The Shifting Tide (14 page)

Hester helped the sick woman to take a few sips from the beaker of water on the table. The water had once been hot and was now tepid. Then they left her and went to the next room, and so on until they were all finished.

“Can I help yer wash ’em?” the girl offered, pointing to the sheets.

Hester looked at her pale face and the slight beading of sweat on her brow. “No, thank you. Go back to bed for a while. It doesn’t take two to do this.”

That was not strictly true—it would have been much easier with someone else to assist her—but she stuffed the soiled linen into two pillow slips and put them over her shoulder, then carried them downstairs.

Once in the laundry room, she checked the coppers and found the first one more than half full. Squeaky must have been working swiftly, in spite of his complaints. She put all the linen into the copper, stirring the sheets around with a long wooden dolly until they were thoroughly soaked. She brought another scuttle of coke across and added it to the boiler, then carried the empty scuttle back.

Next she took the last of the soap to add to the water in the copper, and set about one of the jobs she disliked most, the making of more soap. It was not a difficult task so much as a heavy and tedious one. They bought the potash from a dealer a few hundred yards along the street, in Farringdon Road. It was made from burned potato stalks, not necessarily the best, but the cheapest because it produced a dozen times as much potash as the same weight of any wood. One pound of caustic potash combined with five pounds of clear grease would make five gallons of soft soap. For their purpose the smell of it was unimportant, and funds did not run to adding perfume.

While she was working, Squeaky came in with two more loads of water, scowling so hard she was surprised he could see where he was going. “I ’ate that stuff!” he said, wrinkling his nose. “When we was a proper brothel, we bought soap!”

“If you’ve got money to spare I should be delighted,” she replied.

“Money! Where’d I get money?” he demanded. “Nobody around ’ere makes bleedin’ money! Yer all just spends it!” And before she could make any reply he tipped the pails of water into the second copper and marched out again.

They admitted two more women in the middle of the day, and in the early afternoon Margaret came in and willingly helped scrub the kitchen floor with hot water and vinegar. Later she took another two pounds and went to pay the coal merchant’s bill, and brought back a pound of tea and a jar of honey.

Another woman came in with two broken fingers on her right hand which took all Hester’s skill to set and bind. The woman was exhausted with the pain of it, and it was some little time before she was composed enough to leave.

At quarter to six Margaret went home. Hester intended to take a few minutes’ sleep herself, then see Ruth Clark again before heading home, but she woke with a start to find it completely dark outside and Bessie standing over her with a candle in one hand, her face creased in concern.

Hester pushed her hair out of her eyes and sat up. “What is it?” she said anxiously. “Another admission?”

“No.” Bessie shook her head. “It’s that Clark woman. Wot a miserable piece o’ work she is, an’ no mistake! But she’s real poorly. I think as yer’d better come an’ take a look at ’er.”

Wordlessly, Hester obeyed. Without bothering to pin up her hair she put her boots back on and followed Bessie to Ruth Clark’s room.

The woman lay half on her back, her face flushed, her hair tangled. The sheet was crumpled where her hands had clenched on it. Her eyes were half open but she seemed only barely conscious of there being anyone else in the room.

Hester went over to her and touched her brow. It was burning.

“Ruth?” she said softly.

The woman made no answer except to move her hands fretfully, as if the touch bothered her.

“Get me a fresh bowl of cold water,” Hester directed. The woman’s condition was serious. If her fever didn’t decrease at least a degree or two, she might well become delirious and die.

Bessie went immediately, and Hester picked up the candle on the bedside table and looked more closely at Ruth Clark. She was breathing erratically, and her chest seemed to rattle as if it were full of congestion. Pneumonia. The crisis might well come tonight. Hester could not leave to go home. If she did everything she knew, she might save her. She looked a robust woman, definitely someone’s mistress rather than one of the women who walked the streets selling their bodies to anyone with the money to pay. Often the latter spent their nights cold and hungry, and in the bad weather with wet feet and possibly wet clothes altogether. She put the candle back.

Bessie returned with the water and cloths and set them down on the floor.

Hester thanked her and told her to go and see what she could do for the other patients, then take a chance to sleep herself.

“Not while yer tendin’ to ’er all on yer own!” Bessie said indignantly.

“This isn’t a job for two,” Hester answered, but she smiled at Bessie’s loyalty. “If you rest now, you can take a turn in the morning. I’ll call you if I need you, I promise.”

Bessie stood her ground. “I’ll never ’ear yer!”

“Take the room opposite, then you will.”

“Yer’ll call?” Bessie insisted.

“Yes, I will! Now get out of my way!”

Bessie obeyed, and Hester put the cloth in the cold water, wrung it out, and placed it on the sick woman’s forehead. At first it seemed to irritate her and she tried to turn away. Hester moved the cloth and gently put it over her throat. She wrung it out again and tried her forehead a second time.

Ruth groaned and her eyelids flickered.

Again and again Hester dipped the cloth in the water, wrung it out, and bathed the woman with it, at first only her face and neck. Then, as that seemed to have little effect, she stripped back the sheet and blankets and laid the cloth over the top of her chest as well.

The time crept by. She looked at her watch and it was ten in the evening.

Then some time around midnight she became aware that Ruth had not moved for a while, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Hester leaned forward. She could not see the rise and fall of Ruth’s breathing. She was far too familiar with death for it to frighten her, but it never left her without a sadness. She put out her hand and touched the woman’s neck, just to make sure there was no pulse.

Ruth’s eyes opened. “What is it?” she whispered crossly.

It was the first time Hester had heard her speak, and her voice was startling. It was low, soft, and pleasing, the voice of a woman of some education and culture. Hester was so startled she flinched. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she apologized, as if rather than ministering to a sick patient she had crept into someone else’s bedroom. “I wanted to see if you were still feverish. Do you feel better? Would you like something to drink?”

“I feel awful,” Ruth answered, still speaking as if her throat were parched.

“Would you like some water?” Hester repeated the offer. “I’ll help you sit up.”

Ruth frowned at her. “Who are you?” She looked around the room as much as she could see without moving her head. “What is this place? It looks like a brothel!”

Hester smiled. “That’s because it is—or was. Now it’s a clinic. Don’t you remember coming here?”

Ruth closed her eyes. “If I remembered coming, I wouldn’t ask!”

Hester was taken aback. She realized with a shock how used she had become to gratitude from the sick and injured who regularly found shelter there. She had come to take it for granted, and this woman looked at her with no admiration at all, no sense of respect towards a rescuer.

“Do you remember Mr. Louvain, who brought you here?”

The change in Ruth’s face was subtle, so slight it could have been no more than the struggle to focus her mind, or the fear that she was losing control of what was happening to her.

“He brought me here?” Ruth said quietly.

“Yes.” Hester should have asked again if she wanted water, but curiosity stayed her for another moment, waiting.

An odd smile touched Ruth’s face, ironic, as if there was a terrible humor to her situation that even in her state of wretchedness she could still appreciate. “What did he say?” Her eyes, meeting Hester’s, were hard and angry. She would accept help, but she would not be grateful for it.

“That you were the mistress of a friend of his who had put you out because you were ill,” Hester replied. The answer was cruel, but surely a woman who had followed such a path, chosen or not, must be used to facing truths.

Ruth closed her eyes as a wave of pain washed over her, but the smile did not fade away entirely.

“Mistress, is that what he said?” she whispered derisively.

“Yes.”

“Did he pay you? Is that why you sit here nursing me?”

“He did pay us, yes. Or more accurately, he gave me a donation sufficient to cover the cost of caring for you, and for several other women as well. But we would have taken you anyway. We have plenty here who have nothing to give.”

Ruth was silent. She was finding it difficult to breathe again, and her face was flushed. Hester stood up and fetched half a glass of water from the stand and brought it back. “You should take this. I’ll help you to sit up.”

“Leave me alone,” Ruth said irritably. “You’ve been paid to look after me. Consider yourself acquitted.”

Hester controlled her tongue. “You’ll feel better if you take some liquid. You have a high fever. You need to drink.”

“A fever! I feel worse than I ever thought a human being could—”

“Then stop being so perverse and let me help you take a little water,” Hester insisted.

“Go . . . go to . . .” Ruth was gasping for breath again, and her face was scarlet.

Hester put the cup down, leaned forward, and put her arms around Ruth’s shoulders, heaving her up and sliding another pillow behind her. With great difficulty she put the cup to Ruth’s lips. The first mouthful was lost, sliding down her neck onto her chest; of the second she swallowed at least half. After that she yielded and took almost all of the rest, and finally lay back exhausted.

Hester took away the pillow and helped Ruth lie back, then began again with the cloth and the cool water.

A little after two she left Ruth for a while and went around to the other patients, just to make certain that everyone else was as well as was possible, then she went down to the kitchen and boiled the kettle. She made herself a cup of tea and had drunk most of it when there was a banging at the front door. She roused herself to go and answer.

There were two women on the step: Flo, whom Hester had seen many times before; and leaning against her, white-faced and holding her arm in front of her, cradling it with the other, was a younger woman with auburn hair and frightened eyes. The sleeve of her dress was scarlet and blood was dripping onto the step.

“Come in,” Hester said instantly, stepping back to make room for them to pass her. Then she closed the door and bolted it, as she always did after dark. She put her arm around the injured woman and turned to Flo. “Bessie’s asleep in the room to the left at the top of the stairs,” she directed. “Please go and waken her and ask her to put more water on to boil, and get out the brandy—”

“She don’t need no more brandy,” Flo interrupted her, glancing at the injured woman impatiently.

“It’s not to drink,” Hester replied. “It’s to clean the needle if she needs stitching up. Just get Bessie, please.”

Flo shrugged, pursing her lips. She was somewhere in her mid-thirties, dark-haired, and with a mass of freckles. She had a long, rather lugubrious face, and no one could have called her pretty. But she was intelligent and had a quick tongue, and when she could be bothered, she had a certain charm. She had sent or brought a number of women to the clinic, and once or twice she had even brought one with money. Hester was grateful to her for that.

“I’ll put the water on,” Flo said gruffly. “Yer think I don’ know w’ere ter find it or I can’t lift a pan!”

Hester thanked her and helped the other woman to sit down in the chair in the main room, still nursing her arm, her face pasty white at the sight of so much of her own blood.

Hester lit more candles and began to work. It took her over an hour to stop the bleeding, clean and stitch the wound, and bandage it. Then she assisted the woman, whose name was Maisie, into a clean nightgown and to a bed.

“Yer look ’orrible yerself,” Flo observed when the two of them were alone in the kitchen. “I’ll make yer a cup o’ tea. Yer fit ter drop, an’ if yer do, ’oo’ll look arter the rest of us then, eh?”

Hester was about to refuse, instinctively, then she realized the stupidity of it. She was so tired the room seemed to waver around her, as if she were seeing it through water. She did not want to disturb Bessie, who had more than earned her sleep.

“Then yer should catch a bit o’ kip yerself,” Flo added. “I’ll wake yer if anythin’ ’appens.”

“I’ve got a very ill woman upstairs; I must see how she is. We have to keep the fever down if we can.”

Flo put her hands on her hips. “An’ ’ow yer goin’ ter do that, then, eh? Work a bleedin’ miracle, are yer?”

“Cold water and cloths,” Hester said wearily. “I’ll look in on her, then maybe I’ll take an hour or so. Thank you, Flo.”

But that was not how it transpired. Hester drank her tea, looked in on Ruth Clark, and saw her sleeping, then went to a room two doors along and sank gratefully onto the bed. Pulling the blankets over herself, she allowed oblivion to claim her.

She woke reluctantly—she had no idea how much later—to hear women’s voices raised in fury. One was louder than the other, and unmistakably Flo’s; the other was quieter, deeper, and it was a moment before Hester could place it. Then it came to her with amazement as she sat up. There was no light except the small amount that came from the candle in the passage. The other voice was Ruth Clark’s, and the language was equally robust and abusive from both of them. Words like
whore
and
cow
were repeated often.

Hester stood up, still dizzy with tiredness, and stumbled toward the passage. She blinked as she reached the brighter lights. The noise was worse. How could Bessie sleep through this?