Friends Indeed

by Rose Doyle

  The rain stopped and started many times during that long night. Lizzie Early seemed to die and come back to life many times in the hours we waited for Lucretia and the relieving officer.

  Sarah came to help but was sent back to the nest and James. All of the women with children stayed away. All except for Clara who, like the rain, came and went. She was drunker each time.

  It was getting light, and the rain had at last passed on, before a wren came running to say a covered car was on its way, that she could see Lucretia in front with the driver. We'd been waiting six hours. The relieving officer had insisted on finishing his night's sleep after Lucretia had called him.

  'Lizzie'll be all right now,' said Ellen Neary. She didn't believe it any more than I did.

  But Lizzie Early, a complainer all her life, was conscious and quietly accepting as she was loaded into the car. It had springs, so her journey would hopefully be bearable. I said I would go with her since the doctor at the workhouse would need to know she'd been given laudanum and how much. Clara Hyland said she would come too. There was no stopping her.

  Clara slept for most of the three-hour journey to Naas but I was glad to have her with me anyway. Moll's mother was more eagle than wren. She might be troublesome and troubled but she would protect to the death those who needed her help.

  Lizzie Early was taken from us at the workhouse and put in a ward set aside for wrens. I had never before, and have never since, felt the poverty of spirit I felt in Naas Union Workhouse that summer morning. It was a debased place, and demeaning.

  The ward into which they put Lizzie had twelve beds filled with grey and dying women. A young doctor, so tired-looking he seemed ready to take a place in one of the beds himself, was looking after both them and the rest of the sick and indigent. He reminded me of Daniel Casey.

  When he examined Lizzie he confirmed what I'd diagnosed myself. Lizzie Early had a tumorous growth in her stomach. To be as big as it was it must have been growing, he said, for a couple of years.

  'Her pulse is thin and thready and the bowel's obstructed. It's hopeless . . .' He rubbed a hand across his forehead. 'Laudanum's about all you could have given her. It didn't do any good but it didn't do any harm either. I'll do what I can for her, but it won't be much. The twelve pounds a year we're given to pay for the medical care of wrens and prostitutes doesn't buy a great deal.'

  'Twelve pounds . . .' I echoed him, wondering if I'd heard right.

  'That's what they give us,' he nodded. 'We get another three shillings and fourpence a week each for their maintenance.' He scratched his face, the unconscious gesture of a man whose nerves were rattled beyond normal endurance. 'We get ten pounds too to rent auxiliary buildings for those who aren't sick, just destitute.' He realised what he was doing and dropped his hand, blushing. He might have been Daniel Casey's brother. 'Take a look at what the ten pounds is spent on on your way out,' he suggested, 'if you can bear to.'

  He went back to his work. He didn't ask me how I came to have medical knowledge nor how I came to be delivering a dying wren to the workhouse. A man whose priorities were screaming and in pain in dismal wards on all sides didn't need to know such things.

  The auxiliary buildings were separated from the main workhouse by a high wall. I thought at first that we'd made a mistake and were looking at some ruined and empty hovels. They were low to the ground with sagging roofs and wayward walls but they were lived in, by women and children both. Their beds were bags of foul straw. The air inside smelled and was musty. The earthen floors from the rain the night before were sodden underfoot.

  The women in them were sick or tired or both. They were all defeated. Even the children seemed to be living to die.

  We stayed just long enough for me to understand why those who could preferred to live as wrens on the Curragh.

  'In the wintertime,' said Clara as we walked away, 'when great numbers of women leave the plains, this place is a great deal worse. Better to die with a bit of dignity intact, in the open, I always say.'

  I tried to imagine anything worse and couldn't.

  The carrier drove us back to the wren village. He didn't want to but Clara was sober now and wanted to get back to Moll and threatened him with an inquiry. She would see to it, she promised, that the authorities knew about him going back to his bed after Lucretia calling him and telling him there was a woman dying out on the Curragh. His job could be taken from him, she said.

  'I'm not a well man,' he sniffed.

  'Then give your job to someone strong enough to do it,' Clara gave her hard laugh, 'give it to a woman.'

  I slept fitfully on the journey. Each time I woke it was a shock to find myself in the car. Once I'd dreamed I was back in the French convent. The next time I was in my bedroom in Haddington Road.

  I was so tired when I climbed down at the village that I was surprised to find my legs still able to support me.

  Sarah was frantic. 'There's a curse following me,’ she said as I washed and made myself decent for our visit to the camp. 'Of all the nights of the year why did Lizzie Early have to choose last evening to get sick? Why not tonight, or tomorrow?'

  'It wasn't a choice,' I said, 'and your bad luck is nothing compared to Lizzie's who may be dead as we speak.'

  'I know, I know all that. I'm half mad with selfishness and worry . . .' She took the brush from my hand and began to smooth my hair. 'Motherhood and missing Jimmy Vance have turned me into my grandmother. I expect the world to turn on its head to suit me and everyone to do what I want them to.' She gathered my hair into her hands. 'Let me make it into curls like I used to. Let me at least do that.'

  It wasn't a style I liked any more but it was restful having her do it. I was less tired setting off for the camp.

  There was no sign of Captain Alexander Ainslie by the clock tower. I stood for a while at its base and, feeling conspicuous and alone when he didn't arrive, began walking slowly in the direction of the churches.

  At fifteen minutes past one o'clock I was standing outside the Protestant church and there was still no sign of the captain.

  I was working out a way of telling Sarah we'd been betrayed when I saw him, sauntering towards the clock tower as if time, as well as I, would wait all day for him. I stayed where I was. It took him three minutes to spot me.

  'A much more suitable meeting place,' he smiled as he approached, 'in the shelter of God.'

  'I've been waiting fifteen minutes in His shelter.'

  'My apologies.' He didn't look sorry. 'I was busy on your friend's behalf and was delayed.'

  'You had a shorter distance to travel here than I.’

  'Where exactly have you travelled from, Miss Buckley?'

  I was very tired. 'I've walked here from the wren village in the hollow below the Gibbet Rath. You might know it better as the home of the bushwomen.'

  'A longish journey.' He didn't flinch. He was English and an officer, after all. 'I can see why you're tired.'

  'It's a pleasant enough walk,' I amended.

  I leaned against the side of the church door and couldn't think of a thing more to say. Captain Ainslie's sangfroid didn't fool me. Dimly, through the layers of my tiredness, I could see that he was shocked. It was why he'd become so quiet. He really hadn't known I was a wren. He hadn't known Sarah was one. He was discovering that he'd agreed to deliver a soldier colleague to one of the wanton harlots of the plains.

  'It's not really the way you think it is . . .' They were the last words I said before the world circled about me and an icy chill made me clutch at the door jamb. The sky was sinking to meet a crazily dancing clock tower as I slid to the ground.

  'You lose consciousness quite elegantly, Miss Buckley.' Capt Ainslie's face was hovering over mine when I opened my eyes. When I coughed and shook my head, he stoppered the bottle of smelling salts in his hand. 'We're inside the church.'

  The low, vaulted beams overhead told me as much. It was bright in the church and smelled of polish. There were flowers everywhere: on the al
tar, fixed to the end of each pew, on high stands by the walls. I was at the back, supported by a bed of cushions. The captain left my side and sat in a pew.

  'Are we the only people here?' I said.

  'No one but me saw you collapse,' he was wryly reassuring, 'the soldiers are in the canteens. Meal times are strictly observed in an army camp.'

  I sat and then stood. He made no attempt to help me and I was glad. I needed to gather my thoughts together. Not easy since I still felt chilly and shaken.

  'You'd better sit down.' He moved along the pew, making room for me to sit beside him. I did, but not too close.

  'Thank you,' I looked straight ahead, 'for your discretion and your help.'

  'Have you eaten today?' he said.

  'Of course.' I didn't look at him. I'd had tea, made by Sarah, before leaving the village. She'd wanted me to take bread, and fruit, but I hadn't had the stomach for it. I wished now I'd taken it regardless.

  'So it wasn't hunger made you faint,' he said. 'I don't believe it was your walk on the Curragh either. I suppose,' his sigh turned into a cough, 'that you're with child? Is that the reason you're living with the bushwomen?'

  I thought I was going to faint again. He thought so too and put an arm about my shoulder as I swayed. We sat for several minutes with him holding me hard against him while I took deep breaths and gathered myself, and my senses, together.

  'It's natural enough that you would think that,' I said eventually, 'but I assure you, I'm not with child.'

  'I believe you,' he said and it was my turn to be shocked; it hadn't occurred to me that he might doubt me.

  'I'm feeling well now.' I moved away from him. 'Will you still keep your promise to bring me to Private Vance?'

  'You know that the wrens are forbidden the camp?' he said.

  'Yes.'

  'So why should I hand a soldier over to a wren?'

  'Because you promised and an officer's word is his bond. Or so we're told . . .' I paused. 'I've always believed it to be true.'

  I believed no such thing. What I believed was that honourable people kept their word. Their position in life had little to do with it.

  'I would be defying my camp commander,' he pointed out. 'That would be dishonourable too. And it could be ruinous to my career.'

  'Of course.' Looking down I saw the ugly roughness of my hands and folded them into my skirts. Alexander Ainslie wasn't going to bring me to Jimmy Vance. 'Tell me one thing.' I looked up. He was watching me closely. 'Is Private Vance here, in the camp? Or is Sarah's journey, and her wait out on the Curragh, all a sad waste of time?'

  He said nothing for a minute or two. I'd convinced myself he was working out a way to politely throw me out of the camp when he said, 'Private Vance is here in the camp. I've already told him how things are. The news appeared to give him great joy. Since I didn't know myself I was not, however, able to tell him where his lover is presently residing.' His eyes were cool. 'The price of bringing you to him has gone up since yesterday.'

  'You'd better tell me what it is then,' I said. I would lie. I would cheat. I would find a way out of whatever it was he wanted.

  'The truth.' He was brisk. 'I want to know why someone with the manners of a respectable young woman is living on the Curragh.'

  'You don't think I'm respectable then?' I said. 'Only that I have the manners of respectability?'

  'Manners are learned and you have been an apt pupil. Respectability is a way of mind, a belief in a righteous way of being.'

  'I thought to be respectable was to be of good social standing. That it was a question of being virtuous and upright. You don't think I'm those things?'

  'I am sure you are of good social standing,' he waved a dismissive hand, 'that's why you have learned your manners well. You may well be virtuous and upright too. You miss my point, Miss Buckley, deliberately and cleverly.' He paused. 'What has brought you to live with the wrens?'

  'I'm here because society wouldn't give me what I wanted while demanding from me things I couldn't give.' When he looked puzzled I said, shortly, 'The circumstances of my life.'

  'Then we have that in common. The circumstances of my life have brought me here too.' He gave a short, humourless laugh. 'What I'd like by way of payment for Private Vance is for us creatures of circumstance to meet again and continue our conversation.'

  'You want to talk.' I thought I would faint again, this time with relief.

  'What did you think I wanted?' He was mocking.

  'My family don't know where I am.' I eased my grip on the pew. 'I came here with Sarah, to help her find Jimmy Vance. I'll be leaving as soon as she's settled.'

  'Where will you go, now you've been a wren?'

  It was the question any right-thinking person would ask and I couldn't resent him for it. What the captain knew, as well as I did myself, was that by throwing in my lot with the women of the plains I'd forfeited forever my place in respectable Irish society.

  For a few minutes, before I answered him, I saw myself with his eyes and understood, in a new way, exactly what I'd given up, and the consequences. It's true that we don't appreciate the value of what we have until we've lost it. Or maybe it's that some things don't actually have a value until we've lost them.

  'I'll go to America,' I said.

  I'd never in my life before thought about going to that continent. But if Moll Hyland, at nine years old, could dream of escaping to the New World then why couldn't I?

  'You'll go to America . . .' he echoed me, shaking his head. 'And why would you go to America, Miss Buckley?'

  'To become a doctor.'

  Why else? Why not? There were women doctors in America; Elizabeth Blackwell, twenty years before, had been the first.

  'You're an original,' the captain said. By this I supposed he meant I was half mad. 'But you made a mistake aligning yourself with the women who live in the furze.' By this he meant I would never become a doctor.

  'I will practise medicine,' I said, 'I've already begun . . .' The icy chill spread more slowly this time, the blood draining from my brain and bringing a cold sweat to my forehead.

  'Could I have the smelling salts, please.' I clutched again at the pew.

  He held me against him and I sniffed. I revived almost instantly and, pulling away from him, tried to get out of the pew.

  'It is my very amateur diagnosis, doctor, that you need food and rest.' He put an arm round my shoulder and helped me out of the pew and to the church doorway. We stood there with his back to the sun, my face in the light. 'You're chalk white . . .' He gave me his arm. 'Private Vance will have to wait. You'll need to be fed before meeting him.'

  His quarters, in a hut not far from where Moll and I had met him playing cards, were presentable enough. There was a fireplace with a clock on the mantel, two smallish windows, a table, three chairs, a chaise longue and sideboard. It was ordinary, orderly and very clean. Only the chaise longue, on which I sat, carried the whiff of another Alexander Ainslie, of a life beyond army life.

  He went behind a screen and I heard him moving crockery about. To keep myself from falling asleep I said, 'Your accommodation is more pleasant than I'd have expected in an army camp.'

  'How did you imagine soldiers live?'

  'In more spartan conditions. The chaise longue is pretty.'

  'It was my brother's.' He came from behind the screen with a glass of milk and a plate with cheese and soda bread. 'He served here before me and brought it and the candlesticks, as well as a picture or two.' He put the food on the table. 'I inherited his quarters.'

  'As well as a family tradition of joining the army?'

  'Yes. Will you sit to the table?'

  He watched while I ate. In his shirt and with his hat off he looked younger and I felt less unnerved by him. He was tall but I saw now that he was also slight and, when he asked if he might smoke a cigarette and I said yes, please do, he looked amused.

  'Most women would be outraged,' he said.

  'Most of the kind of women you k
now would be outraged,' I corrected.

  'Touche. Tell me why you are so hungry and tired. Are things so very bad with the bushwomen that you neither sleep nor eat?’

  'I spent the night and morning with a dying woman.' Let him have the facts if he wanted them. 'I went to the workhouse with her. There was no time for sleep before coming here and I didn't feel hungry.'

  'What was she dying of?'

  'She had a growth, a tumour. There was nothing could be done for her,' I said. I knew he feared syphilis.

  'You're sure?'

  'The doctor at the workhouse confirmed it.'

  'Why are you doing this thing to yourself?' He studied the tip of the cigarette. His voice had become harsh. 'It can't all be for the sake of friendship.' He raised an eyebrow. 'Could it be that you see yourself as an Irish Florence Nightingale?'

  I pushed the food away. 'I'd be obliged if you would take me to meet Private Vance now,' I said.

  'You're offended.' He seemed surprised.

  'Offended . . .' I thought about this. 'No. Merely irritated that you, along with most of your compatriots, must always see this country, and its people, as a pale reflection of your own. I'm an Irish woman who wants to become a physician. That is all and what I am. I've no desire to fill the footprints of any other woman, English or Irish.'

  'My apologies,' he said. He still looked surprised.

  I stood, waiting. 'Private Vance is expecting to meet me,' I pointed out. 'And you promised.' I paused. 'We've had our conversation.'

  'We've had some intriguing chit-chat.' He stood facing me. He was smiling, a little. 'I still want to know why you have put yourself outside society.'

  'Maybe it's more that I've retreated for a while, much as you could be said to have done yourself by joining the army.'

  'The comparison isn't a good one, Miss Buckley,' he spoke softly, 'you've turned your back on everything. The army, on the other hand, gives me rank and power and a role to play for my country.' He smiled. 'It has brought me to this fair land of yours.' He shrugged himself into his tunic. 'I don't at all think I've got