had remained coolly silent when the trainees had been welcomed by the stern Sister Jones.
‘Up at six, breakfast at twenty past and on the wards at seven,’ Sister Jones had read out, in her cool voice. ‘There will be lectures in the preliminary training school in the basement here and you will be issued with your timetables for those tomorrow. For the first two months, you will work until eight at night with one day off every fortnight. Students are expected to be in the home by ten, when the doors will be locked. Late passes may be given at Matron’s discretion, but only for special occasions: you will then be permitted to stay out until eleven. There are to be no visitors. Understood?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ everyone had murmured.
Then the room assignments had been read out. Lily and Diana had climbed the stairs with their bags in silence, and Diana hadn’t spoken a word since.
She could suit herself, Lily thought irritably.
She got to her feet and took off the very plain worsted wool coat that had never clung to her figure the way Diana’s suit did to hers, even when it was new. And it was far from new now. Lily had bought it three years ago from Quilian’s Drapers in Tamarin, which in itself had felt like an act of independence, because for years she’d bought her clothes under her mother’s supervision in McGarry’s Drapery. She’d felt pleased every time she saw the coat, pleased at that symbol of adulthood, and satisfied with her first purchase, chosen by herself and paid for with her own money. But now, faced with the glamorous Diana in marvellously cut tweed, she felt lumpen and ugly in it.
She hung her coat up and began to unpack her small cardboard suitcase.
When Diana spoke in a soft, hesitant voice, Lily was so surprised that she actually jumped.
‘I’m Diana Belton. Awfully sorry, we weren’t properly introduced earlier. You must think me a complete boor, but I feel terribly out of my depth here.’
Diana formally held out her hand, still in its suede glove.
‘Lily Kennedy,’ 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
