London Belles

by Annie Groves

  ‘Ted? So who’s he, then? A boyfriend? Been sending you love letters, has he?’

  Dulcie was astonished that any male would show an interest in someone as drab and dull as Agnes, never mind write to her, as well as feeling just that little bit put out that Agnes, with her love letters, had stepped into territory that Dulcie considered to be more properly hers. It wasn’t that she wanted a boyfriend, especially not one who was keen on someone like Agnes, but it still aroused her competitive spirit and galled her a little that plain Agnes should be the first one of them in the house to have a male in tow.

  Her face scarlet with anxiety and mortification, Agnes denied that as quickly as though Ted himself were there to hear Dulcie’s comments.

  ‘It isn’t like that. Ted isn’t my boyfriend.’

  ‘So who is he then, and why is he writing to you?’

  ‘He’s a driver on the underground, and he’s helping me to learn the names of all the different stations on each of the lines, so that I don’t get confused when people ask for tickets. Ever so kind and nice he is.’

  ‘So you are sweet on him then?’ Dulcie pounced.

  ‘No.’ Agnes could imagine how embarrassed Ted would be if he thought that someone as dull as her was getting ideas into her head that had no right being there.

  Listening to their exchange, Tilly could see that Agnes was getting upset and couldn’t help wishing that Dulcie would stop teasing her.

  ‘Learn all the stations? Oh heavens, Agnes, I don’t think I could do that!’ Tilly exclaimed. Dulcie’s behaviour was making her feel uncomfortable. She admired the older girl but at the same time she felt protective of Agnes and didn’t like to see Dulcie making fun of her.

  Giving Tilly a grateful look, Agnes explained, ‘Ted’s been teaching me this tune so that I can sing them ’cos that’s how his dad taught him to remember the stations. We have a cup of tea together every day just before he clocks on. He does the late shift.’

  ‘Well, you’d better not let Tilly’s mother know that you’re being so familiar with a man, otherwise you’ll be out on your ear, ’cos she doesn’t approve of her lodgers having gentlemen friends, does she, Tilly?’ Dulcie demanded, determined to have her pound of flesh.

  ‘Oh, no. It’s nothing like that,’ Agnes protested, looking even more distressed and anxious.

  ‘Dulcie’s just teasing you, Agnes,’ Tilly tried to calm her, insisting to the other girl, ‘Aren’t you, Dulcie?’

  Dulcie gave a dismissive shrug, tossing the folded pages over to Agnes and laughing as she failed to catch them and had to scrabble on the floor for them.

  ‘If you say so.’ It irked her that Tilly had taken Agnes’s side. They were just a couple of know-nothing kids, the pair of them, who’d end up being ‘best friends’ and sticking to one another like glue. She’d left all that kind of thing behind her when she’d left school. In this life it was everyone for themselves, and them that put themselves first did best. Not that she’d actually had a best friend at school, she was forced to admit. But then that had been because the other girls had been jealous of her, and them that had palled up with her had only done so because they were soppy over her brother. Besides, once you started palling up with other girls they started wanting to know every bit of your business, and then they started threatening to tell on you if they didn’t like what you were doing. No, the last thing she needed was a best friend.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘Six weeks we’ve been at war with Germany now, and I’m getting that tired of not being able to sleep properly at night for waiting for Hitler to bomb us that it would almost be a relief if he did.’

  Automatically Sally nodded her head in agreement with the views expressed by the other nurse seated beside her in the canteen whilst they ate their lunch, but the reality was that for once her mind was not on the war. Her heart thudded against her ribs. She’d only come to London and Barts to get away from Liverpool, and until today, if anyone had suggested that she had become attached to Barts and would be unhappy at the thought of leaving, she would have told them soundly that they were wrong.

  Now, though, to her own surprise she was forced to admit that she had developed a love for the old place. But it looked as though she was going to be asked to leave.

  Just before she’d come for lunch, Theatre Sister had told her that Matron wanted to see her as soon as she’d eaten.

  Of course, she hadn’t said why, and Sally was far better trained than to ask. She’d searched her mind and her conscience and so far had not been able to come up with anything she’d done wrong that merited a summons from Matron, and she was glad that Sister had waited until they’d finished work for the morning before telling her. Not that they’d had any serious ops this morning, just a girl who’d come out of the pictures in the blackout and fallen over a sandbag, breaking her ankle, which had had to be properly set, and a young, newly enlisted soldier who’d been fooling around with a friend and ended up with a bullet in his arm.

  All she could think was that there’d been a change of plan and that her services were no longer needed, with most of the hospital being evacuated. She knew that she would be able to get another job – somewhere – but she’d just begun to settle in at Barts and at number 13.

  There was no point in delaying things. She couldn’t finish her meal she was so apprehensive. Getting up, she made her way first to the nearest ladies’ where she stared anxiously at her reflection in the mirror, checking to make sure that her nurse’s tall hat was on exactly as it should be, with no wisps of hair escaping, before removing her cuffs from her rolled up sleeves and then unrolling them. She’d removed her apron before leaving the ward and now, trying to calm the nervous butterflies swarming in her tummy, she left the ladies’ and headed for Matron’s office.

  Her hesitant knock was answered immediately by a firm, ‘Come.’

  Sally went in. Officially Matron was now based with the evacuated Barts in the country, but she still made regular visits to London, and Sally, who greatly admired her, found that despite her nervousness there was something reassuring about the sight of her familiar figure.

  ‘Ah, Nurse Johnson. Good. I dare say you’re finding our ways here at Barts are different from those in your previous hospital, and I hope that you feel that you are benefiting from your time here.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ was the only thing that Sally dared allow herself to say. Had someone complained that because she wasn’t Barts trained her standards were not as high as they should be? Naturally her loyalty to her own training hospital in Liverpool had her mentally up in arms at the thought of it, or of her being found wanting, but of course she could not say so. All nurses, and no doubt matrons too, felt the kind of loyalty for the hospital in which they had trained as members of a family did towards that family. They might criticise and even occasionally find fault, but outsiders certainly must not.

  ‘Your employment here is, of course, only for one year.’

  Sally’s heart began to sink. This was it. Matron was going to tell her that her services were no longer required. Well, at least she hadn’t done something so heinous that she was going to be called to order for it.

  Matron was looking down at some notes on a piece of paper in front of her.

  ‘Although most of the hospital has been evacuated, that does not mean that we don’t have to maintain our traditional Barts high standards here. If London is bombed, then this hospital will be one of those at the forefront of dealing with the injured.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  Sally’s muscles were beginning to ache from standing up so straight, but she dare not relax her pose, even had her training allowed her to do so.

  ‘You have been on duty in the operating theatre whilst our consultant plastic surgeon, Sir Harold Gillies, has operated.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ Sally agreed.

  ‘Sir Harold has extremely high standards and is very particular about the nurses who work in his operating theatre. He has made a point of
informing me that he thought that you, Nurse Johnson, are a first-rate theatre nurse.’

  Matron had summoned her here to her office to praise her. Sally felt so dizzy with relief and disbelief that she was quite light-headed.

  ‘Of course, it is my role as Matron to decide which of my nurses should be recommended for further training and responsibility, and mine alone. However, in this instance . . .’ Matron paused and looked directly at Sally. ‘The evacuation has created a lack of senior nursing staff. What I have in mind, Nurse, is to promote you to the position of theatre staff nurse, with a view – with further training – to you eventually taking on the role of sister.’

  Sister! Back in the early days of their training she and Morag had talked of the impossibility of either of them ever doing well enough to become ward sisters. Fierce pain caught at Sally’s chest. Once Morag and her parents would have been the first people she would have wanted to share her news and her excitement with, knowing how well all three of them, but especially her friend, would understand what it meant to her.

  ‘If you wish to accept the post of staff nurse I shall require you to change from temporary to permanent staff here, Nurse. Do you wish to do that?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, please. And . . . and thank you, ma’am.’

  A small smile touched Matron’s mouth. ‘It is a great deal of responsibility that this hospital will be placing in you and, more importantly, so will its patients, but I have every confidence that you are capable of carrying that responsibility, Nurse, and carrying it as befits a Barts nurse. Thank you, Nurse. You may go. You will be informed of when you are to take up your new duties in due course.’

  Not even once she was outside in the corridor did Sally dare to lean against the wall and give way to her own shaken exultation. She was going to be a staff nurse. And maybe ultimately a ward sister. She could hardly believe how wrong she had been about the cause of her summons to Matron’s office. And it was all thanks to Sir Harold Gillies, whose handiwork she had now had the opportunity to admire on several occasions as she watched him work on surgery in children born with cleft palates.

  Sally knew that there were nurses who openly admitted that theatre work was not for them, but she truly loved it. Staff Nurse Johnson – how proud her mother would have been to learn of her success. Sally’s happiness was replaced by the familiar tight ball of mingled anger and pain that thinking of her mother, and the manner in which her former best friend had usurped her mother’s role, caused. She could never forgive Morag for what she had done. Her father’s loneliness she could understand but not her friend’s taking advantage of it.

  She looked at her watch. Officially she should have been off duty from midday as she was due to start working nights from tomorrow, but of course Matron’s summons had meant that she had not been able to leave, and now that she was here she might as well look in on the ward where the patients operated on this morning would be recovering.

  She was within sight of its doors when a young doctor, whom Sally recognised as being a would-be surgeon, came through them at speed, his white coat flying, his stethoscope dangling round his neck, one of the files he was holding escaping from his grasp and falling to the floor, dislodging its contents.

  Sally bent to pick them up just as the doctor did the same.

  ‘It’s Nurse Johnson, isn’t it?’ he surprised her by saying. ‘I recognised you from the operation on that cleft palate patient last week. I was in the gallery watching Sir Harold operate.’

  ‘You’re from New Zealand, like Sir Harold?’ she guessed, recognising his accent.

  He beamed her a warm smile. ‘Yes. My father is in general practice there. He trained here at Barts himself. I’m George Laidlaw.’

  ‘Sally Johnson.’

  He was an attractive-looking, open-faced young man, with brown curly hair, blue eyes and a warm smile. Sally guessed that he was around her own age and he reminded her of a large gangling puppy, eager to make friends.

  He was looking at her in a way that told Sally that he found her attractive. Normally this would have put her off him as the last thing she wanted was to get involved with a young man. She wasn’t looking for romance, and not just because there was a war on. Her heart was still bruised from her quarrel with Callum over his sister’s marriage to her father. However, there was something so hopeful and pleading about the look in George Laidlaw’s eyes that Sally found her defences melting a little.

  She returned his smile, surprised to discover how easy it was and how pleasant to bask in the warmth of such easy and unaffected male appreciation.

  ‘Look, you can tell me if I’m out of order, and you’re either not interested or already hooked up, but I’d really like to take you out one evening. Just for a getting-to-know-one-another drink.’ When Sally hesitated, he added coaxingly, ‘I’ve seen how kind you are to the patients. How about taking pity on a poor lonesome and far-from-home Kiwi?’

  ‘It’s my duty to be kind to our patients,’ Sally pointed out mock severely, before adding truthfully, ‘Besides, I’m just about to start on nights.’

  Even so, she couldn’t help remembering the fun she and Morag had had when they had first palled up as trainee nurses, especially at the Grafton Ballroom, where they had never been short of eager partners. Those days had been filled with so much youthful happiness. Barts and London were her life now and it was up to her what she made of that life. She rather liked George Laidlaw. He had a nice smile.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be now,’ he was persisting. ‘Any night will do. I mean, I can fit in with you.’

  He was flatteringly keen. Perhaps it would do her good to say ‘yes’. Her mother would definitely have thought so, Sally recognised with a small pang. Even so, in time-honoured female tradition she felt duty bound to test him.

  ‘If Sir Harold’s taken you under his wing, I’m surprised you’ve got time to take nurses out.’

  ‘Not nurses. Just one nurse – you,’ he responded simply, the look he was giving her making the colour rise up to turn Sally’s cheeks a soft pink. ‘And you’re right about Sir Harold, he does keep us busy. It’s a privilege to watch him operate. His protégé, Archie McIndoe, is working over here as well.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  It was obvious to her that both Sir Harold Gillies and Archie McIndoe were much admired by the young doctor. George himself confirmed this to her when, unable to keep the admiration out of his voice, he told her, ‘During the World War, when Sir Harold first got the British Government’s permission to set up a plastic surgery unit, he used to send out labels with the ambulances going over to France so that potential patients could be sent back to him as quickly as possible. He did the most wonderful things for some of those chaps. I dare say if this war gets going he and Archie will be doing a lot more.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they will,’ Sally agreed, with a smile.

  ‘So you’ll come then? Out for a drink with me? When we’re both free?’

  He was persistent, Sally had to give him that.

  ‘Maybe.’

  The answer seemed to please him because he gave her another beaming smile as they both stood up and went their separate ways.

  Sally was still smiling when she eventually made her way out of the hospital and into the October sunshine, and not just because of the praise Matron had given her.

  The newspaper vendors along Holborn Viaduct selling the early evening editions of the papers, were crying out, ‘British Expeditionary Force in France. Read all about it.’

  Sally paused and glanced at the headlines. All young men of over twenty were now being called up, and everywhere one looked one could see men in uniform, the sound of their marching feet a warning, drumming in the war that so far had remained safely distanced from British shores. But for how much longer?

  Sally hugged her uniform cloak tightly around herself. The leaves on London’s trees were already turning and soon they would fall. Please God that a similar fate would not befall the country’s fighti
ng men.

  Dulcie eyed the smart luxurious luggage on show on the luggage department’s floor: trunks and cases of every kind, hurriedly being bought by those wealthy enough to afford them, as they made plans either to leave the country themselves or to send their children away to somewhere like Canada for their own safety.

  Dulcie was particularly attracted to a cream leather vanity case, bound with tan straps. Its lid was open to show off its interior, with its mirror, silver-topped glass jars and silver-backed hair-brushes. It was placed on top of a series of different sized matching trunks. She was sure she’d seen a similar case being held by Gracie Fields in a photograph in Picture Post. The vanity case cost more than she earned in a whole year, but Dulcie loved it. She’d come up here every day during her dinner hour just so that she could look at it and imagine herself parading around with it. She looked round assessingly. The department was very busy. It wouldn’t do any harm for her just to hold the case to see how it felt and how she looked with it. A girl could dream, after all. Quickly she reached out and closed the lid, securing it with its own special key, and then she reached for the case. The leather-covered handle fitted her palm perfectly.

  There was a mirror not very far away. She’d slipped off her overall before she’d come up here, because you weren’t supposed to mingle with the customers. The tan woollen skirt she was wearing complemented perfectly the leather straps on the vanity case, just as its cream leather complemented perfectly her cream silk blouse. She’d had the skirt made up from a roll of fabric she’d spotted on a stall in Portobello Market, which the stall holder had told her with a nod and wink was French. More like fallen off a lorry, Dulcie suspected. The cream silk blouse had come from a second-hand shop in posh Kensington, which Dulcie had heard about by eavesdropping on a conversation between two of the other girls who worked in the perfume department.

  Together with her brown leather shoes, she reckoned that she looked every bit as good as Gracie Fields. In fact, she thought she looked a good deal better, seeing as she was far prettier and much younger than the famous singer.