The Nightingale Nurses Read online

  ‘No, Dr Little, I don’t.’ She threw down the towel. ‘I don’t need a partner because I’m not going.’

  ‘Oh! But I thought you told William—’

  ‘I told William I would think about it,’ she said. ‘Now I have thought about it. And wild horses wouldn’t drag me to that ball!’

  ‘What about this one?’

  Hundreds of tiny mint green pleats fanned out from Lucy Lane’s narrow hips as she did a neat little pirouette in front of them.

  ‘It’s Fortuny,’ she said. ‘Mummy ordered it from Paris.’

  Dora stifled a yawn with the back of her hand. She and Millie were supposed to be helping Katie O’Hara with her dress for the ball, but Katie’s room mate Lucy Lane had taken over. She’d spent the last half hour parading around their room, showing off her latest couture gowns. Every time Dora thought her wardrobe couldn’t possibly hold any more, another came out, more expensive and extravagant than the last.

  The only one who seemed remotely impressed was Katie.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ she sighed enviously. ‘We’re all going to look like carthorses next to you in all your finery.’

  Lucy Lane smirked. ‘It’s so hard to choose, isn’t it? I have so many gowns I could wear, it’s difficult to pick one.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Katie said. ‘I’ve only got one, and I’m not sure even that will do. Mammy didn’t think to pack a ballgown when she sent me over from Ireland!’

  ‘I can’t think why not,’ Lucy sniffed, her nose turned up to the ceiling. ‘Every sophisticated woman needs at least one ballgown.’

  Or in your case, a dozen, Dora thought. ‘Let’s see your dress,’ she encouraged Katie.

  She hesitated. ‘I’m really not sure it will do . . .’

  ‘We won’t know till we see it, will we?’ Millie joined in. ‘Go on, show us.’

  ‘All right. If you promise not to laugh?’

  It took ten minutes for Katie to inch the pink satin over her wide hips. ‘What do you think?’ she asked.

  ‘Well . . .’ Dora searched for something tactful to say. It was hardly the most flattering dress she’d ever seen. The short puffy sleeves cut into the plump white flesh of Katie’s upper arms, while the thick shiny fabric clung unforgivingly to every bulge.

  ‘I think I must have put a bit of weight on since I last wore it,’ Katie sighed.

  ‘A bit?’ Lucy shrieked with laughter. ‘You look six months pregnant!’

  Dora shot her a dirty look. ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.’

  ‘Well, I think it looks delightful,’ Millie said loyally. ‘Although perhaps if you wore a foundation garment of some kind . . .’

  ‘She’ll need two corsets in that thing,’ Lucy put in.

  ‘She’s right. It looks horrible.’ Katie’s voice was choked. ‘That’s it. I can’t go to the ball like this. I look like . . . a shiny pink pig!’

  ‘Don’t get upset, I’m sure we can sort it out. Let me see.’ Dora crouched in front of her to examine the dress more closely. ‘I could let out the side seams a bit. That would give you more room.’

  Katie turned to her, tears glistening on her thick black lashes. ‘Do you really think you could do that?’

  ‘Of course she can,’ Lucy put in. ‘Don’t you remember? Doyle used to stitch knickers in a sweat shop before she came here.’

  Dora opened her mouth to reply, but Millie shook her head. ‘Don’t,’ she warned. ‘She’s not worth it.’

  ‘True.’ Dora gritted her teeth and turned around so she didn’t have to see Lucy’s smirking face. Lucy Lane got her down sometimes. She never let Dora forget her humble origins.

  She never let anyone forget where she came from, either. Her father had made a fortune manufacturing lightbulbs and Lucy was his privileged only child.

  ‘There’s plenty of allowance in these seams,’ Dora went on, looking up at Katie. ‘If you’ve got some scissors I’ll take them apart and repin it so it fits you.’

  ‘And there you were, thinking you’d left the sweat shop behind.’ Lucy’s voice grated across her nerves. ‘I bet you never thought you’d need to use your sewing skills again?’

  ‘I’d like to sew your mouth up!’ Dora muttered in an undertone.

  Katie wriggled out of the dress with much huffing and puffing and handed it to Dora to unpick.

  ‘Perhaps I should join the League of Health and Beauty,’ she said ruefully. ‘That might help slim me down.’

  ‘Unless you really are pregnant,’ Lane said, standing sideways to admire her own slender shape. ‘What?’ She looked around at the others’ shocked faces. ‘She could be, you know. Irish girls are always getting themselves into trouble.’

  Dora and Millie glared at her, but Katie O’Hara just shrugged. ‘She’s right,’ she said. Then added mischievously, ‘Maybe I should tell Tom I’m in the family way. That would give him a shock, wouldn’t it? He might even marry me!’

  ‘Run away, more likely!’ Lucy said.

  ‘It worked for my cousin Imelda,’ Katie said. ‘Five years she was with her man, but he never gave a hint about wanting to put a ring on her finger until she told him she was in the family way. They were married a month later.’

  ‘And what did he say when he found out she’d lied to him?’ Millie asked.

  ‘What could he say?’ Katie shrugged. ‘She just told him it was a false alarm. Besides, she was pregnant before they’d been married a month, so what did it matter?’ She looked down at her bare left hand. ‘Maybe I should try it,’ she mused. ‘We could have a double wedding, me and my Tom and you and Joe,’ she said to Dora. ‘Just think, they’d probably give us a police guard of honour!’

  Dora kept her head down, unpicking the tiny stitches with the point of her scissors. ‘I’m not marrying Joe.’

  ‘That’s what you think.’ Katie gave her a knowing smile. ‘My Tom reckons Joe’s got his heart set on you.’

  ‘But we hardly know each other!’

  ‘Must have been love at first sight,’ Katie said.

  ‘More like love is blind,’ Lucy muttered unkindly.

  Dora went back to her unpicking, panic fluttering in her chest. She shouldn’t have agreed to go to this stupid ball with Joe, she thought. She had tried to let him down gently, but the more time she spent with him, the more of a chance he seemed to think he had.

  She finished unpicking the seams of Katie’s dress and repinned it so it fitted her better. She’d just put in the last pin when Sister Sutton’s voice boomed down the passage, announcing it was nearly time for lights out, so Dora took the dress back to her room, promising to finish sewing it before the ball.

  ‘I feel sorry for O’Hara,’ Millie said, as they climbed the attic stairs.

  ‘Having to share a room with Lane, you mean?’ Dora said.

  Millie laughed. ‘She is awful, isn’t she? No, I mean because of that boyfriend of hers. I’ve heard all kinds of rumours about him. He’s got quite a reputation.’

  ‘I’ve heard a few stories too.’ Dora had even seen him flirting with Penny Willard. ‘Poor O’Hara. She really wears her heart on her sleeve, doesn’t she? She’s just asking to get it broken.’

  ‘Not like you.’ Millie sent her a sidelong smile. ‘Sounds as if you’ve got the right idea, playing hard to get with your boyfriend. He sounds well and truly smitten!’

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend!’ Dora insisted.

  Millie arched her eyebrows. ‘Maybe you should tell him that?’

  ‘Oh, I intend to. Don’t you worry,’ Dora said firmly.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING Dora was off duty from nine until one, so she decided to pay Ruby a visit.

  She had been putting it off for a few days, not knowing what to say to her friend. What words of comfort could she hope to offer to someone who had been through such an ordeal? Dora could see every day how much Nick was suffering. He hadn’t spoken to her again since that moment in the lift, but she di
dn’t need to hear from him to understand how he felt. Pain seemed to radiate through every inch of him. He moved as stiffly as an automaton, as if even the effort of putting one foot in front of the other was too much for him.

  If he was in so much agony, she couldn’t imagine how wretched Ruby must be feeling. Dora had seen and heard about the mechanics of late miscarriage in Gynae lectures, but she could only guess what it must feel like to lose a child.

  She had never been to Victory House before, and it took her a while to find the right flat on the third floor. She could hear gramophone music playing as she approached Ruby’s front door. A lively swing number, the kind she knew her friend always loved to dance to.

  She knocked, and the music stopped abruptly. A moment later Ruby came to the door, smoothing down her blonde curls. Dora was taken aback by how bright and summery she looked in her yellow cotton dress patterned with sprigs of cornflowers.

  ‘Oh, hello.’ Ruby’s smile of greeting faded when she saw Dora. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Nick told me what happened. Oh, Rube, I’m so sorry!’ Emotion overcame Dora and she stepped forward and gathered Ruby in her arms. Whatever wrong she had done in the past, Ruby was still Dora’s oldest friend and she didn’t deserve what she was going through. ‘It’s so cruel, it really is . . .’

  ‘These things happen.’ Ruby’s body was rigid in Dora’s arms. ‘You just have to get on with it, don’t you?’

  Dora pulled away from Ruby, holding her at arm’s length. ‘You don’t have to put on a front for my sake, you know. I’m your mate, remember?’

  ‘Yes well, like I said. You just have to get on with it.’ Ruby stepped out of her embrace, her downcast gaze fixed on the linoleum floor.

  Dora frowned. She knew it was the East End women’s way to paint a brave face over their troubles. She had seen her mother and grandmother do it, and she had done it herself over Nick enough times.

  But not Ruby. Dora had known her friend wail for hours over a broken fingernail. Perhaps her heartache went so deep she couldn’t even express it?

  ‘Why don’t we stick the kettle on?’ Dora suggested. ‘Then we can have a good catch up over a brew.’

  Ruby pursed her lips. ‘As a matter of fact, I was just about to go out when you knocked. I promised my mum I’d call round.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, right. Sorry, I should have warned you I was coming.’ Dora frowned as a thought struck her. ‘Are you sure you’re all right to be up and about? I thought you’d still be resting in bed.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t need to bother with all that. I’m as right as rain,’ Ruby said briskly, putting her hat on in front of the hall mirror.

  ‘All the same, you need time to recover—’

  ‘I don’t want to mope about in bed,’ Ruby said firmly.

  Dora caught her friend’s defiant look reflected in the mirror. Perhaps Ruby was just putting a brave face on after all?

  ‘I’ll walk back to Griffin Street with you,’ Dora offered.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t have to.’

  ‘I want to. I can call in and see my mum too. Then we can have a chat on the way, can’t we?’

  Ruby’s smile stiffened. ‘That’ll be nice.’

  It was a bright, sunny June morning, but Victory House and all the blocks around it were silent. Their footsteps echoed along the concrete walkway as they walked past the line of closed front doors.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Dora asked. ‘You’d think they would have their doors open to enjoy the sunshine, wouldn’t you?’

  Ruby pulled a face. ‘Everyone likes to keep themself to themself round here.’

  ‘It ain’t like Griffin Street, then?’ Dora grinned. ‘Everyone in and out of each other’s houses all day long?’

  ‘No,’ Ruby said. ‘It ain’t nothing like Griffin Street.’

  She looked so wistful when she said it. ‘You sound as if you miss it?’ Dora remarked.

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Dora sent her a sidelong look. Under her thick mask of make-up, Ruby’s face was pale and strained. Poor girl, she could probably do with her friends around her after going through such an ordeal.

  Dora tucked her arm in Ruby’s, trying to jolly her along. ‘Cheer up,’ she said. ‘It’ll all be all right, you’ll see.’

  ‘Will it?’ Ruby said bleakly.

  ‘’Course it will. You’ll get through it, I promise.’ Dora paused, trying to choose her words carefully. ‘Did the doctor say why it might have happened?’ she ventured. Ruby was silent. ‘Ruby? You have seen the doctor, haven’t you?’

  ‘I don’t need to see a doctor.’

  ‘Ruby!’ Dora was horrified. ‘You have to go and see him. He needs to check everything’s all right.’

  ‘Everything’s fine.’ Ruby’s face was shuttered.

  ‘But we had a lecture on it. Mr Cooper the consultant said it was important to make sure—’

  ‘I’m not interested in what the bloody consultant said!’ Splotches of angry colour were splashed like red paint up Ruby’s throat and across her cheekbones. ‘Stop acting like you know everything, Dora Doyle!’

  Dora flinched before her friend’s anger. ‘I was only trying to help.’

  ‘Well, don’t. I don’t need your help. It’s over, it’s finished, and I’m sick of talking about it. I just want to forget it ever happened, all right?’

  ‘If that’s what you want.’ But Dora was still troubled. Surely Ruby’s mother should have told her to go to the hospital? Lettie worked on Gynae, she would have seen what happened to women who didn’t get proper medical attention.

  They walked on, down by the canal. Ruby was so prickly, Dora hardly knew what to say to her.

  Finally, it was Ruby who changed the subject. ‘Don’t let’s fall out,’ she said. ‘You’re my mate, and I don’t want to argue with you.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘That’s all right, then.’ Ruby beamed at her, suddenly more like her old self. ‘Can we talk about something else? I’m fed up with feeling sorry for myself.’

  ‘Of course.’ That would explain the music and the dancing, Dora thought. No matter how heartbreaking the situation, there was a limit to how much misery a young girl could stand. ‘What shall we talk about?’

  ‘I dunno – anything.’ Ruby turned to her. ‘What’s been going on with you? How’s that boyfriend of yours? Joe, ain’t it?’

  Dora sighed. ‘He’s not my boyfriend.’

  ‘Ooh, have I touched a nerve?’ Ruby teased. ‘Don’t tell me he ain’t interested?’

  ‘Far from it. I’m the one who ain’t interested, although I can’t seem to get him to believe that.’

  ‘Why not? He seemed like a bit of all right to me.’

  Dora gazed across the flat brown water of the canal. ‘It just doesn’t feel right. He’s gone and bought us tickets for the hospital ball, even though I told him I didn’t want to go with him.’ She turned back to Ruby. ‘How do I make him understand I don’t want to start courting?’

  But Ruby wasn’t listening. ‘What ball is that, then?’

  ‘The Founder’s Day Ball, next month.’

  ‘Nick’s never mentioned it.’

  ‘He probably didn’t think you’d be feeling up to it.’

  Ruby’s mouth firmed. ‘I reckon a night out’s just what I need. I can’t stay cooped up for ever.’

  ‘Then maybe he’s the one who’s not feeling up to it?’ Dora suggested. ‘He’s been ever so upset since—’ She didn’t finish the sentence, afraid of upsetting Ruby again.

  ‘Then he wants to buck up like the rest of us!’ Her friend sounded dismissive. ‘I’m fed up with seeing him walking about with a face like a wet weekend!’

  Dora stared at her, shocked. ‘You can’t blame him for being upset, Ruby. He was looking forward to this baby . . .’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ she snapped. ‘If I’d known he was going to be like this, I would never have told him—’ She stopped dead, her mouth shutting like
a steel trap.

  Dora regarded her curiously. ‘Would never have told him what, Rube?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, tight-lipped.

  Dora searched her friend’s face. ‘Ruby?’

  ‘Come on, Mum will be wondering where I am.’ She turned and marched off down the street, leaving Dora standing on the pavement.

  Dora stared after her. Then it started to dawn on her, like a speck of light on the dark horizon. Surely she hadn’t . . .

  No. She dismissed the thought. It was too wicked, even for Ruby. And yet suddenly, once she’d allowed the idea to creep into her mind, it all started to add up. Why Ruby was so determined she didn’t need to see a doctor. And that flash of yellow dress, twirling to music behind the net curtains. Perhaps it was nothing to do with wanting to get over her heartache. Perhaps there was no heartache to begin with . . .

  A sudden image of Katie O’Hara flashed across Dora’s mind. Posing in her pink dress, the shiny satin tight across her bulging tummy, laughing about the trick her clever cousin Imelda had played on her boyfriend.

  ‘Ruby?’ she called out. ‘Wait, I want to ask you something . . .’

  ‘There was no baby, was there?’

  Ruby stopped dead, but she didn’t turn round. Dora instantly knew she was right.

  ‘That’s a wicked thing to say.’ Ruby’s voice was flat.

  ‘Then tell me it’s not true.’ Dora stared at the back of her friend’s blonde head. ‘You can’t, can you? You can’t even look at me.’ She was too stunned even to feel angry. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you lie to everyone?’

  Ruby turned around slowly. Dora saw the way her eyes darted and wondered if the next words that came from her mouth were going to be another lie.

  But then her shoulders sank in defeat. ‘He was going to leave me,’ she said flatly. ‘I couldn’t let that happen. I didn’t even know what I was saying until the words came out,’ she looked up at Dora, her eyes appealing for understanding. ‘You know me, always opening my mouth before I stop to think!’ She smiled weakly.

  ‘Oh, Ruby!’ Dora couldn’t think of anything else to say. Her mind was a jumble of thoughts and emotions – anger, disbelief, pain – all tumbling over themselves. ‘But you let him marry you . . .’