Band of Angel (38 page)

Miss Nightingale was nothing if not mercurial. “How is your poor hand?” she asked as soon as Catherine walked into the room.

“Better thank you, ma’am, Dr. Cavendish bandaged it.”

“Good.” She smiled at her fondly. “Something exciting has happened in your absence.
Food
has arrived, and a
stove
—come and see.”

Food was such a worry and obsession with all of them that they both couldn’t help smiling, and Miss Nightingale was almost dancing as she took Catherine down into a small room filled with sacks of flour and sugar. On the windowsill were two charcoal burners with two saucepans steaming on top of them, clouding up the windows.

“Broth in one, jelly in the other.” Miss Nightingale was beaming.

Saliva shot into Catherine’s mouth. Perhaps she would give her something to eat.

Miss Nightingale lifted the lids on both saucepans and stirred them, filling the air with the smell of warm jelly and good broth, then replaced the lids and led her upstairs again. She could have howled.

“There isn’t a moment to lose,” said Miss N. “Tell me, are you right-or left-handed?”

“Right.”

“Good, so you won’t be able to sew this afternoon, but you can still write. I need an acting purveyor, do you accept the job? Mrs. Clark is too ill to do it today.”

Her eyes were gleaming; she was irresistible in this mood.

In the study, Miss Nightingale poked the charcoal and explained the job: two days previously, she said, she’d been given permission for the first time to make a thorough inspection of the hospital kitchens, which, theoretically, supplied upwards of three thousand patients and staff with food.

“I shall not go into details, but I felt . . . I knew some improvements could be made. Now can you keep a secret that is not really a secret?”

“Of course, Miss Nightingale.”

“Next week I plan to set up a properly working extra-diet kitchen. I have five more portable stoves in store as well as a quantity of wine, beef essences, arrowroot, and sago. I bought it in Marseilles on my way out.”

There was a tremor of self-satisfaction in her voice, as if Miss Nightingale enjoyed her own clever, logical mind.

“I have been given permission to visit the Purveyor’s stores this afternoon, for we lack pots and pans, but first I need you to make an inventory so there’s no confusion between the things we have bought and paid for and those lent to us by the hospital.”

She handed her a quill and a sheet of paper and said quietly, “But there is one thing I must say to you before we start. If you ever speak to me again as you did earlier you will be on the next boat home. Dr. Cavendish is a respected surgeon and it was mortifying. Now don’t say another word about it—we don’t have time. Oh, another thing. I hope it is clearly understood between us that you do not discuss
any
detail of what you write down today, however trivial it may seem. Do you understand that?”

“I do.”

“Good. Head your first sheet Requirements. Draw a line under it, then on separate lines note the following:

“Socks: one hundred pairs.

“Slippers: two thousand pairs.

“Flannel: one hundred yards. Query flannel shirts—am I going too fast for you?”

“No.”

“Good. Continue . . .

“Drawers and mitts, soap ad libitum, the soap here is bad . . . knives, forks, spoons. Coconut matting—the kind used in workhouses is best. Air cushions a hundred—fifty round with a hole in the middle for bedsores. Then put three hundred brushes, combs, and a razor for every man.

“No.” She caught Catherine’s surprised look. “None. Up until now,” she said, “washing has been considered a minor detail. Surprising isn’t it, how easy it is to forget the simplest things in a war.” She was looking bland and official again. “Bye the bye, what did Dr. Cavendish say about your hand?”

“He said it was not serious at all,” she lied. “I’m sure I don’t need to see him again.”

“Let us hope it heals well.”

“Let’s hope so, ma’am.”

Miss Nightingale was concentrating with her eyes closed when Catherine saw steam rising through the floorboards.

“Soaps . . . flannels . . . tin basins . . . sponges.”

“Miss Nightingale.”

“Hush, I’m trying to think. Sugar . . . linen—not the coarse kind . . .”

“Miss Nightingale! There’s something burning in the kitchen.”

When Miss Nightingale saw the brown trail of arrowroot pouring under the kitchen door she flew into a rage. “Why can’t people
think
? Why are they so
sloppy
? I expressly told an orderly to watch that.”

Two tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, and as she fiercely drove them away Catherine caught a glimpse of an angry little girl beneath that fiercely controlled exterior. Miss Nightingale said it was her last good saucepan and if they wanted another they’d have to go to the hospital kitchen now. The idea of a walk after such a claustrophobic day was irresistible.

“No, of course
you
can’t go. You don’t even know where the kitchens are.”

“I do. Mr. Ware showed us.”

Miss Nightingale looked at her intensely. She was still upset and breathing heavily. “It must be done today—it has to be,” she muttered, thinking hard. At last she said, “Well, perhaps I will send you. For reasons I don’t want to discuss, I’d rather send you with the message than involve other people.”

Then she told her to sit down and have a bowl of broth. This was astonishing: a bowl of lamb broth carefully flavored and with fat gleaming pearls of barley, some diced potatoes, a few carrots and even onions in the bottom of it. It was so much more delicious than anything she had eaten for weeks that she longed to take it away like an animal, to groan over it, to lick the bowl, but it was gone so fast, and then she had to wash the bowl.

Miss N said it would be better if she didn’t mention the food to the other nurses, there wasn’t enough, yet, to go around. Then she lent her a black cloak, drew a map, and told her to keep her eyes down and under no circumstances to speak to anyone even if she was spoken to.

Miss Nightingale arranged for an escort to take her out of the tower and into the quadrangle. When she stepped out a mizzling rain was falling and it was already growing dark. In the greenish light that shone through the ward windows, she saw the dark humps of the patients with one or two upright silhouettes moving among them, flickering figures that frightened her.

The orderly walked ahead of her, his feet crunching through the snow. As they turned up a muddy path leading across the square, a group of young men came toward them, shouting and throwing snowballs at one another and making strange wild noises as they passed her. One of them stepped toward her with a silly smile and pointed at her bandaged hand. “Alma?” he said, and made the others laugh.

Their sounds grew fainter. She was passing a broken bench and a ditch half full of rubbish when she saw a tall man, covered
in a tarpaulin, sloshing through the mud toward her. He lifted his hat.

“Ah what a surprise—it’s Nurse Carreg again.”

“Dr. Cavendish.” His sopping whiskers under the tarpaulin made him look old and otterlike.

“So you told me a naughty fib, they do allow you out occasionally.”

“No, this is an absolute exception.”

“But a fortunate one: there was one more question I forgot to ask you this morning, and I need it for my notes,” he said in a serious voice.

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Do you have a sweetheart back home?”

“I do.” The lie flew out of her mouth. “Thank you,” she added preposterously.

“He is a very lucky man, Nurse Carreg.” He lifted the tarpaulin as if it was a hat. She stepped away from him.

“So, good evening, until the next time.”

The capital nerve of Dr. Cavendish’s question and the foolish civility with which she had answered it, made her blood boil as she splashed on through the mud, thinking of the many stinging replies she could, and should, have given. The sight of him had added to her growing sense of vulnerability. Behind the ward windows she could see the figures of patients, like shadow puppets that could be summoned or banished at will, and again she was frightened. What if, when the time came, she simply wasn’t up to it?

There was a time when her nerve had failed, when she almost automatically remembered the tests and Deio. Soaring through the air off the rocks above Whistling Sands, galloping down the beach so fast it felt like flying. All the brave things they’d done together were stamped indelibly on her mind, but this was harder, so much harder, and now her dreams . . . of what? Of being independent? Of thinking for herself even if she thought wrongly? Of making up for Mother’s death? They confused and humiliated her almost as much as they had confused him. What a long time ago it seemed now since they’d boasted to each other in that chophouse in Park Lane. What babies, and what a fool she’d been—so prissily sure of her rights, and ready to tell him what was important in life.

The orderly carried on ahead of her, his head down against the rain.

“Catherine! Nurse Carreg.” Sam walked up beside her.

“Sam, what are
you
doing here?” Sam’s fur hat was soaked and
pathetic as if some old tired animal had climbed on his head and died there. His sweet smile lit up the gloom.

“Hang on a mo—I’m going to see a man about a dog.”

He said a few words to the orderly and came back again.

“I told him to get lost. His duty officer wants him back on the wards.”

“Sam,” she said, “is that really true?”

“Middling,” he said, waggling his fingers, “but they were Barnsie’s orders and I dursn’t disobey.”

His face went so soppy when he spoke of Sarah Barnes that she knew they were falling in love.

“She worries about you, miss, and you were gone a long time.”

“Well, there was an emergency,” she said nervously. “There was nobody else around so—” She looked at him carefully. “The only person who stopped me was Dr. Cavendish.”

“Oh!” Sam’s reaction was swift. “Don’t talk to him.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know, but try not to . . . I think he’s a tosser—”

“Sam, you’re so naughty,” she said when they’d stopped laughing. She felt so much better walking with him but then they passed the stables and a horse, a miserable thin creature with no blankets. It was tethered to a palm tree heavy with snow.

“Those are the poor buggers I feel sorry for,” said Sam following her gaze. “They didn’t ask to come here, I’d give anything in the world to have a carrot or a bowl of warm gruel to give him.”

“Oh Sam,” she said, “so would I.”

“Oh dear.” he winced. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve made you sad. I’ll tell you a better thing. Talking to a fellow last night who’s just come from Sebastopol and he saw a fine lot of horses come off the boat. He reckoned close on five hundred were killed in the Light Brigade charge and these were their replacements.”

She let the news sink in for a moment, watching her feet, trying not to panic.

“Sam!” she said at last, “do you have any idea . . .”

“What?” Sam shouted. They’d reached the kitchen and a noisy crowd of waiting men were clattering their pails.

“Who he was?”

“Can’t hear,” bellowed Sam, who was slightly deaf anyway. “This is the kitchen,” he said, pointing toward two huge charred doors. “We stop here until it opens.”

She was being pushed toward the doors by the crowd of desperate-looking men. Their hair was matted, their faces filthy. They held lumps of meat in their hands, tied with string or torn strips of uniform.

“Are they soldiers, Sam?” She was trying not to meet anyone’s eye.

“Orderlies,” he said shortly.

“They look so ill themselves.”
Don’t let it be him. Not him
.

“They are; they spend each morning freezing to death in line waiting for patients’ victuals to get cooked, and each afternoon fighting over whose meat is whose—it’s a terrible system. The cooks, poor bastards, are trying to feed over two thousand men here.”

“Who’s your lady friend, Sam?” One of the men made a chirruping, mocking sound.

“Shut your gob up,” said Sam good-naturedly, “a lovely gel—too good for the likes o’ you.”

The roar this brought from the others—the bellowing and caterwauling—reminded her of penned animals at the cattle market, but then the noise stopped abruptly as the two kitchen doors were pushed open by a man in a filthy apron.

“DINNA! MEATA!” He shouted, “SOUP! STAY IN LINE! STAY IN LINE.”

As the line surged forward, a man with a rusty pail banged her painfully on the shins. A few were admitted; the kitchen door was slammed again.

“Why did they close the door?” she shouted.

“Riots.” Sam’s lips were blue with cold. “There’s not enough to go round and tempers get very high.”

She was shoved inside the kitchen, a huge black hole with five cauldrons in the middle and walls black with grease, where snow fluttered down through the rafters of a broken roof. You could see stars above the pall of noxious smoke. Four cooks stood beside the pots, shouting and swearing, hands purple with cold. They were
ladling a horrible-looking gray stew into weighing scales, then into the men’s pails, shouting, “Next! Get on with it, and hurry up! Hurry up!”