The Nightingale Girls - By Donna Douglas Page 0,29

a letter for posting. Regular as clockwork she was, while he was having his morning cup of tea and a look through the Daily Sketch. And every morning she would greet him with a very polite, ‘Good morning, Mr Hopkins.’

‘Good morning, Nurse,’ he would reply. ‘Another letter, is it? There’s lovely.’ Then he would look at the envelope, to check the stamp and the address. It was always the same. ‘I bet there’s a lot of mothers wish they had a daughter like you, writing every day. I’m sure she appreciates it.’

And Nurse Tremayne would always give him that same sad little smile.

‘I do hope so, Mr Hopkins,’ she’d say. And then she was off, head down, walking briskly across the courtyard towards the ward block to begin her day.

Nurse Tremayne had manners. Very poised and ladylike and never a hair out of place, not like some of them he saw scuttling across the courtyard when they thought they wouldn’t be seen, pinning their caps into place and fastening up their collars and cuffs as they went. Unlike most of them, he had never caught Nurse Tremayne trying to sneak past his lodge after lights out or scrambling through a window someone had left open round the back of the nurses’ home. As far as he knew, she had never even asked for a late pass. And quite right too, in his opinion; girls who roamed the streets at that time of night were after getting themselves into serious trouble.

He’d caught another bunch of them the previous night, tipsy as you like, giggling as they tried to give each other a leg up the drainpipe. They were all up in front of Matron this morning, of course, but it could have been a lot worse. The state they were in, they could have broken their necks.

But not Nurse Tremayne. She wasn’t the type to gad about and get herself in a drunken state. He doubted if she even knew what a good time was. She always had that worried furrow between her brows, her shoulders hunched as if she had the weight of the world on them.

No wonder she didn’t turn heads the way the other students did. His porters would often hang about in the lodge just to watch the nurses go by and pass comments on their favourites. Hopkins didn’t hold with it, but some of these East End lads hadn’t been brought up to respect ladies the way he had. The saucier nurses even played up to it as they sauntered past, glancing over their shoulders to give them the eye.

But they never commented on Nurse Tremayne. Most of them barely seemed to notice her as she slipped by, her head down, cloak pulled around her.

Mr Hopkins sighed to himself. As he often said to Mrs Hopkins, he did not hold with gadding about. But if ever there was a girl who deserved a bit of gadding, it was poor Nurse Tremayne.

Helen walked to Holmes, the Male Surgical ward, worrying about what she’d just done. She always panicked after she’d posted a letter to her mother, just in case she’d accidentally let anything slip. She tried to be careful, but it was difficult to think straight when she was tired after a long day on the wards.

Not that it really mattered what she wrote. Whether it was a few scribbled lines or several pages detailing all the medical procedures she had learnt and all the praise she’d received in the ward report for her hard work, her mother would still be bitterly disappointed in her.

Helen was fourteen years old when her mother told her she was going to be a nurse. It didn’t occur to her to argue. Her mother chose her hairstyle, her clothes, friends, and everything else, so why should her future be any different? Like her mild-mannered father, Helen had understood early on in life that her mother did not appreciate anyone’s opinion but her own, and that the quickest way to stop any unpleasantness was just to give in straight away.

And having decided that her daughter was going to be a nurse, Constance Tremayne wouldn’t even consider the idea of her training anywhere but the Nightingale.

‘It has an excellent reputation,’ she’d said. ‘And since I’m on the Board of Trustees, I can keep an eye on you,’ she’d added sternly.

‘But what if I don’t get in?’ Helen had asked.

Her mother had stared at her as if this were the most ridiculous question in