London at the end of summer was crowded, hot, and smelled of petrol. Jenny wrinkled her nose as she drove across its heart and into the East End. When she had started her training as a nurse, her family, particularly Margaret, had been annoyed at her choice of hospital. With all the teaching hospitals to choose from, she had elected to apply to Queen’s, large and old-fashioned and set squarely in the East End; not the type of place which, since she had insisted on taking up nursing, a Creed or a Wren should choose. But Jenny had had her own way, for despite her pretty face she was a determined girl with a quite nasty temper to go with her hair, and she had done her three years general training, followed it with a midwifery certificate and now held the post of Junior Theatre Sister. Her family still smiled tolerantly at the idea of her having a career, thinking no doubt of Toby Blake waiting in the wings, as it were; sure that very soon now she would realise that to be married to him would be pleasant and suitable and what was expected of her. But Jenny had other ideas, although she wasn’t able to clarify them, even to herself. There would be someone in the world meant for her; she had been sure of that ever since she was a little girl, and although there was no sign of him yet, she was still quite certain that one day she would come face to face with him, and he would feel just as she did—and in the meantime she intended to make a success of her job.
Queen’s looked grey and forbidding from the outside, and indeed, on the inside as well, but she no longer noticed the large draughty entrance hall, nor the long dark passages leading from it. She plunged into them after a cheerful exchange of greetings with the head porter, and presently went through a door, painted a dismal brown, across a courtyard overlooked by most of the hospital’s wards, and into the Nurses’ Home, an old-fashioned building which had been altered and up-dated whenever there had been any money to spare, so that it presented a hotchpotch of styles and building materials. But inside it was fairly up-to-date, with the warden’s office just inside the door and a wide staircase beside the two lifts. Jenny wished the warden, Miss Mellow—who wasn’t in the least mellow—a staid good morning, for it had barely struck noon, and started up the stairs, taking the handful of letters Miss Mellow had wordlessly handed her with her.
Three of them were from Toby; he was a great letter writer; his handwriting small and neat and unmistakable. Jenny sighed as she saw it and glanced at the others; from friends who had married and left hospital, inviting her severally for a weekend, to dinner, and to meet for coffee one day soon. She read them as she wandered upstairs, for she wasn’t on duty until the following morning and she had plenty of time to unpack and get her uniform ready. But Toby’s letters she didn’t open, not until she had gained her room on the third floor, put her case down, kicked off her shoes and curled up on her bed.
There was nothing to say in any of them which she didn’t know already, and why he had to write on three successive days to point out the advantages of marrying him was a mystery—besides, she had seen him only four days ago, and when, as usual, he had asked her to marry him she had said quite definitely, with the frankness of an old friend, that it just wouldn’t work. She put the letters down after a while and went along to the pantry to make a pot of tea. Clare Brook was there, putting on the kettle, having had a free morning from Women’s Surgical, and she greeted Jenny with a cheerful ‘Hullo,’ and went on in mock dismay: ‘You’re on call tonight, ducky. Old Hickory (Miss Dock, the Theatre Superintendent) is off with toothache, Maureen’s got days off and Celia being Celia and left in charge doesn’t feel she should.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Our Celia is getting too big for her boots, just because Mr Wilson likes the way she hands him the instruments… So there you are, Jenny Wren, and for sure there’ll be a massive RTA and you’ll be up all night.’
Jenny spooned tea into the pot. ‘Well, I’ve been away for two weeks,’ she observed, ‘so I suppose it’s fair enough, though it’s beastly to come back to.’
Clare eyed her with interest. ‘Had a good time at that ancestral hall of yours? Seven-course dinners every evening, I suppose, and a dress for each one…’ She spoke without rancour; everyone liked Jenny and nobody grudged her her exalted background. ‘Not engaged to that Toby of yours yet?’
Jenny spooned sugar into their mugs and reached for the biscuit tin. ‘No—it’s silly of me, but I just know we wouldn’t suit. Well, what I mean is…’ she frowned, wishing to make herself clear: ‘We’ve known each other simply years and years, and there’s no…no…’
‘Spice? I know what you mean—you’re so used to each other you don’t even quarrel.’
‘He has a very even temper…’
‘Huh—so there’s nothing for you to sharpen your bad moods on, is there? You need someone with a temper as fine as yours, my dear, without an ounce of meekness in him, to give as good as he gets.’
‘It doesn’t sound very comfortable,’ protested Jenny.
‘Who wants to be comfortable? Chris and I fight quite a bit, you know, and we’re only engaged. Heaven knows what it’ll be like when we marry, but it’ll never be dull.’ Clare handed her mug over for more tea. ‘Which reminds me, I saw the sweetest wedding dress the other day…’
The pair of them became absorbed in the interesting world of fashion.
Jenny had to get up during the night, not for the massive RTA which Clare had prophesied, but for a little boy who had fallen out of his bedroom window to the pavement below; it took hours to patch him up and his chance of survival was so slim as to be almost non-existent. Jenny, going back to bed at three o’clock in the morning, lay awake worrying about him for another hour, so that when she got down to breakfast at half past seven her pretty face was pale and tired, but the news that the child was still alive cheered her up and she ate her breakfast with a fair appetite, wishing, as she always did, that she was back at Dimworth, having her breakfast in the little sitting room overlooking the water garden, with Aunt Bess sitting opposite, reading indignant pieces from the newspaper and calling everybody, impartially, a fool.
There was a heavy list for the morning and Celia Drake, assuming the mantle Miss Dock had temporarily laid down, was at her most trying; if the morning’s work was to run smoothly, then both of them would have to work, sharing the cases. But Celia, topheavy with importance, had elected to take the easiest of the list and leave the long-drawn-out ones to Jenny, which meant that Jenny wasn’t going to get off duty punctually; the list would drag on until after dinner and there would be a wild scramble to get the afternoon list started on time, and although it wasn’t a long one, Jenny guessed who would be scrubbing for it.
She eyed the cases she was expected to deal with and frowned heavily, her lovely hazel eyes dark with temper, while her coppery hair seemed to glow. Celia had retired to the office, probably to sit at the desk and dream of the day when she would—perhaps—be Theatre Superintendent. Jenny poked her indignant head round the door and gave her a fuming look.
‘Come on out and do your share, Celia,’ she invited waspishly. ‘You’re not in Old Hickory’s shoes yet, you know. We’ll share this list, half and half, and if you don’t like the idea, I’ll drop everything and go off sick.’
Celia might hand the instruments with éclat, but her wits weren’t all that quick. ‘Go off sick?’ she wanted to know. ‘But you’re not…’
Jenny nodded her bright head vigorously. ‘Oh, but I am—sick of you. What’s it to be?’
‘Oh, all right,’ declared Celia peevishly, and added nastily: ‘I don’t see why you should have it all your own way just because there’s a baron in your family.’
‘I’ve got his red hair,’ Jenny pointed out, ‘and his nasty temper.’
The
