The Nightingale Sisters (13 page)

Like now, for instance.

‘Look at that,’ she said, pointing. ‘Bold as brass, that one.’

Sister Wren looked, then looked again. A dull flush spread up her neck, a sure sign she was heading for one of her rages. ‘Doyle,’ she hissed. ‘I might have known.’

‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ Lettie said. ‘Her hanging about chatting up lads when she should be working. And in uniform, too. I call it a disgrace, I really do.’

‘So do I, Lettie. But don’t you worry, she’ll get what’s coming to her.’

‘Are you sending her to Matron, Sister?’

Sister Wren looked at her, and Lettie had the satisfaction of seeing a gleam of spite in her eyes. ‘Oh, no,’ she smiled with relish. ‘I’ll deal with her myself.’

Ruby was already in when Lettie got home. She was sitting at the kitchen table, painting her nails. Lettie suppressed her annoyance that the dishes were still piled up in the sink and no one had bothered to put the dinner on.

She dumped her shopping bag on the floor. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?’ she said grumpily.

‘I’ll have one, if you’re making it.’ Ruby didn’t look up as she blew on her nails.

Lettie went over to the sink and filled the kettle under the tap. ‘Where are the boys?’ she asked.

‘God knows. Up to no good as usual, I s’pose.’ Ruby raised her scarlet-tipped nails to show her mother. ‘What do you reckon to this colour? I bought it from Woolworth’s.’

‘Very nice.’ Lettie looked at her daughter’s artfully arranged golden curls, and felt her heart lift with pride. She might be a lazy cow, but Ruby was easily the prettiest girl in Bethnal Green.

She sometimes wondered how she had ever managed to bring such a beauty into the world. Lettie herself was no oil painting. Even as a young girl she had been skinny and sallow-looking, with thin mousy hair and teeth so crooked her mother said she could ‘eat an apple through a letterbox’. Len Pike wasn’t much to look at either. And yet somehow, between them, they had managed to produce a glorious creature like Ruby.

From the moment Ruby was born, she had been Lettie’s angel. She’d treated her like a princess, going without herself so she could buy her daughter dresses, combing her halo of golden curls for hours, telling her how special she was. It wasn’t Ruby’s fault she’d turned out spoilt rotten, her mother thought.

She swelled with a pride she’d never known before when the other mothers commented on how pretty little Ruby was. And when the young men started courting her, Ruby took it all as her due. But Lettie, who had never had an admiring glance from anyone in her life, was thrilled by all the attention her daughter received. Ruby would never be like her, she decided. She would never have to make do with the likes of Len Pike, with his flabby body and bad temper. Ruby could have any man she wanted.

And she wanted Nick Riley.

He wasn’t the man Lettie would have chosen for her daughter. She had hoped Ruby might be a bit more ambitious, go for someone with a trade, perhaps even a businessman, someone with a bit of money who could give her all the finer things in life that she deserved.

Lettie doubted if Nick Riley would ever be able to afford a motor car, or a house in the suburbs. He was good-looking, there was no doubt about that, and he was a grafter. But he was a surly bugger, with a nasty temper when he was roused. And Lettie’s heart sank at the thought of her Ruby saddling herself with in-laws like that old drunk June Riley and her imbecile son.

But if Nick was the man Ruby had set her heart on, then he was the one she must have. The thought that he might not realise how lucky he was, or that he might not feel the same way, had never even occurred to Lettie until she saw him with Dora.

She glanced at Ruby, wondering how best to approach the subject.

‘I saw your Nick earlier on,’ she said casually, as she spooned tea into the pot.

‘Yeah?’

‘He was talking to Dora Doyle.’ Lettie glanced at her daughter. ‘They seemed very thick together.’

‘Why, what were they doing?’

‘I told you, they were talking. And they were smiling,’ she added, filling the teapot.

‘Smiling, eh? Ooh, I’d better watch out, hadn’t I?’

‘You might laugh, my girl, but you didn’t see them together. I’m telling you, they were very thick.’

Ruby set down her nail-polish brush. ‘Blimey, Mum, we’ve all known each other years. They’re bound to talk to each other, ain’t they? It don’t mean anything. What’s he meant to do, ignore her just because we’re courting?’

Ruby held up her hands again, turning them this way and that to admire the light glinting off her shiny painted nails.

Lettie stirred the leaves in the teapot. ‘He looked a bit too pleased to see her, if you ask me,’ she mumbled. Then, when Ruby didn’t reply, she repeated, ‘Are you listening to me? I said—’

‘I heard what you said!’ Ruby’s voice was sharp. ‘Are you telling me my Nick is messing about with Dora Doyle?’

‘I’m not saying anything. But you know he’s got a name for himself round here. There’s lots of girls who’ve tried to catch his eye, and they’ve all fallen by the wayside . . .’

‘Yes, but that was before he met me, wasn’t it?’ Lettie met her daughter’s gaze. Ruby’s blue eyes were hard and determined. ‘Anyway, Dora’s my best mate. She knows better than to mess about with my boyfriend. Even if she was interested in him, which she’s not.’

‘She might not be interested, but how do you know you can say the same about him?’

‘Oh, Mum!’ Ruby gave an almost pitying laugh. ‘Look at me. Do you really think Nick would look twice at someone like Dora?’

Lettie stared into her daughter’s pretty face. She could have been in the films, she was so beautiful. Then she thought about Dora Doyle, as plain as a pikestaff, her broad nose smothered with freckles.

‘You’re right, love, I’m just being daft,’ she agreed.

But as she turned to pour the tea into chipped cups, she didn’t see the troubled look in her daughter’s eyes.

THE NEWS FINALLY
came at midnight.

Ever since the sombre announcement just after half-past ten that night, that the King’s life was ‘moving peacefully towards its close’, wireless sets in kitchens and sluices all over the hospital had been tuned in for further bulletins.

Violet was supervising an emergency admission to Male Surgical when a tearful student whispered the news.

‘Thank you for letting me know, Nurse,’ she said calmly. Later, she was sure the nurse would tell her friends Miss Tanner took the news with no emotion; how it proved everyone right when they said she was a ‘cold fish’.

But although Violet was moved by the King’s death, she felt more wretched for the young man behind the screens, rapidly losing the struggle for life after being knocked off his bike on the way to his night shift. Of course she felt sorrow for His Majesty’s passing. But at least he had lived a long, full life, and had died with dignity. There was no dignity for poor Mr Parsons, lying bleeding in a gutter, his life over almost before it had begun.

She pushed open the door to the visitors’ room and was confronted by a set of anxious white faces. Mr Parsons’ mother, his father, brothers and sisters, all roused from their sleep, overcoats thrown on over their nightclothes in their rush to get to the hospital.

It was a sight she often faced, but it didn’t get any easier. Patients who clung tenaciously to life during daylight hours seemed to lose the will during the long hours of darkness. As Night Sister it was her job to prepare relatives for the worst, or give them the news they dreaded.

‘Is he . . . is he going to be all right, Nurse?’ Mrs Parsons whispered.

Violet took a deep breath, composed herself, and quietly closed the door.

News of the King’s death drifted through the hospital on a wave of sorrow. Nurses wept; patients woke up, grew restless, needed to talk. Violet spent the night going from ward to ward, soothing and comforting, holding hands and making endless cups of tea.

As dawn broke the following morning she was exhausted. All she could think about was going home and crawling into her bed.

She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it at first when she heard the sound of a tap running in the bathroom of Wren ward just before six in the morning. She investigated, and found an unhappy-looking young nurse filling the bathtub. The night student stood in the doorway watching her, looking almost as wretched.

They both glanced round sharply when Violet appeared. ‘What do you think you’re doing, Nurse?’ she demanded.

‘It’s for my punishment, Sister.’ The young woman’s voice was almost drowned out by the roar of the tap. She looked as weary as Violet felt, her face haggard from lack of sleep, her red hair a frizzy, unbrushed halo.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘My cold bath punishment. Sister Wren says you’re to supervise it.’

Violet rubbed her eyes with a weary hand. ‘I’m sorry, Nurse, you’re going to have to explain yourself.’ She looked from one to the other of the two girls.

It was the night student who spoke up first. ‘Sister Wren makes us take a cold bath at dawn if we’re caught talking to men, Sister,’ she explained.

‘I see. So I’m to see that this punishment is carried out?’ They both nodded. ‘And suppose I don’t want to?’

The nurses looked at each other in confusion. ‘I – I’m sorry, Miss,’ said the red-haired student. ‘I don’t understand—’

Violet sighed. ‘What is your name, Nurse?’

‘Doyle, Sister.’

‘Tell me, Doyle, were you talking to this man?’

‘Yes, Sister.’ She met Violet’s eye when she said it. Not boldly or cheekily, but in a steady, straightforward kind of way. She didn’t look like the flirtatious type, Violet thought.

She reached over and turned off the tap. ‘Go away, Doyle,’ she said wearily.

‘But Miss—’

‘Doyle, it’s been a very long night, and now I have to check all the ward reports and make sure all the patients are fed and everything is in order before the day staff come on duty at seven. Do you really think I also have time to supervise you taking a cold bath as well?’

‘No, Sister.’ The girl’s broad, freckled face filled with hope.

‘No, I do not. And I’m sure you have better things to do with your time, too. So go and have your breakfast, and make sure you report back on the ward promptly for duty.’

‘But Sister Wren will be—’

‘I will deal with Sister Wren,’ Violet said firmly.

‘Isn’t it awful about the poor King?’

Millie heard it everywhere she went on that bleak, cold Tuesday morning. All the nurses were talking about it over breakfast, and the old ladies on Female Chronic – the few who were aware of what was going on around them, anyway – all wanted to share their fond reminiscences with Millie as she went about her chores on the ward.

Outside the hospital, church bells rang out. Sister Hyde had allowed a wireless into the ward, but Millie began to wish she hadn’t as they were treated to hour after hour of solemn music.

‘Why do we have to listen to this?’ Maud Mortimer demanded as she submitted unwillingly to Millie wielding a hairbrush. ‘Isn’t this place depressing enough without having to listen to these dreadful dirges?’

‘It’s for the King,’ Millie said, carefully untangling a knot in Maud’s long, silky white hair.

‘Why? He can’t hear it, can he? For heaven’s sake, girl, do you have to be so rough?’ she snapped, jerking her head away.

‘Sorry.’ Millie slowed down her brushing. ‘But the music is a mark of respect, don’t you think?’

‘Respect, my eye,’ Maud tutted. ‘It’s nothing but a lot of mawkish sentimentality, if you ask me. Although I’m not remotely surprised at you getting so emotional about it – you strike me as the mawkish type,’ she added.

‘It’s always sad when someone dies.’

‘What utter nonsense,’ Maud dismissed. ‘For most people it’s a blessed release. Or it would be, if it weren’t for the likes of do-gooders like you,’ she added accusingly. ‘You nurses and doctors, coming in here with your face flannels and your feeding cups and your sickening, relentless cheerfulness, trying to keep us alive when all we want to do is die in peace.’

‘It’s our job to care for people, Mrs Mortimer.’ Millie’s smile wobbled uncertainly.

‘You call this caring? If you really cared you’d put us all out of our misery.’

‘You mustn’t talk like that.’

‘Why not?’ She gestured around the ward. ‘Have you ever taken the trouble to look around you? Do you believe these women want to be helpless and in pain? Do you think they enjoy having to have someone to feed them and wash their hair and wipe their backsides? Don’t you think every one of them would choose to go to sleep and never wake up if they could? I know I would. Oh, don’t look so shocked,’ she snapped. ‘If I have nothing left to live for, why shouldn’t I go when I please?’

‘There’s always something left to live for.’

Maud Mortimer sent her a look of pure contempt. ‘You foolish, foolish girl!’ she hissed. ‘You only say that because you’re young. You wait until you’re my age, and everyone you care about has passed away or forgotten you exist. Wait until your mind is fading and your body is letting you down, and you’re at the mercy of stupid girls with sunny smiles and hairbrushes, then tell me you want to live.’

The bleakness in her hard, bright eyes made Millie want to cry. She could feel hot tears pricking the back of her eyes.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Maud snatched the hairbrush from her, but it fell from her weak grasp and rolled away under the bed. ‘You see?’ she said. ‘I can’t even brush my own hair now. What kind of life is that?’

Millie dived under the bed to retrieve the brush, but Maud waved her away. ‘Just leave me alone,’ she said wearily. ‘You’re giving me a headache.’

‘But—’

‘Did you hear me? I said go away. Go and torment one of these other wretched women. Perhaps you can have a good old weep together about the poor old King.’

Millie was still shaking as she pushed her trolley back towards the sluice. She tried to tell herself that Maud was just having a bad day. But the bitterness she’d seen in the old woman’s eyes haunted her.

She avoided Maud Mortimer for the rest of the morning. Luckily Sister Hyde gave Helen the job of feeding Maud at dinnertime. Millie watched from the other end of the ward as her friend sat beside the bed, a feeding cup in her hand.