set to work, men on the outside, females within. Nell threw herself into this wholeheartedly, imagining what her parents would say if they could see their daughter on her hands and knees. However, there could be no quibble about social division, because, to her pleasure and respect, the well-bred girls mucked in quite enthusiastically alongside everyone else.
It was obvious, though, that contrary to Avril Joyson painting herself as the dedicated nurse, she deemed these elements of the job beneath her, and it had not escaped Nell’s sharp eye that she had quickly volunteered for the easier task of wiping down the walls – meaning she did not acquire a crick in her neck from having to wash the ceiling, nor sore knees for scrubbing the floor, as Nell herself was suffering.
None the less, working her way along the wagon, with only a piece of sacking to cushion her kneecaps from the hard planking, the youngest one amongst them put in vigorous effort, moving her scrubbing brush back and forth along the dusty grooves, constantly scouring her knuckles and sending them redder and redder, yelping at splinters as she sweated and scrubbed alongside Beata Kilmaster. Her own joints being so punished, Nell marvelled at how poor Beata coped so well with her swollen leg. Casting a glance sideways now, as she uncoiled her aching spine, she noted that Beata’s shoulders were trembling. About to touch her in concern, she then realised that her friend was shaking with mirth, and, grinning along with her, she asked, ‘What on earth’s tickled you?’
‘It’s ironic,’ Beata arched her own back to relieve it, ‘you come and be a nurse to save you from skivvying, and what do you end up doing? Skivvying!’
Nell shared her merriment, but wasn’t certain that she understood. ‘Do you mean you were a domestic servant?’
‘Aye, for fifteen blasted years,’ declared Beata. ‘More if you count the unpaid ones.’
Nell frowned, but was too polite to ask how old the other was. All the same, she calculated that if Beata had been working for fifteen years that would make her around thirty. Realising that she was staring, she said quickly, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t think you were –’
‘That old!’ Beata gave her chesty chuckle and finished Nell’s sentence. ‘It’s all right, I know I must seem ancient to a young lass like you.’
‘Oh, no!’ Nell struggled to explain, her scrubbing brush dripping as it paused idle in mid-air. ‘It’s just that you don’t talk down to me, as most of your generation would.’ Her smile said how much she appreciated this.
The other rejoined with her affable air, ‘I hate being patronised meself, so I never do it to others, no matter what age.’
Nell cast an impish glance to where Nurse Green and her snowy-haired mother worked side by side, and whispered to Beata, ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but Mrs Green looks, well, a bit like Methuselah’s wife!’
Beata shared her mischievous laughter. ‘Her daughter’s about fifteen years older than me, so missus must be at least sixty-five. She’ll get the elbow if they find out.’ Though how she had managed to slip through with her grandmotherly looks was inexplicable to both. ‘It’ll be a shame, though, she’s a damned good worker. She’d make three of Oh-be-Joyful.’
Guessing that she meant Avril Joyson, Nell rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, I noticed she was swift to volunteer for the easier bits. I wonder which of us will be first for the chop. Sister doesn’t seem to like me very much.’
‘She’s all right, she’s just strict,’ advised Beata. ‘I’ve had much worse task mistresses in my time – mindst, I think she’ll be getting rid of poor Frenchy before very long if her mangled English doesn’t improve.’
Nell agreed with a laugh. ‘It’s a shame, she seems so nice. We’ll have to help her.’
‘You might be able to. I don’t know any proper French. I don’t know how she and Green got through the interview. I had a stinker.’
Nell then pointed out an anomaly. ‘When I went for interview, they said we shouldn’t have any domestic duties – at least that was the impression I was given.’
Beata confirmed this, but made a cynical addition. ‘I’ve learned never to take an employer on trust.’
Nell pulled a face. ‘I brought a notebook to write down everything I’m taught, as a reminder, but I won’t forget this in a hurry.’ She winced at the gritty block in her hand. ‘Gosh, this blue-mottled soap’s taken the skin off my hands.’
‘At least there won’t be any germs left.’ Beata’s application was that of an expert.
Nell glanced at her partner’s leg and, with their characters being so harmonious, decided to risk an impertinent question. ‘I don’t mean to be nosey, but what’s the matter with your leg? It looks very painful.’
‘Lymphatic oedema,’ supplied Beata, still working whilst Nell paused. ‘They don’t really know what causes it. I’ve had it since I was about ten. The doctor said then it was either heart or kidneys so I was probably a gonner. But I’m still here, so I reckon it’s not so life-threatening.’ Her grin belied how awful it had been to have such a threat hanging over her for years, until a more competent physician had taken charge. ‘It just swells up from time to time. Bit of a nuisance, but there’s plenty worse off.’
Nell guessed that her new friend was in more dis comfort than she let on, and admired her stoicism. ‘You don’t complain much, do you?’
‘Oh, I have me moments,’ smiled Beata.
Nell was curious to know more. ‘It must have been hard, being in service.’
‘Not so different from this,’ revealed Beata. ‘As far as the hierarchy goes, anyway. I was always at the bottom of the ladder.’
Nell breathed a realisation. ‘So that’s how you knew to open the door for Matron …’
‘Quit slacking, nurses!’ called Sister, interrupting her own task, her ire mainly for Nell. ‘I hope you’re not going to be a troublemaker, Spottiswood.’
‘It was my fault, Sister,’ admitted Beata. ‘I was just explaining to Nell –’
‘If she requires an explanation regarding anything to do with nursing – which is all you should be discussing – then she must come and ask me! And you can dispense with the Christian names, from now on it’s surnames only.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ replied both subserviently, and launched back into their scrubbing.
But Nell was to protest when the gorgon was out of earshot, ‘We’ve both got such long names – and it sounds so unfriendly, doesn’t it? Do you think she’d mind if we shorten them?’
‘Spotty and Killie – I don’t think it’d inspire much confidence in our nursing skills, do you?’ grinned Beata, causing Nell to laugh too. At any event, these names were how they were to address each other from then on.
At the end of a very long day of hard labour, Beata’s leg blown up like a sausage and Nell’s knuckles red and bleeding and still embedded with the odd splinter, the nurses were allowed to go home at five, with the promise from Sister that there was plenty more work and longer hours to come.
‘So what are you going to be doing tonight?’ enquired Beata, as the pair of them limped their way from the noisy railway sidings into an equally grimy road. ‘If you’ve any energy left, that is. Have you got a boy to take you out?’
Nell ceased picking at her ragged fingernails, to cast a secretive smile at her much shorter companion. ‘As a matter of fact I have – but I’m only telling you and no one else. My parents would kill me.’ The twelve-year age gap was as nothing in this quickly established friendship, at least as far as Nell was concerned. ‘But I won’t be seeing him for a while, he’s been sent to London.’
‘You’ll be like me, then,’ Beata smiled up at her, ‘just sitting with your feet up by the wireless.’
At this