The Angels of Lovely Lane (11 page)

As she closed the large oak doors, her brother came up behind her. ‘Has she gone?’ he barked. He smelt strongly of whisky and despair.

‘Yes, she has. She thinks she is going to stick it out for the full three years. I give her three months at the most before I persuade her to return. You may have lost the money, but she still has her lineage. I will make a good match for her, never fear. Right now, I want you to get on the phone and find yourself a new firm of solicitors. The sooner that young man has no business at Baker Hall the better.’

Martha would have given anything to turn back the clock and as she lay under the covers, she wished with all her heart that she could. She used to love her work and the sense of responsibility it gave her. She had almost confided in her friend Josie, but when it came to it she didn’t have the words to explain what was happening to her. When she tried, they sounded so disgusting, even to her, that she just couldn’t say them out loud. He hadn’t raped her, which made the rest of what he did hard to explain in a way that didn’t make it sound as though she were at least half responsible. Besides, like everyone else who worked at the hospital, Josie thought Mr Scriven was the closest thing to a film star Liverpool had.

‘Martha, what are you doing still in bed? It’s almost half past six. Come on, up now. I’ll make us some tea and pobs before we go for the bus. Is it thinking about that Jake Berry that keeps you in bed? Mark my words, when he’s in there with you you’ll be looking for reasons to get yerself up and down before he wakes.’

Elsie had put her head round the bedroom door to wake her daughter. There was usually no need; Martha was quite often the first one down the stairs and had the range lit and the kettle on before her mother woke. But recently Martha had been coming down later and later in the mornings, and there was an element of truth in Elsie’s suspicions.

Martha loved the times when she woke with Jake filling her thoughts. She knew they were the luckiest and happiest couple in the world and her mother was wrong. The thought that they might one day be married and share the same bed sent a warm thrill shooting through her. She would never want to get up and go to work again. It was a thought so exquisite that she did not believe it would ever happen. Today, however, it wasn’t thoughts of Jake that had made her wake. It was the nightmare that was Mr Scriven.

She racked her brains to think of a way to leave the hospital. Could she pretend she was ill, or find another job? That, she had decided, was what she would have to do. Look elsewhere for work. There was an easy way to deal with Mr Scriven and that was to make sure that he never saw her.

In the kitchen, Elsie was standing at the sink, peering into the pink plastic-bound mirror that was propped up against the kitchen window. She removed her curlers with the deftness of someone who went through exactly the same process every morning of her life.

‘At last,’ she said, turning round with what looked like a small pink plastic sword sticking out of her mouth. ‘I thought you were never getting out of that bed. What’s up with you? You don’t want to be late, you know. We need to be setting an example to the others.’

Martha didn’t answer but instead picked up the tea Elsie had already poured for her and began to stir in the milk, watching her mam remove the remainder of the pins. Elsie went through the same routine every day. The wire curlers came out one by one and were placed in a plant pot on the windowsill, and the first thing she did when she got back home at night, while the kettle boiled for a cup of tea, was to put them all back in again.

‘There, done,’ she said with a flourish, turning round with a smile. ‘What’s up with you this morning, Martha? ’Tis not like you to be so moody. Have you and Jake fallen out? Had your first row, have you?’

She took an earthenware bowl out of the oven. It was filled with stale bread that had been soaked with sterilized milk and sugar. ‘Come on now, we have five minutes. I had to water the milk down this morning. I’ll call in at the dairy and pay the bill and get the delivery going again after I’ve picked up me wages from Dessie.’

Martha had not heard a word her mother had said. She peered at the lukewarm bread and milk with distaste. ‘Mam, do you think I could get moved from the consultants’ sitting room to somewhere else?’

Elsie looked as though Martha had grown an extra head. ‘Moved?’ she shrieked. ‘Are you mad? Ye have one of the best jobs in the hospital. Do ye realize there are women like Hattie Lloyd who would have ye murdered and yer body hidden if she didn’t know I was watching her every move for a job like yours, and her with her new wallpaper all the way up the wall in the hall? All the way up it is. They haven’t even painted the bottom half. That paper will be filthy in weeks with the kids running in and out and will look a damn sight worse than the paint, I can tell you. She won’t be told, though. Always wanting to be on the up, that one is. God in heaven, no, you cannot move. She would have your place out from under you if she heard you saying that. ’Tis the only thing that keeps us holding our head up around here, having the jobs we do. Thanks to Dessie, between us we earn nearly five shillings more than everyone else. And we’re saving it for a rainy day, not running down to St John’s market every time there’s a new roll of wallpaper in.

‘She wants one of those electric steam iron things coming into the shops, she was saying. I told her, well, once it’s spent it’s spent, and you can’t eat an iron, can you? Although I’m sure no one in her house would be able to tell the difference. Mrs Beeton herself would faint if she saw what Hattie Lloyd put on the table in the name of food. Move where? To what? Everyone would think ye had gone mad. No, you cannot move, you daft thing.’

Martha stared at her mother. It was no use arguing. She could not think of one valid reason why she would want to move from a job every other domestic in the hospital coveted. Except for the real reason, and she knew not a living soul would believe that. They would lock her up at the very least. Say she was as mad as a hatter. Accuse her of leading him on. And worst of all, Jake might believe them.

*

Mr Scriven had taken to visiting the sitting room more and more often, and each time he sought her out. He talked and talked until a kitchen orderly or another consultant entered the room. She far preferred being ignored. She had no idea how to respond or what to say or even why he wanted to speak to her. He had told her about his wife, who drank gin all day when he was at work and had to be put to bed when he got home. About his children, who attended boarding school and barely spoke to him during the holidays. He actually said, ‘My wife doesn’t understand me, Martha. But you do, don’t you? You listen to me.’

‘I make you tea and sandwiches,’ Martha whispered, without expression or emotion in her voice.

His face was always etched with pain when he spoke, but the truth was that she didn’t understand much of what he said and often felt as though the pained expression and long woeful looks were for effect. For her benefit alone. She knew he was a sad and lonely man, and she supposed that was why she hadn’t screamed when he kissed her and placed his hands over her breasts. She had never been kissed before. She had thought about it and imagined what it would be like when Jake finally did it. But in reality her first kiss had been a crushing disappointment. She had hated it. It had made her feel sick and she had asked him to stop.

‘I’m sorry,’ he had said. ‘I thought you would like it. Thought that maybe it was what you were looking for when you spoke to me that day.’

‘Oh, no, Mr Scriven,’ she had said, taking a step back. He was far too close; he had taken to coming into her little galley kitchen off the sitting room and trapping her at the end, so that she had no escape. ‘It wasn’t that. I just saw that you were troubled and I wanted to help if I could.’

‘I see. Well, you did. I mean you have helped. It has been a relief telling you about my awful bloody wife and the way she has turned the children against me. All because I work long hours to pay for the school fees and the nice big house they want to live in.’

Martha almost smiled. ‘Well I’m glad I did help, then. Would you like some bread and butter with your tea?’

Anything other than touch me again, please, she thought.

In answer to her prayers, the sitting-room door opened and one of the other doctors walked in and shouted, ‘A quick cup of tea, please, Martha.’

Martha let the breath she had been unaware she was holding escape without a sound.

Mr Scriven looked over his shoulder and beamed at the new arrival. ‘Charles,’ he said. ‘Good to see you. Are you joining us for golf on Saturday?’ But as he turned to walk away, to join his colleague in the sitting room, he bent slightly and whispered in Martha’s ear, ‘I’ll be back, Martha. Later. With a treat.’

Dana stood outside what she thought must be the Lovely Lane nurses’ home with her overly heavy suitcase in one hand and a rain-dampened sheet of paper, extracted from her letter of acceptance, in the other. Home was just twenty-four hours away, but already felt like another lifetime. She had barely thought about Patrick, and the further she got from Ireland the more the memory had faded. When she realized how close she had come to being imprisoned in a life she had never wanted she felt herself begin to tremble, but she forced herself to stop. To put him and that night from her mind for ever, because the fact was, she was finally free.

Is it this door? she wondered for what felt like the tenth time. Before her stood an imposing building of large grey bricks on four floors. A towering black-painted door with a large polished brass handle stood at the top of a short flight of steps. The front garden lacked any flora or finery and comprised two finely manicured green lawns on either side of a short path. By the light of the street lamp she saw that the top of the low surrounding wall was pitted with holes which had once been home to a fine set of wrought-iron railings. The Lovely Lane home bore the scars of the war effort by shedding tears of rust every time it rained.

On the opposite side of the road was the Lovely Lane park, where branches once held back by railings grew out over the pavement and dripped rain from variegated leaves. There was no sign to announce that she was in the right place, and no number on the house. Her heart beat madly. She had never before approached such a building and she realized she would have to walk down the path and knock on that huge door. All she could think of was that it would be the wrong place and the owner would be angry at being disturbed. Her confidence was not what it was before Patrick had attacked her.

On arriving at the Pier Head, she had decided to walk to her destination. The letter she was holding said that Lovely Lane was only ten minutes from the docks, and she felt that the exercise might help to clear her thoughts a little. Her last moments in Ireland had been more eventful than she could ever have anticipated, and had done much to restore her deflated spirits. Mr Joyce had carried her case all the way to the ramp of the boat. He had spoken very little on the journey, as was his way, but when they approached the barrier he reached into his jacket and took out an envelope, which he held out to her.

‘What’s that?’ she had asked in a voice loaded with curiosity. ‘I already have me wages; ye gave them to me yesterday.’

‘I know that now,’ he replied. ‘But I don’t want yer mammy to be worried about ye. Here’s something to keep ye going when ye are in Liverpool.’

Dana took the envelope and looked inside, and saw a brown ten-shilling note wrapped around a much larger bundle. Hesitantly, she extracted the money and counted it in the fading light. ‘I can’t take this,’ she said, her eyes filling with tears as she stuffed the notes back in the envelope and thrust it back at him.

He had expected and prepared for this reaction. After all, she was Nancy’s daughter.

‘Well, it seems to me now that if ye give it back, and sure that is up to you, I’ll have to put it in the post and hope that Mrs Brock in the post office doesn’t find out and no postman on the way to Liverpool fancies it for himself.’

‘But I haven’t earned it,’ Dana gasped.

‘No, for sure, but when I tell yer mammy ye won’t be going hungry or dependent on anyone for anything it will make her happy, and wouldn’t that be a great thing indeed now. Your taking it would earn her that.’

Dana looked at the envelope in her hand and then back at Mr Joyce. She could not stop the tear that escaped from her eye and rolled down her cheek. Patrick, whom she had known since birth, had tried to rape her. Now another man from the village, with whom in all her life she had never held a conversation that was not about groceries or her mammy, was handing her two hundred pounds. She had seen her father return from market happy with a great deal less.

‘Thank you,’ she said, pushing the envelope deep down into her handbag. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Ye don’t have to say anything, but do come home to visit now, won’t ye? We will all be wanting to know how ye are getting along.’

It suddenly struck her that her mammy had said the same thing. She looked at Mr Joyce while she struggled to make sense of the coincidence, but there was no time.

‘All aboard,’ a voice rang out, and the next moment she was standing on the deck watching the lonely figure of Mr Joyce disappear into the crowd.

She had regretted her decision to walk the ten minutes to Lovely Lane in less than two and wished she had taken a taxi; the driver would have known exactly where to drop her off. The cabbies had shouted after her as she left the ferry and walked away up the rise, but she had placed her hand protectively over the envelope in her handbag and ignored their offers. She had money for the first time in her life and she wanted to keep it. She would not be wasting it on taxi fares.

‘Can I help? You look lost.’

Dana almost jumped out of her skin. A young man had approached her, also carrying a heavy suitcase, which he now set down next to hers. The first thought that crossed her mind was that she had never seen a man like this in Ireland. Even on Sundays, the boys at home never reached such a level of presentability. They were in a perpetual state of grubbiness from working every hour of daylight on the land. Those who could had done exactly what Dana was doing for herself and had left for Liverpool or New York. This man had not a speck of mud anywhere about him and his trousers were not ripped or tied up with twine. His teeth were white, his skin was clean and his hair was combed. A faint aroma hung about him, a light sweet and spicy smell infusing the cold damp air. This was not a man as Dana knew men to be and for a moment she stared, her mouth agape.