by Maggie Humm
1916
ONE DAY SOON AFTER CHRISTMAS, ARRIVING LATE IN Ward C, Lily found Matron already describing the morning’s tasks to the little group of nurses. Fearful lateness would be added to the list of her faults, she stood silent at the rear. Matron caught her eye, and after dismissing the others, motioned her to one side.
“You may remember, Nurse Briscoe, my mentioning a Mrs. Beckwith to you last month?” she said. “She has requested the services of a nurse in the pharmacy. I’ve recommended you.”
Lily almost smiled at avoiding a scolding and Matron’s surprising news. Had she been chosen because she hadn’t grumbled as much as the others? Usually all the worst jobs seemed to fall to her. She washed bedpans more frequently than anyone else but had managed not to reveal her dissatisfaction too clearly in her expression.
“You may take the main staircase down to the pharmacy. It’s a quicker route,” Matron said. “Do not run.”
The main staircase was reserved for doctors and important visitors, and its wide mahogany steps and brass fittings were highly polished every day. Lily stepped down, keeping her back straight, imitating one of the aristocratic mothers she’d seen visiting a patient, hoping a passing doctor wouldn’t question her presence. Reaching the pharmacy, she could see an elderly lady through the dispensing window and knocked gently. Mrs. Beckwith greeted her with a smile. There weren’t many smiles on Ward C. Her hair was entirely grey, but her face had few lines, and what wrinkles there were made her look benign. Lily noticed she was allowed to wear civilian clothes under her open white pharmacy coat.
“Good to meet you, Nurse Briscoe,” Mrs. Beckwith said. “Matron has told me about your steadiness and commitment.”
Shaking her outstretched hand, Lily was surprised to find herself a different person in Matron’s mind, a doppelgänger, one much more resolute than she’d been in the wards.
“I’m afraid some of the tasks are dull,” Mrs. Beckwith said. “I need all the equipment and cupboards cleaned extremely well every day. I understand you are a wonder at cleaning bedpans,” she said, winking at Lily, “but I hope the work of keeping careful records will be of more interest, and I can teach you something of the world of dispensing.”
“I’m happy to undertake any kind of work,” Lily said, smiling back.
Mrs. Beckwith looked her up and down as if examining her uniform; Lily hoped she could compensate for her less-than-perfect skirt pleats by being especially diligent. If only she’d polished the ornamental belt clasp, so Mrs. Beckwith would have a presentable, as well as an intelligent, assistant, but Mrs. Beckwith nodded as if smartness and belt buckles didn’t matter in the whole scheme of things. It was liberating. Staring at the older woman, Lily felt like a child again, a typical solitary child who sees strangers as people with promise, and Mrs. Beckwith seemed to mirror her look back.
“We’ll begin with the ledger today,” Mrs. Beckwith said, “but from tomorrow, cleaning will be your first task each morning so any dust can settle before I begin dispensing.”
Delighted with her own space, a desk and a tall stool in a corner of the pharmacy, Lily relished the idea of becoming like a clerk in her favourite Dickens novel, bent over the ledger, though writing with a Waterman fountain pen rather than a feather quill. She wouldn’t need to bow to Mrs. Beckwith, presumably, as Bob Cratchit bowed to Ebenezer Scrooge. The prescriptions were covered in scribbles, but the doctors’ names were printed at the top of each one, and the numerals appeared easy to read. She worked steadily, recording name, date, and drugs, with Mrs. Beckwith glancing at her from time to time. Lily never dared to ask Matron questions, but here her anxiety dropped away because Mrs. Beckwith seemed accommodating.
“Would you mind spelling out the titles of some of the medicines for a day or so until the names became familiar to me?” Lily asked. “A few like Digitalis I’ve heard before, but not so many.”
“Of course, my dear. We must be accurate.”
The strange Latin names were like a wholly new language. As a child she’d relished getting word order correct in a German sentence, and she knew she’d manage Latin again, eagerly cataloguing the odd-sounding terms. After a few hours’ diligent transcribing, Lily looked up, and Mrs. Beckwith caught her eye.
“I need you to tell me if certain medicines are heavily prescribed and by whom,” Mrs. Beckwith said, “not simply to keep stocks up to date, but also because not all the doctors make sensible decisions.”
Lily’s training had taught her the correct way to clean, the perfect dressing, even how to move around the hospital, but most of all, it had taught her deference to those higher up. Now Mrs. Beckwith was inviting her to question the doctors, almost to spy on them. The thought was strangely exciting, and she eagerly began totalling drug quantities. It was a busy day, with doctors and matrons passing scripts through the dispensing window, waiting for their medicines, and resting with tired faces for a moment before returning to their wards. Lily noticed people she’d never seen before; the hospital must be much grander than it appeared from the staircases and Ward C’s doorway.
“You’ve entered this script already,” Mrs. Beckwith said after lunch, handing one back to Lily with a frown. “We have to be accurate with amounts.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lily said, blushing furiously.
“Don’t worry,” Mrs. Beckwith said, smiling at Lily’s long face. “You’ve made one mistake—I’m sure you won’t make another.”
It was such a sensible reaction, so different from Matron’s, and Lily worked twice as hard as before. Why hadn’t she seen the kindly doctor at the dispensing window? It was several weeks since his offer of coffee. Perhaps he’d been called up. Hadn’t Lord Derby said we needed more men—doctors must be worth several privates? Sometimes, as she sat in the hostel kitchen with Eliza, it seemed so selfish to complain about the rising costs of flour, as they did when there weren’t enough crumpets. Her thoughts drifted on, and by late afternoon her shoulders felt stiff; the moist cold air of the basement was as icy as the ward with its always-open windows, but presumably the medicines needed to be stored below a certain temperature. Cupping her hands and blowing into her palms, she continued writing until her eyelids drooped. Mrs. Beckwith glanced over when Lily next put down her pen and smiled again at her.
“I mustn’t keep you too long on your first day, Nurse Briscoe,” she said. “You may leave after the next set of scripts. If you go directly to the hostel, Ward C won’t know when you stopped work.”
No one else in the hospital had ever treated her as a person with needs, with her own life. Matron never smiled. Had Mrs. Beckwith heard about the theatre trip soon? She seemed to know everything.
Sitting with Eliza in the bus’s dark interior, travelling to His Majesty’s Theatre, Lily kept her thoughts about Mrs. Beckwith to herself, not wanting to upset her overworked friend by praising the pharmacy’s peace and quiet. In the dormitory, as she’d struggled into her saffron slip and old silkette, anxiously suggesting the theatre would be too crowded to see anything at all, Eliza had pulled out some opera glasses, smiling, saying Lily worried far too much about everything. It was true.
She closed her eyes for a second, her mind loosening and the images fading. When she glanced up, couples were chattering around her, the painted street lamps casting a ghastly light, making faces resemble the patients she used to treat, but crowds of lively pedestrians were clutching each other, shining torch beams in front of their feet as they wavered along the darkened pavements. Manoeuvring down the bus’s winding staircase onto the street, she seemed to be surrounded by giddiness, by men and women with happy faces inches apart, gaggles of women linking arms and giggling, and she smiled at Eliza.
She sauntered towards the theatre, the tall white buildings along Haymarket’s wide street reminding her of Parisian mansions and boulevards. She hadn’t thought about Paris for a long time, but the similarity gave London’s evening air an exciting foreign feel, as if all she had to do was sit at a café here and w
aiters would pour her brightly coloured liqueurs. It was a “moony night” performance, the theatre’s poster sticker proclaimed, with moonlight too bright for Zeppelins to attack.
“But I did hear a Zeppelin interrupted the show at the Lyceum,” Eliza said, looking nervously up at the sky.
“The Lyceum’s by Waterloo Bridge,” Lily said, as confidently as she could, “much more than a bomb’s reach away.”
Restored to the stream of chattering people, she stood for a moment in a circle of light at the entrance, watching men in shiny top hats and women clad in furs against the chill of the evening, with hansom cabs lined up against the pavement extending the black of the men’s hats onto the edge of the scene. It seemed an immense distance from the smartly dressed throng under the white portico to the gallery.
“Thank goodness,” Lily said breathlessly as they climbed up, “the ban on smoking means clearer air.”
Tucking in her skirt, squeezing into the tight-fitting seat, she felt like a giant in a child’s toy box. Eliza produced her opera glasses from a jewelled purse and offered them, but Lily shook her head, wanting to see everything with her own eyes, staring at the fauteuils and the grand circle, at the faces brightly illuminated by the footlights in front of the safety curtain, as if they’d all walked into a Sickert painting, made complete when Eliza put the glasses to her eyes.
The house lights dimmed, and as the sound and spectacle reached deep into her, the first glimpse of the stage swept her away with its glamour. Even without the help of Eliza’s glasses, the abstract Vorticist scenery and costumes wove dramatic, vivid shapes. The vivacious heroine Zahrat, with a naked midriff, wore a shawl covered in matching zigzag patterns.
“She must be easily my age,” Eliza whispered, “and yet her body is so supple.”
Lily nodded, engrossed in a sight so utterly at odds with hospital routines, the music reverberating through her whole body. Hearing “Any Time’s Kissing Time,” she touched her face and, in an instant, thought again about something she’d hidden away, something she’d tried not to allow into the working day. Louis had kissed both sides of her face in greeting, as well as her hands, nothing more. How long ago it was now! Did it linger because no one had replaced him? She watched the orchestra through a sudden tear.
During that year, and especially in the winter, she’d found herself remembering more and more frequently the summer days in St Ives, but she’d told herself she should try to meet new men rather than recollect the past. She used to think of herself as never having existed before she met him, but the time was over, and if she went on reminiscing, the golden evening would fade away. There was an abundance of tasks to complete tomorrow in the pharmacy. She’d been doubtful about the kindly doctor, but somehow or other she had to be in the present.
She glanced over at Eliza. “The song’s making me quite sad,” Lily whispered. “Have you kissed many men?”
“Not nearly enough,” Eliza murmured, giving Lily a quick smile, “but there’ll be plenty of occasions, I’m sure.”
Perhaps Eliza was right. In wartime no one could possibly guess the future, and Lily had no example or guide. Father and Mother were her one model of a good relationship; Mrs. Ramsay often seemed so fearful of Mr. Ramsay. Father and Mother never quarrelled, but a kiss on her mother’s forehead in the hall was all she’d ever seen, no hugs. Uncertain what to add, Lily leaned forward, staring astonished as an animal’s nose popped out from the side curtain. Some beast was standing partly hidden in the wings. It was a brown camel with a preposterous double-humped back, and its yawns floated up to their gallery. The creature stood imperious, looking down its nose at the cavorting slave girls with an absurd majesty, surely the sole camel in London’s theatre land.
“I wish we could drown our matrons in hot oil,” Eliza whispered, pointing at Zahrat pretending to boil the forty thieves in jars. She started singing the chorus of Zahrat’s song in a low voice along with the rest of the audience, and Lily joined in, the golden light of the stage sucking her into its world.
Bright top gaslights turned the scanty costumes into a kaleidoscope of colours, and, in the centre of the stage, Zahrat was pulling her exotic fringed shawl around her body, opening and closing it in time with the music. The gesture took Lily back to the nursery at Talland House—seeing Mrs. Ramsay fling her green shawl over the skull head fixed to the wall to calm a fearful child, and the next day watching Prue wearing the same shawl, dashing through the garden. They were with her, running through her life, like a vein of solid granite forcing its way through chalk. She was aware of them now, and the memory made her somehow more aware of herself. Mrs. Ramsay would always be at the back of her mind but as a comfort, supporting her through whatever might come.
It had been months since she’d seen Tansley, but Lily felt a year older. Outside the theatre, pulling on her gloves to return to the hostel, her body felt warm even though her breath was misty in the cold air. The evening seemed significant in some way, as if adding to her sense of being independent, and the thought came into her head if she completed a fine painting for the Academy she’d finally become her own self. She pulled her jacket tight to face the waiting chill of Haymarket.
Reaching the hostel, as Eliza went to the kitchen, Lily hesitated at the entrance, for a minute gazing up at the sky, at the moon almost perfectly round like a ripe yellow fruit. What colours should she choose when she had time to paint? What might the Academy tolerate? She’d never give up her modern techniques. What she did know was she had to paint.
In the kitchen, Eliza was bent over the range inspecting a meagre heap of coals.
“I’ve muffins for toasting,” she said, “and I’ve saved some strawberry jam from my allowance. Let’s have a party!” The two women laughed.
The kitchen gradually heated, its windows fogging over with kettle steam, and the lamp above gave out a rich glow. Eating quickly before other nurses could arrive demanding to share their tiny treat, they happily slurped jam, leaning over the cheap ring-stained tablecloth, its surface a sequence of dirty brown half-moons. This was the kitchen most familiar now to Lily, and she worried her memories of Sophie in Talland House’s kitchen, and of her mother instructing the cook, were fading. Startled by sharp loud tap-taps on the street outside, she glanced over at Eliza.
“What a noise!” Eliza said. “Tap-dancing elephants?”
“It sounds like shoes reinforced by metal segs,” Lily replied. “When I visited northern England with my mother, the workers’ clogs with iron tips clattered too.”
“If segs make shoes last longer in wartime,” Eliza said with a sigh, “then we must find some for ours. It feels like the war is continuing forever.”
“At least clanging outside makes the kitchen snug,” Lily said, finishing her muffin. “It’s a little haven from the bustle of the wards.”
“I did manage to escape the hurly-burly yesterday,” Eliza said, pulling a long face. “I had some leave and took the tram to Victoria to shop. The station forecourt was full of tables, with giant soup tureens and tea urns. Soldiers returning to the front were lining up for a last meal of mulligatawny. I’ve never seen so many men trying to appear heroic. It was unbearably sad.” She glanced down at her clenched hands, which Lily could see were chapped and red.
“My hands aren’t as white as they were,” Lily quickly said, “and my fingers have early arthritis.”
The play for sympathy was feeble. She knew the privileges of the pharmacy, her hands free from carbolic, sitting comfortably for most of the day, piqued by a newfound interest in all the unfamiliar Latin names, the joy of sharing Mrs. Beckwith’s expertise. Working in the basement was being in a bell jar, safe from real life, a kind of cocoon.
“My job can’t last forever,” Lily quickly added. “Matron might demand I return to Ward C at any time.”
Eliza looked unmoved.
“I know I shouldn’t grumble,” Lily continued, “but I miss the life we enjoyed before the war precisely because the pharmacy i
s less stressful. There’s more time to think.”
“Well, at least you’re not completely exhausted every day,” Eliza said, smiling. “Mama used to call me her ‘pooty’ little girl. Any beauty I had has totally disappeared!”
“You know you’re the greatest swell,” Lily replied, laughing at Eliza’s old-fashioned term. “I bet the patients all say it when you give them their morning rubdown.” She smiled, remembering the sheepish, embarrassed men aroused by her washing routine.
“Well, Matron did say the other day,” Eliza giggled, “I cheered up the patients in ways the hospital didn’t officially recognize!”
As she spoke the kitchen door burst open, the late evening’s cold air sweeping in a gaggle of three nurses.
“Extraordinary news!” the oldest one called out. “Our Queen Alexandra’s nurses at the front were all decorated for bravery. After their casualty station was shelled by the Huns, they barely batted an eyelash and went on working through the night!”
The war filtered everywhere, even here into the kitchen, and Lily remembered the boy wearing a military cap, sailing his homemade ship across the pond at Talland House surrounded by admiring Ramsay children. She wanted more than anything now to be certain of peace.
