The Nightingale Sisters Page 2

  ‘Violet Tanner.’ She said it out loud, listening as the sounds hung on the air. It was a long time since she’d called herself by that name, and she still hadn’t quite got used to it again. But she generally got used to all her names, soon enough.

  She stirred her tea. ‘Violet Tanner, Night Sister at the Florence Nightingale Teaching Hospital,’ she said again.

  Yes, she decided. It suited her. For now.

  Chapter Two

  THERE WAS AN extra place laid for Alf Doyle at the dinner table.

  ‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Old habits die hard, eh?’ Rose’s smile was brittle as she cleared the plate away.

  No one else around the table said anything, but Dora knew they were all thinking the same thing; her mum might be putting on a brave face as usual, but she wasn’t fooling anyone.

  It was New Year’s Eve, and round the corner at the Rose and Crown the locals were having their usual knees-up, bidding a noisy farewell to 1935. Dora could hear the sound of laughter and singing drifting down Griffin Street as she and her family gathered around the dinner table.

  Any other year they would have been in the thick of it. Nanna Winnie would be in the saloon bar with a bottle of milk stout, done up in her best dress, face heavily powdered and teeth in for the occasion, taking in all the goings on so she could gossip with her cronies later. Dora’s mum Rose, flushed from too many port and lemons, would be singing along to the piano as it bashed out all the old favourites.

  But not this year. The atmosphere in the kitchen at number twenty-eight Griffin Street was sombre, even though they were doing their best to pretend that everything was normal.

  Except Dora’s youngest sister Bea, of course. The twelve year old never bothered to hide her feelings from anyone.

  ‘What’s this?’ She prodded the lump of brown meat on her plate, her freckled nose wrinkling in disgust.

  ‘It’s melt,’ Dora hissed. As if Bea didn’t know. The butcher sold it for threepence, and the locals called it ‘poor man’s joint’.

  ‘But we always have chicken at New Year,’ her sister protested.

  ‘We had a chicken at Christmas, love. We can’t run to another one.’ Her mother doled a spoonful of mashed potatoes on to a plate. ‘We ain’t made of money, I’m afraid.’

  ‘We always had chicken when Dad was here,’ Bea said sullenly.

  ‘Shh!’ Dora, her grandmother and sister Josie hissed together.

  ‘Yes, well, we had a lot of things when your dad was here,’ Rose said briskly. ‘But he ain’t here now, so we’ve just got to make the best of things, haven’t we?’

  She was smiling when she said it, but Dora noticed her mother’s hand trembling as she passed another plate down the table.

  It had been three months since Dora’s stepfather Alf Doyle had disappeared. He’d just packed a bag one day and upped and gone without a word to anyone. Even his pals at the railway yard where he’d worked hadn’t seen him since. Her mother and grandmother had gone to the police, but they didn’t bother trying to find him. As far as they were concerned, Alf was just another bloke who’d done a flit from his family.

  Dora wasn’t sorry to see him go. For five years she’d suffered abuse at Alf’s hands, living in fear of him creeping into her room at night, silenced by her shame. It was only when she’d found out he’d started abusing her sister Josie that she’d finally found her voice.

  Not that it had done much good. The day she’d finally confronted him, Alf had laughed and given her a beating. But then, just as she thought she would never defeat him, he had vanished.

  It was a shock to them all, but her mother had taken it hardest. Rose Doyle was a typical East End woman, tough and hard-working, the kind who never complained but rolled up her sleeves and got on with life, no matter what it handed out to her. She had coped eleven years ago when she’d been left widowed with five children to bring up. She had taken the blow when her daughter Maggie had died at the age of thirteen. But the disappearance of her second husband had broken her spirit, and her heart.

  No one spoke while they were eating. The only sound was the crackling voice of Al Bowlly on the wireless singing ‘Blue Moon’, his plaintive tones deepening their gloom.

  Dora stared down miserably at her plate. She had fought to get a rare sleeping-out pass from the hospital so she could spend New Year’s Eve with her family. She knew her mother appreciated her being here, but Dora couldn’t help thinking guiltily she might have had more fun back at the nurses’ home, even under the Home Sister’s watchful eye.

  Nanna Winnie tried to lighten the mood. ‘Why don’t we all go down to the pub after tea, cheer ourselves up a bit?’ she suggested.

  ‘You go if you like.’ Rose shrugged. ‘I’m stopping here.’

  ‘But it won’t be the same without you, Rosie love. Come on, you could do with a night out. A good old sing-song with your pals would do you the world of good.’

  ‘And listen to all the neighbours talking about me? No thanks.’

  ‘No one’s talking about you, love.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Mum! You’ve heard them all whispering, same as I have.’ Rose looked up, anger flaring in her brown eyes. ‘Our family’s all they talk about these days. Y’know, I heard Lettie Pike’s even putting it about that I did Alf in for the insurance. As if we’d be sitting down to ox spleen for our dinner if I’d come into money!’

  She laughed, but Dora could see the pain in her face. Rose Doyle was a proud woman, who liked to keep herself to herself. Knowing her family’s business was the talk of Bethnal Green must be agony for her.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, putting down her knife and fork, ‘I can’t go out. I’ve got some more mending to do.’

  ‘You can give it a rest for one night, surely?’

  ‘I like to keep myself busy. And we need the money, don’t forget.’

  ‘How are you managing for money, Mum?’ Dora asked.

  ‘Oh, we’re all right. I’ve started taking in laundry, as well as mending, so that brings in a bit more. And now your brother and Lily have moved in upstairs, they’re helping out with the rent. We’ve not got as much room to breathe, but at least it’s not so much for me to clean,’ she added brightly.

  ‘We all have to share a bedroom,’ Bea grumbled. ‘There’s no room, and we can hear Nanna snoring downstairs.’

  ‘I do not,’ her grandmother denied heatedly. ‘How can I snore when my lumbago keeps me awake every hour of the night?’

  Dora looked across the table at her mother. She was laughing with the others, but Dora could see the strain behind her eyes. The Doyles had been one of the few families in Griffin Street to rent their whole house by themselves, and to have to let out a room was a huge blow to Rose’s pride. But at least it was only Peter and his wife who were living there. Having to live with another family, like the Pikes and the Rileys did next door, would have been much worse.

  ‘I wish you’d let me leave school and help out,’ Josie piped up. ‘I told you I could get a job at Gold’s Garments—’

  ‘And I told you you’re not to think about it,’ her mother said. ‘You’re staying on at school and getting your exams so you can be a teacher, and that’s final. I’m proud of both my clever girls –’ she beamed at Dora ‘– and I’m not going to let anything stand in your way. Even if I have to work all day and all night,’ she added firmly.

  Dora and Josie looked at each other. ‘Best not to argue with her.’ Dora smiled.

  ‘Besides,’ Rose went on, ‘Alf will probably be back from his travels soon. Then we’ll be right as rain.’

  Silence fell around the table. ‘For Gawd’s sake, girl, do you really reckon he’s coming back?’ Nanna said finally, her patience giving way. ‘All this time without a single word, he could be halfway to bleedin’ China—’

  ‘He’ll come back,’ Rose interrupted her firmly. ‘My Alf wouldn’t walk out on his own family.’

  ‘He’s already walked out, love. God knows why, but he’s gone. No
w you’re not the first girl whose old man did a bunk, and I daresay you won’t be the last. A man like that’s not worth a spit anyway, after what he did to you—’

  ‘Don’t talk about him like that!’ Rose snapped. ‘He’s a good man. You don’t know what’s happened to keep him away from us. He could have had an accident. He could be dead in the Thames.’

  ‘I hope to God he is,’ Nanna grunted, her toothless jaw set in a stubborn line. ‘Because if he turns up on this doorstep after all the trouble he’s caused, I’ll swing for him myself!’

  Never one to miss out on any drama, Bea started snivelling. ‘Mum, is that right? Is Dad dead? Has he been murdered?’

  ‘And you can shut up an’ all!’ Nanna turned on her. ‘People don’t pack their bags if they’re off to get murdered, do they? Blimey, you can see who got the brains in this family, can’t you?’ she muttered.

  ‘He didn’t pack everything,’ Rose reminded her. ‘He only took a few things with him, so that means he meant to come back.’ She looked around at them all, her smile brittle. ‘Now I’m sure he had his reasons for going away. But he’ll be home soon, and everything will be all right again.’

  ‘And Moby Dick will swim up the Thames!’ Nanna muttered, as they cleared the plates away.

  ‘Do you think he’ll come back, Dor?’ Josie asked her later as they did the washing up in the narrow scullery.

  ‘I hope not.’ Dora piled the dishes into the chipped stone sink.

  ‘Sometimes I wish he would.’

  Dora turned to face her sister in surprise. ‘After what he did to us?’

  ‘I just want to see Mum happy again.’ Josie’s brown eyes were solemn. Unlike Dora, Bea and their elder brother Peter, who were all ginger-haired, freckled and sturdily built like their late father Jack, the fifteen year old had inherited their mother’s slim, dark-haired beauty. ‘I hate him, Dora, you know I do. But I hate listening to Mum crying every night, when she thinks we’re all asleep. And you know she goes out looking for him? Walks the streets for hours, she does, in the middle of the night. Or she’ll go and stand at the gates of the railway yard, as if she expects him to turn up for his shift like nothing’s happened. It breaks my heart.’ She bit her lip. ‘And she worries, too, about how we’re going to manage. I know she says we’ll be all right, but I can see it on her face every time the rent man knocks on the door. She’s working herself into the ground.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ Dora said.

  ‘It won’t do any good. She’ll just smile and tell you she’s managing, as usual. You know what she’s like.’

  The rest of the evening dragged by. While revellers laughed and sang and fell over cursing in the street outside, Dora did her best to keep her family’s spirits up with board games and singing along to the wireless.

  Rose sat by the fire, her head down, going through the mending by the weak gaslight. No surgeon could ever stitch as beautifully as she could, Dora thought. Rose could turn a worn shirt cuff or mend a hole in a dress as if it had never been there.

  She went over to her. ‘I’ve got something for you, Mum.’ She reached into her pocket, pulled out two pound notes and pressed them into her mother’s hand. ‘It’s not much, but it should at least buy some coal or keep the rent man happy.’

  ‘But this is a month’s wages for you. I can’t take all your money, love.’ Rose tried to give it back to her.

  ‘I’ll be earning a bit more now I’ve finished my first year of training,’ said Dora, hearing the desperate brightness in her own voice. ‘And it’s not like I’ve got anything to spend it on, what with my board and lodgings all found at the nurses’ home.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure . . .?’ Rose looked down at the notes in her hand. ‘I can’t pretend it won’t come in handy.’ She put down her mending and smiled up at Dora. ‘What would I do without a daughter like you?’

  ‘I wish I could do more,’ Dora sighed. ‘Student nurses don’t earn very much, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Yes, but one day you’ll be one of them ward sisters, won’t you?’

  ‘Give us a chance! I’ve got to get through two more years’ training first. And then, if I get through my exams, I have to be a staff nurse, and then—’

  ‘You’ll do it, love. You got this far, didn’t you?’

  ‘True.’ Though there were those who still thought little Dora Doyle, the working-class girl from the back streets of Bethnal Green, had no place to be training as a nurse alongside all the respectable, middle-class students. Over the past year she’d proved most of them wrong, but it was a constant struggle.

  ‘I’m proud of you, love. I really am. Here, give your mum a cuddle.’ As Rose reached up to hug her, Dora felt her mother’s bones jutting sharply under her clothes. Was she eating properly? Years ago, before Alf came along, she had known her mother go without to make sure her kids were fed.

  When the old clock on the kitchen mantel struck half-past eleven, Dora slung her coat over her shoulders and went out into the backyard to listen out for the bells of St Paul’s ringing in the New Year across the rooftops of East London.

  As she threw open the back door, a slice of light from the kitchen picked out a young couple standing in a passionate clinch beside the fence next door. Mortified, Dora quickly tried to retreat, but it was too late.

  ‘All right, Dor? Happy New Year!’ Her best friend Ruby Pike greeted her cheerfully as she adjusted the buttons on her blouse. Blonde curls escaped from her elaborately teased hairdo.

  ‘Happy New Year.’ She could barely bring herself to look at Ruby’s boyfriend Nick Riley. It might have been Dora herself in his arms now if she hadn’t been too scared to let him kiss her last year. ‘I thought you’d be down the pub, seeing the New Year in?’

  ‘My lot are all there. And Nick’s mum, of course.’ Ruby rolled her eyes meaningfully. Everyone knew it was a rare day that June Riley wasn’t propping up a bar somewhere in Bethnal Green. ‘We were supposed to be going up to St Paul’s, but Nick won’t leave Danny.’

  Dora glanced at Nick, who was still trying to rub Ruby’s smudged lipstick off his cheek.

  ‘He gets frightened when he’s on his own,’ he muttered.

  ‘He’s sixteen, Nick,’ Ruby sighed. ‘Same age as my brothers.’

  ‘But he’s not like your brothers, is he?’

  Ruby pulled an exasperated face, but Dora understood why Nick was so reluctant. He was very protective of his younger brother. A few years earlier, Danny had suffered a terrible accident which had left him brain-damaged. The rumour was that he’d been beaten by their vicious bully of a father, who was so scared of what he’d done that he’d run away afterwards. But like the lives of so many people in Griffin Street, no one ever knew the full story.

  ‘I’ll look after him, if you like?’ Dora offered. ‘We’re not doing much, so he might as well come in and sit with us.’

  ‘We couldn’t—’ Nick started to refuse, but Ruby jumped in eagerly.

  ‘Would you? That’d be smashing, wouldn’t it, Nick?’ She curled her arm through his and looked up at him appealingly.

  ‘If you’re sure?’ Nick met Dora’s gaze properly for the first time. Even by the dim light spilling from the kitchen, he made her knees weaken. He towered over her, tall and broad-shouldered, his tousled dark hair falling into his eyes.

  When had she realised she was in love with him? Dora couldn’t decide, but whenever it was, it was too late. He was Ruby’s now. And Ruby was never going to give him up.

  Not that he’d want her to, Dora was certain. Ruby was everything she wasn’t – blonde, buxom, and as glamorous as a Hollywood movie star. Just the type of girl someone like Nick Riley would want on his arm.

  He probably broke out in a cold sweat every time he remembered how close he’d come to settling for a homely girl with frizzy ginger hair, Dora thought.

  ‘He’ll be fine with us,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t look like we’ve got much choice, does it?’ she added wryly, as Ruby darte
d inside to call Danny before anyone changed their mind.

  ‘You could come with us?’ Nick offered.

  Dora smiled. She could just imagine Ruby’s face if she tagged along. ‘What do they say? Three’s a crowd.’

  Before he could reply Ruby came back out of the house, ushering Danny in front of her. He emerged shyly, his head bent and shoulders hunched. But his worried expression cleared when he saw Dora.

  ‘Y’see? I told you,’ Ruby said. ‘You should have seen his face when I said you were here. If you ask me, our Danny’s got a bit of a soft spot for you, Dor. Ain’t that right, Danny boy?’

  She flung her arm around his skinny shoulders in a rough hug and ruffled his pale hair, making him squirm and flinch.

  ‘Leave him be. You know he doesn’t like anyone touching him,’ Nick said gruffly.

  ‘Not like his brother, eh?’ Ruby winked at him.

  Nick ignored her as he helped Danny through the narrow gap in the fence where the slats had broken and weeds had grown up in their place. It was a gap Dora and Ruby had regularly used over the years as they went between their houses.

  ‘All right, Danny?’ Dora greeted him with a smile. He nodded and ducked his head shyly. It was the same every time they met, as if she had to win his confidence all over again.

  ‘Now you’re sure you’re going to be all right?’ Nick asked his brother.

  ‘He’ll be fine. Stop fussing like an old woman, or we’ll miss all the excitement.’ Ruby tugged on his arm, dragging him away.

  Dora watched them hurry hand in hand down the alleyway, Ruby’s excited laughter still echoing on the frosty night air after they had disappeared. Then she turned to Danny.

  ‘All right, love? Shall we go in and get warm by the fire?’

  ‘I like looking at the stars.’ Danny shivered beside her, his pale face turned up towards the inky black night sky. ‘Y-Your Josie’s been t-teaching me their names.’ He pointed his long finger skywards. ‘That one there . . . that’s the P-plough.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Dora peered upwards. ‘It looks more like an old pan to me.’