Christmas Angels

by Nadine Dorries

  Matron folded her hands in her lap. ‘Do you know, that’s an excellent idea. I think I’ll invite her to have supper here with me. I’ve barely spoken to her about anything other than the patients for years. You know that there was the very sad case of the child…’

  Matron didn’t have to finish her sentence. Emily nodded. ‘I do. To be fair, I think everyone does.’

  They both looked into the fire for a moment, both feeling for Sister Tapps, who had fallen into the trap of caring too much for one of her long-term patients.

  ‘I should do that more often, you know,’ Matron said. ‘Invite people over for supper.’

  They both looked up at the familiar squeak of the tea trolley, being pushed by Elsie across the room.

  ‘Do you want two slices of walnut cake today, Sister Haycock?’ Elsie enquired as she kicked the brake on the trolley. She lifted the netting cloche with one hand and held a side plate ready, hovering over the cake dish, with the other.

  Steam rose from the teapot and Emily realized that she was indeed starving. ‘No, thank you, Elsie, just one, please,’ she said.

  Elsie winked. ‘Here you are then, but I’ll leave you one cut on the plate, just in case you change your mind. You’ve been using up a lot of energy just lately.’

  Emily looked up sharply at Elsie and was about to ask her what she meant, but the colour spreading across her cheeks was a dead giveaway. Everyone who lived on the dockside streets knew what Emily and the head porter, Dessie Horton, were up to. It was a scandal and there was no hiding from the gossip, the giggles and, in some quarters, the condemnation.

  Elsie did what all the domestics had mastered to a fine art – she redeemed herself in the next couple of sentences. ‘I always get exhausted myself at Christmas. So much rushing around to be done. Mind you, I haven’t missed a single week this year, either in my butcher’s club or the greengrocer’s. We are going to have a smashing Christmas in our house.’

  ‘Thank you Elsie, we can manage now,’ said Matron and Elsie knew she was dismissed.

  Emily glanced at Matron and could tell she had no idea what Elsie had been talking about. She let out the deep breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and sat back in the chair, the hand that held the plate of walnut cake trembling slightly. It was no secret that Emily and Dessie were in love, nor even that wedding bells were in the air, but that was all Matron knew, and Emily wanted to keep it that way.

  Emily and Matron had built a new relationship. They had been through enough together to know that they could work as a team, that they shared the same values, almost, and would fight to the death for the St Angelus family. But there were some issues on which their views diverged, and Emily was well aware that Matron would be truly horrified if she discovered that she and Dessie were actually lovers. And it wasn’t just the occasional night together – they were effectively living in sin. She was making a big show of returning to her rooms in the hospital each night and ruffling up her sheets, swilling water around the sink, wetting her toothbrush and throwing rubbish into the basket, so that the maids thought she was still sleeping there. The maids were gossiping and laughing along with the rest of them. She was fooling no one, but Sister Haycock was so popular, and had been through so much during the war, that no one wanted to deny either her or the streets’ own war hero Dessie the happiness they had finally found in each other’s arms.

  ‘Once Dessie and I are married, I’ll invite Sister Tapps to join us for the occasional Sunday lunch. It’s the least I can do. We go back a long way, after all – right back to when I had my appendix out as a child.’ Emily grinned as the memories came flooding back. ‘She fed me jelly and ice cream, I remember, even though that was for the children who’d had tonsillectomies. On the ward diet board I was listed as “tonsils” so that the cook didn’t deprive me of the ice cream. She was lovely, kindness itself. And do you know, when I came back here as a nurse, the first thing she said to me was, “And how’s that scar of yours?” And then she asked me had my bowels been OK! It was fifteen years later.’

  Matron chuckled at the thought of Sister Tapps asking Emily about her bowel movements and Emily laughed so much she was scared she’d spill her tea. ‘I was amazed that she remembered me. I had changed a lot from the six-year-old she’d looked after.’

  ‘That sounds just like Sister Tapps,’ said Matron. ‘But she’s not been the same since all that to-do with the polio child.’

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ said Emily. ‘It can’t still be affecting her now, surely.’ She took another gulp of tea. ‘I know what you mean, though. Some of the nurses have become concerned about her recently, but I think it might be that she’s lonely. Her life is the ward, the children, and Mass on Sunday. It must have been different when lots of the sisters used to live in, before the war. She’d have had more company then.’

  ‘The war changed everything,’ said Matron. ‘Would we still have ward sisters living in hospital accommodation if the war hadn’t happened? Would I ever have abandoned the “no married nurses” rule?’ She checked herself. ‘I suppose I’m being a fool. If the war hadn’t happened, time wouldn’t just have stood still, would it?’

  Emily shook her head and bit into the walnut buttercream filling. For a moment she was lost. The novelty of having unlimited access to sugar, flour and butter had taken some getting used to.

  Matron was quite used to Emily’s loss of concentration when she first bit into her cake. She waited patiently for her to finish and recover her tea. ‘All that sadness,’ she murmured, half to herself. ‘All that loss of life. I hope this country never knows the like again.’ She broke off and gazed into the fire.

  The sadness that filled the room whenever anyone spoke of the war had arrived and Emily wondered when that would change, when people would be able to talk openly about the days that had destroyed their lives. For her part, she thought that time would never come. She doubted whether she and Dessie would ever have the conversation about how the war had affected them. Look to the future, Emily reminded herself, not back to the past.

  ‘I’m going to invite her tonight,’ said Matron with a flourish of determination, ‘and at the same time I will tell her the good news – that we are discharging the walking wounded from her ward home for Christmas, that there will be no list admissions in the run-up and that the rest will be transferred to ward three. She will be delighted. Her first Christmas Day off and away from St Angelus in forty years – fancy that!’

  There was no response from Emily, whose eyes were fixed on the extra slice of cake Elsie had left for her just in case. Matron smiled at her as she reached out and slid the slice on to her plate. ‘Oh, why not?’ said Emily as she grinned back.

  *

  Later that evening, replete with liver and bacon in onion gravy, and mashed potato, followed by a jam roly-poly suet pudding and very hot custard, Matron loosened the buckle on her belt. ‘Do the same, if you feel like I do, Olive,’ she said to Sister Tapps. ‘Shall we have a cup of tea in front of the fire before you go back to your room?’

  Sister Tapps took a moment to respond. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had called her by her Christian name. She had no need to undo the buckle on her belt, even though she had made a good job of eating supper. She often missed supper. It involved a trip to the sisters’ dining room, but as she was one of only a few sisters left living in the hospital accommodation, she preferred not to bother. In fact, she would rather go without supper than have to sit at the table with Sister Antrobus. They had their own maid in the sisters’ sitting room and Tappsy would often simply ask her to leave a sandwich in her room for when she finished.

  Sister Tapps was known in the hospital as one who kept herself to herself and liked it that way. Tonight had been special. The supper had been delicious. Elsie and Cook between them had done Matron proud. Matron didn’t like to have alcohol in her dining room, not since the night Sister Antrobus had drunk too much and vomited all over her new red floral Axminster
carpet, but Sister Tapps wasn’t the type to drink, even if she had gone to the effort of buying it in.

  ‘That would be very nice, thank you,’ said Tappsy.

  Matron got to her feet. ‘I think up here, away from the wards and the nurses, you can call me Margaret, don’t you? How long have we known each other? You know, I don’t know why we haven’t done this before, you and I. You make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring the tea tray through to the sitting room. You’ll never guess what I have as a treat – a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.’

  Sister Tapps smiled. ‘We have so much of that chocolate being brought into the ward on Sunday afternoons these days that I have to take it off the parents at visiting time. There’s a new chocolate bar arrives every week, it seems. I send two nurses out with a tray to collect it all in during visiting – you wouldn’t believe how some of the parents complain. And to think, we never saw a bar of the stuff during the war. As scarce as hen’s teeth it was.’

  Matron had stopped midway to the kitchen. ‘It all seems so long ago, don’t you think? And yet it’s not even ten years. What do you do with all the sweets and chocolates when you’ve gathered them in then?’

  ‘I keep them in jars in the cupboard in my office. Every afternoon, after the quiet hour and the sleep, and again after supper, I distribute a small bowlful to each child. That way, everyone has exactly the same and no child is made to feel different or left out because their visitors can’t afford such luxuries, or they don’t have visitors at all. And the children, they do look forward to them. I’ve even known some of the nurses to use them as a bribe.’

  Sister Tapps laughed and it occurred to Matron that she did that a lot, whereas she, Matron, rarely laughed. What does she have to laugh about, Matron wondered. Her thoughtfulness, her kindness, and the compassion she showed every child regardless of creed or background never ceased to amaze her. Matron had heard about the weekly sweet collection and twice-daily distribution. Some were grumbling that the nurses had enough to do and what did it matter that some children had sweets in their lockers and others didn’t. Sister Antrobus had complained herself to Matron. ‘Some of the parents are taking umbrage. They spend good money on those sweets for their own children or charges, only to have them confiscated. Ward four is not a charity. You know me, Matron, I totally disapprove of spoiling children, but, really, I think Sister Tapps has overstepped the mark.’

  Matron was herself well used to Sister Antrobus and was also very well aware that she was looking for a new ward to take charge of. She had smelt weakness in the ageing Sister Tapps and was moving in for the kill. Matron had put a flea in Sister Antrobus’s ear and sent her on her way.

  Sister Tapps rose from the dining room chair with some difficulty. She was the wrong side of sixty, slightly older than Matron, and it was beginning to show. Her now brilliant white hair sat like a cloud beneath her heavy frilled hat and, mid perm, tended to fall in soft loose curls about her ears. She had always been slight and at one time could have been described as swift in her movements. Never tiring, always busy, she had to be persuaded to take her nurses for their morning coffee before they dropped, even though she herself had no need to refuel.

  She might have begun slowing down now, but Matron had noticed as they were talking that her eyes had lost none of their youthfulness. They were blue and twinkly, and her smile was still gentle around the edges. But far more notable, and alarming, to Matron was that Sister Tapps’s sole topic of conversation was the children on the ward. No matter how many times Matron had tried to divert the subject away to a wider realm – the NHS, the post-war building boom, the new plans for Liverpool and the country – Sister Tapps had engaged only momentarily and had then reverted to discussing a patient, her ward or even her surgeon, who had first arrived on ward four as a houseman thirty years ago.

  Now, as she made her way to the armchair, she reprised the topic. ‘We had a new admission this afternoon from children’s services, and you’ll never guess, I only had her sister Kitty in for her tonsils four years ago. The poor mother, there was no stopping her tears. The little sister is in a bad way. She had a turn in the clinic and the doctor thought she was going to go into respiratory arrest. He had Dessie bring her straight up to me, told him, “Take her to Sister Tapps and no one else.” Ran with her in his arms, Dessie did.’

  ‘Yes, I saw it on the bed statement that we had a new one in,’ said Matron. ‘Did they give her aminophylline?’

  ‘They did, or I did. I stayed with her until it was time to come over here. She’s breathing much better now. Good job the parents brought her in when they did. The mother couldn’t bear to leave the little lass – in bits she was. I had to get two of the nurses to take her away so that she didn’t upset the little girl. I think there might be something in this new notion to let parents visit their children daily.’

  ‘Would you agree to that?’ asked Matron.

  ‘Oh yes, of course I would. Remember, it’s not so long ago parents weren’t allowed to visit at all. That was not my notion, you know that. It was already in place when I arrived here.’

  Matron nodded. It was she who’d introduced weekly visiting, immediately she’d taken up her post.

  ‘I told the mother, “It’s not long until Sunday and I’ll look after her just like I did your little Kitty,” but there was no consoling her. I had to call down to Maisie Tanner in the WVS post and ask her to send the daddy up. He wasn’t much better. But little Kitty, you should have heard her, calming them both down, telling her that their Angela was the lucky one to be in such a nice place. ’Twas funny to hear her, so.’ And on she went, not noticing Matron had even left the room to fetch the tea.

  As Matron placed the tray on the table between them, it seemed clear to her that Emily Haycock had been right. It was time Sister Tapps had a break and, given what had happened in the past, she was furious with herself that she hadn’t been the first to notice. That was her job, her duty of care, and she felt consumed with guilt that she had left this finest of ward sisters to her own devices for far too long. She should have known – hadn’t there already been one dire and distressing warning too many?

  She settled into her chair and began to pour the tea. Sister Tapps looked comfortable, rested, happy. The image of the polio child, the sound of her screams, flashed though Matron’s mind, but, shaking her head slightly, she dismissed them swiftly.

  She noticed that Sister Tapps’s navy-blue uniform and Petersham belt looked bigger on her frame than was usual. She was losing weight. Working too hard, as always, thought Matron as she handed over the cup and saucer.

  ‘And now for some of this.’ Matron tore open the bar of Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate and began to slowly peel back the purple foil wrapper. ‘I don’t know why anyone wants to drink alcohol when you can have this instead,’ she said.

  ‘Do you know, Matron… Margaret…’ Tappsy flashed that beaming smile of hers, amused at calling Matron by her Christian name, ‘I wouldn’t know. I have never tasted a drop of alcohol in my life. However, we have a young boy who is eight days post-operative adenoids and his father, well, he smells of it. I may not have tasted it, but I do know what it smells like. I’ve smelt it on many a parent.’

  There she goes again, her point of reference always her charges, thought Matron. And with a start she realized that she was just the same. They were no different. St Angelus was her entire life too and whereas her scope was wider, in as much as she was responsible for a hospital while Sister Tapps was concerned with a ward, they were essentially in the same position. They were the spinsters of St Angelus.

  From under her eyelashes, Matron glanced at the belt hanging off Sister Tapps’s waist, its buckle almost resting on her thighs, and broke off a huge piece of the chocolate. Placing it on a side plate, she handed it to Sister Tapps. Politeness prevented Matron from passing comment, but she made a mental note to keep an eye on her in future. They had been colleagues for so many years. If she didn’t look out for her, who would?


  ‘Now,’ she said as she broke off a smaller piece for herself, ‘I have some news that is going to delight you. I wanted to tell you myself and that is why I invited you here tonight.’

  Tappsy looked up. She was suspicious. Her life had followed a pattern for many years. The variety came from the different children she nursed back to health, from the conditions they were admitted with, and from their parents too – sometimes a challenge, often a delight. She didn’t want any surprises. Her life, her routine, was just as she liked it. The effect of Matron’s words was to set her nerves jangling. She had been about to pop a square of the chocolate into her mouth but hesitated, long enough for it to begin to melt between her finger and thumb. She popped it in anyway as Matron continued.

  ‘You have worked tirelessly for the children who live around here. You must have nursed a child from almost every family in every street, I would think. Sister Haycock and I—’

  Sister Tapps had taken a sip of her tea to wash down the chocolate and she smiled over the rim of her cup. ‘Oh, Sister Haycock, she was such a good little girl. She used to love her ice cream. She’d eat it so slowly, you know, savouring every single spoon. And her mother, well, her heart was broken when her little Emily was admitted. So close they were. The stepfather, he was away, fighting. The mother and daughter were inseparable. Even though we fed her ice cream, she couldn’t get home and back to her mother quick enough. Some of them, they love the taste of ice cream so much, they guzzle it down on to the raw tonsil beds, they find it soothing, but not Sister Haycock, she was an appendix and such a good girl.’ Sister Tapps set her cup on the saucer and looked slightly distracted, as though she was back in time, somewhere else entirely.

  Matron felt slightly confused herself. Sister Haycock was over thirty now, many years on from having been a little girl. How did Sister Tapps remember all this detail? Eventually she said, ‘Why don’t you have some more chocolate?’