The Nightingale Christmas Show

by Donna Douglas

  No, she thought as she put another log on the fire. I’m not the type. And she didn’t want to be, either. She was a married woman, with a nice home and a loving family. She had everything she wanted.

  Nellie was right, she had no business gadding about.

  It was a relief to hear that the next rehearsal would not be happening, as everyone had decided to boycott it. She had managed to avoid Bill all week by hiding out in the kitchen or the sluice whenever he was due up on the ward.

  But there was no avoiding him when Sister asked her to go with a young boy down to theatre. As luck would have it, Bill was due to take him.

  ‘Haven’t seen you in a while,’ he said as he pushed the lift door back with a clatter.

  ‘No.’ She couldn’t meet his eye.

  ‘You’ll have heard no one’s going to the rehearsal?’

  She nodded. ‘Doesn’t look like there’s going to be a Christmas show after all.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it will all get sorted out in the end. Lot of fuss over nothing, if you ask me.’

  Peggy stared straight ahead of her as the lift jerked and rattled downwards.

  ‘Peggy—’

  ‘I’m not sure if I can be in the show with you,’ she blurted out.

  ‘Oh.’ He sounded disappointed but not surprised. ‘I see.’

  ‘It’s the shop, you see … Christmas is coming, and it’s our busy time, and Eric needs an extra pair of hands, and—’

  ‘It’s all right, you don’t have to explain. I understand.’

  His voice was gentle. Peggy fought the urge to look at him, knowing she might weaken if she did.

  ‘I’m sure you can find someone else to help you with your act.’

  He sighed. ‘My heart ain’t really in it any more.’

  The lift jolted to a halt, and Bill stepped forward to push back the metal grille. Peggy hurried through it, relieved to escape.

  They walked in silence down the passageway to theatre, where they delivered their patient.

  ‘Not taking the lift back up?’ Bill asked.

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll take the stairs.’

  He nodded, quietly understanding. ‘I’ll be seeing you, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  As she walked away, Bill called after her, ‘Peggy?’

  She stopped in her tracks. ‘Yes?’

  ‘It was fun while it lasted, wasn’t it?’

  Peggy allowed herself to look over her shoulder, meeting his gaze one last time. There was no need to ask what he meant; it was written there on his face.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘Yes, it was.’

  Miriam

  3rd December 1945

  A sandstorm howled outside. Lavinia listened fearfully to the hot desert wind whipping at the silken folds of the tent.

  ‘I must go,’ she whispered.

  ‘You cannot. The storm is coming closer now. You must stay. You will be safe here.’

  Lavinia gazed around her. The gilded tent was lavishly decorated as befitted a prince’s quarters, hung with draperies of exquisite jewel-coloured silk, the floor strewn with richly embroidered cushions. The musky scent of incense hung heavy in the air, intoxicating her.

  How did she, a virginal vicar’s daughter, ever come to find herself in such a place? And with such a man …

  The sheikh smiled sardonically. ‘There are worse places to be trapped, I think?’

  Lavinia stared up at him helplessly. Trapped she was indeed, and with the most disturbing man she had ever met in her sheltered life. The sheikh was dark, mysterious and forbidden, with his burning, coal-black eyes, sharply drawn cheekbones and cruel but sensuous lips. He seemed to draw her to him like a moth to a flame.

  And those hands, the fingers long and sensitive. She knew one touch could send her senses spinning into realms she had never experienced before.

  You will be safe here.

  She felt anything but safe. She had escaped the storm, only to find herself in much worse danger. A danger to her very honour.

  She wanted to resist him, but her limbs felt weak as he took her in his arms, his face lowering towards hers. She knew he was going to kiss her and even though she knew it was wrong and sinful, she was powerless as his eyes met hers and he whispered in a voice deep and dark and full of mystery—

  ‘Sister, I think Mrs Jefferson’s in labour.’

  Miriam Trott stuffed her novel under a cushion and looked up at the student nurse who stood in her sitting-room doorway.

  ‘What have I told you about coming in here without knocking?’ she snapped.

  ‘Sorry, Sister.’ The young nurse lingered in the doorway, staring down at her stout black shoes.

  Miriam stood up with a sigh, brushing crumbs off her uniform. How typical of wretched Mrs Jefferson to go into labour while she was enjoying her afternoon tea. These women thought of no one but themselves.

  She followed the student nurse back down the passageway that led to the maternity ward. ‘Have her waters broken?’ she asked.

  ‘I – I don’t know, Sister.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know? Didn’t you think to look?’

  ‘No, Sister. Sorry, Sister.’

  ‘Then how do you know she’s in labour, girl?’

  ‘She … she said so, Sister.’

  Miriam stared at her. ‘And you’re supposed to be in your third year? Good gracious, don’t they teach you girls anything these days?’

  ‘Sorry, Sister.’ The young woman bit her lip. Daisy Baker might have been a decent nurse if she had spent as much time on her studies as she did flirting with the junior doctors. As it was, she was quite one of the laziest students Miriam had ever had to suffer.

  ‘Sorry, indeed. You will be sorry, my girl, if you’ve disturbed me for nothing!’

  As it turned out, Mrs Jefferson was in labour, and her copious waters had not only broken, they had soaked through the bed sheets. Mrs Jefferson was now pacing round the bed groaning and crying in pain, her slippers leaving damp imprints on the newly polished floor, while another student, Rose Trent, stood watching her helplessly.

  ‘What is this woman doing out of bed?’ Miriam demanded. ‘You know I don’t allow it.’

  Nurse Trent looked wide-eyed. ‘I tried to stop her, Sister, but she says it helps the pain.’

  ‘I don’t care about that! Matron will be doing her rounds in a minute; we can’t have patients wandering about as they please.’ She turned to Nurse Baker. ‘Get this bed changed immediately, and clean the floor. And do stop making such a fuss!’ She turned on Mrs Jefferson. ‘You’re giving me a headache.’

  ‘But it hurts!’ Mrs Jefferson moaned.

  ‘Of course it hurts! You’re having a baby, it’s supposed to hurt. Good gracious, I would have thought you of all people would know that by now!’

  Mrs Jefferson was a regular on the ward, and exactly the type of patient Miriam disliked. Her family were as poor as church mice, and yet she and her ghastly husband insisted on producing more children. Six at the last count, all of them in rags and probably infested with God knows what.

  And now she had the perfectly ordered ward in uproar, as the other women fretted and fussed over her. Miriam eyed the double doors. It was all very annoying; she had been hoping to finish the next chapter of Desert Heat before Matron came round.

  Fortunately, she had managed to restore some kind of order by the time Miss Fox arrived. The bed had been changed, the floor cleaned and polished again, and the other women had been ordered back into their beds. Mrs Jefferson, meanwhile, had been ushered off to the labour room with strict instructions not to scream too loudly while Matron was on the ward.

  ‘Good morning, Sister,’ Miss Fox greeted her with a warm smile. Miss Davis was by her side, stony-faced as usual.

  ‘Good morning, Matron. Assistant Matron.’ Miriam nodded coldly to her. She still hadn’t forgiven Miss Davis for the way she had spoken to her at the meeting the previous evening.

  Miriam still burned w
ith humiliation, thinking about it. How dare Miss Davis try to tell her she couldn’t sing the song she wanted at the Christmas show? And in front of everyone, too. Who did she think she was?

  Of course, Miriam had gone straight to Matron to let her know exactly what she thought of Miss Davis and the way she was going about matters. It was not the way things were done at the Nightingale. And Miriam should know; she had been there for twenty-five years.

  She wondered if Matron had reprimanded her yet. She hoped she had. Although the Assistant Matron’s face gave nothing away, as usual. She really was a cold fish, with those pale blue, expressionless eyes.

  Miriam led the way around the ward, and waited as Matron spoke to all the patients in turn. They had had a new admission during the night, a young woman who had given birth to her first baby in the early hours. Now she sat up in bed, looking around her with a shocked expression on her face, as if surprised to find herself there. As well she might, Miriam thought. She had her suspicions about that one.

  But as usual, Miss Fox was far too kind, holding the girl’s hand and speaking gently to her. Miriam caught Miss Davis rolling her eyes impatiently, and thought they had something in common at least.

  When Matron had at last finished trying to coax a smile out of the girl, they moved on to Mrs Goodwood. Miriam tensed, waiting for the Assistant Matron to pass comment on her due dates again. But to her satisfaction, this time she stayed silent.

  But just as she had started to think that perhaps the Assistant Matron had finally learned her place, Miss Davis suddenly turned on Nurse Baker.

  ‘Are those cuffs clean?’ she said in a sharp voice.

  ‘I—’ Daisy Baker, foolish girl that she was, could only stand there, opening and closing her mouth like a stupefied goldfish.

  Miriam glanced down at the girl’s wrists. Sure enough, the white linen was distinctly grubby.

  ‘Go and change at once!’ she hissed. She could barely suppress her rage and it was all she could do not to grab the girl by her blonde hair and drag her out of the ward herself.

  She didn’t know which made her more furious, the fact that the girl had had the temerity to turn up for Matron’s ward round with dirty cuffs, or that it was Miss Davis who had noticed it.

  She saw the quirk of Miss Davis’s eyebrow as Nurse Baker hurried away. If the Assistant Matron’s face had been capable of expression, she would have been wearing a self-satisfied smile by now, Miriam was sure of it.

  Finally, Matron and Miss Davis left the ward, and Miriam went over to vent to her friend Mrs Goodwood, who was doing The Times crossword.

  ‘You seem to have had quite an eventful morning, Sister,’ she observed.

  ‘Honestly, these young girls, I swear they get more slapdash every year,’ Miriam fumed. ‘They don’t seem to understand that pride in their appearance is fundamental to good nursing. If they are sloppy with themselves, they will be sloppy with the patients, too.’

  ‘How right you are, Sister,’ Mrs Goodwood sympathised. ‘I had exactly the same trouble with the women in the WVS. And how unfortunate that it was that woman who spotted it,’ she added.

  Miriam gritted her teeth. ‘Quite.’

  That was the worst of it for her, that Miss Davis now thought she had got one over on her.

  Mrs Goodwood changed the subject and asked about the new admission, the young girl who had arrived during the night.

  ‘Oh, her.’ Miriam rolled her eyes. ‘Mrs Jones, as she calls herself. Although if that’s her name, mine’s the Queen of Sheba! And as for that ring she’s wearing …’

  Mrs Goodwood’s eyes widened, scandalised. ‘You don’t think she’s married?’

  ‘My dear, when you’ve been on this ward as long as I have, you learn to spot them a mile off.’ Miriam shook her head. ‘I daresay she’s no better than she ought to be, that one. You mark my words, there won’t be any husband visiting on Sunday. I wouldn’t be surprised if the father was a GI, or one of those Free French. Or a sailor from the docks. At any rate, I daresay he’ll be long gone by now.’

  ‘Shocking,’ Mrs Goodwood said faintly.

  ‘Oh, you see all sorts in here. Present company excepted, of course.’ She smiled at the woman in the bed.

  She paused briefly to admire the flowers in the vase at her bedside, another gift from Mrs Goodwood’s devoted husband Harold.

  ‘Anyway, I must be getting on,’ she said. She could hear the sheikh summoning her from his Bedouin tent. With any luck she could finish her chapter before they had to start serving lunch to the patients.

  ‘Before you go,’ Mrs Goodwood lowered her voice, ‘I wondered if you’d had any luck securing me a private room, as you promised?’

  Miriam shook her head. ‘I’m afraid we may have to give it to Mrs Jefferson instead. She has been taken down to Theatre. It seems she needs a caesarean.’ She frowned. Really, there was no end to the inconvenience the wretched woman was causing. ‘We usually have to give the private rooms to patients needing post-operative care.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mrs Goodwood looked disappointed. ‘That’s rather unfortunate. I must admit I had rather hoped to have some peace and quiet. You know I’m a terribly light sleeper …’

  ‘I know.’ Miriam hated to disappoint her friend. Mrs Goodwood was a person of quality. Of course she should not be expected to mix with these rowdy women, with their rough and ready manners and their coarse sense of humour. Miriam was used to it, but even she found it hard to take sometimes. A woman of Mrs Goodwood’s sensibilities must find it quite unbearable.

  She patted her hand. ‘Let me see what I can do,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I can have Mrs Jefferson moved back to the ward a little sooner. I’m sure she’d prefer to be back here, among her friends, anyway.’ Her mouth curled. Lily Jefferson was the loudest of the women on the ward, always larking about.

  ‘Would you? I’d be so grateful. I know I’m supposed to be resting, but it’s so difficult.’ Mrs Goodwood sighed, her hand going to her swollen belly.

  ‘You leave it with me, my dear.’

  She stood up to go. As she did, she noticed the newspaper lying on the bedside locker.

  ‘I wonder,’ she said. ‘Might I have a look at this, if you’ve finished with it?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Mrs Goodwood smiled knowingly at her. ‘I daresay you’ll be wanting to finish off the crossword? I’m warning you, it’s beastly this morning. If you can finish it, you’re a better woman than I am!’

  But Miriam had no interest in the crossword as she hurried back to her sitting room with the newspaper tucked under her arm. She closed the door and carefully spread the paper out on her table. She flicked past the news and the half-finished crossword, turning straight away to the only page in the newspaper that ever interested her.

  The personal column.

  She had been reading the lonely hearts column for as long as she could remember. Every morning she went through it, noting down any advertisements that caught her eye.

  There were more than there used to be, at least. During the war there were hardly any men left to advertise, but now there were whole lists of them. Widowers, ex-servicemen whose wives had abandoned them while they were away serving their country. All looking for a woman to share their lives with.

  But even as she read them, Miriam could almost hear her mother and her sisters laughing at her.

  ‘Oh Minnie, what’s to become of you?’ She pictured them, shaking their heads in mock sadness. ‘Can it really be so difficult for you to find a man? We all managed it.’

  It was a fact that rankled with Miriam. She was the eldest and yet somehow all three of her sisters had managed to get married before her. Even the youngest, Freda, had found herself a husband and she was as plain as a pikestaff.

  But Miriam remained firmly on the shelf. It simply wasn’t fair.

  It wasn’t for the want of trying, either. One of the main reasons Miriam had chosen to train as a nurse was because she intended to find a handsome doctor to marry befor
e she had finished her training. But here she was, a ward sister for more than twenty years, and still she hadn’t caught anyone’s eye.

  And now she felt as if she had missed her chance. She was the wrong side of forty-five, and all the doctors were far too young. And anyone remotely eligible was quickly snapped up by the likes of Nurse Baker and her silly friends.

  So far, Miriam’s sole experience of romance came from the torrid novels she loved to read, especially by Agatha Pendlebury. Now there was someone who understood what stirred a woman’s soul! But when it came to real life, it felt as if love had passed her by.

  Or so she had thought, until two days ago when Frank Tillery came into her life.

  Miriam hadn’t met him yet, but the woman at the discreet introductions agency spoke glowingly of him.

  ‘He’s in his forties, ex-RAF and now a bank manager. Six foot tall, dark hair, blue eyes. Very charming.’

  ‘He sounds too good to be true,’ Miriam said sourly.

  ‘Oh no, he’s true all right. I’ve met him and interviewed him personally. Utterly charming man. I’m sure he’s just your type.’

  ‘I’ll be the judge of that, thank you very much!’ Miriam snapped. The woman was far too chummy for her liking. Miriam wanted a man, not a best friend.

  The woman had turned a bit funny at that. ‘I’ll make the necessary arrangements, shall I?’ she said stiffly.

  ‘You do that,’ Miriam sniffed. ‘Although you can be sure I will be lodging a complaint if it turns out you’ve wasted my time.’

  The woman’s mouth curled. ‘I don’t doubt that for a moment, Miss Trott.’

  Miriam refused to feel optimistic as she arrived at the Waldorf Hotel for her first meeting with Frank Tillery. She had been here before, after all, and she had always been disappointed. She had been let down too often to pin her hopes on any man.

  In the flesh, Frank Tillery was bound to be short, squat, balding and broke. If he even bothered to turn up at all.

  She arrived early, even though she told herself she should be late. She was so convinced she was going to be let down, she hadn’t even bothered to dress up for the occasion. She was wearing her old utility suit in a dull brown worsted that did nothing for her sallow complexion. The only splash of colour was the red carnation on her lapel that the woman at the introduction agency had insisted she wore so that she and Frank Tillery could recognise each other.