A sneak preview of The Tea Ladies of St Jude’s Hospital by Joanna Nell…

The Tea Ladies of St Jude’s Hospital is out now in eBook and available here.

1

Life in the bus lane

This wasn’t how she’d pictured her life ending. With  the red light looming ahead and the car showing no signs of slowing, she prayed it would be a swift and painless exit. Hilary had contemplated death as often as any woman of her age, she imagined, but she’d always envisaged slipping away peacefully in her sleep. In the event of an accident she would have preferred something more glamorous and befitting a woman of her worldliness, say negotiating a hairpin bend in the mountains above Monaco, being eaten by a lion during a private safari or mauled by a polar bear on an Arctic cruise. Not in the passenger seat of a thirty-year-old Ford at the hands of her own sister. Hilary shut her eyes and braced herself against the dashboard, the seatbelt tugging reassuringly across her bosom.

Airbags must still have been a luxury extra back when the Ford rolled off the production line. That the old blue bomb was still going was a miracle. That her 82-year-old sister Nancy was still alive was equally miraculous, given both her dubious driving credentials and her forty-a-day habit. The woman was indestructible, which is more than could be said for the iceberg lettuce and four wrinkled tomatoes inside the designer handbag resting on Hilary’s lap. For one ridiculous moment, her concern was for the welfare of the hand-stitched Italian leather and salad items in the event of the imminent collision. She held her breath and waited.

Out of curiosity when the anticipated crunch and splinter of metal and glass didn’t occur, Hilary opened her  eyes.  The traffic light had turned green and Nancy was now  in   the bus lane, leaving other more patient drivers in her wake. Hilary released her breath and her grip on the sun-bleached dashboard. The windscreen was so encrusted with dead insects that she could only decipher the faint outlines of the children in the back of the school bus directly ahead.

‘Nancy, we’re way too close.’

‘Do stop fussing,’ Nancy replied. ‘I’ve been driving a lot longer than you have.’

Six years. Six years that would always award her sister the final word. Even now, more than seventy years after the age gap had cast them into their respective roles. A lifetime of tiptoeing around her older sister, like keeping a wary distance from a tense boil that might burst at any moment.

Hilary’s right foot splayed against an imaginary brake, the road frighteningly visible through a hole in the rusted-out footwell. The one saving grace was that this strip of moving tarmac at least led to the hospital. Their chances of survival were increasing with each crunching gear change.

Nancy cracked the driver’s window and launched her smouldering cigarette butt into the path of the vehicle behind. Then she leaned across towards the glove box for another. Hilary retrieved the cigarette packet for her. At her age, Nancy was beyond redemption. In the end it all came down to damage limitation.

‘For heaven’s sake, slow down,’ said Hilary. ‘I don’t want to be late.’

Fat chance of that, Hilary wanted to say. Outpatients always ran late. It was a wonder they assigned appointment times at all. She’d often wondered why they didn’t use little paper tickets like the ones you had to tear off at the supermarket deli. ‘If you carry on like this we’ll end up in Emergency, not Outpatients.’

‘For your information,’ said Nancy, turning her entire body to face her passenger, ‘I have a clean driving record. I have never had an accident.’

It was true. Technically. The dents and scratches on the blue bomb all involved inanimate objects, like gateposts or brick walls, and had given the car’s bodywork what Hilary’s interior designer would have referred to as patina. As a result, other road users gave it a conveniently wide berth.

‘I do wish you’d let me drive for a change,’ Hilary said. ‘You’ve seen how dangerous the roads are around here.

You have enough stress in your life already. I mean, with all your money, your friends and your dignity gone, all you really have left is your little job at the cafeteria.’ Nancy reached over and squeezed her knee. ‘And me. You’ll always have me,’ she said.

Her liver-spotted hand, which should have been on the steering wheel, was little more than a thin glove of bones. In the ten minutes since they’d left the house, Hilary had counted eighteen occasions when Nancy had removed both hands simultaneously from the wheel. This included three bouts of coughing, two attempts to dislodge the jammed-in dashboard lighter, and once to extinguish a small fire in her lap. The other times were a miscellaneous assortment of personal readjustments, obscene hand gestures to other drivers, and an expletive-laden attempt to revive the defunct speedometer. Judging by the angle of her seat, tilted so far forward that her bony sternum almost touched the steering wheel, Nancy’s eyesight wasn’t great either.

Hilary knew better than to pass comment. If the past seventy-six years had taught her anything, it was that Nancy had an answer for everything.

Take the coughing and wheezing. ‘I’m allergic to next door’s cat,’ she’d respond.

Or her over-reliance on prescription sleeping tablets. ‘It’s the worry.’ When asked what she had to worry about, she’d answer, ‘You, Hil. I’m worried about you ending up lonely and abandoned. Especially now you’ve lost your looks.’

As for the squalid state of the old family home they now shared – ‘You wouldn’t understand poverty, Hil. You have a big house and a rich husband.’ Then she’d backtrack. ‘Sorry, had a big house.’

Had a rich husband.

Nancy had waited a long time for this moment and she  was entitled to her schadenfreude. And Hilary knew it was  no more than she deserved. She was past the disbelief and anger stage. The hurt and betrayal had left her numb more than anything. She was merely clinging to the wreckage of her former life and trying not to sink.

This was usually Hilary’s cue to recite her ‘Debt of Gratitude’ speech. About how she could never fully repay Nancy for staying at home to care for their elderly parents, pointing out gently that she’d  tried to  make life easier  by helping with the bills and expenses, stopping short of reminding her that even the blue bomb had also been a gift. Back when it was a solid, low-mileage, roadworthy vehicle and not a death trap that would surely have their mechanic father rolling in his grave. At least the engine was still running, unlike her luxury convertible that had failed to even start this morning.

Cue Nancy’s ‘I Could Have Been’ speech. How she could have been a doctor or a lawyer, a catwalk model, even an astronaut if she hadn’t sacrificed everything so Hilary could run away and marry Jim. They were two seasoned actors following a script in a long-running play. And the curtain never really went down.

When the blue bomb finally skidded to a halt outside the hospital, Hilary discovered tomato juice  leaking between the hand-stitched seams of her handbag. The prog- nosis for the lettuce wasn’t looking good. But there wasn’t time to celebrate arriving in a car and not an ambulance. Nancy tugged on the handbrake and unfastened her seatbelt. ‘You can’t park here.’ Hilary pointed out the red letters  on the ground and the sign only millimetres from the front bumper. ‘This is the emergency drop-off zone. An outpatient

appointment hardly counts as an emergency.’

Nancy made a sound through her nose. ‘If your sister having a shadow on her lung doesn’t constitute an emergency then I don’t know what does.’

‘Fine. Just don’t mention my name when they tow you away.’

A column of ash toppled from the drooping cigarette at Nancy’s lips. Leaning to one side, she disconnected some wires beneath the dash and finally the engine died.

For a woman who was supposedly facing a potentially life-threatening diagnosis, Nancy looked remarkably well. Or at least no different to how she usually looked. She’d looked eighty since she was forty. Only her stained fingers and hacking cough hinted that her filthy habit might be catching up with her.

The first customers would be checking their watches outside the cafeteria by now. Ten years of faithful service behind that counter and Hilary had never once taken a sick day or been late to flip the sign on the door.

Nancy was talking again. She stubbed out the remains of her cigarette and emptied the overflowing ashtray through  the open driver’s window before winding it up again. ‘Are you listening, Hil?’

‘Sorry, what was that?’

‘I said, don’t you worry about  me. I’ll be fine. I’m  used  to doing things on my own.’

Here we go, thought Hilary. Act Two. Nancy’s whole shadow on the lung drama had unfolded remarkably quickly. There was something fishy about the timing, coinciding with a comment that she didn’t want to outstay her welcome and was thinking of looking for her own place. She was prepared to give her sister the benefit of the doubt but couldn’t muster any sympathy yet. The best she could offer was pragmatism. Nancy could take it or leave it.

‘I told you I’d come with you to the appointment. Let me open up and give Joy her instructions then I’ll meet you in Outpatients. It’s right next door.’

‘No, I wouldn’t want to tear you away from your precious cafeteria.’

She knew Nancy didn’t really mean that, but she had a point. Even if Joy turned up on time for once – which was about  as likely as Nancy agreeing to go to the optometrist  for an eye test – Hilary couldn’t leave her to orientate today’s new volunteer unsupervised. Not when she was harbouring serious doubts about inviting Joy to stay on at the conclusion of her trial period next week.

‘You’re right,’ Hilary conceded, picturing the potential mayhem Joy  could cause in an hour. ‘Are  you  sure you’ll  be okay?’

Lip quivering, Nancy nodded. ‘Do you have a spare pack of tissues in your bag or will Dr Goldman have a box?’

‘Don’t worry. I guarantee there’ll be tissues.’ It was true.

There was always something to mop up in a hospital.

The emotional pot shots continued out on the footpath as Nancy gave a conspicuous cough into her hand and appeared genuinely disappointed not to find her palm covered in con- sumptive blood specks.

‘Pop in for a cup of tea afterwards,’ said Hilary brightly. She didn’t want to imagine her sister driving home alone after receiving bad news from the oncologist. If her role at the cafeteria weren’t so vital, she would simply put a notice on the door and be there for Nancy. Then again, this was the same woman who’d dragged Hilary back from a Mediterranean cruise supposedly to their mother’s deathbed, only for Hilary to find the old dear watching A Country Practice and tucking

into a packet of licorice allsorts.

Still, if it wasn’t for Nancy she would have found herself out on the streets six months ago. So where should her loyalties lie – with the children’s ward and the sea-life mural she’d vowed to raise the money for, or with her sister?

Nancy cut a rather pathetic figure as she hobbled towards the hospital’s main entrance, swamped by the oversized rain- coat she insisted on wearing, whatever the weather.  When  the giant glass doors eventually swallowed the fragile figure, Hilary saw her for what she was. For all their bickering, Nancy was her only living relative. Her own flesh and blood.