The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  "And you will have one, brave lad," she said, pulling a fat green sweet from her pocket.

  "Thank you, miss," Martin's mother said. "Poor mite was sufferin' some-thing terrible." She paused then sheepishly added, "Haven't got much this week. Me old man's gone to the call-on every single morning and not got picked. I brung you this. Will it do?" She drew a square of butcher's paper from her pocket and handed it to India. India opened it. Inside was a hand-tatted doily.

  "It's lovely, Mrs. Meecher," India said warmly. "I know we'll find a good use for it. Thank you very much."

  Mrs. Meecher smiled.

  India stood. Ella was hurrying past, heading toward the shed with a basin of warm, soapy water. "Your next is a six-year-old girl. Eczema, I think. A bit hard to tell under all the dirt."

  "Is the rash--" India started to say. She felt a sudden bump on her back-side and turned around. It was Posy. She was scraping her fingers around the inside of an empty honey jar and licking them.

  "Watch where you're going, Posy!" Ella scolded.

  "Mmmmmm..." Posy murmured, lurching off in a sugar trance.

  "The rash, it's--" India began again.

  "I'll be home by nine o'clock, Mama. Maybe ten. Don't wait!" shouted a voice at the kitchen door. Yanki came bounding into the yard. He was washed and brushed, neatly dressed, and eating an apple. He handed his sister a pair of cuff links.

  "Where are you skiving off to, Yeshiva Boy?" she asked, putting the basin down.

  "I'm not skiving. I'm going to Rabbi Abramovitz's. For intensive study," Yanki said, holding out one wrist then the other, between bites of apple.

  "Of what?"

  "Torah, of course. What else?" he replied, sauntering off.

  "Hmm. I don't know. Maybe young Mimi Abramovitz?"

  Yanki didn't reply. Instead he turned and lobbed the remains of his apple into Ella's basin, dousing her.

  "Ach, du Pisher!" she cried, blinking water from her eyes.

  Yanki grinned. "Kush in toches arein, El."

  "Yanki!" a voice screeched, but it wasn't Ella's. India looked toward the back door and saw Mrs. Moskowitz advancing, wooden spoon in hand. "I heard that! You go to read the Torah with such a mouth? At the rabbi's house no less? With such a mouth you kiss your mother?"

  "And Mimi Abramovitz," Ella said, smirking.

  Mrs. Moskowitz stopped short. She put one hand to her chest. "The rabbi's daughter? Yanki, is this true?"

  "No, Mama!" Yankie said, blushing furiously. "And don't go telling the world that it is." He glared at his sister. "Just you wait," he growled, then hurried through the yard and let himself out the back gate.

  Mrs. Moskowitz stood looking after him, smiling. "Imagine that! The Abramovitzes for in-laws... halevei! That awful Alma Rosenstein tells anyone who listens that the rabbi has chosen her son for his Mimi. Won't she be pissing vinegar?" She turned and walked back toward the caf� waving her wooden spoon like a conductor's baton, her anger at her son's fresh mouth forgotten. Then she turned suddenly at the door, and shouted, "Aaron! Miriam! Solomon! My chicken! Sometime this year, yes?"

  "Yes, Mama!" Aaron shouted back from where he and his siblings were plucking chickens.

  Ella shook her head. "If Florence Nightingale could only see this," she said.

  "Twenty-three hundred cubic feet of space per lying-in patient."

  "Impervious glazed tiles."

  "Unlimited hot water."

  "We've really got to do something about the chickens."

  "And the cat."

  India and Ella were silent for a few seconds, looking at the tattered awning, the tumbledown shed. It was everything the textbooks said a clinic should not be. And it was full of patients. Of poor mothers and their chil-dren. Of pregnant women. Of the elderly. All sitting silently and stoically. Never complaining. Prepared to wait all today and tomorrow, too, if that's what it took to have a child's tonsils seen or a baby's cough cured.

  "I believe you asked about the rash, Dr. Jones. It's red, cracked, and weeping."

  "Thank you, Sister Moskowitz."

  "I'll be right in to assist. As soon as I get a fresh basin of water," Ella said. She started for the kitchen, then turned around again. "Indy?"

  "Yes?"

  "Still happy you moved into this madhouse?"

  India smiled. She looked at the yard--at Posy toddling about with the honey jar, at Miriam and Aaron and Solomon sitting in a swirling cloud of feathers. At the old patched awning that Mr. Moskowitz and Yanki had stretched from the shed to the privy to make a waiting room. At the women sitting under it on an assortment of fruit crates and tea chests, children on their laps. She looked at the old garden shed, all six by eight of it, made spotless by soap and buckets of water. At the underwear flapping on the clothesline. And then she laughed. It was a real laugh--loud and genuine. It made her cheeks flush and crinkled her eyes. It made her beautiful.

  "I couldn't be happier, Ella," she said. "Truly."

  She had her clinic. Despite the loss of her savings, and everything else that had happened to her, she was seeing patients and practicing medicine the way she wanted to--with compassion and integrity.

  As she headed toward the shed to see her next patient she thought about the transformation her life had undergone. Only a fortnight ago she was living at genteel Bedford Square, earning a living at the eminent Edwin Gifford's surgery, and engaged to the Liberal Party's rising star. Now she was penniless, living with the Moskowitzes above their caf�running a clinic in their yard. Her life was a shambles, yet she was happier than she had ever been.

  She remembered how it had all come about. She'd been so upset after finishing with Freddie that she couldn't bear to be alone. After a sleepless night she'd traveled to Brick Lane to see Ella. Ella had known immediately that something was wrong. She'd hustled India to an empty table, sat down with her, and demanded to be told everything.

  So India told her. About Wish's will. And the fact that the money for the clinic was gone. About Freddie and his scheming, and how he'd used Alice Little to get her dismissed. She meant to have a quiet conversation with her friend, but there was no such thing to be had at the Moskowitzes'. Posy soon spotted her and climbed into her lap. Then Miriam came with a comb and brush to pester Ella to braid her hair. Yanki was next, looking for help with his tie. And then Mrs. Moskowitz, sensing all was not well, came with a pot of tea. Where Mrs. Moskowitz was, the rest of her family had to be, so in no time Mr. Moskowitz was seated with them, along with Aaron, Solomon, and Solomon's friend Reuben, who lived next door.

  India spoke haltingly, expecting every minute to be told that her tears made her ugly, that emotional displays were for actresses and lapdogs. Those were the things her mother had always said. Instead there were exclamations of sympathy and outrage from the older Moskowitzes. Kisses from little Posy. A hug from Miriam. A grubby handkerchief from Sol. And then there was talking. A great deal of it. Arguing, really--as the family tried to decide upon India's best course of action.

  "She should get the jewelry back. It's hers," Yanki said.

  "No, she shouldn't. It has bad feelings attached to it," Ella countered.

  "Feelings, shmeelings! She can pawn it," Mrs. Moskowitz said.

  "She doesn't need to pawn his dreck. She can make her own way, she's a doctor."

  "How? She can't find work anywhere! You neither, Ella!" That was Yanki again.

  "That's not true! We've only started looking!"

  India tried to get a word in, but she was only talked down. It soon became clear to her that she was to sit silently and drink her tea. She didn't understand why she was not to speak. She felt as if she were entirely inci-dental to her own predicament.

  She looked from one of them to another. At Mr. Moskowitz frowning intently at his steepled fingers. At his wife refreshing everyone's teacup. At Ella yelling at Yanki. At Posy, still in her lap, the fingers of one tiny hand curled tightly around India's thumb.

  And then tears welled behind her eyes, sharp and
sudden, as she un-derstood: this is what a family is. She was weary and frightened and heart-sick. And they knew it. So they had taken her troubles away from her, if only for a little while, and made them their own. She wiped her eyes, hoping no one would see. No one did. They were all listening to Ella, still yelling at her brother about her and India's job prospects.

  "We've only tried three hospitals. There are plenty more. We'll find something," she said.

  Yanki laughed. "It'll be the same story wherever you look. You'll be lucky to get a cleaner's job. I'll bet Gifford blacklisted you."

  "You don't know that."

  "Wait, wait, wait!" Mrs. Moskowitz said. "I don't understand something. Why are you both begging for work at these hospitals? All I've heard for weeks is the clinic, the clinic, the clinic. You both still want it, no?" she asked, looking from India to Ella.

  "Of course we do," Ella said.

  "So make a clinic already. Right here."

  Ella looked around uncertainly. "In the restaurant, Mama?"

  "Bist du meshuganah? In the backyard! There's room. We'll move the washpot to the far end. We have the old shed. You can make an office from that."

  India found her voice again. "In the backyard? But Mrs. Moskowitz, it's... it's a yard," she said, aghast.

  "So?"

  "There's no examination table. No hot water. No instruments. No auto-clave. Those are hardly ideal conditions for a surgery."

  Mrs. Moskowitz flapped a hand at her. "You want ideal? Or you want your clinic? In St. Petersburg we would see healers in the marketplace. Have our teeth pulled in the butcher's stall next to the pigs' heads. The more we screamed, the less the butcher charged us. It helped his business. People watched his patients and bought his sausages."

  "But where will we find patients? How will they know about us?" Ella asked.

  "Oy vey, how you two make problems." She turned in her chair and barked, "Herschel! Herschel Fein!"

  A burly young man on his way to the kitchen with a basket of onions on his shoulder turned around. "Yes, Mrs. Moskowitz?"

  "Your Eva, when is her baby due?"

  "Next month."

  "Does she have a doctor yet?"

  Herschel Fein laughed. "A doctor? On a coster's wages? We'll be lucky to get a vet."

  "What if I tell you she can have both a doctor and a nurse--the best in London!--in exchange for one week's worth of fruit and vegetables for the restaurant."

  Herschel Fein looked at Mrs. Moskowitz. He frowned. He sucked his teeth. Then he said, "Minus the raisins. They're pricey just now and you go through five pounds at least. One week's worth, minus the raisins."

  Mrs. Moskowitz sighed. "You're a hard man, Herschel Fein, a very hard man. But yes, yes, we will leave out the raisins. A deal, then?"

  "A deal."

  "Tell Eva to come here tomorrow and they will see her."

  "But the baby's not due for another month."

  "The price includes an examination before the delivery. To make notes and observations."

  Herschel Fein nodded, impressed. "I'll tell her," he said, and continued on his way to the kitchen.

  "There, girls!" Mrs. Moskowitz said, smiling triumphantly. "Your first pa-tient. Your clinic is now officially open. Better get the shed cleaned out. Mr. Moskowitz will help you, won't you, Mr. Moskowitz?"

  Before Mr. Moskowitz could say whether he would or he wouldn't,

  India said, "But Mrs. Moskowitz, it just won't work. I still have to find a proper, salaried position. I have to cover my expenses. Pay my rent."

  "You will stay with us."

  "Thank you. Truly. But it would be impossible."

  Mrs. Moskowitz reached across the table. She covered India's hand with her own. "With all respect, my dear India," she said, "I look to God to tell me what is possible. Not to you."

  "But I don't want to be a burden to you."

  "Zeeskyte, you don't know from burdens. I know from burdens. Cos-sacks, they are a burden. Watching your father, your husband, beaten in the streets--that is a burden. A slip of a girl who eats nothing and takes up no room is not a burden." Then, as if remembering herself, she added, "But of course this is all up to Mr. Moskowitz. If Mr. Moskowitz says you stay, then you stay." She banged her palm on the table. "Mr. Moskowitz?"

  Mendel Moskowitz blinked thoughtfully at his wife. He tugged at his beard. He sipped from his teacup, put it down again, and said, "She stays."

  A cheer went up from the younger children.

  "It's settled, then," Mrs. Moskowitz said.

  And it had been. India had sold everything but her bed, her clothing, and her books, all of which Yanki and Aaron had moved to Brick Lane with a donkey cart. The bed had been shoved into the attic, where Ella and her sisters slept, and was now shared by Posy. There was barely room to swing a cat up there. It was stuffy in the summer heat, and Posy kept her up half the night giggling and telling stories. Yet India thought it was the finest accommodation she had ever had. Every night she crawled into bed exhausted and happy. Every morning she woke eager and excited to meet the day and its challenges.

  And there were many. She and Ella worked from dawn to sunset, with an hour off for dinner, typically seeing upward of seventy patients a day.

  And even when they had finished with their appointments, as they had now, they still had to scrub down the examination room, sweep the dirt floor of the waiting room, and boil their instruments in Mrs. Moskowitz's kitchen.

  India was just carrying a bucket and mop to the shed when the door to the kitchen opened again. She expected to see Mrs. Moskowitz, hands on hips, bellowing about something, but it was Sid Malone. She hadn't seen him for several weeks, since the day he'd brought the sick little girl, Jessie, to her flat. He was handsome in dungarees, shirtsleeves, and a waistcoat. His eyes found hers and he smiled his cheeky smile. India felt torn in two at the mere sight of him. She wanted to run to him and hide from him at

  the same time. A maddening mix of emotion gripped her, and it was all she could do to simply smile back and wave.

  "Malone!" Ella cried cheerily. "What's troubling you, lad? Catarrh? Rheumatism? Lumbago? Have a seat, we'll check you out."

  "No, thank you. I remember how it went the last time you two got hold of me." He walked over to them and looked all around--at the patched awning, the old shed, and the chickens roosting under it. "I just finished me supper. Your mother told me you were out back. What are you doing?"

  "Isn't it obvious?" India asked. "Ella and I have opened our clinic. We're seeing patients."

  She nudged a chicken out of the way with her foot. "In fact, you're standing in the waiting room."

  Sid looked surprised. "Why aren't you at Gifford's? What happened?" he asked India, as Ella bustled off to sweep the waiting area.

  India told him. About Dr. Gifford. And the Moskowitzes. And Freddie.

  He whistled. "Lytton did all that? Bloke's a damn sight trickier than he looks. You tell him if the MP thing don't work out he can always work for me."

  "I doubt I'll have the opportunity."

  "Not on speaking terms?"

  "Not exactly."

  He grinned. "Inconsolable, is he? Can't live without you?"

  "It's not me he can't live without, it's the money," she replied. "Had we married, my parents would have given us a town house and twenty thou-sand a year."

  Sid blinked. "Twenty thousand?! Blimey, luv, I'd be inconsolable, too. Is that what you're worth?"

  "Not anymore, I'm afraid. It was a limited-time offer."

  "Guess the honorable gentleman isn't so honorable after all, is he? I guess some of us aren't what we seem."

  India gave him a penetrating look. "I'd say none of us is."

  Sid looked away. He toed the ground. "Aye. Well," he said.

  "Aye. Well," she echoed.

  "So you're a free woman now? Available?"

  India blushed. She looked at the ground, feeling awkward and embar-rassed.

  "I guess that would be a bad idea," Sid
said.

  India looked up at him, wondering if he meant it, almost hoping he didn't, but he was smiling. He was teasing her. He didn't mean a word of it. She quickly recovered herself and smiled, too. "The worst," she said, teasing him back.

  But it wasn't what she wanted to say. Not at all. She wanted to tell him that she didn't care if it was a bad idea, she loved him. She wanted to put her arms around his neck, to pull his face to hers and kiss him, but she didn't. She loved him, fiercely, but it would never work between them. Even if she was no longer engaged to Freddie. They were too different. She knew that; she'd always known it.