The Nightingale Girls

by Donna Douglas

  Dora looked at Ruby. ‘This is it,’ she said.

  ‘Just think, this time next month you’ll be out of that ruddy sweatshop!’ Ruby grinned back.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Dora knew she’d made a proper fool of herself in the interview. She was surprised they’d even bothered to write.

  ‘’Course you will. They’d be daft not to take you on. Haven’t we always said, you’ve got the brains and I’ve got the looks?’

  Dora grinned. With her wavy blonde hair and buxom curves, Ruby looked more like a movie star than a machinist. But she could have been clever too, if she hadn’t been too busy flirting with the boys at school.

  Ruby saw Dora’s smile wobble and took her arm, propelling her down the street after Bea, who’d run on ahead to warn the rest of the family at number twenty-eight.

  ‘Stop worrying, you’ll get in,’ she said. ‘You’re doing the right thing, I reckon. I wouldn’t mind being a nurse myself, come to think of it. Think of all those handsome doctors. Not to mention all those rich old men with incurable diseases, just waiting to die and leave me all their worldly goods!’

  ‘I think the idea is to keep them alive, Rube.’

  They reached Dora’s front doorstep. ‘Go on.’ Ruby gave her a little shove. ‘You can’t put it off forever, y’know.’

  ‘I wish I could.’ She dreaded seeing the disappointment on her mum’s face. Dora might have given up on the idea, but it was all Rose Doyle talked about.

  ‘Well, you can’t. Now get in there before your nanna changes her mind and opens it for you. Let me know how you get on, won’t you?’ said Ruby as she let herself in next door.

  ‘I won’t need to,’ Dora said. ‘If I get in, you’ll be able to hear my mum screaming all the way to Aldgate!’

  The letter was on the kitchen mantelpiece, tucked behind the old clock. The rest of the family were ranged around the fireplace, doing anything but looking at it. Dora’s mum Rose was mending shirts, while her younger sisters Josie and Bea played cards and Nanna Winnie peeled potatoes while sitting in her old rocking chair. The only one who genuinely paid no attention was Little Alfie, who played with his wooden train on the rug instead.

  Her mother pushed the mending off her lap and shot to her feet as soon as Dora walked in. ‘There you are, love,’ she greeted her with a fixed smile. ‘Had a good day? I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?’

  ‘Oh, for Gawd’s sake!’ Nanna Winnie rolled her eyes and dropped another potato in the pan of water at her feet. ‘Dora, open that bleeding letter and put your mother out of her misery or we shall never get any peace in this house. She’s been on pins all day.’

  Dora pulled out the letter from behind the clock and stared down at the Nightingale’s crest: the silhouette of a woman carrying a lamp. The thick cream envelope felt heavy. Her heart started to flutter in her chest.

  ‘Can I read it on my own?’ she asked her mother. She knew it would be bad news and she needed time to compose herself before she faced her family.

  ‘No, you bleeding cannot!’ Nanna Winnie snapped. ‘We haven’t sat here all afternoon so you can go and—’

  ‘Of course you can, love.’ Rose Doyle shot her mother a silencing look. ‘You just take your time.’

  ‘But don’t be too long about it,’ her grandmother warned. ‘I told you we should have steamed it open,’ Dora heard Nanna Winnie saying as she let herself out of the back door. ‘She would never have known if we was careful.’

  Their narrow strip of back yard was sunless and damp, overshadowed by a high brick wall that separated it from the railway line high above. Dora took refuge in the privy at the end. The cold October wind whistled through the gaps in the old wooden door as she sat on the weathered pine seat and read her letter by the fading evening light.

  Dear Miss Doyle,

  The Board of Governors of the Nightingale’s Teaching Hospital is pleased to inform you that you have been accepted in their three-year programme leading to State Registration. Please report to Sister Sutton at the Junior Nurses’ Home on Tuesday, 6 November 1934 after 4 p.m. Enclosed is a list of equipment you must bring with you. You will also need to send us the following measurements for your uniform, which will be waiting for you when you arrive . . .

  A train rumbled past, rattling the privy door and shaking the ground under her feet, while Dora read the words over and over again, right down to the signature: Kathleen Fox (Matron). Then she snatched up the envelope and checked the address, just to make sure it had come to the right person.

  She lowered the letter and stared ahead of her at the yellowing squares of newspaper stuck on a rusty nail on the back of the door. From somewhere outside she could hear their neighbour June Riley singing tunelessly. The sound seemed to be coming from miles away. None of it felt real.

  When she finally emerged she found her mother in the yard, sweeping the cracked paving slabs, her eyes fixed on the privy door. She froze when she saw Dora.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  Dora nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Rose Doyle gave a yelp of joy and dropped her birch broom with a clatter.

  ‘You did it!’ she cried, putting her arm around Dora. ‘Oh, Dor, I’m so proud of you!’

  The rest of the family, who had been gathered around the back door, came out of the house and suddenly Dora was lost in a clamour of jumping, cheering and hugs. Nanna Winnie looked on from the doorway, her arms folded across her chest.

  ‘I don’t know why she’s bothering,’ she grumbled. ‘The glue factory was good enough for you and me, Rosie. Why does she have to be different?’

  Next door, June Riley flung open the back door and stuck her head out, her thin face framed by a halo of spiky curlers. ‘Hello, what’s all the ruck about?’

  ‘Our Dora’s going to be a nurse,’ Rose called back, loudly enough for the rest of the street to hear.

  June rushed out into the back yard in her dressing gown and slippers and stepped over the section of fence where the slats had broken, into the Doyles’ back yard.

  ‘Fancy, our little Dora, a nurse!’ Dora could smell the gin on June’s breath as she was trapped in her bony embrace. ‘Wait till I tell my Nick. He’s a porter up at the hospital, he’ll look after you.’

  ‘We know all about your Nick,’ Nanna Winnie muttered. ‘You stay away from him, Dora. There’s plenty of girls round here wish they’d done the same, the dirty little sod.’

  ‘Nanna!’ Dora hissed, as June moved over to hug Rose.

  ‘I speak as I find,’ Nanna said primly. She looked at June and shook her head. ‘Look at the state of her. I expect she’s just got up. Down the pub till all hours, I daresay.’

  Dora blushed, but luckily June hadn’t heard Nanna. Drink made June Riley unpredictable, and she was as likely to go for Nanna Winnie with a poker as she was to laugh it off. They’d lived next door to the Rileys for the last ten years, ever since Dora’s father had died and they’d moved back in with Nanna Winnie. Poor June had turned to drink four years ago when her husband ran off, leaving her to bring up her two sons alone.

  The Turnbulls and the Prossers came out of the house they shared on the other side, to see what all the noise was about, and Rose recounted their news over and over again. It gave Dora a warm glow to see the pride on her mother’s face; this was her moment of triumph as much as Dora’s own.

  ‘It’s good news, then? What did I tell you?’ Ruby stuck her head out of the upstairs window, alongside her mum Lettie’s. She and June greeted each other with the curtest of nods. The Pikes lived upstairs from the Rileys, but the two women rarely saw eye to eye. ‘What am I going to do without you, Dor? Gold’s Garments won’t be the same!’

  ‘You’ll have to find someone else to cover for you while you sneak outside for a fag!’ Dora called up to her.

  ‘I won’t have anyone to have a laugh with, that’s for sure. They’re a miserable lot there. And as for that cow Esther—’ Ruby rolled her eyes.

  ‘She’s all right,’ Dora said, t
hinking of the hamsa, still nestling under her blouse. She’d tried to return it, but Esther had insisted she keep it.

  ‘Only ’cos you’re her favourite.’

  ‘You’d be her favourite too, if you put a bit of effort into your work and didn’t give her so much cheek!’

  ‘I put enough effort into that place just by turning up, thank you very much. I’m not killing myself to line that old Jew’s pockets!’

  ‘I hope you don’t think you’ll have it easy?’ Lettie joined in. She worked as a ward maid at the Nightingale. Unlike her pretty, easy-going daughter, she was a thin-faced, sour little woman, always ready to look on the black side of life. ‘I’ve seen the way they treat them up at that hospital. They work them into the ground, and keep them locked up in that home like nuns. It’s do this, do that, all day long. And those young nurses are right stuck up, too. Very posh they are, don’t give the likes of us the time of day.’ She looked Dora up and down. ‘Don’t know as they’ll take to you.’

  ‘Gawd, Mum, do you have to be so bloody cheerful all the time?’ Ruby rolled her eyes at Dora.

  ‘I’m only telling the truth,’ Lettie said huffily.

  ‘Take no notice of her,’ Nanna Winnie muttered as Lettie and Ruby went back inside and closed the window. ‘She’s always been a bitter old cow. Just because her daughter’s a trollop.’

  ‘Nanna! That’s my best mate you’re talking about.’

  ‘That doesn’t stop her being a trollop, does it? Like I said, I speak as I find.’

  ‘They’re not really going to lock you up, are they, Dora?’ her sister Josie asked. She was fourteen, and the only one of her sisters not to inherit their father’s red curls and sturdy figure. Josie was dark, slender and pretty like their mother.

  ‘’Course they’re not, Jose. But I will have to live at the nurses’ home.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Dunno. Forever, I s’pose.’

  ‘You mean, you won’t live here with us no more?’ Josie’s wide brown eyes filled with tears as she took in the news.

  ‘I’ll be able to come and visit,’ Dora said. ‘I’ll keep an eye on you all, make sure you’re keeping up with your schoolwork and Bea’s behaving herself.’

  ‘That’ll be the day!’

  ‘Then you’ll just have to keep her in line, won’t you?’ Dora put her arm around her sister’s skinny shoulders. ‘You’re the big sister now, Josie. It’s your turn to show the little ones what’s what.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Josie promised. ‘I’ll miss you, Dor,’ she whispered.

  ‘I’ll miss you too.’

  As she looked around the shabby back yard, it began to dawn on Dora what she was leaving. Griffin Street was far from fancy. The narrow terrace of cramped houses, overshadowed by looming railway arches, had seen better days. Brickwork cracked, roofs sagged, and damp seeped through the walls.

  Dora’s stepfather Alf had been all for renting them a better place when he and Rose got married. He was earning enough for them to move into one of those new blocks of flats the Corporation was building, with electricity, inside toilets, proper bathrooms and the rest of it. But Rose wouldn’t go without her mum, and Winnie had no intention of leaving the only home she’d known for fifty years.

  ‘I’ve lived here since I got married, and they’ll have to carry me out in my box,’ she’d declared. ‘I don’t want to live somewhere not a soul speaks to each other.’

  And she was right. In spite of its faults, Griffin Street was a close-knit community of neighbours who laughed together, cried together, and saw each other through good times and bad. There was always someone to have a giggle with, a shoulder to cry on or to lend you a few bob when the rent man was due.

  At least when Rose married Alf, they had been able to afford to take over the whole house, instead of making do all cramped together in a couple of rooms on the ground floor, as they had been.

  It still wasn’t grand. They did all their cooking on an ancient range in the kitchen, and washed at the sink in the tiny curtained-off scullery. But it was homely, and Rose kept it like a palace. The step was whitestoned every day, the windows shone, net curtains sparkled and the house always smelt of polish.

  Dora knew she’d miss it. But there was one person she wouldn’t miss.

  ‘Aye-aye. What’s all this, then?’ As if on cue, Alf Doyle stood in the back doorway, smiling around at the scene. He was a big man, over six foot tall, with thick black hair, a broad face and bright blue eyes.

  Bea ran to him, Little Alfie toddling behind her, and he scooped them up easily, one under each arm.

  ‘We’re celebrating.’ Rose’s face lit up at the sight of her husband. ‘Dora’s got a place to train as a nurse.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Alf turned to face her, the two children still wriggling under his arms. ‘Aren’t you the clever one?’

  ‘But she’s got to leave home and move away forever,’ Josie put in.

  ‘Has she now? I don’t remember anyone asking me if that was all right,’ he frowned.

  ‘You can’t stop me,’ Dora’s chin lifted defiantly.

  ‘I can do what I like until you’re twenty-one, my girl.’

  Their eyes met, clashing in mute challenge.

  ‘He’s only teasing,’ her mother broke the tense silence. ‘Your dad would never stop you bettering yourself.’

  ‘He’s not my dad.’

  ‘I still say what goes.’

  Not for much longer, Dora was about to say. Then she caught the pleading look in her mother’s eyes and kept silent.

  ‘We should celebrate,’ Nanna suggested. ‘I dunno about you, but I reckon a nice bottle of stout would go down a treat.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Rose said brightly. ‘What do you say, Alf?’

  All eyes turned to him. Still glaring at Dora, he lowered Bea and Little Alfie to the ground and dug into his pocket.

  ‘Not seeing your miserable boat race around here would be a cause for celebration, I s’pose.’ He pulled out a handful of change. ‘Josie, go to the chippie. Fish and chips all round, I reckon.’

  ‘But I’ve made a stew!’ Nanna Winnie protested.

  Alf grimaced. ‘All the more reason to get fish and chips, then.’

  ‘Can I have a saveloy?’ Bea asked.

  ‘You can have anything you like, my darlin’, as long as it keeps you quiet.’

  Dora watched her mother as she followed him inside. At forty-two years old, Rose was still a beautiful woman. Her dark hair was threaded with grey but no one would ever have guessed her slim figure had brought six children into the world.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk back to him like that,’ Nanna said to Dora as they went back inside. ‘Alf’s not a bad bloke. And he makes your mum happy. She deserves that, after everything she’s been through.’

  Dora knew her mum hadn’t had much to smile about over the years. Widowed at thirty-two with five children, she had struggled to bring up her family on her own. She’d had to work all hours, cleaning offices and taking in mending for the local laundry.

  And then, when Dora was thirteen, Alf Doyle had come into their lives. He didn’t look like anyone’s idea of a knight in shining armour, with his big lumbering body and hands like ham hocks. But he had certainly rescued Rose Doyle and her kids.

  A gentle giant, everyone called him. He worked as a van driver on the railways. Not the best-paid job in the world, but it was steady and at least he didn’t have to line up with the other men at the dock gates every morning, looking for work.

  Everyone said Rose was lucky. After all, it wasn’t every man who would take on a widow and all those children. But Alf loved the kids as if they were his own. He took them all on outings to the coast and the countryside and the boating lake at Victoria Park, treated them to sweets and ice creams and all kinds of other delights.

  Dora couldn’t have hated him more if she’d tried.

  By the time Josie returned with the food, they’d warmed the plates and were crowded
around the table. The hot fried rock salmon and chips was a lot better than Nanna Winnie’s notoriously inedible stew, especially when Dora was allowed the batter scraps soaked in salt and vinegar to celebrate her big achievement.

  ‘Don’t suppose they’ll be feeding you like this in that nurses’ home!’ Rose said.

  ‘It’s hard work, from what I hear,’ Alf mumbled through a mouthful of chips.

  ‘I’m not afraid of hard work,’ Dora said.

  ‘A bit of hard work never hurt anyone.’ Nanna Winnie took out her teeth and slipped them into her pocket.

  ‘Mum!’ Rose protested. ‘Do you have to do that at the table?’

  ‘Why not? I don’t need ’em now I’ve finished eating. And they rub my gums raw.’

  After tea, Dora and Josie cleared the plates away while Alf relaxed in his armchair beside the fire. Rose sat opposite with her mending, while Nanna Winnie half dozed in her rocking chair.

  ‘You know what I’m going to do one day, Rosie?’ Alf said. ‘Buy you a house. A proper modern house, out in Loughton near your sister Brenda’s place. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Somewhere with a decent garden, not that stinking little back yard.’

  ‘Oi, do you mind? That back yard’s been good enough for me all these years,’ Nanna said, opening one eye. But Alf wasn’t listening.

  ‘You can grow flowers, and I can grow fruit and veg, and keep chickens. And we’ll have electricity in all the rooms.’

  ‘I don’t hold with electricity,’ Nanna grumbled.

  ‘That sounds nice.’ Rose smiled down at her mending. She never stopped working, no matter what the occasion. King George himself could come round for his tea, and Rose would still be turning the collars on a couple of shirts.

  ‘Nice? It’ll be more than nice, love. And it’s what you deserve.’ Alf scratched his expanded belly and sighed with contentment. ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world, do you know that? I’ve got a beautiful wife, lovely kids – what more could a man ask for, eh?’

  ‘Listen to him go on, making all kinds of stupid promises he can’t keep,’ Dora whispered to Josie as they loaded plates into the sink in the scullery. ‘I don’t know how Mum puts up with it.’