The Nightingale Girls (52 page)

Veronica Hanley stared at her in frustration. She wished she understood delicacy and tact, because she needed them for what she had to say next. For a moment she almost wished she had Matron’s facility with words. She might not approve of Kathleen Fox’s methods, or indeed anything much about her, but she had to admit Matron had a way of talking that seemed to get through to people. Unlike Veronica, who just seemed to blunder about, trampling over everything like the big, clumsy thing she was.

A bull in a china shop, her mother had always called her. That was exactly what she felt like now.

‘Well, Miss Hanley,’ Constance was already dismissing her. ‘Thank you for coming all this way, but I do have another appointment . . .’

‘Wait.’ Veronica rummaged in her ancient handbag. It had been her mother’s and had lain unused at the back of her wardrobe for such a long time the leather was cracked and dry. ‘I have a photograph I would like to show you. I think it’s in here somewhere . . .’

Constance tutted. ‘Can’t it wait, Miss Hanley? Only I am in rather a hurry.’

‘Please, it won’t take a moment . . . ah, here it is.’ She pulled the photograph out of her bag. The sepia image had yellowed with age. ‘I think you might find it interesting.’

Constance Tremayne took the photograph with a heavy sigh. ‘Really, Miss Hanley, I don’t have time to . . .’ She stopped dead as her gaze fixed on the figures in the photograph.

Veronica had seen the colour drain from people’s faces when they were given bad news about a loved one. And here it was, happening to Constance Tremayne. Her skin turned the colour of putty.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said faintly. ‘How did you get this?’

‘Before I began my training at the Nightingale, I was a cadet nurse at a hospital on the south coast. St Anthony’s in Whitstable. That’s a photograph of all the staff, taken one Christmas.’ She pointed over Mrs Tremayne’s shoulder at the chubby girl standing head and shoulders above her neighours in the middle of a row. ‘That’s me. I was a big galumphing thing even then.’ She moved her finger up to the back row of the photograph. ‘Those are the sisters, and those,’ she traced some more of the faces, ‘are the staff nurses. I can still remember their names, all these years later. Porter, Casey . . . and there’s Nurse Brown. She was on the TB ward. Very efficient. I must confess, I always wanted to be like her.’

‘Fascinating, I’m sure.’ Constance recovered her composure as she handed the photograph back.

‘But something happened to Staff Nurse Brown. Something rather shocking, I’m afraid.’ Miss Hanley gazed at the photograph for a moment longer. ‘I’ve never had anything to do with gossip. Even as a cadet, I kept myself to myself and never joined in when the other girls gleefully spread rumours about each other. I think it’s rather ghoulish to derive enjoyment from other people’s misfortune, don’t you? But even with my head in a book, I still heard stories. And the one about Staff Nurse Brown was just too difficult to ignore. Everywhere I went in the hospital, people seemed to be talking about it.’

She put the photograph back in her bag and snapped the clasp shut. It echoed around the silence of the room like shotgun fire.

‘You see, this unfortunate young woman fell in love with a doctor. A much older man, and married, too. Anyone with any sense could see straight away that he was just toying with her – apparently this man was notorious in the hospital as a seducer of innocent young nurses.
But the poor, besotted girl truly believed that he loved her as she loved him, and that one day he would leave his wife and they would be together.

‘Eventually, of course, their affair was discovered, and there was a huge scandal,’ Veronica continued. ‘Suddenly this poor young woman’s folly was exposed in front of everyone. But she still didn’t care, because she genuinely believed that her lover would rescue her. But he didn’t. He avoided the scandal, kept his wife and his position at the hospital, and this girl was left to face the music alone. A dreadful business.’

Colour swept Constance’s taut cheekbones, but she said nothing.

‘Of course, she was sent away in disgrace,’ Veronica said. ‘She’d lost everything, including her good name. She had no choice but to leave the town where she’d grown up and move somewhere else. Start all over again, if you like.’ She shook her head. ‘I sometimes wonder what happened to her. I like to think she was able to start again, become the respectable, upstanding person she was always supposed to be, and find someone who was worthy of her love. I also like to think that her experience might have given her some kind of compassion and understanding. Especially where her own children are concerned.’

‘It might just as easily have made her want to protect those she loved from suffering the same fate.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Veronica agreed. ‘But hopefully she would also be wise enough to see that crushing the spirit out of them could only make them more determined to rebel against her. It might even drive them to make the same mistakes she did.’

She gazed at Constance who was now staring fixedly out of the window, as still as a statue. Only the convulsive
movement of her throat showed she hadn’t been turned to stone.

‘I think Staff Nurse Brown would bring up her children to know right from wrong,’ Veronica continued. ‘I also think she would trust them to make the right decisions when the time came.’

There was a long, heavy silence. Veronica held her breath as Constance Tremayne turned to face her. Her face was a carefully blank mask.

‘It’s a very nice story,’ she said pleasantly. ‘But if you’ve quite finished, I do have my committee meeting?’

‘Of course. I won’t take up any more of your time.’

Miss Hanley heard the front door close behind her but didn’t look back until she reached the end of the drive. She’d half expected Mrs Tremayne to be standing at the window, watching her go, but she was nowhere in sight.

She cursed herself for coming. She didn’t know if she’d made it better or worse for Helen Tremayne by trying to talk to her mother. And there was so much more she wished she’d said, too. She wanted to assure Mrs Tremayne that she would never tell her story again, not to another living soul. She wanted to tell her how much she respected and admired her, how she looked up to her.

Just as she’d once looked up to poor Constance Brown.

‘I’M SO SORRY,’
Helen said.

She had never felt more wretched in her life than she did at that moment, sitting across the table from Charlie in the brightly lit cafe where they’d shared so many happier times. They had been sitting there all evening, and Antonio the proprietor was wiping tables, ready to close up.

But neither of them wanted to leave, because they knew it was the last time they were going to be together.

‘I don’t understand,’ Charlie said again, his voice choked. ‘I thought you loved me?’

‘I do, more than anything.’ Helen had only begun to realise how much now she knew she was going to lose him.

‘Then why can’t we be together?’

Helen sighed. They’d talked about it endlessly, going round and round in agonising circles, both of them getting more and more upset and frustrated.

‘How can we stay together when I’m going to be in Scotland? I couldn’t expect you to wait for me.’

‘You know I’d wait for ever for you.’

Helen shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be fair on you. You deserve to be free, to find someone else.’

‘How many more times do I have to tell you? I don’t want anyone but you!’ Charlie ran his hand through his hair, exasperated.

‘We have to make a clean break. It’s for the best,’ Helen said firmly.

In her heart she desperately wanted to ask him to wait
for her. But she knew she couldn’t. Whatever Charlie might say, he was bound to find someone else while she was away. And painful as it might be now, she knew it would be a lot worse to have to find out in six months, or a year’s time that he’d stopped loving her.

Charlie stared down into his empty teacup. ‘It’s not fair,’ he said. ‘Why does it have to be Scotland? Why can’t your mum just let you carry on your training here?’

Because she wants to punish me, Helen thought bleakly. ‘She thinks it would be best.’

‘Is it because of me?’ he asked.

Helen looked into his blue eyes, so sad and desperate for reassurance. ‘It’s my fault,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have started seeing you behind her back. I should have known she’d find out, and that she’d be angry with me for lying to her.’

‘You hardly lied to her, did you?’ Charlie reasoned. ‘Not telling her something isn’t the same as telling her a downright lie.’

‘Not as far as my mother is concerned. She likes to know everything about my life.’

Charlie thought for a moment. ‘What if I was to talk to her?’ he said suddenly. ‘Perhaps if I was to meet her, let her see I was a decent sort of bloke, she’d change her mind and let you stay?’

‘You don’t know my mother.’ Helen shook her head. ‘She never changes her mind about anything. Once she’s decided something, that’s it.’

She wondered what her mother would make of Charlie anyway. To Helen, he was the most handsome, wonderful, loving man in the world. But no one would ever meet Constance Tremayne’s impossibly high standards.

‘It sounds as if you’ve already given up?’ he said. ‘Don’t you want us to be together?’

‘You know I do.’

‘Then fight!’ he urged, gripping her hand. ‘Helen, I’m ready to try anything, do anything, it takes to keep you. And all you’re doing is sighing and shaking your head and telling me it’s all useless, that it won’t work. Why don’t you stand up to your mother, tell her you won’t be pushed around any more?’ He sent her a hurt look. ‘Unless you really don’t care about me?’

‘That’s not fair!’ she protested. ‘Of course I care about you. I love you.’

‘But not enough to stand up to your mother?’

Helen swallowed hard. Charlie was right, she was being a coward.

Millie had told her much the same thing the day before.

‘You don’t really want to leave, do you?’ she had said, her big blue eyes swimming with tears.

‘Of course I don’t.’ A year ago, Helen might not have cared what happened to her. But over the past months she had made good friends at Nightingale’s, and now she knew she would be heartbroken to say goodbye.

‘Then tell her you’re not going,’ Millie shrugged, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. ‘She can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do.’

‘You don’t know my mother.’

‘I know that if I really wanted something, I wouldn’t let anyone stand in my way,’ Millie had said firmly.

It was easy for her, Helen thought. She hadn’t been brought up under an iron rule. The idea of making her own decisions was so strange to Helen, she wasn’t sure she would even be able to do so without Constance Tremayne’s approval.

They were both silent, lost in their own thoughts. Helen glanced up at the clock on the wall, ticking away the
minutes treacherously. Soon she would have to be getting back to the hospital.

‘I’m sorry.’ Charlie threaded his fingers through hers. ‘I shouldn’t have got angry at you. We haven’t got that much time left together, I don’t want to spend it arguing.’

‘I do love you,’ Helen said unhappily. ‘And if I had my way, we’d be together every minute of the day, but . . .’

‘Then let me come with you,’ Charlie cut across her words, his fingers tightening around hers. ‘If you have to go to Scotland, then so will I.’

Helen stared at him. ‘I couldn’t ask you to do that.’

‘You’re not asking me, I’m offering. I could move up to Scotland, find digs near your hospital.’ His face was eager. ‘Then we could see each other all the time, and no one would be able to say anything about it.’

‘But my mother—’

‘What would she know about it? She’d be miles away. Don’t you think it’s a good idea? It’s so simple, I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it before!’

He laughed in delight, but Helen was hesitant. ‘How would you live?’

‘I’d get a job, of course. I know I might not be able to run around like I used to, but there’s bound to be some kind of work I can do.’ He grinned. ‘I could be a haggis-maker. Or a sporran-hunter. Or – I don’t know – Scotland’s only one-legged bagpipe player. I could do something, anyway.’

His good humour was so infectious, Helen smiled in spite of herself. But deep down she was still wary. ‘What about your family? You wouldn’t be able to see them as much as you do now.’ She knew how close Charlie was to his parents and brothers and sisters, and how much it would hurt him not to be with them.

‘So what? I’d be with you, and that’s what’s really important.’ He beamed at her. ‘What do you think?’

Helen chewed her lip. She desperately wanted to say yes, but she knew that would just be selfish. ‘You’re a Londoner, you’d be lost in Scotland.’

‘I’d be lost without you.’

Antonio, a big man in a greasy apron, began cleaning their table. ‘Haven’t you two got homes to go to?’ he said irritably.

‘I’m sorry.’ Helen instantly started to get up, but Charlie held on to her hand, pulling her back down into her seat.

‘I can’t let you go,’ he said quietly.

‘I can’t let you go, either.’ Her heart was already aching at the thought of never seeing him again.

‘Then marry me.’

Everything seemed to stop dead in that moment. Even Antonio stopped wiping their table and looked up.

‘What did you say?’ Helen frowned.

‘Marry me.’ Charlie’s eyes shone, full of hope. ‘I dunno why I didn’t think of it before. It’s obvious, isn’t it? We could get wed, and then we could live in Scotland as man and wife, and there’d be nothing your mum or anyone else could do about it.’

‘She could try to stop the wedding.’

‘Not if we eloped.’ He grinned at her. ‘Where is it couples run off to? Gretna something?’

‘Green,’ Helen said faintly. ‘Gretna Green.’

‘That’s in Scotland, isn’t it? We could get wed on the way, and then turn up as a married couple.’

‘But I couldn’t!’ Helen whispered, shocked. ‘My mother . . .’

‘Your mother wouldn’t know a thing about it. And by the time she found out, it would be too late.’ Charlie grinned. ‘Come on, what do you say?’