The Mother's Of Lovely Lane

by Nadine Dorries

  Dana sipped her tea and looked at him over her cup. This was all so bizarre. Had she been captured by a Martian and landed on another planet? There was no way Pammy, Vic and Beth would believe her if she tried to tell them about this conversation – with the fearsome Mr Mabbutt, of all people.

  Mr Mabbutt lifted the sleeve of his expensive-looking coat and consulted his watch. ‘Oh, bloody hell, is that the time? I’m going to be late for my bloody clinic. Oh, bloody Nora!’ Then he looked at her shamefaced. ‘I am so sorry. I told my wife I would try not to swear in front of you and now I have. Listen, my dear, you and your Teddy, you need to talk. Go to him. Talk to him. Not about his pain or his rehabilitation but about what is on his mind. Speak to him, not as his nurse but as his love.’ Then he picked up his hat, placed a ten-shilling note on the counter to cover the tea and was gone.

  The vendor came back in and, picking up the note, said, ‘Your dad has left enough to pay for your lunch here, Nurse. Shall I cut you a sandwich? I’ve got some nice ham on the bone.’

  ‘That wasn’t my da,’ said Dana distractedly.

  ‘Sandwich then?’

  She almost banged her cup down on to the saucer and her chair scraped back as she stood. ‘No, thanks. I have to go and see someone.’

  She just about heard the vendor shouting his reply as the wooden door clanged behind her. Outside the hut she emptied the last of the bread from her pocket for the ducks hovering nearby, then walked away, head down, lost in thought.

  *

  Mr Mabbutt called into the doctors’ res on his way to the clinics and walked into Teddy’s room without knocking. ‘I can’t stop. I did my best. It is down to you now. I’m in my car, but my guess is she will be right behind me, on her way here right now, I should think, in the hope that someone will let her in to see you. Keep away from bloody Makebee, Teddy. A woman like that nearly stole my wonderful life. You have been a bloody stupid fool.’ He turned to go. ‘Oh, by the way, your last X-ray was good. I’m happier with your recovery than I was. You can get back to work next week, for a few hours each day. I will let Matron know.’

  Teddy stared at the patch of carpet where Mr Mabbutt had just been standing and for the first time his eyes filled with tears. To the closed door he said, ‘But will she forgive me? Please God, let her forgive me.’

  Ten minutes later, he heard her footsteps on the fire escape and she was with him, inside the door. Her face was flushed from walking into the wind. Their eyes locked.

  Dana’s were brimming as she said, ‘Teddy, do you have something to tell me because I am very, very scared and whatever it is, I need to know, right now.’

  19

  Lorcan was sitting in his mammy’s cubicle in a side ward, waiting for her to return from theatre. It looked very bare. Dessie and Bryan had wheeled her up to theatre on her hospital bed, and while she was away various bits of equipment had been trundled in to stand around the periphery in anticipation of her return. An oxygen bottle had been placed to one side and an empty drip stand to the other.

  Sister brought a trolley in. She pushed it against the wall and flicked open a white cloth to cover whatever was laid out on the top. On the bottom layer, Lorcan could see a glass jar with a thermometer in an opaque Dettol solution and next to it she positioned two large white kidney dishes and some brown rubber tubing.

  ‘You are a lucky young man, having Matron’s permission to stay here,’ she said. ‘Your mother should be back within the hour. Theatre will call to let us know when she is on her way back down. I’ll ask the orderly to bring you in a cuppa.’

  ‘I’ve had a word with Matron,’ Dessie had told him. ‘She doesn’t know the real reason why I asked if you could stay with your mammy. I just said you were the only one and a bit upset. Thank God himself, she was in a good mood and happy for you to sit on the ward and wait for her.’ He looked furtively about him and dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘If whoever is behind this knows she’s having another operation, it might be the moment they decide to come back and claim what they think is their stashed loot.’

  ‘Will Matron remember she said that when she does her rounds?’ asked Lorcan nervously. They were all scared of Matron and with good reason. She could reduce a porter’s lad to a trembling wreck by dint of nothing more than a glare through narrowed eyes or a chilly stare.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about that, she was on her way out of the door with Blackie. Had a car waiting for her. Off to stay with some friends on the Wirral for a couple of days, she said. I’ve never known that before. You could have knocked me down with a feather. She called Sister before she left, said you could have unlimited visiting time with your mammy. Didn’t ask me a single question, she didn’t have time.’

  Dessie had been gone for some time. It was now dark and the ward lights had been switched on. Out on the main ward, nurses swept in and out, pulled curtains around beds, carried washing bowls and bedpans here and there. The orderly had forgotten to bring Lorcan’s tea, but he didn’t mind. He watched her at her work as she wheeled a trolley down the ward dispensing tea, biscuits and kindly words.

  He began to pace around the room. Dessie had told him he would be back in half an hour, but he still hadn’t returned. He’d told Lorcan he wasn’t to move and that he had to stay within sight of Sister’s desk, but Lorcan was anxious and tense. His mother had been gone for what seemed like hours.

  He rolled a cigarette and lit it. Lorcan had never smoked in his life, but he was desperate to fit in and every one of the porters’ lads had smoked. He had asked Bryan to teach him and he had practiced, making Bryan’s roll-ups for him. Now, his hands were shaking and the tobacco was spilling out all over the floor. He searched around for the ashtray, but one of the nurses had obviously taken it away when his mother had left the ward. He decided to step out of the rear ward doors to finish his cigarette and dispose of the stub. The doors faced straight out on to the railway line and to the side looked out over the delivery bay. Glad of the distraction from his anxious thoughts, Lorcan stepped to the side to see if any of the other lads were around. The oxygen lorry was parked alongside the porter’s hut and in the orange light spilling out through its windows Lorcan could see that Jake was organizing the unloading. Jake and the driver appeared to be arguing about one of the oxygen bottles and the driver was gesticulating madly towards the inside of his lorry. Lorcan guessed that a valve was missing. He remembered how miserable the driver was and was half glad he wasn’t unloading that delivery. Not tonight of all nights.

  As he threw his cigarette stub on to the ground and crushed it with the heel of his boot, he remembered Dessie’s instruction that he was to be within sight of someone else at all times. He turned back to the wide arched doors and thought he heard a noise, a shuffle. He looked down the side of the door, but it was nothing, a river rat burrowing down into a small hole between the bricks. It disappeared in a flash, but it had startled him and his pulse was racing. If Dessie saw him out here on his own, he would half kill him for having disobeyed orders. Dessie ran the porter’s lads with a military efficiency and in his own way he could be as frightening as Matron.

  Lorcan heard a shout from the lorry and looked round. He could just about make out Jake, trying to wheel a bottle back on to the lorry, to the obvious agitation of the driver. Turning back to the warmth and light of the corridor, Lorcan had no time to see what hit him as a blow caught him on the back of his neck and felled him full length on to the brick floor. The impact winded him and he had no chance to breathe or speak or scream before a well-placed boot caught him square in the eye.

  He turned his head, squinted through the curtain of red that was cascading down his eyeball and saw the familiar brown lace in the black boot. Kevin Bevan. The lace was frayed and partially untied, and it was trailing the floor dipped in his own blood. A bolt of pain seared through his ribs as he tried to pull in air, but it was no use, he was pinned down by the weight of his attacker straddling his back. One of his hands was grasped and his arm
was yanked up his back. Lorcan wanted to scream at the burning sensation shooting up his arm, but he had no air to spare and the agony screeched about his brain, robbing him of any clarity of thought. He was almost blinded by what felt like a bomb exploding in his head.

  ‘Where’s the fecking money?’

  He tried to turn his head to the side. He was confused. He knew that voice as well as his own. It wasn’t Kevin Bevan, it was J.T.

  Lorcan couldn’t answer, all he could focus on was the fact that his arm felt as though it was leaving its socket.

  The weight on his back lifted as J.T. leant forward. ‘Tell me, where’s the fecking money?’

  Lorcan had just enough breath to gasp out the shortest reply before the pain in his ribs prevented him from saying any more. ‘What money?’

  ‘Don’t you fecking “what money” me.’ J.T. turned Lorcan on to his back with one pull of his arm and thwacked down hard with a stick across the top of Lorcan’s thighs.

  Now Lorcan did yell with the pain, but the yell was swept away by a passing train.

  J.T. swiftly dropped to his knees and clamped his hand over Lorcan’s mouth, the stick held high above Lorcan’s head. ‘Now you listen to me. See this?’ He dropped the stick and removed something small and metallic from his pocket.

  Lorcan squinted. It was a valve, just like the ones that fitted on to the tops of the oxygen bottles. Despite the pain, things suddenly started to make sense. The valve was probably the missing one that Jake and the driver had just been arguing about. J.T. must have stowed away on the lorry to get so close. There’d been an oxygen delivery the time before too, when Lorcan had seen J.T. running away.

  As Lorcan stared at the valve, J.T. shoved his thumb into it. ‘See this?’ he snarled. ‘I will turn it and turn it and turn it, and don’t think I won’t, until you tell me where the money has gone and who the feck has it. Because whoever it is, they are dead. Have you got that?’

  Lorcan didn’t reply. His left eye began to swell and close over as he watched the line of spittle on J.T.’s chin move downwards. He was not unused to the feel of J.T.’s boot or the force of his fist. His brother had beaten him many times before, but never with this much anger. In the last few weeks Lorcan had started to hate his brother, but now, with his ribs screaming out in pain and his arm dislocated, he felt a surge of something inside that caused him to appeal to him. He was all he had in the world. Lorcan needed him to help with their mam, to know that she was in the theatre. He made to speak, but no words came. He spat blood and a tooth on to the ground, and his head flopped back and banged against the brick floor. He pulled in the damp night air, the cold burning his lungs, and tried again. To his surprise, he found that he was sobbing, pleading.

  ‘J.T., the Bevans, they hit Mammy, they near killed her.’

  J.T. looked briefly confused and then he sneered in a way that was so malevolent and sinister, Lorcan began to tremble violently.

  ‘The Bevans? You stupid bastard, ’twas no Bevan, it was me. The nosey bitch had her hands on my stash. I was being paid good money for that. The stupid cow would have given the bleedin’ game away.’

  Lorcan could barely take in what he was saying, but J.T.’s voice had dropped and his tone was menacing.

  ‘Where is the fecking money? Who has it? Is it the big man, Dessie Horton? It was in the bitch’s handbag, but some bastard’s taken it. Where the fuck is it?’

  Lorcan imagined his mother being wheeled back into the cubicle and Staff Nurse wondering where he was and he was seized with panic at the thought of her coming out there to find him. He couldn’t bear the thought of J.T. hitting her too. He pushed the elbow he could still feel underneath him and tried to rise up, but it was no use. J.T. shoved him back down.

  ‘You know where it is, you toe rag!’ His eyes were bulging now. ‘I know you do. You’ve been in ’ere every night, I know you have. Where the fuck is it? Some of that money is the Bevans’, from a jump-over. It was too hot for me to keep on the run. If I don’t get it back and I don’t kill you, they will sure as hell kill me.’

  Lorcan stared at J.T., but he was barely listening to him, he was praying to God with every ounce of strength he had left. Please, God, don’t let Staff Nurse come out. He was more worried about her safety than his own, but God wasn’t listening because he heard her voice calling out, ‘Lorcan, are you out here? Your mammy’s back,’ and then came the stifled scream as she opened the door and was faced with J.T. lunging towards her.

  But then he realized that God must have heard because all of a sudden Dessie and Bryan appeared and raced in from the side of the ward. As he closed his eyes, terrified, he heard bodies collapsing on to the floor. Then blackness fell over him as though someone had covered him with a dark, comforting blanket that took away his pain.

  20

  The party had been organized in one of the large rooms in the Silvestrian just off the main bar downstairs. Emily had no idea what was going on or what Dessie was really up to. As far as she was concerned, it was another Veterans’ do and did not require her input. Dessie had told her it was a special night and that he would like her to attend. Everyone else had been told it was a surprise birthday party for Emily, whose birthday was the following week, but that Emily was not to be told. Dessie was providing two barrels of Guinness and the wives had each been instructed by Biddy Kennedy to bring along a plate of food. She and Elsie had spent the day brushing, mopping and polishing the parquet floor as an army of women carrying mops and buckets walked down the road towards the club. Skirting boards were scrubbed and windows washed with vinegar and rubbed with scrunched-up newspaper until they gleamed.

  ‘Why did he have to come all the way up here?’ Branna complained. ‘What’s wrong with the Grapes? They do a lovely wake at the Grapes.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s not a wake, is it. He says he wants it to be special, that’s why, and we are going to make sure that it is special, spotless and special, so stop complaining, Branna. It’s so nice. No one has ever organized a birthday party for me.’

  ‘Ah, I’ll do it for your next one, Biddy, if you don’t make me get on a chair to clean those big windows. I won’t be happy if I do, not with my vertigo.’

  The kids had run up and down the streets excitedly for two days carrying messages from one house to the other. ‘Elsie said don’t make brawn, Noleen, Cathleen has done that already,’ a child shouted through Noleen’s back gate and into the kitchen. ‘Biddy says don’t make the scones because Madge is doing those,’ another shouted an hour later, as Noleen stood there with the flour jar in her hand, about to tip it into the mixing bowl.

  ‘God in heaven, there will be nothing left for me to make,’ Noleen had complained to Paddy the evening before.

  He looked up from his paper. ‘Well, don’t be asking me to do the baking. I might be walking, but there’s no way I’m doing women’s work.’

  Noleen grinned and flopped on to his knee in front of the fire. ‘Really? Was that not you emptying the washing out of the boiler this morning?’

  ‘Oh, behave, Noleen. I emptied it, but you wouldn’t see me hanging it out now, would you? Imagine. Hattie Lloyd would put an announcement in the Echo.’

  ‘Lorcan hangs the washing out for his mammy. He does it every morning before he goes to work or when he gets back. He runs that house like clockwork, he does.’

  Paddy slipped his arm around Noleen’s waist and pulled her into him. ‘I went round there last night while you were at the bingo. Stan and I helped him to put a shelf up in the scullery. Showed him what to do, just like his da would have done.’

  Noleen felt the familiar sadness that settled on her heart whenever they spoke of someone they had lost.

  ‘Mrs Ryan, she was just sat by the fire. Lorcan made us both tea and she didn’t move, but she was chatty. What I couldn’t get over, though, was that she never stopped talking about J.T. About what a lovely lad he is and do you know what, not once did Lorcan put her right. It’s cruel the way she dotes on J.T.
and yet it’s Lorcan who cares for her and does all the work. He still can’t see properly out of that left eye, but he’s back at work and pulling his weight.’

  Noleen laid her head on Paddy’s shoulder. ‘Well, J.T. has gone down for a long, long time now. One charge of attempted manslaughter and one of grievous bodily harm means Mrs Ryan might be pushing up the daisies by the time he does get out. And to think, the police totally believe that no one around here has a clue about any jump-over or where the money went.’

  The fire roared and they relaxed, warm and content, both reflecting on the happiness each felt at things between them having improved.

  ‘Shall we have an early night?’ Paddy winked at Noleen.

  ‘You have to answer me one thing first, if that’s what you’re after. What happened to the money? It didn’t go to the police, so where is it?’

  Paddy grinned and, pulling his wife down towards him, kissed her tenderly. ‘You might have to try and persuade me to part with that information,’ he said.

  ‘Paddy Delaney, you cheeky bugger!’ Noleen shouted, outraged.

  But he was already leading her up the stairs, walking with the now familiar swing to his gait from the false leg he had finally accepted. Once in bed, Noleen collapsed into the arms of her man, the confident, passionate Paddy she had known before the war.

  Afterwards, sitting up in bed, Paddy lit two cigarettes. ‘Eh,’ he said as he slapped her bare backside, ‘put that away, aren’t the kids due back?’