The Little Runaways. Cathy Sharp
of a girl of her age. ‘I know, miss, but our Terry wouldn’t hurt me: he isn’t like Pa …’
‘Nancy.’ Angela caught her breath in shock. ‘Your father didn’t …?’
Nancy’s eyes filled with suffering but she didn’t say anything. Angela couldn’t bring herself to ask the questions that hovered at the back of her mind. If her suspicions were correct, Nancy had been interfered with by her own father and she was less than fourteen years old. What kind of a man would subject his own daughter to something so vile? He had more than likely beaten his son as well. She couldn’t help thinking that neither Nancy nor her brother would mourn him, though both seemed to be upset over their mother.
Angela left the children to sleep, but she couldn’t put the look in Nancy’s eyes out of her mind. Perhaps it was an act of fate that had caused the fire and set them free – and yet Angela had an uncomfortable feeling that there was much more that Nancy could have told her had she wished.
The problem was, what ought she to do about it? She supposed she should report what Nancy had let slip to Sister Beatrice, who would no doubt inform the police – but what was the point of that? Nancy hadn’t really told her anything and it could lead to lots of questions for the girl, and she’d already been through so much. She’d trusted Angela enough to open up a little and it would be a betrayal of that trust to tell. For the moment Angela would keep her suspicions to herself. What harm could that do?
Carole looked at herself in the rather mottled mirror on the wall of her room at the Nurses’ Home and patted her natural blonde and very short hair with satisfaction. It was important to keep hair clean and neat for work, and her new fashionable boyish crop suited her. She was pleased with herself for finding this job. After completing her training at the London Hospital, in Whitechapel, she’d wanted a change, somewhere that she could influence her own life.
The Sister in charge of her ward at the teaching hospital had disliked her almost from the start and Carole was fed up with being picked on the whole time. She was an excellent nurse and had passed all her exams easily, and yet Sister Brighton seemed to hate her. That was probably because Dr Jim Henderson had taken an interest in the younger nurse, and everyone knew that Brighton was mad about him. Unfortunately, he hadn’t looked at her and it had turned her sour – at least, that was what all the nurses under her supervision thought.
For a while Carole had believed that Jim Henderson was the right man for her. Yes, she had imagined being a doctor’s wife and all of the perks that it would have brought. But he had been too dedicated to his job for Carole’s liking, neglecting her to work all hours and talking endlessly of going overseas for a few years to work in a mission hospital and taking her with him to do his charitable works. That was the last thing she’d wanted. Besides, she wasn’t in love with him; there had been a man once, but he had died on the beach at Dunkirk … Carole had hardened her heart after that and now she kept her distance. If she did marry it would be because it fitted in with her plans for a good life – and that didn’t include being a missionary’s wife in some godforsaken backwater. Once the romance was over, she’d given in her notice and taken this job. She was glad to see the back of Henderson and Sister Brighton; they were welcome to each other as far as she was concerned.
At least here she didn’t have to share a room any more. One day she’d have her own little flat, but this would do for now – besides, if you had your own place men tended to ask if they could come back for a drink when what they really wanted was something more. Carole wasn’t a complete innocent, and she would have gone to bed with Jim if he’d shown more interest in her sexually … but he was too intent on his good works. Next time, she would choose a man who was more worldly …
St Saviour’s had exactly what she was looking for. The atmosphere was more relaxed than at the hospital, though Sister Beatrice was a bit of an old dragon. She breathed fire and brimstone whenever she considered someone had done something wrong, but Carole knew her standards were excellent and the nun would be unlikely to find fault with her work. If she’d guessed what was in Carole’s mind, well, it was doubtful that she would ever have taken her on.
Men were unreliable and selfish, and apart from using them to further her ambitions, Carole was opting to focus her efforts on building her career – in her own way. Sister Beatrice was getting on a bit and old-fashioned. An intelligent nurse such as herself could work hard and find a way to make herself indispensable so that when the old harridan retired in a few years she would be the natural successor.
Carole fixed her cap at the precise angle, smoothed her uniform and left her room, locking the door behind her.
It was chilly as she walked to the children’s home through the connecting gardens. St Saviour’s was almost unique in having more than a back yard in this area of London, but it was a relic from the past, when the house had been an impressive early Georgian mansion – and then later a hospital for contagious illness. Similar buildings had grown up all round as the area was peopled with silk merchants, and then the Jewish immigrants who had taken over the streets around St Saviour’s when the rich merchants had moved up West. The house had been used as the old fever hospital until it was closed in the early 1930s, but since then many of the Jewish synagogues and shops in the area had been replaced and there was a mixture of cultures and peoples working and living in the narrow dirty streets. St Saviour’s had become a home for children in need during the war, and the house the nurses occupied was what had once been a rather grand home for the Warden of the fever hospital.
Carole was surprised that the buildings here had survived the bombing in the war. The surrounding streets were filled with large empty spaces overgrown with weeds and neglected, awaiting renovation. In Bethnal Green several bomb sites had been turned into gardens and small allotments for the local residents; here the ruins were just left to decay while local children made a playground from the ruins of their former homes. The Government was going to build houses and shops to replace those lost in the war, but because of the shortage of building materials they were instead putting up prefabricated bungalows and they were dotted here and there amongst the decay and destruction; some had been built further out from the centre, where the air was fresher. Londoners were starting to drift out to the suburbs with the promise of new homes and a better life. From the outside St Saviour’s looked grubby like the rest of the buildings in the area, though inside it was as clean as Sister Beatrice could persuade her staff to keep it.
Most of the girls here were all right. She quite liked Staff Nurse Michelle, though she hadn’t seen much of her, but she was an East End girl and didn’t seem a threat to Carole’s ambition. Angela Morton was a different matter; she wasn’t sure whether she liked Mrs Morton or not, because although she was always friendly there was something about her – something that made Carole sense a rival.
Carole hadn’t yet worked out what Angela’s role was here. She talked of herself as being the odd-job lady, but she carried authority, speaking with a confident smile and amusement in her eyes. Everyone seemed to like her – at least Nan spoke very highly of her and Sally Rush seemed to think she was wonderful. Nan was a surrogate mother to the children, helping with everything, from washing them to giving them hot drinks in the night, taking them to the toilet if they couldn’t manage, or out on school trips. She was the lynchpin of the home and she seemed to be in Sister Beatrice’s confidence. But Nan wasn’t an ambitious person and wouldn’t think of herself in the position of Warden – though Angela Morton might.
Yes, she would bear watching, Carole thought as she let herself in through the back door and went along the rather dark corridor to the dining room, where breakfast was still being served. Helping herself to coffee and a piece of toast with a scraping of what looked suspiciously like margarine and a spoonful of marmalade, she sat down at the table reserved for nursing staff.
Most of the children had already eaten and were leaving the tables in an orderly fashion, under the eye of some of the senior children: new monitors that Angela had appointed since Christmas, so Carole had been told. Sally Rush was gathering the smaller ones, preparing to take them to wash their hands and jam-smeared