The Rose of Sebastopol (14 page)

“You’re wasting your time talking about anything to Max. By now he’ll have forgotten that he even spoke to you.”

Neither Max nor his father was at dinner that evening. The next day Mother and I were banished from Stukeley.

LONDON, 1854

 

 

 

R
osa wouldn’t rest until
she had visited the hospital. She persuaded her mother that in fact it would be churlish not to go, given that Henry was my father’s protégé. But the nearer we came to the appointed day, the more anxious I felt. There was no question of Mother chaperoning us because, as Isabella put it, her head was too full of those
wretched
governesses who must now perhaps wait until September for their new home, due to yet another hitch, this time with the gas supply. Mother had to be there every day giving instructions to the workmen.

It was a pity I had never visited Henry at the hospital before so that I didn’t have to share the first time with Rosa. Overall, my feelings were so complicated that I would much rather have stayed at home and practiced my song for the governesses. I worried that my ignorance would be exposed and that I would show shock or displeasure instead of calm acceptance, ownership, almost.

Rosa said we should take suffering seriously and not set ourselves above either patients or nurses by decking ourselves out in elaborate muslins or silks. As none of her gowns could have been described as frivolous this decree was obviously aimed at me. She and her stern lady friends such as Barbara Leigh Smith tended to ignore fashion, which I took to be a choice made for artistic or intellectual reasons. I, on the other hand, had to dig deep in my wardrobe for anything suitable. We both wore plain white cuffs and our hair was wound tightly at the back of our heads. Rosa borrowed a petticoat to give a conventional bell shape to her gown, which was cinched at the waist by a narrow belt.

After we were dressed we linked arms and stared at ourselves in the mirror. The Quakerish arrangement of Rosa’s hair allowed a glimpse of her fragile neck, and the simplicity of her dress provided a fetching contrast to her luminous skin and eyes. I, on the other hand, was made shrunken and plain by the loss of decoration and volume.

“You don’t look plain,” she cried. “Never call yourself plain. You are like a beautiful woodland creature, delicate and quite wild, if you only knew. Besides, if you’re plain, I must be too. We’re so alike.” Perhaps we were in some ways, but the slight differences in our features meant that Rosa was beautiful and I probably wasn’t.

The drive through London was uncomfortable, because we were wearing heavy dresses in the midst of a heat wave and I was being carried somewhere I by now didn’t want to go at all. Worse, I knew from experience that my companion was decidedly untrustworthy when it came to sticking too rigidly to her mother’s orders, all of which I was very happy to obey: “Don’t go near any of the patients. Don’t touch anything ... Don’t allow yourself to be drawn into conversation with one of those nurses ... I need hardly say that you should only look at the women’s wards, though I wish you’d keep away from the sick people altogether . . .”

Rosa was worryingly pensive, hands folded in her lap, an expression of quiet determination in her eyes. It was as if she was about to be admitted to a convent as a postulant nun. This was Rosa on a higher plain, driven by forces in her nature which were nobler than anything I would ever experience. Her mind, presumably, was fixed on the hospital, whereas my own thoughts were focused on the fact that in an hour’s time we would be seeing Henry for the first time since the night he kissed me under the cedar. Of course, there would be no opportunity today for intimate conversation, but perhaps there might be a glance or a touch. My worst fear was that when we met I’d receive no signal from him.

From the outside Guy’s Hospital looked very grand with imposing gate-posts, gabled fronts, and ranks of high windows. All in all it had rather the appearance of a palace than a hospital for the poor and destitute, and it even crossed my mind that Rosa might have miscalculated and we should have dressed a little more grandly. Beyond the front doors was a paneled entrance hall with portraits over a sweeping staircase of jowly men in stiff cravats. But there was also a smell of unpleasantness covered up and sounds of distant activity that I found very alarming.

We were ten minutes early for our meeting with Henry and after a while Rosa grew restless. From time to time a man in a frock coat crossed the hall, orderlies in their shirt-sleeves, and women who were either nurses or servants. I backed away to the oak staircase, picked up my skirts with one hand, and discreetly put my handkerchief to my nose with the other.

Rosa strode about and glanced up at the clock. Ten past twelve. Next she ventured along one of the corridors which opened on either side. “Come on,” she said. “There’s no harm in looking.”

As I didn’t want to be left alone I had to follow. She marched down a stifling passageway through a series of doors until we were actually in a ward where one glance was enough to convince me that Aunt Isabella had been absolutely right and we should have nothing further to do with the hospital. The smell almost knocked me over. Overflowing privies. Vomit. Worse. I thought of my aunt leaning against her stack of pillows with her tray of tea and a lightly boiled egg, the interminable excretions that had to be dealt with, and it seemed to me that all these sick men—dear heavens, it was a men’s ward—were some dreadful extension of her.

Although nobody raised their voice except for the occasional yelp from one of the patients, there was in fact a great deal of noise: doors opening and closing, heavily shod feet on bare boards, activity on the floor above, the slosh of water, the clink of bottles. At first glance, the ward was quite tidy with rows of beds on either side but there was dirt everywhere, stained sheets and bandages, tarnished utensils, unkempt, low men. My gaze kept drifting to those dreadful bare chests and arms, some hairy, others pallid and flabby-skinned. A memory flickered, that smell, the feeling of guilty revulsion.

The nurses moved from bed to bed in a weary ritual of attendance but they seemed bored and careless. Flies bothered the patients, sun baked through the broken blinds. Meanwhile Rosa walked fearlessly up to a dumpy little nurse and put out her hand (thereby breaking two more of my aunt’s rules). “We are friends of Dr. Thewell. My name is Rosa Barr. I am thinking of becoming a nurse.” The nurse gave a sort of half-curtsey and hurried past me. She smelt of alcohol, I noticed.

Rosa’s ringing voice had caused heads to be raised from nearby pillows. She approached the first bed, stooped down, and took the patient’s hand. “Is there anything I can do for you? ”

I backed away in an agony of embarrassment and distaste. It was as if she had actually climbed onto the stage in the middle of a play. From my former place at the bottom of the stairs in the hall I watched the hands of the clock move on a few minutes. At last Rosa joined me. “I looked for you but you’d gone.”

“We shouldn’t intrude.”

“We’re waiting for Dr. Thewell. It’s not intruding. If nobody took an interest, this place would have no funds at all. It relies on public donation.”

“But you’re not giving anything,” I said, knowing that she never had any money.

“Who knows what I shall give one day? A nurse just told me there is another outbreak of cholera and it’s expected that the hospital will soon be inundated with victims. Five cases have already been brought in. They’re going to empty one of the upstairs wards to use it for isolation purposes. She says they’re sure to need more nurses.”

Cholera
. Horror was heaping upon horror. Cholera. Then we would all die. My head was hot and my bones turned to water. The miasma in this hospital was already enough to kill me in minutes, let alone if cholera patients were admitted too. Images of my deathbed flashed through my mind, my mother pausing long enough in her work to hang over me and become infected, then Father, Aunt, and Rosa.

“We should leave straightaway,” I said.

“Why? ”

“Cholera is very contagious. We shouldn’t stand here in the middle of a crisis and invite disease. It’s sinful to put oneself in the way of trouble. We might take cholera back to Clapham. Your mother, being so ill, is particularly vulnerable.” My voice was high with panic. We ought to have been in the morning room at home, hemming snowy sheets for the governesses.

“There is always a crisis of some kind in a hospital. Can’t you see? That’s why I so want to work here. I want to intervene at the point in people’s lives when they most need me.”

At that moment the entrance doors were thrust open and a crowd burst in carrying some kind of stretcher, followed by a further troop of onlookers and a woman holding a baby of about a year, who howled mournfully. The crowd also brought a gust of hot air with them, and the stench of a London street. No-one was properly dressed but wore bits of clothes frayed at the neck and hem, tied on with string. Rosa and I were pressed higher up the stairs by the crush.

On the stretcher was a boy of about twelve. His upper body was covered by a ragged shirt, his complexion was greenish and his eyes huge. Worse, his feet were exposed and filthy with uncut nails curled over the big toes, and the trouser of the right leg had been cut away to expose a dreadful wound. The thigh was snapped so that jagged bone actually protruded through the bruised and bleeding flesh. All this I glimpsed in a second or two. Though I turned away it was too late; the image was seared into my mind.

I dragged at Rosa’s arm. “We should go.”

She wrenched free and climbed higher so she could see above people’s heads and at that moment Henry appeared, formally dressed but without hat or gloves. I started forward at the sight of him but he didn’t even notice us. Instead he asked people to step aside so that he could be allowed through to the patient, gave low-voiced directions to an orderly about sending the crowd away, and asked for a chair to be brought for the boy’s mother, who was a poor little creature, round-bellied and stooped at the shoulder, altogether too scrawny to be carrying such a large baby. “I sent him out for milk,” she said. “He couldn’t keep away from them new drains. I told him time after time. He always was too inquisitive.”

Henry drew her aside so that they were immediately beneath us, under the banister. “What is your son’s name? Well, Mrs. Lee, I’m afraid that in a case such as this, where the break has severed flesh, we have no choice but to take Tom’s leg off. Infection will set in otherwise and he will die of gangrene.”

It took a while for her to take in what he was saying. Meanwhile the baby writhed and arched, its mouth a wet O of misery. “No, no, don’t take his leg. Oh no, my poor boy. Don’t do that. Don’t. He loves to run.”

“He will run still. We will make him a new leg.”

“But he’ll be a cripple. What good will he be? Oh God, when I think of him running around this morning driving me to distraction.”

Henry took the woman’s hand in both of his. “My dear Mrs. Lee, don’t let him see that you are frightened. Find the strength to take care of him.”

He looked into her eyes and gripped her hand until she pulled herself up and nodded. Henry held out his arms and took the baby, who stopped crying in amazement. Meanwhile the mother stooped over the stretcher and kissed her son’s forehead. His eyes flew open and he began to wail.

“I’ll take care of your son,” said Henry. “I promise.” The baby changed hands again; Henry smoothed the boy’s hair and spoke his name, then nodded to a couple of orderlies.

The mother tried to grab the stretcher as it was borne away but she was held back by a nurse. I discovered that I was gripping the banister in both hands, because I had never seen Henry as tender as he had been with that woman. It was as if he loved the mother and her children more than anyone in the world and he had handled the baby so competently that it calmed down and played solemnly with his watch chain. My heart contracted at the thought that one day he might hold his own child in that way.

Then I wished that I too was sick, that I could fall at his feet and be taken up in his arms and have the light of his compassionate gaze on me.

Rosa had grabbed my arm. “Come on. Come.”

“Where are we going?”

“We should follow Henry.”

“But we can’t. You heard what he said. They’re going to operate on the child.”

“Operations are open to public viewing. Come on. It’s my dream to see an operation,” and then we were actually rushing along the corridor in the wake of the stretcher and a gathering crowd of young men.

I thought someone would surely put a stop to it, we would never be let in to see the operation, but everyone was in such a hurry that they didn’t seem to notice us. A whisper was flying about that Thewell was going for a record seven minutes, the fastest amputation above the knee in history. I was weeping and murmuring under my breath “no, no, no,” but we were suddenly squeezed through a low door and actually at the top of an arena looking down over a mass of heads at a cluster of men in frock coats and the child on the stretcher. We were forced forward so that we hung over the edge of the gallery and a voice behind us said: “Thank God, the new nurses are a sight easier on the eye than the last lot . . .”