Nightingales Under the Mistletoe

by Donna Douglas

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Donna Douglas

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Copyright

  About the Book

  Christmas 1941 and the Nightingale nurses are facing their toughest winter yet.

  With shortages everywhere, and each news bulletin announcing more defeats and losses, the British people are weary and demoralised and The Nightingale Hospital is suffering too.

  Millie is recently widowed and dealing with the demands of her family’s estate. It’s not long before her old world of the Nightingale begins to beckon, along with a long-lost love . . .

  Jess would rather be nursing on the front line but finds herself sent to the country. It isn’t long before the East End girl discovers there are battles to be fought on the home front too.

  Effie finds herself exiled to a quiet village, but the quiet doesn’t last for long as she soon finds excitement in the shape of a smooth-talking GI.

  As Christmas approaches, even the shelter of the countryside can’t protect the girls from heartache.

  About the Author

  Born and brought up in south London, Donna Douglas now lives in York with her husband. They have a grown-up daughter.

  Also available by Donna Douglas

  The Nightingale Girls

  The Nightingale Sisters

  The Nightingale Nurses

  Nightingales on Call

  A Nightingale Christmas Wish

  Nightingales at War

  Nightingales Under the Mistletoe

  Donna Douglas

  Acknowledgements

  I usually leave them till last in my acknowledgements, but this time I feel my husband and daughter should come first in my list of thanks. Writing Nightingales Under The Mistletoe was hard for various reasons (not least me coming up with a new plot two weeks before the deadline!) and even though I was the one at the keyboard, they suffered every word and every page with me. Ken was a true hero, supplying endless cups of tea, listening to my frustration and leaving packets of Fruit Gums hidden around the house to cheer me up. Harriet gave tons of encouragement, read every page with her usual perception, and thankfully didn’t once tell me it was rubbish. I love you both, and I don’t know how you put up with me in deadline mode, but I do appreciate it …

  And my friends frequently came to my rescue, too. Thank you to Maureen Clark for making sure I actually stepped outside the house occasionally, and for turning up with fabulous cupcakes (is everyone getting the impression I respond best to food-based rewards? If so, you’re right). Thank you also to June Smith-Sheppard for sending masses of cyber love, and for still being my friend even when I disappear off the radar for weeks on end. And thank you also to Rachel Diver and Fiona Coleman for allowing me to vent and drink Singapore Slings, and to my author friends Jessica Gilmore and Pamela Hartshorne for allowing me to vent and drink fizzy wine (are you also getting the impression I respond to drink-based rewards? Right again).

  Finally, a big thank you to my agent Caroline Sheldon, and to the wonderful team at Arrow, especially my editor Jenny Geras (welcome back!), Kate Raybould, boss lady Selina Walker, Philippa Cotton in publicity and Sarah Ridley in marketing, and all the amazing sales team, especially Aslan Byrne and Chris Turner. Thank you so much for making the Nightingales what they are, and for throwing me a very nice lunchtime party when I didn’t expect it!

  To Becki Ward

  Chapter One

  IT WAS A cold, foggy November night when Jess Jago arrived on the last train from London.

  She was the only passenger to get off the train at Billinghurst, a deserted rail halt in the middle of nowhere. Jess dumped her suitcase and gas-mask case on the ground and peered around her, trying to get her bearings. The fog was so dense she could almost feel it, like ghostly damp hands pressing on her face.

  She laughed nervously. You’re imagining things, girl! It was just a bit of fog, no worse than the gritty, yellowish pea-soupers that regularly enshrouded the East End.

  She took a deep breath, annoyed with herself for being so twitchy. Honestly, she’d lived all her life in Bethnal Green, grown up among rogues and thieves and God knows what else, and now she was scared because she was in the countryside, with nothing around her but a few trees – and deathly silence …

  ‘Are you the new nurse?’

  The low, gravelly voice came out of the gloom, making her jump out of her skin.

  Jess fumbled in her coat pocket for her torch and aimed the beam into the fog. She swung it slowly left and right, then flinched as it suddenly picked out a grizzled old face under a shapeless hat.

  ‘Turn that thing off, for God’s sake,’ he growled. ‘You’ll have the ARP out, thinking we’re bloody Germans.’ He gave a rattling cough. ‘Well, what are you standing there for? I ain’t got all night, you know. It’s nearly ten and some of us have beds to go to. Besides, this fog plays hell with my chest.’

  Jess heard the faint jingling of a harness, and the clomp of heavy hooves on the iron hard ground. As she lowered the beam of her torch, she saw a cart and a fat grey horse, its head curved wearily downwards.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked.

  ‘Father Christmas, who do you think?’ The old man sighed impatiently. ‘My name’s Sulley – Mr Sulley to you – and I’ve been sent to fetch you to the Nurses’ Home. Now are you coming or not? You’re welcome to walk if you want, but it’s more than five miles, and I doubt if you’d find your way on a night like this, especially since they took all the signposts away.’

  Keeping her torch beam low, Jess carried her suitcase round to the back of the cart and threw it on, then went round to the front and climbed up on to the wooden seat beside the man.

  ‘At last!’ Sulley muttered. He cleared his throat noisily, spat at the ground, shook the reins and they shifted forward slowly, the heavy wheels
rolling beneath them as they started up the lane. The cold night air smelled of dung and damp earth.

  The lurching motion lulled her, and Jess felt her eyelids growing heavier, her head nodding towards her chest. She was bone weary after her journey. The train had been crowded as usual and seemed to inch down the line, stopping every five minutes to allow another troop train to pass.

  Jess had found herself crammed into a carriage with a dozen army boys, all in tearing high spirits. She had shared her sandwiches with them, and they’d made her laugh with their jokes and singing. They reminded her of Sam, full of fun, refusing to take life seriously.

  But Jess had seen enough sorrow and nursed enough wounded soldiers at the Nightingale to know the kind of fate that might befall them. Even as she laughed with them, she found herself looking at their bright, smiling faces, wondering how many of them would come home again.

  Once again, a picture of Sam came into her mind, and she pushed it away out of habit. She couldn’t allow herself to give in to the fear that prowled in the shadows of her mind, waiting to pounce if she once allowed it.

  Beside her, Sulley had started talking. ‘The village is full of Londoners now,’ he grumbled. ‘What with you lot from the hospital and all the evacuees, it’s worse than hop-picking season. Hardly feels like it’s our home any more.’

  Jess bristled. ‘It’s not our choice to come down here,’ she said sharply. ‘We have to go where we’re sent.’

  She certainly wouldn’t have left London if she’d had any choice in the matter. The Blitz had torn the heart out of both the East End and the Nightingale Hospital, and it felt disloyal to abandon it in its hour of need.

  But Matron had been insistent. Most of the patients had been evacuated from London to the Nightingale’s temporary hospital in Kent, and more nurses were needed there.

  ‘It may only be for a few months,’ she had said. ‘But until we can re-open the wards here, you’ll be of more use down there. And I’m sure you’ll welcome the chance of some country air,’ she had added with a small smile. ‘A change might do you good.’

  She had made it sound as if she was doing Jess a favour. But if she thinks that then she doesn’t know me at all, Jess thought. She had been born and brought up in the back streets, with the tang of smog in her lungs from the moment she was born. She was used to the shouts of costermongers and street vendors, the smell of the docks and the glue factory, the rumble of trams and buses. After two years of war, she was even used to the wail of the air-raid sirens, the crump of falling bombs and the reek of cordite and choking dust that followed an attack. She had no time for the country, or the people in it.

  An eerie screech came out of the fog. Jess started out of her seat in terror.

  ‘What the bleeding hell was that?’ she yelped.

  Sulley chuckled. ‘It’s only an owl! Bless me, it ain’t going to hurt you.’ He dug in the depths of his pocket for a dog end, clamped it between his teeth and lit it with one hand, the other controlling the fat old horse. Not that she needed much controlling. Jess could have walked faster than the mare’s steady plod.

  Once again, the motion lulled her. This time Jess must have drifted off, because the next thing she knew the cart had jerked to a halt.

  ‘Here we are,’ the old man said. ‘Home Sweet Home.’

  Jess peered into the foggy darkness. ‘I can’t see anything.’

  ‘The Nurses’ Home is through that gate and up the track a way. There was no room for you lot from London at the hospital home, so they had to convert some old farm buildings.’

  Jess sniffed. A strong odour of manure hung in the air. ‘It smells like a pigsty!’

  ‘That’s right.’ Sulley chuckled. ‘I daresay it’s what you Londoners are used to.’ His laughter turned into a wheezing cough, and he spat at the ground.

  Jess glared at him. At least I don’t stink like an old goat, she thought. That coat of his reeked of cigarettes and sweat.

  She climbed down from the cart and retrieved her suitcase from the back while the old man watched her, drawing on his thin dog end.

  ‘I’ll be here tomorrow morning first thing to collect you,’ he called after her as she walked away, dragging her case behind her.

  Jess turned to face him. ‘You what?’

  ‘I have to take you and the other nurses down to the hospital. It’s a two-mile walk otherwise.’ He jiggled the reins and the old horse clopped off into the darkness before Jess could reply.

  The Nurses’ Home, such as it was, stood at the end of a deeply rutted farm track. It was a long, low building with rough whitewashed brickwork, and a bucket by the front door to catch the drips from the rickety tin roof.

  Jess squared her shoulders. Oh, well, in for a penny, she thought, and knocked at the door.

  It was opened by a tall, elderly woman in a stark grey dress and linen bonnet. Jess recognised her at once as Miss Carrington, one of the Nightingale Hospital’s most fearsome ward sisters. Jess’s heart sank to her shoes. As Sister of the Female Chronics ward in London, Gertrude Carrington had regularly reduced students to tears. Jess couldn’t imagine what she would be like as a Home Sister, tasked with looking after the nurses’ welfare.

  She looked down her long nose at Jess. ‘You were expected over an hour ago, Nurse Jago,’ she greeted her coldly.

  And good evening to you, too, Jess thought. ‘The train was late, Sister.’

  Miss Carrington narrowed her eyes. ‘You’d better come in,’ she said. ‘And take off those shoes. I don’t want you trampling filth all through the place.’

  Inside the building was just as bad as outside. The air was sharp with cold, and reeked of damp. Jess’s breath curled upwards in a feathery plume as she followed the Home Sister down a long, straight passageway with doors leading off to either side.

  ‘As you can see, our surroundings are somewhat – basic,’ Miss Carrington said matter-of factly. ‘But there is a war on, so we must make the best of it.’ She fixed Jess with her steely gaze. ‘May I remind you that even though you are not in London, you are still a nurse of the Nightingale Hospital, and will be expected to adhere to the standards of your training.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘The rules in this Home are the same as in London. No male visitors at any time, and lights out at half-past ten. The door is locked at ten o’clock, and you are expected to be in by then unless you have been given a late pass by Matron. Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ Jess looked down at her stockinged feet so that Miss Carrington wouldn’t see her smile. She didn’t know a nurse who hadn’t flouted those rules at least once. Most of them managed to lead very lively social lives right under the noses of their superiors. As she walked down the passageway, she was already thinking how easy it would be to slip in through an open window after lights out. She wouldn’t even have to risk her neck shinning up a drainpipe.

  Then she remembered. She was stuck in the middle of the country, miles from anywhere. What would be the point of sneaking out when there was no dance hall, or picture house, or anywhere else to go?

  Not only that, she had scarcely been out since Sam was called up. It didn’t feel right to go out and enjoy herself.

  They reached the end of the passageway, and Miss Carrington flung open the very last door. ‘This will be your room,’ she announced.

  It was so small, there was barely enough room for the two narrow iron bedsteads, separated by a chest of drawers. Each bed had a small pile of starched, pressed bed linen sitting squarely on the bare mattress. Over one of the beds, close to the ceiling, was a thin strip of window, shrouded by a heavy blackout curtain. Jess frowned up at it. Perhaps she’d been wrong about sneaking in after lights out. Getting through that tiny gap would be like squeezing through a letterbox.

  ‘We are expecting another nurse from Ireland next week, but you will have the room to yourself until then,’ Miss Carrington said. ‘The bathroom is down the passageway, the fourth door on the right. There is a nu
rses’ common room at the other end of the building, should you wish to use it.’ Her lip curled with disapproval. ‘However, it is next to my room, and I don’t expect to be disturbed. That means no music, no dancing, loud laughter or high jinks.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘The driver will pick up you and the other nurses at half-past six in the morning, and take you up to the hospital,’ Miss Carrington continued. ‘You should report to Matron’s office straight away, and she will assign you to a ward. As you know, we are having to share the hospital building, so you will report to the matron of the infirmary, Miss Jenkins.’ She sniffed the air above Jess’s head, her nose wrinkling. ‘And please make sure you have a bath before you go to bed. I can see I will have to speak to Mr Sulley yet again about transporting manure in that cart of his!’ She gave a final roll of her eyes and then left.

  Jess listened to the Home Sister’s footsteps squeaking back down the passageway, then sat down on the bed. The thin horsehair mattress barely yielded under her weight. She could already feel the springs of the ancient bedstead poking through. She could only imagine what it would be like to sleep on.

  She took off her gloves and massaged the life back into her frozen hands. Her fingers throbbed as the blood flowed painfully back into them. It made her think longingly of the accommodation in London. At the height of the Blitz, all the nurses, sisters, doctors and students had taken to sleeping down in the basement. It had been hot, cramped and frightening at times as the bombs rained down on them, but Jess would rather endure that discomfort than this freezing cold room.

  Keeping her coat on, she set about making up the bed. The thin blanket and sheets looked as if they would barely keep her warm.

  She eyed the empty bed beside her for a moment, then grabbed the blanket from the neatly folded pile and added it to her own bed. When her new room-mate arrived she would give it up, but until then her need was greater.

  She unpacked her belongings. She hadn’t brought much with her. She lined up her books and propped the photograph of Sam on the windowsill. She paused for a moment, her fingertip tracing the curve of his handsome face. He looked so serious in his uniform, she barely recognised the cheeky young man who had joked his way into her heart four years ago.