Nightingales at War (22 page)

Mrs Stanton finally turned to him. ‘What do you think, Oliver? Doesn’t she look lovely?’

Eve turned nervously to him and waited as he raised his gaze from his cards. ‘I think you look exactly like your friend Cissy Baxter. But I suppose that’s the point, isn’t it?’ he replied, his voice full of disgust.

With that, he put down his cards and walked out of the room.

‘Oliver!’ Mrs Stanton called after him. She turned back to Eve, instantly apologetic. ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ she said. ‘I really don’t know what’s got into him. He isn’t usually so offhand.’

‘It’s all right,’ Eve mumbled. It shouldn’t matter, she told herself. She thought she looked pretty, and so did Cissy and Mrs Stanton, and Muriel, and everyone else. So why should she care what Oliver thought?

But she did care. More than she liked to admit.

NICK WAS COMING
home.

The letter Dora had longed for was waiting for her when she came in from duty one evening. She read it aloud to Danny while they were feeding the twins.

Danny frowned. ‘What does em— embar—’

‘Embarkation leave,’ Dora finished for him. ‘It means Nick’s allowed home for a few days before the army sends him away again.’

Danny’s face fell. ‘Y-you mean he’s got to g-go and fight again?’

Dora wished she could have lied to her brother-in-law, to make him feel better. But he had to know the truth.

‘Yes,’ she said heavily.

‘But I d-don’t want him to go. Wh-what if he gets h-hurt?’

‘He won’t.’

‘He got hurt l-last time.’

Dora looked at Danny’s earnest face. He was spooning food into Walter’s mouth, concentrating on getting every spoonful past the baby’s pursed lips without spilling any. Danny was right, she thought. He might not understand everything he was told, but she couldn’t argue with his simple logic.

‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘But what can we do? Nick has to go.’

‘You c-could talk to him?’ Danny looked up at her, his pale eyes shining with hope. ‘Nick l-listens to you. He w-wouldn’t go if you t-told him not to.’

‘It’s not your brother I’d have to talk to, love. It’s the army.’

‘Then you c-could talk to them?’

His faith was almost heartbreaking. In Danny’s world, she and Nick could move mountains.

‘I wish I could, ducks. But even I couldn’t take on the British army.’ Dora smiled bracingly. ‘Anyway, listen to us. Here we are, being all gloomy when we should be happy he’s coming home. We’ve got to keep smiling, Danny, for Nick’s sake. We don’t want him going off to war feeling all worried because we’re fed up, do we?’

Danny shook his head. ‘I – I suppose not.’

‘That’s the spirit. Let’s just think about making this leave really special for him, shall we? So he can go off wherever he’s going with some nice memories, and he won’t have to worry about us.’

The idea seemed to cheer Danny up. ‘I can sh-show him how I’ve b-been looking after the b-babies,’ he said.

‘That’s right. He’ll be proud of you.’

Danny smiled shyly. ‘I w-want him to be proud of me.’

Danny insisted on sleeping with Nick’s letter under his pillow. When Dora crept downstairs to the outhouse in the middle of the night, he was lying awake, trying to read it in the dark, struggling to recognise all the words from memory.

Dora smiled to herself. The poor lad hadn’t seen his brother for seven months, the longest they’d ever been apart. She knew they missed each other dreadfully, and she only hoped Nick would be cheered up when he saw how Danny was flourishing.

The following morning, Little Alfie arrived back from one of his early-morning scavenging trips with some pieces of shrapnel and the news that the hospital had been hit yet again.

Dora sighed. ‘What is it this time?’

‘I dunno. But I saw a couple of fire engines going in there earlier on, and there was lots of smoke.’

‘I hope it ain’t Casualty again! We’ve only just started to put ourselves together after the last time.’

‘I’m surprised there’s anything left of the place,’ Nanna commented.

‘Ain’t you worried one of them bombs will get you, Dor?’ Little Alfie asked.

Dora glanced at Danny. He was playing with Winnie, but she could tell from his stiff posture that he was listening to every word.

‘Don’t be daft,’ she shrugged it off. ‘They haven’t managed to hit me so far, have they?’

‘Yes, but I thought you said one of the nurses had been killed . . .’

‘Anyway, I’d best be off.’ Dora hurriedly shoved the last of her belongings into her bag and headed for the door.

‘I’ll w-walk up the alley with you,’ Danny said, scrambling to his feet.

Dora knew why. They’d barely got through the back gate before he said, ‘I d-don’t want you to g-go, Dora.’

She stifled a sigh. ‘Look, Dan, you don’t want to worry about what Little Alfie says.’

‘It ain’t j-just that.’ He chewed his lip. ‘I don’t like it when y-you’re away. The t-twins don’t like it either.’

‘That’s why I need you to look after them for me,’ Dora said. She laid her hand on his sleeve. The bones of his forearm jutted through his shirt. No matter how much her mum tried to feed him up, Danny always stayed as skinny as a rake. ‘Don’t you worry about me, I’ll be home tonight, same as usual.’

He gazed at her with pale, trusting eyes. ‘You p-promise?’

‘I promise, love. And in the meantime, you just make sure you look after the kids for me, all right? They won’t get scared if you don’t.’

He nodded, his expression serious. ‘I’ll s-sing to them,’ he said. ‘They like that.
You are my sunshine
. . .’ His quavering voice rose into the morning air.

‘That’s the spirit, Dan. You just sing to them and cheer them up till I come home, eh?’

There was no sign of the fire engines, although a pall of smoke still hung in the air. Dora made her way to the Casualty Hall and pushed aside the canvas flap that served as a doorway.

For once, mercifully, they weren’t busy. Less than a dozen patients occupied the pair of wooden benches, the only remnants of the old Casualty Hall. The VADs Cissy Baxter and Eve Ainsley were handing out blankets and hot water bottles to keep out the October chill that blew through the thin canvas walls. But there was no sign of any fire damage, Dora was pleased to see.

She hurried to the cloakroom to get changed. Helen came in as Dora was fastening her apron.

‘Good morning,’ she greeted her friend, trying to stop her teeth from chattering. ‘Cold, isn’t it?’

‘Good thing, too,’ Dora said. ‘I heard the place was on fire.’

‘Oh, that.’ Helen rolled her eyes. ‘It was just a stray incendiary that landed on the roof. Miss Hanley managed to put it out with her stirrup pump long before the fire engines arrived.’

‘Good for her,’ Dora said.

Helen smiled. ‘Isn’t it odd? A few months ago the very idea of a fire would have kept us talking for weeks, but now we hardly think about it unless the building falls down around our ears.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Dora agreed. ‘Nothing seems very shocking any more, does it? Not since poor Dev Kowalski . . .’

They were both silent for a moment, lost in their thoughts. Nurse Kowalski’s name might not be mentioned so much any more, but her death still hung like a shadow over them all. Dora remembered the young nurse’s kindness on her first day, when she’d been so nervous.

Dora had just finished getting changed when she found the doll in her bag. She pulled it out with a groan.

‘What’s that?’ Helen asked.

‘Raggy Aggy. Winnie’s doll. She won’t go to sleep without it.’

‘Do you want to take it home?’ Helen asked.

Dora paused, torn. Going home would mean changing out of her uniform again. On the other hand, she could be there and back in fifteen minutes . . .

While she was still trying to make up her mind, the familiar drone of the air raid siren filled the air.

Helen smiled ruefully. ‘Looks as if Winnie might have to wait to be reunited with Raggy Aggy.’

Dora gazed down at the scruffy doll in her hands. ‘I’m sure she can. She won’t need it until she has her nap this afternoon. I can take it back when I have my break . . .’

As it was, Dora was kept so busy for the rest of the morning that she forgot about the doll. The next few hours brought a steady stream of minor injuries: wounds from falling shrapnel and shattered glass, cuts and bruises, and a couple of elderly people who had collapsed from shock and exhaustion.

It was strange, she thought, how everyone seemed to have grown used to having bombs dropping around them. After nearly two months of air raids day and night, life went on much as usual these days. Most people scarcely bothered to rush for the shelters any more, preferring to stay in their own homes instead. They were tired from all the disturbed nights, but otherwise undaunted.

Everyone who came in dropped a couple of coins in the collecting tin Matron had set up on the booking-in desk. As well as the casualties, there was also a steady stream of people bringing in gifts, including food from their own rations.

‘Just a little gift, Nurse,’ they would say. ‘It ain’t much, but every little helps, eh?’

And then, just before teatime, Dora was getting changed to go home when the siren sounded again.

‘You’re not going now, surely?’ Helen asked her.

‘I’ve got to, even if I have to make a run for it.’ Dora unfastened the stud on her collar. ‘Danny will be worried if I’m not back on time, and Winnie will be frantic for—’

She was cut off by a loud crash, which threw them both to the floor and plunged the room into darkness.

‘Not again!’ Helen picked herself up, straightening her bonnet. ‘Really, this is too bad.’

‘Did they get us?’ Dora eyed the cloakroom door nervously. The last time she had opened it after an explosion, she’d been greeted by a huge, smoking pile of rubble. The shock still haunted her.

Helen seemed to guess what was going through her mind. She headed purposefully to the cloakroom door and threw it open.

Outside, much to Dora’s immense relief, everything was much as it had been, although the VADs and the patients seemed to be in an ungainly heap behind the booking-in desk where they had taken shelter.

‘Thank God!’ Helen breathed, echoing Dora’s thoughts.

‘But it must have been close, for us to feel it like that,’ Dora said.

‘We’ll soon find out, won’t we?’ Helen said grimly.

It wasn’t long before the ambulances started to arrive. By now, Dora was familiar with the drill. She and Helen went out into the yard to meet them, climbing into the back of each vehicle to assess the wounded. The seriously injured were sent straight down to Theatre or to the Emergency Treatment Rooms, while those with minor injuries were sent to the Casualty Hall to wait for their wounds to be dressed.

And then there were those for whom it was too late. They were dispatched straight down to the mortuary.

Dora hated sifting through the bodies, discarding the dead and deciding what to do with the living. It felt all wrong.

In between these duties she listened to the First Aiders and the ambulance drivers talking among themselves, sharing their scraps of news.

‘It was a really nasty one, on the railway line,’ the ambulance driver told her, lighting up a cigarette with shaking hands. ‘Very messy business. I’m surprised you didn’t get it here.’

‘We caught the tail end.’ Dora climbed into the back of the ambulance. Another burns victim. She could smell the scorched flesh before she pulled back the blanket. ‘Where did it hit, exactly?’

‘Griffin Street. Flattened the whole place.’

Dora froze, her hand halfway to the blanket. Suddenly she didn’t want to see who was underneath.

‘
YOU MUSTN’T BLAME
yourself. There was nothing you could do,’ her mother said again.

Dora couldn’t trust herself to reply. She clutched her twins tighter to her and buried her face in Winnie’s neck, desperate for reassurance. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to let them go since she’d found them in the church hall rest centre. Her mother, brother and sister sat in a row, blankets around their shoulders, white-faced and silent with shock.

By contrast, Winnie and Walter hadn’t stopped crying. They looked at her, mouths gaping, cheeks wet, inconsolable with misery.

Dora knew exactly how they felt.

‘But I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘Danny was so frightened of the explosions, he’d never go out by himself.’

‘It was Winnie’s doll.’ Little Alfie broke his silence, his gaze fixed on the empty space in front of him.

Dora’s heart quickened. ‘Aggy?’

Her mother nodded. ‘We were on our way to the shelter, but Danny kept saying we’d left it behind. He’d been looking for it all afternoon, said she wouldn’t settle without it. I tried to tell him it didn’t matter, that we’d manage. But he must have gone back for it anyway.’ Rose’s eyes were huge and dark in her white face. ‘By the time I realised he was gone, it was too late. The whole street went down like dominoes.’

‘We’ve lost everything!’ Bea started to cry, and Rose comforted her. Dora watched them and wanted to smack her sister. Danny was dead, and all Bea could think about were her lost belongings.

Danny was dead.

No matter how many times she said it, it still didn’t seem real. Only a few hours ago he’d been playing with the twins, babbling to them in that daft baby talk, so excited because his brother was coming home . . .

‘Nick!’ She hadn’t realised she’d cried his name aloud until she saw the three faces staring blankly at her. ‘He’ll have to be told,’ Dora said, recovering herself quickly. ‘He’s coming home in a few days. He needs to know before he—’

Dora stopped talking, grief and pain choking her. She closed her eyes, but she couldn’t shut out the painful thoughts that filled her head, of Nick turning up on their doorstep, all smiles, looking forward to seeing his family again. And then having to break the news to him that his beloved brother was dead.

No. Dora’s mind rejected the thought. She would rather never see her husband again than have to put either of them through that.

‘We’ll tell him, don’t worry,’ her mother soothed.

‘I don’t know what he’ll say . . .’ It would break his heart, Dora knew it. And it would be all her fault. She had let him down. She’d promised that she would take care of his family, and she had failed. Nick would never forgive her, she was certain of it.

‘It wasn’t your fault.’ Rose’s voice changed, hardening. ‘You’ve got to stop blaming yourself, love.’

Dora stared at her. What was her mother talking about? Of course it was her fault.

She had the doll, Raggy Aggy, still stuffed in her bag. Dora couldn’t bear to touch it, or even to look at it. If only she’d taken it home when she’d first realised she had it, Danny would never have tried to go back to the house and look for it.

Better still, if she hadn’t left her family in the first place . . .

Danny hadn’t wanted her to go to work. It was so unlike him to make a fuss, and yet that morning he’d all but begged her not to leave them. It was almost as if he knew . . .

But she’d let him down. She’d put her own selfish desires before her family, and look what had happened. Now Danny was dead, and Nanna was in hospital, and her babies had no home.

‘What are we going to do?’ Little Alfie’s plaintive voice cut into her thoughts.

Dora glanced up and realised they were all looking at her – her mother, her brother, her sister, even her babies were staring up at her with wide, trusting eyes. They all expected her to be the strong one, to come up with the answer, to look after everyone. How could they possibly still rely on her when she’d let everyone down so badly? she wondered.

Fortunately, her mother stepped in. ‘I’ve been talking to one of the ARP wardens,’ she said. ‘He says we’ve got to go to the Administrative Centre, down at the public library. They’ll sort us out with our cards and our ration books, and all the other bits and pieces we’ve lost. Then we’ll have to go to the Assistance Board, and the Housing Department . . . and I suppose we should see about getting some of our things salvaged . . .’ Her voice sounded bright, but Dora could see the weary despair in her eyes.

‘What about Nanna? Will she be all right?’ Little Alfie piped up.

‘She’ll be fine. They’ll be looking after her lovely in that hospital. Ain’t that right, Dora?’

She caught her mother’s desperate look, and this time managed to rouse herself to say, ‘Mum’s right, Alfie. They’ll take good care of her.’

‘She ain’t going to die, is she?’

‘No, ducks, Nanna will be fine. She’s just had a funny turn with her heart, that’s all. You’ll see, she’ll be right as rain in a day or two.’

But Nanna had looked anything but right as rain when Dora went to see her in the hospital earlier. It had broken her apart all over again to see her strong grandmother laid so low. When had her indomitable Nanna Winnie become so old and frail? Why hadn’t Dora been caring for her instead of nursing strangers?

Worse still was breaking the news to Nanna Winnie that Danny was dead, and that her own beloved home, the house where she’d first lived as a young bride, was reduced to nothing more than rubble and dust.

Seeing her grandmother’s trembling fingers plucking at the bedcovers while she fought so hard to stay strong had been almost more than Dora could stand.

And now it was her mother who was doing her best to stay strong as she explained to Little Alfie that by the time Nanna was well enough to come out of hospital, they would have a nice new home for her to live in.

‘But it won’t be like Griffin Street, will it?’ he said.

‘No, love,’ Rose admitted sadly. ‘It won’t be like Griffin Street.’

‘I don’t want a new home,’ Little Alfie said. ‘I want to go back to Griffin Street. I want our old house back, and everything to be the same as it was.’

Dora met her mother’s gaze over his dark head. If only they could go back, she thought. How differently she would do everything next time.

But the whole world had changed in the space of an hour. Her life had completely turned upside down, and Dora wasn’t sure she could cope with it any more.

‘Dora?’ She looked down to see Little Alfie at her shoulder, looking up at her.

‘What, love?’

‘Do you think Octavius managed to escape? Only I asked the ARP blokes, and they couldn’t find him. I expect he ran away, don’t you think?’

Dora couldn’t meet her brother’s trusting gaze. He was looking to her for reassurance, just like everyone else. But for once she was too exhausted to give it.

Kathleen Fox looked across the desk at Dora Riley and wondered when the poor girl had last had a wink of sleep.

‘I heard about what happened,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s a terrible tragedy. You have my condolences, Nurse Riley.’

Dora nodded, but she didn’t speak. As usual, she looked as if she was fighting to stay in control of her emotions.

‘Have your family found somewhere else to live?’ Kathleen asked.

‘Not yet, Matron,’ Dora’s voice was tight. ‘They’re staying in a rest centre. But they might be able to go and stay with my aunt in Haggerston.’

‘I see.’ Kathleen paused. ‘And you’ve decided to resign from the hospital?’

‘I think it’s for the best.’

Best for who? Kathleen wondered. Not Dora, judging by her wretched expression. ‘And may I ask why?’

Dora winced. ‘I’ve realised my place is with my family, Matron.’

‘Well, I’ll be very sorry to lose you,’ she said. ‘You’re an excellent nurse.’

‘Thank you, Matron.’

‘When would you like to leave?’

‘Straight away, if possible. My grandmother is in hospital, and my mother and family need me. They’re not coping too well in the rest centre . . .’

‘Very well. As I said, I shall be sorry to lose you. But I certainly wouldn’t want to keep you here if your heart is no longer in it.’

‘Thank you, Matron.’

As Dora reached the door, Kathleen said, ‘But don’t forget, if you ever change your mind and want to come back, I would be very happy to have you.’

For the slightest fraction of a second, Kathleen thought she saw a flicker of regret in Dora Riley’s muddy green eyes.

‘Thank you, Matron,’ she said stiffly. ‘But I can’t see myself ever changing my mind.’