Secret for a Nightingale (22 page)

Had I a gift? Yes, I had. It was to save lives. I had seen the suffering in those beds of pain and it had affected me deeply. I felt inadequate. What could I do about it? My own child, I believed, had been neglected. Murdered! That was a wild statement; but if they had called Dr. Calliber in time he might have saved his life. Instead, Aubrey had brought his devilish familiar to my child’s bedside and that man had given him a drug and killed him.

Because he had been my beloved son I might be passionately unreasonable in this case, but I believed that they might have saved his life and had failed to do so. I was going to find that doctor. I was going to confront him; I was going to prevent him from causing the death of someone else with his diabolical experiments.

I had taken a gigantic step forward.

I had a purpose in life. I would grow strong and well and in due course it would be revealed to me which road I should take.

In the meantime I was finding solace and indeed exhilaration in nursing Lily Craddock back to health.

She had been with us for two weeks and was greatly improved, then a melancholy seemed to come over her and progress slackened.

Jane and Polly discovered the reason.

“You know what, Miss Pleydell, that girl’s worried.”

“She has no need to be.”

“Well, she’s getting better. I reckon she’s enjoyed being the invalid.

What she is thinking now is: What am I going back to? “

“You think she’s anxious about the future?”

“She’s that all right.”

“I see,” I said. I had been thinking about Lily’s future for some time.

She was a seamstress, we knew, and finding it hard to make a living.

She had been a country girl until two years ago. She belonged to a big family and rimes were hard; she had had to leave the family circle and earn her own living. She had been in service and had not liked it. She had come to London where she thought the rich lived and that she might therefore earn a good living with her needle.

It was clear to us all that she was not going to do that with any great success.

I explained my feelings to Jane and Polly.

“I am not a rich woman,” I told them, ‘but my father has left me adequately provided for if I am not extravagant. I could offer Lily a job here. She could help you . perhaps sew for us and do the shopping. “

“Not the shopping,” said Jane.

“She’s too soft, with her country ways.

She’d get done all the way round. To put her loose in the market-place with the mistress’s money would be like putting one of them martyrs into the lion’s den. And she’s no Daniel. “

I laughed.

“You had better carry on with the shopping, then; but I could manage to pay Lily a little salary and at least she would be well fed and housed.”

“You’re your father all over again. Miss,” said Polly.

“Don’t worry.

We were wondering about asking you if we could keep her. “

When I put the suggestion to Lily her joy was overwhelming and from that moment there was a change in her. That perpetual nervousness and apprehension slipped away from her.

I thought: I am almost happy.

I used to sit with them in the evenings and gradually learned about their lives before they came into mine. Jane and Polly had had a hard childhood, with a drunken bully of a father whose entrance into the house was a signal for terror.

“He’d knock Ma about something shocking,” said Jane.

“He’d come rolling in, and then he’d roar and it would start. Me and Poll used to hide under the stairs as long as we could … and once we went out and tried to stop him lamming into Ma. He turned on us. He broke your wrist once, didn’t he, Poll?”

“Never been quite right since,” said Polly.

“Give us a bit of rain and it hurts like billyo.”

“I reckon we’d have done for him one day if he hadn’t fallen down the stairs and done for himself before we got old enough ( to do it.”

“What a terrible story,” I said.

“I’m glad that the drink and the stairs killed him so that you didn’t have to.”

“I would have done,” said Jane, her eyes blazing.

“There’s some as ain’t fit to live in this world.”

I closed my eyes and saw the Devil Doctor, mysterious with horns and cloven feet. She was right. Such people should not be allowed to live.

“We had a right old time when he was gone,” said Polly.

“Ma used to go out cleaning steps, and when we was old enough we did all sorts of things, didn’t we running errands, doing cleaning. Sometimes we went hungry, but we didn’t mind that so much because we’d got rid of him.

Then Ma died and we was on our own. We nursed her, didn’t we, Jane? I reckon he had done for her. She was never well. He spoilt everything for us when we was little, didn’t he, Jane? “

Jane agreed that he did.

“You see,” she went on, ‘you marry ‘em . as Ma did him. He must have been all right then or she would never have been such a fool as to let

herself in for that . and then, after the wedding, out they come in their true colours, some of them. “

Polly threw a warning look at her sister, which I intercepted. I knew what she meant. I, too, had had a disastrous marriage from which I had just escaped.

Listening to all this. Lily, feeling herself to be one of us, opened out and talked of herself.

“There was ten of us,” she said.

“I was the sixth. I used to look after the little ‘uns. We used to go gleaning, harvest time. And sometimes we’d go picking fruit and lifting potatoes. We had to get out and earn and when I was twelve I went into service.”

“You didn’t like it?” I asked.

“It was all right at first. And then there was this son … he come home, you see. He used to talk to me on the stairs, and come in the kitchen sometimes when no one was there but me. I thought he was nice at first. Then he used to ring the bell in his bedroom. And then ..

and then . Oh, it didn’t half frighten me something shocking. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run away but I didn’t know where to run to. Then one day the mistress came in and saw us and I was sent home. Oh, it was awful. I was put out of the house with my tin box.

Nobody believed it wasn’t my fault. “

ThenI’ said Jane.

“The bad ones causes grief all right.”

“Ought to be boiled in oil and cut into collops and served to donkeys,” added Polly.

“And then I come to London. There was a girl in our village who was mad to go. She said the streets were paved with gold and you only had to pick it up and be rich. So we ran away together. We got a lift in on a cart which was going to London. We went to an inn and they gave us a bed if we worked for them. We stayed there for three days. There was a lady there who’d torn her dress and I mended it for her and she said that was very neat. She paid me well and said I should be doing sewing for a living. So I thought I would. I found a room, which was more like a cupboard, and I went round to the tailors’ shops for work.

They’d give you shirts to make and men’s coats and waistcoats to make the buttonholes and sew

the buttons on. I liked it better than scrubbing, but you had to work all hours to get enough to live on. And the clothes was heavy. You had to take them away and bring them back. My friend . she’d gone off.

I don’t know what happened to her. She said there were easier ways of earning a living. She was very lively. Men noticed her. I think I know what she meant. “

“And what were you doing when we found you?” I asked.

“I wasn’t looking where I was going. I was that upset. I’d just come from the tailor’s. I’d taken in a pile of waistcoats. I’d been doing the buttonholes and buttons and I’d been up half the night because I had to get the money that day. It was a horrid little shop … dark and dingy. I’d seen the man before but he hadn’t been the one to pay me then. I didn’t like the look of him; his face was greasy and hairy and he was so fat. He said, ” Hello, Goldilocks, I suppose you want some money. ” There was a dozen waistcoats and that’s quite a lot. I said, ” Yes, sir. There’s a dozen there. ” He said, ” Well, first give us a kiss. ” I was frightened of him. It reminded me of my first job in service. I screamed, ” No,” and he was very angry. He threw the waistcoats on the counter and put his thumb under the buttons and half pulled them off.

“Don’t,” I cried. He said, “Get out. We don’t pay for work like that.”

“But you did it,” I said.

“It was you.”

“Get out of here, you slut,” he said, “or I’ll have the police on you.” I was so frightened, I just ran out. I was in such a state I didn’t know where I was and then . suddenly I was under the horses. “

I felt angry as I listened. Poor child! To be treated so. No wonder she was afraid of life. I looked at Jane and Polly who shared my emotion. I said quietly: “Nothing like that is ever going to happen to you again. Lily.”

She took my hand and kissed it, looking at me in a wondering kind of way. I thought then: I have to do something. I wish I knew what. But I should discover. Fate had brought her to me and through her I had regained my will to live. And I knew somehow that I had a duty to perform. It was to help people like Lily Craddock.

There were wicked people in the world. Men and women exploiting people, but mostly men exploiting women, for their own ends. I could clearly picture the young man who had attempted to seduce Lily and the evil man in the tailoring establishment. And the embodiment of them all was that doctor . the Devil Doctor . who had helped to ruin my husband and who had allowed my son to die.

My mind was made up. I was going to find that doctor. I was going to expose him to the world for what he was.

The prospect gave me a zest for living. I needed that so much.

Lily settled in with the utmost ease. She went through our wardrobes and mended everything that needed mending. She found some sheets which were going to be thrown away and she indignantly declared they could be turned. She found work for herself, being determined to make a worthwhile contribution to the household. She could not know how much she had done for me. Jane and Polly knew it, though; and they were indulgent towards her, protective, seeing her as the helpless little country girl who had not had the advantage of being brought up in the great metropolis.

She was making a dress for me of emerald green velvet. She had seen the material in a shop and prevailed upon me to buy it.

“With your reddish hair and those green eyes. Miss Pleydell, don’t you see … it is just the thing for you. And the dress I will make …” She sighed in ecstasy.

So I bought it to please her. I had not yet reached the stage when I could be the least interested in clothes.

One day when I returned to the house after a brief trip to the shops, I was told that a lady and gentleman were in the drawing-room. They had come ten minutes before and Jane had told them I should not be long, so they had said they would wait.

“They said they was Mr. and Mrs. St. Clare,” said Jane.

I was puzzled.

I went into the drawing-room and there was Amelia with a

man whom I immediately recognized. She ran to me and embraced me. She looked younger than I remembered her.

She said: “Oh, Susanna, it is lovely to see you. I have some news for you.”

She held out her hand and Jack St. Clare took it.

“You’re … married?”

Amelia nodded.

“Oh, I am so pleased for you.”

“We have been friends for so long. It seemed foolish to wait.”

“I saw it all coming,” I told her.

“And your letters betrayed it.”

I congratulated them both and I was genuinely pleased. I was so fond of Amelia and she was the sort of woman who needed a husband. I hoped she would have children, successfully this time. But I could not bear to think of children. When I saw them in the Park my misery would overwhelm me . either that or my anger.

I asked if they would care for some refreshment. What about coffee, tea or some wine?

“Not now, thank you,” said Amelia.

“I just called to tell you we were in London.”

“For how long?”

“Only a week. We are staying with my parents.”

“Are they pleased about your marriage?”

“Delighted. I want to come and see you and talk. There’s so much to tell you. Could I come tomorrow? Jack has some business to do.”

“But of course.”

And so it was arranged; and the next day Amelia called and took tea with me.

When we had settled down and v ere alone she said: “I hope you didn’t mind my coming without warning. I know you wanted to get right away entirely but I hoped you didn’t include me in the things you wanted to get away from.”

“I certainly did not.”

“I know you have reverted to your maiden name. I have told Jack about that and he understands perfectly. I shall make sure I call you Miss Pleydell.”

“And Anna … the second part of my name. I want to be quite different.”

“I’ll remember. Sometimes I blame myself for not warning you before you married him. Stephen had an idea that you would save him. He was really very fond of his brother. Stephen wanted the marriage very much after he had met you. He said he knew you’d be strong and stable. But I knew you would have to find out before long.”

“Do you think I could have done anything, as Stephen seems to have thought I could?”

She shook her head.

“Perhaps there was a remote possibility. But I see that after the child’s death you couldn’t stay there.”

I hesitated for a moment too emotional to speak because she had brought back memories of my beautiful child.

“You see,” I stammered, “I left a healthy child and came back and found him … gone.”

“I know. I know.” And she did because she had lost children of her own.

“You see, he started this drug-taking when he was quite a young man. He read those books … and he was fascinated by that man.”

“Dr. Damien?”

“I told Stephen that was what started it, but Stephen wouldn’t have it. The man was a friend of his and Stephen thought the world of him.

He believed in all that working for mankind and so on. I never did.