just pop it in the post. But maybe he was right. That way, there was no danger of it getting into the wrong hands, and they both knew the consequences of that happening. She had been forced to pack up her belongings at St Dunstan’s and flee before the police arrived to question her. She would not let Luuk be so careless again.
As she put the phone down, a headline in her copy of the Nursing Times, which had been delivered to her desk along with the post, caught her eye.
Matrons Do Not Have the Commercial Skills Required to Run New NHS, Say Whitehall Mandarins.
She read further.
Whitehall officials are expressing concern that hospital matrons are not capable of negotiating hospital contracts with the efficacy needed in complex commercial dealings. NHS budgets are rapidly being depleted because of poor decision-making by nursing staff who have been given responsibilities way beyond their capabilities.
‘How dare they?’ she muttered.
Concerns have been raised regarding the power of hospital matrons over all things commercial. When interviewed, Mr Thornton said, ‘Hospital matrons have been trained to make sick people better, not negotiate contracts. Over the next two years we will allocate regional managers to each cluster of hospitals across the UK. Matrons will then be able to concentrate on what they do best, which is nursing and organizing the day-to-day care of patients. There will of course be no threat to their role. Matrons are here to stay.
Miss Van Gilder frowned. Time is running out for us, she thought. It had all been so simple. Luuk had set up an office in Liverpool and was drawing up a proposal that overcharged by sixty per cent. The two of them would buy the machines, cut the number of staff and re-employ some of the sacked domestics at wages of thirty per cent less than what they’d previously earned. She and Luuk would cream a handsome profit off the top.
I might have time to get one more hospital in after this one, before they cotton on, she thought. She opened the jobs section of the Nursing Times to see what was available. And then I shall have enough to buy this house.
She picked up the phone again. ‘Switch, get me this number.’
A few minutes later, Madge called her back. Again, Miss Van Gilder waited to hear the click from the board.
‘Mr Walton from Walton and Ramsbottom estate agents speaking.’
‘Ah, yes, good morning. I am enquiring about the cottage you have for sale.’
Madge scribbled like mad. She now had the information she needed to take to the meeting, but what to do with it? What did she mean by her twenty per cent? It was enough of a shocker that Miss Van Gilder had a son. Where had he been hiding? It looked as though between them they were about to rob the hospital blind.
Folding her paper carefully, Madge leant sideways, retrieved her handbag from under her chair, opened the clasp, dropped the paper inside and snapped the clasp shut.
‘Right, meeting time,’ she said and dialled the school of nursing to summon Biddy.
31
Emily lay in bed and gazed through the window at the blue sky. The top of a sycamore tree waved in the breeze. It was a perfect Sunday morning. Before Dessie went downstairs to make the tea, she’d asked him to open the curtains. There was nothing she loved more than the sunlight pouring into the bedroom, but she knew it made Dessie nervous. Even though they’d now spent many nights together, he was terrified that a neighbour might glance up and catch sight of her. Whenever she needed to use the outhouse, he first stepped into the yard and looked up to check that none of his neighbours were at their upstairs bedroom windows. Emily would hover in the kitchen doorway until Dessie said, ‘Right! Now!’ and she would dash across the yard. Before she left the outhouse, she checked through the small window on the side wall.
‘This is hardly romantic, is it?’ she would say as she slammed the kitchen door behind her. But there was little discussion about it because Dessie could never refrain from kissing her before she reached the end of a sentence.
Dessie carried the tea into the bedroom and she smiled up at him. She could not believe what was happening to her or how she felt. The kindest man in the world was looking after her, loving her and she felt like a new woman. A different woman. She was no longer Emily Haycock, unwilling spinster of St Angelus. She was Dessie’s lover and just the thought of the nights they had spent together was enough to flood her cheeks with colour.
‘Here you go, Sister Haycock,’ said Dessie as he placed the cup in her hands and sat himself down on the edge of the bed.
She was naked and the covers were dishevelled, kicked down to the bottom of the bed only half an hour since, when they had woken and made love.
He looked down at Emily and blinked. ‘I keep thinking I am dreaming,’ he said. ‘How did this gorgeous woman end up in my bed? Di
d you get the wrong house? Take the wrong turn?’
Emily began to giggle under his gaze and pulled the sheet up to cover herself.
He took a sip from his tea as he assembled his thoughts. ‘Here was me thinking all this time that that was it. I would work until retirement, save enough money to be comfortable, help out a few others on the way and that would be me done. Apart from tending to my pots and the football, I couldn’t think that there was anything else in store for me. But look, here you are, lying in my bed, drinking the tea I made for you and you haven’t run away.’
Emily cheekily set her chin at him. ‘If the second cup isn’t as good as the first, I will be off in a flash. Don’t go taking me for granted already.’ She wagged her finger and Dessie, having placed his cup on the floor, lay down next to her and gathered her into his arms.
‘Don’t say that, not even if you’re joking. I couldn’t bear it and I’ve only known you for a bit.’
‘Well, that’s not quite true, is it? We’ve actually known each other for years.’
Dessie kissed the top of her head. ‘Strictly speaking, I’ve known you for longer than you’ve known me.’
Emily lifted her head off the bed and looked at Dessie, startled. ‘How is that then? We’ve both worked at the hospital for the same length of time.’
Dessie held her tighter. He told himself it was to stop her from slipping off the edge of the bed, but really he couldn’t hold her tight enough. He was more afraid of her slipping out of his life. ‘Well, you forget, don’t you, that I’m almost ten years older than you and when you were six, I was already sixteen. I knew your stepfather, Alf. We signed up together. You won’t remember, but all the lads around these parts were in the same regiment.’
Emily didn’t answer, she let the knowledge settle.
‘I was sorry to hear he was in the home for veterans. I have been to see him once or twice, but by the time I was demobbed, he was not too good and didn’t know who I was. I think he thought I was one of the doctors.’
‘That was you!’ Emily’s head shot up from the pillow then sank back down again just as quickly.
‘Yes, it was me. And do you know, I have always known where you go every night when you visit him.’
Again, there was no response. Emily’s love for her family, the mother and brothers she had lost in the bomb, burnt in her heart and she never spoke of it. There was a time when she’d thought the pain of her loss would kill her, when she didn’t dare recall the memories of Richard and Henry, so their voices had haunted her sleep instead. She’d thought she would go mad with grief, but then Alf beat her to it and she had to look after him and as a matter of necessity she’d had to lock her own sadness away in her heart.
‘I never knew that,’ she whispered.
‘I know. That was how I intended it to be. I didn’t want to mention it and rake up the past for you.’
‘Do you miss your wife?’ Emily had seen the sky burning red with the flames on the night the docks were hit.
‘No, not at all. She was down at the docks. Everyone thinks I have no idea what she was up to while I was away. But I was under no illusions. I’m not sure we ever really loved each other, you know. She just needed someone at the time.’
Emily breathed in deeply. The room smelt musky, of sex and Darjeeling. It was an unfamiliar smell to her and one she liked. They had spent almost every night together since the first – not wanting to be apart, and carefully evading Miss Van Gilder’s watchful gaze – and she could not imagine sleeping alone ever again.
It started as it always did. They didn’t need words. The silence that sat between them was calming and natural, allowing both of them to deal with the past and reconcile the present. He lay on his side and began to trace the outline of her breasts with his finger. Looking into her eyes, he moved down over her thighs.
‘Don’t close your eyes,’ he whispered. ‘Look at me.’
She turned her head to the side, embarrassed. ‘I can’t, I’m still new at this.’ She half giggled and then turned to face him. ‘I don’t really know what to do.’
‘Yes, you do,’ he said. ‘You know very well because you have been the best lover any man could wish for.’
She was smitten. They were delirious with their love for each other and she did not hesitate even for a second. As she wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down towards her, she was filled with the confidence of a woman who knew she was loved.
*
Hattie Lloyd was one of the first to arrive at Mass. Popping her head inside the church, she could see that neither Biddy nor Elsie had turned up yet, so she lit a cigarette and waited by the railings in front of the soot-stained building.
St Angelus was not the most attractive church in Liverpool, but it was one of the best attended. Biddy had once commented that the churches in the smarter parts of Liverpool were so much nicer. ‘The poor go to church to pray for help, the rich forget to go and say thank you, but for that they are rewarded by visits from the bishop and a golden eagle for the Bible to rest on. At St Angelus we have a bit of old wood. How is that right?’
Elsie of course had no answer. She just loved her church even more and dedicated an extra hour a week to making the flowers on the altar look that little bit nicer.
When Biddy passed through the gate, she saw Hattie raise her hand, drop her cigarette on the path and grind it out with the toe of her shoe. ‘What’s got into you?’ said Biddy. ‘You look like you’ve won on the pools. Either that or you’ve got a moth trapped in your knickers.’
‘Don’t be so vulgar, Biddy,’ reprimanded Elsie. ‘Not outside the church door, for God’s sake.’
‘Don’t you blaspheme then,’ said Biddy.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake, you two, shut up bickering, will you?’ Hattie interjected. ‘Sometimes it’s more like you two are sisters than friends. Well, listen up now, will you, I have a bit of news for you, I do.’
The bells pealed out loud and clear and the chattering stopped briefly.
For Biddy and Elsie, whose lives were dominated by hard work and routine, hearing the words ‘a bit of news’ was like receiving a mild electric shock.
Biddy’s eyes narrowed; she was instantly suspicious. ‘News, what news could you have?’ she asked, her voice loaded with disbelief. Hattie Lloyd was not part of the mafia and Biddy wanted to make sure it stayed that way. She didn’t want Hattie thinking that a bit of gossip would automatically qualify her for inclusion.
Out of the corner of her eye, Biddy caught a flash of red, and for a second, Hattie’s impending news was overshadowed by a moment of wonder at the fashion statement that was Madge, walking in through the church gate.
‘Where in God’s name did you get that coat?’ asked Elsie. It was long and red and it even had a fur-lined hood. ‘It’s a sunny summer’s day, it looks ridiculous.’
‘Stop it now, Elsie. I can wear a red coat if I want to. I got it in George Henry Lee’s. It was on sale for less than half price. How else am I going to get a fella at my age? I need to wear something eye-catching.’
‘No, you don’t,’ said Hattie. ‘You can wear any old cast-offs to bag a fella. Ask Emily Haycock.’
Biddy almost dropped her handbag on the pebbled path and it was just as well, because her first instinct was to whack Hattie with it. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked. ‘Why would you say that?’
The bells stopped ringing for a moment as one of the younger priests walked past. ‘Morning, ladies. God be with you,’ he said as he disappeared through the door. He was totally ignored. All eyes were on Hattie Lloyd.
‘Well,’ said Biddy, ‘what do you mean?’
‘What? You actually don’t know? Am I really and truly the first? Well, well, fancy that. I will say, though, you can’t deny that she needs a bit of fun, can you? Or him, for that matter. I reckon they are very suited, I do, but I do wish they would come clean and tell you ladies. I can see it’s a secret I’m going to have to bear. If they don’t want the world
to know, then it can’t be my place to do it. Mind you, I hope they get a move on, I’m sick to death of hiding behind my bedroom curtains, I am.’
The penny dropped with a clang. Hattie lived next door to Dessie. But that couldn’t be right. Emily would have told Biddy. But even as Hattie spoke, Biddy knew it was true. Emily had been unable to wipe the grin from her face for days now and Biddy had guessed something was different, though she’d assumed it was related to work. Everything with Emily always was.
Hattie looked as though she could have bitten her own tongue off. ‘How could I be so stupid?’ she said out loud. ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ She had let the cat out of the bag and lost her moment of glory.
‘Hattie Lloyd, you have been practising for fifty-four years. After a while and with so much practice, it’s easy.’ Biddy tried to make up ground. ‘Of course I knew. I will be honest with you now, obviously I knew. And I had my suspicions it was Dessie, but as you know, she’s my boss and I didn’t want it spreading around on the gossip mill. But now you know, Hattie, we aren’t going to be able to stop that, are we?’
‘Oh no, Biddy,’ said Hattie earnestly. ‘You can depend on me for that.’
32
Lily sat on a long wooden bench in the hallway of the convent, holding her mother’s hand. Sister Therese had told her that morning that the police had been unable to locate her stepfather. ‘He’s probably dead too,’ she’d replied, her voice low with grief. Lily no longer cared.
Her mother was sobbing next to her. She’d followed Lily around all morning like a child. ‘Hold your mother’s hand,’ Sister Therese had instructed, and Lily had, even though it did not feel like the right thing to do. It was an unfamiliar gesture. She tried to recall a time when her mother had held hers, or, much more painfully, Joe’s, but the memories failed her; there were none. It was she who had fed Joe his bottles when he was a baby. She who had carried him around on one hip for months on end. Lily had loved her little brother with all of her heart, whereas this woman sitting next to her, her mother, would struggle to recall Joe’s smiling eyes, the touch of his fingers on her face, the expression on Christmas morning when Sister Therese had bought him the tricycle, the giggle that made him cough. All of those memories belonged to Lily and were hers to hold and keep for ever. Her mother had nothing. She would miss nothing and, Lily knew, in the shortest time would remember nothing.
The Children of Lovely Lane Page 39