The Nightingale Sisters (19 page)

‘I daresay you’re right, Mrs Mortimer,’ Millie agreed. She picked up the patient’s copy of
The Times
, still neatly folded on her locker. ‘Are you not doing the crossword today?’

‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘I love
The Times
crossword. I always helped my father do it when I lived at home.’

Maud raised an imperious eyebrow. ‘I’m sure you were a great help,’ she said witheringly.

‘You’d be surprised.’ Millie looked down at Maud’s wrinkled hands, lying limp on top of the bedcover. ‘I could help you, if you like?’ she offered. ‘Perhaps I could fill in the answers for you.’

Maud’s sharp gaze fixed itself on her. ‘What are you saying? Are you implying I’m too feeble to hold a pen?’

‘Well—’

‘I told you, you stupid girl, I’m not in the mood. Good gracious, is it compulsory to be usefully occupied in this place?’

‘No, but—’

‘Now I’m finding you rather tiresome. Please leave me alone.’

She turned her head away, dismissing her. Millie opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.

Helen was sympathetic. ‘She really is an absolute horror, isn’t she?’ she whispered.

Millie shrugged it off. ‘I feel sorry for her. She’s such a proud woman, it must be awful for her to have to admit she needs help.’

‘That’s no reason to take it out on us,’ Helen replied. ‘I’m dreading dinnertime. She’s bound to make another horrible fuss about being fed. I just hope I’m not the one who has to do it today.’ She shuddered at the thought. ‘I don’t know why they don’t just give her a feeding tube. It would be far easier.’

‘Would you like a feeding tube shoved down your throat?’ Millie asked. ‘It might be far easier for us, but it wouldn’t be easier for her.’

She glanced back at Maud Mortimer who was lying back against her pillows, eyes closed. But even from the far end of the ward, Millie could tell she wasn’t asleep.

‘She was a suffragette when she was younger,’ she said. ‘I overheard Sister telling Staff Nurse Willis the other day. Apparently she was arrested and force fed because she refused to eat. That’s why she’s so terrified of the feeding tube.’

‘Oh God, I had no idea.’

‘That’s the point, isn’t it? None of us knows anything about these women.’ Millie gestured around the ward. ‘To us they’re just old ladies who wet their beds and won’t eat. We forget they were once like us, girls with hopes and dreams and lives ahead of them.’

‘Yes, but they’re old and they need our help now,’ Helen reminded her. ‘We’ve still got to nurse them.’

‘And what if we end up like them one day? I don’t know about you, but I’d hate it if some young nurse kept trying to treat me like a child, just because she’d learnt it from a textbook.’

Helen smiled. ‘Now you’re even starting to sound like Mrs Mortimer!’

Sister Hyde was called away to attend a meeting in Matron’s office, leaving Staff Nurse Willis in charge of supervising dinner.

Much to Helen’s relief, the job of feeding Maud Mortimer fell to Millie.

‘And try to see she has it all this time,’ Staff Nurse Willis warned her as she handed her the cup. ‘Sister is very concerned that she is not keeping her strength up.’

Millie looked at the feeding cup. It was like something a small child would use. How humiliating it must be to have to subject oneself to it. Especially at the hands of a stranger young enough to be your grandchild.

She took a deep breath. If Sister Hyde had been supervising dinner as usual, she doubted if she would have had the courage to speak. But Staff Nurse Willis was a kindly woman.

‘Please, Staff, may I make a suggestion?’ she said.

She quailed as Staff Nurse Willis frowned at her. Kindly or not, she still wouldn’t appreciate any interference from a student.

‘Go on,’ she said shortly.

Millie could already see Maud’s forbidding expression as she approached with the tray a few minutes later.

‘If you think you’re going to feed me with that slop, you’re wrong,’ she snapped, her mouth already tightening in refusal.

‘If you think I’m going to feed you at all, then
you’re
wrong.’ Millie set the cup down. ‘Sister isn’t here, and I’m far too busy to sit here holding this cup. If you want feeding, you’ll have to do it yourself.’

Maud Mortimer’s eyes widened. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me.’ Millie picked up the cup and showed her. ‘I thought this might help. I’ve wrapped the handles in lots of clean dressings to make them easier for you to grip, you see?’

Maud stared at the cup, then back at Millie. Her face was unreadable. Looking into her cold eyes, Millie felt her confidence wilting. ‘Anyway, I’ll just put it down for you on this tray . . .’ She set it down carefully.

Maud looked from the cup to her and back again. Millie noticed her flexing her fingers tentatively. Then, gearing herself up, she reached for the cup. Millie held her breath, only letting it out as Maud grasped the handles and lifted the cup shakily to her lips.

‘Busy, indeed!’ Millie heard her mutter as she walked away. ‘Busy gossiping with her friends, more likely.’

Typical Maud, Millie thought as she walked away. She always had to have the last word.

She was still smiling to herself when Sister Hyde returned to the ward. Millie was in the kitchen, washing up the dishes with the pro. Through the crack in the door, she saw Sister talking to Staff Nurse Willis. Sister Hyde looked down the ward at Maud Mortimer, then back over her shoulder at the kitchen door. Millie caught her frosty grey glare, and her stomach plummeted.

‘Nurse Benedict?’ A dish slipped from her hands at the sound of Sister’s voice. It fell back into the sink, splashing her and the pro with soapy water.

‘Yes, Sister?’ She turned, soap suds running down her face.

Sister Hyde suppressed a sigh. ‘Staff tells me you came up with an idea to help Mrs Mortimer feed herself?’

‘Yes, Sister.’ She stared at the ground. This is it, she thought. This is where I get hauled over the coals yet again.

‘It was a good idea, Benedict. Mrs Mortimer struggles with the loss of her independence, so you showed great sensitivity. For once,’ she added.

Millie looked up at her, hardly able to believe what she’d heard. It didn’t even matter that Sister Hyde managed to make praise sound like stinging criticism. Just to hear the words was more than enough. ‘Thank you, Sister.’

Sister Hyde looked her up and down. ‘It’s just a pity you can’t manage a simple task like washing up,’ she said.

KATHLEEN FOX CONSULTED
the piece of paper in her gloved hand, then looked back up at the dank tenement building. Surely this wasn’t the right address?

Her doubts had been growing ever since she’d got off the bus at Cable Street. The narrow, cobbled streets around her were straight out of Dickens. Grubby washing hung listlessly from lines strung between houses so tall and close together that only the dimmest strip of daylight penetrated the gloom. A sway-backed horse clopped past, slowly dragging a cart, while children in ragged clothes played in the gutter. In the distance the skyline was scarred by dockside cranes and the smoke stacks of ships, while seagulls screeched overhead, searching for pickings.

Even as she knocked on the door, Kathleen couldn’t imagine someone as refined as Violet Tanner choosing to live in such a place.

The woman who answered had a cigarette dangling from her lips.

‘Yes?’ She squinted at Kathleen through the drifting smoke. ‘What do you want?’ She looked her up and down. ‘If you’ve come round collecting for the church, you can sling your hook, ’cos I ain’t got nothing to give.’

She went to shut the door in her face, but Kathleen held out her hand. ‘I’m looking for Miss Tanner,’ she said.

The woman regarded her with hostile eyes. ‘There’s no one here by that name.’

From somewhere inside the house, Kathleen heard the distant sound of a child coughing.

‘Are you sure? This is the address she gave me.’ Her tone was pleasant, but the look she gave the woman was capable of reducing a student to tears in under ten seconds.

‘Then she’s pulling a fast one, ain’t she?’

‘I hardly think Violet Tanner would pull a fast one, as you call it.’

The woman cocked her head. ‘Violet, you say?’

‘That’s right. Violet Tanner.’

A malevolent smile edged across the woman’s face. ‘I knew it,’ she muttered to herself. ‘I knew the uppity cow was hiding something. Tanner, eh? She’s got some front.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

The woman looked at her, considering for a moment, then stepped aside. ‘Top floor,’ she said, jerking her head towards the narrow staircase. ‘That’s where Violet Gifford lives, at any rate.’

Kathleen edged past her into the hall. The greasy, yellowing wallpaper and smell of overboiled cabbage made her feel sick. Poor Miss Tanner, she thought. Why on earth would she choose to live in such a hellhole?

She found out when she reached the top floor. She stood outside the door for a moment, listening to the sound of the child’s rasping cough. Then she knocked.

There was no reply, so she quietly let herself in.

The room was small, cramped, and stank of mildew and liniment. Violet Tanner had turned it into a sick room, rigging up a makeshift screen around one of the beds. Kathleen barely recognised the usually composed Night Sister in the woman who sat sponging the face of a feverish small boy.

‘Hello, Miss Tanner,’ she greeted her. ‘Or is it Mrs Gifford?’

‘Matron?’ Her ravaged face barely registered shock. Kathleen saw at once that she was utterly exhausted. Her skin was the colour of putty, except for two dark circles like bruises around her eyes. Strands of hair escaped from an untidily fastened bun.

Kathleen didn’t bother to ask for an explanation. All her professional attention was immediately fixed on the child.

‘How long has he been like this?’ she asked, slipping off her coat and rolling up her sleeves.

‘A few days. He usually gets a bout of bronchitis every winter, but this time it’s much worse.’ Violet gently pressed the sponge to his sweating forehead. The boy twitched away from her, his eyes closed, lips moving in a stream of delirious chatter that neither of them could hear.

‘I thought he was improving. His temperature went down for a while, but now it’s increased again. I’ve been giving him steam inhalations and linseed poultices.’ Violet’s voice was shrill with worry. ‘I’ve had the doctor in twice, but he just told me I was being over-anxious.’

Then the doctor is a fool, Kathleen thought. She put her hand on the child’s chest. His breathing was rapid and shallow, his sternum drawing in with effort on every breath. There was a tinge of blue around his lips.

‘And what do you think?’ she asked.

Violet looked down at the child. ‘I think he needs to be in hospital.’

‘I agree.’ Kathleen reached for her coat. ‘Where is the nearest telephone box?’

‘On the corner.’

‘I’ll go and call for an ambulance. You stay here with your son. He is your son, I take it?’

Violet bit her lip and nodded. ‘Oliver,’ she said. ‘His name is Oliver.’

Violet was too exhausted to lie any more. Too exhausted and far, far too afraid.

She was glad Miss Fox was there to take charge. She organised the ambulance, then helped Violet pack up some things for herself and Oliver. It felt such a relief to have someone else to share the burden.

They travelled together in the ambulance with Oliver. Violet clutched his little hand in hers and tried to shut her mind to all the nameless terrors that threatened to overwhelm her.

She should have called the ambulance, she told herself over and over again. She knew Oliver was ill, but she had allowed herself to be persuaded by that arrogant doctor instead of trusting her own instincts. If her son died, it would be her fault. Her fault for making him live like this, for not providing for him properly.

If he died, it would be her punishment for all the terrible mistakes she’d made in her life.

Miss Fox seemed to read her thoughts. ‘It will be all right,’ she said softly. ‘He’s in safe hands now.’

Her voice was calm and reassuring, but Violet had used that tone herself on too many patients’ families to be fooled by it.

At the hospital, she followed matron, moving like a ghost through the corridors she knew so well, but which suddenly seemed strange and terrifying to her. Even the nurses in their crisp uniforms looked like beings from another world.

On the Children’s ward, Sister Parry frowned at the sight of Matron, dressed in her coat and hat and not her uniform. She didn’t recognise Violet at first. She tried to hustle her out into the parents’ room until Matron intervened.

‘I think we can allow Miss Tanner to stay, under the circumstances, Sister,’ she said.

Sister Parry frowned at her in confusion. ‘Miss Tanner?’ Recognition dawned on her face. ‘Sister? But I don’t understand – what are you doing here?’

Once again, Miss Fox answered for her. ‘There will be plenty of time for questions later, Sister. The first thing we must do is to get this young man well again.’ She smiled down at Oliver as the porter lifted him on to the bed that had been made up for him. ‘Now, we will need to get an inhalation tent set up. Has the consultant been informed?’

‘He’s in surgery. But the registrar is on his way, Matron.’

‘Very well. I will arrange to have a word with Mr Joyce when he comes out of theatre. I would like his opinion.’

Violet was allowed to stay on the ward until Oliver was settled, and the registrar had arrived. She wanted to stay with him then, but Miss Fox took her arm and steered her gently out of the ward.

‘He’ll be all right for a few minutes,’ she said. ‘You and I need to have a talk.’

She took Violet to her office, a book-lined study full of heavy, dark furniture. Kathleen sat her down in one of the leather armchairs on either side of the fireplace, and ordered some tea. Violet stared into the crackling flames, grateful that she didn’t have to think at all. She had been galvanised by fear and terror for so long, she hadn’t realised how utterly exhausted she was. Embraced by the fire’s welcome warmth, all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sleep.