‘They have my full sympathy,’ said Dana with more than a hint of raw truth in her voice. ‘I know exactly how they feel.’
Branna winked at Teddy to dispel any offence he might have taken at her comments. ‘Dr Davenport, will you be back to work any day soon? The place isn’t the same without you and your high jinx.’
Jake bounded over, abandoning a large wicker basket on wheels at the edge of the quadrangle of still empty wooden chairs in the waiting area. Within an hour, every chair would be filled and there’d be more patients leaning against the walls, waiting for a name to be called and a seat to become vacant.
‘It took me nearly half an hour to get him here from the res,’ said Dana to Jake. ‘So many people are so relieved to see him in one piece.’
Suddenly a white-painted door flew open and Nurse Makebee popped her head out. ‘Ah, there you are,’ she said to Teddy, then threw Dana a less than friendly glance. Without asking Dana to help, she came over to the wheelchair and, kicking off the brake, turned Teddy around and wheeled him away.
‘Shall I come too?’ asked Dana, surprised.
‘No need,’ said Nurse Makebee. ‘I can manage quite well.’
Dana felt slightly deflated. Teddy hadn’t turned around as he left or insisted she should follow and now, with no obvious patient to look after, she felt slightly daft standing there alone.
‘I’d watch that one if I were you,’ said Jake as he walked back to the basket. ‘She eats men for breakfast, or so they say. Not that I would know, mind. I have my Martha. If Nurse Makebee walked to work stark naked, I wouldn’t notice, and besides, I’m just not important enough for the likes of her. Chin up, anyway, Dr Davenport is looking just great to me.’
A funny feeling settled in Dana’s stomach. She felt unimportant, a spare part, used. She had done absolutely everything for Teddy since the day of his accident and now she stood there, hanging around outside while Nurse Makebee assisted Mr Mabbutt. A sad and mildly rebellious feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. To hell with it, she decided, I don’t care if anyone sees me, and she flopped on to one of the chairs opposite Mr Mabbutt’s room. Under the white door opposite, through the light slipping out from the brightly lit room, she saw the dark shadows from the wheels of Teddy’s chair and the shuffling feet of Nurse Makebee next to it. She stared at the door and waited.
*
‘Does she know?’ Nurse Makebee hissed at Teddy on the other side.
Teddy almost sneered at her. ‘Well, thank you for your good wishes, I must say. No, of course she doesn’t know, but she may as well do. It is the worst situation to be in. All right for you though, isn’t it. Does your fiancé know?’
She looked affronted. ‘No, of course not, but he’s not here any longer. He is back in London now. He only came for experience on chests with Dr Gaskell.’
‘Well, bully for you. I suppose you have some other poor man in your temporary grasp now that he’s gone.’
She had the audacity to smile at him, almost mockingly. ‘Teddy, this is the 1950s, darling. I have no idea what my fiancé is up to and nor he I, but a girl can’t be expected to live without the er, nicer experiences in life, can she?’ She grinned and even Teddy, who called himself a liberated man, was shocked.
‘Golly, you really have no shame, do you?’
Nurse Makebee opened his notes, extracted the outpatient sheet and clipped it to the front. ‘Shame? That’s a thing of the past,’ she said.
‘You should meet Oliver Gaskell, you two would be well matched,’ said Teddy.
‘Oliver Gaskell? Oh no. That man is all talk. He is one big puff of hot air. Likes to make himself out to be the Romeo of the wards. It’s the reputation he loves. I’m afraid his actions don’t match his intentions. Ran a mile, he did, when I suggested we went for a drink.’
‘I find that hard to believe. He’s never out of the pub and he has a different nurse on his arm every night.’
‘It’s all a performance,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘Oh, I’m not saying he doesn’t date, I am sure he does, but, you know, he’s just not fun enough. I like naughty boys, like you, Teddy. Anyway, never mind Oliver Gaskell, how are you feeling?’
Teddy almost groaned out loud. The fact that she felt his behaviour was more wanting than Oliver Gaskell’s actually stung. ‘Goodness, you sound like you might really care. Well, as you ask, I can’t live with myself. I resent everything Dana does for me because, frankly, I don’t deserve her, and yet I can’t bring myself to tell her about us because the second I do, she will walk straight out of the nearest door. It’s a living hell. Dana has morals and she lives by them.’
Unscathed by his words which had meant to embarrass at the very least, Nurse Makebee almost threw a gown at him. ‘Here, put this on. Mabbutt will be here in a minute. We can’t change what happened, Teddy. We had a holiday. You had a hotel booked, I had two free weeks, it was a shame to waste it. We had lots of nice dinners and sex and I read some jolly good books as well, and if I remember rightly, the books were a darn sight more interesting than the sex. You really do need to brush up on that technique of yours, you know. Even a peasant from the bogs like that one outside would have room for complaint. Look, we are both adults, for goodness’ sake. It’s not the 1930s, there has been a war, remember? Everything changed.’
Teddy grimaced, his face flushed with embarrassment. She had been his first. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He had been so stupid and he wished every day that the car crash had killed him. He didn’t want to live with this guilt any longer. It was agony and to add to it, her words were cutting him like knives. ‘Don’t you see how wrong all that is? How wrong we were. War or not.’
‘Oh, don’t worry, Teddy. It will be another ten years before women catch on to the fact that we are equal to men and deserve equal freedoms and pleasures. Why do you think I am a nurse? Florence Nightingale was good at leading the way and standing up to men. Although I’m not sure she would have approved of going as far as I do.’ She laughed and then added testily, ‘Look, I need to know, are you going to be an idiot and confess to the bog jumper out there, or are you going to man up and get on with this, for both our sakes? If you confess, I’ll have to watch my back as my fiancé might get to hear something and er, we are due to be married next June. You aren’t the only person in this hospital who bears a grudge towards me. There are one or two nurses who are less than friendly.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Teddy. ‘I’ve heard that your fiancé is very wealthy. Stands to inherit a very large GP practice in London, isn’t that right? And a family estate in Buckinghamshire that’s worth a few bob? Where does all your talk of liberation come in there, or doesn’t it?’
Nurse Makebee looked stunned.
‘You are just a sex-mad hedonist,’ said Teddy. ‘If you really were all you profess to be, you wouldn’t be so horrible to that wonderful lady outside this door. You would want to stand up for her, for her rights. You would not behave so callously and do what you did. What we did.’ He stopped. He was close to tears. He was the loser. He had zero defence for his own behaviour and he was guilty as charged.
The outer door banged open and shut and Nurse Makebee glanced over her shoulder nervously. Mr Mabbutt had arrived in his examination room.
‘Look, Teddy, it would be best for us both if you just did the right thing and protected me. I am the innocent party here.’ Her voice had taken on a whining edge and Teddy could see that she was not as confident as she had been only moments before. He wanted to shout at her, ‘Innocent? Really? How?’
Teddy heard Mabbutt pick up the phone in the next room. His murmured voice floated through. Nurse Makebee carried on talking, faster and in hushed tones. ‘My reputation would be damaged, while yours, as a man, obviously only stands to be enhanced.’
‘My reputation would be enhanced? How? As an unfeeling, uncaring cad? My life is ruined. I love her and I have nowhere to go with this. And now you, with all your big talk of liberation, want me to protec
t you so that your wedding to a wealthy man goes off without a hitch? What about Dana? What about destroying her world, what about us and the life we imagined would be ours, what about that?’
Mabbutt’s footsteps could be heard shuffling around the desk.
‘She doesn’t need to know, you stupid man, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. What we did is in the past. Forget your conscience, grow a pair of testicles, get on with your life and stop your pathetic “I can’t live with myself” nonsense. It’s self-indulgent and, by the way, very unattractive indeed. You are lucky to be alive after your accident. Try thinking about that. If you feel so bad about what we did, go and marry her. All we did was have sex and a bit of fun. It’s not illegal. It’s allowed.’
Teddy had deliberately blocked out the two weeks they had spent together. The vast quantities of alcohol, her constant demands. At first she had excited him, then exhausted and quickly repelled him. During their brief conversations over dinner, he had discovered that she had been brought up in an orphanage and had never known either of her parents. All she knew was that she was born in Southend-on-Sea and that her mother had delivered her to the front door of the orphanage on the day of her second birthday. She appeared to be almost indifferent to her past, but Teddy had sensed that she was deeply resentful. He pitied her fiancé. He looked at her face as she wrote his details down in his notes. She was stunningly attractive and there was no doubt about it, she could pitch her frilled cap at almost any doctor she wanted. But he saw nothing but a rejected, motherless past that would haunt her future and, for the briefest moment, he felt deeply sorry for her too.
Mr Mabbutt appeared behind the curtains and looked at them both disapprovingly. ‘Am I expected to wait all bloody day?’ he asked tartly.
‘Coming, Mr Mabbutt,’ said Nurse Makebee.
‘Where’s Nurse Brogan?’ Mr Mabbutt asked with a hint of surprise in his voice. ‘She told me yesterday she would be bringing you over, Dr Davenport. Matron tells me she has been a bit of a hero where you’re concerned. I hear you haven’t been the easiest patient.’
‘She is outside, waiting,’ said Nurse Makebee.
‘Well then, Nurse, I suggest you call her in. As the nurse who has put all the hours God has sent into nursing this young doctor better, she is the one I want to bloody well speak to.’
Nurse Makebee looked less than happy at this instruction and appeared to be about to object. But, thinking better of it, she turned and headed to the door. Teddy felt all the fight leave him in a rush.
Mabbutt glanced at the door and looked slightly agitated. ‘I had better be quick,’ he said. ‘Look here, I heard all that and it sounds to me like you have been a bloody fool. Is there anything I can do to help? I haven’t patched you up, you know, so that you can live a life of bloody misery.’
Teddy’s fingers brushed across his lips as he looked down. The last time he’d cried was when he fell out of the apple tree when he was eleven years old and Roland had laughed at him for being a cissy. ‘Thank you, sir, but I am afraid there is nothing anyone can do. It is a problem of my own making and one I have to sort.’
‘Just because they call me the silver fox, don’t think I don’t know what you’re going through,’ said Mabbutt. ‘Look, I will send Nurse Brogan back to her ward when we’ve finished and you and I can have a chat then. I will wheel you back. Two heads are better than one and I think we might be able to sort this between us.’
*
Matron had spent an hour of her morning talking to Emily Haycock about Nurse Dana Brogan and Dr Teddy Davenport. Sister Haycock wanted to give Nurse Brogan more flexibility in her shifts, so that she could continue caring for Dr Davenport, but Matron wasn’t at all keen. Now that they were both back at St Angelus it wasn’t seemly. ‘News has reached me that Dr Davenport is less than grateful for the work Nurse Brogan has so far put into his recovery, or indeed, for my allowing her to nurse him in Bolton. Seems to me he needs to spend less time with Nurse Brogan, not more. Time for him to appreciate her efforts. What an ungrateful young man.’ They were sat in Matron’s office, on opposite sides of the large oak desk. Emily was taken aback. How did Matron know this? ‘Of course, Matron,’ Emily replied. If there was one thing she had learnt over the years it was never to argue with Matron when she had ‘that’ tone in her voice and it was certainly present today.
‘Is everything well, Matron?’ asked Emily as she folded her notebook and prepared to leave. Their meeting was now obviously over. Matron sighed and looked out of the window. ‘I fear not. I had hoped to have received some news by now, important news, for St Angelus, but sadly, I have heard nothing and I fear I may have lost an important battle for the women on the dockside streets. I’m just not used to losing, Sister Haycock.’ Emily was stinging from her request for Nurse Brogan to be given more flexibility in her shifts flatly refused and the words, ‘You should try walking in my shoes for a day’ were on the tip of her tongue. Instead, as she stood, she said, ‘Never, Matron. You always win,’ and with a warm smile to disarm her words, she took her leave.
*
Matron spent the rest of the morning deep in bed statements and pharmacy orders and could barely utter a thank you or raise a smile when Elsie arrived with her mid-morning tea. She heard the phone ringing just as she was about to take Blackie for his lunch-time walk. Having clipped on his lead, she attempted to walk back to the desk, but Blackie was clearly unimpressed. He dug his back paws in very firmly and had to be dragged across the carpet. ‘No, Blackie, stop, I have to answer it, it is three minutes to one. We don’t leave until one.’
A pitiful howl came from somewhere within his tartan coat. Matron picked up the telephone. ‘Matron’s office.’
Madge’s chirpy voice came back down the line. ‘Hello, Matron, it’s the MP Mr Marcus on the line, shall I ask him to call back after lunch?’
‘Oh, goodness me, no, please put him through.’
‘OK, give me two seconds then, please, Matron, while I speak to his secretary, Miss Jackson. We will both patch you through together.’
‘Thank you, Madge.’ Matron heard the click from the switchboard followed by a silence broken only by a light fizz of static on the line. Through the window, she watched two brown-coated porter’s lads race past. They were obviously calling out to a group of nurses who were rushing back as fast as they could, doing the heel–toe walk without breaking into a forbidden run. One of the nurses turned and said something back to the lads and she saw one boy push another in the arm in a jocular manner. Matron smiled, something she rarely did in front of her staff. Out on the wards she was Matron, a woman with impeccable standards, and to smile would imply a weakness that would dent her authority.
Her eye was caught by something else: Dr Gaskell’s son Oliver calling Nurse Harper to the side of the prefab building that housed the path lab. Her brow furrowed and she took a step closer to the window, as far as the telephone lead would allow. The fact that he had checked to see that no one was watching before they spoke, the clandestine manner in which their heads dipped close, and the way that Nurse Harper then set off before he followed a few moments later, having again looked left and right to confirm that the coast was clear, spoke volumes. The only other person she noticed who had witnessed the meeting was Bryan Delaney, standing at the window of the porter’s lodge, and he looked almost as unhappy about what he had seen as Matron did herself.
She had no further time to reflect on this as the familiar tones of Maximillian Marcus crackled down the line from Westminster. ‘Matron, good day, how are you?’
‘I am very well, thank you, and delighted to take your call. How is the weather in Westminster? It must be better than here.’
‘I’m afraid to say it is, Matron. I have already spoken to my mother this morning, in Hoylake, not so far from yourself, and she tells me the north-west is only just surviving under a tempest of gales and rain. A drifting of distant cumulus is about as bad as it has been down here for some time. We even have a
sunny blue sky today.’
‘Well, we do have our own spell of wintry sunshine here,’ Matron replied, ‘but I am sure it won’t last long and no doubt whatever weather they’re having over the water in Hoylake will be with us soon enough.’ She actually loathed the way people who lived in the south were so smug about the weather. It was her own fault, she had started it, but wouldn’t it be nice if for once she had a telephone conversation with someone in London who told her how awful the weather was down there while Liverpool basked in sunshine.
She gave a small cough and waited for him to continue. From here on in, the telephone call could go one of two ways. Success or disaster. For she was certain that if her eminently reasonable request for a new maternity unit was not granted, the reasons would be sinister and deep and, worse, would very likely not be shared with her. She was nervous for the future of St Angelus, for she was not deaf to the rumours about a brand-new hospital that were doing the rounds. She was worried not just for her patients but for everyone else who depended on St Angelus. First and foremost her staff and all those who relied on hospital wages, especially the families of the fallen and injured. She was the matriarch of the largest family on the dockside, the family of St Angelus. Her beloved family whom she would always put first, even if none of them ever put her first by way of return.
Mr Maxwell’s deep baritone voice drifted back to her. ‘Anyway, as I promised you, I have spoken to the secretary of state and indeed to the major as well. I have to say, Matron, you have a big fan in your Dr Gaskell. From what I hear, he has been immovable with regard to his position.’
She wondered what position that was. She was suspicious. Dr Gaskell had not mentioned a word to her about having held a conversation with anyone; in fact he had become rather distant of late. He had taken to bringing his golf clubs to work and sneaking off after his afternoon clinics rather than joining her for a cup of tea, as had always been their way. She didn’t like to admit it, but she rather missed his company. Since he had stopped visiting, she had found herself retiring to her lonely bed without having had a single social conversation, to do with something that didn’t relate to the hospital, in the entire day.
The Mother's Of Lovely Lane Page 30