Band of Angel (27 page)

“There you go, love,” he said, “Forty-nine Belgrave Square.” She stepped out into a puddle of muddy water, which soaked the hem of her dress.

A tall, imposing woman came to the door and took her umbrella. As she stepped into the hall, which was warm and light with mirrors on either side, her foot slipped into a soft carpet.

“This is Miss Carreg,” the tall woman told a maid, “take her downstairs with the others.”

She wondered if the maid could hear her heart thumping as she led the way. She was taken to a medium-sized pantry room where a row of wet and bedraggled women, some still steaming from the rain, sat on a row of benches. Above their heads was a shelf that another maid, in a spotless white apron, was rapidly emptying of jars of preserved fruit, flour, tea, and sugar. The room smelled of wet wool and bodies. Catherine sat on the furthermost edge of the bench near the door until a small woman, surrounded by packages, appeared and she was told to budge up. She wedged Catherine in beside a bulky woman with a damp shoulder who smelled of gin. She took out a gray rag and blew her nose.

“Don’t you trust us not to nick it?” she said to the maid, her phlegmy laugh becoming a cough.

“I’m only following orders, ladies,” said the maid in a huff, “sorry.”

Catherine felt sick and panicky. To distract herself, she looked quickly from one face to another. This woman, whose split boots were making puddles on the floor, had dark circles etched under her eyes; the next, a yellowish complexion and filthy boots. Then there was a fat woman with swollen lips, leaning heavily on her knees and breathing through her mouth. Lizzie was right, she thought, there was the world as it was, and the world as you wanted it to be.

They sat there for nearly an hour.

Twice the maid came back and removed more provisions. “Don’t touch anything that isn’t yours,” she said.

“They think we’re thieves,” the fat woman with the thick lips told Catherine, who looked away.

At last, the woman at the end of the row, who wore a green dress and a black net hat dirty enough to have been taken from a dustbin, stood up and said, “Bugger this. I’ve got a job to go to tonight and children to feed. Miss Thing will have to do without me.”

“That’s right” and “You tell ’em girl” were muttered from the bench, but nobody else moved and no one complained when the maid suddenly came in and told Miss Carreg she could go up since she was closest to the door.

Up she went again, across the hall, and up another staircase and through a high, curved double door into a warm, high-ceilinged room, where she could hear rain splattering against large square windows. This room had peach-colored walls and golden sofas, and some beautiful mirrors reflecting back a dancing fire, some important-looking relatives, and charming furniture.

At the end of the room she saw Selina Bracebridge, blond and bouncy as ever, sitting at her desk behind a pile of papers. Lady Bracebridge didn’t remember they’d met before and introduced herself. She said she would be joined in the selection process by Lady Cranworth and Lady Canning for, as she might well imagine, Miss Nightingale had a great deal on her mind. Unlikely, her brief smile seemed to convey, that Catherine would understand the workings of Miss Nightingale’s mind, but it was important to be polite. Her ladyship opened a large leather register.

“Your name?” she said.

“Catherine Carreg.”

Carreg. Welsh word, from stone.
She stood as straight as she could but remembered to keep her eyes down.
I want to go. I’m going to go
. The words kept coming in her head.

“From?”

“The Lleyn Peninsula in Wales, originally.”

“How must I write that down? Or perhaps you don’t know.”

“I do. L-L-E-Y-N pronounced hleen. But I believe, ma’am, we may have met at the Home for Governesses where I work.”

“We did? I don’t remember that pleasure.”

Oh blast it!
Looking down, Catherine saw she had brought some
mud in on the hem of her dress and could smell the wool as it dried. Wet sheep. Like home. It was awful, she thought, to have come so far and to want something this much.

“Your age?”

“Twenty-six, ma’am,” she lied.

“You’re young for this.” Selina Bracebridge suddenly closed her eyes and stifled a yawn. Her diamond ring winked in the peach light.

“None of them are used to this kind of work,” thought Catherine.

“Miss Nightingale has expressly asked for older women.”

“I have had a great deal of experience, ma’am,” she said, “and I have a reference from a surgeon, Mr. Holdsworth.” She handed her the letter.

“I know Ferdinand Holdsworth; such a very nice man.” Lady Bracebridge read the letter without expression and then laid it aside. Flames from the fire turned her face and hair into a glowing mass of pinks and golds. “So, does he support you in this venture?”

“Yes, my lady”—or at least he would when she asked him to.

“So I may write to him?”

“You may write to him.”

“Good.” The letter was put aside. “Tell me, why do you wish to go?” Lady B looked fiercer. “Do you have a religious motive? We are not sending women out to be chaplains you know.”

This remark annoyed her greatly, but she kept her temper saying quietly, “No, your ladyship, I want to be a nurse.”
Or a doctor if it could ever be allowed.

“No doubt you are aware of the sisterhoods,” said Lady Bracebridge, “religious orders that are beginning to train nurses. They have some fine qualities but some do tend to think of nursing as a road to salvation, or at least Rome.”

“I nursed in Wales and at the Home with Nurse Smart.”

“I don’t think I know, Nurse Smart,” Lady Bracebridge said vaguely, “there were three other people interviewing this morning apart from myself. Now . . .” She stood up, and Catherine, for a moment, thought the interview might be over, but after a short pause, Lady Bracebridge began to pepper her with questions.

“Do you have children? Don’t bother to make me up a story if you have. In some ways we welcome them as a sign of maturity although, naturally, they would be left at home.”

This woman.
Her dander was rising.
She treats me like a servant, or a penitent.

“No, your ladyship. No children.”

“Any husbands or things?” she said carelessly.

“No.”

“Any communicable diseases?”

“No.”
Oh unbearable! Eyes down. Eyes down.

“Any record that would make a speedy departure from England convenient for you?”

“No.”

“Are you prepared to be sober, honest, punctual, quiet, orderly, and clean? Do you realize that failure to be these things could result in instant dismissal? Do you have a high sense of duty? Are you prepared to obey Miss Nightingale in every particular, or accept the consequences?”

“Yes.”
She wants a band of angels, not nurses.

And then, from the hallway outside, the sound of dogs yapping, doors slamming and a low musical voice crying “Selina, dearest, I’m back!” The door burst open and Miss Nightingale flew across the carpet and clasped Lady Bracebridge by the arms.

“What a morning! I’ve never had such a day. I’ve simply sped back and forth across London, from the War Office to the uniform makers and then to Mother’s. How goes it here?”

“Oh Florence,” Lady Bracebridge was gleaming with excitement, “
I must, I will
hear every word, so do stay please, just sit,
sit,
have tea by the fire with me. I have just about finished with Miss Carreg here.”

“Miss Carreg?” Miss Nightingale hadn’t noticed her, but now she was giving her a terrible look. “What on earth are you doing here?”

Catherine could hear her heart thumping, as Miss Nightingale took off her dark blue bonnet and placed it precisely on a low settle.

“I gave you no permission to come. In fact I told you not to.”

“I want to go, Miss Nightingale.” She looked her straight in the eye.
“I want to go more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life before.”

“Why?” There was no softening of her expression.

“I want to help.”

“Why?”

I killed my mother.
“To help the poor soldiers, Miss Nightingale, and because I want to serve you absolutely.”

Still frowning a little, Miss Nightingale walked across the length of carpet, a floating graceful walk, and asked to see Miss Carreg’s particulars. Lady B passed her the sheaf of papers. A butler came in with a tea trolley. “Not yet Phillips,” he was told, “put the crumpets near the fire and bring the pot back when we’ve finished with Miss Carreg.”

Then Lady Bracebridge told Miss Nightingale, with a significant look, that they’d only had fifty-two applicants that morning. Both thought it wasn’t as many as they’d expected and they would need to think about it.

“Our time is already running out,” Catherine heard Miss Nightingale say, and then she was given another freezing look for being within earshot of such an important conversation.

“Go downstairs,” said Miss Nightingale suddenly. “Right away! We need time to talk and have our tea.”

Back in the basement again, she was led into a smaller, more airless room where she waited on her own surrounded by brooms and pails. She was shaking with shock at the anticipation of the rocket from Miss Nightingale that hadn’t quite come, and angry, too: Lady Bracebridge had not asked her one single question about her nursing abilities but had treated her like a servant, and a dim one at that.

Half past three. Quarter to four. Half past four. She began to doze in a kind of dull agony of waiting. When she closed her eyes, she half dreamed she was with her mother. She saw the outline of her beautiful, straight nose as she’d held her hand when they’d stood together, looking over the water to Bardsey Island.
Oh we’ll go a roaming, the two of us you and I.
The door opened again and she was instantly awake. They were taking her upstairs again. Lady Bracebridge stood in front of her and her heart almost stopped beating.

“Miss Carreg,” she said. “We have sent a messenger this afternoon to Mr. Holdsworth asking him for a further reference. You are too young for us and, if someone better qualified and more suitable turns up, you will not come, but if they don’t, can you sail with us on October 21?”

Good God!
She felt her stomach fall away.

“I can,” she said.

“Very well. A uniform and a draft letter of agreement awaits you at the door, just in case.”

Back at the Home, the door flew open as soon as she touched it.

“Well?” Amelia Widdicombe and Lizzie said together.

“I am going,” she said. “If nobody more suitable turns up.”

“Oh blessings!” Miss W closed her eyes and nodded her head vigorously.

“Well done, you.”

“What about you, Lizzie?” Catherine said anxiously. “What did they say to you?”

Lizzie looked at her, a strange expression on her face, both amused and terrified. She squeezed her hand very tight. “I’m going, too.”

“Oh thank God, Lizzie,” she said, flooded with relief.

“Oh, please, dear ladies, go soon, and go fast.” Miss Widdicombe’s red-rimmed eyes were filling up again. “There is so much work ahead of you.”

“Well, give her a chance to get her cloak off first,” said Lizzie in her usual practical voice. “She’s dripping all over Mrs. Clark’s floor.”

“And I dripped mud all over Lady Bracebridge’s carpets earlier.” Catherine felt a sense of rising hysteria.

“You did what!” All the tensions of the day exploded into school-girlish chortles as she told them, Miss Widdicombe holding her long face in her hands and letting out strangled squeals, and Lizzie sitting on the stairs roaring.

“And they asked if I drank or had a criminal record,” Catherine eventually gasped out, but as she said it, she felt the laughter become tears.

“They asked you what?” Miss Widdicombe stopped laughing, too. “Why should they assume that?”

“They always do,” said Lizzie flatly. “They ask every nurse straight outright before she gets a situation, I can’t see the harm in it.”

“But it pains me to think of you or Nurse Smart being treated like a low person.” Miss Widdicombe had suddenly become their friend and ally. “You are both,” her eyes were filling up again, “so good, so kind.”

“Oh nothing like that,” Catherine assured her quickly. She wanted to hold this in her mind as a good day and not think about the questions she’d been asked, or the row of smelly fat women, or any of the other painful things—like telling Deio—that lay ahead.

“Well, let’s talk about something else,” said Miss W quickly. “Was Miss Nightingale there, and if so, what was she wearing? And what did she say?” Her protruding teeth gleamed as she waited for the fun bits.

“She was only there for a short while,” Catherine heard herself say in a trembling voice. “She is remarkable, you know. If anybody can lead this expedition it is she.”

She was remarkable Miss Widdicombe agreed, and a tear slid down her cheek.

Catherine felt tired suddenly, with the glassy, head-spinning tiredness of a child who has been shrieking and playacting for too long and who yearns suddenly to be normal and to go to bed. But their raised voices and laughter had drawn two of the governesses to the top of the stairs.