Nurse Kitty's Secret War

by Maggie Campbell

Genres: Sagas; Historical Romance

Synopsis

A novel inspired by the brave nurses and doctors from the first NHS hospital, the Trafford General, opened after the end of World War II. An inspiring and romantic read for fans of Call the Midwife and The Nightingale Girls.

It's May 1945 and at 3pm, nurse Kitty Longthorne listens, together with the other surgical staff at South Manchester's Park Hospital, to Winston Churchill's broadcast on the radio. Germany has signed a declaration of complete surrender. The war is over in Europe and that day is to be celebrated as VE Day.

The mood in Park Hospital - still full of wounded American soldiers - is jubilant and hopeful, though Kitty is anything but. Her clandestine squeeze and the man she hopes to marry, James Williams has been giving her the cold shoulder for the last week, and she can't work out why. Furthermore, her twin brother, Ned, is still missing in action - his last known whereabouts point to him being in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

An uplifting, heart-wrenching novel based on the true story of the first ever NHS hospital, for fans of Donna Douglas and Nancy Revell.

Praise for NURSE KITTY'S SECRET WAR

A galloping read that conjures up life in a late 1940s hospital, complete with fierce matrons and handsome doctors. Nurse Kitty is a feisty heroine who sticks her neck out to protect her patients, while trying to resolve her own family problems and heal her broken heart. It's engaging and atmospheric. - Gill Paul

I'm sure readers will love Nurse Kitty as she struggles to find true love when everything is going against it. I loved the end-of-WW2 setting, which is vividly imagined, and the sheer energy of Maggie Campbell's pacy prose. A perfect escapist read. - Kitty Danton, author of A Wartime Wish

Release date: July 5, 2020

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 288

Sample

The young American soldier grimaced as he tried to stretch his freshly bandaged arm towards Kitty.

‘Please, nurse,’ he said, ‘stay with me a while longer and read to me. Like you did the other night when I couldn’t sleep for the pain.’ Beads of sweat ran down the lad’s cheeks and onto his clean pyjamas. Yet again, his hair was starting to stick to his ghostly pale forehead.

Kitty shook her head and drew back the curtain around his iron bed. ‘Now, just you rest that arm, Glen Hudson,’ she said, plumping his pillows. She mopped his brow with a fresh, cool cloth. ‘You’ve got a nasty infection and you’re still running a very high temperature. If you want to make your nineteenth birthday and ever get back home to … where was it?’

‘Des Moines, Iowa, ma’am.’

‘Right. Yes, that place. Well, you’d better get some rest.’ Lowering her voice, she treated him to her kindest smile, smoothing down his bedsheet. ‘And mind you keep our little Hemmingway session to yourself. Look how many other soldiers are on this ward. If you let them know I gave you special treatment, they’ll all be having me reading out letters from their sweethearts and bedtime stories. Matron will have my guts for garters. Who’ll look after you then?’

Her feverish patient nodded. ‘I think I love you, Nurse Longthorne.’

‘Get away, you rum pig!’ Kitty chuckled. ‘If I had a tanner for every delirious GI that said that, I’d be a rich woman!’

Though he was only six years younger than she was, he looked like a lost boy, tucked in as he was with crisp sheets. How much he reminded her of her own brother, Ned, when he’d gone off to war, four years earlier. Except that Glen Hudson’s family probably knew their son had returned home from the Rhineland, missing a leg and only barely back from the brink of blood poisoning, but now in the good care of Manchester’s Park Hospital. Hitler’s armies were falling at last. If Glen survived, he would never have to return to active duty. But what exactly did Kitty and her mother know about poor Ned’s fate?

She swallowed hard. She was staring at the clipboard full of Glen’s notes in a bid to hide the tears that welled in her eyes, when she felt a tug on her apron ties.

‘Nurse Longthorne! Have you a moment?’

A stern voice caused Kitty to look round in alarm. She expected to find Matron, scowling at her with giant, watchful eyes through those round tortoiseshell glasses she wore.

‘Oh, Nurse Jones!’ Kitty said, so relieved to see instead the bright red hair and freckled cheeks of her friend and fellow-nurse, Violet, that she giggled nervously. She clasped her patient’s notes to her chest. ‘I thought for a minute you were—’

‘Never mind that!’ Violet dropped her voice to little more than a whisper. She took the clipboard and hooked it onto the end of the young GI’s bed, then pulled Kitty out of earshot. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

Kitty felt lightheaded. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Violet said. ‘Far from it! Come to the staffroom, quick! Churchill’s about to address the nation on the wireless.’

‘But what if Matron or one of the sisters knows we’re—?’

Violet grabbed her hand, squeezing hard. Her cheeks flushed pink. ‘They’re all there. Even James.’ She winked. ‘Come on!’

James. Just the very mention of Dr James Williams made Kitty’s heart lurch inside her chest. Only two weeks ago, she’d felt sure she was about to officially become the surgeon’s sweetheart. She – humble Kitty Longthorne from Hulme – had caught the eye of the best-respected young doctor in Park Hospital, after years of worshipping him from afar, delighting in their blossoming friendship and increasing closeness. But though they had been to a matinee at the cinema and for afternoon tea, which had led to a chaste but enjoyable trip to the Lakes, Kitty was still unsure if they were going steady. Their paths had barely crossed since that picnic on the banks of Windermere. Perhaps he’d been too busy. Or maybe he just saw her as a sympathetic ally and nothing more. She hoped not.

Taking a deep breath, she followed Violet into the crowded staffroom. The early May sunshine streamed in through the large windows, catching the billowing yellow smoke from the doctors’ cigars in strong beams of light. Every armchair had been dragged towards the large wooden wireless set that took pride of place on a table in the corner. The doctors sat closest, still wearing their white coats over their suits. Of the nursing staff, Matron sat in front, seated stiffly next to Professor Cecil Baird-Murray. The student nurses who had been allowed to leave their charges stood at the back, chattering excitedly, though the ward sisters treated them to disapproving glances.

With a pang of longing, Kitty spotted James right by the wireless, looking as handsome as ever with his perfectly Brylcreemed dark hair. He rubbed his strong jaw, frowning as he listened over the staffroom hubbub to the broadcaster’s preamble. When he leaned over and turned the volume up, Kitty could almost taste the intrigue on the air.

‘Do pipe down, everyone!’ he shouted, holding his hand up to shush the room’s occupants. ‘It’s starting.’

The crackling sound of radio silence filled the room until Big Ben chimed. Kitty could hardly breathe. When the bell was finally still, Winston Churchill’s stately voice rang out, telling the nation that the Germans had surrendered.

‘The Act of Unconditional Surrender!’ Professor Baird-Murray said, slapping the arm of his chair and pointing with his cigar. ‘Did you hear that, gentlemen? The Hun has fallen yet again. About bally time!’

Matron glared at him so that he fell immediately silent, allowing Churchill to speak on.

‘Today is Victory in Europe Day.’

Everyone in the staffroom cheered. Those who were seated leaped up, clapping in the direction of the radio. Kitty noticed James steal a glance in her direction. There was pure joy in his eyes for that fleeting moment, but she looked away, listening to the cautious words of Churchill.

‘Let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead.’

She clenched her starched white apron inside her fist, dreading what would inevitably come next.

‘Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued …’

Edging towards the door, Kitty felt tears bite anew at the backs of her eyes. The war was not yet over for Ned and the other soldiers who had left to fight for Hong Kong in 1941. For all the letters she’d written to him since his departure, not a single one had ever seemed to reach him.

‘Are you going to get dolled up and go out?’ Violet asked, slipping out of her sensible nurse’s shoes and unpinning her cap from her glowing red hair which tumbled below her shoulders.

Kitty stood in the doorway to her friend’s bedroom, weary after a twelve-hour stint on the ward where she’d worn a smile for her jubilant Allied Forces patients, though her own heart secretly ached. Now, the nurses’ home thronged with girls who had come off the day shift, exchanging news of street parties that stretched the length and breadth of the country.

‘I’ve no plans,’ she said, ‘apart from going to see my mam.’

Violet cast her bundled nurse’s uniform onto her bed with abandon. She curled her lip and scoffed. ‘Your “mam”! Oh, Kitty! You are funny. You’re such a simple Trafford girl.’ Then, she held a flowered dress against her body. With its cinched-in waist, it was certainly no home-sewn ensemble.

Biting her tongue against the insult, Kitty stood aside to let Violet hang the garment on the door frame.

‘Is that dress silk?’ she asked. She watched Violet start to draw dark seams with a fine brush up the backs of her pale legs.

Violet blushed and batted her eyelashes. ‘It was a gift. I think VE day calls for making an effort, don’t you? Especially as I’m off out with the dashing new beau who bought it for me!’

Kitty looked down at her own dowdy skirt and flat shoes, wondering whether she would have captured the heart of Dr James Williams if she’d worn something other than jumble-sale cast-offs in what little free time she had. ‘Well, you’ll look just like Rita Heyworth,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘Who’s the boyfriend?’

Tapping her nose, Violet merely grinned. ‘Don’t wait up.’

Outside, the spring evening sunshine still warmed Manchester. Everywhere she walked, Kitty found streets hung with colourful bunting and filled with rejoicing people. The children who hadn’t been evacuated to the countryside ran around excitedly, their mouths smeared with smiles of bright red jam. Even the red-brick terraces that had been lucky enough to dodge the incendiary bombs of the Luftwaffe seemed to glow with joy at the news that the war was finally over.

When she reached the street in Withington where her mother was lodging above the corner shop, Kitty searched among the revellers. She edged past the long line of tables that were laden with now-empty plates and used napkins. The adults were drinking and dancing the hokey-cokey, and Kitty locked eyes with a little blond boy. He sat alone at the table, holding an uneaten sandwich as if it was a prize.

‘Want a butty, miss?’ the boy asked, holding his sandwich out to her. ‘It’s corned beef. I’ve already had five! We had tinned peaches too.’

Kitty ruffled his hair. ‘No thanks, lovey. You enjoy it. Have you seen Mrs Longthorne – the lady who lives over the shop?’

The boy shook his head. He held his fingers up in a V for Victory and Kitty followed suit in reply. She was just about to continue on her way, when an older man lurched into her. Shabbily dressed with his collar open and a stained tie hanging loose, he stank of whisky and his eyes seemed glazed.

‘Come ’ere, gorgeous. Give us a peck on the cheek.’ He leaned in to kiss Kitty.

‘Enjoy your party,’ Kitty said, pulling away in horror and marching smartly onwards.

By the time she’d reached the end of the long street, she found Ainsworth’s corner shop in darkness with the ‘Closed’ sign hanging in the window. She pushed the door open with a tinkle of the bell, but the place seemed deserted. The shelves, half empty but for some tins of spam, fruit salad and evaporated milk, thanks to rationing, had apparently been left unguarded.

‘Mrs Ainsworth!’ Kitty called out.

There was no answer.

She lifted the hinged counter and pushed past the curtain that separated the shop from the living accommodation at the back. Finally, she found Mrs Ainsworth snoozing in her flowery chair, wearing a party hat that was hanging from her neatly curled hair.

Kitty crept past her to open the door that concealed the steep stairs. She climbed up in near-darkness only to find that her mother’s room was empty. If she wasn’t with the revellers outside and she wasn’t here, where was she?

Picking up a photograph that was in a frame beside the neatly made single bed, Kitty looked at the faces in the family portrait that had been taken in 1938, just before war had cast its shadow over the Longthorne family. She traced her finger over the stern faces of her mother, her father, Ned and finally the young, hopeful girl that Kitty had once been, full of nursing ambition and dreams of marrying a doctor – the latter seemed to be slipping beyond her reach. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she knew then exactly where her mother had gone.

Kitty picked her way past the bomb sites and wove through raucous street parties, all the way to Hulme. It was almost dark by the time she reached what had once been her old street.

With a sigh of relief, she finally found her mother, sitting on a battered sideboard that had been left to peel and warp in the rain. Too heavy to carry away and not even broken up for firewood in a city that had been burning for far too long, it was the only piece of their old two-up-two-down home that, miraculously, had been left intact. Everything else had been reduced to rubble by the Nazi bombers.

‘Mam! I’ve walked for miles, trying to find you.’ She hopped up next to her mother on the sideboard and flung her arms around her. ‘Why aren’t you celebrating with Mrs Ainsworth?’

Her mother shied away. When she looked at Kitty in the twilight, it was clear from her bloodshot eyes and the sherry fumes on her breath that she was tipsy.

‘I was. But then I had to come back here. I wanted to remember how it was before … before we lost everything. All that singing and dancing. VE day, indeed! How can I join in? What happens when the Ford factory closes because they don’t need me to make parts for Lancaster bombers anymore?’ She started to cough. Her chest rattled ominously.

‘You’ll get a job as a machinist, easy.’ Kitty shuffled closer to her mother. ‘Something’s bound to come up.’

Her mother swallowed a sob. ‘And what if it doesn’t? What if they find out about your dad? Everybody knows Elsie Longthorne’s a laughing stock.’

‘It’s all yesterday’s chip-wrappings, Mam.’

‘Oh aye, right,’ her mother scoffed. Shaking her head, she finally leaned on Kitty’s shoulder. ‘You don’t see it, do you? The war’s over for everyone but us Longthornes.’

‘Don’t be daft, Mam.’

Then her mother opened her eyes and met Kitty’s gaze. ‘Daft, am I? Listen! The war’s only over for us when the Japanese have surrendered, and they haven’t given up the ghost yet.’ There were tears in her eyes. She coughed twice. ‘What if they don’t? What if our Ned never comes home?’

‘He will! “Missing in Action” doesn’t mean dead. And I’ll find a way to help with money.’ Kitty linked arms with her. ‘If Hitler’s armies couldn’t defeat us, peace certainly won’t. It’ll all work out. You’ll see.’

Her mother shook her head violently. ‘No. I won’t see. You don’t understand.’

‘What? What’s going on, Mam? There’s something you’re not telling me. Come on! Out with it.’

With a shaking hand, her mother pulled a crumpled piece of paper from the pocket of her coat. Her chest rumbled and rattled as she passed it to Kitty. ‘I got this, this morning.’

Kitty knew that telegrams rarely contained good news. She smoothed the paper out and, with a sinking heart and feeling her lips prickle with fear, she read the fateful message:

Deeply regret to inform you that Private Ned Longthorne previously reported as missing after Battle of Hong Kong is now reported prisoner of war interned in Japanese camp stop letter follows stop any further information will be communicated to you immediately stop pending receipt of notification no information should be given to the press stop

She bit her lip and exhaled heavily. ‘Oh, Mam!’ Tears welled quickly and rolled down her cheeks. Reading and rereading the words, she saw her twin brother in her mind’s eye as a ten-year-old. Wearing short trousers and clambering over some old wreck with dirty knees, a snotty nose and boots with flapping soles, Ned had always been the polar opposite of his sister. While she had worked hard at school, loving to read and please her teachers, Ned had taken great joy in playing the truant. He’d made easy money by stealing coal from railway sidings and selling it to the neighbours, and he’d made an excellent lookout while the local thieves peddled their black-market goods on street corners. Best of friends and worst of enemies, depending on which day you caught them on, Kitty and Ned had always been so similar, and yet so very different.

‘Our Ned’s a prisoner of war?’

‘In Japan. Dear God! The Japanese treat them brutal, I’ve heard.’

‘We don’t know that for sure. Nobody does. It’s all just rumours.’

But her mother’s bloodshot eyes were suddenly heavy with more than just sherry. ‘Aye. Because the lads never make it back to tell the tale. I feel it in my water. My Ned’s suffering out there and he’s never coming home.’

Kitty swallowed hard, trying to push away imaginings of her brother, labouring on the Siam-Burma railway or else languishing in some disease-ridden hut in a camp. It wouldn’t do to frighten her mother when, in reality, the British public knew so little of what was going on over there. ‘You know our Ned, Mam. He’s an alley cat with nine lives. Come Christmas Day, we’ll all be sitting round the table together, listening to Ned boast about his adventures in the Orient.’

‘I haven’t got a table anymore. What am I going to buy a new one with? I’m going to be out of collar. You’re earning tuppence-ha’penny and need every penny to get you through your training. And as for being together … your dad’s a dead-leg. And our Ned—’ Her body stiffened. She closed her eyes, her mouth downturned. ‘I’ve got the princely sum of nowt.’ Her mother jumped down off the sideboard, hands stuffed into her cardigan pockets. She started to walk briskly away.

Jumping down and catching her up, Kitty felt all the joy of VE day draining from her. ‘But you’ve got to hope, Mam. Hope’s all we’ve got left.’

Once her heartbroken, slightly tipsy mother had been safely installed back in her little bedsit, Kitty returned to the nurses’ accommodation, treading softly in the newly minted moonlight. She tried the door handle to the block. It was locked.

‘What time do you call this?’ a voice thundered behind her.

Kitty turned around to see the stern face of Matron, looking formidable in the long shadows with her starched cap perched on top of her perfect battleship-grey curls. She felt the blood drain from her lips, causing her to stumble over her words of explanation. ‘I, er – well, it took me hours to walk from – I was visiting my mam, matron. And there were street-parties everywhere. She was crying and we just found out my brother, Ned—’

‘It’s five past ten, young lady,’ Matron said, meaty arms folded over her ample bosom. ‘Doors locked and lights out at ten!’

‘But—’

‘But nothing. Just because it’s VE day doesn’t mean you can flout the rules. We’ve just had scores of badly wounded soldiers from the front come in on the trains at Victoria. They’re not going to be interested in your excuses if you’re not fresh for your shift in the morning.’

‘I’m sorry, matron. It won’t happen again.’ Kitty’s words were almost inaudible above the sound of the blood rushing in her ears. She wiped her hands on her skirt. Would her wages be docked as they had been the previous week, when she’d broken that thermometer? How had Matron known to lie in wait for her? Surely she couldn’t be the only young nurse who had missed the curfew, tonight of all nights.

‘Get inside, then, thoughtless girl!’

Amid her flurry of apologetic words, Kitty was ushered into the utilitarian foyer. The door clanged to behind her and she was left to stumble in the dim light to her room.

Mulling over all that had happened over the last few hours, Kitty sat on her hard bed and slipped her low-heeled shoes off her aching feet. As she rubbed her soles, she tried to imagine what Ned might have gone through after being captured. Her nursing work had been so all-encompassing and the sights in the hospital so grisly on such a regular basis that she’d had to block as many of her true feelings out as possible, just to survive the war. So many young, wounded men whose bodies had been ruined by gunfire and shrapnel! Whenever she and the rest of the medical staff had been unable to save the life of a soldier, she’d fleetingly visualised Ned, lying with a sheet over his face. She’d made an effort to banish such dreadful thoughts as quickly as possible, though.

‘Oh, Ned!’ she whispered to the shadows cast by her bedside lamp.

Leaning across the rough blankets of her precisely made bed, she lifted the precious framed photograph of her family from its place of honour on the bedside cabinet. Having been shoved by her mother into a drawer of the sturdy old sideboard when her father had been flung into prison, this was one of only two family photographs Kitty had managed to salvage from the wreckage of their bombed-out house. The photograph had been taken at the wedding reception of her cousin, Doreen – a lively affair above The White Lion in Withington in 1938. Doreen and her husband Stanley had both been killed during the Blitz, but here was a snapshot of the Longthornes from better times. Kitty’s mother and father were posing in their Sunday best, looking dour. A smiling young Kitty had worn a home-sewn flowery hand-me-down from Maggie, the seamstress who’d lived next door to their terraced house in Hulme. At her father’s side stood Ned, drowning in a borrowed suit and grinning from ear to ear. Always smiling. Always a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

‘Be careful, our kid,’ Kitty said, tracing a finger gently over the face of her twin. ‘Mam needs you back in one piece. It would kill her if—’

There was an insistent rat-a-tat knock on Kitty’s door, making her jump and drop the frame onto her bed. Who on earth could be paying her a visit after lights out?

Holding her breath, she stood behind the door, poised to open it. ‘Hello. Who’s there?’

‘Open the door this minute, Longthorne!’ It was Matron and she sounded even more angry than before.

Gingerly, Kitty opened the door and peered out at the furious face of her superior. Matron’s jowls wobbled with indignation.

‘You’re in trouble, young lady. And not for the first time tonight.’

‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Kitty said, pulling her cardigan tightly around her.

‘You’ve a visitor. A male visitor.’

‘Eh? Who?’

‘Follow me.’

Trotting down the stairs after Matron, listening to the stout woman complain about a male intruder – apparently drunk and disorderly – who had broken a window in the laundry and who had clambered inside the nurses’ accommodation block, Kitty could barely stay her wildly beating heart. Who could the man be? It certainly wasn’t Ned. And since James’s ardour for her had suddenly cooled, it absolutely wouldn’t be him.

‘Are you sure this gentleman asked to see me?’ Kitty asked, spotting her friend Violet slip silently in through the kitchenette window after a night of celebrating.

‘He’s no gentleman,’ Matron said, marching ahead.

A tousled-haired Violet met Kitty’s gaze. Wide-eyed, Violet pressed her index finger to her lipstick-smudged lips; begging for Kitty’s discretion as she tiptoed past the two, heading in bare feet up the stairs to the bedrooms, holding her high-heeled shoes.

Kitty, however, was more interested to know what man had pursued her to her front door. Matron led her to a storeroom where the caretaker stashed his various tools of the job. She took a key from the large keyring attached to her belt and unlocked the door. Pushing it open, she shed light on the intruder who had been sitting in the pitch-black on a rickety wooden chair.

‘Explain!’

The man inside the cupboard held his hand up to squinting eyes and smiled at Kitty with five rotten teeth studded along otherwise toothless gums. ‘Hello, love.’

His alcoholic breath billowed out to greet her. Kitty dug her nails into the palms of her hands until the pain made her eyes water. She was almost rendered speechless by the sight of her visitor. Almost.

‘Dad?’

‘Kitty, love,’ her father said. ‘Give us a hug.’ He was slurring his words, reaching out to her with dirt-ingrained hands.

‘What on earth are you doing here, Dad? I thought you were—’

‘I got out. Today! A year off my sentence for good behaviour.’ He chuckled and winked at the matron. ‘I’m a good boy, me!’ Then he turned back to Kitty, treating her to a black-toothed smile. ‘Your dad’s home, Kitty. I’ve done my time and I’m here to stay.’ He almost overbalanced on the chair, righting himself just in time and hiccupping.

Balling her fists, Kitty remembered the sight of her weeping mother, who had had to fend for the family during the war, thanks to her father’s thieving ways. ‘Well, you’re not staying here. You’ve got no business coming to find me in the middle of the night.’

‘I couldn’t find your mam. So, I had to find my little girl, didn’t I? She didn’t want to let me in, did you, you fat old cow?’ He pointed to Matron, who looked distinctly unimpressed. ‘I told her I’m your dad and she didn’t believe me. But you can’t come between a dad and his girl. And you’re all grown-up now, aren’t you? My little Kitty-cat’s a woman, now.’

Feeling her cheeks flush hot that the matron should be privy to this embarrassing and unexpected reunion, Kitty took a step back. ‘I was a woman before you went away. But you were too busy getting up to no good to notice.’ She couldn’t disguise the disdain in her voice. Worse still, she couldn’t hide the angry tears that stabbed at her eyes. She needed to hold the wave of frustration back. It wouldn’t do to make a fool of herself in front of Matron.

‘Are you quite all right?’ Matron asked her, uncharacteristically placing a hand gently on her forearm. Her formidable superior then faced Kitty’s father and treated him to the same stern expression that caused the junior nurses’ hearts to quail. ‘Perhaps you need to make an appointment, Mr Longthorne. It seems your daughter doesn’t want to speak to you right now, and it’s a very unseemly late hour.’

‘What’s it got to do with you, nosey hole?’ he said. His face had crumpled into a sneer.

Kitty gasped. ‘Dad!’

Unperturbed, Matron took a step towards him, towering over him. ‘Out! Out now, or I shall telephone the police.’

As Kitty’s father stood up, swaying, then staggered tow. . .