The Bad Penny
KATIE FLYNN
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Epub ISBN 9781446410820
Reissued by Arrow Books in 2004
17 19 20 18 16
Copyright © Katie Flynn 2002
Katie Flynn has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published in the United Kingdom in 2002 by William Heinemann
First published in paperback in 2002 by Arrow Books
Arrow Books
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099436539
This one is for Jo Prince, because she reads all my books – and tells me what she thinks of them. Thanks, Jo!
The Bad Penny
Katie Flynn has lived for many years in the north-west. A compulsive writer, she started with short stories and articles and many of her early stories were broadcast on Radio Mersey. She decided to write her Liverpool series after hearing the reminiscences of family members about life in the city in the early years of the century. She also writes as Judith Saxton.
Praise for Katie Flynn
‘If you pick up a Katie Flynn book it’s going to be a wrench to put it down again’
Holyhead & Anglesey Mail
‘She’s a challenge to Josephine Cox’
Bookseller
‘A heartwarming story of love and loss’
Woman’s Weekly
‘One of the best Liverpool writers’
Liverpool Echo
‘[Katie Flynn] has the gift that Catherine Cookson had of bringing the period and the characters to life’
Caernarfon & Denbigh Herald
Also by Katie Flynn
A Liverpool Lass
The Girl From Penny Lane
Liverpool Taffy
The Mersey Girls
Strawberry Fields
Rainbow’s End
Rose of Tralee
No Silver Spoon
Polly’s Angel
The Girl from Seaforth Sands
The Liverpool Rose
Poor Little Rich Girl
Down Daisy Street
A Kiss and a Promise
Two Penn’orth of Sky
A Long and Lonely Road
The Cuckoo Child
Darkest Before Dawn
Orphans of the Storm
Little Girl Lost
Beyond the Blue Hills
Forgotten Dreams
Sunshine and Shadows
Such Sweet Sorrow
A Mother’s Hope
First and foremost, I should like to thank Sarah Miers, School Sister, based at the Grove Road Health Centre, Wrexham, for the loan of invaluable books on District Nursing and Midwifery in the Twenties and Thirties. As usual, any mistakes are my own but if I happen to have got it right, it is thanks to Sarah Miers. The library staff at Wrexham were their usual helpful selves, particularly John Thomas, who acquired for me photographs of nursing uniforms of the time, and Nia Rogerson, who came up with an extremely helpful – and little known – book of reminiscences on nursing in the Thirties.
Karen and Ric Hague, whose book search service is unrivalled, also did yeoman work in providing books which were unavailable and out of print in Britain; many thanks. And if I have left anyone out, you must blame the M.E., which makes remembering anything that happened before yesterday extremely difficult!
Liverpool 1932
Patty Peel trudged across the snow-covered courtyard to where her bicycle was kept in the ramshackle shed against the jigger wall. It was eleven o’clock and a wild January night, and as she wheeled her bicycle through the narrow opening into the jigger she reflected that the only thing you could be sure about with babies was that they would arrive at the moment most inconvenient to midwives. What was more, this birth should rightly have been attended by Nurse Stoddard, since it was in her area of the city. But Stoddard was in bed with influenza, so all her cases had been passed on to Patty.
The family she was about to visit were the Mullins, who lived in Stanton’s Court off Cuerden Street. Patty had been woken a bare ten minutes earlier by a ragged boy, blue with cold and wearing the thinnest, shabbiest jacket she had ever seen, totally unsuitable for such weather. ‘Me mam’s havin’ the baby,’ he panted, holding on to the doorjamb as though it were the only thing keeping him on his feet. ‘Can you come, Nurse? And can you hurry, ’cos me dad’s in a wicked temper and me mam’s awful poorly.’
Patty was not particularly fond of children, but her heart went out to the Mullins boy. He wore cracked and gaping boots through which his bare, bluish-grey skin could be seen and he looked as though he had not had a square meal for a month. Yet he had clearly run all the way from Stanton’s Court to Great Homer Street, despite the fearful weather.
‘I’ll be there right away,’ she had said briskly. ‘You’d best come in while I get dressed.’ She had hesitated before the last remark since she had little faith in the honesty of young boys, but she told herself that no one would leave a dog out in such weather and held the door wider.
The boy, however, shook his head. ‘I dussn’t leave me mam for long,’ he said breathlessly, already beginning to back down the steps. ‘She’ll feel better when she hears you’re a-comin’ and me dad’s less likely to start a ruckus if he knows you’re on your way. Besides,’ he added as he turned away, ‘you’ll have a bike, I reckon, and I’m on foot. No point in wastin’ time while you wait for me. Just you come along as fast as you can, missus.’
Shrugging, Patty had closed the door and returned to her bedroom where her clothing and equipment were laid out on a chair by the bed, ready for just such an emergency. She dressed quickly and as quietly as possible, anxious not to disturb the sleeper in the second bed, nor to rouse the two young nurses who shared the room next door. The house belonged to a retired midwife, who had been a great help to Patty in the early days of her career but now seemed to resent her lodgers’ frequent night calls. The previous week, she had given Patty and her roommate notice to leave.
‘I’m too old to be woke up every night of me life by you bangin’ in and out,’ she had explained, half apologetically. ‘Ordinary nurses are different; their hours is more – more like shop-workers. Oh, I ain’t sayin’ you and Higgins are noisy or thoughtless because you’re good girls in your way, but I’ve had forty years of disturbed nights and I reckon that’s enough for anyone. Besides, me granddaughter’s got a job in the post office on Sir Thomas Street and she’s needin’ a room. Blood’s thicker’n water so I telled her she could move in come next Monday.’
Patty had been neither particularly surprised nor dismayed. Mrs Bogget’s house in Great Homer Street was a meeting place for both friends and family and their loud voices and constant quarrels frequently disturbed her daytime sleep, as did the heavy traffic which roared along the busy main road. Her roommate was planning to move back into the nurses’ home, but Patty had seen some pleasant dwellings in quiet side streets, still in her area, which would suit her a good deal better than Mrs Bogget’s crowded and noisy dwelling.
But right now, head bent against the whirling flakes, Patty had no time to think about moving house. The area through which she cycled was not strange to her, but very soon she would leave Cazneau Street, turn down Richmond Row and enter the maze of tiny streets she must negotiate to reach her destination. That would not be too bad, provided she could make out the street names through the fast falling snow, but once she reached Cuerden Street it would be a different matter. The courts were always ill lit, if lit at all, and though Nurse Stoddard had drawn a little map indicating the Mullins’s house, Patty was not too sure that she would be able to find it, what with the dark and the snow falling so thick and fast.
Presently, she turned into the first court and immediately her worries left her. Only one house had a candle burning shakily in an upper window and as she dismounted from her bicycle and leaned it against the steps, a small figure detached itself from the shadows and a husky voice said: ‘You’ve done well, Nurse. I runned all the way but I only just got back meself. Here, bring your bike into the hallway. You don’t want it getting iced up.’
‘Right you are,’ Patty said briskly, heaving her bicycle up the three worn stone steps, slippery now with snow, and pushing it inside. There was barely room for it against the banisters since the hallway seemed to have become a depository for all manner of rubbish. Boxes, bundles of rags, empty bottles and a pram so old that its entire body was falling off it in strips were crammed into the narrow space and Patty looked rather desperately around her for some sign of a kitchen where she could boil water and sterilise her instruments. She turned to the small boy. Outside her door, she had thought him eight or nine, but now she saw that he was twelve or thirteen, though miserably small and undernourished. She said: ‘Where’s the kitchen? I’ll need boiling water and some clean cloths. Has your mam any baby clothes ready? A cradle? Some pieces of clean blanket?’
The boy looked at her as though he had no idea what a kitchen was, but said readily: ‘Me sister’s boiling water on the oil stove in the back room. There’s eleven of us and Fanny’s nigh on fourteen, so she knows what you’ll be wantin’. We lined a nice box wi’ bits o’blanket … I dunno about clean rags, though. Oh, miss, won’t you go up to our mam? She were hollerin’ somethin’ awful earlier, but now it’s nobbut little gasps and groans; I’s bleedin’ scared, so I am.’
Patty looked at the small, sharp face and headed for the stairs. When she reached the landing she had no need to ask in which room her patient lay, for both doors were open. One was ringed with frightened, childish faces. The children were clad in cut-down coats, thin shawls and rags. It was plain the Mullins dressed up rather than undressed when despatched to bed. The other room was empty save for a large brass bedstead, upon which a woman lay. Her face was as white as the snow which fell outside, her eyes dark-shadowed, and she had bitten her lip until blood ran down her chin. She was covered with a thin patchwork blanket and even as Patty entered the room she tried feebly to struggle into a sitting position, as the great mound of her stomach contracted beneath its thin covering.
Now Patty saw there was a man standing by the bed who looked up as she entered. ‘Thank Gawd you’ve come, Nurse,’ he said hoarsely. ‘She’s in a bad way, my old lady. What’ll I do to help?’
Patty pulled back the thin blanket and cast a professional glance at the woman on the bed. ‘It won’t be long now,’ she said briskly. ‘Fetch me a jug of hot water and a basin so’s I can clean the child up when it’s born, and I’ll have a kettle of boiling water to sterilise my instruments.’
The man shambled gladly out of the room and she heard his footsteps thundering down the stairs and his voice raised as he repeated her requirements to the occupants of the back room. Having got rid of the husband, Patty turned to her patient once more. ‘Not long now, Mrs Mullins,’ she said gently, as she began to examine her. By the look of it she would need her forceps since the baby’s head was only just showing. ‘But you may need a little help; I think we should send your lad for the doctor. The baby’s a big one and you’re already weak from pushing. Why didn’t you call me earlier?’
Mrs Mullins turned huge, dark-blue eyes up towards the midwife and Patty realised, with a small shock of surprise, that the other woman must have been beautiful once. Not even her state of health could disguise the long, curling eyelashes, the small, straight nose and the clearly defined cheekbones, though the long, dank gold hair was dull and lifeless and her skin unhealthily pale, with sores at the corners of her mouth and nose. ‘I always try to have the baby before the midwife comes; it’s cheaper, and Gawd knows, after eleven kids, you’d think I’d have no difficulty. What’s more, I sent the lad to Nurse Stoddard’s place first, not knowin’ she were ill,’ she whispered in a thread of a voice. ‘As for the doctor, my lad wouldn’t know where to go. Dr Carruthers is sick with the ’flu – he’s the nearest.’ Another contraction shook her and she stopped speaking, her face contorted with pain. When the spasm was over, she flopped back on to the thin pillows. Sweat was pouring down her face. ‘Oh Gawd, I’ve never had it so bad before,’ she muttered. ‘It started yesterday … oh, Nurse, I can’t go on much longer.’
‘You won’t have to,’ Patty said, but her heart failed her. She knew the patient was too weak to go on pushing; it would definitely have to be a forceps delivery and it would have to be done quickly.
She sighed with relief as the bedroom door opened and the husband came back into the room. He was breathing heavily and carried a kettle, still belching steam, in one hand and what looked like a pudding basin in the other. ‘I’ll fetch water for washing when the kid’s born,’ he said gruffly.
Patty opened her black bag and tipped her instruments into the kettle. It might not be ideal but it was the best she could do for now and experience told her that only immediate action would serve.
*
Patty was right in thinking that the delivery would require forceps; what she had not anticipated was that, having successfully delivered a baby girl, she should realise that there was another baby, this time a breech presentation. Desperately, she tried to remember who was standing in for Dr Carruthers, but in the event any help would have been useless. The second baby was born dead, a tiny, puny, blue-faced creature, and within seconds of its birth Mrs Mullins, too, had quietly and undramatically simply ceased to breathe.
Patty, worn out and deeply unhappy, made the bodies of mother and child as presentable as possible. She cleaned the dead woman up and brushed her hair back from her face, noticing how very young and peaceful she looked. She put the dead baby in the crook of its mother’s arm, then lifted the living child out of the box in which it had been peacefully slumbering, wrapped it in a piece of blanket and went slowly down the stairs to face the family.
By now, it was almost six in the morning. Patty entered the back room and immediately Mr Mullins surged to his feet, though Fanny remained seated, her small face anxious. ‘Is it over?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Is Gladys all right?’
Patty’s heart sank even further. She had thought him an ignorant and probably violent man, but now she saw, from the look on his face, that he had loved his wife in his own way. She opened her mouth to speak but the words caught in her throat. With tears running down her cheeks, she shook her head silently, then said: ‘No, Mr Mullins, I’m afraid not. Your wife gave birth to twins but she, and the smaller baby, died a short while ago.’
Mr Mullins gave a great, despairing shout and began to weep. Beside him, Fanny followed suit. Patty, thinking to comfort him, said consolingly: ‘But you’ve got a beautiful little girl here.’
Mr Mullins had slumped down at the table again and buried his face in his hands, but at her words he lifted his head and glared at her, his bloodshot eyes burning with anger even though tears spilled from them. ‘Another bleedin’ girl? And what do you think I’ll do with another bleedin’ girl?’ he screamed. ‘It were her comin’ that took away my Gladys. I’ve seven kids still livin’ at home and Gawd above knows how I’ll manage them wi’out my wife. Jobs on the docks is like gold dust with this depression an’ all. I’m tellin’ you, Nurse, if you don’t take that kid out o’ here I’ll do somethin’ desperate – smash it to a pulp wi’ me own hands, very like. Take it to an orphan asylum, tell ’em I can’t look after it – and don’t you go sayin’ who I am or where I lives, because if the authorities come down on me I’ll not stand for it. I’ll abandon me kids and get work aboard a ship, so there’ll be seven extra on the parish, I’m warning you.’
Patty stared helplessly at him, glad that she had insisted that the younger children go to bed earlier. At least she only had the father’s grief and not that of his large family to deal with. The kids were dirty, unkempt and undernourished, yet she had the strange feeling that they were still a family unit and a strong one. She, Patty, had been brought up in an orphan asylum, never loved and constantly harassed by the overworked – and probably underpaid – staff of that institution. She had never known what it was to go hungry, perhaps for days at a time, or to have inadequate rags of clothing, no proper bed, and dirt, the constant enemy, all around, but with a flash of perception she realised that the Mullins children would understand and share their father’s anguish. In all the families Patty knew, the older children took on the responsibility for the younger ones, but it was the mother alone who looked after a new baby. With their mother dead, and the little ones already in their charge, the Mullins girls would only see the new baby as an additional burden.
Patty sighed and tightened her hold on the child in her arms. ‘Very well,’ she said, trying to make her voice both practical and kindly. ‘The baby is not strong, and will be better off in an orphanage if you feel so sure that you can’t take care of her. You’d best send for a neighbour, Mr Mullins, to see to your wife’s laying out and to help with the arrangements for the funeral. Do you have relatives living nearby who might be willing to give a hand?’
