A Christmas Wish

by Lizzie Lane

  The more she studied the handsome face of this man, the more she remembered about the boy who’d been kind to her.

  ‘No. Not really. Have I?’

  He looked down at her from his greater height and grinned.

  ‘You’re certainly not so skinny.’

  ‘I was skinny. Hungry too.’

  ‘So what happened to the wicked witch?’

  ‘Aunt Bridget’s house burned down with her inside.’

  ‘Are you sorry?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. Not for her. The whereabouts of my family was also burned to ashes. I’ll never find them now. Not easily anyway.’

  The underground station was emptier than it had been earlier. The last train home would run soon.

  In the dim light she noticed how blue his eyes were and how sooty black his lashes and brows. Strange that she hadn’t really noticed that before. His chin was strong and although his lips seemed slightly crooked, they hinted at determination. She deduced that, like Bradley Fitts, he was not a man to be trifled with.

  On the journey home, she told him that she was studying to be a doctor. His eyes lit up with admiration that made her spirits soar.

  In return he spoke casually in a way that put her at ease. He talked about London, the mix of people from all over the world, the history of the river itself, how upmarket Chelsea had once been far down river outside the city, how wave after wave of immigrants had settled in the East End, the place where ships of many flags called in to discharge cargoes of cotton, chocolate, tea, coffee and sugar.

  ‘And people,’ he said. ‘Always they brought more people.’

  ‘My father was always away at sea,’ she said to him, and then looked away when she saw how intensely he was regarding her.

  ‘Is he still away at sea?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him for years. So I still have no family.’

  ‘Seems old Bob Barton wasn’t infallible. That’s where I copied my advice from. It seemed a good idea at the time. That bloke just seemed so bloody clever.’

  He was leaning forward, hands clasped together on his knees. They rattled on through the dark tunnels, talking warmly in the way they used to, his gaze fixed on her face.

  ‘This is amazing,’ he said to her. ‘I can’t believe I’ve found you again. I’ve often thought of you, scrabbling around beneath our pitch. Didn’t begrudge you a thing, though.’

  ‘Did your father?’

  ‘No. He thought you would be a beauty when you grew up. My father was usually right about things.’

  He smiled and Magda blushed.

  ‘I’m glad I found you again too,’ said Magda.

  He covered her hand with his and squeezed.

  ‘You never know. Stranger things happen at sea, so they say. And miracles happen.’

  He tossed his head and laughed. ‘What a load of baloney! All those clichés!’

  ‘Oft spoken phrases; quoted so often perhaps because they’re true.’

  When they arrived at her station and his hand left hers, she immediately found herself missing its warmth and the sense of security it had given her. Once the doors were open, they alighted from the train. Gently and out of courtesy, his palm still cupped her elbow.

  ‘I’m glad we met up again,’ he said to her.

  ‘So am I.’

  Her response was sincere. At least talking had made her forget her fear of Bradley Fitts.

  ‘I’m fine from here,’ she told him when he suggested he walk her home.

  ‘That wasn’t a suggestion. I insist.’

  He also insisted on waiting outside until the door of the mews cottage was locked and bolted behind her.

  Once inside, Magda leaned against the locked door, closed her eyes and made an effort to compose herself. She’d never believed in love at first sight, but surely that was no guarantee that it didn’t exist? Anyway, she knew him from way back.

  You’re being silly, she told herself, opening her eyes and fanning her hand in front of her face. He’s just being kind to you, like he always was.

  In all honesty, she had considered that being friends with dear Doctor Andy was about as close as most people get. She liked him and had entertained the thought that liking alone might be enough to base a relationship on – even a marriage.

  But Daniel Rossi made her tingle all over, besides feeling very protected.

  A wall-mounted light bloomed as Winnie appeared and turned up the gas. Her head was an explosion of tightly tied rags; taken out in the morning they would be a mass of curls. At present she looked like the Gorgon of Greek mythology.

  She was wearing a shawl over a voluminous nightgown and leaning on her stick.

  At sight of Magda, her face beamed brighter than any light could ever do.

  ‘Home at last! I was getting worried, my dear. Working late again?’

  Still smarting from what Susan had told her, Magda hedged her response and couldn’t even smile.

  ‘Winnie, I need to talk to you. Now. Before we go to bed.’

  Winnie looked alarmed, her lined face creasing like the crazing on an old plate.

  ‘Has something bad happened?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ snapped Magda as she put down her folder and removed her hat and coat, unable to communicate with Winnie in the affectionate way she had always done. ‘You tell me.’

  On hanging up her hat, a pretty lilac one that Winnie had bought her for her birthday, she immediately regretted her tone. The felt hat was soft beneath her fingers when she stroked it – just as Winnie had always been soft with her.

  Be gentle, she told herself. There has to be a good reason why Winnie never told you about your father visiting.

  Those, she decided, were the best words to use.

  ‘I presume there’s a good reason you didn’t tell me that my father turned up a while back.’

  Winnie looked shocked at first, then gradually her face saddened and she sighed. Bracing both hands over her walking stick, she said, ‘I’ve made a pot of tea. Let’s talk over that.’

  They sat either side of the small table in a kitchen that wasn’t large but was cosy and smelled of the plum pudding Winnie had made for Christmas. Neither touched the tea Winnie had poured and the silence between them was awkward.

  ‘I should have told you. I should have!’

  ‘What did he want?’

  What she really meant was had he come to see her, take her with him, leave the address where she could contact her family. But she had to give Winnie a chance.

  ‘He came for money.’ Winnie looked at the daughter she’d always wanted, the one that should have been. ‘Your father’s a wastrel. He was dirty and smelled of drink and he had no money. He came here demanding to see you, but when I gave him money he changed his mind and left. That was it.’

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘I didn’t want to upset you.’

  ‘He could have told me where my sisters and brother are. Didn’t you think …?’

  Magda paused. Winnie didn’t want her to leave. She thought of the fire and Aunt Bridget dying in the flames. Now her father had come looking for her – after all these years.

  ‘Magda, I doubt he would have remembered where he took them all those years ago. He was in a state. Full of the drink and aching to get his hands on more.’

  ‘I would have liked the option of meeting him.’

  ‘I did suggest he wait, but the moment I gave him some money he was gone.’

  Magda turned and stood looking out of the window without really seeing anything at all. Her thoughts were in turmoil.

  Firstly it hurt that her father had come looking for her and then left without leaving even a note. Secondly she knew very well that Aunt Winnie didn’t want her to leave.

  She turned to face the woman who had been kind to her, the woman who had replaced her own mother. But she wasn’t her mother and the question had to be asked.

  ‘He wouldn’t stay?’

  Winnie
shook her head.

  ‘Aunt Winnie, I’m not sure I entirely believe you. I know you don’t want me to leave. What I’m unsure of is what lengths you will go to in order that I stay.’

  Winnie’s crooked hands tightened over the walking stick she now used all the time.

  Her brows knitted above clear eyes that burned with purpose.

  ‘You still want to be a doctor, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course. The reason is too strong to ignore.’

  ‘I’m glad of that.’

  ‘I’ll always be grateful for what you’ve done for me, Winnie, but I have to remind both you and myself that I do have a family. I don’t belong to you.’

  ‘I regret that you don’t.’

  She winced as she straightened; the arthritis that now invaded her whole body had almost bent her double and the pain was excruciating. ‘I’ve already told you why I am committed to you becoming a doctor.’

  Magda nodded. ‘You did.’

  ‘I know you’ll be a good one and a fitting memorial to the daughter I lost.’

  Magda sat mutely studying her hands, thinking through her future plans.

  Daniel had given her good advice about staying away from the East End.

  She’d been offered two training positions, one at the London Free Hospital and one at Queen Mary’s. The latter was in the heart of the East End, while the London Free was in Holborn.

  The promise was that her training at Queen Mary’s would involve visiting those who couldn’t get to the hospital; those who needed a doctor to visit.

  Despite Bradley Fitts, despite her promise to Daniel Rossi, Queen Mary’s beckoned.

  The tragedy of her own mother having needed a doctor and Winnie’s baby dying at birth was reason enough to become a doctor, but it was more than that. There were other young women in Winnie’s predicament. It was only right that she paid them back in the only way she could. They needed her. And the East End was also the place where she’d last had contact with her family. What if they came looking for her?

  She had to be there. She just had to. Her father might come back, and this time Winnie would know better than to send him away.

  Daniel Rossi stood outside the mews cottage; his eyebrows beetled into a worried frown. He’d set out purposely to corner Bradley Fitts about a particularly nasty attack on a dancer at an East End club. The dancer was pretty, or at least she used to be before she’d rejected Fitts’s advances.

  From the little Magda had told him so far, she’d done pretty much the same to him.

  ‘He’s always been a bully and he’s never forgotten that I gave him the brush off – if you can describe climbing out of a lavatory window as a brush off,’ she’d said to him with a wicked grin. ‘That’s why I keep away from that area.’

  ‘Best thing you can do is to stay away,’ he’d replied, as taken with her light laugh as he was with the looks of her, and his amazement that such a scrawny girl had turned into a beautiful woman.

  The advice was sound and he felt assured that she would stay away from the wrong side of London. The trouble was, would Bradley Fitts stay away from her?

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Magda

  Magda paused and looked up at the brick and white stone archway.

  Queen Mary’s Hospital for the East End

  Her lips moved silently as she read it once and read it again. This old hospital had stood here since the middle of the last century, though it was called something else back then. At present her excitement was such that she just couldn’t think what it was. But never mind. She was here and even though it felt as though her feet were floating some few inches above the ground, her mind was made up. She was going to become a doctor and for a moment felt quite elated; that was until a hospital clerk with inky fingers and busy eyes issued her with a map of the hospital. One glance and she was convinced the building had as many corridors as it did wards.

  ‘Don’t lose it,’ said the officious little man. ‘They don’t grow on trees and I haven’t got time to draw up new ones.’

  As he’d already turned to another pile of paper and another task, she didn’t think he would notice if she didn’t thank him.

  ‘A “Thank you Mr Meeks” would be in order, young woman!’

  Not that busy. She gave him her sweetest smile and thanked him anyway.

  She was late arriving outside the first ward on today’s itinerary to meet a senior houseman, a Doctor Friesman, according to the information handed to her.

  Standing head and shoulders above everyone else, he peered over both his spectacles and the surrounding sea of student heads to fix on her.

  ‘We are late,’ he said scathingly. ‘Do we have a name?’

  ‘Magdalena. Magdalena Brodie … Sir.’

  ‘Brodie! We will not be going over the introduction already given. We will keep our ears open as we go along. Are we clear?’

  Magda joined everyone else in mumbling a nervous ‘Yes, sir,’ though had no time to study her colleagues.

  A pair of hard eyes landed on each of them in turn.

  ‘We will proceed,’ he said.

  Doctor Friesman walked with a limp, presumably acquired during the Great War, which would go some way to explaining the sharp orders.

  They followed him like a flock of ducklings, white coats flapping.

  The smell of carbolic soap dominated the ward and the brown lino that covered the floor looked shiny enough to slide on.

  There were six beds on either side of the ward containing patients who looked too scared to move. Strict orders from matron, thought Magda on noticing that each patient’s arms had been placed in identical positions over crisply turned-down sheets.

  Matron would undoubtedly have known which wards would be visited today, pre-warning the ward sister.

  Magda briefly wondered whether the amount of sheet turned down had been measured with a ruler. It certainly looked that way.

  Nurses in starched headdresses, previously fluttering between beds, tactfully withdrew the moment Doctor Friesman strode into the ward. The exception to this was the ward sister who, like all nurses, approached the saintly man with an air of humility.

  The small, grey-haired woman wore a tight expression and kept her distance as though he might bite if she got too near.

  Or as if she were greeting the Pope, thought Magda.

  ‘Good morning, Doctor Friesman.’

  ‘Good morning, Sister Goodenough.’

  ‘Do you wish me to attend, Doctor Friesman?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘When you’re ready, Doctor Friesman.’ The sister sounded and looked servile, like a handmaiden ready and willing to do whatever he wished.

  ‘Now would be as good a time as any, Sister.’

  The woman bent from the neck, a little bow to a respected superior. In response the already tall doctor seemed to grow that much more, as though a show of humility contributed to his own self-esteem.

  They stopped at the first patient, the sister awaiting instructions at the head of the bed.

  Her head spinning with information, Magda concentrated on what Doctor Friesman was saying. Determined to capture every word, she paid little attention to the other young doctors in the group.

  ‘Symptoms!’ exclaimed Doctor Friesman. He was standing at the head of the bed pointing to the patient as though he were a lamb chop.

  The student doctors snapped to attention and looked suitably serious. This was the moment when they were expected to assess the patient’s condition by referring to the notes and carrying out a perfunctory examination.

  ‘Liverish,’ said Magda.

  Doctor Friesman raised his eyebrows. ‘Our newest recruit says liverish. Well, really. And what brings you to that conclusion might I ask?’

  Once she realised that her colleagues were looking at her, Magda wished she hadn’t jumped in quite so quickly.

  ‘Well?’

  All eyes stayed fixed on her. She gulped and said what she thought.
<
br />   ‘His complexion is very yellow. Even his eyes.’ She braved the deep frown of Doctor Friesman and the others and dared to move to the head of the bed and pull down the man’s lower eyelids.

  ‘As you can see …’

  In her mind she was reading the medical text that she’d pored over night after night in order to pass the first of the examinations that would make her a doctor. She’d done so with flying colours. Now she surprised herself with just how well she remembered it, concluding that revision was worthwhile after all. She couldn’t help feeling smug.

  Doctor Friesman’s voice snapped her back to reality.

  ‘Stop smiling like a lovesick ninny and remember where you are, young lady. This is not a tea dance. This is a place where the sick shall be healed – even by women!’

  Magda clenched her jaw. She so wanted to retort that she was a serious student and certainly not a lovesick ninny. She would also have liked to tell him that his breath was bad and, as a senior physician, he really should set a better example and attend to his diet. However, she would be depending on this man to get her through her training and final exams. Just smile prettily, blush demurely and keep your mouth shut. Sucking the tip of her pencil helped with the latter. Blushing didn’t come naturally and she was of too dramatic an appearance to ever incline to demure.

  The smell of antiseptics, oil of cloves and tincture of violet coupled with carbolic set her teeth on edge. Perhaps that was why the others of her group were just as silent; either that or afraid to say the wrong thing.

  She had eyed her colleagues only fleetingly, catching a glimpse of red hair, brown hair, casually aloof expressions and those so studious it seemed unlikely they were aware of anyone else in the world.

  There was also a woman; a very foreign-looking woman.

  She’d determined not to interact with any of them; they were of a different class and as likely as not had never experienced the hardships she had endured.

  Yes, she was living in isolation, not making new friends. Daniel was the only person she allowed to touch her emotions and he was becoming far more than a friend.

  Training to be a doctor wasn’t about making friends with your own class or gender. Whether she was right or wrong, Magda felt that, as a woman, she needed to prove herself better than a man. She needed to gain respect from the nursing staff as well as the other doctors. To this end she must be better than anyone else. Day and night must be devoted to study and carrying out the practical side of her vocation, hence not getting involved with Andrew. But it wasn’t him on her mind. It was Daniel Rossi.