Bertie looked from her to the envelope, then over her shoulder to his dinner keeping warm on a pan of boiling water. The house was filled with the smell of Ida’s buttery pastry, baked to perfection and containing his shin of steak, slow-cooked all afternoon in onions and potatoes before it was popped into the pie crust.
‘The envelope, Bertie. If it isn’t in my hand by the time I count to ten, your dinner is going to land in the dog’s bowl.’ Bertie licked his lips and looked at the envelope, but Ida never made idle threats. He knew it was hopeless and he handed it over.
‘Thank you very much, Bertie,’ said Ida tartly, as though she were speaking to a badly behaving four-year-old, ‘and here you go; you can have the ten shillings back for spends and, as a bonus, you can have your dinner too for that. Think yourself lucky you have a wife as generous as me.’
She took the money out of the envelope and threw it onto the fire. From the corner of her eye she watched Bertie as he went through his homecoming routine. He turned on the taps in the scullery and, as the water thundered into the enamel bowl, pulled down his braces and unbuttoned his shirt and undid the belt around his waist.
‘Don’t pee in the sink,’ Ida shouted as she tucked the notes into her purse.
The smell of Wright’s Coal Tar soap did battle with the beef and lost and the dog, who had risen from her old army blanket at the sound of her master returning home, sat hopefully by the oven door, looking up to the pan. Ida clicked the purse shut, placed it in the bottom of her bag, underneath her packet of egg sandwiches wrapped in greaseproof paper and pulled the zip all the way around. She knew the purse would be safer in her bag at work than it would be at home, with Bertie.
‘Are you going to the bingo before work?’ he shouted from the scullery. She had picked up a tea towel and was removing the plate from the pan and laying it on the kitchen table.
‘Don’t I always,’ she said. ‘God willing, we can make it a double win and have a good Christmas. With your winnings and my club money, we’re doing all right this year, so far. How was work? Was the boss man, Dessie, on your back again?’
‘Aye, he was. I don’t know why it is Matron thinks she has to keep sending him down. I told her, we’ve got a job to do and we know what we’re doing. I mean, I wouldn’t tell him how to go about the head portering, would I? Imagine if I turned up at the theatre doors to wheel one of the patients back to the wards? He’d have my guts for garters. What makes him think he can do my job, eh?’ The rest of his complaint was drowned out by the sound of his own head being placed under the tap and his hair washed as his stream of words became an incomprehensible splutter. Ida buttered a slice of bread and placed it by the side of his plate.
‘Was our Gracie there?’
‘Yes, and she’s a hardworking girl our Gracie. She’s the one you want to be giving the money to, her or her poor mother, not that fat lazy arse of an oaf who I am ashamed to call my son and who lies in his bed all day long.’
Ida slapped another slice of bread and butter on the plate. ‘And was that baby there again?’
‘What’s that?’ Bertie came out of the scullery, upper clothing removed, apart from his grey string vest, rubbing his still-dark hair with a towel.
‘The baby, was he there? Did Sister Horton just dump him on Mrs Duffy again? They’ll be making our Gracie look after him next, because that Mrs Duffy’s too old in my book to be looking after a child so young. So, was he there?’
Bertie frowned. Ida asked him about the baby every day, as often as she asked him for details about the new accommodation that was being built for Mrs Duffy. Tonight was no exception and these conversations irritated Bertie beyond belief. He liked to read the obituaries while he ate his tea. Bertie was a man who listened to noise all day long, drills, hammers, saws. ‘Is a bit of peace and quiet too much for a man to ask for?’ he had once asked when he was trying to eat and read. It was the first and last time he ever complained because his paper ended up on the fire. He reluctantly lifted his head from his plate.
‘He was, as always. And I’ll tell you what, if that woman didn’t have that baby being left with her every day, his Lordship wouldn’t be coming down to check up on me every five minutes. It’s not me he’s checking up on. It’s her. That’s why he’s in and out all the time. A nuisance it is. No one helped us with our kids – you had to give up work so why should they have their cake and eat it? All my working life I’ve been able to work to my own pace and now I’m looking over my shoulder all the while.’
‘It’s not right, that isn’t,’ said Ida as she fastened the ties on her rain hat. ‘A baby who went through what he did needs to be looked after by one person, his own mother, preferably – and I did work during the war, at the munitions factory. It was my mam who looked after ours and that’s how it should be, family or no one. If I’d just left our kids with any old person, we’d have been a lot better off, but I didn’t, because it’s not right.’
Bertie pulled out the wooden kitchen chair and scraped the legs across the tiled floor to reach the salt on the other side of the table. The sound made Ida’s teeth grate. ‘It was shocking too,’ she said, ‘seeing them out with the pram last Friday night when I walked home from the bingo. The night air is bad for a baby’s chest. No child of that age should be out in the dark. He’d have been better tucked up in his cot and she should have stayed in and looked after him not out gallivanting late at night. You never saw me down the pub, when ours were little.’
‘Thank God,’ muttered Bertie under his breath as he poured the salt into the palm of his hand. In the early days of their marriage, the pub had become Bertie’s second home out of a necessity to escape Ida and the kids – and that was one thing he had put his foot down about in the days when he still could, that the pub was his place of sanctuary, and the kitchen, Ida’s. ‘The adoption must be happening soon. I almost told Dessie Horton what you said as well, about them having the baby out at night, too.’
‘Don’t do that,’ said Ida, her voice sharp as she stopped dead on her way towards the pantry. ‘I don’t want him guessing it was me.’
‘You don’t want him knowing what was you?’ Bertie looked confused.
Ida sniffed, looked around the room as though she was checking to see if anyone was listening, glanced at the Virgin Mary on the wall, ignored the disapproving frown and reached a decision; she would tell him because the burden was killing her and confession hadn’t worked one little bit; in fact, she strongly suspected that father was cross with her and not on her side. She had almost worn her rosaries out with the penance.
‘Bertie Botherthwaite, don’t you dare tell anyone what I am about to tell you, now.’
‘What?’ said Bertie intrigued. ‘Since when have I ever repeated to anyone what you tell to me?’
She looked at him defiantly. ‘I’ve written a letter of complaint.’
‘A letter of complaint? About what and to who?’
‘To the Liverpool children’s services, that’s who. That baby is being pulled from pillar to post, out in that pram at all hours and they went after the publicity, they wanted it all over the papers and on the telly, so now they have to live with everyone having an opinion, don’t they.’ Ida drained the dregs of cold tea from a cup she had left earlier. ‘It was disgraceful,’ she said as she banged the cup on the saucer. ‘It should all have been kept confidential, out of the way of nosey beggars.’ Bertie nodded his head in agreement. ‘Tonight, Biddy almost ran over me, she did, running along the road with the pram, taking him back home. She said he had been in the school with her at the hospital and now she was taking him home for his tea because Emily had new nurses on the wards she was checking up on. I bet that lad doesn’t know where he lives half of the time.
‘Well, life might be a lot easier for us soon. She isn’t fit to look after that baby – and if he isn’t at the nurses’ home, I reckon they won’t want Mrs Duffy there any more; it’ll be time for a new pair of hands and I have as much chance as anyone of getti
ng that job. So, you make a good job of that housekeeper’s accommodation, because it could be us living there. But no one must know it was me who sent that letter. I didn’t sign it, of course.
‘Right, I’m off to work. I have a new cleaner working with me while Noleen is off; Eva her name is, a right odd one. Imagine, I know nothing about her other than she talks funny and, what’s more, she knows nothing about me, because she’s never asked, not a single question – not where I live, if I have a family, a fridge, a twin tub, nothing. That’s not normal, that isn’t. Very secretive she is, hiding something. Make sure you wash up and put everything away spick and span before you go down to the pub or you’ll feel the frying pan on the back of your head in the morning and I won’t bother to wake you up first.’ Ida’s good humour had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived.
The back door slammed shut. ‘And that is normal, is it?’ asked Bertie, but no one heard him, other than the dog, who licked his fingers as he dropped them by his side for her to lick clean so that he could open the Echo without staining it.
*
As Ida reached the back gates of the hospital, dusk had fallen, but she could still make out the wisp of a figure ahead of her, half running, half walking.
‘’Ere, Eva, wait for me,’ she shouted. Eva did not appear to have heard her and continued at her brisk pace, so Ida shouted louder, ‘Eva, stop.’
Ida spotted Emily Horton pushing the pram towards the back gates, the wheels bouncing on the cobbles, at the same time as Eva did. Emily didn’t see either Eva or Ida, she was too busy peering in over the canopy, singing to Louis. Ida could make out his little white fingers, gripping on to the side of the pram. Eva had stopped dead and had as good as shrunk into the gate post. The gates, long since taken to contribute to the war effort, had never been replaced. Ida was almost out of breath by the time she had reached Eva.
‘What the hell are you running like that for?’ she asked as she caught up.
Eva wasn’t listening, she was staring at Emily and the pram. Little Louis was wearing a hat, knitted by Biddy, which he was trying to remove with one hand as he gripped the side of the pram with the other. Emily, secure in their own world, was laughing.
‘Oi, you little monkey, leave it on. You’ll catch an ear infection if you let the cold get into your ears.’
Emily’s protests were neither understood nor heeded as the hat landed on the cobbles beside the pram and Emily, too late to stop the wheels, was already a yard ahead by the time it hit the floor. Eva could not help herself; she lunged forward, crossed the path and, retrieving the hat, held it out to Emily to take, while her eyes never left baby Louis, who stopped smiling, and stared in the eyes of the strange woman who stood at the side of his pram.
‘Oh, thank you so much,’ said Emily. ‘He’s such a wriggler. Here, come on, little man, it’s going back on – thank goodness it’s not wet. Thank you, love.’ Emily spoke to Eva without looking at her as she slipped the hat on and fastened the chinstrap over the side button. Then, bending down, she cupped Louis’ face with one hand as she hugged him and placed a tender kiss on his cheek and briefly hugged him into her. All the while, Louis’ eyes were locked onto Eva’s, his expression sombre. He was no longer struggling to remove the itchy hat and Eva could not breathe, felt for sure that her heart was breaking in two. As the tears filled her eyes so that Louis became nothing more than a blur before her, she turned back to the gate. Ida slipped her hand through her handbag and shrugged it up onto her elbow and, in an unusual act of kindness, slipped her arm through Eva’s as she approached her.
‘Come on, love, I don’t know what’s up with you. You look like someone in a trance. I’ve no complaint with your work, mind. The mortuary floor has never been so clean as it was last night after you mopped it. Now, we’ve got fifteen minutes to spare before we collect the mops and buckets. Matron, as miserable as she is, leaves a table for those coming on nights. It’s for all night staff, porters too, in case anyone didn’t have time for their tea before they left for work. Let’s me and you go and get a cuppa to put a bit of colour in your cheeks.’ As Ida guided Eva away, Eva stared over her shoulder at the sight of Emily pushing the pram away and down the path. ‘Oh, never mind that one,’ Ida said. ‘You won’t get any more than a curt thank you from her. Right up her own arse, she is, and I wouldn’t even mind, only it’s not really her baby.’
*
Ida poured the tea and sat Eva down at the empty table. There were a few women in the hall, eating the left-over barm cakes with whatever had been put up for supper inside. Matron hated waste and she knew some of the women would have gone without food to feed their own brood and had insisted on something being made of everything that was left over. The offerings were always appreciated. ‘Oh, lovely,’ they heard one woman say from the counter, ‘dripping, sprouts and stuffing with the bread tonight, girls. Better than what I gave our lot.’ The sound of cackles filled the air along with the gentle hum from the bubbling urn.
‘Get that down you,’ said Ida. ‘Do you want me to fetch you a barm?’
Eva shook her head. ‘No, I have eaten already.’
‘Put sugar in your tea then, you look peaky.’ Eva stirred her tea and didn’t object to the two sugars Ida heaped into it. ‘Now, I thought you became very upset back there, when you picked the baby’s hat up. You looked like you had seen a ghost. Lost a baby of your own, have you, love?’
Ida thought she was bang on the money as Eva almost spat out her tea. But recovering, she shook her head. ‘No, no, not at all. I’m just not feeling very well,’ she said.
Ida took out her tobacco tin; she knew Eva was lying and decided she would bide her time. ‘Of course, love, never mind, I don’t mean to pry,’ she lied. ‘We’ll have our tea and this ciggie and then we’ll crack on.’ Ida watched Eva drink as she exhaled a plume of blue smoke over her. She was a patient woman who would bring all her skills into play. Eva would crack, soon enough.
Chapter 12
Dr Gaskell knocked on the door of Matron’s office, then popped his head around the door. ‘Are you free?’ he asked.
‘I am indeed,’ she replied as she looked up and gave him a distracted smile. Her desk was placed in front of the window, Blackie, as always, asleep in his basket at her side and behind her, a curious seagull perched on the red sandstone windowsill, peering in, almost expectantly.
‘Have you been feeding that seagull?’ he asked as he closed the door behind him.
‘No,’ she answered, slipping a paper knife into an envelope she was holding. He could tell she was being less that truthful.
He marched over, took a biscuit from a plate that had been pushed to the end of her desk and moved closer to the window. The seagull began to patter excitedly from one end of the windowsill to the other and began tapping the glass. ‘Really?’ he mocked.
‘Oh, here,’ she said as, vexed for having been caught out, she jumped up from the chair and lifted up the sash window. ‘Don’t tease her.’ Dr Gaskell noticed the way Matron looked at the gull and saw that they had a moment of tenderness as the gull stood still and calm, knowing what was about to happen next. The wicker of Blackie’s basket crackled and a growl emanated from somewhere within the woollen tartan blanket. Matron placed the biscuit deep into the ledge in front of the gull and the gull looked at her adoringly, before pattering towards her. She shuffled the biscuit along to a place she felt safer and then began to peck away at it as Matron made soft clucking sounds. Matron shut the window carefully so as not to frighten the gull away. Dr Gaskell walked over to the fire, poked it and stood with his hands behind his back as she sat back down at her desk.
‘So, do tell me: I saw a message on the noticeboard, asking staff not to feed the gulls and let me think, who was it who had signed that letter?’ He rubbed his chin as though deep in thought. ‘Oh yes, it was you.’
She threw him a look of utter disdain. ‘Yes, well, that one is injured. I couldn’t just sit here and watch her starve to death, coul
d I? She needs to build up strength to fly again. She loves porridge.’ She picked up the paper knife and a letter.
‘Oh, well, that’s fine then. So you won’t mind if I feed the stray cat that hangs around the consultants’ sitting room?’ She looked up, exasperated, and he grinned. ‘You carry on with your correspondence.’
‘Oh, would you look at that,’ she exclaimed, as she pulled an embossed invitation out of an envelope, ‘an invitation to a Christmas drinks party in Bolton.’
‘Ah, yes, to the Davenports’?’
‘It is, did you get one too?’
‘We did. It’s a rather long way to go, however, so we were thinking of booking accommodation nearby. Would you like to come in the car with Doris and I?’
Matron thought hard. She was unused to leaving her hospital. Hated doing it. She often remained, the sole person in charge, sailing the ship day and night.
‘Let me think about it. It is very short notice, only ten days away.’ She opened another letter and leant back in her chair. ‘Oh, dear, this isn’t good news at all.’ She leant forward and, laying the letter flat on her desk, smoothed the sheet with her hands. ‘It’s a letter notifying me that the head of children’s services has left and has been replaced by a Miss Devonshire – do you remember her? She was a busybody on the trust once.’
‘Devonshire? I think I do. Was her fiancé a major? Fell in the war?’
‘He was – she just acted like one. Anyway, if that wasn’t bad enough news, not only has she taken over children’s services, but she will be personally taking over the adoption process for little Louis because, apparently, they have received a complaint.’
‘A complaint? Who from? And a complaint about what?’
‘It says a complaint that Emily is working full-time and rearing the child using the assistance of casual non-family members.’
Snow Angels: An emotional Christmas read from the Sunday Times bestseller (The Lovely Lane Series Book 5) Page 13