The Angels of Lovely Lane Read Online Free PDF Page B

Ireland, earlier, in the summer of 1951
    ‘Dana, would ye wake up, sleepy head, and come downstairs and see Daddy. Your letter has arrived, look. He will be late for work if he doesn’t leave soon.’
    Dana blinked furiously. Her mother had pulled back her bedroom curtains and bright sunlight streamed into her room, replacing the damp rainy gloom of yesterday, and so many days on the windy west Atlantic coast of Mayo.
    ‘What time is it?’ she asked, as she put her feet out of bed on to the small bedside mat, avoiding the cold linoleum. A slithering notion of fear combined with excitement slipped into her belly.
    It was here. The letter that would confirm whether or not she had been accepted for nursing training at St Angelus in Liverpool. If she had, her dreams had come true and her prayers been answered. If not, she would have to accept the offer of a place at a hospital in Dublin, and this she definitely did not want to do. Daddy had made it clear that if she trained as a nurse in Dublin, she would be expected to travel back to Mayo on her days off and holidays to help her mammy on the farm. Dana loved her parents, but being the only child had severe drawbacks.
    ‘It’s half past seven and would ye look at this letter, two weeks it’s taken to get here. ’Tis a disgrace.’ Dana’s mother waved the brown envelope up and down as though she were furiously fanning her face. ‘The war is long gone, and they are still blaming the Germans for post our donkey could deliver faster with his legs tied together. Come on now, quickly, I want to make the eight o’clock mass and Daddy’s going into town in the van.’ With that, her mother bustled out of the room and down the stairs, shouting, ‘Noel, listen to me, don’t be moving now. You’ve to wait until Dana comes down and opens her letter. Stand around the table now, both of ye.’
    Dana pulled on her dressing gown, looking out of her bedroom window across the never-ending miles of mist-soaked bog. ‘I won’t miss you one bit,’ she said to the wet, rolling earth. ‘I want to have a life of me own, I do, and I do not want to marry flaming Patrick O’Dowd.’
    As if on cue, she heard the click of the yard gate and, pressing her face against the window to see who it was, saw Patrick striding across the yard. As though he sensed her at the window, he looked up and raised his hand in greeting. Dana feebly raised her own in return.
    Patrick disappeared beneath her window to make his way in through the back door. ‘Bloody nosy Mrs Brock.’ Dana cursed the postmistress under her breath, as she slipped off the dressing gown and put on her slacks. She must have told him I have the letter, she thought, and he realized what it would be. How else would he know to be here?
    Now fuming, but determined not to show it, she pulled a sweater on over her head and made her way down the stairs into the kitchen, where she knew the family committee would be waiting. Her grandmother would have known before she did that the letter had arrived. Mrs Brock had antennae that spread as far as Sligo.
    Dana had to play out the next twenty minutes very carefully. She knew she was blessed, in as much as her mother would not miss mass for the world, and her father had to go to town to pick up the newly arrived fertilizer before it sold out. He had spoken of nothing else over supper the previous evening. Her entire plan had been to think one step ahead of her father at all times. To anticipate his arguments and to be ready with a reply that he could not challenge. It was all so easy. He was a simple man, driven and motivated by religion and morals and some very strict rules, inherited from Dana’s grandmother, who was now sitting in her chair by the fire. As for Patrick, he was the son of her father’s best friend on the neighbouring farm. He was so familiar to her he could have been her brother, and he spent so much time on their farm he might just as well have been.
    As she opened the