The Nightingale Sisters (34 page)

Well, they would listen to her now, she thought.

‘I don’t care what anyone says. She’s not going back to that house.’

Defiance flashed in Rose Doyle’s dark eyes as she hauled a sheet out of the dolly tub. Dora had been given another afternoon shift, so she’d gone to visit and help with the Monday morning wash.

‘Are you sure about this, Mum?’ Dora chewed her lip worriedly. As Nanna Winnie would say, it was a rum state of affairs. Who would ever have imagined that Rose Doyle would become so protective over the girl who had got pregnant by her own husband?

‘Sure as I’ve ever been about anything.’ Rose fed the sheet through the rollers of the mangle. ‘The poor kid’s terrified, and no wonder. No, I’ve made up my mind. She’s staying with us.’

Dora rested her weight against the handle of the mangle until it started to turn. ‘But after what happened with her and Alf . . .?’

‘I don’t blame Jennie for that,’ Rose dismissed. ‘How could I? She was just a kid. She didn’t even know he was married. No, she did nothing wrong, in my eyes. If anyone’s to blame, it’s that swine.’

Dora stared at her mother, lost in admiration. Rose Doyle’s big, forgiving heart never ceased to amaze her.

‘What does Jennie have to say about it?’ she asked, as she helped her mother haul the sheet clear of the mangle and over to the washing line.

‘She doesn’t want to go back, why would she? She’s happy here. She’s settled in nicely in the past week, and the kids all love her. She pays her way, too, so it’s not like we have an extra mouth to feed. It feels as if she’s part of the family already.’

Dora felt a slight stab of jealousy at the thought of Jennie Armstrong taking her place, being a big sister to Josie, Bea and Little Alfie, and helping Nanna Winnie around the house. But at the same time, she couldn’t resent her for it. The girl had had a hard enough life, growing up without a mum and with her brute of a father. She deserved a chance.

Besides, she’d brought a lot of happiness back to the Doyle family. It was as if finding out the ghastly truth about her husband had liberated Rose. Now she could see Alf for what he really was, she no longer pined for him. There was no longer a place set for him at the dinner table – in fact, his name was never even mentioned.

And with Peter working as a porter at the hospital, and Jennie bringing in an extra wage, the family was finally finding its feet financially as well.

‘What about the neighbours? I expect Lettie Pike will have something to say about it.’

‘Lettie Pike can go to hell.’

As if on cue, there was a rustling from next door’s yard. Rose winked at Dora.

‘Did you hear that, Lettie?’ she called out.

A moment later Lettie Pike appeared sheepishly from the privy. ‘I can’t help it if I had to go, could I?’ she said huffily. ‘I’ve got better things to do than listen to you, Rose Doyle!’

Rose watched her go back into her house and slam the back door. ‘She’s been in there for half an hour.’

‘Maybe I should offer her an enema?’ Dora suggested.

‘I’d like to see that!’

They were still laughing as they wrestled the wet sheet over the line to peg it in place. The March wind caught it, lifting it like a sail and flapping it wetly back in Dora’s face.

She spluttered, still laughing, and pushed it to one side – then let out a scream when she saw a man standing in front of her.

‘Sorry, did I give you a shock?’ Joe Armstrong grinned at her. He was dressed in his uniform, all polished shoes and shiny gilt buttons. His helmet was tucked under his arm.

‘Just a bit.’ Dora pushed her curls back off her face, suddenly conscious of what a mess she must look in her scruffy old wash-day clothes.

‘I just thought I’d call round to see how our Jennie was doing.’ He glanced at the house. ‘Although I suppose she must be at work?’

‘You suppose right.’ Rose came round from the other side of the sheet to confront him, her hands on her hips. Even Joe, towering policeman that he was, regarded her warily.

‘How is she?’ he asked.

‘She’s doing all right, thank you,’ Dora said. ‘Now the cuts have healed and the swellings have gone down.’

‘That’s a relief.’ Joe stared at the ground. ‘Sorry I haven’t been round more often this week, but I’ve been working overtime.’

‘That’s all right, son,’ Rose replied, her voice losing some of its sharpness. ‘But your sister’s not safe to be left with your brute of a father, and that’s a fact. That’s why I want her to stay here, with us.’

He looked at her and for a moment Dora was worried he was going to argue, but then she saw the hope that lit up his green eyes.

‘Really? You’d do that for Jen?’ he said.

‘We’d love to have her, we really would.’

He smiled. ‘It would be a weight off my mind if I knew she was safe.’

‘Then that’s settled.’ Rose beamed at him. ‘And I reckon I owe you an apology too, son,’ she added. ‘I know I haven’t been too welcoming in the past.’

‘That’s all right.’ Joe looked sheepish. ‘You get used to not being welcome, in my job.’

‘I should think you do.’ Rose dried her hands on her apron. ‘Can I offer you a cup of tea, just to show there’s no hard feelings?’

‘Sorry, Missus, I can’t stop. I’d be for it if my sergeant caught me supping tea when I’m meant to be on the beat.’

‘Maybe next time then. You’ll have to call round and see your sister again.’

‘I will.’

He was staring at Dora as he said it. Rose looked from one to the other, then gave a funny little smile and said, ‘Right, I’ll leave you to it.’

Joe waited until the back door had closed behind her before he spoke to Dora. ‘As a matter of fact, it wasn’t just Jennie I came to see. I was hoping you’d be here.’

‘Why?’ She felt the colour drain from her face and knew she’d gone as white as the sheet she was pegging out. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve found Alf?’

‘What? No,’ he dismissed. ‘I’m still looking, but I don’t imagine he’ll turn up any day soon.’ Then, just as she was letting out a sigh of relief, he added, ‘No, I came to ask if you’d like these?’

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of tickets. ‘The lads at the station and the local fire brigade are having a dance at the Town Hall on Saturday. As you can imagine, we could do with a few girls coming along, or we’ll end up tripping the light fantastic with each other. I wondered if a few of your nurse pals would like to come? And you, of course,’ he added, a blush spreading up from under the stiff collar of his tunic.

‘I’m sure they’d love to, if they can get the time off.’ Dora took the tickets from him. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Thanks.’

There was an awkward pause. Dora glanced around, and saw her mum and Nanna Winnie with their noses pressed against the kitchen window. She glared at them, but they paid no attention.

‘Anyway, I’d best go,’ Joe said. ‘So I’ll – um – see you on Saturday, shall I?’

‘If I can make it.’

‘I hope you can.’ He paused for a moment, as if he was about to say something else. Then he turned and marched off through the back gate.

Dora turned back to the window. Her mum and Nanna Winnie had gone, with only the trembling net curtain to show that they’d ever been there.

‘
GO ON, IT’LL
be a laugh.’

Millie looked across the breakfast table at her friend’s face, full of eager appeal. Dora had been pestering her about the police dance at the Town Hall all week. Even though Millie had told her several times she couldn’t go, Dora didn’t seem to want to take no for an answer.

‘How did you get all those spare tickets anyway?’ Lucy Lane asked.

Colour rose in Dora’s face, clashing with the curls of fiery red hair that poked out from under her cap. ‘A friend gave them to me.’

‘A friend, eh?’ Katie O’Hara cackled, nudging her. ‘That wouldn’t be a boyfriend, would it?’

‘No!’ Dora denied, a bit too quickly. Millie and Katie O’Hara glanced at each other across the table, both trying not to smile.

‘As if!’ Lucy smirked, poking at her porridge with her spoon.

Millie ignored her, turning back to Dora. ‘I would love to come, but I’ve got to catch the early train down to Sussex for the christening tomorrow.’

‘We won’t be late back, I promise. We only have to go for an hour.’ Dora looked appealingly at her. ‘Please, Benedict? It’s not often we get the same night off. Especially a Saturday night?’

Millie wished she could have gone, if only to make her friend happy. Dora so rarely asked for any favours. But she knew she would be rotten company.

She was so nervous about seeing Seb at the christening. She hadn’t seen or heard from him at all in the two weeks since they’d called off their engagement.

For the first few days, she had expected him to turn up at the nurses’ home, or at least to write to her. But as the days passed and her hopes began to fade, she’d had to face the fact that it really was over between them as far as Seb was concerned.

Now she had to go down to Lyford for the christening, and she wasn’t looking forward to it at all. But she was the baby’s godmother, and just to make things even more awkward, Seb and William were both godfathers.

She caught Dora’s quizzical glance across the table, and forced herself to smile back. She didn’t know why she couldn’t bring herself to tell the other girls about her broken engagement. Perhaps it was because if she said the words out loud it would make them seem too real.

She hadn’t even told her family yet. She just hoped Seb wouldn’t decide to announce it to everyone at the christening, and humiliate her.

‘Why don’t you invite Tremayne?’ Millie suggested.

‘She’s already going out with Charlie tonight. Love’s young dream!’ Dora rolled her eyes. ‘Please, Benedict,’ she begged. ‘The friend who gave me these invitations – Joe – well, I think he might have the wrong idea about me.’ She blushed again, lowering her eyes demurely to her empty porridge bowl. ‘If I go on my own, he might think – you know?’

‘I’ll go with you, if a miracle happens and Sister Wren lets me off at five,’ Katie offered. ‘I don’t want to miss out on the chance of all those young policemen, do I?’ Her round blue eyes gleamed in anticipation.

‘We’ll be home early, so you can catch your train in the morning,’ Dora pleaded with Millie again. ‘I promise we’ll be tucked up in bed well before midnight.’

‘Speak for yourself!’ Katie laughed.

‘I can’t think of anything worse,’ Lucy said with a delicate shudder. She leant across the table at Millie. ‘I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be seen dead in a dump like that!’

The way she said it set Millie’s teeth on edge. Lucy was always trying to make out that she and Millie were somehow a cut above the rest of them, just because Millie had a title and Lucy’s father had made millions manufacturing lightbulbs. But she knew her own father would be utterly horrified by such petty snobbery.

It was the superior sneer on Lucy’s face that changed Millie’s mind. Before she knew what she was doing, she had turned to Dora and said, ‘Oh, what the hell. You’re right, we don’t often get a night out together, do we? Count me in.’

‘Smashing!’ Relief was written all over her friend’s kind, plain face. ‘You’ll enjoy it, I promise.’

But after a long, hard day on the ward, Millie began to regret her change of heart. The last thing she felt like doing was dancing. Her feet ached, her head was throbbing with tension from avoiding yet another stinging reprimand from Sister Hyde, and all she really wanted to do was to sink her aching limbs into a deep, albeit tepid, bath.

She was already daydreaming about easing off her shoes as she pushed the trolley out of the sluice, ready to start on the teatime beds and backs round . . . and crashed straight into Dr Tremayne.

Bowls, flannels and tins of powder went everywhere. William dived to catch the bottle of meths with one hand before it crashed to the ground.

‘Howzat?’ He grinned, and handed it back to her. ‘And to think they wouldn’t let me bowl in the inter-hospital cricket match last summer.’

‘Thanks.’ She took it from him and bent to pick up the bowl, already steeling herself as she heard Sister Hyde’s brisk footsteps bearing down on them.

‘Really, Benedict! Why don’t you watch where you’re going?’ she snapped. ‘Are you all right, Dr Tremayne?’

‘Quite all right, thank you, Sister. And it’s I who should have been looking where I was going.’

He stooped to help reload the trolley, but Sister Hyde stepped in.

‘No, Doctor, leave Benedict to do it. I need you to take a look at Miss Wallis. I think she may need an adjustment in her medication. And mind you mop all that up,’ she instructed Millie over her shoulder as she ushered him away. ‘I don’t want anyone slipping and breaking their neck because of your carelessness.’

As he followed Sister Hyde down the ward, William turned back and gave Millie an apologetic shrug.

‘You’re late,’ Maud observed a few minutes later, as Millie pulled the screens around her bed.

‘I’m sorry.’ Millie prayed Maud wouldn’t be in one of her difficult moods. She was too tired to deal with it. All she wanted to do was go off duty.

‘It doesn’t matter, I suppose. I hardly have any pressing evening engagements planned.’

Millie smiled, in spite of her weariness. ‘Let’s get you turned over, shall we?’

‘You’re wasting your time, you know,’ Maud complained, as Millie dabbed methylated spirits on to her jutting shoulder blades. ‘I don’t even know why you’re bothering.’

‘We’ve got to make you comfortable, haven’t we?’ Millie said soothingly, her mind elsewhere. ‘We don’t want you getting any nasty pressure sores.’

‘It would be a fine thing if I did feel uncomfortable,’ Maud replied tartly. ‘It would be a fine thing if I felt anything at all!’

Millie lifted her head at the sound of William’s voice, coming from the other side of the screen. He was talking to a patient, his voice warm and reassuring.

‘Did I ever tell you I used to play tennis?’ Maud said suddenly.

‘No, I don’t think you ever mentioned it.’

‘Well, I did. And I swam. I was an excellent swimmer. My family had a house in Deal and I adored the sea. I was completely fearless, even as a young child. I used to tell everyone I would swim the English Channel one day – are you listening to me?’ she said sharply, jerking Millie out of her reverie.