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bitch.”
    He leaned forward to put the palms of his hands flat on her immaculate desk, and glared at her. “I’m off to see Frank Campbell next, but I’m warning you, Gertie, that I expect your wholehearted support in this. Since the girls are required to live in, they will each have a bedroom. You will provide a common room with easy chairs, and desks and bookshelves for studying. The kitchen will be at their command for light meals as well as liquids, and see they have an ice chest before spring. Get off your pampered bottom and see to their welfare! Use Marje Bainbridge as a chaperone, by all means, but not in the lap ofluxury. I hear that there will be money to build a new home for nurses, but until it’s finished, I want my trainees adequately accommodated.”
    Gertrude Newdigate had listened, but wasn’t prepared to take the blame for Frank Campbell’s parsimony. “Fight your own battles with that awful man!” she said coldly. “My hands are tied.”
    “Rot! I’ve known you for twenty years, and you don’t scare me. Nor does Frank. Gertie, think ! Those four young women are so good, that’s the real tragedy of it! Why on earth are you risking four potential matrons just to please a gang of petty West End nurses who don’t know sodium from potassium? Who wouldn’t know a Latin or a Greek medical root if it bit them on the bum? Devote your energy with the West Enders to convincing them that in future Medicine will demand educated nurses, so look to their daughters. Don’t be so in tune with yesterday!”
    Her natural detachment was returning; she could see what Liam meant, though she hadn’t intended it to happen. The trouble was that she was too new to Corunda Base, and hadn’t understood how dismal the quality of West End nursing was when it came to science and theory. Still, she had one dagger she could slip in.
    “How is your wife?” she asked sweetly.
    He didn’t bite, he spurned the bait. “Philandering, quite as usual. Some things never change.”
    “You should divorce her.”
    “Why? I’ve no mind to take another wife.”
    The Latimer girls loved Dr. Liam Finucan, a solitary ray of light in a densely black tunnel. Having discovered how bright and well prepared they were, he applied himself with vigour and enthusiasm to the task of tutoring them, thrilled to find that their knowledge of mathematics and physical phenomena enabled them to understand things like the gas laws and electricity already. They were as competent as men in the early years of a medical degree. When it came to subjects new and strange, they seized upon knowledge eagerly. Even Grace, he was learning, had more than enough brains to cope with the theory; what slowed her down was lack of true interest. To Matron he had said “four matrons”, but three was more correct. Whatever Grace burned for, it was not to become a registered nurse.
    His favourite among the four was Tufts, whom he always called Heather. Edda was the more gifted and intelligent, but the pathologist in Liam admired order, method, logic, and in those areas Tufts reigned supreme. Edda was the flashy surgeon, Tufts was the plodding pathologist, no doubt about it. His liking for her was reciprocated; neither the monocled handsomeness of the surgeon Max Herzen nor the bubbling charm of the senior obstetrician Ned Mason held anything like as much attraction for Tufts as Dr. Finucan did, with his white-winged black hair, long and finely featured face, ship’s grey-blue eyes. Not that the unromantic Tufts mooned over Dr. Finucan, or dreamed of him when asleep; simply, she liked him enormously as a person and loved being in his company. Understanding her nature, her sisters never made the mistake of teasing her about men,especially Dr. Liam Finucan. Though nothing about her was nunlike, Tufts did bear some resemblance to a monk.
    The fire Liam lit under Matron was a little like a torch, in that Matron lit a fire under Sister Bainbridge, who kindled one under the