Secret for a Nightingale (21 page)

It had been so with my father; and it was doubly so with me, I think, because of the circumstances. They felt for me; they made my grief theirs; and I knew that they were all worried about my health. Aubrey would have said that it was their own future which concerned them, not mine, for if I were ill and died what would become of their comfortable jobs? But I was sure they really felt for me Jane, Polly, Joe, all three of them.

Joe had taken me out on one of those little shopping expeditions, and as we were leaving the shop where I had bought some gloves and were trotting along Oxford Street in the midst of a certain amount of traffic, all of a sudden Joe pulled up with a jerk. I looked out of the window. We were stationary and people began to gather. Joe had alighted and I got out of the carriage. I stared in consternation, for lying in the road, with blood on her face, was a girl.

Joe looked at me.

“She dashed right off the pavement … right under the horses’ feet and before I could say Jack Robinson she’d gone down.

There wasn’t time to pull up. “

I knelt down by the girl.

She was pretty with masses of fair curly hair; her blue eyes looked at me appealingly.

I said: “It’s all right. We’ll take care of you.” I put my hand on her forehead. She closed her eyes at once and seemed comforted.

The driver of a passing carriage leaned out and shouted:

“Whatcher been up to, Joe? Better get her to the hospital… quick.”

I said that was a good idea.

A policeman was making his way through the crowd which had gathered. I told him that the girl had run out into the road right under our horses.

“I’d like to take her to the hospital,” I said.

The policeman thought that would be the best thing to do.

Some instinct made me take charge.

“We must be careful that she hasn’t broken any bones,” I said.

“If she has, we shall need a stretcher.”

The policeman said: “Can you stand up. Miss?”

I said: “Let me.” I knelt beside her. She turned her eyes to my face and I was aware that she trusted me, which sent a warm glow through me. I suddenly felt capable and glad that I was there to do what I could for her.

I said: “You have been knocked down. We want to know if you have broken anything. May I just see what I can do?”

I touched her legs. She did not wince so it occurred to me that if she could stand up there could be no fracture. I helped her up r’r. 1 she stood without pain. Obviously there were no bones broken.

“We’ll take you to the hospital,” I said.

She looked alarmed but I whispered to her soothingly, “It’ll be all right. We’ll see what they have to say.”

The policeman nodded his approval and we helped the girl into the carriage.

“St. David’s is not far off,” said the policeman and added that he would accompany us.

The girl sat between us. I noticed she shrank from him. I put my arm around her and she lay against me. I was very relieved because I did not think she was badly hurt.

I asked her her name, which was Lily Craddock. I gave her mine and my address, but I doubted she was in a state to take it in.

We arrived at a tall grey building.

“I think I’d better take her in. Miss,” said the policeman.

The girl looked at me appealingly and I said: “I’ll come this afternoon and see how you are.”

She gave me a piteous half-smile which seemed far too grateful for the little I had done. Joe talked about the incident all the way home.

“They just don’t look where they’re going. Out she darts … Tilburies, gigs, carts … and whiskies everywhere. I don’t know what gets into ‘em. They’re going to cross that road if it costs them their

lives. Different from the open road, Miss Pleydell… going along at a spanking pace … and the horses’ hoofs ringing on the road.”

“Yes, it must be. I think she will be all right. I don’t think she was badly injured.”

“I thank me stars for that. I wouldn’t want a corpse on me conscience.

After all them years of good driving that wouldn’t be nice. But it would have been the young person’s own fault, though. “

“Poor girl! Perhaps she had something on her mind. She had a pleasant face.”

“You never know with them girls. Miss Pleydell. The pleasant-looking ones is often the worst.”

I found myself laughing at him and pulled myself up with a jerk. I did not laugh nowadays. There was no laughter left in life for me.

But I had to face the truth. It must be over an hour since the girl had fallen under the carriage and during that time I had not thought of Julian or my father. That poor girl’s misfortune had bought me an hour of forgetfulness.

I arrived at the house and let myself in. Polly came out and told me that it was almost lunchtime.

“I know,” I said.

“I’m later than I thought. We knocked a girl down in Oxford Street and took her to the hospital.”

“My sainted aunt!” cried Polly.

“Was she hurt bad?”

“I don’t think so. Very shocked, of course. They’ll find out in the hospital. I’m going to see her this afternoon.”

Both girls looked at me in dismay.

“You’re not going into one of them places, Miss?”

“The hospital, you mean? Yes, of course. I want to know about this girl. After all, it was my carriage which knocked her down.”

“She must have been where she shouldn’t have. Joe would never have run her down if she hadn’t been.”

“It was probably her fault, but that makes no difference. I shall go and see her. I feel a responsibility for her.”

“Oh Miss, you can’t go into a hospital.”

“Why not?”

“They’re not for the likes of you.”

I looked at them questioningly and they assumed the look which I was beginning to know well and which always amused me. It meant that I was an innocent and really did not know much about the ways of the wicked big city. They had been born and bred here; they were wiser than I;

they knew.

“Hospitals is terrible places, Miss,” said Jane.

“Of course. People there are sick or dying.”

“I’d rather be dead than go into one of them. Don’t you ever let me be took in, Poll… not if I’m at my last gasp.”

“I must go to visit this girl to see if she is all right.”

“Miss, only the lowest of the low is there,” said Polly.

“There was a time when Jane and me thought of taking it up … nursing, you know a profession, like. We’d looked after Ma for years and reckoned we was good at it. But them nurses … They’re drunk half the time .. lowest of the low, they are.”

“I am going to see this girl. Her name is Lily Craddock. I am going this afternoon and nothing is going to stop me.”

Jane lifted her shoulders.

“There’s some fish for lunch,” she said.

“It’s that fresh it’ll melt in your mouth.”

I sat down and they hovered over me serving me.

I was surprised that I could eat a little.

I shall never forget my visit to that hospital. As soon as I entered the place I was aware of the smell. I could not think what produced it. I only knew that it was nauseating. Later I knew it came from dirt and lack of sanitation.

I walked into a room where a large blowsy woman was sitting at a table. She looked half asleep.

I roused her and said: “I’ve come to visit Lily Craddock who was brought in this morning.”

She looked at me in surprise as though there was something very unusual about me.

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder towards a door. I walked to it, pushed it open and went into a room.

How right Jane and Polly were! It was a horrible sight. The room

wasjng with several windows, half of which were boarded up. That obnoxious smell was more apparent here than outside.

There were rows of beds about fifty or sixty of them, I calculated and so close together that there was hardly room to pass between them.

It was the people in the beds who shocked me most. They looked like corpses, some of them; at the best they were in stages of decay yellow-white faces, dirty, straggling hair, the bed linen discoloured, ingrained with grime and excrement. One or two of them raised themselves on their elbows to look at me; most of them were loo close to death, I imagined, to take notice of anything.

I advanced into the room and said in a loud voice: “Is there a Miss Lily Craddock here?”

I had found her. She was at the far end of the room. I passed along the line of beds and went to her.

“Miss … it’s you!” I saw the joy in her face and I was glad.

“I

never thought you’d come. “

“I said I would.” I looked at her and noticed that she was different from the others. Her face looked almost healthy in comparison.

I went on: “You can’t stay in this place. I’m going to take you away.”

She shook her head.

“Yes,” I said firmly.

“I am taking you home with me. I’m going to look after you until you have quite recovered.”

A kind of wonderment spread across her face.

A woman was approaching us. She appeared to be a person with some authority.

I said to her: “I have come to take this young woman away.”

“Oh?” she said, eyeing me rather insolently from head to foot.

“There can be no objection, I am sure. It was my carriage which ran her over. My carriage is now waiting outside for us. Bring her clothes, will you, please?”

“Who are you. Madam?” asked the woman, and I saw with delight and amusement that I had somehow managed to overawe her.

“I am Miss Pleydell, daughter of Colonel Pleydell of the War Office.

Now, let us get this girl’s clothes. If she is unfit to

walk, she can be carried to the carriage. My coacnman will help if necessary. “

“I … I can walk,” said Lily eagerly.

The woman called to another. She said: “This young woman’s leaving. We want all the beds we can get. It’s something to do with the War Office.”

I was laughing to myself as, when Lily was dressed she had been wearing her underclothes in the bed1 took her arm arid helped her to the door.

Joe was waiting to get us into the carriage.

I looked at the girl anxiously as we drove along.

“How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Better, thank you. Miss.”

“You wouldn’t have been better long if you had stayed in that place,” I said grimly.

And that was how Lily Craddock came into my life and it started to change from then on.

I had something to do. Every morning when I awoke the first thing I thought of was my patient. She had looked fairly healthy in that hospital but that was when she was compared with people on the point of death, and as soon as I had her under my care, I discovered that she was frail, undernourished, rather fearful of the world, desperately trying to earn enough money to keep herself alive.

The care other filled my days. I planned her meals; I tended her; I nursed her; and my pleasure in seeing her change under my eyes was worth all my efforts.

Once she said to me: “I reckon my good angel sent me under that carriage. I didn’t know there was people like you in the world. When I think of what you’ve done for me …”

I was deeply moved and I said to myself then: I don’t think it is anything much compared with what you are doing for me.

I was moving away from despair, from melancholy. I would never cease to mourn my dead, but I had been shown almost by a miracle that life was not entirely barren for me. There was something worthwhile that I could do.

Lily once said: “I teel better when you siroKe my roreneau. It’s something about your hands, Miss Pleydell.”

I looked at them. Long, tapering fingers ‘artist’s fingers,” someone had once said. I had no skill in the arts unless one could call nursing an art.

I was haunted by those people in the hospital and the memory of the few nurses I had seen. They were unclean, blowsy and unkempt; they smelled of gin, and I was sure they neglected the sick and vulnerable.

That seemed terrible to me and I rejoiced that I had been able to take Lily away.

As for myself, I was eating more; tending Lily made me hungry. Special dishes were prepared for her, for Jane and Polly had thrown themselves wholeheartedly into the task of, as they said, ‘getting her on her feet’. I would sometimes be tempted yes, actually tempted to share those dishes and nothing could have pleased Jane and Polly more. They were nursing me back to health as well as Lily Craddock.

Sometimes the gloom would descend on me and I would think of my baby crying for me when I was not there, unable to breathe and no one there to care for him . and finally that doctor . that wicked doctor who had come to experiment on him. Perhaps he knew what he gave him would not save his life but he wanted to see the effect.

Somehow the neglect of those hospital patients became linked in my thoughts with that doctor. Those nurses cared only for themselves.

They were unemployable in most things so they came to the hospital.

What a way to choose people for this most important of professions.

Those who entered it should have dedication; they should feel they had a duty to succour the sick. They should be properly trained. Yet what those women wanted was a lazy life, food for themselves and shelter.

And that doctor . in his way he cared nothing for life either. He wanted to prove the effect his drugs had on people and he had no compunction in using them to further his evil experiments.

I remembered hearing of the infamous Madame de Brinvilliers who had lived in the seventeenth century. She had wanted to murder people who stood in her way, and before

poisoning them, she had tested her poisons on hospital patients to see the effect, and whether she could administer them without detection.

The hospitals must have been something like the one I had seen. I could imagine that woman visiting, as an angel of mercy, ministering to the sick, bringing them food laced with poison. That doctor was a similar case, only being a doctor he had more opportunity of carrying out his murderous methods than she had.

I was filled with a burning desire to do something. I had changed. I no longer felt that I had finished with life. It was like being born again. I could see a purpose in my life. It was as though I had had a divine revelation. I was being told something about myself, and it was only now that Lily Craddock had brought it home to me so clearly that I realized what it was. My ayah had said, “You have healing hands. It is a gift and the gods do not look kindly on those who do not use the gifts they bestow on them.”