The Tea Ladies of St Jude's Hospital

by Joanna Nell

Genres: Women's Fiction; Humor & Satire; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

The Marjorie Marshall Memorial Cafeteria has been serving refreshments and raising money at the hospital for over fifty years - long after anybody can remember who Marjorie Marshall actually was. Staffed by successive generations of dedicated volunteers, the beloved cafeteria is known as much for offering a kind word and sympathetic ear (and often unsolicited life advice) as for its tea and buns. Stalwart Hilary has worked her way up through the ranks to Manageress; Joy, the cafeteria's newest recruit, has been late every day since she started; seventeen-year-old Chloe, the daughter of two successful surgeons, is volunteering during the school holidays because her mother thinks it will look good on her CV. And when they discover the cafeteria is under threat of closure, this unlikely trio must band together to save it.

Release date: September 29, 2021

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 368

Sample

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 prognosis 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 consumptive 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 raincoat 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.

IN THE HOSPITAL CAR PARK, JOY PRACTISED HER SMILE INTO her compact mirror. The bright tangerine colour that complemented her hair had bled into the lines around her mouth. After trying to mop up the tiny tributaries, she decided the solution was another layer of lipstick. The wider her smile, she noticed, the less obvious the bleeding.

This morning the onshore breeze outside the hospital had turned her new scarf into a spinnaker, and forced her to break into an uncomfortable jog. Joy reefed in the excess fabric and secured it beneath her bra strap. She hoped that would be sufficient to satisfy Hilary’s rigid health and safety protocols. If the manageress had her way, the volunteers would all wear theatre scrubs and plastic clogs to serve tea and buns.

Today, Joy had experimented with an oversized ring, an impulse purchase at a craft market years ago, back when her fingers were still straight. The pale blue glass disc was the size of a quail’s egg and she imagined Hilary’s eyes on stalks when she saw it. But Joy decided to wear it anyway. Partly because once she’d managed to slide the ring across her bulbous knuckle, she couldn’t get it off again. She was stuck with it. And so was Herr Hilary. She only hoped it wouldn’t hamper her chances of being offered the permanent position, after all the effort she put in over the past four weeks. Every night without fail, Len tested her on The Manual – unofficially referred to as Mein Kampf on the volunteer grapevine – until she was word perfect.

‘In the event the manageress is absent due to …’

‘Illness, temporary or permanent mental or physical incapacity …’ Joy tried to picture the last line on page twenty-one. ‘Or on compassionate grounds.’

‘Responsibility will automatically be delegated down the chain of command in the following order of seniority …’

‘I know this,’ Joy bubbled. ‘Full-time accredited volunteers, then trainee volunteers, followed by short contract junior volunteers.’

Outside St Jude’s main entrance, Joy gathered herself. The hospital was in the throes of a major renovation. Not before time. From a distance the imposing Victorian building, presiding over the town from halfway up the hill, looked positively Dickensian. It appeared to have been designed as a deterrent to sickness or infirmity of any kind, and although the interior had been modernised over the years, it still had an old-fashioned air of misery. Joy reminded herself that she was not here to judge the hospital on aesthetics after the exceptional care they had given Len on ward seven, rather she was here to repay those kindnesses.

In truth, she was getting as much out of her volunteering as the hospital was. The Marjorie Marshall Memorial Cafeteria was a place where staff, visitors and patients could all draw breath, drink a hot cup of tea and find a sympathetic ear. For Joy, it was a place to connect and belong.

‘Morning, Joy.’ A figure stepped out of a cloud of blue– grey cigarette smoke. It was one of the long-stay patients, Vince, a gentle giant of a man who always wore the same blank expression and a pair of large headphones that never appeared to be actually plugged into anything. Everything about him had been slowed to half speed. Joy suspected it was the drugs, both the illicit ones and the ones the psychiatric ward prescribed. He was perfectly harmless, as was his equally wide-eyed partner-in-crime, Lindy, her sinewy body in perpetual motion, her yellow-stained fingers impatient for the cigarettes the security guards regularly slipped her.

‘Hello, Vince,’ said Joy cheerily as she ran the gauntlet.

Lindy stepped towards her. ‘Spare a ciggie?’

‘Sorry, lovely,’ Joy replied. ‘But if you pop down to the cafeteria in half an hour, I’ll have the usual for you.’

The usual, a daily can of fizzy drink, cost Joy a tiny portion of her pension, since neither Vince nor Lindy ever carried any cash. It was a small price to pay to keep them happy and she never begrudged adding the few coins to the till when Hilary wasn’t looking.

The half-speed man and double-speed woman stood aside and waved her through. Joy spritzed her neck with the perfume bottle she kept in her handbag. The Lily of the Valley was no match for Vince and Lindy’s Benson & Hedges but for a woman whose own clothes stank of stale smoke, Hilary could be funny about smells. Hilary could be funny about a lot of things.

Joy plumped up the peacock-coloured chiffon around her neck, adjusted the oversized ring until the colour returned to her knuckle, and took a deep breath.

‘You can do this,’ she told herself, as she had at the start of every shift since her interview last month. The familiarity of the hospital had knotted her stomach that first morning. It was getting easier, each day bringing with it less trepidation, as Len had assured her it would.

‘You’ll get there, love,’ he’d said when she came home that first day and told him she didn’t think she was ready after all.

‘It’s much harder than I thought it would be.’

‘It’s all right to take your time.’

‘I worry about leaving you on your own all day.’

‘I’m not going anywhere in a hurry.’

One day she would return to the ward where Len clocked up enough frequent flyer points to secure him his own birthday cake and a kiss from the ward clerk. The blood tests and scans and transfusions were all behind them now, as was the lipstick-stained cheek. When the time was right, Joy would return to ward seven to thank all the doctors, nurses and auxiliaries individually. Only then would she be ready to move on from those dark days. Closure. That’s what they called it, which seemed curious to Joy. To her it represented the opposite – a new beginning, an opening up. But she wasn’t ready to go back yet. The last thing she wanted was a reminder of all Len had been through. The position at the cafeteria was a step in the right direction, she told herself, an excuse to get out of the house every day now that Len was doing better. An excuse to wear her outfits again, if nothing else.

First on the right inside the main entrance was the tiny newsagency. Nitin was in his customary spot standing optimistically behind the counter watching the ebb and flow of potential customers. He waved and gave her a toothy grin.

‘The new edition is here, Joy,’ he shouted, waving a Luxury Traveller magazine.

‘Thank you, lovely. I’ll pick it up on my way out.’

One day, she and Len would take that trip they’d promised each other. In the meantime, there was no harm in dreaming.

Nitin never set foot inside the cafeteria, and Joy knew Hilary went out of her way to avoid the tiny newsagency, even if it meant driving to an out-of-town office supplier whenever she needed new stationery. The unspoken rivalry made no sense to Joy. The newsagency sold newspapers and magazines, and the cafeteria offered mainly tea and buns. Yes, it was true that Nitin also stocked confectionery and cold drinks, but Hilary also insisted on keeping a small display of greeting cards. St Jude’s was a busy hospital and there were plenty of customers to go round. Enough for Nitin to make a modest living and plenty for the volunteer-run cafeteria to raise money for essential equipment or fund small projects to improve the lives of the patients.

Joy hurried past the reception desk, lest she be sucked into the gravitational field of Wendy’s latest conspiracy theory. She was the human equivalent of Twitter, sharing snippets of news and opinions with unsuspecting passers-by. Even the mild-mannered Nitin referred to her as Hashtag Wendy.

By the time she reached the cafeteria Joy was quite out of breath. Avoiding Wendy was at least keeping her fit. Today marked a personal best. Unfortunately the physical signs of her exertion were unlikely to disguise yet another late arrival. As she’d feared, Hilary was already standing under the clock, arms folded.

‘Eight fifty,’ she said. ‘You’re late again. This simply won’t do.’

‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ puffed Joy. ‘It’s only eight forty-five by my watch. I checked it against the World Service this morning.’

‘Even Greenwich Mean Time can’t be trusted. You should know by now that we go by this.’ Hilary pointed to the old plastic clock that hung behind the counter, hands almost obscured by years of grease and dust. What Joy wouldn’t give to have a go at that sad grimy face with the Spray n’ Wipe. If only she could do the same with Hilary’s scowl.

Choose your battles, she heard Len say. GMT wasn’t worth getting into a lather over.

She put her bag on the usual shelf in the overstuffed storeroom and found a clean blue apron. Her scarf became entangled with the apron strings almost straight away but Hilary was too busy grinding her pencil through the sharpener to notice. Every morning, Joy watched her test the lead point against her index finger until she was satisfied. It was reassuring to know that if theatres ran out of instruments, Hilary’s pencil was ready to perform open-heart surgery if needed.

‘Where’s the Duke of Edinburgh this morning?’ Joy looked around for the nervous lad. She had grown rather fond of him. She’d always loved young people and delighted in the fact that at her age, most people were younger than her anyway.

‘He had a mishap on the gold hike,’ replied Hilary. ‘Dr Nash is repairing his anterior cruciate this morning.’

Joy wasn’t completely certain what this meant but the fact that an orthopaedic surgeon was involved implied she was referring to a body part and not camping equipment.

‘I’m sure we’ll manage,’ said Joy but she was going to miss him, not least because without his perceived shortcomings, hers would be under increased scrutiny. Mondays were the hospital’s busiest day, when the cafeteria was most under pressure. Still, they were hardly feeding the five thousand, although with Hilary as the official micro-manageress the task of supplying simple refreshments to a handful of customers often felt biblical in proportion.

‘Don’t worry,’ Hilary said. ‘There’s a new girl starting this morning. She should be here at nine. Chloe Something-Pearson. Double-barrelled, so she should be good. Her father, I forget his name, is head of colorectal at The General. Her mother, Sue Pearson, is a surgeon too, works here at St Jude’s.’

‘I know that name. If it’s the same lady doctor I’m thinking of, she’s very good. One of my book club ladies was under her for her scare last year. Nice bedside manner. Warm hands.’

‘Apparently this Chloe girl is going to be a doctor too. It’s about time we had someone intelligent working here.’ Seeing Joy’s face fall, Hilary added, ‘No offence, Joy.’

‘None taken, Hilary.’

Hilary must have noticed the ring because she pursed her lips and made that little sound through her nose. ‘Since we’re already running late, I’ll do napkins myself.’ She nodded towards the almost-empty plate under the glass dome by the till, ‘You’re on muffins this morning.’

Joy washed her hands and set to work transferring blueberry muffins from a large plastic container in the storeroom to the plate. Last week, when the midweek muffin supply hadn’t arrived, Joy had microwaved a Monday muffin, dusted it with icing sugar and added a squirt of cream before she’d served it to a customer. Far from praising her ingenuity, Hilary had whipped the plate away from the customer and issued an immediate refund.

‘In future I’d prefer it if you didn’t show too much initiative, Joy. We have a reputation for serving honest food here. Simple and fresh. This,’ she said, addressing the steaming muffin, ‘is not fresh.’

It was almost nine. When she’d finished with the muffins, Joy started on the fruit buns. She’d barely finished stacking the plump doughy buns when Hilary elbowed her aside and rearranged them into a tottering pyramid.

‘Until you’ve been to Giza and seen what those ancient Egyptians built with their bare hands, you can’t possibly understand.’ Hilary stood back and admired the arrangement. She and her husband had ‘travelled’. Money bought stories, and in this case, guaranteed the final word on fruit buns.

Hilary was on edge this morning, glancing repeatedly at the clock and apparently oblivious to the customers waiting patiently outside. As always, at the front of the queue was an immaculately dressed older man carrying a folded newspaper under his arm. Three times a week, on the days his wife underwent dialysis according to Wendy, the man with the newspaper made himself at home at the table in the far corner, where he read his paper from cover to cover. He was polite and proper, a real gentleman, but not one for small talk. Joy had introduced herself and he’d smiled warmly but never offered his name in return. She delivered a fresh pot of tea to his table every hour on the hour. On Mondays he ordered a sausage roll which he ate with a knife and fork. Wednesdays he liked a toasted fruit bun with butter, and on Fridays Joy always made sure she saved him his favourite, a chocola. . .