It was deep and special for Rose, too. Unlike her, Rose didn’t give her heart away easily. Now she had, and Daisy had ruined it for her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
He smiled bracingly at her. ‘It’s not your fault. If anything it’s mine for falling for a girl who’s still in love with her dead fiancé.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. She’s made it clear it’s over, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘It’s a shame about the act,’ Daisy said. ‘You put in so much hard work.’
Tom shrugged. ‘It doesn’t look as if there’s going to be a show anyway. Everyone’s up in arms about the last rehearsal and there’s talk of boycotting the whole thing.’ He looked rueful. ‘But it was fun while it lasted.’
As Daisy walked away, he said, ‘I know it probably won’t do any good, but if you wouldn’t mind putting in a good word for me with Rose? Tell her I’m sorry.’
‘I will, if I get the chance.’
You’re not the only one, Daisy thought as she walked away.
PART TWO
Violet
23rd December 1945
Dr Gruber was being discharged, and his cousin Gerte had come to collect him. She was fussing around him as usual, just as she always did whenever she came to visit.
Dr Gruber took it all in good part, although Violet could tell he found his cousin’s ministrations quite trying.
‘It’s quite all right, Gerte, I can carry a few books myself,’ he protested mildly, as he watched her clearing out his bedside locker.
Gerte sent him a strict look. ‘Isaak, you have been very sick. We need to take care of you,’ she insisted. She leaned forward, peering into his eyes. ‘Are you sure he’s quite well enough to go home?’ she said to Violet. ‘He looks rather pale …’
‘The doctor saw him first thing this morning and said he was fit to be discharged,’ Violet said.
Dr Gruber raised his eyebrows. ‘What, you don’t want me to come home now?’
‘Of course we want you to come home; the whole family is looking forward to seeing you,’ Gerte said. ‘We’re going to have a party tonight to celebrate …’
Violet caught Isaak Gruber’s look of dismay and stepped in.
‘It might be a good idea to keep him quiet for a few days, just to give him time to get his strength back,’ she said.
Dr Gruber gave her a grateful smile. ‘You hear that, Gerte? I need to stay quiet. Just in a room with my books and I will be well in no time.’
‘Books!’ Gerte scorned. ‘Some good food and good company is what you need.’
Dr Gruber turned to Violet. ‘You see, she pays no attention to anyone. Perhaps I should stay here, after all?’
‘Nein, Isaak, you’re coming home where you belong,’ Gerte said firmly.
Dr Gruber looked wistful, and Violet could almost tell what he was thinking. Where he belonged was back in Germany with his wife and his children and the life he used to have. But fate had given him a new life, and now she could see from his face that he was wondering how he would fit into it.
She hoped Gerte would have the good sense to give him the time and space he needed to adjust. She was a kindly soul, and she obviously adored her cousin, but there was a danger she might smother him if she wasn’t careful.
‘Did you bring those things I asked you to?’ he asked Gerte.
‘Of course. I have them somewhere …’ Gerte searched through her capacious bag. ‘Ah yes, here they are.’
She produced two neatly wrapped packages and handed them to her cousin.
Dr Gruber passed one of them to Violet. ‘This is for you, Schwester,’ he said. ‘To thank you for taking such good care of me.’
‘Thank you. How thoughtful of you.’ Violet unfastened the narrow ribbon on the box and opened it. Inside were half a dozen pastries, dusted with a drift of sugar and smelling deliciously of cinnamon and fruit.
‘Rugelach,’ Gerte said. ‘Fresh from my husband’s bakery this morning.’
‘I thought you might care to try them?’ Isaak Gruber looked as anxious to please as a child.
‘They look delicious.’ Violet took an appreciative sniff. ‘I’ll share them with the other nurses this morning.’
Isaak nodded, satisfied. Then he handed her another package, wrapped in brown paper. ‘And I wonder if you would give this to Fraülein Davis for me?’
‘Miss Davis?’
Isaak Gruber nodded. ‘I had hoped to see her myself before I left, but alas, it seems I won’t have the chance …’ He glanced at Gerte, who was already poised with his suitcase, ready to go.
Violet looked at the package in her hands. ‘I didn’t know you were that well acquainted with the Assistant Matron?’ she said.
‘Oh yes, we often talk together.’
‘I’ve never seen her here.’
‘Mostly she comes to see me during the night. Like me, she has trouble sleeping. So we sit up into the night together, and tell each other stories.’
‘Stories?’
He nodded. ‘We both have many stories to tell, Schwester.’ He pointed to the package in her hands. ‘That is why I have given her a journal, so she can write down her stories when I am not here to listen to them. It may help her, I think.’
‘I’ll see she gets it.’ Violet looked down at the package in her hands, intrigued.
The porter arrived with a wheelchair to take Dr Gruber downstairs. Violet walked beside him, with Gerte bringing up the rear, still fussing over his bags.
‘What kind of stories?’ she asked.
Isaak Gruber sent her a shrewd look over his spectacles. ‘That is not for me to say. Fraülein Davis may tell you herself one day. I hope she will, for her own sake.’ He gazed down at the string of blurred numbers etched down his left arm. ‘But I will tell you that she and I have both seen things no human being should ever have to see. And those horrors can stay with you forever. You never feel the same again. From then on you are always – separate.’
They reached the doors, and Violet held them open for the porter to push the wheelchair through. Outside the air was cold and fresh, with the promise of yet more snow.
‘This is where we say goodbye, I think.’ Isaak rose slowly from his wheelchair, wincing at the unfamiliar movement. ‘Thank you again, Schwester, for all you have done for me.’
‘You’re welcome, Dr Gruber.’
Gerte led the way to the car where her husband waited. Seeing them, he got out and opened the boot to load Dr Gruber’s bags.
Isaak Gruber started towards them, then turned back to Violet.
‘Be kind to her, Schwester,’ he said. ‘She deserves your respect more than you can imagine.’
Violet stood on the steps of the hospital and watched the car as it drove away. Through the back window, she could see Gerte leaning towards her cousin, fussing over him
Poor Dr Gruber, she thought. Gerte would kill him with kindness if he allowed it.
She looked down at the package in her hand.
Be kind to her, Schwester. She deserves your respect more than you can imagine.
What did Dr Gruber mean? He seemed to be speaking in riddles.
She returned to the ward. The staff nurses and students were busy with their morning routine, but they were delighted when Violet handed out the pastries that Gerte Gruber had brought. Shortly afterwards, the porter arrived with the newspaper trolley, and Violet made sure she took a copy of The Times.
She retreated to her office and flicked through to the personal columns to check that her advertisement was still there, just as she did every morning.
Seeking Dorothy Eloise Tanner. Anyone with information as to her whereabouts, please contact Violet Tanner at PO Box Number 758, London.
Seeing it there every morning gave her a tiny glimmer of hope. Surely today would be the day when someone would see it? If not her mother herself, then perhaps a friend, or a neighbour …
She checked the post office box every other day, her heart
sinking when she found another day had gone by with no replies. Her mother had apparently disappeared from the face of the earth.
Violet tried to stay optimistic for Oliver’s sake. He was very hurt by his grandmother’s disappearance, and kept asking Violet why she might have done it.
‘I don’t understand,’ he would say. ‘I thought she liked us? Why would she write to me in the first place if she was just going to disappear the next minute? It doesn’t make sense.’
Violet remained guiltily silent. She knew it was her own harsh words that had sent her mother away, and now she regretted them bitterly.
She had had time to reflect on what her mother had said, and now she understood that Dorothy Tanner was only looking out for her child, just as Violet looked out for Oliver. They went about things very differently, but her mother had been trying to protect her, in her own way.
Now she desperately wanted to tell her mother that she understood, that she no longer blamed her for what had happened.
But it seemed it was too late.
‘I wish I could have seen her once more, just to say goodbye,’ Oliver had said to her that morning.
‘Me too,’ Violet said.
The harsh ring of the telephone shattered the peace of the ward. It was the signal that Matron was on her way. Each ward would ring the next to warn them to be at the doors and ready by the time Miss Fox arrived.
Violet put aside the newspaper, straightened her bonnet and went out to gather her nurses.
Miss Davis was with Miss Fox as usual, but Violet barely spared the Assistant Matron a word of greeting. The two women had not spoken to each other since the night of that last rehearsal, when Miss Davis had been so unforgivably rude to her.
Now, after talking to Isaak Gruber, Violet found herself watching the Assistant Matron through new eyes.
She was a thoroughly unlikeable young woman, who made no effort to make herself popular with anyone. If anything, she seemed to go out of her way to push people away.
But then Violet remembered what Dr Gruber had said.
She and I have both seen things no human being should ever have to see. And those horrors can stay with you forever … From then on you are always – separate.
What if she wasn’t really the cold fish she seemed to be, but someone who had chosen to close down a part of themselves, shut off their emotions for their own protection?
She still couldn’t imagine the chilly Assistant Matron forming any kind of friendship with anyone, least of all someone as genial as Isaak Gruber. But then she saw the look of shock and disappointment on Miss Davis’s face when they reached what had been his bed, which now lay empty.
‘Oh, has he gone?’ she blurted out.
Violet nodded. ‘He was discharged this morning. His cousin arrived first thing to take him home.’
‘What a shame,’ Miss Fox said. ‘I would have liked to say goodbye to him. He was quite a character, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes, he was.’ Violet looked at the Assistant Matron as she spoke. Miss Davis had carefully composed her face into her usual chilly mask, giving nothing away.
‘He left you a present, Miss Davis,’ Violet said.
Miss Davis looked up, dismay in her pale blue eyes. ‘A present? For me?’
‘I’ll fetch it for you.’ Violet went to retrieve the package from her desk drawer.
Miss Davis looked at it guardedly. ‘What is it?’
‘A journal, I believe. He said he hoped it would help you.’
‘What else did he say?’ Miss Davis’s voice was an urgent whisper.
‘Nothing. Except that he wished you well, and he wanted you to go on telling your stories.’
‘Goodness, you must have made quite an impression on him, Miss Davis,’ Miss Fox commented. She looked at Violet, her brows rising sceptically.
Miss Davis did not reply. She went on looking down at the package in her hands. Violet thought she could see the faintest tinge of colour in her cheek.
The next minute she was all business again. Tucking the package under her arm, she said briskly, ‘With your permission, Matron, I will inspect under the beds. The springs were really quite dusty yesterday.’
‘Of course, Miss Davis.’
As the Assistant Matron walked away, Kathleen whispered, ‘How extraordinary. I wouldn’t have thought of her as a writer, would you? What sort of stories do you think he meant?’
‘I don’t know,’ Violet said. But she was beginning to have her suspicions.
As Dr Gruber had said, perhaps there was more to Charlotte Davis than met the eye.
Charlotte
23rd December 1945
The whole camp was so quiet. There was no sound at all and yet there were people everywhere. They were like ghosts. You didn’t know whether they were living or dead. Most of them were dead. Some were trying to walk, some were stumbling, some on hands and knees. There was an oppressive haze over the whole camp. The sun was shining, but everything seemed to be lifeless …
Charlotte wrote without thinking, letting all the words spill out on to the page as they came to her, worried that if she allowed herself to consider them for too long she would not dare write them down.
As she wrote, she could feel some of the tension flowing out of her. Dr Gruber was right: writing down her story did bring her some kind of release. Not as much as talking to him, but it still helped.
The doctor had only been gone a few hours, and already she missed him. Night after night they would sit together in the darkened ward, and Charlotte would spill out her thoughts to him, things she had never expected to share with anyone. And Isaak Gruber would listen, and nod thoughtfully, and gently urge her to go on when the words became too much for her.
At first Charlotte had worried that dredging up her old memories would open old wounds, but as Dr Gruber had explained to her, the opposite was true. Hidden away, her fears and memories festered and grew, poisoning her from the inside. By bringing them out into the open, exposing them to the light, they seemed to lose their power and turn to dust.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had been woken by one of her nightmares.
She finished writing and closed the journal, then put it away in her bedside drawer. Outside, the snow had started to fall again, eddies of swirling flakes in the light from the street lamps.
Tomorrow was Christmas Eve. In two days’ time, the patients would be gathering in the dining hall, expecting to see a Christmas show.
Only Charlotte knew there wasn’t going to be one.
Sooner or later she knew she would have to tell Matron. She should have told her days ago, after no one turned up to the last rehearsal. But somehow Charlotte had been praying that a miracle might happen.
Miss Fox had asked her about it earlier, when they were in the office.
‘Well, Miss Davis,’ she had smiled at her. ‘Are there any more rehearsals before the big performance on Christmas Day?’
Caught off guard, Charlotte had replied, ‘There is a final dress rehearsal tomorrow, Matron.’
‘Splendid. If you don’t mind, I’d like to come and see it?’
Lost for words, Charlotte could only stutter, ‘Of course, Matron.’
‘I shall look forward to it.’
As Miss Fox closed the door to her office, Charlotte allowed her head to sink into her hands. Now she had done it. If she wasn’t in trouble before, she certainly was now.
What had possessed her to say that? It was her chance to come clean to Matron, to confess what had happened. She had to do it sooner or later.
But the thought of uttering the words, of admitting she had failed in the one simple task Miss Fox had given her, was beyond her.
At first she had blamed everyone else. They had let her down badly, every single one of them. And they had let the hospital and the patients down, too. How dare they walk out on her?
But the more she thought about it, the more she realised Miss Tanner had been right. She only had herself to blame. If s
he had gone about things differently, treated people with respect instead of barking out orders, then things might have turned out better.
Perhaps it wasn’t too late to put things right, she thought. She might just catch Miss Tanner before the end of her shift. It would be difficult for her to swallow her pride, but she knew she had to do the right thing, for everyone’s sake.
Miss Tanner was supervising a first-year student who was giving her first injection. Charlotte saw the flash of dislike on the ward sister’s face when she pulled aside the screens and saw her standing there.
‘Miss Davis.’ She quickly masked her dismay behind a smile. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I would like a word with you in private, if that’s possible?’
Miss Tanner hesitated for a moment. ‘Wait in my office while I finish off this injection, then I’ll be with you.’
Miss Tanner’s office was off the main ward. It was small and the tiny window made it dark, but a pot of bright red poinsettias on the desk gave a splash of colour to the gloom.
Charlotte fought the urge to tidy the scattered paperwork on the desk. She was supposed to be here to build bridges, not to destroy even more. But even so, she couldn’t stop herself from carefully folding the copy of The Times that lay open at the personal columns.
She seated herself, only to stand up again a few minutes later and pace the room. She had just decided to sit down again when the door opened and Miss Tanner entered.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘What can I do for you, Miss Davis?’
Her voice was brisk, sparing her no pleasantries. Charlotte winced at her tone. It was no more than she deserved.
She took a deep breath. ‘It’s about the Christmas show,’ she said.
Miss Tanner’s brows rose. ‘What about it?’
Charlotte looked into the ward sister’s dark brown eyes. Miss Tanner’s face was carefully composed, giving nothing away.
‘I wanted to apologise. For the way I behaved.’
‘Oh.’ That took her by surprise, Charlotte could tell.
‘You were right, I went about it in entirely the wrong way, and I upset everyone in the process.’ She looked down at her fingers, lacing and unlacing in her lap. ‘I should never have agreed to do it in the first place. I was completely out of my depth from the moment I started. I knew it, too, which was why I was so … heavy-handed.’
The Nightingale Christmas Show Page 20
