The Nightingale Girls

by Donna Douglas

  ‘He’s not my type,’ Nick muttered.

  Ruby laughed and batted him playfully on the arm. ‘Oh, you’re a funny one, you are, Nick Riley! Come on, let’s go to the pictures. I’ll even sit on the back row with you, if you like?’

  He looked her up and down. She was everything a man could ever want, with her pin-up girl curves and saucy smile. She was right, there were a lot of men in Bethnal Green who would love to get an offer like that from Ruby Pike.

  But not him.

  ‘Some other time,’ he said.

  As he walked on, Ruby called after him, ‘How do you know there’ll be another time? I might change my mind, you know.’

  But I won’t change mine, Nick thought as he headed home, Dora’s charm still clenched in his fist.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  DORA SQUEEZED HER eyes shut, trying to memorise the bones of the foot.

  ‘Calcaneus, talus, navicular, cuboid, cuneiforms, metatarsals, phalanges . . .’

  She paused, trying to make the words sink in, but they just seemed to fall away into nothingness.

  ‘Each toe has three phalanges – proximal, middle, and distal – except the hallux, or big toe, which has only two – proximal, and distal. The hallux . . . proximal and distal . . .’

  Across the room in the darkness she could hear Millie and Helen’s soft breathing as they stept. She longed for sleep too, but the PTS exams were two days away, and there was still so much to learn.

  At least she had her books now. She’d been surprised when Nick gave her the money. Old Mr Solomon had been more generous than she’d hoped, giving her enough money to afford brand new books.

  But that was where her luck had run out. The past week had been spent reading far into the night, trying desperately to catch up and cram her brain with all the information the other girls had been able to study for the past three months.

  All the time, the picture of her family haunted her, smiling through their disappointment as they welcomed her back home. Just like Jennifer Bradley’s parents had as they bundled her into the car that day.

  And then there was Alf. It didn’t even bear thinking about, being back under the same roof as him.

  Dora lay back on the bed and rubbed her eyes. They felt gritty and sore from studying. How blissful it would be to just let them close and allow herself to drift away . . .

  The squeak of the doorknob shocked her awake. She sat up quickly as the door opened and Alf Doyle stood there. His looming dark bulk filled the doorway.

  Dora’s mouth went dry with fear. ‘Go away,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t belong here.’

  Alf leered at her. ‘Not until I get what I’ve come for,’ he said softly. ‘You know what I’ve come for, don’t you, Dora love?’

  He came towards her, undoing his belt. Dora shrank back against the hard wooden bedhead. ‘Leave me alone,’ she whimpered. ‘You don’t belong here. I need to study . . .’

  ‘I know what you need.’ His hands gripped her shoulders, pushing her down on the bed. She struggled against him, but his weight pressed down on her so she couldn’t breathe . . .

  ‘Doyle? Doyle, wake up.’

  When she opened her eyes, it wasn’t Alf’s leering grin she saw, but the concerned faces of Millie and Helen looking down at her.

  ‘You had a nightmare,’ Millie told her kindly. ‘You were thrashing about and shouting.’

  ‘Sorry. Did I wake you?’

  ‘Us and half the mortuary too, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Helen padded back across the room to her own bed, yawning.

  Dora gulped in a deep, calming breath and felt her racing heartbeat slowing down.

  ‘What were you dreaming about?’ Millie asked.

  ‘I don’t remember,’ she lied.

  ‘You kept telling someone to leave you alone?’

  She saw Millie’s frown of concern and panicked. Had she given herself away? ‘It was probably something to do with the PTS test,’ she said. ‘I’ve been worrying about it a lot.’

  ‘Haven’t we all?’ Millie said.

  ‘Can we go back to sleep now?’ Helen mumbled sleepily from the other side of the room.

  They went back to bed, and moments later Dora once again heard the soft breathing that told her her room-mates were fast asleep.

  She lay awake, staring up at the ceiling. Tired though she was, she was too terrified to close her eyes in case she cried out again and gave herself away. Alf Doyle, she thought bitterly. Even now, he still made her too afraid to sleep.

  The four sisters who filed into the student block could not have looked more unfriendly if they’d tried. The students watched them arrive from the window of the nurses’ home.

  ‘Is Sister Hyde with them?’ Millie whispered anxiously. ‘Oh, please God, don’t send her again. If I even see her in that examination room, I’ll just fall to pieces, I know it.’

  ‘I’m going to fail anyway,’ Katie groaned. ‘I’ll be the only O’Hara girl not to qualify. I’ll be sent back to Ireland and my mammy will die of shame.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re all getting so worried about.’ Lucy, as ever, was perfectly calm and poised. ‘It’s only a couple of tests. You should pass it easily, as long as you’ve prepared.’

  Dora was glad she wasn’t the only one who gave her a black look. Lucy’s perfection had started to grate on all of them over the past few days.

  Sister Parker didn’t help their nerves, either, fussing over them like an anxious mother hen.

  ‘Make sure you arrive promptly for each of your tests, and don’t address the examiners unless addressed by them,’ she’d warned them over and over again. ‘Remember to bring a clean apron in case of accidents. And, Doyle, can you please do something about your hair?’

  Dora tucked her curls under her cap. She could understand Sister Parker’s anxiety. It reflected badly on her if her students didn’t do well in PTS.

  There were two days of tests for the students, a practical and oral test followed by a written examination. For days they had been practising their bandages, taking each other’s temperatures, checking pulses and respiration and swotting up on the bones and organs of the human body and their various functions. But as she made her way unsteadily to the student block with the seven other students from her set, Dora could feel all the knowledge she had worked so hard to cram into her head slowly ebbing out like a retreating tide.

  They waited in the classroom to be called. Finally the first four were summoned, two into the kitchen and two into the practical area.

  Millie followed her partner, Gladys Brennan, into the practical area as if she were going to the gallows. ‘I’m going to get a capelline bandage, I just know it,’ she hissed to Dora.

  Dora smiled, but the smile was wiped off her face when she was summoned to the kitchen with Lucy Lane.

  Why did it have to be her? she thought wretchedly as she followed her down the corridor. No matter how good she tried to be, Lucy would make her look hopeless by comparison. They were given the task of preparing a meal for a patient on a Sippy diet. Lucy immediately knew what to do, moving with practised efficiency around the kitchen, pulling out pans, peeling vegetables and chopping up beef, while Dora stood motionless at the stove and tried to get her dull brain to think straight.

  Slowly it started to come back to her. Sippy diet, that meant very bland, lots of milk and cream, suitable for a patient recovering from a gastric ulcer.

  She mentally went through a list of suitable dishes. Boiled fish would be bland enough, with mashed potatoes and a spoonful of pureed vegetables, and junket to follow.

  Lucy was already busy stirring something on the stove. Beef consommé, by the delicious smell filling the kitchen. Dora hoped her humble offering wouldn’t pale in comparison.

  For the next few minutes they were both busy, working in purposeful silence while the sisters looked on from the other side of the room. They didn’t seem to be paying too much attention to their cooking, thank goodness; Dora knew she would be
all thumbs if they’d stood over them all the time.

  She had boiled her vegetables and potatoes, put her junket aside to set and was lighting the gas ready to cook her fish when she heard Lucy cry out. Dora turned around. Lucy was standing at the next stove, staring into the pan with a look of utter despair.

  Dora’s eyes darted to the sisters, still conferring quietly at the far end of the room. ‘What’s wrong?’ she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.

  Lucy tipped the pan towards her. The soup had boiled down to almost nothing, a couple of spoonfuls of rich brown syrup. ‘I must’ve lit the gas under the soup again, instead of under the vegetables. It’s ruined.’ Her usual composure had disappeared, and her voice was thick with tears.

  Serves you right, Dora thought. She had a sudden mental image of the sisters looking into the pan, then putting a big cross next to Lucy Lane’s name. That would stop her bragging, she thought.

  At the other end of the room the sisters were beginning to stir. Any moment they would look up and realise something had gone wrong.

  ‘Put some boiling water in it,’ Dora whispered. ‘Hurry up, before they come.’

  ‘But it’ll taste awful.’

  ‘It can’t be any worse than it is now, can it? Just boil up a kettle and hope their taste buds are too numb to notice.’

  Lucy shook her head mournfully. ‘I didn’t light the gas for my vegetables either. They’re not even cooked.’

  ‘Then you can share mine. Now quickly, get that kettle on while they’re still having a chin wag over there.’

  Her face still blank with shock, Lucy did as she was told while Dora strained and pureed her vegetables and mashed her potatoes. Before the sisters came to inspect their trays of food, she quickly dolloped a spoonful of veg on to Lucy’s plate.

  They both held their breath as the sisters sampled their dishes. When Dora glanced across, she saw Lucy had her eyes tightly shut, her lips moving in a silent prayer.

  After a long time, one of the sisters put a tick on her clipboard.

  ‘Thank you, Nurses,’ she said. ‘Please send in the next pair.’

  It took Millie several minutes to take in what Sister Parker had said to her. Even then she’d had to show her the printed result sheet before she would allow herself to believe it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sister, I’m just so surprised I’ve passed,’ she said.

  Sister Parker regarded her severely over her spectacles. ‘Believe me, Benedict, no one could be more surprised than I am,’ she said with feeling.

  The others had all passed too, and there was much excitement in the nurses’ block as they swapped horror stories.

  For once Lucy seemed oddly quiet, Millie noticed. She hadn’t bragged about how well she’d done, or how easy the test had been. She hadn’t made a single nasty remark. During supper, she had even offered Dora the cocoa jug first for once, instead of grabbing it for herself.

  ‘What’s the matter with her, I wonder?’ Millie mused.

  Dora shrugged. ‘Maybe the test has brought her down to earth?’

  ‘I doubt it. You wait, she’ll be full of herself again by tomorrow.’

  ‘You never know,’ Dora said. ‘She might be different once we start training on the wards.’

  ‘The wards!’ Excitement bubbled inside Millie. ‘Just think, we’re going to be real nurses.’

  ‘Steady on, we’ve got another three years of training before then.’

  ‘But at least from now on we’ll be on the wards, dealing with real patients.’

  ‘Yes, and have you seen the state of some of them?’ Dora laughed. ‘I bet after six months we’ll be longing for Mrs Jones again!’

  ‘Well, she did it. I don’t know how, but somehow she managed it.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’ Veronica Hanley looked up from her quilt-stitching and pretended not to know what Sister Parker was talking about.

  ‘Young Doyle. She passed her preliminary training. More than passed, in fact. Her marks were excellent. They might have been even better if she’d had access to books earlier.’

  Veronica gave her a tight smile. ‘She is a tribute to your excellent teaching, Florence.’

  ‘She’s a very bright girl,’ Florence Parker corrected her, a touch of irritation in her voice. ‘Even if some people would have dismissed her out of hand,’ she added pointedly.

  ‘You’re talking as if she’s already a qualified nurse,’ Sister Sutton said, leaning over her sewing to pass a biscuit to Sparky. ‘She still has three years and several more examinations to go before we can say that.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Miss Hanley agreed. ‘Girls can change a great deal in three years.’

  They lapsed into tense silence. Veronica had the feeling Florence was bursting to say something more, but manners prevented her. She was surprised at her friend. She had always thought Sister Parker had standards. Now she was beginning to sound like some kind of socialist.

  ‘What about Benedict? Did she pass?’ Sister Sutton asked.

  Florence Parker thought about it for a moment. ‘She scraped through, yes.’

  ‘Well, I hope she changes in the next three years,’ Agatha Sutton said with feeling. ‘Otherwise God help our poor patients!’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  HAVING TEA WITH her mother was always an ordeal for Helen. Constance Tremayne criticised everything, from where they were seated – ‘Not a corner table, please. And not over by the window, either’ – to the quality of the sandwiches. ‘I hope they are freshly made?’ she frowned at the waitress, who stood with her notepad poised.

  ‘Yes, Madam. Freshly made to order.’

  ‘Then we shall have an assortment and a pot of tea for two.’ She snapped her menu shut.

  ‘Any cakes, Madam?’

  Constance looked down her nose at the girl. ‘Did I order cakes?’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘Then obviously we do not require any. And make sure the pot has been warmed and the water is boiling,’ she called after the waitress.

  Helen put down her own menu. There wasn’t much point in looking at it, since her mother always ordered for her anyway.

  It was a cold, wet January afternoon, and Helen was on her break. She was due back on the ward at five o’clock, and felt guilty that she was already counting the hours. She found herself thinking about Charlie Denton. He was due to go home that day, and Helen had hoped she might be there to see him off. But Sister Holmes had put her down on the rota to take her break from three till five, and then her mother had summoned her for afternoon tea, and Helen couldn’t possibly say no to either of them.

  The waitress returned with their tea and sandwiches. Helen cringed as her mother inspected everything. It took her some time, but finally Constance found something that wasn’t to her satisfaction.

  ‘Waitress! Over here, if you please.’

  The girl came over, her expression resigned. ‘What can I do for you, Madam?’

  ‘You can take this teacup away and bring me a clean one. Look at it, it’s revolting.’ She shuddered with distaste.

  The waitress peered into the cup. Helen prayed she wouldn’t argue; she could already see the light of battle gleaming in her mother’s eyes.

  ‘Very well, Madam.’

  Helen caught the waitress’ scowl as she took the offending cup away. The poor girl might feel put upon, but at least she only had to put up with Mrs Tremayne for half an hour or so. Helen had been under her thumb for the last twenty years.

  ‘That’s better,’ Constance said, when the waitress had returned with a spotless cup. She turned her attention back to Helen. ‘Now, where were we?’

  Helen folded her hands in her lap and waited patiently for her own inspection. She was certain that, unlike the second teacup, she would not pass muster.

  She could feel her mother’s gaze, raking her up and down. Finally, Constance said, ‘Have you cut your hair?’

  ‘Just a couple of inches.’ Helen fingered the ends of her hair uncertainly.
‘But I was thinking of having it cut a bit shorter,’ she ventured. ‘A lot of the other girls are having theirs done, and—’

  ‘No, I don’t think so,’ her mother cut her off.

  ‘But it’s all the fashion. And it would be a lot more practical.’

  ‘Short hair looks fast.’

  Helen watched her mother pour the tea. It was a waste of time to argue. Constance Tremayne had spoken and that was the end of the matter.

  She allowed her thoughts to drift back to Mr Denton, or Charlie as she called him in her head. He had been in an odd mood as she’d helped him to pack that morning, as if he had something weighing on his mind.

  Helen did her best to cheer him up. ‘I bet you’re looking forward to getting out of here?’ she’d said, as she carefully folded his spare pair of pyjamas.

  ‘I don’t know about that. I’m not sure I’m ready for the big wide world yet, Nurse T.’

  ‘You’ll be fine,’ she reassured him. ‘You’ve learned to cope really well with your new leg.’

  ‘Oh, I can manage all right in here. But what’s it going to be like when I get out there?’ He turned his gaze towards the window.

  ‘You’re bound to feel a bit nervous at first,’ she said briskly. ‘But I bet in a couple of weeks you’ll be happily drinking pints in the Rose and Crown and won’t even remember this place!’

  ‘I won’t forget you in a hurry.’

  Helen was on her hands and knees, clearing out his locker. She was glad he couldn’t see her blushing face.

  ‘Helen? Have you listened to a word I’ve said?’

  She looked at her mother across the table. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘I thought not.’ Constance’s mouth pursed with irritation. ‘I hope you’re more attentive than this when you’re working on the ward?’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that you’re representing me at the Nightingale. I do not expect you to let me down.’

  ‘No, Mother.’

  ‘And if you make a mistake, be sure I will find out about it.’