Christmas Angels, Page 3

  ‘How is she?’ he’d whispered as he squatted down at her side, holding on to the arm of the settle to keep his balance.

  Maura, ever the vigilant housewife, noted as he spoke that there was a gravy stain on his vest from the night before. ‘Still bad. She did sleep for some of it, though,’ she whispered back.

  As though to let him hear it for himself, Angela’s chest rattled with her next inward breath.

  ‘I’ll knock on next door and ask Peggy to go and fetch the doctor.’

  Maura had nodded. The time had come. Most of the Irish mothers in the streets cured their own, with patience and love and a few herbs sent in the post from Ireland. But they always knew when it was time to hand over to a higher authority. ‘Change your vest before you go. I’ll wash that one today.’ Angela might be sick, but the chores still needed to be done, Kitty and the twins had to be seen to, and Tommy could not miss a day’s pay.

  The doctor had arrived just after ten. He listened to Angela’s chest, complimented Maura on her spotlessly clean kitchen, scribbled a letter addressed to ‘children’s services’ and told Maura that she had to take Angela to the hospital. There was a clinic that started at three o’clock, he said. He would phone ahead and let the consultant know that Maura would be attending with Angela. ‘If you have any night things for her, pyjamas and the like, take them with you,’ he continued.

  ‘Will she be having to stay in?’ asked Maura, unable to bear the thought of being separated from her daughter for several days. At St Angelus, visiting time on the children’s ward was on Sunday afternoons only. They knew that from when Kitty had her tonsils out and from other children on the street who were regular visitors to St Angelus, ward four and Sister Tapps. There wasn’t a family on the dock streets who did not regard Sister Tapps as the closest they had ever know to the Virgin Mother, but it was the separation from their children that caused the most poverty-hardened women to make themselves sick with distress.

  The doctor looked at her with sympathy in his eyes. ‘Dr Walker will decide what is best,’ he said. ‘There are lots of these chests around at this time of year. Best to get her right.’

  Maura nodded.

  The doctor could have added that his entire morning would be spent with patients trotting in and out of his surgery asking for ‘a bottle for the chest, Doctor’. He would oblige, all the while knowing that the cure couldn’t be written on his prescription pad. What his patients needed was to move away from the Mersey and into heated housing that was free from mould spores and damp.

  Despite having had no sleep, Maura spent the remainder of the morning cleaning her house. Meanwhile, her neighbour, Peggy, spent her time knocking on their neighbours’ doors for spare nightclothes, then rushing down to Woolworths in town for two new vests and pairs of knickers for Angela, just in case.

  Now that they were actually at St Angelus, Maura wondered whether the doctor had made a mistake and sent her to the wrong place. Was Dr Walker based in one of the other hospitals? The Southern, maybe? As she looked up at Tommy she felt her energy drain. But Tommy had had a brainwave.

  ‘I know, why don’t we go back to that nice lady on the WVS stall?’ he said. ‘I remember her from when our Kitty had her tonsils out. Maisie, her name is. I bet she’s asked all the time where places are. Especially the bleedin’ chest clinic, as how is anyone else supposed to find it if we can’t and you can read.’

  Wearily, Maura agreed, but she was not happy that she hadn’t seen the sign and that they were effectively lost and none the wiser. Of the two of them, Maura was the one who really could read. She’d known there was no point in Tommy looking up at the signs. He could read the names of the horses and the times of the races, and he knew how to identify descriptions of form, but that had been the limit to his knowledge until Kitty had taken hold of him. Kitty brought her reading books home from school and every night she taught Tommy a new word. He was not allowed to get away with it, as much as he tried, not one little bit, but even Maura knew it could be some time before he learnt the words ‘chest’ or ‘clinic’.

  ‘All right then. I can’t think of a better idea, sure I can’t. Come on, Kitty. Let’s go back to the doors.’ Maura bent down and tucked the blanket around Angela. ‘Shhh now.’ Pushing down hard on the handle of the pushchair, she turned it all the way round to face the direction they’d come from and they began to retrace their steps back down the corridor.

  ‘Tommy, move,’ Maura said as she almost bumped into him with the pushchair. She was sharp with him and he knew why. Much of what passed between the two of them needed no words of explanation. That left plenty of room for frequent rows and passionate reconciliations, the latter having so far produced two daughters and one set of twin boys.

  Maura was full of anxiety and hospital was the last place she wanted to be. One of her closest friends had come into St Angelus by choice to have her baby – not because she needed to, and against the strongly worded advice of Maura and every other woman on the streets. They had all delivered their babies at home, with each other’s help, and if there was a problem, the local midwife would be summoned by whoever’s husband happened to not be in the pub – usually Tommy – and in most cases it all worked out just fine.

  Their friend had walked into St Angelus, waving them all goodbye as she went, but she had never returned. The Irish Catholic community on the four streets of the dockside had not stopped talking about the death of their friend at the hospital. ‘Oh and Jesus, didn’t she just come out in a box, would you ever have known,’ was what they were still saying to one another, and to anyone who didn’t yet know the story, on a regular basis. Not one of them had expected a death in childbirth, in a hospital.

  They quickly found the WVS stand and Tommy automatically reached for the cigarette tucked behind his ear. It was an instinctive reaction to the smell of tea brewing. Any sense of urgency, whatever the task in hand, evaporated when a cup of tea was in the offing.

  He was now on familiar territory. He scanned the area for where he used to sit for hours when Kitty was a patient on Sister Tapps’s ward. She had been very little at the time. The rule had been only two visitors to the bedside at any one time, so he would let half the street traipse in and out to see Kitty – her operation being the entertainment of the week and the talk of the neighbourhood – before he took his turn. But today Maura was on to him.

  ‘Don’t be thinking you’ll be sitting in here drinking the tea and picking out your nags in the Racing Post while I take Angela to see the doctor meself. You must be joking,’ she warned.

  Tommy was affronted. ‘You have to, Maura. You have the child in the pushchair, not me. That’s not my job. I’m not actually coming in there with you, am I now. That’s why we brought our Kitty, isn’t it, queen?’ He winked at his eldest daughter.

  She winked back. Kitty might have been their firstborn and a girl, but she was her da’s best friend and they both knew it.

  Lifting his head, Tommy could see the steam from the WVS urn rising above the rows of wooden chairs. The air was thick with spiralling columns of blue smoke, chattering voices and the sound of metal spoons clinking against national issue cups and saucers. It was dark and gloomy outdoors and the high windows did nothing to bring cheer or warmth into the wooden-floored room with its walls of dark green tiles. Nor did the single light bulb help much, dulled by its green glass shade, way up high. He squinted through the smoke and patted the outside of his jacket pockets with the flat of his hands, trying to locate his box of Swan Vestas.

  ‘Oh, yes, you are coming in with me, Tommy Doherty,’ said Maura, her arms folded as she looked him straight in the eye.

  Tommy, his attention back to Maura, responded in a flash. ‘No, I am not, Maura. I came and sat here when our Kitty was having her tonsils out and I said on the day we took her home that I was never coming back again. It’s the smell, Maura, it makes me ill. Let me go and ask the woman where it is and you and our Kitty can go while I wait here for you both.’ He looke
d confused as the search for his matches moved from the front of his jacket to the back of his trousers.

  ‘What in God’s name have you come for then,’ Maura demanded, ‘if all you wanted to do was sit here and drink the tea?’

  Tommy had his answer ready. ‘Because you wouldn’t give me a minute’s peace if I didn’t, that’s why. I didn’t want to be going any further than the gates now and that’s the truth. Come to the hospital with me, you said, and I came. You didn’t say anything about coming in with you, sure you didn’t.’

  A smile suddenly spread across Tommy’s face and he lifted his cap in the traditional docker’s greeting. Maura’s head spun around.

  ‘But would you look at that! There’s your lovely woman, Maisie, and she’s pouring me a cup of tea. See? She just smiled at me, she recognized me. Come on, Maura, Maisie will put us right. Would you look at that!’

  To Maura’s amazement, Tommy was not telling a lie. The woman he called Maisie, wearing a floral wrap-around apron, was smiling at them. She was standing next to a woman in a hat and an oversized glass hatpin, who looked as though life very rarely threw any surprises her way, and she was not smiling. But this didn’t seem to hold back Maisie, who was beaming from ear to ear and holding up a cup and saucer, inviting Tommy to move closer. Before Maura could say another word, Tommy was on a direct path towards the smile and the ashtray being held out to him.

  ‘Hello, Tommy, fancy seeing you back here. Hello, love,’ she said to Maura.

  Maura felt relief wash through her. During Kitty’s stay at St Angelus, she’d been the one to sit at her daughter’s side throughout, while Tommy had given up his place for the neighbours, so she’d not been familiar with the staff on the WVS stall.

  ‘You cannot begin to imagine the number of men I tempt across the foyer with nothing more than a cup of tea in my hand and a couple of biscuits from the Huntley and Palmers tea-time range. I get these ones because they are our Stanley’s favourites. You look as though you need one too, love. Here you go,’ she said to Maura. ‘If you don’t mind me saying, you look washed out.’

  Without him even having to ask, Tommy was handed a large brown Bakelite ashtray by the woman with the hatpin and the sour face. He made to put his hands in his pocket to look for money, but Maisie had already slipped the saucer containing the pennies under the counter so that Tommy and Maura would not be offended.

  She waved her hand at Tommy. ‘We aren’t collecting today, love,’ she said. She would slip the saucer back on to the table later, for those who could donate, but not until she was sure Tommy and Maura had left the hospital. As she always said to her helpers on the stall, you couldn’t mistake an Irish dockside family because nearly every one of them looked as if they’d just stepped off the boat. ‘They have so many children,’ she’d say to whoever would listen, ‘they don’t have a penny to waste, do they? I can’t take money from them, even though they always want me to. They are too proud for their own good, those dockers.’

  She immediately noted the anxious and suspicious frown that crossed Maura’s face as she scanned the table looking for some sign of how much the tea and biscuits would cost. ‘Don’t worry, really, there’s no charge,’ she said. ‘And don’t forget the ashtray for that cigarette I can tell you are searching for.’

  The helper with the stern face jumped in. ‘We try to keep the ash off the floor, if you don’t mind.’

  Tommy was left in no doubt that this was a warning, not a request. He grabbed his tea and, thanking Maisie profusely, sat on one of the hard wooden chairs and extracted his cigarette from behind his ear.

  ‘Hello, dear, would you like a glass of squash?’ Maisie was now smiling down at Kitty, who looked up to her mam for reassurance and squeezed her hand tighter.

  Kitty lived among the Irish, went to church with the Irish and was taught by the Irish. That was her world. Having not moved outside of the four streets, a Liverpool accent was not her familiar dialect. ‘Can I, Mam?’ she asked. Maura nodded, and Kitty returned Maisie’s smile and took the glass of thick orange liquid.

  ‘Say thank you,’ said Maura, ‘and go and sit with your da now and wait.’

  Kitty, who never had to be asked twice, whispered her thank you and almost skipped over to Tommy, careful not to spill the precious squash as she sat down next to him. They never had squash at home. With four children in the house and half the neighbourhood in and out throughout the day, even if they could afford it, it would be drunk almost before it could be unpacked.

  ‘And is it one lump or two for you?’ asked Maisie as she poured the tea for Maura.

  ‘’Twould be two, er, please,’ said Maura. ‘And I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I wonder, could you tell me, I have to be here…’ She pulled the doctor’s letter out of her coat pocket, removed a sheet of paper from inside the brown envelope and proffered it to Maisie, who exchanged it for the cup of tea and two arrowroot biscuits.

  Maisie looked up and gave Maura a conspiratorial smile. ‘Is it for the little one?’ She nodded down towards Angela, now fast asleep in her pushchair, exhausted by her most recent bout of coughing.

  At least when she’s asleep she’s free from the coughing, Maura thought as she looked down at her child. Maybe that’s a good sign. Maybe she will have turned the corner when she next wakes. Her heart constricted. She was sleep-deprived and emotional but still full of hope. Maisie’s kindness was having an effect. She was acting in that Liverpool way, as if she had seen Tommy only yesterday and knew them all well.

  ‘Don’t worry, love, she’ll be fine. My daughter, she’s one of the nurses here. Nurse Tanner. I know them all, I do. The doctors here, they are smashing. I wouldn’t worry if our little Stanley had to come and see one of them, not at all. Now, let me see, oh, yes, well, you have to go back outside the building and follow the path around to the left. Children’s services is in one of the prefabs. You’ll see it, it’s attached to the building on the side. There is a sign above the door. Your appointment isn’t for another half an hour, though, so sit and enjoy your tea in here first. I think Sister Antrobus is on outpatients, I wouldn’t let you be late for her – bit of a battleaxe, if I’m being honest. But you’ve plenty of time to drink your tea first. There is no WVS around there, although I’ve told them there should be. They send them to me to look after and that’s not a problem, so long as it’s not pouring down with rain.’ Maisie noticed that Maura’s attention was fading. ‘You enjoy your tea first. Go and sit with your Tommy, go on.’

  Maura blinked, stared at Maisie and stammered a thank you. She wasn’t used to such kindness from a stranger and like most of the Irish in Liverpool was often wary of anyone in authority bearing gifts.

  ‘Well, at least I know where to go now,’ she said as she sat down next to Tommy and Kitty.

  Tommy was mildly agitated, searching for his matches. ‘Maura, I haven’t me matches. How has that happened? They were in me pocket, I put them there meself.’

  Maura flicked open the clip on her battered brown leather handbag. It was her most precious possession, bought at a jumble sale, its seams frayed and the stitching peppered with holes. She had found a sixpence in the small pocket in the bronze silk lining, but she’d never removed it nor felt the inclination to spend it, and she had certainly never told anyone about it. There was a tiny piece of brown paper folded with the sixpence and it read: Happy Christmas, from your Reggie. Christmas 1914. She had slipped the note back into the place it had lived for all those years, next to the coin, which had become her lucky sixpence. Even on a Thursday night, the night before payday when she was struggling to make two pounds of potatoes, a couple of carrots and a loaf of bread stretch between them all, the silver sixpence remained in situ.

  The aroma from the inside of the handbag wafted up to her. It smelt of a woman who had passed, who had once carried in her handbag make-up and trinkets that Maura would never even encounter let alone own. The stale but reassuring smell of compact, lipstick and Coty L’Aimant perfume calm
ed her. When Maura opened the bag it was as if, like a genie, the ghostly scent escaped, the invisible signature of another woman’s life.

  The lady at the jumble sale had given Maura the bag when she’d bought second-hand clothes and shoes for the children. She told Maura it had belonged to a lady who had passed away. ‘No one from around here will buy it,’ she’d said. ‘They all knew her. She was a regular at the church. Her husband died in the war.’ Maura’s face had fallen. ‘Oh, not the last war. He was long gone. The first war. No one around here can remember him. He was only in his twenties – newly married, they were. You take it, along with those clothes you’ve bought. Have something for yourself. It’s good leather, it is. Quality. Has a few years left in it yet.’

  Maura had been touched by the woman’s thoughtfulness, but then she always found the ladies from the Anglican church who ran the jumble sale to be kindness itself. They never made her feel a lesser person for being a Catholic, nor for being the one buying the clothes rather than donating them.

  She extracted a box of Swan Vestas from the handbag and threw the matches on to Tommy’s lap.

  ‘What are you doing with those in your handbag?’ he asked as he scooped them up. ‘Did you take them from my pocket?’

  ‘I did, Tommy. And you are such a dozy bugger, ’twasn’t difficult, I can tell you. I thought I might need to bribe you to come to the hospital with me and our Kitty, but then I wasn’t accounting for your woman with the tea.’ She placed her handbag down on the floor and, taking her cup and saucer from the seat next to her, raised the cup to her lips and began to sip at her tea. She could sense Tommy grinning and, turning to him, she grinned back.

  ‘You are a wicked woman, Maura Doherty, and what’s worse, you are teaching our Kitty here your ways.’ Tommy struck the match and his face flushed red as he pulled hard on the cigarette.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ said Maura, tutting.

  She always tutted and Tommy always had the same answer. ‘I need them for me nerves and they keep me chest loose, Maura. If it wasn’t for these…’ He held the lit cigarette up to show her, as though it had the secret to a long life written down the side. ‘…I’d be dead, I would, working in all that dust down on the docks.’