The Angels of Lovely Lane (10 page)

And then her mother went and died. Without a sound or any fuss, which was always her way. She simply slipped away in the night as she slept.

‘A weakened heart, left by the rheumatic fever she had as a child. We know it can often damage the aortic and mitral valves quite seriously, but there is nothing we can do, even if we pick it up, which is often difficult. It’s just impossible to know,’ the doctor had said. His words of explanation were no comfort to Victoria. It was time to send for Aunt Minnie.

*

Aunt Minnie had stormed through the doors of Baker Hall like a whirlwind to attend Lady Baker’s funeral, and it took her less than a day to understand the true extent of the damage.

‘Why is the fire in the hall not lit? And for goodness’ sake, Gerald, what is that food on your jacket? Where are the staff?’ She went in search of Victoria. ‘I’m here now, sweetie,’ she said when she found Victoria with wet eyes and a book, unread, on her lap. She kissed Victoria on the cheek. ‘Fear not.’ But Victoria did fear, very much. Even with the protected life she had led, she was aware of the real extent of her father’s drinking and the chaos which gripped Baker Hall. Aunt Minnie was as unlike her mother as it was possible to be. She was forthright, opinionated and used to having her own way. She was very much a Baker and Victoria was very much her mother’s daughter.

Aunt Minnie spent her first month trying to bring some order back into the neglected hall and coaxed the remaining staff, who were as good as packed and about to leave, to remain. She paid them herself. The majority were approaching retirement. During the war, the young men had left to fight and those who remained, or returned still able-bodied, had been lured by the post-depression, post-war air of industry and prosperity which flourished in the towns and cities. Service became a thing of the past and no one wanted to work the hours or endure the routine of a stately home.

‘I have paid the staff for the past three months and guaranteed their future stipend, Gerald, but I cannot run two houses and my inheritance will not last five minutes in Baker Hall,’ said Aunt Minnie. ‘We must find a solution soon, but first, we have to get this place back into some sort of order.’ Aunt Minnie’s husband had been an officer in the war and had left her widowed and well provided for at forty years of age, but unlike her brother, Minnie had chosen not to wallow in despair or to sink into a whisky decanter.

She had tasked Victoria and her father with the job of reordering and organizing the dusty library and of moving some of the books from the first floor to his study, while she herself took over the study and tried to make sense of the letters and demands from merchants for payment. The situation was far worse than she had anticipated.

After dinner one evening, Victoria came downstairs to get herself a drink and she overheard her name being spoken.

‘What are we to do with Victoria?’ Aunt Minnie was asking her father.

Victoria knew eavesdroppers heard no good of themselves, but she crouched down outside the large oak door and pressed her eye to the keyhole. Aunt Minnie was sitting forward on the sofa, staring into the fire, looking troubled, nursing a glass.

‘That woman, she ruined us.’

Her father was slumped on the sofa and spat the words out as he pointed at the portrait of her mother hanging over the fire, before he gazed into the bottom of his soon to be auctioned glass. They were familiar words to Victoria. He had repeatedly blamed her mother when she was alive for not providing him with a son and heir. He took a gulp of whisky and swilled the ice around. Victoria shuffled from crouching to kneeling; it was more comfortable and she wanted to hear everything. She knew Aunt Minnie well enough to realize that she did not engage in idle discussion. If she had raised this subject, she must have a plan and so far, her plans had filled Victoria with horror.

‘If we sell off any more farms, Gerald, we’ll diminish the earning capacity of the estate. No one wants a house this size with no earning potential. What would be the point of that? An estate without revenue.’

‘What choice do we have?’ her father looked up from his glass with alarm.

Victoria could see her Aunt Minnie lean over and gently pat her father’s arm, a gesture designed to coax him back from the pit of self-loathing to which he often retreated when Minnie brought up the future of Baker Hall, the family, the overdue taxes and, last but not least, of Victoria, his only child.

‘I have an idea,’ said Minnie. Victoria shifted her position on the floor – this could be interesting.

‘I’m going to call in your solicitor and see if he can help.’

‘He’s not my solicitor any more,’ said Gerald. ‘His war wounds caught up with him. He died last year.’

‘I am aware of that,’ said Minnie.

Victoria could tell that Aunt Minnie was now entering the zone of decreasing tolerance. Pity for her brother stretched only so far. No one blamed the war for ever. They had all paid a price for freedom and now had a responsibility to look forward.

‘His son is also a solicitor, and has taken over the practice. He is supposed to be a chip off the old block. It’s time you realized that the tax man has no interest in heritage, Gerald, and certainly no love of privilege. The party you’ve supported all your life might be back in power but it won’t keep you out of a debtors’ prison. You need to wake up, and when you have you can tell me what on earth we are going to do about your wonderful, gifted daughter. In the meantime, I shall phone your solicitor first thing tomorrow. You need help, and I will not let you drag that delightful young woman down with you.’

Victoria only just managed to get back to her feet before the library door burst open and Minnie strode out. Without any thought as to what she was doing or why, Victoria stepped into her path and blurted out, ‘Aunt Minnie, I want to be a nurse, just like Mummy.’

*

Two meetings with the solicitor and two weeks later, auctioneers’ agents arrived to catalogue the contents of the house. Gerald was nowhere to be seen. He moved like a ghost from room to room, avoiding everyone, unable to bear the thought of dismantling his precious library.

‘Choose the books you want to take with you to the dower house,’ Minnie suggested.

The dower house only had six bedrooms. To Victoria’s father, the very thought was a profound humiliation. Victoria had hoped there would be enough money left over from the sale of Baker Hall and its contents to keep them in some degree of comfort, but Roland had disabused her of that notion as she escorted him to his car after his first visit. Victoria had warmed to Roland as soon as he had arrived at the Hall. His manner towards her had been gentle and caring and as she had shown him to her father’s study he had said, ‘The last time I saw you, you were cycling away from my house with your mother, your pigtails flying behind you.’

Victoria had blushed. ‘I was dreadfully sorry to hear about your father,’ she said. ‘Mummy was very fond of him, and I loved coming with her to change his dressings. He always had a toffee apple for me. It was worth the journey just for that.’ They had both laughed and their eyes had met and held until they heard Aunt Minnie.

‘Come along. We have much business to discuss.’

‘The personal debts on the estate are enormous,’ he had told her. ‘It’s not just the final instalment of the death duties. Your father has been borrowing against assets for some time just for the upkeep of the estate. Although the paintings should clear most of the debts, it may come to the point where the cottages and the dower house also have to be sold.’

‘What? My father will be left with nothing? Not even a house?’ They were standing in front of the stately home where generations of Victoria’s family had lived. The portraits of her ancestors, which had hung on the walls for four hundred years, were to be sold on to strangers. She felt as though the fabric of her world was crumbling.

‘My father tried his best to persuade him to sell the house years ago. From the time when your grandfather died and the first demands for death duties arrived. Of course now, due to the delay and with all the compound interest...’ Victoria’s eyes filled with tears as Roland fell silent. He could see that she was barely able to understand the magnitude of what was happening. ‘I will do my utmost to achieve the best for you both. Are you going to be all right?’ His voice was filled with concern, which he knew had grown from a feeling of protectiveness born of the fond recollections he had of her as a child and the care she and her mother had shown to his father. A feeling that had nothing to do with his duties as the family solicitor.

Victoria looked up at him. The genuine warmth in his eyes and the kindness in his voice was almost more than she could bear, and now her tears broke free and ran down her cheeks, unchecked. Tears she had hidden from her formidable Aunt Minnie, fearing that she would be regarded as weak, like her father.

‘Dearie me.’ Roland awkwardly put an arm round her shoulder. ‘Your parents kept you out of the loop for your own protection. I know it makes all of this an enormous shock, but they were only trying to do their best for you. You know the estate will come to you, but frankly the debts are so huge...’ His voice tailed away again, leaving unspoken the fact that no man would want to marry Victoria and take on such a huge financial burden.

Victoria lifted her chin proudly. ‘I have already decided I want to become a nurse, like my mother,’ she said, and Roland smiled.

‘I still remember you wearing a nurse’s apron.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Victoria brightened. ‘I used to love wearing that apron and helping Mummy. Mrs Armitage made it for me. She said I was her youngest nurse. And I just loved helping and driving into Bolton to your house. Such a bonus, I remember, when we had petrol and didn’t have to cycle.’

‘I couldn’t think of doing anything more worthwhile.’ Roland opened the back door of his car and threw his briefcase on to the seat. ‘There was something in
The Times
this week about restructuring the state registered nurse syllabus. Nurses are to take on some of the work undertaken by doctors. The NHS has a bit of a crisis on its hands, with the shortage of young men. We lost some of Britain’s best brains during the war.’

‘Surely plenty of young women could train as doctors?’ Victoria felt slightly miffed.

‘Oh, indeed, and they are, lots of them now. Most become GPs, but even then it’s the old story. They marry and leave to start families of their own. Have you considered becoming a doctor?’

Victoria looked up at the gathering clouds scudding across the sky. A shadow fell across the drive. ‘No. I want to be like my mother.’

Roland smiled at her tenacity. ‘Well, for what it’s worth, I think it’s a good idea. My father always spoke very highly of your mother. She left an impression – well, you both did, actually.’ His voice had dropped as he kicked up some loose gravel with the toe of his shoe. He was gazing at Victoria’s hair, and he was overcome by an urge to reach out and remove the pin sticking out from the back of her neatly coiffed roll and watch it tumble.

Their eyes met and Victoria smiled for the first time since Roland had emerged from the meeting with her father. He smiled back at her and the warmth in his eyes made her feel lighter. Less troubled. ‘I know I want to become a nurse but I’m not sure how to go about it. Where would I go?’

Roland, as keen as mustard to be useful, seized his opportunity. ‘Well, I think I may be able to help you there. My brother Edward is a doctor at St Angelus in Liverpool. I could make some enquiries, if you like? You’d be close enough to return home sometimes, but far enough away to put some space between you and Baker Hall and all that’s going on here.’

‘Would you mind awfully?’ Victoria cherished her mother’s spirit, and held her heart in her own. She knew now that she would not stop until she got what she wanted. Nursing would become her vocation. It would give purpose to her presently empty life.

Roland wished he hadn’t been so impetuous. If he could have done it without being noticed, he would have kicked himself. In wanting to help her, help this girl he had come to like so much, he now risked losing her. With his own promise of speaking to his brother and making enquiries about a nursing course at St Angelus, he was sending her away. Edward’s way.

*

As Roland rang the bell, the dogs barked frantically.

‘You do know he’s sweet on you?’ Aunt Minnie peered at Victoria as she fastened the lid on her suitcase.

‘I do.’ Victoria picked up the case, testing the weight.

‘Well then?’ Aunt Minnie took her niece’s gloves from the bed and held them out to her.

‘Well then what?’

Victoria and Roland had met a dozen times since that first day. He had driven her to Liverpool for her interview, taken her for dinner with his brother Edward, and been there for her every step of the way. She had told no one. Aunt Minnie and her father thought she was visiting a school friend in Manchester.

‘You know perfectly well what. Are you sweet on him? Because if you are, please be careful. Your father would never approve, and for that matter nor would I.’

‘Why ever not? Because he doesn’t have a title, or land, or money?’ There was a chill to Victoria’s voice that her aunt had never heard before. Victoria reached out and took the gloves and felt immediately guilty. ‘If Father thinks Roland is good enough to handle our financial and legal affairs, why would he not be good enough for me? After all, he is proving to be far more competent at managing the affairs of Baker Hall than Father ever was.’

Minnie struggled to reply. Victoria was of course absolutely right, but Minnie did not want her brother’s incompetence to blight the plans she had for her only niece.

Victoria continued, ‘Look, very soon I may have nothing. Absolutely nothing and then I won’t be a catch for any man. What’s more, my training will take three years. I have every intention of completing it and becoming a qualified nurse. If Roland is sweet on me, he has a long time to wait.’

*

Minnie stood on the steps and waved until Roland had driven through the gates. She was not unhopeful. She knew many eligible young men in London. Rich eligible men. They wouldn’t have been classed as top drawer as short a time as ten years ago, but as everyone kept telling her, today it was a new world.