The Bad Penny (13 page)

‘The girls are making blankets for hospitals in France and some are writing their weekly letters home,’ Miss Briggs said. ‘If it had not been raining, they would have gone to the park for an hour or so of leisure.’

Miss O’Dowd sniffed and turned towards Miss Briggs: ‘Satan always finds mischief for idle hands to do,’ she quoted sourly. ‘Leisure time should be spent in improving both the mind and the body, but we’ll discuss that later. She turned back towards the children. ‘That will be all, girls; you may recommence your tasks.’

For a moment there was complete silence as the door closed behind the two women, then a low buzz of conversation broke out. Patty could see that everyone had been shocked both by Miss O’Dowd’s appearance and by her words. In the past, the staff – and Miss Capper – had been strict, sometimes unfair, but they had never approached their work with the steely determination which had gleamed from Miss O’Dowd’s eyes. If she tries to stop me from seeing Selina and visiting Mrs Thornton, then I’ll make sure she regrets it, Patty told herself, but knew the threat was a hollow one. A child was always powerless against adults and could only rebel in her heart and mind unless she wanted to court disaster.

Laura jerked at Patty’s arm. ‘Wharra terror,’ she exclaimed in awed tones. ‘One hard slap from her and you’d be dead, I reckon. As for her cane – well, I don’t like the sound of that at all. I reckon we ought to write that letter straight away, no messing.’

Patty agreed and the two of them spent the next half-hour explaining to Mrs Reilly that it was now truly important that Laura be allowed to visit her home sometimes at weekends. When the letter was finished, Patty scribbled a hasty note to Selina and the two girls went along the corridor to the secretary’s room, where stamps and envelopes were available. The children were allowed one stamp and one envelope per week, though few of them availed themselves of the privilege.

When the girls entered the room, Miss Briggs was sitting behind the desk, poring over a large ledger. She looked up as the girls entered, raising her thin brows in enquiry. ‘Yes?’

‘Please, Miss Briggs, may we have a stamp each and an envelope?’ Laura said politely. She was usually the spokeswoman when Miss Briggs was the teacher being addressed since Miss Briggs’s hostility towards Patty was renowned. ‘I’ve written a letter to my mother and Patty has written to a friend.’

Both girls expected the teacher to pull out the long middle drawer of the desk and to extract stamps and envelopes, albeit grudgingly, but instead Miss Briggs simply held out her hand. ‘Give the letters to me,’ she said crisply. ‘If they pass muster, I will see that they are posted.’

Both girls stared at her, round-eyed. ‘But – but it’s a letter to – to my mam,’ Laura gasped. No one never reads our letters, Miss Briggs!’

Miss Briggs smiled unpleasantly. ‘No? But that was in Miss Capper’s time. Miss O’Dowd has already stipulated that all letters must be read by a member of staff. If anything of which Miss O’Dowd does not approve has been said, then the letter will have to be rewritten without the offending sentence or paragraph.’

Laura looked hunted and Patty knew she had told her mother about Miss O’Dowd and implored Mrs Reilly to help her escape from the new regime occasionally. Patty knew at once that if Miss Briggs set eyes on the words, there would be terrible trouble. And as for herself … well, the letter she had written to Selina had included a full description of the ogress now in control.

Miss Briggs clicked her fingers impatiently. ‘Come along, come along,’ she said briskly. ‘Why are you hesitating? I’ve explained that this is one of Miss O’Dowd’s new rules. Is that not sufficient for you?’

Patty took a deep breath, scrumpled her own letter into a ball and took Laura’s from her unresisting fingers. Fortunately, there was a small fire burning in the study grate and before Miss Briggs had more than opened her mouth, both letters were in the flames and burning brightly. ‘We changed our minds, Miss Briggs; we don’t want stamps and envelopes after all,’ Patty said in her most sweet and reasonable tone. We’re very sorry to have bothered you.’

Miss Briggs did not pretend to misunderstand them. She smiled coldly and let her eyes return to the ledger once more. ‘I expect you will want to rewrite your letters yourselves,’ she said sarcastically. ‘No doubt you will go back to your common room and inform the other children how things stand. All incoming mail will, in future, be opened and read by a member of staff. Your friends and relatives will doubtless wish to know things have changed.’

‘Yes, Miss Briggs, thank you, Miss Briggs,’ the girls chorused, but once outside the door they stared at one another with very real dismay. ‘Thank the Lord you gorrem in the fire before old Briggsy snatched ’em out of me hand and read every word,’ Laura said, pale to the lips. ‘Oh, Patty, Durrant House has never been a bed o’ roses, exactly, but it’s going to be
awful
from now on.’

And Patty, returning to the common room to write a very different letter to Selina, could only agree.

By September, the girls were growing used to the new broom. Miss O’Dowd, known as ‘old dowdy’ to the girls, ruled with a rod of iron and had a strange idea that orphans should not be given privileges since such treats softened them and did not prepare them for the hardships they would meet when they went into the outside world. Discontent and muttering became usual, even amongst the meekest residents of Durrant House. In fact, the only good thing about the new matron’s iron rule was that it drew the girls together as nothing else could and made the rest of the staff into allies rather than enemies.

It clearly never occurred to Miss O’Dowd that every time she punished the girls by handing out wholesale detentions, one of the teachers had to give up her own free time to monitor that detention. The walks in the park and the gentle games they played there were as much a relief for the staff who supervised them as for the girls themselves. And when Miss O’Dowd began to cut their meagre food supply even further, the resident nurse told the matron bluntly that she was not saving money but simply moving it from the kitchen to the sanatorium. ‘What I’m trying to say, Matron, is that with even less food to line their stomachs, the children are twice as likely to come down wit’ one of a dozen ailments which decent food could help to prevent,’ Nurse Mitford said bluntly. ‘It’s bad enough, to be sure, when a measles or mumps epidemic sweeps through Durrant House wit’out having children weakened by poor nutrition so that they come out in eruptions of boils or suffer from continual hacking coughs.’

Since Nurse had tackled Miss O’Dowd in the sanatorium, an exact account of the conversation had spread like wildfire from the patients to the rest of Durrant House and there was much admiration for Nurse Mitford’s daring in standing up to her superior. At the time, a sick child had reported, Matron had huffed and puffed and said she was as aware as Nurse Mitford of the importance of feeding the children a nourishing meal at least once a day. ‘I wouldn’t dream of depriving them of anything but luxuries,’ she had said stiffly. ‘But I see no need to pander to their appetite for sweet things by providing a piece of currant loaf at Sunday teatime. And meat heats the blood; less meat won’t harm them.’

Nurse Mitford had snorted inelegantly. She was a great favourite with the children, a round, apple-cheeked little woman with a strong Irish brogue, who worked unceasingly on behalf of her charges and managed to make sure that the food in the sanatorium was a good deal better than that served in the dining room. Now, she fixed Miss O’Dowd with an accusing eye. ‘I’m not after saying that a slice of currant bread will make or break the health of a child. I’m after pointing out that the kitchen staff have noticed there’s no meat any more in the twice-weekly stew and that the gravy is just gravy browning. What’s more, growing children need milk and what they’re getting these days is so diluted with water that you can see the bottom of the mug through it. Don’t tell me there’s a war on, Matron, because no one’s more aware of it than I, but sure and don’t I know the girls should have their share of what food is available and at present they don’t.’

To the girls’ delight, Nurse Mitford’s words had had their effect. The twice-weekly stew had been a great treat and the girls had mourned its replacement by a sort of thin vegetable soup. Upon its return to the table once more, they all rejoiced. When a second course was introduced, usually consisting of bread pudding or stewed fruit and custard, they felt themselves privileged indeed, even though puddings were still only served two or three times a week, and thanked Nurse Mitford in their secret hearts for every delicious spoonful.

Patty’s friendship with Selina continued, and to Patty’s amazement this was due to Miss Briggs. Miss O’Dowd had issued a command that all relatives who might want to take the girls home over the weekend, or during the school holidays, must come to Durrant House so that she might make sure they were suitable. When Patty put in her own request that she might be allowed to visit Selina when the older girl had time off, she had described Selina as her cousin, her dead mother’s sister’s child. Miss Briggs, who had been in the room taking notes for Miss O’Dowd since the secretary was busy elsewhere, had opened her mouth … and closed it again. Whether she had been thinking that it would be nice to be rid of Patty from time to time it was impossible to say, but Patty was grateful to her, nevertheless, and, instead of deliberately annoying the teacher whenever it was possible, began to try to see the older woman’s good points. At one time she would have said that Miss Briggs had no good points and was both surprised and pleased to discover that she was wrong. Miss Briggs had a sharp tongue and a nasty way with her, but she could be understanding and even amusing on occasion.

On this particular day, Patty and Selina had planned a trip across the water. Selina knew a village with a small general store in the back room of which the proprietress served customers with an excellent and very reasonably priced tea. She had been there before with nursing colleagues and was eager for her young friend, too, to enjoy the treat. She called for Patty early in the morning, looking very respectable in her navy-blue skirt and coat with a small hat perched on her light brown hair. Patty, of course, was in Durrant House uniform and carried her Burberry over her arm, for it was a warm and sunny day, though Patty noticed, as they made their way down to the Pier Head, that there was a coolness in the breeze which lifted the hair from her face.

Once aboard the ferry, Patty began to relax. She always felt that whilst they were in walking distance of Durrant House, someone might be sent to bring her back and she might lose her treat. It was always possible that an incautious remark could reveal to the matron that Patty was a foundling and could not, therefore, possibly possess a cousin, but so far this had not happened. And as the ferry docked in Woodside, Patty took Selina’s hand and beamed up at her. ‘It’s so grand to see you, Selina, that I wouldn’t mind if we just spent all day sitting on the quayside and chatting.’

Selina smiled back and squeezed her hand. ‘It’s the same for me, queen,’ she said. ‘I love telling you all the little things that happen on the wards and how I’m getting on with the work. Of course, us probationers talk amongst ourselves all the time, but it’s nice to tell someone else what is going on – someone who isn’t working in the hospital herself, I mean. And believe it or not, I really love hearing about the Durrant and what goes on there.’ She chuckled. ‘Things at the hospital don’t seem nearly so hard when I think of what you poor kids are going through.’

‘Oh, it’s not all bad,’ Patty said cheerfully as they made their way to the nearest bus stop. They meant to take a bus ride to within three or four miles of the village which was their destination, for despite the fact that she was on her feet all week, often running from ward to ward, Selina liked to spend a good deal of her spare time walking in the fresh air. She often told Patty that walking and the countryside were the two things she enjoyed the most, and Patty knew, with a sinking of the heart, that once she was qualified Selina would try for a post in a rural community, rather than in one of the big and busy hospitals in the city. Selina had assured her that they would keep in touch, but Patty knew it could not possibly be the same. Patty had years ahead of her before she would be able to join a hospital herself, and then there would be more years of training. At the end of that time, if she passed all her exams and did well, she might be able to apply for a post at Selina’s hospital, but secretly she doubted she would ever do so. And anyway, she reminded herself, as the two of them scrambled their way up the stairs of the bus towards the upper deck, Selina’s got ever so pretty since she left Durrant House and started curling her hair and using a bit of makeup. She’ll go and get married and have kids of her own and she won’t need me at all.

But the day was too lovely to waste it in regretting something which might never happen. ‘Are you still on Women’s Surgical?’ Patty asked as soon as they had settled themselves comfortably. ‘Or are you back with the soldiers again? Who is your sister? I hope you’ve moved on from Sister Richards, because she was such a horror.’

‘No, it’s Sister Eagles now, and I’m general dogsbody on one of the medical wards,’ Selina said cheerfully. ‘It’s a nice ward and the nurses and patients are friendly and optimistic. We’ve had a lot of cases of trench foot and some of the dear fellows do get better and regain almost full use of their limbs, though others are not so lucky. It’s interesting nursing them because they need a great deal of attention and dressings need to be changed constantly, of course, which is one task that the fully fledged nurses are only too eager to hand over to us probationers.’