The Nightingale Sisters Read online

  ‘I’m surprised he hasn’t come in to see you too?’

  There was a long silence. Then Jennie said, ‘Dad would never come. I wouldn’t want him to, anyway.’ Her voice was heavy with resentment.

  ‘You don’t get on with him, then?’ Dora said, dabbing on methylated spirits.

  Jennie didn’t reply. Dora wondered if the faded bruises and scars that covered the girl’s back were answer enough.

  ‘At least you’ve made it up with your brother, that’s a good thing,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I’m pleased about that. Joe’s always looked after me. He’s the strong one, you see. Even my dad listens to him.’ Then her smile faded. ‘I just wish he hadn’t kept going on about my . . . the baby’s father.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He kept on at me, wanting to know who he was and where he lived.’

  ‘I expect he just wants him to face up to what he’s done.’

  ‘He wants to kill him, more like. Joe would rip him apart with his bare hands if he ever got hold of him.’

  ‘So you didn’t tell him?’

  Jennie shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter anyway. He’d never find him.’ Her voice was dull. ‘He’s long gone.’

  ‘You mean he did a runner after he found out about the baby?’

  Jennie kept her mouth tight shut, trapping the words, as if she’d already said too much.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Dora went on. ‘You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

  Jennie regarded her warily. ‘You wouldn’t tell Joe?’

  ‘’Course not. I know how to keep a secret, believe me.’

  Jennie hesitated for a moment, then shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m too ashamed. It turns out . . . he wasn’t the man I thought he was.’

  ‘In what way?’

  But Jennie didn’t reply. Dora saw a tear squeezing out from between tightly shut lids, and understood that, whatever had happened with Jennie’s mystery man, it was too painful for her to talk about.

  She didn’t think any more of it until she was sent off duty at five. She was crossing the courtyard when she spotted Joe Armstrong sitting on a bench under the plane trees. A freezing wind whipped his fair hair across his face but he hardly seemed to notice as he smoked a cigarette, his gaze directed into space. He looked as if he had the worries of the world on his broad shoulders.

  Dora hesitated. Should she go over? She remembered the last time she’d taken it upon herself to speak to him. She’d caused more harm than good that day, and didn’t want to repeat it. Besides, they were right outside Matron’s office. She would only have to look out of the window and Dora would be in for a lot more trouble than Sister Wren’s cold bath punishment.

  But Joe Armstrong looked so desolate, she was walking towards him before she could stop herself.

  ‘All right, Mr Armstrong?’

  He looked up at her sharply. ‘Oh, it’s you, Nurse. Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘Is there something on your mind?’

  ‘Just thinking, Nurse.’

  ‘Visiting time finished over an hour ago.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ve got a lot of thinking to do, haven’t I?’

  Dora took a quick glance towards Matron’s window, then sat down beside him. ‘Jennie will be all right, you know.’

  ‘Will she?’ Joe Armstrong looked at her, his eyes narrowing. ‘She told me she can’t have kids now. What kind of life is that going to be for her, tell me that.’ He took a long drag on his cigarette. His hands were shaking, Dora noticed. ‘Our Jennie’s always loved babies. All she’s ever wanted is to get married and have a family of her own. Who’s going to want her now?’

  ‘I – I’m sorry.’

  Joe’s shoulders slumped. ‘No, Nurse, I’m the one who should be sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.’ He managed a weary smile. ‘Our Jennie couldn’t stop talking about you . . . Nurse Doyle this, Nurse Doyle that. I don’t think she would have pulled through if it hadn’t been for you.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that—’

  ‘I do. You’ve been kind to her. And Jennie’s not had a lot of kindness in her life, I can tell you.’

  Their eyes met and held. Dora rose to her feet, feeling suddenly awkward. ‘I have to go,’ she said. ‘If Matron sees me talking to you, she’ll have my guts for garters.’

  As she started to walk away, he called her back. ‘Nurse?’

  ‘Yes?’ She looked over her shoulder.

  ‘I don’t suppose she’s said anything to you . . . about who did this to her?’

  Dora thought about her promise to Jennie, and shook her head. ‘Not to me.’

  ‘Probably just as well.’ Joe Armstrong dropped his cigarette end and ground it out viciously with the heel of his boot. ‘But I daresay I’ll find him soon enough.’

  Nick Riley was having a cigarette behind the Porters’ Lodge when he spotted Dora talking to Joe Armstrong.

  He recognised Armstrong immediately. The man belonged to the Poplar Boxing Club, and they’d faced each other in the ring a few times. He had a reputation as a dirty fighter and most of the lads were afraid of him. But not Nick.

  Why was he talking to Dora? Nick immediately felt his hackles rise.

  It seemed to him sometimes as if he’d spent most of his life watching Dora Doyle, never quite getting up the courage to speak his mind. They had lived next door to each other for more than ten years, his family and hers, always in and out of each other’s houses. He had been eleven years old when she first arrived in Griffin Street, already on the verge of manhood and responsible for putting food on his family’s table. He’d watched Dora play with the younger kids, and envied her her freedom. He’d listened to her sitting on the pavement, telling them stories, and wished he could sit at her feet like they did. He’d felt so tongue-tied and foolish around her, all he could do was lash out and tease her. But even then she was more than a match for him. When he’d made fun of her frizzy ginger hair she’d kicked him in the shins, so hard it had brought tears to his eyes, although he would never let her see how much she’d hurt him.

  And she’d hurt him again, just a few months ago, when he’d finally plucked up the courage to kiss her. It was the first time he’d ever shown his real feelings, the first time he’d made himself vulnerable to anyone.

  And she’d rejected him.

  The memory of it still burnt. He’d made up his mind in that moment that he would forget her. He had even started courting Ruby Pike in an effort to push all thoughts of Dora from his mind and his heart.

  But he had never realised how hard it would be.

  He watched her turn away from Joe and head across the courtyard towards him. As she drew level with the Porters’ Lodge, he stepped out in front of her.

  ‘Oh, Nick! You nearly gave me a heart attack!’ Dora put her hand to her chest.

  ‘Was that Joe Armstrong you were talking to?’

  She frowned. ‘You know him?’

  ‘I’ve been in the ring with him a few times.’

  ‘He’s a boxer?’ She considered it for a moment. ‘That doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘He’s been in to visit his sister.’

  ‘The girl who had the backstreet abortion?’

  He saw the flash of anger in Dora’s face. ‘Who told you that?’ she snapped. Then, before he could answer, she said, ‘I suppose it was Lettie Pike?’ Her mouth tightened. ‘That old bag shouldn’t go around gossiping.’

  ‘Asking Lettie Pike not to gossip is like asking her not to breathe.’

  ‘True.’ Dora smiled reluctantly. She wasn’t even pretty, Nick thought. Her mouth was too wide, her nose was too pudgy and smattered with far too many freckles. And as for that hair . . . He’d always gone for lookers in the past. Real glamour girls, like Ruby. The kind who turned men’s heads in the street.

  Dora would never turn any man’s head. And yet when she looked at Nick in a c
ertain way, it was like someone had lit a firework inside him.

  ‘So why was he talking to you?’ he asked.

  ‘You’re a nosy one, aren’t you? It’s not like you to want to know everyone’s business. If you ask me, you’ve been spending too long with Lettie Pike!’ There was a teasing glint in Dora’s eyes. ‘If you must know, he’s worried about his sister.’

  ‘I daresay he’ll want to know who got her into trouble, too. I know if I were him, I’d want to make someone pay for what they did to her.’ Someone always had to pay. It was the East End way.

  ‘And you think that would help his poor sister?’

  ‘You’ve got to protect the people you love,’ Nick insisted stubbornly.

  Perhaps if he’d stepped in sooner, he could have protected his brother Danny from their dad. As it was, he’d made Reg Riley pay in the end, giving him a taste of his own medicine and then running him out of Bethnal Green for good.

  ‘Violence isn’t the answer to everything, Nick,’ Dora said.

  It got rid of your stepdad, didn’t it? he wanted to reply.

  He would never have interfered in anyone else’s business, but when Danny told him he’d seen Alf Doyle beating Dora that day, it was as if someone had flicked a switch inside Nick’s head, rekindling all his old rage. A few days later he’d cornered Alf in an alleyway and convinced him to pack his bags and leave Griffin Street. And, coward that he was, Alf hadn’t argued.

  Perhaps he shouldn’t have interfered, thought Nick. But as he’d said to Dora, you had to protect the people you loved.

  It was the way he looked at her. In all the months they’d been courting, Lettie Pike had never seen Nick look at her Ruby the way he looked at Dora Doyle.

  She had stopped for a moment by the window to rub her aching back. Those nurses thought they had it so hard, but they should do her job, she thought. She was getting too old for sweeping and scrubbing and laying fires. She should have been putting her feet up. And she would have been, too, if her lazy husband Len ever managed to stay away from the bookies long enough. Between the horses and the drink, he somehow managed to squander every penny she brought home, and a lot more besides. He’d even found the few quid she’d hidden in a toffee tin under the bed, the thieving sod. And when she’d complained, he’d given her a clout round the ear for hiding it in the first place.

  She glanced out of the window and caught sight of Dora Doyle talking to a young man under the trees in the middle of the courtyard. And she wasn’t the only one watching. From the shadows behind the Porters’ Lodge, Nick Riley was watching them too.

  Lettie felt a prickle of unease.

  She stood rooted to the spot as Dora finished talking to the young man and headed across the courtyard. Then Nick stepped out in front of her.

  Lettie pressed her nose against the glass, but she didn’t have to hear what they were saying. It was there, in the way they looked at each other.

  ‘Sister?’ she called out.

  ‘What is it, Lettie?’ Sister Wren came over straight away.

  They’d worked together on the ward for many years. Sister didn’t treat her like she did the nurses. She understood Lettie’s value too much for that. The maid was her eyes and ears on the ward; she let Sister know when the nurses were getting up to no good.

  Like now, for instance.

  ‘Look at that,’ she said, pointing. ‘Bold as brass, that one.’

  Sister Wren looked, then looked again. A dull flush spread up her neck, a sure sign she was heading for one of her rages. ‘Doyle,’ she hissed. ‘I might have known.’

  ‘Terrible, isn’t it?’ Lettie said. ‘Her hanging about chatting up lads when she should be working. And in uniform, too. I call it a disgrace, I really do.’

  ‘So do I, Lettie. But don’t you worry, she’ll get what’s coming to her.’

  ‘Are you sending her to Matron, Sister?’

  Sister Wren looked at her, and Lettie had the satisfaction of seeing a gleam of spite in her eyes. ‘Oh, no,’ she smiled with relish. ‘I’ll deal with her myself.’

  Ruby was already in when Lettie got home. She was sitting at the kitchen table, painting her nails. Lettie suppressed her annoyance that the dishes were still piled up in the sink and no one had bothered to put the dinner on.

  She dumped her shopping bag on the floor. ‘I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?’ she said grumpily.

  ‘I’ll have one, if you’re making it.’ Ruby didn’t look up as she blew on her nails.

  Lettie went over to the sink and filled the kettle under the tap. ‘Where are the boys?’ she asked.

  ‘God knows. Up to no good as usual, I s’pose.’ Ruby raised her scarlet-tipped nails to show her mother. ‘What do you reckon to this colour? I bought it from Woolworth’s.’

  ‘Very nice.’ Lettie looked at her daughter’s artfully arranged golden curls, and felt her heart lift with pride. She might be a lazy cow, but Ruby was easily the prettiest girl in Bethnal Green.

  She sometimes wondered how she had ever managed to bring such a beauty into the world. Lettie herself was no oil painting. Even as a young girl she had been skinny and sallow-looking, with thin mousy hair and teeth so crooked her mother said she could ‘eat an apple through a letterbox’. Len Pike wasn’t much to look at either. And yet somehow, between them, they had managed to produce a glorious creature like Ruby.

  From the moment Ruby was born, she had been Lettie’s angel. She’d treated her like a princess, going without herself so she could buy her daughter dresses, combing her halo of golden curls for hours, telling her how special she was. It wasn’t Ruby’s fault she’d turned out spoilt rotten, her mother thought.

  She swelled with a pride she’d never known before when the other mothers commented on how pretty little Ruby was. And when the young men started courting her, Ruby took it all as her due. But Lettie, who had never had an admiring glance from anyone in her life, was thrilled by all the attention her daughter received. Ruby would never be like her, she decided. She would never have to make do with the likes of Len Pike, with his flabby body and bad temper. Ruby could have any man she wanted.

  And she wanted Nick Riley.

  He wasn’t the man Lettie would have chosen for her daughter. She had hoped Ruby might be a bit more ambitious, go for someone with a trade, perhaps even a businessman, someone with a bit of money who could give her all the finer things in life that she deserved.

  Lettie doubted if Nick Riley would ever be able to afford a motor car, or a house in the suburbs. He was good-looking, there was no doubt about that, and he was a grafter. But he was a surly bugger, with a nasty temper when he was roused. And Lettie’s heart sank at the thought of her Ruby saddling herself with in-laws like that old drunk June Riley and her imbecile son.

  But if Nick was the man Ruby had set her heart on, then he was the one she must have. The thought that he might not realise how lucky he was, or that he might not feel the same way, had never even occurred to Lettie until she saw him with Dora.

  She glanced at Ruby, wondering how best to approach the subject.

  ‘I saw your Nick earlier on,’ she said casually, as she spooned tea into the pot.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘He was talking to Dora Doyle.’ Lettie glanced at her daughter. ‘They seemed very thick together.’

  ‘Why, what were they doing?’

  ‘I told you, they were talking. And they were smiling,’ she added, filling the teapot.

  ‘Smiling, eh? Ooh, I’d better watch out, hadn’t I?’

  ‘You might laugh, my girl, but you didn’t see them together. I’m telling you, they were very thick.’

  Ruby set down her nail-polish brush. ‘Blimey, Mum, we’ve all known each other years. They’re bound to talk to each other, ain’t they? It don’t mean anything. What’s he meant to do, ignore her just because we’re courting?’

  Ruby held up her hands again, turning them this way and that to admire the light glinting off her shiny painted nails.

/>   Lettie stirred the leaves in the teapot. ‘He looked a bit too pleased to see her, if you ask me,’ she mumbled. Then, when Ruby didn’t reply, she repeated, ‘Are you listening to me? I said—’

  ‘I heard what you said!’ Ruby’s voice was sharp. ‘Are you telling me my Nick is messing about with Dora Doyle?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything. But you know he’s got a name for himself round here. There’s lots of girls who’ve tried to catch his eye, and they’ve all fallen by the wayside . . .’

  ‘Yes, but that was before he met me, wasn’t it?’ Lettie met her daughter’s gaze. Ruby’s blue eyes were hard and determined. ‘Anyway, Dora’s my best mate. She knows better than to mess about with my boyfriend. Even if she was interested in him, which she’s not.’

  ‘She might not be interested, but how do you know you can say the same about him?’

  ‘Oh, Mum!’ Ruby gave an almost pitying laugh. ‘Look at me. Do you really think Nick would look twice at someone like Dora?’

  Lettie stared into her daughter’s pretty face. She could have been in the films, she was so beautiful. Then she thought about Dora Doyle, as plain as a pikestaff, her broad nose smothered with freckles.

  ‘You’re right, love, I’m just being daft,’ she agreed.

  But as she turned to pour the tea into chipped cups, she didn’t see the troubled look in her daughter’s eyes.

  Chapter Eleven

  THE NEWS FINALLY came at midnight.

  Ever since the sombre announcement just after half-past ten that night, that the King’s life was ‘moving peacefully towards its close’, wireless sets in kitchens and sluices all over the hospital had been tuned in for further bulletins.

  Violet was supervising an emergency admission to Male Surgical when a tearful student whispered the news.

  ‘Thank you for letting me know, Nurse,’ she said calmly. Later, she was sure the nurse would tell her friends Miss Tanner took the news with no emotion; how it proved everyone right when they said she was a ‘cold fish’.