The Nightingale Girls - By Donna Douglas Page 0,66
the icy January air on her cheeks she felt foolish. Fancy feeling sick at the sight of a drawing in a medical book! If she was like this now, how would she be when she reached the wards?
Of course Lucy Lane had a field day afterwards, regaling everyone who’d listen about Doyle turning queasy at the facts of life lecture.
‘I told them all it must have been something you ate,’ Millie told her loyally in their room later. Dora had escaped there as soon as the morning lectures had ended, unable to face lunch in the dining room with the others. Millie had taken the big risk of smuggling her a slice of bread and marge, even though it meant sneaking it past Sister Sutton’s room and Sparky’s keen nose.
‘Thanks.’ Dora nibbled on the crust. It might have been true, she reflected. She was usually ravenous by lunchtime, but it was all she could do to swallow past the solid lump of misery in her throat.
Millie watched her, her wide blue eyes sympathetic. ‘It is all rather beastly, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘All that business Sister Parker told us about, I mean. Glenda Pritchard actually fainted when she told us during my last stint in PTS. So I think you did rather well, under the circumstances.’ She shook her head. ‘It seems so terribly complicated, doesn’t it?’ she whispered, her voice hushed with awe.
Dora put down her piece of bread, her appetite deserting her. ‘I don’t know and I don’t want to know,’ she said firmly. Then she added, ‘I think I should just pack it in and go home.’
Millie stared at her. ‘Why? Not just because you went a bit wobbly in a lecture, surely? I told you, Glenda Pritchard was far worse than you—’
‘Not just because of that,’ Dora said. The truth was, she didn’t feel as if she really belonged at the Nightingale. She’d really tried to fit in, but she was always painfully aware of the differences between her and the other pros. They were all well-to-do, well educated girls who knew so much more than she did. Not just the subjects they learned in class, but all the other things books didn’t teach. The unwritten rules, like which knife and fork to use, how to pour a cup of tea, how to speak properly. They talked in a language she didn’t understand, about ballet lessons and boarding schools.
And none of them understood her, either. None of them had lived the life she had, working in a sweat shop and dodging the rent man.
Not that she could explain that to Millie. She was the poshest of the lot of them, but she was also the nicest. She was so used to being pretty and popular, she simply wouldn’t be able to imagine what it must be like to feel like an outsider.
‘I’m going to fail PTS,’ Dora said. ‘The exams are only a couple of weeks away, and I still don’t have my books. I’ll never catch up at this rate.’
‘I’m sure they’d let you take PTS again, like they did me,’ Millie said cheerfully.
Dora smiled, but didn’t reply. They might give an Earl’s daughter a second chance, but she doubted if they’d do the same to an East End girl who’d barely scraped in the first time round.
‘Anyway, I’ve already said you can have my books,’ Millie went on.
‘And I’ve already said thanks but no thanks.’
‘There must be some way you can get the money to buy them?’
‘I don’t have rich relatives like you, more’s the pity.’
‘My relatives aren’t that rich, most of them are in hock up to their eyeballs just to keep – that’s it!’ Millie’s eyes lit up. ‘You could pawn something!’
Her pretty, innocent face was so earnest, Dora couldn’t help laughing. ‘And what does an Earl’s daughter know about pawning things?’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Millie said. ‘My third cousin Lord Lumley had a terrible gambling habit. He was forever heading up to London with a suitcase full of the family silver.’
‘It’s a pity I don’t have any silver to pawn, then!’ Dora said wryly.
‘What about that charm your friend gave you?’
‘My hamsa? I can’t get rid of that.’
‘You wouldn’t be getting rid of it. You could get it back when you get paid next month.’
Dora considered it. Esther had told her to use it whenever she needed a bit of luck. Perhaps it would turn out to be lucky for her after all . . .