Band of Angel (21 page)

“Yes?” A small woman opened it.

“My name is Catherine Carreg,” she said. “I’ve just come. Do you have a dustpan I could borrow?”

“I do.” The woman, who had a wild fuzz of brown hair and freckles, smiled brilliantly at her. “Come in. Isn’t this grand?”

She held the door open, still smiling, on an identical room with the same kind of string for her clothes. On hers was a sad little gray woolen dress and a pair of much-darned stockings, pale at the heel from many washings.

“The room?” Catherine wondered for a second if she was being teased, but the woman’s pleasure seemed genuine.

“Yes! I honestly can’t bloody believe it.”

“Where are you from?”

“Nurse Smart, St. Thomas’s Hospital. Call me Lizzie. I’m relieving.”

“Relieving?”

“Yeh.” She patted the bed beside her. “Sit down. We’ve had a cholera epidemic at the hospital these past three months, a terrible do, then out of the blue my superintendent says there’s a job with
this Miss Nightingale, who’s ever so posh and runs a sanitarium, and would I like to take it? Like to take it! What did she think?” Her eyes gleamed. “It’s so nice here.”

There were so many questions Catherine now longed to ask, but Lizzie, who seemed to brim with happiness, kept talking. She told Catherine how the word was that Miss Nightingale was a bit of a tartar with very high standards, that she had only just taken over here and had already dismissed four nurses, one surgeon, and a chaplain, so they’d have to look sharp, and where did she come from by the by?

From Wales, Catherine told her. She said she was relieving, too. Looking over her shoulder, she saw a tiny pair of well polished shoes already under the bed.

“Well . . . you can tell me the rest later,” said her new companion kindly, after she’d fallen silent. “And don’t mind me, I’m much too gabby.”

“Oh no. I like to talk, it’s just that I . . . well, there is so much to ask: Did you not have rooms of your own at St. Thomas’s?”

“Oh Lor’, no.” Lizzie was attacking her hair with a comb. “I’ve been there for more than five years now, and I share a cupboard with three others. The new ones sleep in a kind of cage on the landing. I’ve never had a room of my own before.”

“A cage! But—” A piercing bell rang. It came from the landing outside, where it seemed to leap up and down inside its glass house, shaking with rage.

“All right bossy boots.” Lizzy went up to the bell and tapped the glass. “We’re coming. . . . It’s a clever thing though,” she explained. “You press the switch downstairs and hear it up here. Millie downstairs was telling me about it. Miss Nightingale is very modern, she was telling me, very modern indeed. Goodness me, you’re pretty, do you have a man friend? Oh don’t mind me! I ask too many questions. Have you eaten? Well I have, but I’m not going to say no to another one.”

Millie met them on the stairs on their way down to lunch and Lizzie, who seemed to deal with everyone with the same sort of straightforward friendliness, asked her straight out whether she thought Miss Nightingale would show her face at lunch, and Millie looked almost shocked, and said in a moist whisper that she
was very important, and never ate with them but only did the announcements, and besides that a Lady Bracebridge and a Lady someone or other had come to see her earlier, with a pile of presents, and some lovely grub.

“What kind of lovely grub?” Lizzie’s eyes were shining, she said she was a “porker when it came to food,” which made Millie laugh, then cough, and Lizzie said that if she was Millie she’d take that cold home and give it a hot toddy of brandy and lemon.

“Quail’s eggs, chocklick, Lapsang whatsomaflip tea, all from Fortnub and Masonds.”

“Blimey oh riley,” Lizzie said cheerfully, “it’s as good as being at Buckingham Palace here.” Millie said it was a good place to work if you could stick the governesses, and she wouldn’t believe how many important people stopped by.

“Is she all right then, Miss Nightingale?” Lizzie asked Millie. Millie turned and looked at her, her red eyes scrunched up with the effort of thought.

“She’s all right but a bit lah-di-dah and a bit frightening,” she said. “You wouldn’t want to cross her. She’ll have you out of here as quick as ninepins if you don’t behave.” She was interrupted by a string of sneezes, and opened the door to the dining room. “Meet the customers.”

On either side of a long wooden table were about thirteen or fourteen governesses, clattering away with their knives and forks. They were a somber group: two of them in wooden wheelchairs, and one, a depressed-looking woman in a dark wrapper with a black patch over her eye. Mrs. Clark, who was in the middle of telling a story when they walked in, left them standing awkwardly by the door. She was holding a steaming pile of mashed potatoes and ladling out stew into waiting white bowls. There were plates of stew, carrots, and cabbage and jugs of gravy on the table. Lizzie, behind Catherine, gave a low moan.

“No, that girl just walked out on me, just like that and without a word,” Mrs. Clark was saying. “Miss Nightingale said she was very very sorry, but I was just going to have to carry on.” A dollop of stew hit the plate. Mrs. Clark’s eyes closed eloquently, “So!”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” one or two of the governesses murmured.

“Oh goody!” said a small plump woman at the middle of the table
who was watching the progress of the stewpot with gleaming eyes, and who appeared to be deaf. “Rabbit stew, a particular favorite.”

“And I’ve got two new nurses to settle in.” Mrs. Clark looked at them at last. “It takes time, my ladies, and that’s my problem. Time.”

The governesses glanced at them briefly and carried on eating, but the deaf one smiled, and said, “Halloo, well done! Well done!” in a general hearty way.

Catherine, who had had one or two very nice governesses when young, was surprised that no one had introduced them by name, but told herself that this was good for her; she was learning to be humble.

“Mrs. Clark,” said Lizzie, who was smiling again. “Where do you want us?”

“Nurses at the end.” Mrs. Clark, still appalled by her workload, pointed with her stew spoon toward the end of the table. “Millie will serve you. I only hope there’s enough,” she explained to the governesses. “I only heard they were coming at quarter to ten.”

“Oh dear, dear, dear,” the sympathetic little chorus started up again.

“Poor Mrs. Clark works so hard,” said one.

Catherine and Lizzie had only just sat down and picked up their knives and forks and exchanged something like conspiratorial smiles with each other, when there was the noise of a door closing outside, and the squeak of a shoe in the corridor. Mrs. Clark’s whole expression changed, she almost ran to the door, and then ran back.

“Sit up,” she instructed the governesses. “Sit up straight! It’s Miss Nightingale.” She mouthed “
early
.”

A scraping of chairs. Fourteen plates of rabbit stew and mixed vegetables left as the governesses got to their feet—even the crowlike figure in the wrapper did her best to rise.

And then Catherine felt the air in the room thrum with purpose, with tremendous excitement, as Florence Nightingale walked into the room. She was tall and slender with the kind of long and graceful neck designed for diamonds and well-cut evening dresses. Catherine, expecting someone older and worthier-looking, was much surprised by her youth and her beautiful smile.
Now she stood at the end of the table, amused but totally in control.

“Good-day to you all,” she said gaily, “and sit down, please. Don’t waste good food by letting it grow cold.” The governesses began, flinchingly, to eat again, like dogs that are not sure the bone put down is for them.

“Two short announcements,” she said in her low, musical voice. “Miss Anna Bowliss, having successfully completed a course of treatment with us, leaves tomorrow. She will be taking a last cup of tea with me tonight, you are all invited. Six o’clock sharp.”

Her face was so expressionless that Catherine could not tell whether she looked forward to this. Miss Bowliss, small and plain, and strangely built like a pantomime horse with rather too much behind and not enough in front, stood up, went scarlet, and murmured, “Oh thank you! Thank you ever so much, Miss Nightingale.” There was a smattering of applause and a few gasps of excitement.

Catherine learned later that the ceremony of the last cup addressed a problem at the Governesses’ Home apparent since it had opened: many of the women who came to them wretchedly overworked and underpaid, soon discovered it was rather more fun being ill there than being well in the outside world. The sad but necessary task of shoehorning them back into the world of drafty attic bedrooms, awkward children, and employers belonged to Miss Nightingale. The little gathering (a party would be too fanfarish a word) was to soften the blow and mark their leave-taking

“Next,” Miss Nightingale was getting impatient, “two new nurses have joined us today: Nurse Elizabeth Smart, from St. Thomas’s Hospital, and Catherine Carreg, who”—she glanced briefly at her—“is to be a probationer. Mrs. Clark will have plenty for you to do this afternoon I’m quite sure, and I will see you at six, too.

“Last thing: Lady Herbert has sent up twelve pounds of raspberries from the country especially for you. Thank-you letters in that direction of course, and three volunteers to make jam in the kitchen this afternoon.” Such was the zeal of the volunteers, some of whom pumped their arms in the air like children, that Miss Nightingale was forced to hold up a slender hand and make a firm
decision. “Miss Poulter”—a stick-thin governess too timid to raise her hand—“Belinda Peterson, Thelma Sugg”—a sensible-looking woman who carried on eating and made no fuss.

“Oh and one last thing,” said Miss Nightingale on her way out, “I should like to see you, Miss Carreg, for a private word, after the six o’clock gathering tonight. There are one or two matters we need to sort out.”

“What on earth did she mean?” Catherine whispered anxiously, after she had gone. One or two of the governesses were craning to look at her.

“Have not the foggiest.” Lizzie was tucking into her stew with abandon. “But I wouldn’t worry about it,” she whispered in a lower voice. “Women like that usually talk as if they’ve got a bun up their arse.” Catherine didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, Lizzie was so outspoken, and this was all so strange and new, and Miss Nightingale so sophisticated, so contained. She was every bit as alarming as Mr. Holdsworth had warned.

“She must be very clever to have so much influence so young.”

Lizzie supposed so and said that if Catherine was not going to eat her potato she wouldn’t mind it.

“The women here seem to worship her.”

“’Course they do,” came the reply. “It must be like staying at the Savoy for most of them. Stuck-up lot though, aren’t they?”

“Have you met her before?” How grateful Catherine was already for her new confidante. “I don’t know much about her.”

“I have.” Lizzie finished her potato and swallowed. “At St. Thomas, you wouldn’t believe what it’s been like, we’ve had all leave canceled, and the nurses have been dropping like flies. She came in from time to time with the superintendent.”

“That was splendid of her. Did she nurse?”

“Of course not.” Lizzie seemed quite surprised at the question. “I shouldn’t think so. She’s a lady, in’t she? She looked at us, she talked to the bosses, and then she went. ’Ere pass me those carrots and have some yourself. You’ve got a long day ahead of you.”

After lunch, Catherine was sent down to the kitchen to get her orders from Mrs. Clark. It was bad luck that she arrived at the very moment Millie was out buying vegetables, a new governess was knocking timidly on the front door, and Mrs. C had decided she could sit down for five minutes with a glass of something in the kitchen.

Mrs. Clark, puffing and furious, ordered her out into the hall to tell whatever her name was to follow her upstairs.

Miss Widdicombe was a thin, high-shouldered, anxious young woman. Later, she was to tell Catherine all her woes: she was the daughter of a country parson from Somerset, and was a clever woman of thirty-two who knew Latin and Greek, and most of Wordsworth’s “Prelude” by heart, but who could not stop crying. There was no money in her purse now after the expensive cab ride from the railway station, and nothing but anxiety in her heart. She was worried about the war in the Crimea, and about her brother, Simon, who was there with the 17th Lancers. She worried about herself and the flecks of blood she occasionally found in her handkerchief. She cared very much that the time for being loved and for being married had somehow sped by and left her high and dry, and she had come to dislike the children she taught, who, she suspected, neither liked nor respected her.

And Miss Widdicombe was tired, almost as tired as Nurse Smart but without any of the latter’s native toughness. Now she cowered near the hall table, almost blubbering with nerves and exhaustion.

“My maid has gone out on an errand,” Mrs. Clark told her grandly, “and we are very much at sixes and sevens today, but I shall show you up and Miss Carreg will help you with your bags.”