‘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.
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘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.
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Mortimer. I was miles away.’
‘I should think you were!’ Maud looked outraged. ‘Good gracious, I’ve had to listen to your ceaseless nonsensical chatter for weeks. You’d think you’d have the decency to listen
when I finally want to speak!’
‘You’re right, it was thoughtless of me.’ Millie dredged up a smile from the depths of her stout shoes. ‘What was it you were saying?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Maud’s thin mouth turned down sulkily. ‘It really isn’t important, not now.’
She followed Millie’s gaze as it strayed back across towards William’s voice on the other side of the screen.
‘You rather like him, don’t you?’ she remarked.
‘Who?’
‘You know perfectly well who. That young man. The one who calls himself a doctor. On the other side of the screens. The one you’ve been listening to when you should have been listening to me. What’s his name? Ah, yes! Tremayne.’
‘Mrs Mortimer, Please!’ Millie shot an anguished look towards the screens as Maud’s voice rang out.
‘Please what? Do you honestly think he hasn’t noticed you watching his every move?’ Maud sniffed.
‘There. You’re all finished.’ Millie changed the subject hastily straightening Maud’s nightgown and refastening it. ‘I’ll make your bed comfortable now.’
‘Is he the reason for your broken engagement?’
Maud’s gaze was as sharp and penetrating as a scalpel. Millie looked away. ‘Of course not,’ she muttered, bending to tuck in the sheet.
‘Very well, don’t tell me the truth,’ Maud said huffily. ‘As long as you’re not lying to yourself.’
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘I think you do.’ Maud sent her a long, considering look. ‘You know,’ she said after a long pause, ‘there are times when I wish I had swum the English Channel.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Millie blinked at her.
‘I told you, I wanted to do it when I was a girl,’ Maud explained impatiently. ‘When we lived in Deal I used to stand and look out to sea all the time. I’d tell myself that one day I would take the plunge, so to speak, and swim the Channel. I thought I might be the first person to do it, but of course Captain Webb beat me to it,’ she smiled. ‘Then I thought I might be the first woman to do it. I used to swim out to sea, wondering if I’d ever be brave enough to go all the way to France.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
Maud gave a little shrug. ‘A thousand and one reasons. I went to school, then to university, then I was married . . . I told myself I still had time, but somehow I never did it.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘Oh, I’m not saying I didn’t lead a very full life, or that I didn’t achieve a great deal. But somewhere in the back of my mind I’ve always had this nagging little regret that I wasn’t brave enough to strike out and make that swim.’ She looked down at her hands, her fingers curling in towards her palms like the edges of a dying leaf. ‘But of course it’s too late now, isn’t it? Too late for regrets.’
She looked up at Millie. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’ she said. ‘Regret is a terrible thing, child. You must never reach my age knowing there are paths in life you wish you had taken.’
Millie was too flustered to speak for a moment. She didn’t want to hear this; her life was already in a mess without a stranger trying to confuse her even more about her feelings.
‘As I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She finished straightening the bed hastily, desperate to escape.
‘Where are you going?’ Maud asked, as Millie pushed the screens back from around the bed. ‘Aren’t you going to stay and help me with my crossword?’
‘I can’t, I’m too busy.’
‘But I’ve been looking at it all day. I’ve worked out most of the clues, I just need you to fill them in for me . . .’
Maud suddenly seemed very small and vulnerable. Her sharp blue eyes were usually so clear and incisive, but looking into them now Millie could see the milky veil of old age over them.
‘Please,’ she whispered.
Her plea touched Millie’s heart. Any other day she would gladly have spent time with her. But today she was tired and upset, and the last thing she needed was to suffer a vicious tongue lashing from Maud Mortimer. She’d had enough criticism from Sister Hyde that day.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, glancing at her watch. ‘I don’t have time this evening. I’m supposed to be going off duty soon. Perhaps one of the other nurses could help?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Maud said, turning her face away.
Her sulkiness rankled with Millie. She was a nurse, she reminded herself, not Mrs Mortimer’s personal servant.
But then she told herself not to be so selfish. Maud was an old, sick lady, she was bound to be demanding. ‘I’ve got tomorrow off, but I’ll be back on Monday,’ Millie said. ‘Perhaps we could do the crossword together then?’
Maud turned her head to look at her. ‘I’ll have to check my diary,’ she said.
Millie smiled, in spite of herself. ‘You do that, Mrs Mortimer.’
As Millie left, she called after her, ‘You’ll remember what I said, won’t you? No regrets.’
Millie turned to look back at her. ‘What on earth would I have to regret?’
Dora had never been to a dance before. She stood in the doorway, gazing in awe at the cavernous room, alive with noise and colour. At the far end, on the small stage, a dance band in evening dress was already playing a lively number, their brass instruments catching the light, while the floor was filled with dancers swinging each other around. Dora had never seen anything like it. It was as if her Nanna’s wireless had suddenly burst into vivid, noisy life in front of her.
‘What a dump,’ Lucy Lane said. In spite of her dismissive attitude earlier, as soon as she found out Millie was going she had decided to invite herself along anyway. Now she stood in the doorway, looking around as if there was a bad smell under her turned-up nose.
‘Well, I think it’s smashing,’ Katie O’Hara said loyally. ‘It’s better than sitting in our room studying, anyway. And it’s a good excuse to get dressed up.’
‘You call that dressed up?’ Lucy gave her outfit a scathing glance. Dora caught Katie’s blushing face and felt for her. It wasn’t Katie’s fault that her best dress was one of her Irish mother’s home-made creations, a flouncy style in black and white that did little to flatter her plump figure.
Dora thanked her stars that her own mother was more skilled with a needle, although her faded blue flowery dress had seen better days. Lucy, by contrast, was done up to the nines in fashionable dark green crêpe, with a string of real pearls around her throat.
Dora glanced at Millie. She looked lovely as ever in a pale yellow dress, her blonde curls catching the light from the lanterns strung overhead. But her downcast expression made her look like a sad angel.
‘What do we do now?’ Dora asked, looking around. There was no sign of Joe, although it was difficult to recognise anyone in the swirling crowd.
‘Wait to be asked to dance, I suppose.’ Katie flashed an encouraging smile at a group of young men who were loitering by a pillar on the other side of the room.
‘O’Hara! Do you have to be so shameless?’ Lucy hissed at her.
Dora wasn’t sure she wanted to be asked. She didn’t think she would ever be able to move herself around the dance floor as fast as the other dancers, especially after so many hours on her feet on the ward.
Millie seemed to feel the same. ‘I’m going to sit down,’ she said.
‘No one will see us over there!’ Katie wailed, but Millie was already heading determinedly for the corner table. ‘It’s all right for her, she’s engaged,’ Katie hissed furiously to Dora. ‘She should give the rest of us a chance!’
Dora smiled, but secretly she was relieved to be hidden away. She was beginning to wonder if coming to the dance had been such a good idea. She had come for Joe’s sake, but there was no sign of him.
Lucy wouldn’t let her forget that either. ‘Looks like your young man has stood you up,’ she remarked.
‘I told you, he’s not my young man,’ Dora replied through grit
ted teeth.
‘Obviously,’ Lucy smirked.
Dora scanned the dance floor, torn between disappointment that he wasn’t there, and relief that she didn’t have to dance or make awkward conversation. She had been so worried that by turning up tonight she might give him the idea that she was interested in him. Now she realised with a pang that he wasn’t remotely interested in her.
‘Well, this is ridiculous!’ Katie declared, standing up. ‘If someone doesn’t ask me to dance in the next minute, I’m going to ask them.’
‘You can’t do that!’ Lucy looked scandalised.
‘Why not? I used to do it all the time at the village dances at home.’
‘This is different. You’re in London now, not some little Irish village in the middle of nowhere. You can’t act like a clod-hopping hoyden here. You have to be sophisticated.’
‘I’d rather be a clod-hopping hoyden who gets to dance than a sophisticated wallflower!’
With a last defiant look at them, she plunged determinedly into the seething mass of dancers, searching for a partner.
‘Look at her.’ Lucy shook her head in despair.
‘Leave her alone. At least she knows how to enjoy herself,’ Dora said. ‘Anyway, it looks as if her plan’s worked.’ She nodded towards the dance floor, where Katie was dragging a very handsome but rather surprised-looking young man on to the dance floor. ‘Maybe we should try it?’ She smiled at Millie, who seemed to be a million miles away. ‘What do you reckon, Benedict?’
‘Sorry?’ Millie looked up vaguely. Dora moved closer to her.
‘We don’t have to stay, you know?’ she said, over the blaring of the music. ‘We can go home.’
‘Nonsense, I’m enjoying myself,’ Millie said, although her smile was strained.
‘Are you sure? I know I nagged you into coming—’
‘I would only have sat moping in my room if you hadn’t.’
Dora frowned. ‘Why? Is something wrong?’
Millie’s smile brightened a fraction. ‘Of course not. I’m just tired, that’s all. Anyway, we have to stay,’ she added. ‘You never know, your young man might be looking for you.’
The Nightingale Sisters Page 28
