Band of Angel (30 page)

“Be yourself, my love,” he’d said, sleepily taking her hand. “Be
your own sweet self.” But the time when this reply might have pleased her had passed.

“I’d like to do more than that,” she’d said tartly. “After all, one is oneself every day; tomorrow will be different.”

Sidney had then suggested that she could, if she liked, greet each one of the women personally and then stay on to hear his speech.

“I could sit at the door with the register and tick off their names as they come,” she’d said, making a conscious effort to soften her voice, “that would be useful.”

“Capital idea, Chouchy,” calling her by her pet name and sleepily stroking her breasts. “Excellent thought.”

“Are you worried about Flo, darling?” She stroked his hair and marveled, as she had so many times, at how handsome he looked in profile.

“Dreadfully,” he said, dropping his husband voice and speaking to her as a friend. “I don’t think she has any idea yet of the job she has taken on. Think of the problems we have keeping the peace among our fifteen servants who have an easy situation in the middle of London. Think of taking them to the other side of the world to fight a war. But Flo is remarkable—she has no fear, thinks like a man.”

“I never know what a man means when he says a woman thinks like a man,” replied Elizabeth Herbert drowsily. She was enjoying holding her husband’s hand and receiving these intimacies in the dark. “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

“What I mean I think,” his voice beginning to trail into the realms of sleep, “is that, in spite of . . . charm . . . gentle ways, she is quite . . . terrifying . . . no—”

But he was asleep and then, so was she, worn out by her day. Up in the study Florence kept on working.

It was five forty-five p.m. on the twentieth of October, and lights blazed at every window of Sidney Herbert’s house. There was a fire in all the main rooms; the day had been very cold and the air was raw. While Catherine waited with the nurses outside at the bottom of the steps to be let in, Elizabeth Herbert levered herself
with difficulty behind the Chippendale desk in the hall. She was wearing what was for her a simple dress: a pale blue crinoline—a ravishing shade against her long olive throat—matched by the pale blue sapphires on her neck and ears. Her dress had thirty-six yards of watered silk in its shimmering folds and had taken her dressmaker and her three assistants four weeks to make it at a cost of two hundred pounds.

The nurses’ uniforms (cost: two shillings per dress; time of making: one hour) looked, if anything, even uglier en masse. The pepper-and-salt color made them look dirty even before they were worn, and the tentlike cut made the tall look taller, the fat fatter, the small smaller. Three parlormaids, sneaking looks at them from behind the curtains, were laughing at them and calling them frights. When the footman in his white powder and white gloves instructed them to line up they looked like a long, gray, dismal worm. Each time the footman shouted “Next!” from the front door, the worm broke into bits, then joined up again and moved on.

Elizabeth Herbert sat behind her desk in the hall, her pen poised. Her dark eyes glowed—work suited her.

“Name?”

“Sarah Barnes, your ladyship,” from a fat woman with large, red, chapped hands. “From Seven Dials. I’ve come for the nursing.”

Tick went Mrs. Herbert’s pen.

“Name?”

“Harriet Erskine from Miss Sellon’s.” A long, pointed face with cunning eyes.

“Jolly good.” Tick, Tick. “Follow the others to my husband’s study—he’ll speak to you soon.”

“Name?”

“Sister Etheldreda from the Norwood order.”

“From the Norwood order? Hold on, oh yes, there you are,” tick, tick, “follow the others please.”

“Mary Bowmen, St. John’s House.”

Emma Fagg, Anne Higgins, Maria Huddon, Eliza Forbes, Sarah Terrot, Elizabeth Wheeler, Etheldreda Pillars, Georgiana Moore, Elinor O’Dwyer. Elizabeth Herbert’s pen moved busily
up and down the register, this really was rather fun, until all forty women were organized into neat marks on her page.

A huge fire had been lit in the sumptuously paneled study of the Secretary at War. It spread its light over a collection of good-looking ancestors in gilded frames, the Aubusson rugs, and an empty leather-tooled desk facing forty chairs, now filling up with nurses and nuns. Most of the small tables in the room had been emptied of their ornaments.

Catherine arrived before Lizzie and kept a seat for her. Even though Lizzie had left her in no doubt that she would come—the money, she said, was too good to miss and there would be no more work at the Governess Home—Catherine couldn’t help nervously twisting in her seat, hoping she would not be too late. Lizzie had been flying around London, saying good-bye to various relatives and to her gentleman friend, and they hadn’t seen each other all day.

“Lizzie!” Her friend stood by the door, looking pale. She was swamped by her uniform and tugged at it uncomfortably as she sat down.

“Are you all right?” asked Catherine in a low voice.

“I’m all right,” said Lizzie with a wry little smile. “Not the best afternoon of me life, but I’m still here. Ugh, this is itchy. God bless my soul, what a beautiful room.”

Some version of her amazement seemed to have taken hold of most of the nurses, who conversed, if they dared to at all, in whispers as though they were in a cathedral.

“Tell me later what happened,” whispered Catherine.

“Shussh!” a nun to the right of Catherine frowned. She had a small mouth and broken veins on her cheeks, and a meek, superior expression. “I could never love that face no matter how hard I tried,” Catherine thought, and then felt ashamed—she would have to learn now to curb pettiness and mean thoughts.

The whispers died out as Elizabeth Herbert, in a swish of blue silk, entered the room. When she put her index finger in the air, her sapphire winked. “Ooh,” went a nurse in front of them, “ain’t she beautiful.”

“Ladies, nurses,” she announced, a charming tremor in her voice. “Welcome to you all, welcome to our house. I am the wife of Sidney Herbert.” She smiled as if this was the most marvelous thing in the world. Catherine heard Lizzie pull her breath in sharply and saw a tear roll down her cheek.

“My message is that my husband and Miss Nightingale have been held up for a few minutes. To fill in the time I shall pass out your agreements for you to peruse.”

“Lizzie, what’s up?” she whispered.

“I’m a fool, Catherine, don’t look at me.” Lizzie stared at her workmanlike hands.

“Read them very carefully,” Mrs. Herbert advised.

“I can’t read,” said one of the nurses.

The nun beside Catherine said “shush!” again, but before there was time to hand out the agreements the paneled doors opened again and all talk stopped.

“Mr. Sidneyah Herbertah,” announced a liveried footman, “the Secretary at War.”

There was a low sigh, almost a moan, from the women as he walked across the room and stood behind his desk. He was so handsome. No more than thirty years old, tall and graceful with thick darkish blond curls, dark eyes, and a strong, clever, kind face. Miss Nightingale walked behind him. She was dressed simply in a black merino dress with a spotless linen collar and cuffs. Her grave and humble expression suited the ecclesiastical severity of the dress. She followed Sidney Herbert to his desk and, sitting down on one of two carved chairs, folded her hands in her lap and waited for him to begin. He rustled some papers, his hair, boyish and adorable, gleamed in the lamplight. But when he looked up it was a man who faced them, a man with a tremendous air of natural authority.

“Ladies,” his dark eyes made each one feel he addressed her personally. “You have a date with history, so I shall not keep you long. My most important task tonight is to welcome you and then to hand you over to your very able administrator, Miss Florence Nightingale, from henceforth superintendent of the Female Nursing Establishment of the English General Hospitals in Turkey. No woman in England has ever been so distinguished or so honored
before, and no woman in England was ever worthier of this high honor.”

“Strewth,” breathed Lizzie.

Miss Nightingale, sitting in the lamplight with her hands folded demurely in her lap, merely seemed to listen intently as though he were speaking of somebody else. But then she favored him with a quick glance, radiant and ardent.

“There will be forty of you in all.” Herbert looked up and down the four rows of chairs.

“You come from many different backgrounds and persuasions. Ten of you are Roman Catholic nuns.” The nuns bowed their heads slightly.

“Eight are Anglican sisters from Blandford Street.” The eight nodded in unison.

“The rest of you come from hospitals and private homes throughout the land, and from a wide variety of situations, but if this mission is to succeed, and pray God it will, you must put your differences behind you and all pull together. The eyes of the nation, the eyes of the world, are on Scutari. If you succeed, an enormous amount of good will be done, a prejudice will have been broken through, and a precedent established that will multiply the good to all time.”

The fat woman sitting in front of Catherine became restless. “What’s a president?” she asked in a rude whisper. The nun beside Catherine inhaled sharply and rattled her beads, but Mr. Herbert showed no sign of having taken offense. He had a beautiful smile and was smiling now.

“And now,” he said, “I have nothing more to say to you except to hand you your agreements and to ask, if you would, having read them, sign them.”

Four servants walked up and down the rows handing out sheets of paper.

Catherine’s read, “Memorandum of agreement made this October 1854 between Miss Florence Nightingale on the one part, and Miss Catherine Carreg on the other part:

“Whereas the said Miss Nightingale, Superintendent, has undertaken to provide female nurses for the sick and wounded of the
British Army serving in Turkey; and in carrying out this object, she has engaged to employ the said Miss Carreg in the capacity of nurse, at a weekly salary varying from ten to eighteen shillings according to merit; and also to provide board and lodging.”

There was an excited murmuring when those nurses who could read saw this. The money was almost double what most of them were used to. The rest of the agreement stated that, were she to become sick or wounded, her return fare would be paid by the government, but that if she was returned for bad bahavior—neglect of duty, immoral conduct, or intoxication—she would pay her own fare home and forfeit all claims on Miss Nightingale, “the whole of whose orders she undertakes to obey until discharged by the said Superintendent.”

One of the nurses burst out “No! I haven’t, I never did!” when they reached the part about neglect of duty and immoral conduct. A brief burst of laughter, for the first time that evening.

“Sign your agreements when you have read them,” said a footman. “Step this way!” And then the gray line of women began to form again and move toward Sidney Herbert’s desk: the fat women, already straining at the seams of their new dresses; the thin, wan-looking ones; the nuns still in their dark habits. And then Catherine, looking at them ahead of her, felt a throb of excitement and alarm, wondering who would be made and who broken by the task ahead of them.

When it was her turn: Mr. Herbert pushed a copy of the agreement toward her and fixed his dark eyes upon her as she, too, curtsied and signed.

Now she was in a high state of anxiety about the meeting with Deio the next day, and about everything. After the Herberts had finished with the nurses, they were taken in a carriage to a cold, dreary house, several streets away, where they were met by a landlady who looked sour and put upon. She took no account of the unusual nature of their evening but told them they must have an early night and get up early the next day to turn their rooms out.

The dormitory she led them to showed signs of a hasty conversion. There were twenty beds arranged in straight lines, each with a label and a name pinned above it. Each bed was divided from the next by an unhemmed “modesty” sheet. At the end of the room a row of jugs and basins for their ablutions. When the wind blew outside, the modesty sheets puckered like old men’s mouths.

“Gawd, it’s cold in here, ain’t it?” said one of the nurses, who looked small and crumpled and had filthy hands.

“Perhaps they’re getting us into the spirit of Roosia before we go,” said another. “It’s powerful cold out there you know.”

The bad-tempered landlady appeared again to tell them to hang their uniforms on the hooks provided above the beds, and to stow bags or valises neatly under them. A poor-looking collection of bags they were, too—some no more than stained rags cobbled together, others of frayed leather, and stinking carpetbags looking like battered old family pets.

They were made to walk in a single file down to the kitchen, where they sat around a large scrubbed table laid with a plate of bread and cheese and a jug of ale. In the greenish blue shudder of a
gas light, Catherine examined her new companions. Most of them looked old and fat and frightened and not at all like heroines. She was glad she’d arranged to meet Deio at Green Street.