Annie Groves - Wartime for the District Nurses

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

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London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2019

Copyright © Annie Groves 2019

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

Cover photographs © Jonathan Ring (models), Lebrecht Music & Arts / Alamy Stock Photo (background)

Annie Groves asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008272241

Ebook Edition © April 2019 ISBN: 9780008272258

Version: 2019-02-25

Many, many thanks Teresa Chris, Kate Bradley and Pen Isaac – the dream team.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

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Edith Gillespie woke up and for a moment could not work out where she was. Her brain was too befuddled with sleep to remember and there was no light to give her a clue. She struggled to work it out.

Not in the house where she’d grown up in south London, that was for sure, because there would have been the sound of at least one of her many siblings breathing, or snoring, or sneezing. She’d never had the luxury of a room to herself for all those years, not until she’d left home to train as a nurse. She didn’t think she was in her nurses’ dormitory, though. That had been near a station and you could always hear the trains, or porters and drivers shouting. After that she’d chosen to take extra training as a district nurse, but this didn’t feel like the home in Richmond. It must be wherever she’d gone after that.

Now it all came back to her. She was at the North Hackney Queen’s Nurses home on Victory Walk, in Dalston. This was her little attic room, and the reason it was so dark was that the blackout blind was firmly in place. The country was at war, and had been for nearly a year. It was warm as it was summer, and from the birdsong outside it was already dawn. Slowly she sat up and shook her head, trying to wake up.

Her dream lingered on the fringes of her mind. The details had gone but the sensation of happiness – of being cared for – remained, and she smiled in the darkness, savouring that comforting and thrilling feeling. Somebody loved her and she loved them back.

Then she remembered and cried out despite herself. Harry was gone. Harry Banham, the most handsome and wonderful man in the world, had not made it back from Dunkirk, and she was alone. Her dream had lied. There was nobody to hug her, to hold her and tell her how beautiful she was. There was no golden future for the couple who’d attracted envious glances wherever they’d gone. The life they’d so recently begun to plan was never going to happen. Sobs came from her throat and dimly she realised that she started most of her days like this, waking in the hope of seeing Harry and then coming back to reality with a sickening bump.

Her alarm clock began to ring and she reached automatically to silence it, then crept across the rag rug to the window and pulled back a corner of the blind. Sunshine edged its way into the little room, revealing that it was far from luxurious but had all the essentials. The room of a woman who had a job to do.

Edith turned to her wardrobe. The full-length mirror on its door reflected her slight figure, with her short, dark hair sticking up from where she’d slept on it. Her dark eyes took it in and she automatically smoothed it back down. Then she took out her uniform, shaking out the creases. Time to start the day. No matter that her heart was still raw from recent bereavement. Plenty of others were in the same boat. She had to carry on as normal and do what was required of her. After all, she was a nurse.

‘Gladys, whatever are you doing?’

Edith arrived downstairs for breakfast to be greeted by her colleague, Mary Perkins, complaining loudly. Mary had never been one for waking up in the best of tempers and now her voice rose over the clattering of saucepans and pots being stacked on the lino floor of the storeroom, which was squeezed between the stairs and the large area they all used as a canteen and common room.

Gladys, who helped out their cook and with general domestic duties, stood up and pushed her lank brown hair from her eyes. Even though the morning was still young she looked as if she’d already been up for hours.

‘We got to hand over all our scrap metal,’ she said. ‘The government says so. There’s going to be a collection or we can take it to the council. So I’m sorting out all our old pots what aren’t no real use any more.’

‘Yes, but can’t you do so quietly?’ Mary wailed. ‘Surely they can’t need it right now? The council depots won’t even be open, and I’ll bet all their staff are still safely asleep, like anybody sensible would be.’

Gladys shook her head. ‘I got other things to do later. So I thought I’d get on and do this now, then it will be one job done and ticked off me list.’

Edith nodded to herself. This time last year, Gladys wouldn’t have said boo to a goose, but she’d changed in the months in between, gaining in confidence and learning to read. Now she was standing up to Mary, who had a heart of gold, but was used to a lifetime of speaking sharply to servants.

‘Come on,’ Edith said, not wanting to start the day with a row. ‘I’m starving. Let’s have some toast.’ She steered Mary away and over to a vacant dining table, as Gladys resumed her sorting and stacking.

Mary plonked herself down on the hard wooden chair, which made her rich brown curls bounce around her cross face, and allowed Edith to fetch her some toast and a cup of tea. ‘It’s too bad,’ she grumbled.