23. Dark Plots

In the bleak early-morning light, Olive, gasping for breath after her long run from the Grange, burst into the Home through the back door and found Shirley already busy baking bread in the kitchen. Startled by the sight of Olive, who had left Mary Vale some months ago and who had been disliked by many of the girls, including Shirley, she could only gasp, ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I have to see Matron immediately,’ Olive answered, her eyes wild. ‘It’s urgent.’

Shirley gave the unpleasant-looking girl with sly eyes and a vicious tongue a long, suspicious look. She had to admit, though, that Olive did look genuinely distressed.

‘Get on with it,’ Olive snapped rudely. ‘Tell her I’ll wait for her in the garden.’

Matron, who’d been in her office most of the night and had barely slept due to her nervous agitation, joined Olive, who wasted no time in breaking the awful news. Visibly shaken, Matron smothered a cry of anguish with her hand. ‘NO!’ she rasped. ‘That’s impossible!’

‘It’s the truth,’ Olive assured her.

‘What did you do to the poor child?’ Matron demanded.

‘Nothing! I done like what you told me to do.’

‘You couldn’t have,’ Matron protested. ‘You obviously did something, you stupid girl!’

Furious with Matron, Olive hit back with a snarl. ‘He was fine when I settled him down for the night! He’d fed well and I’d winded him, I was there right by his bloody side throughout the whole soddin’ night, but when I woke up he was gone.’

Almost out of her mind, Matron paced the garden, running her hands through her hair.

‘I employed you to watch the child’s every move. God! Oh, God!’ Turning venomously on Olive, she lashed out further. ‘I’ll drag you through every court in England if you’re responsible for Bertie’s death.’

Olive stuck out her chin. ‘Try it, and I’ll tell any court who asks how you sneaked the kid out of Mary Vale like a thief in the night.’

By this time, Matron was literally ranting in fury. ‘He was a strong, robust child – he showed no indication of any abnormality or infection, his vitals were good,’ she gabbled to herself. ‘His breathing … his colour … they were both good … how could he possibly die?’

Leaving a scowling Olive in the garden, Matron ran back to her room, where she immediately phoned Percival, whom she woke from his sleep, with Olive’s grim news.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he cried explosively. ‘What’re we going to do? The Bennetts are planning to arrive here later today to pick him up!’

Tense and white-faced, Matron was thinking fast. ‘Then put them off immediately,’ she commanded.

Percival was so panicked he had trouble understanding her. ‘Put them off?’

‘YES!’ she cried. ‘We’ve nothing to show them. Tell them the baby’s not well enough to travel – tell them anything to stall them,’ she added wildly.

Eventually seeing the logic in her suggestion, Percival said, ‘Yes, of course, I’ll phone them right away … but we’ll have to come up with another plan.’

Matron quickly corrected him. ‘Don’t you mean another baby?’

Percival didn’t mince his words. ‘Precisely. Another baby – if we’re to get the Bennetts’ money.’

Matron, who’d already thought of Tom as a possible replacement, added cautiously, ‘Actually, there is another baby boy in the Home.’

Percival gasped in relief. ‘Can we pass him off as Bertie without arousing suspicion?’

‘We can but try,’ she said smoothly.

‘Then get the bastard up here as soon as you can!’ desperate Percival begged.

‘I’ll do my best, Sir Percival, but we must act carefully,’ she told him. ‘For the time being, I’m sending Olive back to the Grange, where she’ll await further instructions. I can’t keep her here, where residents might start asking her questions.’ She paused before adding, ‘Could you make sure the room Bertie occupied is back to normal before her arrival, please?’

Before Percival could start to bluster and protest, Matron bade him a brisk good morning and quickly put down the phone. Having dispatched Olive, Matron locked her office door so she could be certain of no tiresome interruptions. Thinking fast, she grabbed Nancy’s and Daphne’s files, which would soon join Bertie’s file, safely locked away in her own private suite. But having the files safely in her hands wouldn’t get Tom up to the Grange, which was Matron’s burning priority.

‘Stay calm,’ she told herself. ‘Think!’

The phone shrilling out on her desk made her jump sky-high. Grabbing it, she barked, ‘Yes. Who is it?’

‘Dr Jones here,’ came back the reply.

Matron’s heart dropped; at this moment in time she needed to talk to the drunken doctor like she needed a hole in the head. Just the sound of his slurred voice put her teeth on edge.

‘I wondered what time would be convenient for me to conduct my rounds?’ he asked.

Normally, Matron would have referred him to Sister Ada and have done with it, but it suddenly occurred to her that having a doctor as an ally (albeit a drunken one) could work to her advantage.

‘Dr Jones,’ she began in a tone of voice he’d never heard her use with him before, ‘would it be possible for you to come tomorrow morning?’ Making it up on the air, she babbled, ‘I’d like your advice on, er …’

WHAT? she thought frantically. Playing for time, she added vaguely, ‘There’s a child I’m a little concerned about …’

Jones innocently volunteered the very information she needed. ‘Oh, dear, I hope it’s not got an attack of the measles,’ he remarked. ‘There’s a lot of it about at the moment. Have you checked for Koplik spots yet, Matron?’ he inquired.

Matron’s heart raced. ‘I haven’t, but I will right away, Dr Jones.’

‘If you spot them at the back of the throat, then I need to see the child urgently.’

‘We certainly wouldn’t want that spreading through Mary Vale’s nursery,’ she added earnestly.

‘Let’s catch up in the morning, Matron,’ he suggested.

‘First thing,’ she replied, as she put the phone down.

Who would have believed that idle, drunken Jones could have come up with a solution to her problem? Babies could go blind as a result of the infection; some even died. In homes like Mary Vale, where babies were at risk, it was essential that any contagious infant was immediately isolated in order to prevent the infection from spreading throughout the entire nursery. Getting to her feet, Matron paced the room as she made plans that would enable her to take exclusive charge of Tom. She would nurse him round the clock in a private room off the main ward, and, with him in her sole charge, she would be able to secrete him up to the Grange when the coast was clear. It would take planning and careful synchronization but it was do-able – if she kept her nerve.

Shirley wasted no time in telling Ada about the visit that morning from horrible Olive (who everybody had been glad to see the back of).

‘She seemed all of a flutter,’ Shirley remarked.

‘How odd she should ask to see Matron,’ Ada mused. ‘As I recall, they couldn’t stand the sight of each other.’

‘I wouldn’t say they were on friendly terms now: from what I saw of the two of them in the garden, there was a lot of shouting,’ Shirley told her. ‘Matron soon sent her packing.’

Ada couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Well, that’s a relief: the last time Olive was in the Home she pinched anything she could get her hands on!’

Joking apart, Ada thought to herself, ‘Why has Olive visited the Home?’ Throughout her entire stay at Mary Vale, Olive had never made a secret about how much she loathed the place and just about everybody in it, and that included Matron too. So why on earth had the two former adversaries met in the garden, and what exactly had they been arguing about?

Matron spent the rest of the day executing her plan, which she had to do with great subtlety in order not to arouse suspicion among the staff. While Ada was busy on the ward, Matron found the key to the room she planned to use. After unlocking it, she slipped inside to find a single bed and a baby’s cot, which was all she needed.

Before tea-time she went to see Tom in the nursery, which surprised Ada, who was busy assisting the girls on the bottle-feeding rota.

‘Matron?’ Ada politely inquired when she entered the busy room.

Walking in between the line of little cots, Matron peered very closely at each baby in turn.

‘I’ve heard some rather alarming news from Dr Jones: it appears an epidemic of measles is rife in the area.’

Ada’s prettily arched eyebrows shot up. ‘Really? I’ve not heard anything.’

‘Dr Jones mentioned it only this morning,’ Matron answered airily, as she stuck her head into Tom’s cot in order to get a good view of the child, who was fretful and mewling. ‘Is Tom all right?’ she asked sharply.

‘Yes, he’s fine,’ Ada replied scooping Tom into her arms, then carried him to a comfortable chair, where she settled herself before commencing bottle-feeding the baby. ‘Just hungry.’

‘He looks flushed,’ Matron commented.

Concentrating on the baby, who was having trouble connecting with the rubber teat, Ada answered quickly, ‘He’s a little overheated, nothing more than that.’

Having finished her inspection, Matron strode to the nursery door. ‘I’ll pop back later to see how Tom is; he doesn’t look quite right to me,’ she informed her ward sister.

Ada eyed Matron as she went, then turned her attention to Tom, who was finally sucking successfully from his bottle.

‘There’s a good boy, you’re fine, aren’t you?’ she crooned. ‘A very good little boy.’

Back in her office, Matron sat down and drummed her fingers on her desk. She was satisfied that she’d sown the seeds among the staff of a possible measles epidemic, and she’d certainly pop back and see Tom in the nursery before she went off-duty tonight. She would have to make sure that the baby boy was indeed hot when the doctor examined him in the morning: a hot-water bottle applied a few minutes before his examination should do the trick, she thought. As far as she could see, everything was in place to facilitate her plan, and she only hoped that Percival had kept his part of the bargain and managed to postpone the Bennetts’ arrival.

The next morning Matron was on the ward bright and early. She said a polite good morning to Sister Ann, who’d completed her night shift and was hurrying off to the convent to get some rest. Sister Ada had just taken over from her, and was busy with a team of girls bathing babies in the sluice room. Checking that nobody was in the nursery, she opened the briefcase that she had tucked under her arm and quickly removed a small hot-water bottle. Slipping it under Tom’s bedding, she watched him wriggle in discomfort as the heat reached him.

‘Excellent,’ she thought. ‘He’s going red in the face.’

Standing guard over Tom’s crib, she waited until the baby started to cry, then she snatched the bottle from under his body and slipped it back into her briefcase, which she quickly hid in a cupboard.

‘Poor little boy,’ she said somewhat over-dramatically, as she reached down and picked up the child.

Seeing Shirley entering the ward with a mop and bucket, she strode past her with Tom in her arms. ‘He’s dreadfully overheated: tell Sister Ada I’ve taken his temperature and will be seeing to him,’ she declared. Astonished Shirley could only stand and stare at the departing figure.

In the sluice room Ada was concentrating on drying a little girl who was laid across her lap with a towel underneath her squirming body. She caught sight of Matron hurrying past the sluice room with a baby in her arms.

‘Where’s she off to?’ Ada wondered.

The fretful baby claimed her attention and Ada returned to the task of drying and dressing her.

When Dr Jones arrived, he found Matron in the room off the ward that she’d carefully prepared for Tom, who was now in a little canvas cot, red-faced and screaming.

‘I brought him in here just to be on the safe side,’ she said in a voice that brooked no argument.

As Jones searched for his stethoscope in his medical bag, he asked, ‘Have you checked for Koplik spots?’

She nodded. ‘They’re very much in evidence at the back of his throat and he has a roaring temperature.’

Matron was confident that lazy Jones wouldn’t trouble himself to double-check the accuracy of her statement, which is exactly what happened. In fact, anxious to avoid picking up the unpleasant infection himself, Jones quickly signed all the forms she proffered.

‘Best to keep him away from the other babies if he’s incubating measles,’ he swiftly concluded.

Matron almost smirked. ‘My thoughts entirely. I shall personally nurse him round the clock,’ she added rather self-importantly. ‘After all, it is ultimately my responsibility to ensure that this disease remains contained.’

Bundling his stethoscope back into his bag, Jones nodded his approval. ‘Quite right, Matron. I bid you good day,’ he said, as he all but bolted from the room.

‘Please alert Sister Dale right away,’ Matron called after panicked Jones as he hurried away.

Ada was astonished when the doctor made his sudden announcement.

‘Tom seemed perfectly fine when I gave him his morning feed, and there was certainly no sign of his having a high temperature then,’ she stressed.

‘I have no choice but to isolate the child,’ Dr Jones insisted. ‘I’ve just examined him,’ he lied. ‘And there is no doubt at all about his condition. We don’t want a full-on outbreak. Tom is under Matron’s sole care in a private room just off the ward.’

‘I’m happy to nurse Tom,’ Ada volunteered.

Knowing better than to disobey Matron’s strict instructions, Dr Jones stuck to the plan. ‘Heavens, no need for that, Sister! You have more than enough to do as it is,’ he gushed. ‘Matron wants to take care of this matter personally. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make my report.’

A bewildered Ada could only stand on the ward and watch him go. Gathering her wits, she turned on her heel and dashed to the room Dr Jones had mentioned, only to discover that the door was firmly locked. Sighing, she retraced her steps; Matron really was serious about isolating Tom, even to the point of locking the door. It would have been nice to check up on the little boy, whom she’d grown very fond of, and, besides, something was niggling her: something just did not feel quite right. Still, given the seriousness of the illness and the potential danger Tom could be to the other new-borns, she supposed she had to go along with the plan to keep him in isolation, for the time being anyway.

Now that her plan was swinging into action, Matron made herself highly visible as she hurried busily back and forth looking after Tom, who, mercifully, slept soundly once he’d cooled off.

‘This time,’ she vowed to herself, ‘there’ll be no slip-ups.’

A knock at the door made her jump. ‘Who is it?’

‘Sister Dale,’ came the reply.

Matron opened the door and cautiously poked her head around it.

‘I just wondered if I could get anything for Tom?’ Ada asked.

Not wanting Ada to see the baby peacefully sleeping, Matron slipped out of the room and quickly shut the door behind her.

‘He’s not at all well,’ she lied. ‘If his temperature goes any higher, I may have to call the doctor back.’

‘Poor lamb,’ Ada murmured.

‘I just hope he makes it through the night …’ Matron sighed. ‘He’s never been a particularly strong child, I fear. But we must keep him here, for the benefit of all the other babies in the nursery.’

‘We’re all saying prayers for the little chap,’ Ada said earnestly. ‘I’ll be going off-duty soon, but I’ll bring Sister Ann up to date before I leave.’

‘Would you be so kind as to ask her not to disturb us during the night?’ Matron added, as Ada turned to go.

‘Certainly, Matron. Goodnight,’ Ada replied.

The hours that followed seemed endless – though Matron was kept busy attending to the little boy, whom she fed and changed in order to make him comfortable for his move to the Grange. Obviously, the quietest and safest time to remove Tom was in the dead of night, between the midnight and the 4 a.m. feeds. With her heart pounding, she checked her wristwatch over and over again as she waited for silence to descend on the ward. Around 1 a.m., when all was deadly quiet, Matron wrapped her capacious nurse’s cape around herself; then, after peeping through the curtains to make sure the lights on the ward were out, she lifted a slumbering Tom from his cot.

‘Shhh,’ she murmured, as she tucked the sleeping baby underneath her cape; then she opened the door and, assuming an air of authority, hurried along the dark corridor that led to the back door. Carrying Tom under one arm, she slid the bolt with her free hand and emerged through the tradesmen’s entrance, where she’d had the foresight to leave her car unlocked and as close to the door as possible. Sighing with relief, she slid into the driver’s seat; then, after carefully settling Tom in the passenger seat, with her cape wrapped around him, she started the ignition.

Little did Matron know that, for all her carefully laid plans, somebody was watching her every movement. In the dimly lit kitchen, Shirley, sleepily waiting for her batch of bread to rise, had been startled by a shadowy figure passing the kitchen door. Spotting it was Matron, with every hair on the back of her neck rising, Shirley followed. Once outside in the cold night air, she hunkered down behind a bush, from where she watched Matron quickly settle a small bundle on the passenger seat. Before Matron closed the car door, Shirley was quite sure she saw the bundle stir; wondering if she was imagining things, she watched intently as Matron got into the driver’s seat and started up the engine. It was only then that she heard the shrill cry of a baby.

‘That’s Tom!’ she gasped, laying a hand over her mouth to smother her cry.

Having only recently been in the nursery cleaning around the baby’s cribs, Shirley instantly recognized Tom’s mewling cry, which was distinctly weaker than that of the other, more robust babies.

Watching the car drive slowly out of the grounds with no headlights to guide the way, alarm bells sounded in Shirley’s head.

‘Jesus! She’s taken Tom!’ she muttered and, without stopping to think, she grabbed the gardener’s old rickety bike and set off, at a safe distance so as not to be seen, along the road after Matron.

Matron made her way to the back of the Grange, where Shirley, now hidden behind a belt of rhododendron bushes, saw her knock on the door, which was opened by Olive. Hardly able to believe her eyes, Shirley stood rooted to the spot. If scheming Olive was involved, she knew deep in her gut that something bad was going on at the Grange and Matron was at the heart of it. Staying hidden behind the rhododendron bushes that were dripping with a fine rain, she waited until Matron reappeared. Hurrying past her, Matron made her way to the front of the Grange. Dodging in and out of trees and bushes, Shirley followed Matron, who was admitted through the front door of the Grange by a footman. With the rain now teeming down, plastering her hair into lank, wet strands, Shirley, frozen to the bone, saw Matron reappear about half an hour later. Still in hiding, she watched her get into her car and drive away, again with the headlights off.

When the sound of the car engine had faded away, Shirley jumped on to the bike and cycled back to Mary Vale, where, shivering with cold, she dashed into the kitchen to warm herself by the old range where she’d left her bread to rise. Checking the clock on the kitchen wall, she put the bread into the oven to bake, then sat by the range to wait for it to be ready. It was there that Matron found Shirley, fast asleep, with her hair still streaky wet from her night out in the rain.

‘What are you doing?’ she barked, as she shook Shirley awake.

Fuddled and frightened, Shirley babbled, ‘Waiting for the bread to cook.’

‘Are you usually up in the middle of the night?’

‘Only if I’m minding the bread,’ Shirley replied.

Matron’s eyes swept along Shirley’s skinny little body. ‘Why are you wet?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Have you been out?’

Shirley’s tongue felt like it was stuck to her palate, but eventually she managed to stutter, ‘N … no.’

Matron made a grab for some dry dead leaves that clung to strands of Shirley’s hair. Waving them in front of the girl’s pale face, she asked the question again: ‘Have you been outside?’

Shirley knew she had to explain herself somehow or worse would follow. ‘Only to fetch in the milk,’ she spluttered.

Contemptuously flicking the leaves at trembling Shirley, Matron brought her own face as close as she could to the girl’s. ‘If I find out you’re lying, or, worse still, spying, you will live to rue the day, madam.’

After Matron had stalked off, Shirley, weak with relief, virtually sank to the ground, where, filled with deep foreboding, she fearfully hugged herself.

‘I need to talk to Ada – I need to tell her where I’ve been right away.’

But, as she rose to leave the kitchen, her eyes caught sight of the clock on the wall. ‘It’s too early to wake her now; she needs her sleep.’

Slumping back down, she said to herself, ‘I’ll tell her first thing, as soon as she comes on duty.’

Matron hurried back to the room that Tom had previously occupied.

‘Snivelling, lying, interfering little bitch,’ she seethed under her breath. ‘It’s so damned obvious she’s been out of doors – and, knowing her, she’s been snooping too.’

There was now absolutely no doubt in her mind at all: she would get rid of the damned girl once and for all. And, Matron thought as she entered the room where she had ‘nursed’ Tom and quickly locked the door behind her, she had to do it fast, just in case Shirley had seen something she shouldn’t have and started blabbing to her friends.

Knowing it would soon be dawn, Matron needed to prepare the room for others to see; right now, it looked too spick and span, as if she hadn’t slept in it – which she hadn’t – but she didn’t want anybody else to know that. After rumpling the sheets and blankets on her bed, and on Tom’s cot too, she set a stone-cold, half-empty feeding bottle on the bedside table alongside a thermometer and a stethoscope. When she was satisfied the room gave off the appearance of frantic nocturnal activity, she sat on the edge of the bed, where, after taking a notepad and pen from her handbag, she composed a letter to the Reverend Mother, insisting that Shirley be removed from Mary Vale immediately. Matron wrote that the girl’s stay, extended for far too long, would set an unwanted precedent. The matter had been referred to Sir Percival, who’d expressed a wish that Shirley’s stay at the Home should be curtailed with immediate effect.

Though Shirley had hardly slept, she was still on the ward first thing, cleaning, as usual, and hoping to see Ada just as soon as she started her shift. After her terrifying encounter in the kitchen with Matron, her jangled nerves were soothed by the steady, rhythmic swish-swish of the mop, which she regularly dipped into a bucket of heavily disinfected hot water. It was there that Matron (having just delivered her letter to the Reverend Mother at the convent) tracked her down.

‘Miss Miles,’ she boomed without any preamble.

At the sound of her icy voice Shirley’s blood ran cold in her veins; beginning to shake in every limb, she gripped the mop handle to support her quaking body.

Matron came straight to the point. ‘I’ve just informed the Reverend Mother that we’ve received an official complaint concerning your extended residency here. I’m afraid funds have run out and you will have to vacate the Home at once.’

With her head reeling in shock, Shirley tried to speak, but her tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of her mouth.

‘It’s the precedent, you see,’ Matron rolled on. ‘What if every girl in Mary Vale took a shine to free board and lodgings, like you have?’ she asked maliciously.

Eventually, outraged Shirley found her voice. ‘That’s just not true!’ she cried. ‘I would never cheat and lie. I love Mary Vale, and all my friends here.’

Matron gave an unconcerned shrug. ‘Yes, well, that’s as may be. I’ve informed Sir Percival and the Board, who, of course, are in complete agreement with me. I’m here to personally remove you from the premises before breakfast.’

Pole-axed with shock and fear, Shirley laid aside her mop before she dropped it. Her worst fears were now confirmed; the very thing she’d been dreading was about to become a reality. Unchecked tears streamed down her face.

‘Please, Matron, please don’t make me go, I beg you,’ she implored.

Anxious that nobody should witness the scene, Matron quickly herded Shirley out of the ward.

‘Come along – let’s pack your things, and I’ll see you on to the train,’ she said in a steely voice, as she virtually frog-marched the staggering girl up the stairs to her bedroom.

As Matron flung Shirley’s few belongings into a battered old suitcase, which she’d found tucked away under the neatly made bed, Shirley, now out of her mind with terror, immediately tried to snatch them back.

‘NO! NO!’ she screamed. ‘Please, please don’t send me back home.’

At which point Matron, sensing that she had a hysteric on her hands, slapped Shirley hard around the face.

‘Listen to me, young lady,’ she snarled, gripping Shirley’s hands hard. ‘I’ve had more than enough of your dramatics.’ Pushing her hard face close to Shirley’s, she dropped her voice. ‘I am NOT Sister Ann or Sister Ada, or any of your gullible friends. You will do as you’re told or I will call the police and have you forcibly removed,’ she threatened.

Shirley crumpled on to her bed. ‘Can I at least say goodbye to Sister Ann?’

‘What kind of a fool do you take me for?’ Matron scoffed. ‘Why would I allow another show of your wild emotions? Isn’t that your game? Deceiving good, honest people to get your own selfish way?’

Dumping the remainder of Shirley’s clothes into the suitcase, she slammed it shut and then literally threw Shirley’s coat, hanging on the back of the door, at the girl.

‘Get up,’ she commanded. ‘And get out of Mary Vale.’

Before the residents of the Home had even come down for their breakfast, Matron had all but dragged Shirley down the garden path to Kents Bank Station, where she boarded the first train south. Not taking her eyes off Shirley for a minute, vengeful Matron stood on the deserted platform until the slow-cranking train disappeared into the mist swirling in from the marsh, where mournful seabirds swooped over the tidal waters slowly rolling in. Only then did Matron turn away and, with a triumphant smile on her face, retrace her steps back to Mary Vale, where she could prepare herself for all the questions that would inevitably be asked about Tom.

Shirley sat in her freezing-cold, empty compartment like a condemned prisoner going to the gallows. All the happiness and joy she’d experienced over the last few special months – the love, laughter and friendship – they were gone forever.

‘I always knew it was too good to be true,’ she thought to herself. ‘It was like a dream, one I prayed I would never wake up from, but now I have.’

Wiping the steam from the window, Shirley caught a last glimpse of Mary Vale disappearing from sight, and from her life too.