Nightingales Under the Mistletoe

by Donna Douglas

  She could imagine how he’d laugh at her now. ‘Look at you, making such a fuss,’ he’d say. ‘Life could be a lot worse, believe me!’

  And he’d be right, thought Jess as she lay back on the hard bed, her eyelids already drooping. As Miss Carrington had said, there was a war on and they had to put up with it.

  After all, how bad could it be?

  Chapter Two

  EVEN WITH AN extra blanket and most of her clothes on, it was far too cold for her to sleep that night, so Jess was exhausted the following morning when Mr Sulley arrived in his horse and cart to take her and a dozen other bleary-eyed nurses to the hospital. At half-past six it was still pitch-dark and they huddled together in the back of the cart, their cloaks pulled around them for warmth.

  ‘At least it’s not raining,’ said the girl next to Jess, a pleasant-faced staff nurse called Alice Freeman. ‘That’s much worse. Especially when Mr Sulley won’t put the cover up.’

  ‘You mean he leaves you to get wet?’ Jess said in disbelief.

  ‘Soaked to the skin, sometimes.’ Alice nodded gloomily. ‘We’ve all got colds, and Nurse Owen was sent to the sick bay with pneumonia last week.’

  The other nurses joined in with their own horror stories of life away from London, so by the time they arrived at the hospital gates Jess was feeling thoroughly depressed.

  She clambered out of the cart after the others and found herself standing outside high walls and an imposing pair of wrought-iron gates. Dawn was starting to break, and against the dull pewter sky she could make out the solid black bulk of a building at the end of a long sweep of drive.

  ‘That’s the infirmary. Grim, isn’t it?’ Alice whispered beside her. ‘Apparently it used to be a lunatic asylum, until they closed it down and turned it into a hospital. We all reckon it’s haunted.’

  It didn’t look very welcoming, that was for sure. Now her eyes were getting used to the gathering light, Jess could make out a forbidding three-storey building with straight rows of windows that seemed too small for such a large place. They seemed like dozens of blank eyes, staring down at her.

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ she said.

  ‘Probably just as well,’ Alice replied.

  They hurried up the drive, and Alice pointed her in the direction of the main building, and Matron’s office.

  ‘Be warned,’ she said. ‘She’ll probably be awful to you. She’s awful to all the London nurses.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. We think she’s a bit upset that we’ve taken over her hospital.’ Alice rolled her eyes. ‘As if it’s our fault we’re here.’

  ‘Is she that bad?’

  Alice gave her an enigmatic look. ‘She’s nothing like our darling Miss Fox, that’s for sure.’

  There was already a sorry-looking line of nurses waiting outside Matron’s office when Jess got there. One carried the evidence of her crime, a broken thermometer in a receiving dish.

  As Jess joined the end of the line, the two nurses beside her were whispering between themselves.

  ‘What did you do?’ she heard one say to the other.

  ‘Helped myself to the leftovers from a patient’s plate. I couldn’t help it, Sister had cancelled my dinner break and I was starving. Now I’m going to lose half a day’s leave over a wretched potato!’

  All too soon it was Jess’s turn to be summoned to Matron’s office. Miss Jenkins sat behind her desk, all dressed in black. She was older than Miss Fox, more solidly built and a great deal grander. Her face was unsmiling beneath her elaborate starched linen headdress as she regarded Jess over the rim of her spectacles.

  ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

  ‘Jago, Matron. I’ve been sent from London.’

  ‘Another one?’ Miss Jenkins tutted. ‘We’re already quite overrun as it is. Honestly, doesn’t Miss Fox need any nurses? She seems very keen to send you all down here.’

  ‘I’m sure she just wants to help you, Matron.’

  Jess realised it was the wrong thing to say as soon as she saw Miss Jenkins’s pale blue eyes harden.

  ‘Are you suggesting I need help?’ she snapped. ‘Perhaps you don’t think my nurses are up to the job?’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean—’ Jess started to say, but Miss Jenkins cut across her.

  ‘That’s the trouble with you London nurses, you think you know everything. I daresay you’ve come to teach your country cousins a thing or two, have you?’

  Jess again tried to protest, but Miss Jenkins was still speaking.

  ‘Let me tell you something, Jago. I have been running this hospital for thirty years, and I think I know what I’m doing. And I must say, I’m rather sick and tired of outsiders coming down here and telling us our business. As if your London training somehow makes you better than everyone else!’

  She stopped abruptly, her cheeks flushed pink. ‘Very well,’ she said, more calmly. ‘Since you’re here, I suppose you should make yourself useful. Report to Sister Allen on Female Medical, I daresay she’ll know what to do with you. Send in the next girl on your way out, please.’

  And that was it. Jess was still in a daze as she headed out of the front door and back down the stone steps.

  She hadn’t expected Matron to clasp her to her bosom and thank her for coming to the rescue. But it would have been nice to feel she was actually wanted …

  ‘Watch out!’

  Jess swung round to see a bicycle hurtling towards her. The rider was pedalling furiously, gathering speed, almost as if he wanted to knock her down. Jess barely managed to spring out of his path as he flashed past.

  ‘Look where you’re going!’ she called out. ‘You could have sent me flying.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be dawdling, should you?’ the young man shouted back over his shoulder as he barrelled past.

  ‘And you shouldn’t be riding on the path. You’re a menace!’

  But he was already gone, his scarf fluttering behind him like a pennant in the dawn light.

  She found the Female Medical ward on the top floor of the main building. Like the wards at the Nightingale in London, it was a vast, high-ceilinged room, smelling of polish and disinfectant. Forty beds faced each other in two rows running along its length. In the middle of the ward stood a long table and the ward sister’s desk.

  Sister Allen was as pleased to see her as Miss Jenkins had been.

  ‘And Matron sent you to me, did she?’ she sighed. She was in her late twenties, sandy-haired and freckled. ‘Well, I suppose she had her reasons. You can start by helping Maynard with the baths. Then do the beds and get the patients ready for the doctor’s round at half-past ten. Do you think you can manage that?’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Sister Allen looked as if she very much doubted it. ‘Well, ask Maynard if you get stuck. Don’t come to me, I’m far too busy.’

  Jess found Maynard in the bathroom, warming towels on the radiator. She was a lively, green-eyed blonde of about Jess’s age.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she greeted Jess over her shoulder. Maynard was the first person to smile at her since she’d walked through the hospital gates. ‘Where did you spring from?’

  ‘I’m Nurse Jago. I’ve been sent down from London.’

  ‘Have you? Poor you.’ The girl looked sympathetic. ‘I’m Nurse Maynard, but you can call me Daisy.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Mrs McCready needs an emollient bath. She’s a diabetic and her skin is itching like mad. Do you think you could prepare the linseed bag for me? You’ll find everything you need in the prep room next door.’

  ‘I’ll do it now.’ As Jess turned away, she happened to glance at the contents of the bath tub. ‘Is the water supposed to be that colour?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, yes, it’s always brown, unless you run the taps for ages and ages,’ Daisy replied cheerfully. ‘I think it’s rust in the pipes, or something.’

  ‘Shouldn’t Sister get someone to look at it?’


  ‘Oh, she’s tried. But finding a decent plumber is nigh on impossible since they’ve all been called up. We just have to put up with it.’

  Jess eyed the mucky brown water dubiously. It didn’t look at all safe. ‘What about when you want to make a hot drink for the patients?’

  ‘Sister says it’s all right as long as we boil it properly. And if it tastes foul most of the patients are too ill to complain anyway!’ She gave Jess an apologetic smile. ‘I daresay it’s not what you’re used to in London, is it?’

  Jess thought about working in the bombed-out hospital, sweeping fallen masonry from the floors every morning and boiling instruments for hours over spirit stoves when the power went off. Once she’d even assisted with an operation by shining a torch over the surgeon’s shoulder.

  ‘I dunno about that,’ she said. ‘We had to make do in our own way.’

  ‘I’d love to go to London,’ Daisy said, unfolding another towel. ‘I suppose you’ll find it all very dull down here. All we get are old ladies with diabetes, heart problems and bronchitis.’

  Jess went off to the prep room. It was a tiny space lined with shelves and glass-fronted cupboards containing a variety of preparations in jars and bottles. Two other cupboards were filled with equipment and dressings. In front of her was a counter with a sink and a stove top.

  Jess found a pan in the cupboard, filled it with water and set it on the stove. As she went to pick up the sack of linseed from the floor, a scurrying motion caught her eye.

  ‘Bloody mouse!’ She went to catch it but it had already disappeared down a hole in the skirting board.

  ‘I know. They’re everywhere unfortunately,’ sighed Daisy Maynard behind her. ‘But they’re not nearly as bad as the rats.’

  ‘Rats?’ Jess swung round in horror.

  ‘Not many,’ Daisy assured her hastily. ‘And we hardly ever see them up here. They’re mainly in the Fever Wards,’ she said, as if that would make Jess feel better.

  She examined the nibbled corner of the hessian sack and hoped she’d never see the damage a rat could do.

  As she set about weighing out the linseed into a bag and boiling it up, Daisy stood in the doorway and chatted. Jess found out she was twenty-one years old, her parents were dead and she lived with her brothers and sisters. One of her brothers was in the army, and her elder sister was a housemaid at Billinghurst Manor. They lived in one of the workers’ cottages on the castle estate.

  She also found out that Sister Allen was bitter because her naval officer boyfriend had jilted her, and the previous staff nurse on Female Medical had had to leave quickly for ‘family reasons’.

  ‘And we all know what that means, don’t we?’ Daisy gave her a sidelong look.

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘You know!’ Daisy mimed a pregnancy bump on the front of her apron. ‘Although frankly, I’m amazed she managed to get into trouble since there are no men in the village any more. Not a single one. Not one you’d want to be seen with anyway. If you want to find a decent one, you have to go all the way in to Tunbridge Wells, and there’s only one bus a day there and back.’ She sighed again. Jess strained the bag from the boiling water, then held up the pan. ‘I’ll take this through for you, shall I?’ she said, before Daisy could say any more. She’d already made up her mind that Daisy Maynard was a terrible gossip, and Jess had a feeling it wouldn’t be long before she herself was being discussed around the hospital.

  Eventually, Jess managed to escape Daisy’s chatter long enough to get some jobs done. She made and straightened beds, cleaned false teeth, combed hair, sponged faces and applied liberal amounts of methylated spirit to backs and shoulders.

  And then it was time for the doctor’s round. Jess had pulled down her sleeves and was fastening on her starched cuffs as she joined Daisy and Sister Allen at the doors outside the ward.

  ‘Really, Jago, your appearance is very sloppy,’ Sister Allen hissed. ‘I don’t know what kind of standards you had in London, but it really won’t do here. Make sure you’re properly presented in future.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’ Jess looked down at herself. She couldn’t see anything wrong with her appearance, but she knew better than to contradict a ward sister.

  The next moment the doctors came striding up the corridor. There were two housemen, both young men in their twenties, one dark and good-looking, the other gawky and bespectacled with untidy brown hair. Jess instantly recognised the awkward one as the young man who had nearly knocked her down on his bicycle that morning.

  If he recognised her he didn’t show it. His serious gaze skimmed straight over her towards Sister Allen.

  ‘Dr Drake,’ Daisy whispered. Her downturned mouth told Jess all she needed to know. ‘And the handsome one is Dr French.’

  Dr French was much more friendly. He greeted Sister Allen and Daisy, then turned to Jess.

  ‘And who have we here?’ he said, his eyes twinkling. His dark hair was swept off his high, noble brow and his upper lip was outlined with a thin moustache, making him look like Errol Flynn.

  Jess cleared her throat nervously. ‘Er – Jago, sir.’

  ‘It’s very nice to meet you, Nurse Jago.’ His charming manners confused her. The last time a doctor had spoken to her directly was when Mr Prentiss, the Nightingale’s Ear, Nose and Throat consultant, had lambasted her for handing him the wrong forceps.

  Dr Drake gave an impatient sigh. ‘May we get on?’ he said. ‘We have a great many patients to see.’

  ‘Yes, yes of course. We all know you’re a very busy man, Dr Drake.’ Dr French pulled a mocking face at the nurses behind his fellow houseman’s back. ‘Lead on, Sister. After you, Dr Drake.’

  They couldn’t have been more different, Jess thought. Dr Drake was whip thin and radiated impatience, while Dr French preferred to take his time. He would stop to chat to each patient in turn, holding their hands and offering them cigarettes. The women swooned as if he was a visiting movie star.

  All the while, Dr Drake would sigh and fidget at the end of the bed. Jess could see a pulse beating rapidly in his neck.

  ‘Does Dr French always take so long to do his rounds?’ she asked Daisy.

  ‘It depends. Sometimes it takes even longer. Except when Dr Drake is doing the rounds, and then it’s over in five minutes. But Dr French is much more patient, which is why everyone adores him. He is divine, isn’t he?’ she sighed.

  ‘If you like that kind of thing.’ Jess glanced at her watch. It was almost time for lunch, and they weren’t nearly ready. Once again, she desperately missed the city, where people didn’t know each other’s business. Where there were proper routines and things were done with speed and efficiency, and taps didn’t belch out rusty water.

  She didn’t think she would ever get used to country life.

  Chapter Three

  ‘WHAT DO YOU think you’re doing?’

  If the girl hadn’t been so young and pretty, Stan Salter of the RAF Works Squadron might not have given her the time of day. He’d already got it in the ear from the CO for not getting the job done quickly enough. Added to which it was freezing cold and he wanted to finish work before his fingers dropped off.

  But he’d always had a weakness for blondes, and this one was a real peach.

  He allowed his gaze to travel the length of her body, from her polished riding boots to the fair curls that framed her face. She reminded Stan of a china doll, with those wide blue eyes and perfect Cupid’s bow lips. He’d bet she had a beautiful smile.

  But she wasn’t smiling now as she stood a few feet away from him, holding on to her horse’s bridle. The other hand twitched a riding crop against her slim thigh.

  Not that Stan was afraid. His RAF overalls gave him a feeling of power, as well as making him attractive to women in a way he never was in civvies. ‘I’m measuring up,’ he told her. ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Why?’

  He leaned against the tree trunk and took a packet of Craven ‘A’s out of his pocket. Since he’d
stopped work anyway, he might as well enjoy himself. ‘It’s got to come down to make way for the airfield.’

  ‘What airfield?’

  ‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?’ He lit his cigarette, cupping his hand around the end to shield it from the cutting November wind. ‘The one they’re building on this land.’

  ‘Since when are they building an airfield?’

  ‘Since the RAF requisitioned that big house over there.’ He nodded towards the manor house that could just be seen beyond the trees. ‘By this time next month, this whole area is going to be full of aircraft hangars and runways. Reckon you’ll have to find somewhere else to ride your horse then, eh?’

  ‘We’ll have to see about that, won’t we?’ The young woman scowled.

  ‘Oh, don’t be like that, sweetheart. Look on the bright side. In a few weeks this place will be swarming with RAF boys. You’ll enjoy that, won’t you?’

  The girl frowned. ‘I don’t think I will,’ she said.

  ‘You mean to tell me you wouldn’t fancy a pilot for a boyfriend?’

  Her horse shied a little. As the young woman went to steady it, Stan caught the flash of gold on her left hand. Typical, he thought. The pretty ones were always taken.

  But that didn’t mean anything these days. With so many men away fighting, their lonely wives often enjoyed a bit of company.

  ‘You play your cards right and I could get you an invitation to the big house,’ he said. ‘They’re going to be having a high old time up there, I expect. Parties and dances and all sorts. We RAF boys know how to have a good time.’

  ‘Do you indeed?’ The girl turned away and swung herself up into the saddle in one nimble movement. ‘Well, it’s very kind of you, but I don’t think I’m going to need any invitations to that house from you.’

  ‘Oh?’ Stan took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘And what makes you say that?’

  ‘Because it’s my house,’ the girl said over her shoulder, as she dug her heels into her horse’s flanks and galloped off into the trees.