Abbeyford Remembered (17 page)

“So you've come back home, have you? Well, we'll have to clear a room out …” he made as if to straggle up.

“There's no need, Pa. I'm not staying. I've only come to ask one thing of you. Do you know where Jamie Trent is now?”

Her father slumped back against the sofa. His mouth trembled and his eyes darted from side to side. His shaking fingers plucked at the worn material of the sofa. “ Trent? Trent? Tha's my name.”

“No, it isn't, Pa. Your name is
Smithson
!”

“No, no,” he shouted, breathing heavily.

“ 'Ere, watch it,” the woman spoke up. “Don't upset him. He's had one heart attack. I don't want him havin' another.”

“That's
my
name,” he mumbled. “Squire Guy Trent was my father. It's my birthright.”

“I know, Pa. I know,” Carrie said soothingly, with far more patience than she felt. “But do you know where his grandson, Jamie Trent, is now?”

“Grandson? Grandson? I don't remember no grandson. His son, Wallis – but he's dead, isn't he?” He grinned suddenly, showing blackened, broken teeth. “Killed trying to save his horse from a fire I started.”

“You seem proud of the fact,” Carrie said with disgust. Her father grunted.

It was no use, she thought. He couldn't even remember Jamie – or wouldn't! She turned to leave, then briefly looked back over her shoulder. “Pa – why does Lady Adelina Lynwood hate you?”

“Adelina? Ah, my lovely Adelina, my proud beauty!” He laughed cruelly. “Robbed her of her maidenhead, didn't I? Thought she was better than me. I showed her. Wallis Trent wasn't going to have her before me.”

Carrie turned away feeling physically sick. His whole life had been spent in bitter resentment of his unfortunate birth. Instead of rising above his illegitimacy, he had allowed it to warp his mind and soul and had destroyed everything and everyone he had touched. Even himself.

Carrie left the Manor and went towards the tiny railway platform to wait for the next train to London.

She would never see her father again, for she guessed that, in that pitiful state, he could not survive for many more months.

London was a vast and lonely place and the small amount of money she had had left after paying for her passage home would not last very much longer. Her heart wanted only to search for Jamie, but common sense told her she must find shelter and employment first. But what could she do? Her only experience had been of housework – and the keeping of the shack was scarcely the same as working in a fine house as a maid. She found cheap lodgings and then began searching for work. Carrie applied for one or two positions as housemaid but was turned away. She was even unsuitable for the post of kitchen-maid it seemed.

Winter came, but Carrie had no money to buy warmer clothes – clothes such as she had not needed in the heat of India. New Year arrived, but except for the odd temporary job, lasting only a few days at a time, Carrie still had not found permanent employment. And still she had no news of Jamie, in spite of numerous enquiries.

Then suddenly the cold weather was gone and a warm spring arrived. At least now she was no longer shivering.

One evening when she returned to her dismal lodgings, she found the house in a turmoil. The landlady, a fat, loudmouthed individual, was standing at the top of the stairs banging on the door of a room opposite to the one Carrie occupied.

“You bring that woman out o' there, Mister. I'll have no sickness here in my house.” Again she banged on the door.

“What is it, Mrs Prince? What's the matter?” Carrie asked.

“Cholera! That's what,” she panted, wheezing, heavily. “I don't want no sickness in my house.” She shook her fist towards Carrie as if she were personally responsible.

Carrie stood still on the stairs as the memories of the camp in India swept over her, the natives dying of the dreadful disease.

“Mrs Prince – let me try. I was among cholera in India. I'm not afraid.”

“I want 'er out of here. There's a place run by a Miss Nightingale – a cholera house – in Harley Street. She can go there.”

“Perhaps you'd call a cab then, while I try to talk to the husband.”

“A cab? An' who's to pay for that, might I ask?”

Carrie raised her eyebrows. “Which do you prefer? The price of a cab against her staying here in your house?”

Grumbling, the woman turned and waddled downstairs.

Carrie knocked on the door. “Mr Smith – please open the door. It's Mrs Foster from across the landing.” There was no response. “Mr Smith – I know something about cholera. I've been amongst it. I want to help you. Please – open the door.”

Nothing happened for a few moments, then Carrie heard the key turn in the lock and the door opened a fraction. Two frightened brown eyes peered round the door.

“Has she gone – Mrs Prince?” He was thin and undernourished himself, dressed only in trousers and a dirty striped shirt and waistcoat. He still wore his cap even in the house.

“Yes, let me come in. I want to talk to you.”

Once inside the cramped, airless room, Carrie quickly saw that the woman lying on the rough bed in the corner was very sick. She was writhing, and moaning and dribbling. The whole room smelt sour with sickness. Swiftly, Carrie explained in whispers to the man that his wife must have some proper care. “Mrs Prince knows of a cholera house. Let your wife go there. It's her only chance!”

“No, no, it's the workhouse she means.”

“Nonsense – but we will go with her to make sure Mrs Prince is speaking the truth.”

The door of No 1 Harley Street was opened by a maid in a black dress with a frilled white apron and cap. “ Yes'm?”

“We have a woman sick with cholera,” Carrie said. “ We have been told we might bring her here.”

“Oh, no, madam. This is an Institution for Sick
Gentlewomen.
We can't take – just anyone!”

Carrie opened her mouth to protest but at that moment a quiet voice spoke behind the maid. “ What is it, Mary?”

The maid turned and curtsied. “Begging your pardon, Miss Nightingale, there's someone at the door with a woman sick with cholera. She thinks she can bring her here.”

The door opened wider and Carrie looked up to see a tall woman, slim and dignified, dressed completely in black. Her calm face was surrounded by short brown hair and her grey eyes were alert and bright. “I am Miss Nightingale. May I help you?” Her voice was pleasant and her pronunciation beautiful. She was undoubtedly a lady of quality, Carrie thought instantly.

Carrie repeated her story.

“I am so sorry, what my maid tells you is perfectly correct. This establishment is for gentlewomen only, and I couldn't take the risk of a cholera patient here either. Take her to the Middlesex Hospital. She will be well cared for there.”

“Thank you. We'll do that.” Carrie turned away and hurried back to the anxious little man in the cab.

“What'd she say?”

“They can't take her here. We've to take her to the Middlesex Hospital.”

“Oh, no!” the little man groaned. “She won't come out of one of them places!”

Grimly, Carrie was forced to agree.

But little Mrs Smith did recover – though she was one of the very few people who survived the dreadful sickness. Perhaps she owed her recovery in no small measure to the devotion of one particular nurse – Mrs Carrie Foster. As soon as Mrs Smith had been admitted to the hospital, Carrie had applied to become a nurse there and was taken on immediately.

“It looks as if we could be at the beginning of an epidemic,” the Matron sighed. “ Inexperienced though you are, I can make good use of you. I shall be glad to have someone who is not afraid of infection. It will make a change!” she added wryly.

As the spring of 1854 turned into summer the cholera epidemic which had threatened broke out in earnest. The hospitals were stretched to bursting point. Several nurses fell victim to the disease and others fled, fearing for their lives. Carrie worked long and hard amongst the crowded wards – so crowded that some beds were occupied by two women. Others lay on palliasses – or, as more and more patients flooded in, on the bare floorboards – between the beds and down the centre of the ward. There was little the nurses could do to cure the victims of cholera. They could only try to alleviate their discomfort by washing them, offering drinks, or holding the hand of the dying.

It was here at the Middlesex Hospital that Carrie met Miss Nightingale again, for in August that lady came to help organise the nursing of cholera patients. So hectic were the days, so exhausted was she at the end of them, that Carrie had little time and even less energy to continue her search for Jamie. She had written to several officers' clubs, enquiring if he were a member, she had even written to army officials, asking for information as to his regiment and posting, but all enquiries had proved useless.

Then, as weariness and desolation threatened to break down even Carrie's strength of purpose, a letter arrived from Lady Lynwood.

‘
I have just learned that Jamie's regiment has been posted to the Crimea. I understand he sailed last week.'

Carrie sat with the letter in her hand, loneliness and misery sweeping over her. He had left England, he had been here, somewhere quite near perhaps, and she had not known, and now he was gone, away across the sea to fight a war they had only just begun to hear of.

The weeks passed and the cholera epidemic abated and the hospital began to return to something like normality.

It was ironic, Carrie thought, that now that she had a little more time, there was nothing she could do. Jamie was in a far-off country and she was a virtual prisoner here in England.

At the beginning of October, Carrie received a terse note from Miss Nightingale.

“
Please come to see me tomorrow at No 49 Belgrave Square at 11 a. m.
”

Carrie was shown into the dining-room of the home of Mr Sydney Herbert, Secretary at War, at two minutes to eleven the following morning. Miss Nightingale was seated at the dining-table, papers spread out before her, her pen poised in the act of writing copious notes. She was plainly dressed, her brown hair, parted in the centre and looped in two plaits over her ears. The grey eyes in the oval face regarded Carrie searchingly.

Without preamble, she launched into the reason for her summons. “I have been asked to take a party of nurses to the Crimea. Will you come?”

Carrie gasped. The Crimea? She was being asked to go to the Crimea? It seemed like a dream. She could find Jamie, or at least, her reason told her, she would stand a better chance of hearing news of him than stuck here in England.

“Oh, yes, yes. I will.” She could not stop her eagerness from showing on her face.

“It will be demanding, back-breaking work, it will tax your strength, your resolve and your courage to the utmost. You will see sights you had never thought existed. I know of your work at the Middlesex Hospital – it does you credit. But I know nothing of your experience before that?” The statement was a question.

“I nursed my brothers when they died from consumption. Last year I returned from India – my late husband was a railway builder.” She paused as Lloyd's laughing face was in her mind's eye. “There was much sickness in India – particularly cholera. I helped out when necessary.”

Carrie was not one to boast of her self-sacrifice and yet Miss Nightingale's shrewd eyes seemed to read on her face that here was a woman who had had experience of life. It was written in her eyes.

“Have you any ties in England? Any family or – attachments?”

Carrie shook her head and answered quickly, perhaps too quickly. “No – there's no one here now.”

Miss Nightingale's eyebrows rose fractionally but she asked no more questions on that point. She went on to explain the work which would be required of Carrie, finishing with the words, “ I am a strict disciplinarian and any transgression from my rules will be severely dealt with. Do you still want to come?”

“Yes – I do.”

Miss Nightingale smiled and her face altered immediately, the stern lines relaxing, but only for a moment for then she added seriously, “I don't know what we're going to find out there, Mrs Foster. I hope you will have the stomach for it.”

Carrie smiled, remembering the harshness of her life as it had been before she had married Lloyd Foster. “ I think I shall, Miss Nightingale.”

“Good,” Miss Nightingale said briskly. “We leave on Saturday, the day after tomorrow. Can you be ready?”

Carrie felt a surge of excitement. “Yes, ma'am, I can.”

She was on her way to find Jamie!

It was a motley selection of women who finally staggered ashore at the Scutari landing-stage. The
Vectis
, in which the party had travelled, had docked at Constantinople and the last mile of the journey, across the Bosphorus, had been made in two caiques. Carrie, least affected by the
mal de mer
of all the party, helped her companions.

“Gawd luv us,” exclaimed one ‘nurse', a woman recently released from prison, “w'ot 'ave we let ourselves in fer?”

“What indeed,” murmured Carrie. Some of the younger girls sank to the ground, whilst the Sisters, Roman Catholic nuns, accepted the trials in silence, but they were white-faced and, Carrie noticed, their hands were shaking.

Carrie looked about her. The whole shoreline was a vast cemetery. In the rough ground were row upon row of gravestones of various sizes.

Near the landing-stage were a few Turks and, scarcely recognisable, their uniforms were so torn and dirty, were some British soldiers. All pride was gone, their faces were grey with sickness and suffering. Two walked on crutches, one trouser leg hanging loose and empty. Another nursed an empty sleeve, his eyes staring and vacant. Another ranted and raved, weaving about as if drunk until he slumped down on to the ground. No one went to his aid, no bearers appeared to carry him to the hospital. The man just lay there.