Naturally, Toby had left a message, couched in terms calculated to send Patty flying off to New Brighton as soon as her rounds were over, but though he made the child repeat what he had said twice, he still hoped that Ellen and Patty had met up. He was sure the kid would do its best, but three hours inside such a tangled head could well result in some much-scrambled gobbledegook when Patty finally arrived in Ellesmere Court.
‘Toby! Supper’s ready!’
Toby smiled and got to his feet at the sound of Trixie Flanagan’s voice. He had agreed to spend the night with the Flanagans and had been offered the use of their couch. He had told them about Patty, how well she did with the rifles, how the flatties were attracted by her mass of gold hair and had noticed, with amusement, the jealous look in Amanda’s eyes. If only she were a couple of years older, I wouldn’t worry myself over catching Patty, he found himself thinking. Patty’s good, or as good as a flattie can be, but Amanda was born to it. The thought made him remember how Amanda Ellington had teased him when he’d mentioned Patty’s name. ‘Patty the flattie, Patty the flattie,’ she had chanted. ‘Or shall we just call her Flattie Patty?’
He had been quite hurt at the time, but fortunately her gleefully smiling face had made him see the funny side, so he had forgiven her though he had said loftily: ‘She won’t be a flattie. Once she’s married to me and working on the shooting gallery, she’ll be a fully fledged member of the community in no time.’
‘Tobeee! Me sister’s shouted you for supper twice and she won’t let the rest of us start our meal until you’re sat down at the table, so get a move on.’
‘I’m coming, I’m coming, don’t be so impatient,’ Toby pretended to grumble, making his way past her and grinning apologetically at the rest of the family, already seated around the long table. ‘Sorry, Trix. I were getting cleaned up and grease ain’t all that easy to shift.’ He slid on to the bench and sniffed appreciatively at the good smell coming from the big black pot in the middle of the table. He picked up his spoon and fork and smiled seraphically at his hostess. ‘Judging from the smell, that’s an Irish stew, my favourite food. I bet you’ve all been cursing me making you wait, but I’m here now. Let’s go!’
Darky was in luck. He drew a blank at the David Lewis Northern Hospital on Great Howard Street, but when he tried the reception desk at the Stanley Hospital the trimly uniformed woman behind the desk said at once that they had had a district nurse admitted earlier. She consulted a large ledger, then smiled up into Darky’s worried face. ‘It’s all right, chuck, don’t gerrin a state,’ she said comfortably. ‘It says here she come off her bicycle in a hailstorm, or some such, banged her head on the pavement edge or the tramlines – something hard at any rate – and broke her arm. The doctor said she realised she was falling and tried to save herself, but fell with one arm at an awkward angle. It was a nasty break and she had to go to theatre to get it put right. We didn’t manage to get her name because the knock on the head had concussed her.’
‘Well, if she’s blonde and pretty as a picture, she’ll be Patty Peel, a young district midwife who lives next door to me in Ashfield Place,’ Darky said at once and found himself praying that it was his Patty lying in a hospital bed, somewhere quite near him now. Concussion and a broken arm were no joke, but compared to the alternatives – lying dead in a mortuary, being the victim of white slave traders or an abducting Toby Rudd – a broken arm and a bump on the head seemed almost trivial.
‘I haven’t set eyes on the girl myself, but the nurses were talking about it when I came on duty,’ the receptionist admitted. ‘You’d best go along to the ward, Mr er …’
‘I’m Derek Knight,’ Darky supplied at once. ‘Can you tell me the way to the ward, Nurse?’
The receptionist immediately abandoned her desk, though only to call a night porter across. ‘Can you take Mr Knight along to Ward Ten? He’s a relative of the young nurse who was brought in earlier.’
Darky did not correct her but followed the porter along a great many gloomy, ill lit corridors, until they reached a pair of swing doors with the legend
Ward 10
written above them. The porter pushed the doors apart and a nurse sitting behind a small desk, further down the long room, rose to her feet and came swiftly towards them, a finger on her lips.
‘Relative of one of the patients,’ the porter whispered hoarsely, indicating Darky. ‘The one we don’t have a name for; Mr Knight’ll identify her if he can.’
The nurse, who had looked rather forbidding, smiled at Darky and indicated that he should follow her. They walked almost the full length of the long ward and then the nurse came to a halt beside a bed in which lay a figure Darky recognised. It was Patty, white-faced, with an enormous blue bruise on her forehead. She lay neatly on her back with her head turned to one side and someone had plaited her long tresses so that she looked very young, no more than a schoolgirl. Her right arm was outside the covers and encased in gleaming white plaster, and a tube led from a bag of some sort of liquid, suspended above the bed, into her wrist.
Darky’s heart smote him. He had thought such awful things at first, suspecting her of going off with Toby and simply forgetting her responsibilities to Merrell and his mam. But now that he saw her looking so pale and vulnerable, pity welled up in his heart and he felt that he could never do enough for her. He told himself that if she truly preferred Toby to him … but at this point his thoughts broke down in confusion, and anyway the nurse was tugging at his arm.
‘I can tell by your expression that you’ve recognised her,’ she hissed. ‘Can you come back to my desk, please, and give me the details?’
Darky complied, and when the nurse had finished filling in the form he glanced wistfully back up the ward towards the pale little figure in the bed. ‘She looks awful frail, Nurse,’ he said uneasily. ‘And that’s a whacking great bump on her forehead, as big as a hen’s egg. Is she going to be all right? When will she wake up, do you reckon?’
The nurse smiled at him. ‘Are you her husband?’ she enquired. ‘Yes, she’ll be just fine. She came round after the anaesthetic but she was still very confused, so when she fell asleep we decided to put off asking any more questions until morning. Besides, concussion is quite commonly followed by a degree of memory loss so there’s little point in asking questions of someone who cannot, as yet, tell you the answers.’
‘I see,’ Darky said rather doubtfully. ‘When do you think it will be possible for me to come and see her, then? I could stay all night, of course, but my mother is dreadfully worried because we had no idea what happened to her – Patty, I mean – so I really should go home and relieve her mind. Besides, I suppose there’s no point in my sitting beside her bed if she doesn’t know I’m there.’
‘No, no point at all,’ the nurse said firmly. ‘Having someone on the ward is disturbing for other patients, and because you would not be able to help looking at your wife’s face your gaze might well wake her before she was ready. No, you are quite right, you should go home. Get a good night’s sleep and come back after eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, if you are able to do so. Doctor’s rounds usually take place between ten and eleven, so there may be more news of your wife by then.’
Darky smiled and nodded, but decided he had better come clean since, sooner or later, someone would realise that a married couple with different surnames was unusual, to say the least. ‘I’m not Nurse Peel’s husband,’ he admitted. ‘Not yet, at any rate. She’s my young lady.’
‘Oh I
see
,’ the nurse said, but vaguely, as though she had not been really listening. ‘In that case, could you get in touch with her parents for us? Only, until she’s fully conscious and can give us their address—’
‘She’s an orphan. So far as she knows, she has no living relatives,’ Darky said quickly. ‘But my mam’s been as good as a mother to her and I know she’d like to visit – if you’ll be keeping Nurse Peel in hospital for long, that is.’
‘That’s for the doctor to decide,’ the nurse said primly. ‘And now, Mr Peel, if you don’t mind …’
‘It’s Mr Knight, actually,’ Darky said rather wearily, deciding that the nurse was either tuppence short of a shilling or simply worn out after a too-long shift. ‘I did tell you I wasn’t Nurse Peel’s husband, remember?’
‘I’m awful sorry,’ the girl said, and for the first time Darky looked properly at her and saw how white she was and how shadowed her eyes. ‘The nurse who normally does the night shift has been taken ill so I’ve been on duty since six o’clock this morning and look like having to remain on duty until tomorrow. I’ll be relieved before eleven o’clock, though, so I’ll leave a note for the ward sister explaining that you would like a word with the doctor and to see the patient; I’m sure there will be no difficulty.’
Darky cast one last, longing look towards Patty’s still figure in the bed and then set off on the walk home. Despite Patty’s plight, he found that he was feeling rather light-hearted as he strode along the glistening wet pavements. He had found her and, though clearly far from well, she was in good hands. She would get better and as soon as she was fit again he would stop shilly-shallying and beg her to be his wife.
Back at No. 23, he stole in his stockinged feet to his mother’s room and peeped round the door. She was not asleep and sat up in bed at once, though cautiously, making as little noise as possible. She was just a dark shadow amongst other shadows, but Darky did not have to see her face to read the painful enquiry which he knew it would wear.
‘I’ve found her!’ he whispered. ‘She’s in the Stanley Hospital with a broken arm and a bit of concussion, but the nurse says she’ll be fine and I’m to go back tomorrow at eleven to have a word with the doctor. Oh, Mam, I’m that relieved! I was imagining the most dreadful things, so a broken arm and a great bump on the head doesn’t seem nearly as bad as it might have.’
‘You weren’t the only one,’ his mother whispered back. ‘I’ve been lying here imagining the most dreadful things. White slave traders, murder and mayhem … you name it, I’ve thought of it.’ Mrs Knight sighed deeply. ‘Well, now that we know the worst – and you say it isn’t too bad really – I’m going to get my head down and try for a few hours’ kip, and you’d best do the same. Good night, son, I’ll see you in the morning.’
Patty awoke. At first she could not think where she was, for the light above her bed seemed both strong and intrusive, not in the least like the soft light that filtered through the curtains of No. 24 Ashfield Place. Then she remembered that it was wintertime and was more puzzled than ever. She was pretty sure the alarm had not gone off, yet someone had switched the light on right above her head and she could hear a good deal of muted noise, far more than that caused by herself, Ellen and Maggie getting up late on a Sunday, for instance.
She was still puzzling over it when her mind gave a sort of click and everything fell into place. Of course. She was in hospital and had been here for several days. She had broken her arm and cracked her head against the tramlines and she had consequently suffered from concussion and a degree of memory loss. The nurses assured her that she would be soon be back to normal, but Patty, a patient for the first time in her adult life, found herself longing for Ashfield Place, for the girls and for her familiar routine as ardently as she had ever longed for anything.
She sat up, wincing as the change of position made her injured arm ache, and looked about her. Jenny Sales, in the bed on her right, grinned at her. ‘Tea trolley’s on the next ward so it won’t be long before we get our cuppa,’ she said cheerfully. ‘How do you feel today, queen? I feel just grand meself ’cos I’m goin’ home after me dinner. It wouldn’t surprise me if they let you out today an’ all. How long have you been in, any road?’
‘Five perishin’ days,’ Patty groaned. ‘Oh, what wouldn’t I give for a delicious home-made meal. I don’t know how they can call the stuff they give us food. Do you?’
Jenny looked doubtful. ‘What’s wrong wi’ it? I admit the breakfast porridge is a bit thin but that stew we had last night were pretty good and there were plenty of it.’
Patty immediately felt guilty. She knew from her own experience that a great many people in the city ate poor quality food, and that was clearly why Jenny had enjoyed a meal of watery stew so bulked out with vegetables and gravy that it was impossible to say what meat had been used. Hastily, she said: ‘Yes, it was the breakfasts I meant; the other meals have been prime.’
The two girls continued to chat idly as they drank their tea, made their way to the washroom for their daily ablutions and ate their breakfast. Once that was done, however, the patients were free to amuse themselves until doctors’ rounds started. Patty lay back on her pillows and allowed her mind to wander over the past few days.
Although children were not allowed to visit, Darky had brought Merrell to the hospital and Ellen had pushed Patty in a wheelchair into the reception area. The wheelchair had not been necessary, since there was nothing wrong with Patty’s legs, but the sister on the ward disapproved of patients wandering about the premises and had insisted on the chair. The reunion had been glorious, with lots of hugs, kisses and tears on both sides, particularly when Patty had had to tear herself away since Sister had warned her severely not to be absent from the ward for longer than ten minutes. She had doubled that and had still left her dear little daughter – for Patty would always consider Merry her daughter now – with the utmost reluctance and had cried all the way back to the ward.
She had had a good many adult visitors though; Darky had come on every available occasion, Mrs Knight had popped in, and most of the other neighbours on her landing had either come in person or had sent messages and small gifts. Even her patients had either visited or sent good wishes by Ellen, though poor Ellen had had her work cut out doing Patty’s rounds as well as her own and had not been as frequent a visitor as she would have liked.
Toby, however, had come even more frequently than Darky once he found out where she was. Of course, it was easier for him since the fair was closed now except at weekends, but it was a long journey from New Brighton to the hospital and Patty appreciated that it was not every young man who would have paid a girl to whom he was not even engaged such close and loving attention.
The other women on the ward openly admired both Toby and Darky, though Toby was considerably the more popular of the two. He chatted and laughed with the girls in the beds nearest Patty’s, complimenting them on their pretty nightgowns or elaborate bedjackets, teasing them about their young men and behaving as if he had known them all his life. He often mentioned the fair and invited them to come across to New Brighton when they had left the hospital, promising free goes on the rides and generally cheering everyone up. Once, Patty had asked him if he was embarrassed by being the only man in a room full of nightgowned women and he had clearly been astonished by the question. ‘Embarrassed? Why on earth should I be embarrassed?’ he had asked. ‘The only one who embarrasses me is that sister with a face like a hatchet, and she makes me feel I ought to be ashamed just to be a feller!’
Darky, on the other hand, though he smiled and exchanged greetings with the rest of the patients, came to see Patty and no one else and his eyes seldom left her face, though he and Patty chatted and laughed with an ease which Patty had once thought they would never attain.
‘Hey, Patty, are you asleep?’ The husky voice of Sadie, the patient in the bed on Patty’s other side, broke into her thoughts. ‘Ain’t you the lucky one though, just to break your perishin’ arm? I’ll bet you’ll be signed off today or tomorrow and able to go home, but the doc said yesterday I’d be here for a full three months. Why, you can walk about the ward, go down to reception, all sorts, but all I can do is lie here on me back with me perishin’ leg up at a most unladylike angle and worry about what’s goin’ on at home.’
Patty smiled sympathetically. Sadie had descended from a tram into the very same hailstorm that had caused Patty’s accident and had slipped on the pavement edge, crashing down with her leg bent at an awkward angle. She had broken both tibia and fibula, and although she was by nature a cheerful and outgoing woman, she was worried that her family would be unable to cope.
Patty was about to comfort her, to say that she herself would go round to Sadie’s house and let her know how things were progressing, when the doors at the end of the ward opened and Sister ushered in Mr Watkin and his team. Immediately, all conversation stopped. Patients who had been knitting or reading hastily hid work and books under the blankets and the nurses whizzed backwards and forwards, whisking covers straight and kicking any slippers or knitting bags on the floor out of sight under the high beds.
Patty had worked in hospitals for so long that the routine was familiar to her and she did her best to help the nurses by keeping the area around her own bed and those of her neighbours clean and neat. She had got Jenny to tie back her long hair since she could not do it herself whilst her arm remained in plaster, and now she settled primly back against the pillows and waited hopefully; surely Mr Watkin would see the sense of letting her go home where she was needed, would agree to her being signed off.
Toby slicked down his hair with water and pressed it back, though he knew that within ten minutes of going out into the brisk wind his soft, toffee-coloured hair would flop over his forehead once more. He considered the violet-scented hair oil which the Flanagans had given him for Christmas but decided against it, for though this evening was important he did not fool himself that Patty’s decision would be affected by tidy or untidy hair.
There was a decent-sized mirror beside the door in the green caravan and Toby stood before it and checked his appearance. He was wearing navy-blue trousers and a thick, matching sweater with a white silk scarf knotted around his neck. Over these garments he wore his heavy black winter coat and he carried a trilby hat, though he had no intention of wearing it. Liverpool was always a windy city and he had no desire to see a three and sixpenny hat sailing off his head to land on the bosom of the Mersey. He wondered whether he should change the navy-blue jumper for a scarlet one, or even the green, which Edie had knitted him the winter before she left. It would look more cheerful, certainly, but he rather thought that seriousness and sobriety should be his watchword this evening. He intended to propose marriage to Patty, and knowing her adult self as he now did he thought it best to play down the more flamboyant side of his character and to show Patty what a faithful and hardworking husband he would be, as well as a loving one.
Having decided on his appearance, Toby buttoned the overcoat so that only the white silk scarf showed at the neck and picked up the bunch of violets from the jug of water close by the door. They were hothouse violets, of course, and he had paid what he felt was an extortionate sum for them only that morning. Then he picked up the single red rose which he had purchased at the same time and threaded it into his buttonhole. Satisfied, at last, he opened the caravan door and was met by a blast of wind so strong that he had to tuck the violets inside his coat for fear they would be blown out of his grasp and scattered across the fairground. Then, tucking his head into his collar, he set off for the hospital, comfortably sure that he had done everything he could to make his suit acceptable to Patty. Not that he had much doubt of her answer. If he had seriously worried, the small jeweller’s box nestling in his inside pocket would not have been there. But, of late, Patty had been so sweet and carefree when in his company that he could not believe her indifferent.
He had had a word with the sister last time he visited and she had been pretty sure that today would be Patty’s last day on the ward. ‘They’ll send her back home tomorrow; Mr Watkin as good as told us that she was able to manage at home now,’ she informed him, with a twinkling smile. ‘Then you’ll be able to have her all to yourself, Mr Rudd, and I know that will please you.’
Toby had agreed, of course, though in fact this was anything but the case. Once she was home with the girl Maggie and Nurse Purbright constantly in attendance and Mrs Knight and her son right next door, he knew that his opportunities for seeing Patty alone would be severely limited. What was more, the difficulties she would encounter with her broken arm in plaster for a number of weeks might make her short-tempered and less willing to consider changing her status. No, he must propose whilst she was still in hospital, strike while the iron was hot in fact, or else risk a rebuttal.
He was aware that Darky Knight was in love with Patty, of course he was, but could not fathom how Patty felt about the other man. They were friends, it was true, but he did not think that Darky meant to ask Patty to marry him. Why, otherwise, would Darky have come slogging all the way to New Brighton on the day following Patty’s accident just to tell him in which hospital she lay? If Darky had had intentions there himself, surely he would not have let the opposition know where she might be found. Toby knew that in similar circumstances he would have said nothing to Darky, would have done his utmost, in fact, to keep the other man in the dark. And I’m not a bad sort of feller, Toby told himself as he battled his way aboard the ferry. I’m as generous as the next man, but only an idiot – or someone not really interested in the girl – would let a rival know how the land lay.
He got off the ferry at the Pier Head and was lucky enough to catch a tram immediately. He had come early deliberately, partly because he knew that Patty always had plenty of visitors between seven and eight and partly to give himself more time since he wanted to discuss with her just where and how they should get married and where she would like to go for a brief, three-day honeymoon. He knew most women wanted white dresses, and bridesmaids, but hoped that practical Patty would be different. He wanted a nice register office ceremony to be performed as soon as possible, followed by a few days away, perhaps in Southport, a town he had always liked, and then a return to New Brighton and the green caravan until around April, when he would want to move back to the Flanagan’s fair.
Thinking it over as he swung off the tram and faced into the wind once more, dodging the great shining rain-dappled puddles which almost hid the paving stones, he decided that probably Patty’s broken arm was a blessing in disguise. The ward sister had told him it was a nasty fracture and might take as long as three months to heal properly. If they got married almost immediately he would make sure that Patty had a thoroughly enjoyable three months, living in the green caravan, helping out occasionally on the shooting gallery and savouring a freedom from work which, he guessed, she had never known. Oh aye, he told himself, splashing onwards, at the end of three months he was sure she would willingly give up this so-called career of hers in favour of himself and the fair he loved so well.
*
‘Well? Not that I need to ask, Patty Peel, your face tells it all.’ Sadie’s own face wore a delighted beam. ‘So they’re letting you out tomorrer, eh? Now don’t you forget what you promised. You’ll nip round to Hetherington Court just as soon as you’re able, to check on me old feller and me kids.’
Patty was coming down the ward from an interview in Sister’s office and beamed back at her friend. ‘Yes, I’m to go home tomorrow,’ she said blithely. ‘I had to promise that Mrs Knight would pop round to help out until I settle in and have learned to do things one-handed. The nurses have been wonderful, letting me help them in the kitchen and the sluice, so that I’ve got used to not using my right hand. There are all sorts of tricks which help. I can’t carry a tray, but if I put things into a bag I can manage several objects at a time, and simple things like making a cup of tea and chopping vegetables can be done with one hand if you put the vegetables into a smallish container and then wedge the container in a corner. But of course peeling potatoes just isn’t possible, so Sister said to cook them with their skins on; they’re better for you like that, anyway.’