Annie Groves - The District Nurses of Victory Walk

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The compelling bestseller from the author of The Mersey Daughter and Winter on the Mersey.Alice Lake has arrived in London from Liverpool to start her training as a District Nurse, but her journey has been far from easy. Her parents think that she should settle down and get married, but she has already had her heart broken once and isn’t about to make the same mistake again.Alice and her best friend Edith are based in the East End but before they’ve even got their smart new uniforms on, war breaks out and Hitler’s bombs are raining down on London. Alice must learn to keep calm and carry on as she tends to London’s sick and injured, all the time facing her own heartache and misfortune while keeping up the Spirit of the Blitz…

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The difference between the bright daylight and the gloom of the corridor made them blink, and Alice at first almost didn’t see the young woman who let them in. She swiftly led them down the dim hallway and up a set of stairs, turning and opening a door, with a shy murmur of ‘she’s been expecting you’, before vanishing again. Sunshine flooded in through a large window, falling on a sturdy but well-worn wooden desk covered in cardboard folders, with an equally solid-looking wooden bookcase behind it. Alice had just enough time to notice the familiar spines of textbooks she had studied when a student nurse before a bustling woman in uniform shot across from the far corner of the room and started speaking at top speed. Her hair was red as copper, her face was sprinkled with freckles and she was even shorter than Edith. Alice had the distinct impression that here was somebody who hardly ever sat still – keen energy radiated from her as she waved them inside the office.

‘Come in, come in. Make yourselves comfortable. Nurses Lake and Gillespie, I take it?’ She looked at them brightly.

‘Y-yes,’ Alice stuttered, momentarily taken aback by the woman’s strong Scottish accent. ‘I’m Alice Lake.’

‘Then you must be Edith Gillespie,’ the woman said, sounding delighted as she took them across to the slightly faded sofa on the far side of the room. ‘I’m Fiona Dewar, and I’ll be your superintendent. Sit, sit and take the weight off your feet, there’ll be time enough for standing very shortly. Take every opportunity for a nice sit-down in this business, that’s what I say, because who knows when you’ll get another chance? You’ll be rushing around soon enough, I’ll be bound.’ She took her seat behind the desk and pulled one of the folders towards her. ‘Gladys will bring us a cup of tea, that’s the young lady who let you in. She doesn’t say much to start with but you’ll get to know her all the same, I’m sure. So, now, your previous matron has said some very impressive things about you, Miss Lake.’ She turned a page in the file. ‘Most promising. You weren’t inclined to go back to your home town, then?’ She looked up and, although her grey eyes were kind, Alice realised they missed nothing.

Hastily she cleared her throat. ‘No, I did my specialist training in London and I grew to like it. Besides, it means I can work with Edith, we work well as a team.’ She smiled at the superintendent, hoping there would be no further questions in this delicate area. She had no intention of revealing her real reason for staying away from Liverpool. That was her own private business, and it would stay that way if she had anything to do with it.

Edith beamed and the superintendent turned her gaze towards her. ‘Ah yes, Miss Gillespie, it’s always good to have a friend to hand, especially when you’re in a responsible profession like nursing.’

Alice winced a little as yet again the older woman had homed in on a sensitive issue. Edith took her responsibilities very seriously – for as long as she was on duty. After that she took having fun very seriously as well. Alice suspected their former matron might well have made a note to that effect.

Edith sat up straight against the slightly sagging cushions of the sofa. ‘Yes, Miss Dewar. I know we won’t go round in pairs but we always found it useful to help each other out when we were studying, testing each other, that sort of thing.’

Fiona Dewar nodded sagely. ‘Indeed. That shows commendable dedication. And we don’t stand on ceremony here, girls. You may call me Fiona, unless it’s in front of patients or doctors. It may surprise you to learn that I’m not vastly older than you are.’

Alice made a valiant attempt not to let her astonishment show on her face. Their previous superiors would have never, ever have relaxed the tradition of formal titles. Besides, she had thought Fiona Dewar must be at least twice her own age – but then, looking more closely, she saw that she was wrong. Perhaps the superintendent was in her late thirties; but knowing she was at such a senior level had made Alice assume she must be even older. ‘No, of course not,’ she managed to say, as Edith was clearly unable to utter a word.

The superintendent beamed again. ‘I’m delighted you’ve both decided to join us. I know the borough’s main branch is a bit more central, but we like to think we keep a welcoming house here.’

Alice shifted in her seat. ‘We saw that you had vacancies for two nurses and so we thought we could stick together.’

Fiona nodded again. ‘That sounds very sensible. So, I’m sure you’re well prepared for your new positions and you’d never have passed the exam if you weren’t, but all the same …’ She sat back a little, clasping her hands. ‘It will be different to what you’ve been used to working in a hospital. Of course you are still under the medical direction of a doctor – you won’t be expected to dispense medicine for any patient except in emergencies, and I’m happy to say that our local GPs all appreciate the hard work we district nurses do. All the same, you will be required to show initiative and to take every opportunity to promote good health and hygiene to every family. Prevention is better than cure.’ Her eyes gleamed and Alice and Edith smiled in agreement.

‘Always remember, you are guests in the patients’ homes.’ Fiona’s face grew serious. ‘We never, ever judge our patients on account of their creed or degree of poverty. I regret to say that you will have plenty of dealings with the various officials who oversee public assistance, as many households around here can’t pay into provident schemes. Yet they are all equal when it comes to treatment.’

‘Of course,’ said Alice hurriedly, inwardly wondering how bad it might be. She knew all about poverty in theory – but she’d never gone without herself.

‘So, ladies, may I safely presume that you can ride bicycles?’

‘Yes, I been doing that since I was a kiddie,’ Edith assured the woman.

Alice inclined her head towards her friend. ‘I can manage a bike too.’ She’d never been allowed one as a child; her parents had thought it was too dangerous an activity for their beloved only daughter. ‘I learned when I was a student nurse. When we were working shifts it was the only reliable way to get around.’

‘Quite so,’ Fiona Dewar said approvingly. ‘We are fortunate to be well connected with public transport here, as you must have found out earlier, but when visiting your patients you will have to do so by bike. There’s no bus or tram that will get down some of our narrower streets. Do I take it that neither of you are familiar with this part of London?’

Both nurses shook their heads.

‘Oh, it’s a wonderful place to work.’ The superintendent spread her hands in front of her. ‘You’ll never be bored for a minute. We have unemployment around here, of course, and some of our local citizens do live cheek by jowl, you might say, and so we have to be extra vigilant against the spread of disease. There was an outbreak of typhoid down in Shoreditch at the beginning of the year, terrible business. Overcrowding makes it worse. But then, you knew all that before you qualified, didn’t you?’

Alice agreed somewhat nervously. It was one thing to learn such things as a part of a course, quite another to be brought face to face with the facts. Still, if she’d wanted an easy life she could have gone back to Liverpool. Although that would have been difficult in other ways.

‘It can’t be any more overcrowded than where I grew up,’ said Edith matter-of-factly. ‘We were seven of us children in a two-bedroom house and that was better off than some of our neighbours. You just got on and made the best of things.’

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