‘I expect that is because his father was lost at sea some years ago,’ Sister Ruth Linton said. ‘I read the police constable’s report. The mother looked after them well and they both attended school fairly regularly until about six months ago … but things have gone downhill since then.’
‘I expect it is this man – her pimp, I imagine. He is the reason she’s in hospital and Charlie’s back is covered in bruises.’
‘Should we have the doctor to him?’
‘Yes, when he comes but there is no need to call him out tonight,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s happened frequently by the look of the bruises – some old, some new. Still, it may be best to get Dr Kent to look when he comes.’
‘I’ll make sure he is told,’ Sister Linton said and picked up her tray. ‘I’m taking this to Matron. She has been sitting with a female patient all night. Sal is not expected to last until morning and Matron will not leave her while she lives.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah said. She understood Matron’s wish to remain with a patient she cared for. The nurses were taught never to become fond of a patient but it happened just the same. When you looked after someone, day in and day out, it was always a wrench when they passed away. ‘It is a sad time for her.’
‘Sal is a believer and has made her peace with God; she will go to her rest soon,’ Ruth Linton said. ‘However, she is suffering and Matron is trying to ease her passing. I shall take them both a cup of tea.’
Sarah got on with her sandwich making. In a place like this death was a part of life; despite all the efforts of the nurses and doctors it could not be avoided.
She found some jelly and took two small ice creams from the refrigerator. They were kept for the sick children, but Sarah doubted Charlie and Maisie had ever tasted them before and wanted to give them a real treat. Returning to the ward, she discovered them sitting in bed, faces shining and clean, like a pair of little angels. They sat forward eagerly as she set the tray on Maisie’s bed, handing Charlie his sandwiches and a bun on a plate and placing the dishes of jelly and ice cream on the little cabinet between their beds.
‘Enjoy your supper. I have to go back to my own ward, but I’ll come and see how you’re getting on tomorrow night when I’m on duty.’
‘Yeah, all right,’ Charlie said, his mouth full of ham sandwich. ‘This is smashing, nurse – yer all right.’
‘Thanks, I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Sarah said. On impulse she bent and kissed first his cheek and then Maisie’s. ‘Look after your sister, Charlie. You’re both safe now you’re here.’
She left them both eating happily. They were the only two in their part of the ward, which was divided by a screen. Nurse Jenny Brown was on the other side of the screen, attending to a young girl named Dora who had been brought in that day with a cut on her leg. It had been bandaged and she’d been fed and looked after earlier, but she was frightened, complaining that her leg was painful.
The worst thing about it was that her injury had come from the man who had been her foster carer. He and his wife had gone out to get drunk and when they returned he’d hit the child and sent her tumbling down the stairs. The wife had come to her senses quickly and sent for the doctor, who had acted immediately, sending the girl to the infirmary, whereupon, her husband had hit his wife and sent her flying to teach her to keep her mouth shut. She’d told the doctor that the girl had fallen, but he’d reported the incident to the police and they were investigating. However, cases like this often went unresolved, because the children and wives were too frightened to speak against the bullies that hurt them.
‘It will be a little sore for a while, Dora,’ Jenny told her. ‘But there’s no need to worry. I’ll get you a nice cup of cocoa and that will help you to sleep.’
‘I thought you were on the women’s ward this evening?’ Sarah queried as Jenny left the child to fetch her cocoa. ‘Isn’t Nurse Anne on duty here?’
‘I am on women’s, but Dora lives in my street so I thought I’d pop in and see her – her mother is on the women’s ward and was worried about her …’
‘Mother and daughter are in hospital together?’ Sarah was surprised.
‘Mrs Swan says they fell down the stairs but I know what her husband is like and I’ve heard he knocked them both about. Of course, Mrs Swan will never report him, though she called the doctor to the girl and he did, so maybe this time the police will give him a talking to.’ Not that she thought it would do much good! The only way would be to imprison him and that would leave the wife and children without financial support, so it was not a solution.
‘These bullied wives never do report it.’ The nurses shook their heads over the folly of women who put up with bullying husbands. ‘But when a child in their care gets hurt it is time something was done.’
Sarah nodded to Jenny and returned to her own ward. Sister Norton was sitting at the desk but rose as she walked towards her.
‘Everyone appears to be sleeping, nurse,’ she said. ‘Are those children in bed?’
‘Yes, eating their supper. They were just hungry and dirty – though Charlie had been beaten over the past few weeks.’
‘By the same person as attacked their mother?’ Sister Norton’s dark eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘Why will they get themselves into these predicaments?’
‘Her husband died at sea. She was probably just trying to earn a living to feed the kids.’
‘Surely there are other ways?’
‘For us, but not always for a mother with two growing children,’ Sarah said. ‘Jim’s mother found it very hard to bring up her four children after her husband died in an accident at work – that’s why we’re saving a nest egg before we marry. He doesn’t want it to happen to me.’
‘I dare say you would be missed – although Matron might keep you on if you marry. She is a law unto herself … a good nurse and caring, but I’m not sure she understands what it is like to live in the real world, and how often married nurses are obliged to take time off.’
Sarah was surprised; it was unusual for Sister to criticize Matron.
Sister Norton bid her good night and left and Sarah walked round her ward, making sure everyone was peaceful. It was easy to think someone was sleeping when they were actually lying awake and in discomfort. Medicine could be given to those it had been prescribed for, but for others a nice cup of tea would often do the trick – and if she knew Woody, he would be hoping she would take him one before the end of her shift. She would check everyone else first and then see if her favourite patient was really asleep or just ignoring Sister Norton.
CHAPTER 2
Jenny left the infirmary at the same time as Sarah Cartwright. They smiled at each other in understanding for both were yawning. It had been a long night and the wind was chilly this March day in 1936, a hint of rain in the air as they hurried for the bus. A shelter had recently been built for waiting passengers and it was a little warmer behind the glass panels.
‘I’ll be glad when spring finally comes,’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t like the winter.’
‘Nor me,’ Jenny said and moved a strand of long dark hair out of her eyes. She envied Sarah being blonde and having hair that waved naturally when she let it down from the tight knot she wore at work. Her own hair was straight and shiny and she normally wore it in a neat pleat at the back of her head. ‘Have you seen the Charlie Chaplin film that’s on at the Gaumont?’
‘No. It’s ages since Jim took me anywhere but the pub. We’re saving hard and we just go for a drink once a week … and I’d rather see Douglas Fairbanks Jr than Charlie Chaplin; he’s more romantic.’
‘Yes, dreamy. Anyway, who needs the cinema when you’ve got a chap like yours?’ Jenny said with a look of envy. ‘When are you gettin’ married?’
‘When Jim thinks we can afford it,’ Sarah said. ‘Oh, here’s my bus. Yours should be just behind. Probably see you tomorrow, then.’
Sarah leapt on her bus and Jenny craned her neck looking for the one she needed, which usually followed up behind the number forty-five, but this time there was no sign of it and she pulled her coat collar up round her neck.
‘Cold, isn’t it?’ a male voice said from behind her and Jenny turned to see a man in a fawn overcoat and a trilby hat pulled down over his brow. He looked smart, she thought, a bit like a film star with his dark, brooding good looks and she smiled. ‘It feels as if it might snow again.’
‘Oh, I do hope not,’ Jenny said. ‘I can’t wait for it to be summer again.’
‘Winter has its place, if you’ve got a nice log fire and someone to share it with,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help overhearing you and your friend just now – I like Chaplin’s films. I don’t suppose you’d like to come with me one evening?’
Jenny was taken aback by his boldness. She was just considering how she could make him aware that she wasn’t the sort of girl who could be picked up just like that when her bus came around the corner. Torn between taking the cheeky stranger down a peg or two and not wanting to miss her chance, she waved frantically at the bus to stop. Then, just as she leapt on, she turned her head and looked at him.
‘Maybe – when I know you better!’
‘Hey, don’t go!’ He moved towards the bus as if he would make a flying leap to catch it but it was too quick for him and Jenny laughed to herself as she saw the frustration in his face. Her abrupt departure had done all she’d wanted to, giving him a message she’d been unable to form in words. He was attractive, and Jenny really wanted a boyfriend to take her out and maybe to get serious with, but if he thought she was easy he would have to think again. She’d been brought up decently and her sister Lily would hit the roof if she knew Jenny had been in danger of agreeing to visit the cinema with a stranger.
Sitting in one of the front seats in the bus, Jenny smiled to herself. She’d definitely felt attracted to the handsome stranger who certainly had film star looks, but it wouldn’t do to let herself be picked up off the street, even though, for a moment, she’d been tempted.
If the stranger had also been attracted, he would return to the bus stop and introduce himself. Jenny would wait and hope – because she was nearly twenty and she’d never had a proper boyfriend, just friends who’d walked her back from school and sometimes offered a mint humbug.
Jenny’s smile vanished as she thought of her home life. She lived with her elder sister Lily and their grandmother, Mabel Brown. Mabel was half blind these days but in her own kitchen she knew exactly where everything was and refused to be made an invalid. The two sisters loved the woman who had brought them up single-handed after their parents died, and did their best to look after her now she wasn’t so well. Lily, and then Jenny, had trained to be nurses and they both worked for the Rosie Infirmary. At the moment, Lily worked days and Jenny worked nights and that meant they didn’t have to leave Gran alone much, though she was forever telling them to go out and have a good time while they were young.
‘I was courtin’ by the time I was your age,’ she’d told Jenny only a few days earlier. ‘We made it to the altar just before your father was born but not by much. I lost my man to the Great War – too old for the army, they said, so they gave him a job on the docks, cleaning the ships – and that’s what he was doin’ when one of them Zeppelins fell on the docks and killed him. That’s sod’s law, that is, my girl. If he’d gone to fight same as he wanted, he’d probably ’ave come back.’
Jenny knew Gran would have told her she should have grabbed her chance with the stranger, but Lily would say that no men were to be trusted and certainly not one who tried to pick her up at a bus stop! Jenny wondered if it was Lily’s attitude to men that had held her back, making her slow to respond to any overtures from the opposite sex, even the young curate who had come to ask after Gran and spent his time staring at Jenny. Her sister had had her heart broken by a man. Jenny knew that, even though she didn’t know the details of Lily’s unhappy love affair, which had happened when she was eighteen, and Jenny was still at junior school. If she asked, Lily just turned away and refused to answer. All she would say was that Jenny would be a fool to trust any man.
‘We’re dedicated nurses,’ she was fond of saying. ‘What do we want with marriage and a husband?’
‘What about children?’ Jenny asked once but the look on Lily’s face had made her wish she hadn’t spoken and since then she’d not mentioned the subject once. For herself, she knew that being a nurse was only a part of the life she wanted – a husband and children were her dream for the future, though she never mentioned it when Lily was around, because she didn’t want to remind her sister of what she’d lost.
As the bus slowed at her stop, Jenny got to her feet and made her way down the interior. She wanted to call in at the little shop on the corner of Little Lane and buy a packet of tea, some biscuits, and a tin of corned beef. She would get a fresh loaf too and then she could make some sandwiches for her and Gran; corned beef and sweet pickle was one of the elderly lady’s favourites and they nearly always had it on a Friday when Jenny got paid.
Sarah arrived home and put the kettle on minutes before Jim knocked on their back door. Her mother looked at her, eyebrows raised as she glanced in the mirror, fluffing out her hair before she went to answer it.
‘Set the clock by you, lad,’ Mrs Cartwright said as Jim entered and pulled her daughter into a loving embrace. ‘If my Bob had been as reliable in the mornings, he’d be gang master now instead of standing in line waiting for a job.’
‘You can’t blame Dad,’ Sarah said, even though she knew her father was sometimes the last to join the queue of jobless men waiting on the docks for a chance to earn a few quid. ‘With his back he ought to have retired years ago.’
‘He would if we could afford it,’ Mrs Cartwright said. ‘He keeps sayin’ we’ll be off to the country when you’re wed, my girl. A little cottage, vegetables, fruit, hens and a couple of pigs – that’s his dream.’
‘It’s not yours though, is it, Mum?’ Sarah said, leading Jim to the table and cutting him a slice of seed cake. ‘Eat that while I make the tea, love.’
‘Does it matter what I want?’ her mother asked ruefully. ‘Your father’s needs come first and always have.’
‘Don’t talk like that, Mum,’ Sarah chided. ‘He’s a lot better than most – just imagine how you’d feel if Dad came home drunk three or four times a week like Sid Harding.’
‘I wouldn’t put up with it like Ruby does!’ Mrs Cartwright spoke of her neighbour in a belligerent tone. ‘I told her only yesterday she should put her foot down – did you hear him shouting in their yard the other night? Keeping folk awake!’
‘I was at the infirmary,’ Sarah said. ‘Ruby works hard there, cleaning the wards. She must need her sleep and it can’t be easy living with a man like Sid.’
‘It’s because he can’t earn a living wage,’ Jim put in frowning. The one thing about living in the close-knit communities of the East End was that everyone knew everyone else in their own street and the roads nearby. Jim often saw Sid Harding propping up the bar of the pub where he worked. The Crown and Anchor was down near the East India Docks and always busy. Jim knew most of the men who frequented the docks well. ‘Don’t be too hard on him. He thinks the world of his daughter Julia – and Ruby too – but it makes him feel inadequate that he can’t keep them properly and his wife has to work as a skivvy at the Rosie. You know what the situation is like at the moment – there’s never enough work for all the men.’
‘It would be a help if Sid brought what he did earn home,’ Mrs Cartwright said. ‘Anyway, how are you getting on, lad? Any news on your promotion yet?’
Jim had applied to be the manager of the Crown and Anchor which had just been renovated. He was hoping that he would get the job, because the wages would be better and there would be living accommodation over the pub. If he got his wish, it would mean he and Sarah could bring their marriage forward. He sipped his tea and shook his head.
‘I wish they would hurry up and make up their minds. If I don’t get the job, I’ll have to think about doing something else. Life is running away with us and it’s time we were planning our wedding.’
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Mrs Cartwright said. ‘I want to live to see my grandchildren – and Bob wants that cottage in the country.’
‘Mum!’ Sarah laughed. ‘If you don’t mind, I might have an opinion about all this.’
‘You know you adore me and can’t wait to be my wife,’ Jim said and kissed her on the lips. He winked at his future mother-in-law, with whom he got on like a house on fire. ‘I’ll give the brewery a ring today and see what they have to say – now I’ll go and let Sarah get some sleep. I’ll pop in around teatime, love.’
‘All right.’ Sarah gave him a quick hug and let him go. Working nights meant that the only times they got to see each other on a working day were if Jim popped round a couple of times. When Sarah wasn’t at the infirmary, he took a few hours off to be with her and they usually took a walk to a nice pub in the Whitechapel Road or spent some time in Mrs Cartwright’s front parlour, talking and kissing and making plans for a future when they had their own home. ‘Off you go then, I’m tired.’
Jim kissed her again and left. Mrs Cartwright gave her a plate with a thick slice of toast with butter and marmalade and Sarah smiled, biting into the crunchy treat with pleasure.
‘Lovely, Mum. I’ll take it up with me if that’s OK?’
‘He’s a good lad, that Jim,’ her mother said and smiled. ‘Not many would be here on the dot when you get back from work. He works late himself, but he’s always here for you.’
Sarah nodded, because she knew what her mother thought: if it had been her, she would have married and lived in a couple of rooms. Sarah and Jim wanted a house of their own but failing that, rooms over a pub would do – and that would make life easier for them both. Sarah wasn’t sure how long she would go on nursing when she was married; it depended on how soon the babies came along – and nursing was something she could go back to when they were older. She might not find work at the state hospitals until the rule on married nurses was changed, but she knew there would always be a job for her as long as Matron was in charge of the infirmary.
She wondered if Sister’s patient had died during the night and thought it likely. The elderly lady had advanced cancer, which the doctors had pronounced inoperable. With no one to look after her at her rather bleak home, the only place for her during the last few weeks of her life had been the Rosie. Matron took all the hopeless cases and said it was her duty to care for those most in need.
Sarah’s thoughts moved on to Ruby Harding as she washed her hands and face and cleaned her teeth before tumbling into bed. Ruby was the mainstay of the cleaning team at the infirmary and had a hard life. Sarah’s mother was right when she said Ruby shouldn’t put up with Sid’s drinking, but she probably felt she had no choice.
CHAPTER 3
‘I’m warning you, Sid Harding,’ Ruby was saying to her husband at that moment as she put a plate with thick doorsteps of toast spread with dripping in front of him, ‘it’s no use you moaning about eating rubbish for breakfast. I’ve just got back from scrubbin’ three wards on me ’ands and knees and me back aches something chronic. I’ve got a second shift at the infirmary this afternoon and even that will hardly pay enough to keep a roof over our heads. If you think you’re gettin’ a fry-up in the mornings on what you bring ’ome, you can think again!’
‘Ah, give over, Ruby love,’ Sid moaned and put a hand to his head. ‘Me ’ead feels like a thousand hammers is at work.’
‘They’re workin’ ’arder than you ever do then.’ Ruby glared at him. ‘What did you ’ave left in yer pocket when you got back last night, drunk as a skunk? Two bloody shillings, that’s all. And if I hadn’t snatched that you’d ’ave spent it down the pub this morning.’
‘I only earned six bob yesterday – they give me a job sweeping out a bone lorry and I was lucky ter get that, but the stink was so bad I ’ad to ’ave a pint, love.’
‘But one is never enough for you, Sid Harding,’ Ruby said. ‘Eat up or get out of me way. I’ve got work to do – unlike you, mine never stops.’
Sid muttered something rude beneath his breath, careful not to let Ruby hear what he said, because she wouldn’t stand for swearing. Grabbing his threadbare jacket, he slouched off with a glare at his wife.
Ruby nodded her satisfaction when she saw he’d only eaten one slice of toast and dripping. Sid wasn’t one for fatty stuff, but Ruby loved it. She ate the second slice with relish. It just served him right and she’d punished him for coming home drunk yet again. It was time he started looking for work properly and kept what he did earn for her and his daughter.
Julia was a bright girl, really clever. Ruby sometimes wondered where she’d got her brains from, because it certainly wasn’t Sid, and Ruby herself wasn’t one for book learning. Julia’s teachers said that she had a good future in front of her, providing she won a scholarship to the grammar school – but that only paid the tuition fees. The uniform – which included indoor shoes as well as outdoor ones, PE and sports outfits and a tennis racket and a hockey stick – and books, all cost a great deal of money and had to be paid for by the parents. Ruby had no idea where the funds were coming from. Her wages were just about keeping them afloat but unless Sid started pulling his weight, Ruby knew she couldn’t afford to buy all the things her daughter would need. And that was Sid’s fault.
Ruby knew that jobs were scarce at the moment, but she’d managed to find a job and so could Sid if he was willing to take any kind of work. He was just going to have to pull his socks up – and this time she meant it. If he let her down again, she would take Julia and leave him.
Telling herself what she would do was one thing but doing it was another. Sid wasn’t the worst of husbands; he didn’t hit her or Julia – if he had that really would be the end. The problem was, she still fancied him something rotten and there were times when he smiled and she just melted like an idiot. But Ruby had had enough of his drinking. He was going to have to stop and she would need to be firm, because otherwise he would end up on the scrap heap like so many others who drank to forget the misery of their lives.
Ruby had always wanted more children but after Julia they just hadn’t come. She sometimes thought she’d like to foster another child, give an orphan a home where the poor little bugger would be safe, but how could she when Sid spent all his wages and couldn’t be trusted?
A picture of the kids in the little room at the end of the children’s ward entered Ruby’s head. If Sid brought his wages home as he ought, she would have offered to have those kids – that boy’s cheeky smile made her laugh to herself and the girl was a poor little mite who needed some love. Ruby just hoped they wouldn’t stick them kids in a home …
‘Of course, they ought to be sent off to an orphanage,’ Lady Rosalie said to Mary Thurston that evening, when they spoke over a glass of sherry in Matron’s office. ‘However, the girl is poorly, and I think we should try to keep them together.’
‘Is there any chance of putting them with foster parents?’ Mary asked, frowning. ‘The children’s mother is still alive and they should be returned to her when she’s well enough.’
‘Perhaps …’ Lady Rosalie frowned. ‘I’m in the middle of moving that little girl in your ward to another set of foster carers. Mrs Swan says she loves Dora and wants to look after her when she’s on her feet again – but her husband is a brute when he’s drunk. I didn’t interview him myself or I should never have allowed him to become a foster carer. If I had my way, he would be locked up, but they tell me the police won’t prosecute without sufficient evidence.’
