Wedding Bells for Nurse Connie

Book 6: Nurse Millie and Connie

by Jean Fullerton

Genres: Sagas; Romance; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

Nurse Connie Byrne has lived and worked through the Second World War, has celebrated its ending with friends and patients in the East End of London and is now enjoying a fresh new chapter in her life and looking forward to her wedding. But, as many a young bride-to-be has proved, the path of true love never runs smooth . . .

Connie's busy professional life and the 'characters' who are her patients, serve to give her a much-needed sense of perspective. Her work as a nurse in the East End means that she sometimes needs to be tough, ready to face anything - even the nicest of surprises.

Read by Julie Maisey

Release date: May 5, 2016

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 384

Sample

 

Chapter One

5 July 1948

As the early morning July sunlight crept around the edges of the faded curtains, Sister Connie Byrne, the senior nurse for the Spitalfields and Shoreditch Nursing Association, flicked her head in an attempt to dislodge the lock of her golden-red hair from her temple, without success.

But then, wasn’t it always the same? As soon as you tied your mask and put on your sterile gloves, your nose started to itch or a stray hair tickled your forehead.

Ignoring it, she wriggled her fingers in her rubber gloves. ‘Right, Mrs Sinclair, one more push and I should be able to see baby’s head.’

Margaret Sinclair, a slightly built young woman with fluffy blonde curls, rolled her grey eyes. ‘I bloody ’ope so.’

Margaret and Don Sinclair and their four – soon to be five – children lived on the third floor of Fallow House in Brushfield Street, just a stone’s throw from Petticoat Lane. The three-room dwellings must have seemed like palaces to the artisans who first moved into them a hundred years before but now they were one of the dozens of damp, overcrowded Victorian tenements waiting demolition under the LCC’s post-war slum clearance programme.

‘Right, Margaret,’ she said, placing the labouring woman’s left foot against her own hip. ‘With the next pain I want you to tuck your chin in and push down into your bottom.’

Margaret nodded then, taking a deep breath as another contraction built, she lowered her head and strained.

Cupping her hand around the woman’s bulging vulva, Connie waited for the baby’s head to appear. It did almost immediately, showing Miss or Master Sinclair to have a full head of sticky black hair.

‘Slowly now,’ Connie said in an even tone as she supported the stretching flesh.

Mrs Sinclair’s perineum went white and, just as Connie feared it would tear, the head popped clear.

‘Rest now,’ said Connie, gently easing the baby’s head out.

Connie’s patient gasped and flopped back as the baby instinctively turned. There was a moment of calm and then Margaret caught her breath again.

‘That’s it,’ said Connie. ‘One more push should see him born.’

Margaret tensed again and, cradling the baby’s head with one hand and holding a shoulder with the other, Connie lifted the baby out.

‘Hello, young man,’ Connie said, smiling at the baby’s screwed-up and mucus-smeared face.

Margaret collapsed back against the headboard. ‘Is he all right, sister?’

Her son answered for himself by letting out a wail.

‘Ten fingers, ten toes, a full head of hair and a good pair of lungs, so I’d say he’s just fine,’ laughed Connie.

Like every midwife, Connie had delivered her share of stillborn babies so, no matter how straightforward the labour or delivery, she was always thankful to hear her small patients’ first cry.

Laying the newborn on his mother’s stomach, Connie clamped the cord and automatically thanked the Virgin, then glanced down at her watch.

Seven-fifteen. With a bit of luck, she would be back at the Fry House in time for breakfast.

Margaret grunted and delivered the afterbirth, which Connie checked then rolled in newspaper to burn on the fire later.

‘What are you going to name him?’ she asked, taking the infant back from his mother and wrapping him in the towel.

‘Stewart. After Stewart Granger,’ said Margaret, reaching for her tobacco tin on the bedside table and taking out a roll-up. ‘I loved him in Fanny by Gaslight.’

Taking the sling and fishermen’s scales from her bag, Connie removed the towel from around the child and gently laid him in the middle of the netting. Looping the corners of the sling onto the hook, she raised the scales.

‘Seven nine,’ she said, when the marker settled.

Margaret blew out a puff of smoke. ‘And didn’t I know it.’

After putting him in a nappy, Connie dressed the newborn in the well-washed vest and leggings that had been placed ready on the dressing table, then she wrapped him in a crochet shawl. He yawned and started rooting around.

Mrs Sinclair pinched out her cigarette and put the stub behind her ear. ‘Give ’im here,’ she said, her rounded face forming itself into a sentimental expression.

Connie handed baby Stewart over.

Margaret tucked him in the crook of her arm and kissed his damp forehead.

‘Do you want me to help get him on the breast?’

Margaret grinned. ‘Ta, luv, but I can manage. And leave all that stuff,’ she said, indicating the pail of blood-stained linen that Connie was just about to take hold of. ‘My sister Vi will be here after she’s seen her kids to school and she’ll sort that out in the laundry downstairs.’

‘Are you sure she won’t mind?’

Margaret shook her head. ‘Course not. You get on.’ She winked. ‘It’s a big day for you lot down at Fry House, isn’t it?’

‘Too true,’ said Connie, remembering that the good and the great from far and wide were due to descend on Fry House later that morning to drink tea, scoff cake and make interminable speeches. For today, Monday 5 July, 1948, was the start of the much-talked-about new National Health Service. From today onwards, doctors, nurses, hospitals, medicine, spectacles, visits to the dentist, everything in fact, would be free.

‘I heard there was royalty coming,’ said Mrs Sinclair.

‘No, just the mayor,’ Connie replied. ‘Do you want me to fetch your husband?’

‘You better had or he’ll be late for work,’ Margaret replied.

Connie wrapped her dirty instruments in a cloth before placing them inside her bag, then she went to the door and called for Mr Sinclair.

There was a thump along the small hall and Don, dressed in the paint-splattered overalls of his trade, appeared.

‘Another chip off the old block,’ said Margaret, turning the child so her husband could see his latest offspring.

Don grinned and went over to the bed.

‘’Allo, son,’ he said, running a calloused finger over the baby’s soft cheek.

‘Coooeee,’ called a woman’s voice from outside the room.

‘In here, Vi,’ called Margaret. ‘But you’ve missed all the action.’

A blonde-haired woman, dressed in an overall with a printed scarf tied in a turban on her head, hurried into the room. As Margaret and Vi marvelled at the baby’s small hands and ran through the family members he resembled, Connie packed the last few bits of her equipment away and wrote up her notes.

Don gave his wife a swift kiss on the head. ‘I’ll have the foreman after me if I don’t get on.’

Husband and wife exchanged a private look, then Mr Sinclair turned to Connie. ‘Here you go, sister.’ He rummaged in the pocket of his worn trousers and offered her a ten-shilling note. ‘Worth every penny.’

Connie held up her hand. ‘Bevan’s already paid me.’

Don looked blank for a moment. ‘Course, I forgot.’ He shoved the money back in his pocket. ‘I’ll raise a glass to the old Welshman later in the Three Feathers when I wet the baby’s head.’

He gave his wife another peck on the cheek, then tramped out of the bedroom. The front door banged and Vi rubbed her hands together. ‘Right, then, who wants a cuppa?’

‘Not for me, thank you,’ Connie replied, snapping her case shut. ‘I’ve still got a half a dozen visits before the bun fight starts at eleven.’

With her summer blazer fastened and her felt hat firmly on her head, Connie closed the Sinclairs’ faded front door. Standing back to let the children from the flat next door hurry past to school, Connie walked to the stairs then made her way down to the street below, carefully avoiding the puddle of urine by the bottom step.

Although the early July sun was now fully over the horizon, it hadn’t yet managed to breach the red-brick tenements that lined both sides of the street.

As Fry House, the five-storey Georgian townhouse that served as both a clinic and a nurses’ home, was only a short distance from the Sinclairs’, Connie had opted to walk when she’d taken the call asking her to attend Mrs Sinclair earlier that morning.

As she stepped out into the road, two girls, dressed in the distinctive navy uniform of Sir John Cass school, dashed out of the adjoining stairwell and almost collided with Connie.

‘Sorry, miss,’ said the taller one of the two. ‘We didn’t see you.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ Connie laughed. ‘Where are you off to so early? The running track?’

The other schoolgirl gave her a toothy grin and shook her head. ‘Nah. Netball practice. We’re up against Morpeth in the area semi-finals,’ she called behind her as the two of them scooted off towards the main road.

Connie turned the corner into Commercial Street. It was the start of a working day and the thoroughfare was already busy with people and traffic as buses and trams trundled towards the dock to the south and the City to the west.

Waiting until a wagon with Plashet Fruit and Veg painted on the side had passed, Connie crossed the road and headed northwards.

As she drew level with the tall iron gates of Christ Church, she attracted the attention of a gang of market porters hogging the pavement outside the Ten Bells with pints of beer in their hands after a long night’s work.

‘Oi, oi, sweetheart,’ called one beefy individual with a red handkerchief tied at his throat. ‘Why don’t you give us a bed bath?’

Those around him sniggered and nudged each other.

‘Ignore him, luv,’ called another, a younger chap in a worn leather waistcoat. ‘Why don’t you come and sit on me lap and see what pops up?’

There were cat calls and wolf whistles, but keeping her expression cool and her eyes ahead, Connie walked on until she at last turned into Duval Street, where Fry House was situated.

Well, the street sign riveted to the wall at the entrance of the narrow passageway said Duval Street but everyone called it by its original name of Dorset Street. The last of Jack the Ripper’s victims was found butchered in Miller’s Court, a passageway opposite the clinic. In those days Fry House had been Moody’s doss house as the faded paint on the brickwork on the side of the house testified.

Stepping over a swirl of dog dirt on the pavement, Connie tripped up the three steps and pushed open the front door. The smell of porridge and fresh bread filled her nose, setting her stomach rumbling again. Above her head the sound of water running in bathrooms and the soft sound of someone singing along to the wireless drifted down as the nurses who lodged in the rooms above got ready for the day.

Shrugging off her jacket, Connie hooked it on a spare peg on the coat stand. The postman had already delivered the early post but, as she caught sight of the pile of manila envelopes with Ministry of Health stamped across the top, Connie’s heart sunk.

Leaving the unwelcome correspondence where it was, Connie headed for the narrow stone stairs at the far end of the passageway and made her way down to the basement where the refectory was.

Although only a few of the twenty-five or so nurses who lodged at Fry House were down for breakfast, there were hardly any places left at the half a dozen tables.

Having been built some century and a half ago and originally intended as a place of business, Fry House was cramped, there was no other word for it. The high-ceilinged, airy room with a large window at the front of the house, which they now used as a treatment room, had once been the main trading area of the weaver’s shop beneath the family living quarters, while the square room overlooking the yard served as the nurses’ office.

The superintendent didn’t fare much better as she had to work in what was little more than an understairs cupboard off the ground-floor passageway. Someone had put a triangular-shaped window in there to let in light, probably at the same time as they’d piped in running water at the turn of the last century.

Connie looked round the room and spotted Rose Williams, the sister who covered the Club Row end of Bethnal Green Road. She was wedged at the table beneath the metal grill which let in light from the street above. Rose, seeing that Connie was looking for a seat, indicated that the chair next to her was free.

Connie smiled gratefully. Collecting two slices of toast and a cup of tea, she squeezed between the chattering nurses to join her.

‘Who were you called out to?’ asked Rose as Connie pulled her chair in.

‘Mrs Sinclair, just after five.’ Connie yawned. ‘It was straightforward enough but she’ll need a follow-up visit in a couple of hours.’

‘I’ll add her to my list for later,’ said Rose, taking out her notebook. ‘I’m over that way to see one of my deliveries this morning so it’s not a problem.’

‘Thanks. With everything that’s going on here I’ll be lucky to get out of the place at all today.’ Connie yawned again. ‘Still, at least I’m a half-day tomorrow. I tell you, after a week of being on call I’m all but done in.’

Rose pulled a face. ‘Well, I’m sorry to give you the bad news but you’ve been written up for the baby clinic tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Have I?’

‘’Fraid so.’

‘What about Fran?’

‘She’s on her day off and she’s gone to see her sick sister so she isn’t even around,’ Rose said.

‘Moira?’

‘Dr Marshall phoned yesterday and requested a nurse to assist him in the surgery all day,’ Rose informed her.

Connie looked aghast. ‘Didn’t the super tell him we couldn’t spare her?’

Actually, given Miss O’Dwyer’s hair-trigger temper, Connie was surprised she’d not heard the superintendent bellowing her response from her third-floor bedroom above the super’s office.

‘She wanted to but the chairwoman, Mrs Howard, told her that as Old Goddamnit Marshall has paid for a nurse to help at the surgery, we have to honour it, so she couldn’t say no,’ said Rose.

Up until today the Spitalfields and Shoreditch Nursing Association, like every other District Nursing Association in the land, was responsible for raising its own funds.

Some of their money came from the council in order to provide statutory antenatal and childcare services plus nursing for those with tuberculosis or a notifiable disease. It also covered the care of those in receipt of National Assistance and the like, but the bulk of their money came from charging their patients: one and six for a straightforward dressing, half a crown for something more involved or ongoing and one pound ten shillings to deliver a baby. However, as the association covered one of the poorest areas in London, it had a constant struggle to raise money. Knowing this, doctors like Dr Marshall sometimes hired the association nurses to do the less savoury work of ear syringing, ulcer dressings and to nurse their private patients at home.

‘Well, at least after today we can tell him to whistle for it,’ said Connie, sprinkling a spoonful of sugar in her tea. ‘And I’ll tell him so when I see him later.’

‘Don’t be too swift to rock the apple cart, Connie,’ said Rose, scooping up the last of the porridge in her bowl. ‘According to my friend at the Health Board, some of the local doctors are unhappy with the National Service for Health and might not play ball, perhaps we should keep him sweet. Jane has been allocated to help in the clinic but you know a trainee Queen’s Nurse can’t be in charge.’

Connie forced a plucky smile. ‘Well, it could be worse.’

‘How?’

‘Marshall could have purloined Jane too.’

Connie took the cover off the butter. Thankfully there was a knob of creamy Anchor, enough for her two slices, nestling beneath. Although butter had come off rationing a few months back, it was still scare and Mrs Rogerson, Fry House’s motherly housekeeper, often could offer them only marge for their bread.

‘You want to come to the Empire with me and Florry later?’ asked Rose, cradling her cup in her hand. ‘They’ve got a new dance band that’s supposed to be top notch.’

‘I’d love to but I’m seeing Malcolm tonight,’ Connie replied.

Rose looked puzzled. ‘I thought he was at his Scout troop on Monday.’

‘Usually,’ Connie replied. ‘But the Memorial Hall is being decorated so they’ve cancelled the meeting.’

Rose grinned. ‘So are you going out somewhere nice?’

Before Connie could reply, the refectory door banged open and Miss O’Dwyer, the Spitalfields and Shoreditch Superintendent, marched into the room with a grubby-looking toddler balanced on her ample hip.

Bridget O’Dwyer was a hair’s-breadth over four feet ten inches with a broad, scrubbed face. Her navy uniform was in the old pre-war style and had mutton-chop sleeves with a full skirt which stopped mid-calf. Her starched collar, cuffs and the frilly cap on her steely grey hair were pristine and you could have seen your face in the polished toes of her laced-up nurse’s shoes.

With a physique like an Irish hurling full forward, the association’s senior nurse was not someone you’d want to tangle with. That is unless you were a patient and then she’d carry you on her back to Jerusalem if it would help you back to health.

Clutching a wodge of letters in her free hand, she now filled the doorway and the room fell silent.

With a look of thunder on her face, Miss O’Dwyer scoured the room until she spotted Connie. Shaking the screwed-up paperwork above her head, her voice boomed across the space.

‘You’ll never guess what those bloody ijats at the Ministry—’

There was a scrape of wood as the nurses in the room stood up from their breakfast. ‘Good morning, superintendent,’ they chorused.

‘And a bright morning to you all, too, me darlings,’ Miss O’Dwyer replied, flapping her hand up and down.

The nurses resumed their seats as the superintendent waddled over to Connie and flopped down on the spare chair between the two nurses. The child, now perched on Miss O’Dwyer’s knee, lunged at Connie’s tea which she moved swiftly out of harm’s way. She broke off a crust of toast and handed it to the child who grasped it with chubby fingers.

‘Ministry of Health,’ the enraged superintendent muttered. ‘Ministry of Numbskulls, more like.’

‘What do they want now?’ said Connie, indicating the crumpled correspondence in the superintendent’s hand.

‘Figures.’ The superintendent flourished the mangled manila envelopes again. ‘More blasted figures. And today of all days! Sure to Heaven don’t they know I’ve half of Bethnal Green and Spitalfields descending on me in less than three hours? What time will I have to look at figures?’

‘But didn’t you send them all our records two months ago?’ asked Connie, as she buttered another piece of toast.

‘To be sure,’ grumbled Miss O’Dwyer. ‘But they aren’t satisfied with making me go boss-eyed with all the numbers once, now they’re are asking that I “kindly go through them again”.’

She laid the letters on the table and the baby plonked a butter-smeared hand on them.

‘They say “they can’t balance them against the ones the association’s secretary sent”. Well, I tell you, it’s no problem of mine if they can’t do their job, now is it?’ Miss O’Dwyer rolled her eyes. ‘And if the one who turned up here last time is anything to go by, most of them so-called ministry officials are only just off their mother’s teat.’

‘Well, he was a bit on the young side, I grant you, but he seemed to know his stuff about nursing associations,’ said Connie, taking the Ministry of Health’s letter from the baby to prevent him cramming it into his mouth. ‘Whose child is this?’

‘Brenda Riley’s little Johnny,’ said Miss O’Dwyer, looking dotingly at the baby. ‘Darling little man, so he is.’

‘I’m sure he is,’ said Connie as a ribbon of dribble left the child’s mouth and descended towards the superintendent’s starched cuff. ‘But why is he here?’

‘His brother kicked an empty milk bottle over and then proceeded to tread on it,’ Miss O’Dwyer replied. ‘Went right through the sole of his plimsoll, poor lad. I said I’d mind him until Mrs Riley comes back from Casualty.’

‘But what about getting ready for Fry House’s handover ceremony?’ asked Connie.

‘Well, I thought you being the darling girl you are, Connie, you could scoot around the place to make sure all is as it should be.’

‘Connie’s only just got in from a delivery, superintendent,’ Rose said.

A sentimental smile lifted the superintendent’s fleshy face. ‘And who’s the happy mother?’

‘Mrs Sinclair,’ Connie said. ‘A boy.’

‘She’ll be needing a check visit later.’

‘I said I’ll pop in after lunch,’ said Rose.

‘Well, now,’ said Miss O’Dwyer. ‘The Sinclairs live no more than a hop, skip and a jump away so perhaps I’ll get out of your hair, Connie, and take a stroll round there when Brenda picks up Johnny in a while.’ Miss O’Dwyer sighed and, closing her eyes, she drew in a deep breath. ‘Don’t you just love the sweet smell of a newborn?’

She stood up, holding Johnny in her beefy arms, and headed for the door.

‘Haven’t you forgotten something, superintendent?’ asked Connie, holding up the letters from the Ministry.

‘Leave them on my desk,’ said Miss O’Dwyer over her shoulder as she continued on her way.

As Connie watched the superintendent’s broad hips squeeze between the tables, she couldn’t help wondering, with the world and his wife descending on the place in less than three hours, if sniffing Master Sinclair should really be Miss O’Dwyer’s number-one priority this morning.

 

As the grandfather clock in the hall showed eleven o’clock, Mr Granger, the chair of the Regional Health Board, stepped forward and grasped the red ribbon that Connie and Miss O’Dwyer had pinned across the treatment room door the night before.

‘On behalf of the Minister of Health, it gives me great pleasure to declare Fry House officially part of the National Health Service,’ he said, snipping through the ribbon.

The nurses and patients who had packed into the corridor and up the stairs cheered and then spontaneous applause broke out as everyone, including Connie, clapped enthusiastically. Miss O’Dwyer, who was telling anyone who’d listen that she’d not had a wink of sleep for the past month with the worry of it all, crossed herself twice. Fortunately, Brenda Riley had collected her son just after handover at eight-thirty which allowed Miss O’Dwyer time to dash to the Sinclairs’ to welcome Stewart and be back at Fry House by nine-thirty, just as the baker arrived with the sandwiches.

Mr Granger stepped through into the treatment room, where the refreshments were being served, and a surge of people followed.

Connie stood back until the gathering thinned and then strolled into the treatment room, stifling another yawn as she remembered her early start.

Mrs Rogerson’s spread was already being devoured by local dignitaries including a handful of councillors with plates piled high with sandwiches. The various religious communities were well represented, too. Reverend Michaelson, the vicar of Christ Church, wearing a baggy suit, grey shirt and dog-collar, was chatting pleasantly with Rabbi Abrahams from Quaker Street synagogue and the skeletal Father Flaherty from St Anne’s, the Catholic church. In contrast with the everyday garb of his colleagues, Father Flaherty was dressed in a black cassock with a stiff upright collar encircling his neck while a wide-fringed belt was tied tightly around his sinewy middle. He had a heavy gold chain and crucifix slung around his neck and the grey hair on his skull-like head was clipped so close that, from a distance, he looked completely bald. His hooded eyes surveyed his fellow clerics with mild interest while the corners of his mouth lifted just a fraction, being as near to a smile as the priest could ever manage.

The housekeeper had arranged for Kossof the baker to supply kosher tit-bits for the Jewish members attending the opening, so the rabbi too was balancing a full plate of food as he talked. Mr Dawkins from the Shoreditch Chamber of Commerce had no such restriction on his diet and was therefore cramming a sausage roll in his mouth while talking to the mayor, who in full regalia was sweating profusely in the overcrowded room.

Collecting a plate from the pile at the end of the table, Connie helped herself to a couple of corned beef sandwiches and a fairy cake.

‘So that’s it, is it?’ said Rose, as she and Fran ambled over to join her. ‘We’re all working for the government now.’

‘Not according to the front page of the Sketch,’ said Fran, taking a pilchard sandwich from the pile. ‘They say we’re all working for the people.’

‘Well, whoever we’re working for, I for one am very grateful that from today I can throw my collection book into the bin and just concentrate on my job,’ said Connie.

‘You’re right,’ said Rose. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a nurse in the land who will miss taking money from their patients, myself included.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Fran, raising her teacup.

Connie and Rose chinked theirs against it by way of a toast to the new Health Service.

‘Three pretty nurses. Just what our readers like to see,’ said the photographer from the local newspaper, pointing his camera at them. ‘Can you do that again, girls?’

Connie and her two friends raised their cups.

‘Cheese!’

‘Cheese,’ they repeated.

The flash popped and Connie blinked to clear her vision of the white stars caused by the bright light.

The photographer moved on to another group of well-wishers.

‘Of course, not everyone is happy about things being free,’ said Rose.

‘You mean that lot over there?’ said Connie as she looked across at the handful of well-heeled local GPs, including Dr Marshall, who stood puffing cigars.

Despite the momentous occasion, the doctor in charge of the Christ Church surgery, who had at least a thousand souls depending on him for their medical needs, was wearing an old grey suit, which by the look of it hadn’t been pressed since the day war broke out, over a dingy shirt with frayed cuffs, his necktie was stained and threadbare.

‘My Harold said they blooming well held the country to ransom until the government coughed up,’ continued Rose, cutting into Connie’s thoughts.

Dr Marshall pulled a silver hip flask from his pocket and, after offering it around, took a swig.

As if sensing he was being watched, Dr Marshall looked over. He regarded the nurses for a second or two then, shoving the flask back in his pocket, he started towards them.

‘We’ll see you later, Con,’ said Rose.

‘Cowards,’ Connie hissed as her friends slipped away.

Dr Marshall stopped in front of her.

‘Sister Byrne,’ he said, giving her a toadying smile. ‘How nice to see you.’ His eyes slid over her. ‘And looking as lovely as ever.’

Connie smiled politely.

‘So here we are,’ he said, casting his condescending gaze over the throng surrounding them. ‘Bevan’s utopian world, although what a grubby Welsh miner’s son knows about medicine is beyond me.’

‘I’m sure he has good people to advise him,’ said Connie.

Dr Marshall grunted by way of an answer. He took out his flask and uncorked it.

‘There is tea if you’d like it,’ said Connie.

Dr Marshall took a swig and shook his head. ‘I need something stronger than tea to get through this circus.’ He put the bottle to his lips again and swallowed. ‘Still,’ he said, smacking his lips, ‘at least we’re all in it together, aren’t we, sister?’

‘I’m sure the National Health will be a great relief to our patients.’

‘Oh, of course. We mustn’t forget the patients, our new master, must we?’ Spite flashed across his fleshy features. ‘Queuing up outside the surgery since first light demanding—’ A tic flickered above his right eye. ‘Do you hear? Demanding I see them. Goddamn them.’

‘Any news on getting another GP for the practice?’

‘Now you mention it, there is,’ he replied, taking a new cigar from his pocket and biting off the end. ‘I’m advertising for an associate again.’

Connie looked amazed. ‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ Pulling a lighter from his pockets, he lit his cigar. ‘Now the goddamn Ministry have put their hands in their pockets at last I can afford to.’

Connie gave him an artless smile. ‘Well, I hope you appoint someone soon because now we’re employed by the NHS you won’t be able to borrow Fry House’s nurses to cover your surgeries any more.’

A purple flush stained Dr Marshall’s jowls. ‘You do know that even in this goddamn NHS nurses are still under the direction of doctors?’

‘We do and I’m sure I can speak for all the nurses in Fry House when I say we look forward to working with your colleague when he arrives.’ Connie smiled sweetly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get on with my visits. Doctors aren’t the only people with patients queuing down the street today.’

 

Humming along to Dinah Shore singing ‘Buttons and Bows’ playing on the radio, Connie dragged her brush through her unruly curls. It was now a few minutes short of seven-thirty and she still hadn’t put on her face. Malcolm, who was always punctual, would be here any moment and, as always, she was late.

It was hardly surprising. Even though she’d intended to start on her rounds immediat