Band of Angel (18 page)

“I have come to London,” she said, “to be a doctor, or if that is quite impossible, to get a professional nurse’s training.”

“I see,” he said. “Have you had any nursing experience?”

“My mother died in childbirth a few months ago.”

“Ah.” Poor girl, he should have guessed, she had the fearful look of the recently bereaved. He did not answer her directly, but crossed his long legs and asked if she would mind his pipe. Then, wrapped inside a cloud of aromatic blue smoke, he disappeared for a bit.

“Impossible.”

“Impossible?”

“Forgive me,” he said, “but it is kinder to be blunt. You are too young, you are, if I may say so, a very attractive young woman. You would be like a lamb to the slaughter. Some of those medical students—I know, I teach them almost daily—have a strange reaction to all the death and suffering they see around them. I don’t know quite how to put it, but it’s almost an animal reaction. I’m being frank in order for you to truly understand. They make jokes about dead people who they call stiff ’uns. It’s a way of dealing with fear. When we are not around they throw limbs at each other. Apart from that, you would be teased and tormented unmercifully from morning till night. I know what I talk of, my dear; there is one woman doctor now in the whole of London. I knew her quite well before her health collapsed and she was rendered a semi-invalid. My colleagues were, I’m afraid, very
unhappy about a woman entering their profession, and they made her life a misery. It was very depressing to witness it.”

She sat considering this, and then looked at him steadily. “What eyes,” he thought, “the kind that make men want to perform great deeds.”

“I am not afraid of the company of men,” she told him. “I came to London with the cattle drovers, and worked beside them every day.”

“No medical school would admit you,” he continued doggedly. “Each one is as rule-bound as the next. There is another important question to consider: it takes about six years to become a doctor. You would have to apprentice yourself to a doctor and, in the unlikely event that he would agree to have you, it would cost your parents a great deal of money for your tuition, your instruments, your student’s fees, and your lodgings. Is your father behind this?”

A dog sighed by the fire.

“I thought it better to find a situation before I asked him that question,” she said guardedly, and then burst out, “Surely I can do something else. I am young. I’m keen to learn. Is the whole of the medical profession barred to me? Could I be a nurse?”

He signed again.

“Impossible. My students call them the band of angels because they have such a terrible reputation. Some are a step up from streetwalkers, some simply poor and desperate, some of course are magnificent—we don’t often hear about them.”

He replied that it was a scandalous situation and he was not proud of it. He put his fingers into steeples and rested his nose on top of them. She could see him looking puzzled as if some stray thought eluded him.

“So there’s nothing else you can think of?” she persisted.

A silence, then he puffed a few more times on his pipe, making goldfish sounds. Perhaps one more thing, he said cautiously, but it might not appeal to her, or be easy to arrange.

She leaned forward eagerly.

“Yes?”

“Well, my old friend Dalrymple, who incidentally is one of the ablest surgeons in London, works once a week at the sanatoria for
sick governesses in Harley Street. The full name of the place is The Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances. The home is run by a remarkable lady, the daughter of aristocrats, who believes as you do that more women should be properly trained in medical matters. It is a very, how shall I say it, genteel place. The kind of place your father might approve of. The patients are mostly governesses, paid for by their relatives; there are no student surgeons, no improper patients. I have no idea if they need any help but it might be . . .”

“Mr. Holdsworth”—she jumped to her feet—“It’s a capital idea. How can I ever thank you enough?”

“Please, please,” he said nervously, “sit down, sit down. It’s only the seed of a suggestion, of an idea. The lady in charge is formidable and fierce and will need to be handled quite carefully. I do, however, have one small card up my sleeve, which you will forgive me if I do not immediately reveal to you, but which might prove effective.”

“What is the lady’s name?”

“Her name,” he said, “is Florence Nightingale.”

She held both his hands. She thanked him from the bottom of her heart.

“Please don’t,” he said, “you may come to rue the day.”

Before their interview was over, Mr. Holdsworth agreed to approach Miss Nightingale on two conditions. The first: that Catherine immediately contact her family and inform them of her whereabouts and her plans. The second: that she stay at his home for a week in order to recover her health and strength. If she got the job, her life from then on would be hard and, in his professional opinion, she looked pale and run-down. Furthermore, he’d blushed at this and so had she, it might be helpful if Margaret could take her shopping and get her “um . . . kitted out.”

The next day, after breakfast, she sat in a chair in the morning room, a sheet of writing paper on her knee, her tongue slightly protruding between her teeth, and wrote a letter to her father outlining her plans and enclosing a short note from Holdsworth. The second letter was more difficult. Remembering the look of stunned surprise on Eliza’s face still brought tears to her eyes; she owed her sister such a profound apology.

By the end of the morning there were many crumpled pieces of paper in the wastepaper basket but the letter, with its entreaties of love and its desperate need for news from home, was finally done. She longed to tell Eliza about the drove and about Deio, but even to think about him brought her such mounting distress that she kept her counsel and, instead, asked her for practical things: “my brown portmanteau, if you please, my dark dress and bonnet, two pairs of woolen stockings, and as good a stock of underthings as you may find in my drawer. Also handkerchiefs, my dark leather boots with the side buttons, that sketch of mother and father from
the top of the washstand, my book of poems, and one of Juno’s shoes.”

She enclosed some money to pay for the postage, telling Eliza to buy herself chocolates and scented soap with any that was left over.

“Please send these things quickly,” she wrote, with more firmness than she felt, “for I hope to start work soon.” Before she sealed the letter, she had a premonition that she might soon be very cold, an odd premonition, on that sunlit, bird-loud day, but strong enough for her to go back to her list and add, “and my blue cloak.” That done, she felt a great release, like a tight hat coming off. She’d set it down, and was ready now.

She opened her eyes, took a deep breath and looked around the room. A clock ticked; she had to start now and was aware that for her this was a big moment. She picked up one of three books Mr. Holdsworth had left her that morning. He’d opened one, saying “Ferguson. It’s the standard work on anatomy and physiology—he’s a colleague of mine. Clerkwell C.F., although a bit of a quack in my opinion, is an astute observer of symptoms. Before the end of the day you will imagine yourself having every ailment invented by God—most students do.”

She sat down in a leather chair near the window with Brook’s theory of disease in her hands. It began with a section on typhus explaining a great controversy that now raged about the origins and spread of infectious diseases. The miasmic theorists said typhus was spread by the state of the atmosphere corrupted by terrestrial exhalations or vapors. The contagionists blamed poor sanitary conditions in the cities and the contamination of drinking water. A third group had clear evidence that the culprit was human fecal discharges in the water, or some agency resembling a living organism. As a child she’d had a vivid and recurring dream in which she’d suddenly discovered four new doors in Carreg Plâs, opening onto rooms never seen before. She’d moved through the rooms entranced, and now felt the same mix of curiosity and fear. What would she find? It was like lifting a stone and finding a keen, milling, new life of ideas and possibilities beneath the flat surface of things.

When she was finished with typhus, Margaret, who was being
very kind to her, put her head around the door and asked if she would like a tray of tea. When it came, she drank it down gratefully; after years of frittering her time, the effort of concentration was great. She turned the page and moved to the section on smallpox. There had once been a small outbreak of it at Aberdaron and her mother had gone to visit the sufferers. Everyone had blamed it on a long hot summer, but there might have been a thousand other explanations. By the time she’d finished with smallpox, the light was fading behind the French windows and she was stiff and yawning, but she wasn’t done yet. She opened the section on childbirth, diseases of, and for the first time was disappointed. There was almost nothing here. “A condition,” said the book curtly, “requiring the services of a trained midwife or accoucheur and not of interest to the general medical student.” There were no pictures, and what information there was, was given in language too technical to understand.

Catherine could smell her mother’s room again. Sick and sweet and dying. Felt her mother’s hand in hers. “This is for you, Mother,” she thought, “for you and for me.”

And then she thought of Deio, how he’d suddenly arrived on the doorstep that day. He’d leaned down and put his face next to hers and absorbed her pain. Tender and strong, yet full of some deep understanding of her: she’d breathed him in, his strength, his smell of fresh air and smoke, his youth. These were the moments that were so hard to forget. She stood up and walked around in a fever, she had to get new thoughts in her head now, to learn to be alone. He’d changed everything on that night in Llangollen and she had, too, with her writhing body, her moans. The surge of feeling—unbelievable, like a wave breaking, and then the hurt and the blood. Dreadful and shameful.

Breathing heavily, she made herself sit down calmly. Beyond the darkening garden, London was a distant thrum. Somewhere out there was the Governesses’ Home. She tried to picture it in her mind: a stately building with a library like Mr. Holdsworth’s. Miss Nightingale at the blackboard teaching.

“Is there any news?” she asked Mr. Holdsworth a few hours later, as soon as he walked through the door.

“I only asked her this morning,” he scolded her. “Be patient. And don’t forget the second of my two conditions. I want some roses in those cheeks, before I even think of it.”

Her father’s letter came ten days later.

Dear Catherine,

We are relieved to hear you are well, but your letter and your disappearance has shocked and upset us all.

It seems you are quite set on spending your life away from home and I cannot feel glad about that, neither can Gwynneth, but in view of what has happened, and after taking advice from Rev. Hughes and Mr. Holdsworth about your reputation in this community, I say with regret that you should be given leave to try this new way of life for one year. After that time we shall have to review the situation as and when both parties see fit.

The last bit hurt most. It sounded as if he were disposing of a field, or drawing up a loan agreement for a horse. But it was followed by an agreement that if she obtained a situation with Miss Nightingale he would pay her a small allowance quarterly and in advance. He had signed off:

I pray this will make you happy.

With every best wish from your father.

She folded the letter and put it back in its wrapper with a sudden longing for his tweedy smell, his strong arms, the safe feeling he’d once given her. She thought of the barley sugars he used to dole out from the tin in the little cupboard beside the fire. There seemed no way back, but she would miss him.

Eliza’s letter smelled of violets. She wrote:

It was a wondrous relief to hear you are safe and well again. All we heard from Deio was that you were in London. Since then, Eleri has come down to the house to set our minds at rest
and I feel I can breathe again, and whatever you decide to do will be all right because you are well.

The summer here has continued long and hot; we had too much grass and then suddenly, just on the week Father was to harvest, it looked like rain, so he and Alun and the Merediths worked day and night to get the harvest in, and Gwynneth and I spent those days in the kitchen, cooking up pies and ferrying them and lemonade to the fields. It was fortunate that we got it in before a big storm hit on Friday two weeks ago. A bolt of lightning got the Vaughans’ barn near Pwhelli; Mr. V got hit by a brick on the forehead and knocked out.

Now, I have a secret for you, which is not really that anymore. You remember Gabriel Williams, don’t you? He is tall, with dark curly hair and the sweetest smile you can imagine. He is a Gwynn Williams, the son of Ivor Williams who used to farm near Grandma’s. He was, unexpectedly, at Grandma’s party. I wish you had been there. It was a beautiful night—she had put up the Chinese lanterns and it was warm enough to open the windows and there was a full moon over the mountains. He marked five dances on my card, and then we sat in the garden and listened to the fat girl from Caernarfon singing “I Will Borrow This Rose.” It was wonderful, Catherine. Yes, I am in love, definitely!!!! The next week, Gwynneth, who is delighted and already bursting with advice about gloves and dresses, escorted me over to his parents’ house for lunch. His parents were so agreeable and kind. I think he might speak to Father soon. I wish I could speak to you about all of this. Please keep writing and tell me all the new things that are happening to you, I so want to know that you are well and happy,