Band of Angel (35 page)

Clara Sharpe said it felt as though they were in the sultan’s harem, sitting like this. “Pass us a fig, Fatima,” she said. Anne Higgins, a stout woman with a slow, hissing laugh like steam escaping, went “ssss . . . ssss . . . sss.”

Catherine wanted to hit someone again. She was sick to death of inactivity, of stupid jokes, of being cold and confined. Let them work, for God’s sake. But no. When their dirty cups had been washed up, Nurse Barnes, always greatly interested in her own health, unpacked her own medicine box and dwelt lovingly on the quantities of Carnation corn caps, Sloane’s liniment, and Shaw’s blood purifier, which she admitted, to general approval, she’d nicked from her last employer.

“In fact, I nicked them all.” She goggled her eyes at her own cheek. “I wouldn’t from you lot, mind, but they paid me so bad.”

She told them about an attack of measles she’d had three years ago so severe that, “Me spots grew inwards.
Inwards.
I promise you. My son fetched me a bottle of Shaw’s, and I was up that night cooking his dinner.”

“You’ve told us that already,” said Emma Fagg, “twice.”

But Barnsie, as they now all called the widow, got away with it. Everybody liked her because she was so softhearted but, when the floor was swept, Catherine was horrified to see Barnsie put her mattress down next to hers and say with a smile, “I’ll sleep here next
to you.” All of them smelled, after days without a proper wash, but the widow had a particularly odd and terrible smell, like old meat; she was also a snorer.

“All right then, my precious?” Barnsie squeezed her hand.

“Yes, thank you,” said Catherine, determined not to cry; it was just that she felt so homesick.

That night, Barnsie turned toward Catherine in the dark and said she thought she was a bit of a “dark horse,” and although the others talked about their fellows, she’d never said a word. “You’ve never even said if you’ve got a sweetheart, and I bet you have—lovely girl like you.”

Catherine said, with a terrible sinking of her heart, that she hadn’t, so there was nothing much to say about that. It hurt so much to say it that Barnsie must have noticed. She changed the subject abruptly, and said, “Right then,” as though Catherine had been pestering her for days, “so I’d better tell you my story at last.”

She got up on one elbow and came so close to her in the dark, that Catherine could see the outline of her teeth, which were childishly large and friendly. Her story took nearly an hour to tell; Catherine never could quite work out whether she told it out of tact, or to test, or out of a simpleminded desire to entertain. All she knew was that with Barnsie’s puffing breath on her cheek and the occasional flash of her eye in the dark, she felt like the prey of some unstoppable wild beast come to tell her that its life was as important, as repulsive, as wonderful, as the next person’s.

Her parents, Barnsie told her, were street people. Her father’s principal occupation had been as a coachman on the London to Brighton run, but his “chief abiding place” was the taproom, and, since people hadn’t taken kindly to being driven at an erratic pace, he “soon took up residence there, more or less permanent.” After that, she said, they’d lived in Seven Dials, in a house that was “nothing better than a kind of tent, which was why I don’t think this room is as bad as some of the other stuck-up arses I could mention.”

“Barnsie!”

“I don’t mean you. You’re my silly little girl.” Barnsie squeezed her hand in the dark, and, in spite of herself, Catherine smiled. When they’d first moved to Seven Dials, Barnsie went on, her mother had set up her own street stall, “although where she got the money for the combs and children’s toys and such like was nobody’s business.” But then, one day a young thief, no more than thirteen or fourteen, had come, knocked her mother out cold, and took her stuff, and not long after that her mother was a stiff ’un. There was a long sigh in the dark, and Catherine, feeling a rising hysteria, put her hands over her eyes.

“Please stop talking,” she wanted to beg her, but the harsh voice kept going.

“I’m ten years old, and I go out on the street to take over where my mother left off.
Come buy this lot. Penny the lot. Lovely knife, cut your butter wiv it.
”

There was a thump on the wall next to them.

“Firkin silly bitches.”

“Barnsie! Barnsie!”

“I’m only talking. So, where was I? Well, that’s it . . . then I find that selling things is another way of starving, so I’ll put it in a nutshell for you: I had two younger brothers and sisters, and they’re starving, too, so I goes up to the dolly shop I know in Seven Dials, and I buys myself a crinoline and a lovely little pork pie hat with a feather, and I’m not ashamed to tell you this, I put myself out on the street.”

“Barnsie, please don’t . . . you don’t have to tell me . . .”

“I do, I have to, you’re much too wet behind the ears. We won’t stay like this forever, we’ll be meeting soldiers soon, and you don’t have a clue.” And Barnsie went on to tell her in some detail of the gentlemen she had lain with, what she had done for them, and they for her.

“So what do you think to that?” she asked eventually. “You’ve gone eversa quiet.”

She was thinking about Deio in the chophouse.
Do you know what most men call nurses? Skirts, cracks, crumpets.

But Barnsie, dear Barnsie, so comfortable, so warm with a bosom any child would love to sink their head in. Not evil, not dirty, and
now, her round blue eyes staring at her in the dark, waiting for an answer.

Catherine gave a shuddering sigh. “I think, well, I think . . . a great deal of evil has been done to you in your life.”

“Evil be buggered.” Barnsie sat up in bed. “I wasn’t ’ticed. Nobody forced me. I like it—some of it anyway. It’s only women like you that find it disgusting, women like me think it’s all right. I had dresses, I had hats, me brothers and sisters had food in their mouths and I was my own master and mistress. What’s so bloody evil about that?”

“Barnsie, shush, keep your voice down. So why did you stop?” She knew it was wrong of her but she was riveted.

“Ah well,” she said, more calmly. “I met a bullyboy didn’t I? His name was George. Gorge with George.” Barnsie seemed to think this was funny and gave a rattling laugh that ended in a cough. “He wanted my money and when I didn’t give it, he gives me a shiner and I can’t work, and the next night he’s waiting there with another one for me. So I stopped, and for the next few months I gets a respectable job working for an old man dying of tuberculosis.”

She said she’d grown fond of this old gentleman, although nursing was not as well paid or as much fun as being on the streets, and she might have left had not a son entered the picture.

“The son took me upstairs one day, and a baby followed. I was eighteen.”

“But did he not admit his guilt and support you?” Now Catherine sat up in bed, her eyes flashing.

A snort in the dark. “Oh my God, she’s a caution! No, he did not support me. He broke off all communications with me; shortly afterward I’m dismissed with a bad character. And do you know something that will make you smile, Catherine”—she pronounced it Cafrin—“I fell for him. He was lovely looking, tall and dark, and I’ve got a lovely little baby who is up at the foundling hospital in Marylebone. The sisters know all about him, and they told me if I stay here and save me money and don’t drink, I’ve got a better chance of getting him out.”

“Oh Barnsie, how hard that must be.”

“He is beautiful.” Barnsie’s voice broke. “Very beautiful.” A long
silence, and then more cheerfully, “Well, there’s a lot more where that came from.” A great yawn and then even breathing—that would be the last of her until the rising bell at five.

Catherine lay in the dark with her eyes wide open, horrified, yet obscurely thrilled. Could it really be true what she said about physical love? That some women lay with men and still loved them afterward, even if they weren’t married, and why did poor women like it, and married women who were better off find it disgusting? And was what she’d done with Deio what it actually was? And then the thought of him came flooding back to her: his lips tasting of smoke, the easy way he sat on his horse and smiled at her, his shining black hair. She tried to shudder again—for surely the memory of the full-length of his body lying on hers was disturbing? Degrading. Only now, she remembered her excitement at seeing his outline in the dark; the feeling of liquid silver that had run through her veins when he’d kissed her; first tenderly, then as if to claim her, and then—Oh! Was this what Barnsie meant, the unexpected uproar in her own body at the brief taste of his mouth, before she threw him off?

They stayed in their freezing room for two weeks, sewing bandages, stuffing stump pillows, and sorting piles of rotten linen. Then one morning Anne Higgins, who was staring out of the window, started to moan.

“Oh
God have Mercy!
Get over here and look at this.”

They dashed to the window. Down at the pier, orderlies were unloading from boat after boat what at first glance looked like huge, dirty fish. Then they saw they were British soldiers, many of them almost naked and blue with cold. The women moaned to see how their bones stuck out, and the rough way some were thrown onto the stretchers.

“Good God almighty! Oh my God!” Most of the women were in tears it was so horrible.

It was snowing again outside; a dog on a short length of chain barked as the men were roped onto litters and hauled up the muddy hill. They watched one old pensioner holding the front end of a litter drop a man down the hill, and saw how he bounced pointlessly like a muddy snowball until he stopped screaming.

“Please God,” breathed Lizzie, who had clutched Catherine’s hand so hard her nails left marks, “when are they going to let us help?”

It was at that moment that Miss Nightingale burst into their room without knocking. “Nurses, please!” She clapped her hands. “Away from that window at once. I want to introduce you to Dr. Menzies,
the senior medical officer at the Barrack Hospital, and a very important man indeed.”

“Miss Nightingale,” Catherine couldn’t stop herself. “Those poor men . . . why can’t we help them?”

“Be quiet at
once,
Miss Carreg,” snapped Miss Nightingale coldly. She bowed her head and looked up at the doctor demurely through her eyelashes. “We are entirely at Dr. Menzies’s disposal.”

“Thank you, Miss Nightingale.” Dr. Menzies’s smile conveyed no warmth. “It is a distressing sight I grant you, but they will be well taken care of and the matter is in hand.”

Miss Nightingale raised her head and gave him a steady look.

“That is all we care about,” she said, and gave the nurses a warning glance.
I know what I’m doing. Don’t you dare cross me.

“It occurred to me, Dr. Menzies,” she said in the same mild and supplicating voice, “that we might possibly have some small role to perform in the way of women’s work: sewing, washing—whatever would suit you best.”

“Possibly,” replied Dr. Menzies reluctantly. “It would be a shame to have brought you all this way for nothing.” He shifted his features now and crinkled his eyes.
They hate us,
Catherine thought,
they don’t want us here.
That possibility had not occurred to her before.

Later in the day, an unusually subdued Lady Bracebridge appeared. “Miss Nightingale has drawn up a timetable for you all,” she said. “Keep quiet while I read it.”

“At eight o’clock precisely each morning,” she began, “you will assemble downstairs, dressed in your full uniform ready for prayers. Prayers will be conducted in Miss Nightingale’s room. After prayers, you must go back to your room and wait for the nine o’clock bell to ring. When the nine o’clock bell rings, you will be taken either to a ward, or a kitchen, or to the linen stores, or the washtub. When you go, you will be supervised either by myself or Miss Nightingale, or perhaps Mrs. Clark when she is well. You are not, and I shall repeat,
not,
ever to go
anywhere
without special permission from Miss Nightingale herself. Failure to obey will result in instant dismissal. At half past two, you will dine in your room. Your food will be brought to you. Eat it all: rations are scarce. Likewise, you are
advised that water will be limited to one pint per person each day. At half past four, you will return to your room and stay there until prayers at nine, after which time you will go to bed.”

Lady B went on to say that, if it could be arranged, they might, every now and then, be taken on a supervised walk, at which a certain amount of sarcasm and jeering broke out among the nurses, Clara Sharpe muttering that that was bloody generous of them.

“Your last instruction is that you do
nothing
and speak to
no one
without permission,” Lady B had to raise her voice. Even she, Catherine noticed, had flea bites on her face now. “And be warned that any of you who feel inclined to drink, or to engage in any kind of coarse conduct, will be punished by instant dismissal. Is this clear?”

“Clear as firkin day,” whispered Sharpe, then, in a louder voice, “Sorry to ask this, my ladyship, but when will we nurse the soldiers?”