The Angels of Lovely Lane (21 page)

Sister Ryan stopped talking to make sure everyone was still standing, then:

‘Mr Nightlinger, open a fridge, would you, and let the girls see their first cadaver.’

Mr Nightlinger had been perched on a wooden stool while Sister Ryan spoke. He slipped from the stool with no great hurry and walked towards a small square metal door. With a flourish, and with a movement so rapid that he took the girls by surprise, he pulled the fridge handle down. A body shot out among them on well-oiled runners. The screams of twenty-one nurses filled the air. Mr Nightlinger always presented the grimmest body he had in store. This one was an elderly tramp. Despite the best efforts of the mortuary staff and the frosty paleness of his skin, he did not look contented or serene.

A grin slowly spread across Mr Nightlinger’s face just as a loud thud announced that one of the girls had passed out cold.

‘Oh, what a shame,’ said Pammy to Dana, as they turned round to see who it was. ‘What comes around goes around, eh?’

Behind them, Nurse Celia Forsyth lay flat on her back on the cold grey tiled floor.

Jake and Martha left the cinema hand in hand. Jake had sat with his arm around Martha’s shoulder throughout the film. He felt more like a man than he had ever done before.

‘That Diana Dors, did you see her hair?’ Martha’s voice was full of excitement. ‘Everything about her was so sophisticated. I’ll never be like that, Jake. My hair will never shine like that. It was so beautiful.’

It hadn’t exactly been Diana Dors’s hair or her sophistication that had impressed Jake. There were moments in the film when he had to remember to check that his mouth wasn’t hanging open, but he was keeping quiet. He didn’t want to do or say anything that would make his Martha feel less than the beautiful princess he thought she was.

‘She was very pretty, but not as pretty as you, Martha. She has a long way to go there yet to catch you up.’

Martha squealed. ‘Jake, you are full of the blarney sometimes. Honest to God, you are.’

Jake grinned and hugged Martha to him. ‘I’m not. I just don’t think there is any woman in Liverpool as pretty as you, that’s all. I’ve always thought so. Ever since you came off your three-wheeler when you were a toddler and hit the kerb with your mouth. Do you remember that?’

Martha groaned. ‘Do you know, my gum still feels sore sometimes.’

‘I’m not surprised. You knocked out every one of your front baby teeth and the ones that were left, they all turned black. Pretty as a picture you were. I led you with one hand and dragged the bike with the other, all the way to your front door. Yer mam, she almost had a fit when she saw you and all the blood pouring down the front of your dress.’

Martha giggled. ‘She did, but that’s the reason she likes you, Jake, because you looked after me. My mam never forgets a good turn.’

Jake felt his heart swell. Maybe it was because of that day, at age six when Martha had first made him feel like a man. The day she had turned her babyish face towards him and cried for help. Jake sometimes felt overcome by feelings of protectiveness when he was around Martha.

‘I want to do that for ever, Martha. Protect you.’

Martha buried her face in his shoulder as they walked along in step. ‘Don’t let anyone hear you say that, Jake Berry,’ she said. ‘Someone might think you were proposing to me.’

Jake held Martha out at arm’s length. That had certainly not been his intention when he collected Martha from her front door to take her to the picture house. In fact, it was something he thought would be at least another year down the line, when he had done the house up and had somewhere to take his new bride, but in a flash he was seized by the moment and before he could stop himself, the words were out.

‘Martha, I am,’ he said, surprising himself as much as Martha. ‘I am proposing to you,’ and in the middle of a busy moonlit street Jake dropped on to one knee. ‘Martha O’Brien, will you marry me?’ He almost laughed out loud at himself.

For a moment, Martha was so stunned, she could not respond.

‘Go on, love, say yes.’ A couple walking past them had stopped and were watching with amused grins on their faces, and now a small crowd of people leaving the Odeon began to gather around them. Jake began to feel very self-conscious as Martha, embarrassed and thrilled, began to giggle.

‘Martha, will you answer me? Would you look at the cut of me, kneeling on the floor, me knees gone numb.’

Martha hesitated no longer. Without any idea she was saying yes to a man of some means, she put Jake out of his misery. ‘I will, Jake Berry, yes, I will.’

Rising to his feet, Jake removed his cap and kissed his new fiancée. It took a moment for them to realize they were being applauded by a crowd of cinema-goers.

‘That was better than the film, that, mate,’ shouted one man, as he clapped.

‘Make sure he always brings you tea in bed, love,’ called his wife.

‘May your first born be male,’ shouted another. But Martha and Jake were lost in the bliss of the moment and the anticipation of a life ahead.

*

In Lovely Lane, Mrs Duffy had advised the girls to make the most of their weekends off, because once they were on the wards a free Sunday would be a rare treat. Off-duty preferences and requests were always granted to qualified staff first and then nurses who were further up the training ladder; new probationers were last on the list.

‘The thing is, you have to bite your lip and get through the first year without complaining,’ Mrs Duffy told Dana and Victoria, as they helped her clear away the hot chocolate mugs so that she could leave promptly.

The last thing Mrs Duffy liked to do each night was to ensure the catch was down on the front door before she left. During the day the door was left unlocked, for nurses coming to and from the hospital and for the cleaning maids. ‘Let me hear the chain slide now,’ she would shout through the letter box to whichever nurses on the other side had been persuaded to engage in the exaggerated performance of dropping the catch and slipping the bolt and chain across. ‘Good girls,’ they would hear her say once satisfied her charges were locked up as safely as chickens in a coop.

What Mrs Duffy didn’t know was that as much as she cared for her nurses, they cared for her back. They also had their own ritual, within the sitting room. ‘Mrs Duffy is leaving,’ the nurse on door and chain duty would yell down the corridor. This was the code for whoever was in the sitting room to put down her book or knitting and leave the warmth of the fire to stand discreetly behind the long dark velvet curtains in order to peep through the nets, which Mrs Duffy prided herself on keeping snow white, and watch her as she descended the steps to wait at the bus stop on the opposite side of the road, directly outside the park gates. The nurse on Mrs Duffy duty stood at the window until Mrs Duffy was seated on the bus and watched as it pulled away.

‘It is not an exaggeration to say that as a new probationary nurse you are on the bottom of the pile, I’m afraid,’ Mrs Duffy had told them, ‘and you will spend most of your early days in the sluice room cleaning out bedpans. Bedpan rounds are every two hours, so just as you finish cleaning up after one another comes along. I’ve had some girls come back here at night in tears, unable to face food and complaining they can’t shake the smell off. They don’t last long. Usually gone before the year is out, so don’t any of you fall into that trap. Just grit your teeth and remember nothing is ever as bad as it seems, and I’ve heard it all. There isn’t one gruesome detail I haven’t had described to me about bedpans, I can assure you.’

When Mrs Duffy said this, Victoria almost heaved.

‘Come along, Nurse Baker. You are the daughter of a lord, aren’t you? You should be made of stronger stuff than that. It will be your job to show a stiff upper lip to the others.’

Victoria racked her brains to make sense of why she, the eighteen-year-old daughter of a hereditary peer, should be made of stronger stuff than anyone else. If anything, she was the most terrified of them all.

Until recently, she had never cleaned her own toilet or washed her clothes and had not even contemplated the prospect of cleaning out a bedpan. In the circles Victoria had moved in at home, no one ever discussed such things. She had known that many patients spent a long time in bed recovering from illness and surgery, but it had never occurred to her that clearing away the products of a bowel evacuation would be her responsibility.

‘You had another telephone call from home last night. Was it your aunt again?’ Mrs Duffy was never nosy, but always chatty, which sometimes amounted to the same thing.

Victoria almost bent over with embarrassment. She did not want to lie to Mrs Duffy, but in recent weeks hardly an evening had gone by without a call from Roland via the pay phone that was situated on the wall in the laundry room. She had received a number of demanding letters from her Aunt Minnie, too, who seemed incapable of understanding that Victoria could not come and go as she pleased.
Anyone would think you were in a nunnery
, she had written.

What Victoria didn’t mention to anyone, not even Aunt Minnie, was the alarming letter she had received from Roland.

I have been dismissed from handling the affairs of Baker Hall
, he had told her
. Your aunt has instructed a large firm from Manchester
.
It is a bit of a blow, I don’t mind admitting. Doesn’t bode well for me locally
. Victoria paced her room as she read this. ‘Why? Why?’ she said out loud. She didn’t really need to ask; she knew the answer. It was Aunt Minnie’s way. She had to be the one who was in charge. The decider and the controller.
Please don’t tell them at home that I have written to you, but when it is time to visit, let me know and I shall collect you from the station and we can talk.

Without a second’s hesitation, Victoria had gone straight to the phone box on the corner of Lovely Lane and called Roland. Without even knowing it, Aunt Minnie had brought them closer together. Now, the most difficult part of telephone conversations with Aunt Minnie was not letting slip that she knew everything that was happening back at Baker Hall.

Victoria could not wait to see Roland again. With every day that passed and every telephone conversation they became closer and closer. She wanted to see Roland far more than she did her Aunt Minnie, who had telephoned Victoria the previous evening demanding that she return for a week. Victoria had explained to her that it was impossible. ‘I have my PTS exam in a few weeks, Aunt Minnie. I can’t just come and go as I please.’

‘Well, that is just ridiculous. She says she can’t come, Gerald. What? What shall I tell her? Your father says it’s not a prison, Victoria, you must be able to get away sometimes. They aren’t the bloody Japs. Life is not easy here, Victoria, I can tell you. Gerald, will you shut up. I cannot hear her. Victoria, your father wants to see you. He wants you to come home. He’s not happy, what with everything as it is. Can’t you come for a visit, dear?’

‘I honestly can’t, not until my PTS exam is over. Please understand that. It really is very important.’

‘What I don’t understand, Victoria, is why with so much happening here you have taken yourself off to bloody Liverpool, of all places, to prance around like this. Gerald, WILL YOU SHUT UP!’

Victoria heard the telephone receiver click back into place.

‘It was Aunt Minnie, Mrs Duffy,’ she said now. ‘She would like me to visit home, but I told her I can’t. Not until after my exams.’

‘Well, you will be going straight on to the wards as soon as the exam results are known. It could be a while before you have time to visit home. Best wait until we know what your ward off-duty will be.’

Victoria could barely hide her disappointment, but it was Roland she wanted to see, not Aunt Minnie. She was desperate to see Roland again. The man who had made her feel safe as her world fell apart. ‘Of course, Mrs Duffy.’

‘Oh, I nearly forgot. There’s another letter for you.’ Mrs Duffy took an envelope out of her apron pocket.

Victoria removed the clips from her hair and took off her cap before lying on her bed to savour the contents of the letter. She had recognized the handwriting immediately.

I hope you have managed to avoid my brother and keep your heart safe from him and ready for me
, he wrote, only half in jest.
He tells me he has seen you about the hospital looking beautiful in your uniform and I don’t mind admitting I am eaten up with jealousy.

The truth was, being absent from Baker Hall had made her very sure that Roland had already won her heart. His brother Teddy could be the next Laurence Olivier, but he did nothing for her. Roland had lit a torch somewhere within her and nothing Teddy could say or do would alter that. She had told none of the girls anything about Roland. For now, he was her secret and she would keep it that way.

* * *

It was Sunday evening and the results of the PTS exam were due to be delivered to the nurses’ home.

The girls waited nervously in the hallway for Mrs Duffy to return from Matron’s office with the announcements and a list informing the new nurses which ward they had been allocated for their first placement.

‘Oh my God, was there anything ever as bad as this,’ groaned Pammy, who was sitting on the stairs.

‘Will you move away from the window, Nurse Harper,’ Dana snapped. ‘Looking out won’t make Mrs Duffy get here any quicker.’ It was unusual for Dana to snap at anyone and the assembled girls fell silent, until Pammy, who could never keep quiet, chirped up once more.

‘Oh, God, I can’t wait to know which ward I’m on, never mind the results. I feel so nervous I want to be sick. Just think, tomorrow, if we have all passed, we will all be proper nurses.’

Lizzie burst in from a holiday at home, allowing a fierce wind to blow down the hall, and as she opened the front door, they all shrieked.

‘Oh, it’s you! We thought it was Mrs Duffy with the results list,’ Pammy told her.

‘Are your twelve weeks up already?’ said Lizzie, amazed. ‘Golly, that went quickly.’