Nightingales at War (2 page)

As if she knew what Kathleen was thinking, Miss Hanley sighed and said, ‘I suppose we must trust your judgement, Matron. You are in charge, after all.’ God help us, her forbidding expression implied.

Kathleen turned her gaze back to the linen order, the various items crossed through with red pencil. Life was difficult enough, without having to fight her own daily battle with Miss Hanley, she thought.

DORA RAN ALL
the way back to Griffin Street.

No one living in the street ever used their front door. Only rent collectors and tallymen turned up on the front step. Dora hurried down the narrow back alleyway, hemmed in by high, rough brick walls that led up to the railway embankment on one side and the tiny backyards of the terraced houses on the other.

She lifted the rusting latch and let herself in through the wooden back gate that led into the yard of number twenty-eight. Like its neighbours, it was small and square, with spindly weeds nosing their way through the cracks in the paving slabs.

Her younger brother Alfie was squatting beside a battered cardboard box in the middle of the yard, dangling a lettuce leaf over it.

‘What you got there, Alfie?’ Dora approached and peered into the box. A twitching nose and a pair of black eyes stared back up at her. ‘Blimey, a rabbit. Where did that come from?’

‘I caught him on Hackney Marshes. His name’s Octavius and he’s my pet, but Nanna says he’s going in the pot.’

He pulled a face. All the family called him Little Alfie, but at eight years old he was a sturdy boy who nearly came up to Dora’s shoulder.

She crouched beside him and put her hand out to stroke the rabbit’s soft brown fur. ‘You don’t want to take any notice of Nanna. You know she’s all talk.’ She nodded towards the leaf in his hand. ‘All the same, you’d best not go feeding it too much, or she might change her mind.’

She left her brother, ducked past the drooping washing line and let herself in the back door.

Her mum Rose was in the scullery, making tea.

‘Hello, love.’ She smiled at Dora over her shoulder. ‘You must have heard the kettle boiling.’ She turned, wiping her hands on her pinny. ‘How did you get on at the hospital?’

‘Matron says I can start next week.’

Her mother beamed. ‘There, what did I tell you? I said they’d give you your job back, didn’t I?’

But Dora wasn’t listening. Her attention was fixed on the thin curtain that separated the scullery from the back kitchen. The gurgling sound of her children’s laughter lifted her heart, and it was all she could do not to run to them. ‘How were the kids?’

‘As good as gold.’ Rose Doyle gave her a knowing look. ‘You go in and see them, and I’ll bring you a cup of tea. You look as if you could do with one.’

‘Ta, Mum.’ Dora gave her a quick, grateful smile and pushed through the curtain.

The little kitchen had always been the heart of the house, the place where the whole family gathered to talk, laugh, cry and fight. Nanna Winnie was in her usual place in her rocking chair by the hearth, mending socks. It gave Dora a pang to see how close she held the darning to her face these days, squinting over her spectacles. Her eyesight was failing, although she would never admit it.

‘All right, Nanna?’ Dora greeted her cheerily, but her gaze was already fixed on little Walter and Winnie, propped side by side on the rug at Nanna’s feet. Nick’s brother Danny was with them, patiently building up towers of wooden bricks for them to knock down with their chubby, flailing hands.

Walter caught sight of her first, and promptly burst into tears. Winnie joined in, and soon they were both wailing.

‘Typical! They haven’t cried all day until you walked in,’ Nanna grumbled.

‘They’re just excited, that’s all. Hello, darlings.’ Dora scooped them both up, one in each arm, and kissed their fat little cheeks. They looked so like their father it was heartbreaking, with their dark curls and intense blue eyes.

Dora buried her face in Winnie’s neck, breathing in her achingly familiar baby smell. ‘Are you sure they’ve been all right?’ she asked.

‘I told you, they’ve been little angels,’ her mother said, coming in with the tea tray. ‘I’ve hardly had to look after them, as a matter of fact. Danny’s been doing it all, ain’t that right, Dan?’ Rose looked affectionately at the young man kneeling on the rug, tidying up the bricks. Danny gave her a shy, lopsided smile in return.

‘He’s devoted to them, all right,’ Nanna agreed.

‘I should think so,’ Dora said. ‘They’re your niece and nephew, ain’t they, Danny?’

He nodded earnestly. ‘They’re my f-family,’ he said. ‘N-Nick said I had to look after them while h-he was gone.’

‘Quite right, too.’ Dora smiled indulgently at him. Danny Riley was a curious-looking young man, with his mop of pale hair and vacant eyes. He was in his early twenties, but he had the mind of a child. His mother told everyone he’d had a terrible accident, but Nick had confessed to Dora that it was a beating by their brutal father that had left his brother so broken and damaged. Nick had also told her that when he’d found out, he’d given the bully a taste of his own medicine. He hadn’t gone into details, but knowing her husband Dora could well imagine. Whatever Nick had done, he’d frightened Reg Riley so badly that he’d left town, never to be seen again.

Nick had been protecting his brother ever since. Apart from herself and their babies, Dora knew Danny was the only person in the world Nick Riley truly loved.

Dora loved Danny too, so she was happy to have him come to live with them after they were married. With a good home, and surrounded by love, Danny had started to thrive. He fitted right into their happy family, and since the twins came along he’d been utterly devoted to them. He would play patiently with them for hours, singing to them, making silly faces or letting them yank handfuls of his hair. He would help Dora settle them and then he would sit for hours watching over them while they slept, marvelling at their tiny fingers and toes.

He would have taken them from her now so she could drink her cup of tea in peace, but Dora couldn’t bear to let go of them. She sat at the table with one twin on each knee, chatting to her mum and her grandmother.

She told them all about her interview with Matron, and how she’d asked all kinds of questions about why Dora wanted to leave her children and go back to work.

‘Well, she’s got a point, ain’t she?’ Nanna said. ‘It ain’t right for a mother to go out to work. She should be with her kids.’

Dora was crestfallen, but once again her mother stepped in.

‘Listen to yourself, Ma! You were working down the laundry when you were nine months gone with our Brenda and me, so don’t you try to tell anyone different. And I was just the same.’ She turned to Dora. ‘Take no notice of her, Dor. She’s just in one of her cantankerous moods. You should hear her talking about you to the neighbours. Anyone would think you were Florence Nightingale herself the way she goes on about you.’

‘I do not!’ Nanna Winnie denied, two bright spots of colour staining her jowly cheeks. ‘And as for you,’ she turned her attention to Little Alfie, who had the misfortune to walk through the back door at that moment, ‘you get out there and take those filthy boots off before you come into my nice clean kitchen. I ain’t having you tramping mud all the way through. And I hope you ain’t been feeding that sodding rabbit again? I’m telling you, the sooner that gets made into a pie, the better!’

Rose caught Dora’s eye across the table and winked at her. Dora grinned back. Typical Nanna Winnie. God forbid anyone should think she’d gone soft in her old age.

Rose put down her cup and stood up. ‘Anyway, I’d best get on, or I’ll never get any food on the table.’

‘Can I help?’ Dora offered.

Before her mother could reply, Danny scrambled to his feet, a tangle of lanky arms and legs.

‘I’ll h-help,’ he said. ‘I l-like cooking.’

‘Well, then, I won’t say no.’ Rose smiled at him. ‘Come on, Danny. You can help me cut up the greens.’

‘If the bloody rabbit ain’t had ’em all!’ Nanna muttered.

When they’d gone, Dora turned her attention to the official blue military envelope propped up on the mantelpiece. She’d spotted it the moment she came in, and her heart had bounced in her chest, hoping it might be from Nick. But peering closer, she realised the neat, round handwriting was nothing like her husband’s untidy scrawl.

‘Is that from our Josie?’ she asked.

‘It is.’ Nanna plucked the letter from behind the clock and handed it to her. ‘And this came with it, too.’ She passed over a black-and-white photograph. ‘Don’t she look lovely in her uniform?’

Dora felt a choking lump rise in her throat at the sight of her little sister Josie, looking so smart in her WAAF uniform. ‘She looks so grown up,’ she murmured.

‘That’s what I said to your mum. Hard to believe she’s turned twenty, ain’t it?’

Dora stared at her sister’s smiling face. She was the only one of the family to inherit their mother’s slender dark beauty and not their father’s red hair and sturdy limbs. She was the quietest of the rowdy Doyle clan, as well as the cleverest. She and Dora were very close, and now Josie was up in Lancashire learning how to repair aircraft, Dora missed her almost as much as she missed her Nick.

There was another letter from her sister-in-law Lily. After Dora’s brother Peter was called up, Lily and their little daughter Mabel had been evacuated down to Kent. Dora was supposed to go with them, but she couldn’t face being away from the rest of her family.

Her other younger sister Bea came home from work in time for tea, and soon they were all gathered round the table, talking and arguing as usual.

‘The girls at work reckon we’ll be invaded now,’ Bea announced, helping herself to potatoes.

Dora caught Danny’s look of dismay across the table. ‘It won’t come to that,’ she said.

‘How do you know?’ Bea pouted. ‘It makes sense, don’t it? Now they’re in Holland, we’ll be next.’

‘Not now Churchill’s in charge,’ Nanna predicted confidently. ‘That old beast will stand up to Hitler, don’t you worry.’

‘It’s our soldiers I feel sorry for,’ Bea went on, through a mouthful of food. ‘How do you think our Pete’s going to get on, stuck out there? And your Nick,’ she added, looking at Dora.

‘He’ll be all right, don’t you worry about that.’ Dora glared at her sister across the table and willed her to be quiet. Seventeen-year-old Bea had always been the troublemaker of the family, keen to stir it up whenever she could.

‘Yes, but—’

‘Can we talk about something else?’ Dora cut across her sister’s objection. ‘What was Mickey Malone doing hanging around our back alley first thing this morning?’

A dull flush rose in Bea’s face. ‘I dunno, do I?’

‘Really? He looked as if he was waiting for you.’

Rose put down her knife and fork. ‘Mickey Malone? Round here? I hope you ain’t having anything to do with him, young lady!’ she warned.

‘That family’s nothing but trouble,’ Nanna chimed in.

‘I dunno what you’re talking about,’ Bea mumbled, shooting Dora a filthy look across the table. Dora hadn’t meant to get her sister into trouble, but at least it had stopped Bea from talking about Nick and the war. Dora was finding it hard enough to keep her spirits up without her sister making it worse.

After tea, Dora went upstairs to put the twins to bed. Danny insisted on helping her.

‘Don’t you want to listen to the wireless?’ she asked him. ‘
Sandy’s Half-Hour
should be on soon. You know how much you like listening to the music.’

Nick had bought the wireless for them just before he left, and it was Danny’s pride and joy. He would sit for hours, twiddling the knobs, his ear pressed to the polished wooden set, grinning with delight at each crackle and whine. He listened to everything. He would cackle with delight at
It’s That Man Again
, hum along to the band music, and listen earnestly to the news broadcasts and the advice from
The Kitchen Front
, even though he didn’t understand them. It made Dora smile to see him so happy.

‘I’d r-rather help you.’ He slanted a shy smile at her. ‘B-besides, you always say I can g-get them off to sleep b-better than you.’

Dora smiled. ‘That you can, Danny,’ she agreed. ‘Come on, then, let’s get this pair washed and changed.’

She was amazed at how deft Danny was at changing the babies’ nappies. The young man who was so clumsy he couldn’t tie his own shoelaces, was gentle and careful when it came to folding and pinning the towelling squares into place. He was an expert compared to the ham-fisted attempts of the student nurses Dora used to see on the children’s ward.

Once they’d got the twins washed and powdered and in their nightclothes, Dora tucked them up in the middle of the double bed with bolsters on either side to stop them rolling. Walter went to sleep straight away, but Winnie twisted and grizzled, holding out her chubby hands.

‘She w-wants Aggy,’ Danny said, pulling the battered rag doll out of his pocket and handing it to Dora. ‘She won’t sleep w-without her.’

‘Thanks, Dan. I might have known you wouldn’t forget.’ Dora took the doll from him and tucked it in beside her daughter. Sure enough, Winnie gave a satisfied sigh and her eyelids fluttered closed.

If only all our problems could be sorted out so easily, Dora thought.

She left Danny singing to them while she went to sort through the pile of washing her mum had left in a corner of the room. ‘You Are My Sunshine’, as usual. Danny had heard Jimmie Davis singing it on the wireless and hadn’t stopped humming it since.

It was strange, she thought. Danny usually stammered words when he spoke, but for some reason he could sing without a single stumble.

Dora joined in, humming to herself as she picked up his shirt to fold it. But the sight of it in her hands stopped her in her tracks. Why did even the simplest job have to remind her that Nick wasn’t here? His absence permeated every part of her life, from the moment she woke up without him in bed, to the moment she went to sleep thinking about him.

‘Nick will come home, w-won’t he, Dora?’

She looked up, shocked to hear her own thoughts put into words. Danny had stopped singing and was watching her carefully. She hoped he hadn’t seen her falter, or the tears she’d quickly dashed away.

‘Of course he will, Dan.’ She forced lightness into her voice.

‘B-but Bea said—’

‘Take no notice of Bea,’ Dora dismissed instantly. ‘She talks a lot of nonsense.’

Danny was silent for a moment. ‘Nick w-won’t get killed, will he, Dora?’ he asked finally.