The Angels of Lovely Lane (38 page)

He doesn’t know where you are. He doesn’t know where you live. Liverpool is a big city. The new roads are being laid miles away. He will never find you. By the time she had reached the dining room, she was calmer.

‘Shush now, nurses,’ said Mrs Duffy, coming back from the kitchen to begin collecting up the plates. ‘Let’s have a bit of quiet. We are in the midst of death. You should all call into evening mass on your way home, if you can make it, and say a prayer for Nurse Baker.’

Beth, who was sitting quietly at the table reading her Evelyn Pearce, spoke up.

‘Mrs Duffy, I didn’t hear Celia go and she has my revision notes in her room. Could you let me in to collect them, please?’ Celia was the only nurse in the home who kept her bedroom door locked. The rest of the rooms remained on the snip and nurses walked in and out of each other’s rooms at will.

‘Of course I will. Here, take my master key and run up now. Bring the key back down on your way out. Do you know where she will have put them?’

‘Oh, yes, they’ll be on her desk. I’ll be right back.’

There was a clatter of chairs and dishes as the nurses helped clear away and a rumble of footsteps on the wooden floor as they dashed towards the stairs.

‘Could you post this letter to Nurse Baker, please? I’ve put a stamp on it.’ Dana held out her letter to Mrs Duffy.

‘Come here, you,’ said Mrs Duffy. Dana noticed that her eyes were watery. She threw her arms around Dana and gave her a bear hug. Dana took a deep breath. She wanted to stand there and melt into the hug. To sink into it and be repaired.

‘You have a heart of gold, you, writing that letter to Nurse Baker,’ said Mrs Duffy. Dana nodded her thanks, not daring herself to speak.

Her heart was heavy as they walked towards the hospital, her mind full of the letter from home. Concern for Victoria. Disappointment in Teddy. Fear of Patrick. There was an autumn chill in the air, and the girls had their caps tucked under their capes as though they were sheltering a newborn puppy. They had learnt, within their first days on the wards during a wet March, that wearing a cap on a damp day affected the starch and the cap, instead of standing firm, frill proud, wilted like a damp handkerchief. The Mersey mist had much to answer for.

‘Have you decided what you are going to wear for the dance?’ Pammy decided to chance her luck. ‘The doctors are very keen and they have asked if some of us will help to organize it and be on the social club committee. There is always one nurse from each intake and I said it could be me. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘I’m not going,’ said Dana unequivocally. ‘Even if I wanted to, I don’t have a dress for that kind of thing, and I don’t care who is on the committee.’

She thought of the clothes hanging up in her wardrobe. The day dress she had bought on the market at Castlebar. The evening dress made by her mammy of black crepe, with six mother of pearl buttons placed in a neat row down the front, which at the time Dana had thought was gorgeous. Now, having seen the fashionable clothes Maisie Tanner had sewn for her daughter, Victoria’s day dresses, bought in the best stores in London, and even those of studious Beth, Dana would rather die than be seen out in any of them. She had decided that her uniform was the best-quality dress she owned.

‘But you must. You have to. We can’t go without you,’ squealed Pammy. ‘Beth has agreed to go, sort of, and it will be just what Victoria needs when she gets back, to cheer her up like.’

They both turned as they heard the sound of Beth’s footsteps running to catch them up. ‘Did you find your revision notes?’ asked Dana, who wanted to borrow them herself.

‘I, er, I did, thanks.’

‘You will definitely come to the dance, won’t you, Beth?’ said Pammy, who had now decided on a different tactic to persuade Dana to agree.

‘Only under duress,’ Beth replied. ‘But, yes, I’ll go to the ball and make a right spectacle of myself.’

‘Oh, it’s not a ball, Beth,’ said Pammy with a look of astonishment. ‘It’s just a doctors’ dance in the social club.’

Beth gave a rare smile. ‘I do know the difference between the two, Pammy. It was just a figure of speech.’

Pammy laughed with embarrassment. ‘Of course you do. I’m such a div. Anyway, Dana, we will speak to my mam. She’ll sort you out with a frock. No one can resist Mam. She’ll have you round her little finger and your measurements on her dressmaker’s dummy in no time. You too will come to the ball, Cinderella, along with Beth here. You don’t mind me being on the committee, do you, Beth?’

‘Well, no, just as long as you run everything past me. These things have to be organized properly. They don’t just happen, you know. Maybe I should come to the meetings with you? Just to be sure.’

Even Dana, from the depths of her despair, could not resist a smile as they walked on up the lane. It only took five minutes in the company of her friends to calm her. It was obvious that the man she had thought of so much over the past few months was not who she had thought he was, but why would he be? She had experienced the full gamut of emotions, from upset and disappointment through to anger. Now she accepted that for girls like her there were only ever men like Patrick O’Dowd. Maybe if he bumped into her in Liverpool, she should just give in. Maybe that was how it was meant to be. She might be nursing in a big city, but she knew in her heart of hearts that she would only ever be a girl from an Atlantic-coast farming village, whose grandest sartorial concession had been to leave her dungarees and rubber boots back at home on the farm.

Men like Teddy were attracted to pretty, well-spoken, elegant girls like Victoria and not to tomboy daughters of an Irish farmer. She could not alter the ways of the world or even of Liverpool, and she most certainly could not change her destiny. She was Dana Brogan from the farm, and despite the pretty uniform and the cape and the frilled hat, notwithstanding attempting to discover a more exciting and brighter future, away from milking cows and planting potatoes, that was really who she was and always would be. Who was she trying to kid?

As she walked to the hospital with Pammy and Beth on a dank and dismal morning, Dana accepted that one day her future would be with Patrick O’Dowd and she had just better get used to it.

*

Beth hadn’t been able to find her revision notes anywhere in Celia’s room. Like all their rooms, it was tidy and well ordered. Mrs Duffy inspected them once a week to check that the maids were doing their job properly, and if anywhere was less than shipshape the offending maid and the nurse herself soon knew about it.

‘Well, blow me,’ said Beth out loud as she carefully looked through the papers on Celia’s desk again. It occurred to her that maybe Celia had left for her holiday and taken Beth’s handwritten notes with her. They had an exam in two weeks’ time and Beth felt fury rising as it began to dawn on her that that was exactly what Celia had done, leaving her in the lurch.

‘You are just the limit,’ Beth whispered as she picked up Celia’s book on trolley setting for nurses and then, intrigued, the sheet of paper which slipped out.

It had fluttered down on to the desk and Beth thought she could see the word
Dana
written on the front in a bold and confident script. Beth couldn’t help herself. Slowly, she opened the letter. ‘Why is this here?’ Beth wondered out loud. Without knowing why, she slipped the note into her apron pocket then tiptoed out of the room, locked the door with the master key and went downstairs to Mrs Duffy.

Matron fussed around the kitchen. She had invited Sister Antrobus for supper again and she was due in less than half an hour. She polished the sherry glasses and made sure the plates were warm.

‘I hope she likes chicken, Blackie,’ she said to the dog, who was almost leaning against the oven door, looking hopeful. ‘Some people don’t, you know. Oh, I know you do. Put that tongue back in, or you will burn it on the door. It’s the first time I’ve ever made this sauce. Any sauce, really. Can you tell?’ The dog looked up at her as she popped a lump of butter on to the potatoes, ears pricked, tongue at the ready to catch anything that might fall from the table. Butter was still difficult to acquire in the shops, but not so hard if you ran a hospital. She transferred the dish from the gas oven into the old warming oven at the side of the big chimney, feeling smug that she had insisted it remained when they removed the old range last year.

She wanted everything to be perfect when Sister Antrobus arrived. They had spent some of their off-duty time together. Matron had invited her to a concert at the Philharmonic Hall to hear the Messiah last Christmas. They had also attended a play together at the Royal Court Theatre. Matron had been thrilled on that particular occasion.

‘Do you know, I haven’t been here since before the big fire,’ she had told Sister Antrobus.

‘Well, we must jolly well come again,’ Sister Antrobus had said and Matron’s heart sang. However, no return invitation had been forthcoming. No indication that Sister Antrobus was keen to spend more time in her company was apparent and she was longing to spend another evening alone with her, just the two of them.

She remembered the first time she had invited Sister Antrobus to her private rooms in the hospital. She knew how people talked, especially the porters. But, realizing it would be odd to invite Sister Antrobus to another concert, she had become almost desperate. She felt covered in shame when she thought of the tactics she had deployed, and when the hour had actually arrived, her stomach had quivered, her mouth had felt dry and her hands had been shaking as she listened for the footsteps on the wooden stairs leading to the door of her flat. She remembered how it had taken her weeks to build up the courage to issue the invitation. At all costs, she must never reveal her true feelings.

Now, dashing into the bedroom, she ran a comb through her hair yet again and checked her fingernails. For the first time in her life, they were adorned with polish. Cutex Pink Shimmer from Woolworths. She looked at herself in the mirror. She very rarely wore her own clothes. Quite often she remained in her office until after the night staff had come on duty. She would have a word with Night Sister, walk Blackie around the perimeter of the hospital and return to her flat, take a bath and change into her nightclothes. Recently a television had been installed in the flat and she sometimes watched the news before she took herself off to bed. And that was her life. Work, dog walk, Horlicks, the news, bed. It was the same every single night. Night after night. Year after year, until now, at fifty, she was acutely aware that there would be no surprises left in life. She was who she was. Alone. Without family or friends, and she could see no way that would change. Unless she did something about it.

‘How do I look, Blackie?’ She turned from the mirror to face her affectionate companion. She had carried him into her room and sat him on the bed where he lay on her pillow, gazing up adoringly. ‘Will I pass?’ she asked, as she leant over to ruffle his fur. Smiling at the little dog, she looked into his doting eyes. She felt happy. It was not a feeling that was familiar to her, but tonight her favourite person was coming to supper and she was filled with delight. Yet it was not a happiness she would be able to share, because she had no idea how or where to begin. Her feelings would be her own. Never to be revealed to anyone, because she didn’t know how.

*

‘Well, I have to say, that was the most delicious sauce. I would never have considered putting a sauce on chicken. How very clever.’ Sister Antrobus wiped her mouth with her napkin and, having devoured most of the chicken, leant back in the chair and raised her wine glass.

The wine was sweet. Matron was furious with herself. She knew nothing about wine and had sought advice from the woman in the wine store.

‘I drink Guinness meself,’ the woman had cackled, ‘but we do sell an awful lot of it. Oh yeah, that’s me bestseller on a Satdy night. You can’t go wrong with that.’

Matron thought she must be right. How could she possibly go wrong with a bestseller? But now the wine, which was so yellow it looked more like a urine sample, had been poured into the glasses and she wanted to die with embarrassment. It was horribly sweet and sickly, but she noticed that this hadn’t prevented Sister Antrobus from drinking it in rather large gulps. She thought that Sister Antrobus probably had to do that to disguise the taste.

Matron had already decided she would return to the wine shop tomorrow and give that woman what for. Bestseller my backside, she thought, and she had bought half a dozen bottles, too, as they were on special offer. She wondered whether or not the dust on the shoulders of the bottles should have been a giveaway. It had almost spoilt her evening, and if it hadn’t been for the wonderful conversation and the fact that she and Sister Antrobus got on together so well it could easily have done so.

Laying down her knife and fork on her plate, she answered, ‘It’s called Sauce Diane. I saw the recipe in
Woman’s Weekly
and thought I would give it a try. Like you, I thought it might be quite risky putting a sauce on a chicken, but as they say, one has to live dangerously every now and then.’

‘Sauce Diane? Oh I say, that’s terribly exotic.’ Sister Antrobus laughed. The dreadful wine, on top of the sherry Matron had offered as an aperitif, had gone straight to her head. The sherry had also been bought from the woman in the wine shop.

‘Try this one. Golden Knight. You can’t go wrong with that,’ she had said, failing to mention that the hardened local drinkers referred to it as golden shite.

‘Now, to move to the reason I invited you tonight,’ Matron lied. ‘How has our chairman’s son and new consultant Mr Gaskell settled down?’

Sister Antrobus took another sip of her wine, although being a woman of little finesse it was more like another gulp. ‘Very well indeed. He has all his posts in place. However, I have no patience with some of their new methods. They discharged a post-op fibroidectomy today who was only operated on a week ago. Mr Scriven keeps his in for a full three weeks. At this rate, we shall be run off our feet. For each patient Mr Gaskell discharges, another walks in through the doors.’ Matron filled Sister Antrobus’s glass with more wine. ‘And do you think he will be good for St Angelus?’