Cathy Kelly 3-Book Collection 1: Lessons in Heartbreak, Once in a Lifetime, Homecoming. Cathy Kelly
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said Lily, proffering her own hand stiffly.
‘You’re from Ireland! Oh, I love Ireland, wonderful hunting. Do you hunt?’
‘No,’ said Lily evenly.
‘No, sorry, no, of course,’ muttered Diana.
‘Why “of course”?’ demanded Lily. ‘Why shouldn’t I hunt?’ She’d been on Lady Irene’s hunter once, a huge roan named Abu Simbel. She’d only ridden him round the yard, and she’d been scared stiff the whole time. Lord knew how people raced over hedges and ditches on horses, galloping wildly after some poor fox. It was beyond her.
‘I’ve offended you – I am so sorry.’ Diana clapped her hands to her perfectly red mouth. ‘I’m so frightfully sorry.’
And she started to cry. ‘I have to make a success of this. My father says I’m behaving like a silly child and he’s very angry with me. Can’t understand why I didn’t stay at home and go into the Auxiliary Territorial Service, says he’s going to cut my allowance and, oh, all sorts of ghastly things, so I have to do this. I have to stick at it. This is what I want, to do something with my life.’
Lily sat down beside Diana. They were almost the same size, she realised. Diana had narrow hips, long legs and a considerable bosom, as she did. She’d got Diana all wrong, she realised now. That cool poise had hidden terrible nerves.
‘My father didn’t want me to come either,’ Lily offered. ‘Wants to know why I’m going off to nurse people in a war he says shouldn’t have happened in the first place. He’s not keen on war: we’ve had a fair bit of it at home. But this is the only way I’d be able to train as a nurse properly, and I wanted to do something too.’
‘Goodness, Daddy thinks war is the only answer,’ said Diana. ‘He’s simply furious his gammy leg prevented him from rejoining his old regiment. He’s stuck with the Home Guard. He doesn’t believe I’ll be any good at nursing. He won’t disinherit me, though – nothing to leave.’
Suddenly they both began to laugh, and Diana was wiping tears away with a silk handkerchief.
‘There’s nothing for me to inherit, either,’ Lily said.
The door opened and a small, freckled face with a mop of fair curls peeped round.
‘Am I in the right place?’ she asked in a strong Cockney accent.
‘This is room fifteen,’ Lily replied.
‘That’s me then,’ said the girl, and came into the room properly, dragging a suitcase that looked bigger than she was. She was tiny, like an older version of Shirley Temple with those curls, but her laughing, cat-shaped eyes made her appear a little more grown up.
‘Maisie Higgins,’ she said. ‘Lawks, crying already!’ She stared at Diana’s tear-stained cheeks. ‘I heard the matron was a bit of a Tartar, but I didn’t think she’d be cracking the whip already.’
The first weeks in the grand old hospital on Gray’s Inn Road were hard and exhausting. Lily and Maisie at least were used to getting up early – Maisie had been an apprentice in a hairdressers’ – but Diana found it a nightmare. Food in the home was good, despite rationing. But the hardest part was getting used to dealing with actual patients. Anyone thinking there would be a lot of theory and lessons before they worked on the wards had been in for a shock.
Despite being students, they were thrown in at the deep end.
‘This is wartime,’ said one of their nursing tutors that first day as she led them from ward to ward, letting them see the size of the great hospital. ‘Sad to say, but it’s a great time to learn because you’ll see things that you’ve never seen before. A quarter of last year’s intake have dropped out, didn’t have the stomach for it. So, ladies, it’s up to you.’
One of their number vomited at the sight of a burn victim having his dressings changed. Lily felt like joining her. But she forced herself to stand up straight and proud at the bedside. If she was to do this job properly, she’d have to learn to deal with worse sights. She would not be dropping out.
‘You all right?’ she whispered to Diana, who was looking very green under her starched nurse’s cap.
‘Not really,’ Diana murmured, wobbling on her feet.
‘Think how hard it’ll be for the poor man if we all run like headless chickens,’ Lily said, her eyes still on the patient’s face, taking in the terrible charred edges of the burns and the raw pink skin underneath.
‘Righto,’ gulped Diana. ‘I understand.’ She smiled at the man.
‘Well done, Nurse Belton,’ said the tutor. ‘Thought we’d lost you for a moment there.’
‘Not a chance,’ said Diana, squeezing Lily’s hand tightly.
Lily was surprised and pleased to discover that there were women medical students at the Royal Free.
‘Wonder if they’re like us and get the dirtiest jobs?’ Maisie said thoughtfully.
‘Not bloody likely,’ said another of the trainees.
The student nurses undoubtedly got all the worst jobs on the wards, mainly bed-pan duty and sponge-bathing patients. One of the more sadistic ward sisters took an instant dislike to Diana and gave her all the most horrible jobs, including reapplying a dressing to a wounded man’s groin area.
Diana nearly died of embarrassment, she told the other student nurses that evening in the home’s tiny common room.
‘I don’t know which of us went pinker,’ Diana sighed, ‘him or me. Poor chap.’
‘Poor chap!’ parroted Cheryl, a tough girl from Walthamstow who never missed the opportunity to tease Diana over her cut-glass accent. ‘Bloody toff,’ said Cheryl. ‘Who’s she think she is – Lady Muck? She should have stayed at home with the butler. We don’t want her sort here.’
It had been another in a series of long days and Lily was dead on her feet. But even so, she could recognise that something needed to be done.
Easing her tired body out of her chair, Lily stood up and put her hands on her hips. ‘You’ve an awful mouth on you, Cheryl,’ she said coldly. ‘Diana doesn’t look down on you, so you ought to stop looking down on her.’
This stopped Cheryl in her tracks. ‘Me look down on her?’
‘Do you look down on me, too?’ Lily went on. ‘Am I a big thick Irishwoman when I’m not here to hear it?’
‘No,’ shot back Cheryl. ‘You’re different…’
‘We’re all different,’ Lily said sharply. ‘It’s high time you got used to it.’
‘Or else?’ Cheryl’s pointed face hardened.
Lily drew herself up to her full imposing height. ‘I was raised right beside a farm. My father’s a blacksmith and my mother’s in service, and I can launder a lady’s camis as handily as help shoe a horse. There were lots of knocks in my life before I came here and I’m not putting up with any more from the likes of you, madam. I don’t believe in raising my fist to anyone, but if I did, I’d knock you from here to kingdom come and you wouldn’t get up in a hurry, I can tell you. So leave Diana alone.’
‘The wild Irish girl!!’ cheered someone.
‘Fine,’ snapped Cheryl and left the room in a huff.
‘Thank you so much,’ Diana said, grabbing Lily’s arm. ‘That’s the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for me.’
She had tears in her eyes. Lily realised that at some point she’d have to explain to Diana that, when she was feeling vulnerable, she adopted an icy demeanour that gave entirely the wrong impression.
‘Think us three ought to stick together,’