The Angels of Lovely Lane Read Free

organized the evacuee transport leaving her friend’s back yard only yesterday morning.
    She had no idea how she and her da would manage without Rita. If her own children were evacuated, how could they accept her help? Rita struggled every day, but she never failed to help out, and in return Emily did what she could for her, including watching her boys while Rita did shifts down at the munitions factory at the weekends. No doubt, if Rita’s children were away, she would increase her shifts to full time, and why shouldn’t she? But it would mean she would no longer be there when they needed her. These troubled thoughts had run through Emily’s mind since yesterday, but now she needed to run to the shop and collect up the kids before dark fell.
    ‘I’ll run for the messages quick, Mam. I’ll be back in half an hour.’
    Her mother smiled weakly. ‘You’re a good girl, Emily, the best. I’m lucky to have you.’ Emily kissed her on the brow and stood for a moment, breathing in the smell of hair that she dared not wash.
    Before she left for the shop, she popped her head round Rita’s back door. ‘Give me your coupons, quick. The shop has butter in.’
    ‘God, you’re a love,’ said Rita, taking the coupons out of a drawer. ‘How’s yer mam? I took her some pearl barley soup in at lunch time, but she didn’t want it.’ Her face was full of concern for Emily, whose two young brothers had run over and grabbed her knees as soon as she walked into the kitchen.
    ‘We’re having the best fun here, Emily. Do you want to play too? Rita says we have to listen to the radio later, because there is going to be news about the war and she wants to know where Uncle Jack is. Are you coming to listen?’ Richard jumped up and down and looked up at her with eager eyes.
    ‘I will when I’ve done the jobs, love,’ Emily said, smiling at Rita. ‘And once the tea is cleared away we can play a game ourselves tonight, at home. As long as we are not too noisy. Mam is on the sofa we moved into the kitchen this morning, and she would love that.’
    ‘Mammy’s on the sofa. Mammy’s getting better,’ shouted Richard as he jumped up and down in excitement. Satisfied, he ran back off to play with the other boys.
    ‘I was there when Dr Gaskell came, Emily,’ said Rita. ‘Your da asked me to sit in, when he had to pop into the club to get his rota for the blackout. He said your mam had been pretty bad this morning. The doctor gave her an injection for the pain and he left some medicine in a brown bottle on the dresser. She’s to have it when the pain gets too bad. He said he wants to talk to your mam and da in the morning and they have to meet him at St Angelus. I was thinking, perhaps you might want me to go with him if you can’t?’ Emily was about to protest, but Rita went on, ‘Maisie Tanner has offered to take the boys to school. She loves your little Richard, thinks he’s a dote, and if she does that I can easily go to St Angelus. The doctor said he wants someone to be with your mam and da to listen to what he has to say and remember for them afterwards, and I said well that’s not a problem, it will be Emily or me. What do you think, love? Can you go? Or shall I? I think the doctor wants yer mam to be looked after by the St Angelus nurses and I know there are none better. My own mam was in St Angelus and she loved those nurses. Angels from Lovely Lane she called them. They all live in that big white house opposite the park gates. You know the one?’
    Emily nodded. She herself had seen the nurses in their long skirts and capes and frilly hats, and when she was a little girl she thought she had never seen such pretty ladies. She had confided in no one, but all she had ever wanted to do was to become one of the angels. To wear the uniform and to look after people who were sick. But the war, Alfred’s being called up and then so badly wounded, her mother’s illness, two little boys to care for, her nursing duties at