The Angels of Lovely Lane (45 page)

Hattie was peering over the wall between her back yard and Elsie’s. She took the stub of a roll-up ciggie out of her apron pocket and lit up, expecting to be standing around for at least five minutes to chew over Biddy’s news. She squinted as the blue smoke rose upwards and tears stung her eyes in protest.

Biddy was tempted to share. To tell Hattie that she knew where Martha was. It took every ounce of her willpower to keep her own counsel. ‘Just tell her to come down to mine when she gets back, will ye? Tell her I have something for her now.’

Hattie wasn’t going to let her away that easily. ‘Why don’t you tell me what it is and I’ll pass a message on? I’m reliable, me.’ Hattie crossed her arms and leant on the wall. ‘You wouldn’t be running like that if you didn’t have something important to say. I haven’t seen you run that fast since New Year’s Eve in ’forty-six when you realized your Mick was in the pub with yer purse. Generous man your Mick.’

Biddy blessed herself, remembering the night. ‘I shouldn’t have bothered running and put my heart in danger like that. The bloody purse was empty by the time I got there. The bastard.’ Hattie smiled. This was more like it. She knew mentioning their Mick would distract Biddy.

Due to its close proximity, almost everyone who lived in the community worked at the hospital in some capacity or another. Hattie was a night cleaner who nursed a deep resentment that after all these years she had never progressed.

‘What is it? Go on then, tell me,’ she said. ‘You know me, I’m the very soul of discretion I am. I’ll tell Elsie as soon as she gets back. I might even go up to Josie’s to fetch her for you, if you like, seeing as how you’re all out of breath. Course, I’d ’ave to know what it was I was going to fetch her for first though, obviously.’

Biddy looked down at her shopping bags. It was no good. Elsie wasn’t here, she needed to get word to her and what better way of doing it than telling a woman with a gob the size of the Mersey Tunnel. She took the path of least resistance.

‘Tell Elsie to come down to mine as soon as she gets back. Tell her I know where Martha is.’ With that, Biddy picked up the potatoes and her basket and trotted out of Elsie’s gate, and back up to the entry to her own house.

‘Biddy,’ shouted Hattie, throwing her cigarette over the yard wall into the cobbled entry. ‘Biddy!’ But there was no reply. Hattie decided there was nothing for it. Placing her washing on the pulley in the kitchen and hoisting it up to the ceiling, she left via the front door and began knocking on doors to spread the word. Biddy knew where Martha was. Now all they had to do was find Elsie.

‘What a day this has been,’ Biddy said to her welcoming cat. ‘If the Holy Mother told you herself what had gone on, you wouldn’t believe her.’

Letting the cat out and placing the kettle on the range, she began to unpack her shopping. She watched the cat through the kitchen window as he leapt from the roof of the outhouse up on to the entry wall.

‘Find Elsie, would ye?’ she said to him. She often talked to the cat, believing she got more sense out of him than from most people.

*

As soon as Biddy had put the phone down on Dessie, she had made her way to the classroom where Emily Haycock was teaching a class of final-year students, and gestured frantically through the glass in the door. Emily had frowned but, realizing that it must be something serious for Biddy to disturb her, said, ‘We will finish early today, nurses.’ A murmur of appreciation had swept around the room.

Biddy didn’t wait for the students to leave.

‘Something bad is happening on ward two. I think your Nurse Tanner may need your help.’

Biddy had no need to say another word. Emily didn’t even wait to collect her cape. She was off and down the stairs as fast as her feet would carry her.

The hush which had descended on the Lovely Lane home was unnatural. Even the knitters were subdued. With Celia Forsyth away on holiday they were not obliged to discuss the latest pattern or argue the merits of stocking stitch or moss stitch, and their comments were confined to ‘pass the wool’ or, ‘dash it, lost count again’, over the clickety clack of their wooden needles.

Sister Haycock had arrived with Nurse Tanner and the two of them were presently closeted in a small downstairs study room. When the door had closed behind them Pammy had thought for a brief moment that Sister Haycock was going to hug her. She was certain the nursing director had reached out for her hand, but of course she hadn’t. It was just her imagination. Emily asked her to go over and over again the events of the afternoon. She let Pammy cry as she gazed down on the girl’s now unkempt and flowing hair, her red bloodshot eyes and swollen red nose and thought, I’ve got this, Maisie. I’ve got her back for you. My turn to help your family now. It also occurred to her that one day soon she would have to face the past and turn to the future. Doing that would mean having to knock on Maisie’s door.

‘I’ve let everyone down,’ Pammy sobbed. ‘Me mam, me dad, you, Mrs Duffy, everyone.’

Emily let Pammy cry it out, and handed over her own handkerchief. ‘Look, Nurse Tanner, everything always appears worse at night, especially on a wet and miserable night like tonight. Listen to that wind. There’s a storm brewing out there.’ She was trying to divert Pammy’s thoughts, to lift her out of the well of despair she had fallen into. ‘I know Matron was harsh and Sister Antrobus was worse, but that was tonight. Matron has agreed that we can go back to her office tomorrow to talk about this. You haven’t gone yet, Nurse Tanner. As far as I am concerned, you are still a part of St Angelus and I will do everything in my power to keep it that way. Let’s pray for a miracle. Matron’s word is law, but perhaps we can persuade her to change it.’

‘I think it was all a bit of a shock, to be honest,’ said Pammy, as she wiped her nose. ‘I’ve never seen an abortion before. I don’t suppose I would have, with them being illegal. He said he had to do it, because of the carbolic. Said she was blistered and burnt. But he did something very odd. He injected straight into her uterus through her abdominal wall. Staff Nurse Bates said the drug was only supposed to be given intramuscular by the drip. She said that a side effect of the oxytocin – that was the drug he gave her – was that her uterus could have ruptured.’

Emily retained her composure. That was a piece of information to be filed away.

‘What would you have done, Sister Haycock, if you had been me? Some of the nurses were turning up their noses at the girl, you know, and that’s something else. We didn’t even know her name. Mr Scriven said it was Jane Smith but we knew that was a lie.’ Pammy’s voice began to rise.

‘There, there, don’t get upset again. The other nurses should have known better. Whatever one’s religion, it has to be left at the ward door in cases like this. The moral position would be to ensure that abortion is available free on the National Health Service for all women in the early stages, to prevent cases like the one you saw on ward two today. Women should not have to resort to visiting butchers in back streets.

‘You hold tight, Nurse Tanner. I need to think. Things always seem better in the morning. And, remember, pray for that miracle.’

*

Dana and Beth had colonized the far corner of the sitting room, and when Pammy returned to join them they absorbed their tearful friend into their midst while she recounted events. ‘Look after her,’ Sister Haycock mouthed to Dana as she popped her head round the sitting-room door before she left.

‘He refused to accept that the baby had lived and said it hadn’t and that I was imagining it, but I know it did. I saw it with my own eyes,’ Pammy said.

Dana blessed herself and gasped, ‘The poor little mite.’

‘Why did she have an abortion in the first place?’ asked Beth. ‘Did you get to find out?’

‘No, not a word. We didn’t even have any name or address or anything.’

‘Well, that’s most odd. If you ask me, something is very untoward there,’ said the stickler for standards, Beth.

Dana looked thoughtful. ‘What did Sister Haycock say when she came to the ward?’ she asked. ‘What a stroke of luck that was altogether. Imagine. She just chose that moment to pop in to see Sister Antrobus. A few minutes later and it would probably have been too late. See, there is a God. You must pray to him tonight, Pammy, to say thank you for sending Sister Haycock to the ward for ye.’

Pammy dried her eyes for what seemed to be the twentieth time that day.

‘You should have heard how Sister Antrobus shouted at me when I went back into the ward to find out what Branna meant. Sister Haycock heard her and told me to sit on the visitors’ benches in the corridor outside while she went into the office to speak to Matron, and then when she came back out she said, “We have until tomorrow to make a case to keep you at St Angelus. I told them a decision made in the heat of the moment would not be wise and very unprofessional.” While she was talking to me we could hear Mr Scriven in the office complaining to Matron and Sister Antrobus. He’s a nasty piece of work, that man.’

The girls listened attentively. Pammy didn’t mention the part about Sister Haycock telling her she needed a miracle to happen tonight. She couldn’t truly acknowledge to herself what a precarious situation she had landed herself in. It had all happened so quickly. She had allowed her emotions to get the better of her, and Pammy knew that was a recipe for disaster. Her friends hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen the look on Sister Antrobus’s or Mr Scriven’s face, or Matron’s for that matter. They hadn’t heard any of them shouting. The hopeful conclusion her friends had reached, that she would survive this, sounded empty and hollow to Pammy. If she had left her personal feelings to one side and acted in an entirely professional manner, she would not be facing the prospect of returning home, her dreams shattered.

It was the midwife who had visited the house every day to attend to premature Lorraine who had inspired the young Pammy to become a nurse. Pammy wanted to be just like Nurse Heather, who had sucked out Lorraine’s airways with her little tube and massaged her back for over half an hour every morning, with the baby almost hanging upside down on her knee. She had weighed her, bathed her, and instructed family and friends how to manage until she returned the following morning. On the day she announced her visits would have to cease, when Lorraine was twice the size she had been at birth, she left Pammy a little card for when she arrived home from school. On the front was a sprig of pressed heather. The delicate paper-thin lilac and purple petals were almost transparent. Pammy thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. On the inside the midwife had written the words
To Nurse Pammy. Thank you for being my little helper. I shall miss you. You were the best nurse I have ever worked with. Look after your little sister for me. I discharge her into your care. Nurse Heather.

What had happened in the sluice room that evening could not have been further from the image of nursing that Pammy had carried with her since that day. Now she wondered to herself whether she really wanted to be a nurse any longer. Did she honestly want to work with the likes of Sister Antrobus and Mr Scriven, people who had denied a birth and a life?

‘If it had been a little girl and not a little boy, she may well have survived,’ said Beth matter-of-factly.

‘Why?’ asked Pammy, taking a fresh, dry handkerchief from Beth’s proffered hand. Pammy’s own was by now a soaking wet rag, beyond use.

‘No one really knows, it’s just that baby girls are much stronger than boys at the same stage of gestation and tend to survive more often. It’s a mystery, but that’s how it is. You will hardly find any premature baby boys that survive. It’s always the girls.’

Pammy thought it was equally mysterious that Beth was being so understanding and kind. She had moved seamlessly from being a very definite fan of the ambitious and unpleasant Celia to a supportive member of their group.

Mrs Duffy’s progress towards the sitting room could be heard long before she appeared. The wheels on her trolley squeaked and groaned under the weight of steaming copper jugs of milky drinks and home-made biscuits as she made her way from the kitchen to the sitting room.

Emily had popped into the kitchen before she left to explain what had happened.

‘I think we all need an early night tonight, nurses, don’t you?’ Mrs Duffy said to the room in general as she handed Pammy her drink. Pammy looked up at her and, not daring to speak, simply nodded. She felt as though she had let Mrs Duffy down along with everyone else.

‘Things always look better in the morning, and goodness me, we all need that, don’t we? So, let’s be having you all up the stairs as soon as you’ve finished.’ Mrs Duffy was afraid that if she didn’t spur the nurses on they would sit there all night, chewing over a situation which not one of them could influence by anything she said or did. There was only one woman who could make a difference and she was already on the case. Sister Haycock was Pammy’s only hope.

None of the girls would dream of arguing with Mrs Duffy, whose kindness and wisdom had inspired much respect from all of them except Celia, who fortunately was not around to inflame the situation. Half an hour later, everyone was tucked up in bed. Dana and Beth had run out of words of comfort, and had to agree with Mrs Duffy that waiting for the morning was now the only thing to be done.

Pammy lay in her bed and stared at the moon and stars through her window, wondering what tomorrow would bring. Sister Haycock’s words rang in her ears.
Matron’s word is law
. She knew it might be the last night she would ever spend at Lovely Lane. She heard the thunder seconds before the flash of lightning illuminated the cosy room she had come to love. As a lonely tear ran down her cheek, Pammy said aloud, ‘This is it. You’ve done it now, soft girl.’

She didn’t want to leave her friends, Lovely Lane, or her familiar room. She thought of Mrs Toft and of her appreciation and their laughter when she said goodbye. She remembered how Martha O’Brien’s face had been filled with gratitude when she had helped her through her pain by holding her hand. Helping people, being a good nurse – and despite her earlier doubts she knew she had been a good nurse – was the only thing she could be proud of and the only thing in the world that she knew she truly wanted. The sound of her sobs was drowned by the thunder which rattled at the windows.