The Nightingale Sisters

by Donna Douglas

  It was a fine spring evening, and the London plane trees in the centre of the courtyard were a fresh acid green in the early evening sunshine. Dora was smiling to herself as she crossed the courtyard, heading for the nurses’ home to get changed. But her smile disappeared as she saw her brother Peter emerging from the Porters’ Lodge, followed by Nick Riley.

  Her heart jolted. Only one thing would bring Peter to the Nightingale, and that was trouble.

  ‘Pete?’ Ignoring the risk of being caught and sent to Matron, Dora hurried over to him.

  He turned to face her, his freckled face splitting into a broad smile. He was only a little taller than her, strong and stocky, with the muddy green eyes and bright ginger hair they had both inherited from their father. Somehow they suited him better.

  ‘All right, Dor? I wasn’t sure if I’d see you. Nick thought you might still be on duty.’ He looked her up and down. ‘Look at you, in your uniform. Don’t you look a picture?’

  But Dora hardly heard his compliment. ‘What is it, what’s wrong?’ The words came out in a rush, tripping over each other. ‘Has something happened to Mum or Nanna?’ All kinds of dreadful fears crowded into her mind. ‘Oh, God, it’s one of the kids, isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t get in a flap, everyone’s all right. Blimey, and I thought you nurses were meant to be calm in a crisis!’ He put his hands on her arms, steadying her. ‘It’s good news, Dor. I’ve got a job!’

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘What? But how? Where?’

  ‘Right here. Nick heard there was a porter’s job going and put in a good word for me. I’ve just been to see Mr Hopkins, and he gave me the job on the spot.’ Peter grinned at her.

  ‘Oh, Pete, that’s smashing news.’ Dora put her hand to her racing heart. ‘I’m so glad for you.’

  ‘It means I’ll be able to start paying my way again, help Mum out a bit more,’ he said proudly.

  Dora looked past him to where Nick stood behind them, hands thrust into his pockets, kicking at a loose cobble with the toe of his boot.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘They needed someone, that’s all.’ Their eyes met and held for a moment. Then he dragged his gaze away and said, ‘But you’ll have to keep your nose clean, Pete. Mr Hopkins don’t stand for no messing about.’

  ‘I will, don’t you worry.’

  ‘And I hope this means we won’t hear any more nonsense about the Blackshirts?’ Dora added.

  Her brother’s face darkened. ‘It’s not nonsense,’ he muttered.

  Dora caught Nick’s eye. He lifted his broad shoulders in a slight shrug.

  ‘It’s good news, anyway,’ she said, determined not to let anything spoil the moment.

  They left Nick at the Porters’ Lodge and walked as far as the gates together, being careful to stay out of sight of anyone who might report her.

  ‘How’s Mum?’ Dora asked the question that had been troubling her ever since she’d last been home.

  ‘Oh, Dor, she’s not right.’ Peter shook his head. ‘Hasn’t been the same since that bloke Joe Armstrong came round. It’s proper upset her, but she won’t talk about it. Just tries to act like it didn’t happen. And she went mad the other day when Nanna mentioned it.’

  ‘I don’t blame her. Poor Mum.’

  ‘I know. I should have punched that sod when I had the chance, coming round upsetting everyone with his lies like that.’ Peter ground his fist into the palm of his hand.

  Dora couldn’t look at him. ‘You really think they’re lies?’ she said cautiously.

  ‘Don’t you?’ He frowned. ‘Come off it, Dora, you know Alf as well as I do. He’s a diamond, and he was devoted to Mum. Do you honestly believe a decent bloke like him would do something like that?’

  The blood sang angrily in her ears, and for a split second, Dora was tempted to tell her brother exactly what kind of a ‘decent’ bloke Alf was. But she knew she could never burden him with that knowledge.

  ‘If he’s such a diamond, why did he walk out on us?’ was all she could say.

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Peter shrugged his shoulders. Then he added in an undertone, ‘If you ask me, he’s had an accident and they haven’t found him yet. But don’t tell Mum that, will you? I don’t want her any more upset than she is already.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Dora shook her head. At least she and her brother could agree on something.

  She was still in a good mood when she went for supper later that evening. Even the fact that the only space left on the second years’ table was between Sister Sutton at its head and her least favourite student Lucy Lane didn’t dampen Dora’s spirits. Neither did the heap of grey, congealed mince that was served up on her plate.

  As usual, she was so hungry she ate it all, barely stopping to speak until the plate was half-empty. Across the table, Katie O’Hara did the same. Only Lucy Lane picked fastidiously at her food, her upturned nose pointed even further skyward.

  ‘I don’t understand how you can bear to eat this filth.’ She shuddered delicately. ‘But I suppose it’s a case of what you’re used to,’ she added, with a sly sideways glance at Dora.

  Dora paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. Lucy Lane never missed a single chance to have a dig at her and where she came from. She made no secret of the fact that as far as she was concerned, only girls from well-to-do families should ever be allowed to train as nurses.

  And they didn’t come much more well-to-do than Lucy Lane. Her father had made a fortune with a factory making lightbulbs, and he and Lucy’s mother lived in fine style somewhere in town. As their only daughter, Lucy was spoilt rotten. She was forever bragging about the latest gift her father had bought her, or the fantastic parties she had been to.

  Quite why she had decided to become a nurse Dora had no idea, since she also made it clear she was quite the most brilliant student at her boarding school, with a glittering academic career at Oxford ahead of her.

  Across the table, Katie O’Hara rolled her blue eyes heavenwards and went on shovelling in food. Dora smiled. At least she didn’t have to share a room with Lucy, unlike poor Katie.

  They really couldn’t have been a more ill-matched pair, she decided. While Lucy Lane was petite and precise, Katie was all softness, with her billowing dark hair, plump figure and lilting Irish voice.

  ‘I was mentioned in Sister Parry’s ward report today,’ Lucy announced loudly, to no one in particular. No one responded. They all allowed her showing off to wash over them these days. ‘I had to take the children down for tonsil surgery.’

  ‘I’ve done that,’ O’Hara said, through a mouth full of food. ‘It’s horrible, isn’t it? The way those poor little mites scream when they’re taken in. And you’re left with the others all lined up outside, waiting for their turn. It’s heartbreaking, it really is.’

  ‘You’re too soft, that’s your trouble,’ Lucy dismissed. ‘You have to take a firm hand with children. It’s for their own good. Sister Parry says so.’

  Dora wasn’t listening. She was watching Millie further along the table. For once, she didn’t seem to be interested in joining in their conversation. And she was picking at her food with even less enthusiasm than Lucy.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Dora mouthed to her.

  Millie looked up and gave her a sad little smile. ‘I’m fine.’ But Dora knew she wasn’t. She had heard her the night before, weeping quietly into her pillow in the early hours. She longed to ask her why, but sensed Millie wasn’t ready to talk about it. Dora didn’t like to pry.

  After dinner, Katie asked Dora to come to her room to revise.

  ‘Please,’ she begged, as they filed out of the dining room. ‘Otherwise I’ll only be stuck with that know-all Lane, telling me how stupid I am.’

  The idea didn’t appeal much to Dora either. But then neither did the prospect of going back to her own room. Helen was out with Charlie, and she had the feeling Mil
lie wanted to be by herself.

  ‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘As long as she doesn’t start telling me how stupid I am.’

  ‘She wouldn’t dare,’ Katie laughed. ‘You’re the only one who ever stands up to her.’

  But that still didn’t stop Lucy from picking on both of them as they tried to study in the bedroom.

  ‘What are the main complications you should watch for after a mastoid operation?’ Katie sat cross-legged on the floor with her heavy copy of The Complete System of Nursing open on her knees. Dora sat on the bed opposite, staring at the ceiling as she tried to think.

  ‘Let me see . . . erratic temperature or sudden fall in temperature . . . abnormally slow pulse . . . squint or double vision . . . drowsiness, pain, facial paralysis, rigors – and delirium,’ she finished triumphantly.

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘You forgot vomiting,’ drawled Lucy Lane. She was sitting on her bed, pretending to look out of the window. ‘Vomiting not associated with the administration of food,’ she added, with a smug smile at Dora.

  ‘Why don’t you revise with us?’ Katie suggested.

  ‘No, thanks. I already know all this.’

  ‘You could help us?’ Dora said.

  ‘Why should I?’

  They eyed each other coldly across the room. It rankled with Lucy that Dora regularly did better than her in tests, and had been mentioned favourably in ward reports too. Dora was only concerned with doing her best, but Lucy saw everything in her life as a competition.

  ‘I’m too tired to study anyway.’ Katie stifled a yawn.

  ‘We have to carry on,’ Dora said. ‘Mr Wittard the ENT consultant is doing the lecture tomorrow. We need to know all this stuff before then.’

  ‘You should have started revising a lot earlier then, shouldn’t you?’ Lucy pointed out primly. They both glared at her. The fact that she was right didn’t make her any less obnoxious.

  ‘They can’t expect us to pick up our books after fourteen hours on the ward,’ Katie complained. ‘It’s inhuman, that’s what it is.’

  ‘And we have to give up our one free afternoon to go to this lecture,’ Dora reminded her.

  ‘Why did I ever want to be a nurse?’ Katie groaned.

  ‘Because you didn’t have any choice?’

  ‘True. My ma would have disowned me in shame if I hadn’t.’ Katie was the second youngest of five sisters. The three eldest had all come over from their little village in the west of Ireland to train at the Nightingale, and Katie had been expected to do the same.

  Suddenly Lucy sat up straighter and pressed her nose to the glass. ‘I say, there’s a man outside.’

  ‘Where?’ Katie scrambled on to Lucy’s bed to get a better look. ‘I can’t see him. Where is he?’

  ‘He was standing right by the steps a moment ago, but now he’s disappeared into the shadow of the hedge. He’ll pop out again in a minute . . . oh, do stop shoving, O’Hara, you’ll be through the window in a minute . . . There, look! Now do you see him?’

  ‘Ooh, yes.’ Katie gave a little squeal of excitement. ‘I wonder what he wants?’

  ‘He keeps looking up at the windows. I bet he’s waiting for someone.’

  ‘Maybe they’re planning to elope?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Lucy dismissed this. ‘Why does everything have to be so dramatic with you? You’ve been reading those silly romances in Peg’s Paper again, haven’t you?’

  ‘Well, he’s definitely waiting for something,’ Katie defended herself. ‘And it must be important if he’s prepared to risk coming here. If Sister Sutton catches him . . .’

  ‘I don’t suppose he has any idea he’s stepped into the lair of a fire-breathing dragon!’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ Dora put down her books and went over to the window. She saw the tall broad-shouldered figure sheltering under the lamp post, caught the glint of fair hair in the lamplight, and felt a jolt of recognition.

  ‘Joe?’ She said his name without thinking. Katie and Lucy both swung round to face her at the same time, one excited, the other incredulous.

  ‘You know him?’ Lucy snapped.

  Katie looked impressed. ‘Is he your boyfriend?’

  ‘No, he’s just – someone I know,’ said Dora.

  ‘What’s he doing out there?’

  ‘Maybe he’s come to declare his undying love?’ Katie suggested.

  Lucy’s lip curled. ‘Don’t be stupid!’

  ‘I’d better go and find out, hadn’t I?’

  ‘At this time of night?’

  As if to prove the point, Sister Sutton’s voice suddenly boomed out from the passageway, ‘Lights out in fifteen minutes, Nurses.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Katie said breathlessly. ‘Sister Sutton will have your guts for garters if she catches you sneaking out to meet a man.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, you make it sound like a lovers’ tryst. I’ll only be five minutes.’ Dora opened the door a fraction and peered out. ‘Sister Sutton’s going upstairs. I’ll slip out now, before she comes back down.’

  ‘You’ll be in trouble if you get caught.’

  ‘Then I’ll just have to make sure she doesn’t catch me. Cover for me, won’t you?’

  ‘Don’t worry, we won’t say anything. Will we, Lucy?’ Katie sent her a meaningful look. Lucy stayed silent, tight-lipped with disapproval.

  Dora paused in the hall, listening for the sound of Sister Sutton’s heavy tread on the landing above her head. Then she scurried down the passageway and let herself quietly out of the front door.

  By the time she’d reached the stone steps of the nurses’ home, there was no sign of him. She began to think she was imagining things as she scanned the darkness.

  ‘Joe?’ she whispered. ‘Are you there?’

  He stepped out of the dense shadow of an overgrown hedge. In the dim lamplight, she could see the relief written all over his face. ‘Thank God it’s you. I wasn’t sure what to do . . . I was going to knock but then I saw this big woman coming towards me and I just hid.’

  ‘Just as well. If Sister Sutton had found you, we would both have been for it.’ Dora shivered in the cool evening air. ‘What are you doing here anyway? Look, if it’s about Alf, I told you I’d let you know if I heard . . .’

  ‘It isn’t. I came because I need your help. It’s our Jennie.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  Joe’s expression was grim. ‘You’d better come and see for yourself. But I warn you, it’s bad.’

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  JENNIE SAT HUDDLED on a bench outside Victoria Park. As they approached, she turned her head to look at them. Dora caught her first glimpse of the girl’s face, and let out a cry of shock.

  ‘You see? I told you it was bad,’ Joe said grimly.

  She was barely recognisable. Under the harsh greenish lamplight, her face was a distorted, bloated mass of livid bruises. Congealed blood was crusted around her puffy lips, and tears oozed slowly from swollen, purple eyes.

  Dora felt sick just looking at her. ‘Who did this?’

  ‘Dad found out about the baby.’ Joe’s voice was flat. ‘I came home an hour ago and she was like this.’

  ‘Poor lamb.’ Dora crouched down in front of the girl and reached up to stroke a lock of hair off her face. It was matted with dried blood. Jennie was so badly beaten it was hard to know where the blood had come from. ‘We need to get her to the hospital.’

  ‘No!’ Jennie managed to say the word through stiff, swollen lips. She clutched at Dora’s hand.

  ‘We thought maybe you could clean her up?’ Joe asked quietly.

  ‘But she could have broken bones, a cracked rib, or anything.’ Dora stared at them helplessly. ‘She needs proper medical treatment, more than I can give her.’

  Jennie squeezed hard on Dora’s hand. ‘No hospital . . . Dad . . .’ Her eyes were barely more than slits in her puffy face, but Dora could still read the panic in them.

  ‘She doesn’t want t
o get him into trouble,’ Joe translated for her.

  ‘He deserves it, after what he’s done.’ Dora took out her handkerchief and dabbed gently at a spot of blood oozing from the girl’s temple. ‘So if I can’t get her to hospital, what do you expect me to do?’ she asked. ‘I can’t tend to her here in the middle of the street, can I?’

  ‘I – don’t know,’ Joe admitted. ‘When I found her like this, all I could think about was getting her to you. I don’t know what I expected, I just thought you could help . . .’

  Dora read the appeal in his face, and made up her mind.

  ‘I know somewhere we can take her,’ she said.

  It was well after ten and there was no one about in Griffin Street when Dora unlatched the tall wooden gate that led into the backyard of number twenty-eight.

  The lights were on downstairs, casting a welcome glow across the cracked flagstones as they crept across the yard. Inside the kitchen, Dora could see Nanna Winnie rocking in her chair to one side of the fire, while her mother had her head down over her mending on the other. Josie sat reading at the kitchen table, elbows propped up, lost in a book as usual.

  ‘Are you sure this is all right?’ Joe whispered. He stood behind her, Jennie leaning heavily against him.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Dora looked back at him, then at Jennie. ‘But what choice do we have?’

  Her family looked up as she walked in.

  ‘Dora?’ Her mother put down her mending and stood up, smiling but confused. ‘Are you all right, love? Why—’ She froze when she saw Joe standing in the doorway. ‘What’s he doing here?’ she said in a stone-cold voice.

  ‘We need your help, Mum.’ Dora nodded to Joe, who carried Jennie into the kitchen. As he released her to close the door behind him, the girl’s legs crumpled from under her.

  Dora went to catch her, but her mother got there first.

  ‘Help me get her into a chair,’ she ordered Joe. He stepped forward and scooped his sister up into his arms like a child, carrying her over to the fireside. Rose cleared the mending from her chair and Joe placed his sister down in it carefully.

  ‘Josie, go and put the kettle on. Mum, do we still have any brandy? She looks like she could do with a nip.’