Even curiosity seemed deadened as she mechanically pulled her cloak round her shoulders and drew on her gloves.
As she walked across the busy courtyard she saw the man waiting at the main entrance – tall, broad-shouldered, immaculately turned out, gold-knobbed cane held casually in one hand – it was Harry Cussons. He came forward, right hand extended.
‘Miss Winton, I feared I would never run you to earth, you seemed to be held captive in this convent – or prison!’ She watched the remembered muscles ripple in his throat as he laughed. ‘May we go somewhere more private to talk?’
‘Across the road, there are public gardens, above the tunnel entrance. We can go there.’
She walked ahead of him out into the bustle and noise of the Dock Road. He took her elbow as they threaded between the traffic, but released it as soon as they reached the other side. The gardens were deserted, except for a few wizened old men, huddled on the benches on the far side, soaking up the meagre rays of the winter sun. May turned and faced her companion.
‘I do not advise the seats, they harbour bugs.’
For the first time since they had met Harry Cussons looked discomfited, but he rapidly recovered himself.
‘Miss Winton, May, the last time we met, I forgot myself. I was so impatient for your company I just did not think – I failed to realise the implications of taking you to a public restaurant. Please do forgive me.’
He waited expectantly. As she looked at him May had a strange sensation of unreality. The cold wind whipping her skirts around her ankles, the gusts of grit blowing into her face, the roar and clatter of the traffic running down the steep slope to the tunnel – that was all real enough. But it was as though the man standing in front of her were the other side of a thick sheet of plate glass: he smiled, he spoke – she saw his smiles, she heard his voice, but they did not touch her.
He seemed to be waiting for an answer, so she replied, ‘We all make mistakes, Mr Cussons.’
He beamed in relief, and said gallantly, ‘I do, Miss Winton, but you, I’m sure, never!’
May thought of Sister Simeon’s many rebukes, and a bleak smile passed over her lips. Harry Cussons seemed to interpret this as encouragement.
‘Miss Winton, this is hardly the appropriate time or place, but I wish to ask you – as I have never asked any woman before,’ he paused, then pressed on. ‘Will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?’ He gathered momentum. ‘I find you so beautiful, so high-spirited, so witty, so charming. Let me,’ and he made a sweeping gesture that encompassed their drab surroundings, ‘let me take you away from all this ugliness and grime, let me take you back to that life of gaiety and elegance and luxury where you belong. I do love you, May, and I think you feel something for me.’
As he spoke these last words May felt the sheet of glass begin to shiver and soften. The dusty grey shrubs around them receded and she seemed to be peering down the tube of a kaleidoscope, a child’s toy in which there, in the distance, were the brightly-coloured patterns, forming and re-forming before her eyes: the glittering ballrooms, the shining summer sun at Ascot, the white napery and gleaming silver of a long table arrayed for dinner. They were tiny and far away, but they were there, sharply etched, jewel-bright, and infinitely desirable. But then, as she bent nearer, she saw another picture: Lord Hindlesham’s sad, monkey face in the shadows of the cab, and she heard again his low, serious voice, ‘You are lucky, my dear. You see the evils that you wrestle with – the dirt and the disease and the poverty. They are all clear before you, too clear, perhaps, but you know your enemy and can fight it face to face. There is evil and weakness and corruption in Society, too, but it hides itself under a dazzling exterior, and its creeping rottenness is hard to grasp and harder still to battle with.’ And as she listened, the pictures in the kaleidoscope became smaller and smaller, and shrank to the size of a pin’s head, and went out.
May pulled her cloak more tightly around her against the cold wind and asked, ‘What of your mistress, Mr Cussons. What of Lady Hindlesham?’
He flinched, as though she had struck him; then took hold of himself again. ‘Of course, if we were married, I would break the association completely.’
May looked at him, and the betraying conditional hung in the air between them. Then he began to try and regain his lost ground, his voice gentle and persuasive.
‘I know you value your calling, you feel you are useful here; but, seriously, May, there must be many other women with a talent for nursing, while there is only one woman I could ever marry, and that is you.’
And May saw the sincerity in his eyes and knew that that was true, for the moment, anyway. And what was her task here, but to watch helplessly by as young men arched their backs in agony and died too slowly? But as the wave of easy surrender reared up and hung poised, waiting to sweep down and overwhelm her, she remembered other voices: ‘Pull yourself together, Nurse Winton, there are other patients. We will have a heavy ward this evening.’ And the sobbing: ‘You tried, Nurse, you tried. Thank you for trying.’
May shuddered, pulled herself up straight and raised her chin. She spoke in a level tone.
‘You are right, Mr Cussons. I am not indispensable here, but there is some benefit to others in what I do, however little. I will not give up now. Besides,’ she hesitated, then plunged on, ‘though it is true, as you said, that I do feel something for you, I do not respect you as a woman should respect the man who is to be her husband. Thank you, but I cannot marry you.’
She turned away from his stricken face and moved swiftly along the gravel walk. She ran between the jostling traffic and under the archway, fleeing inside the high, prison-like walls as though into a refuge.
Home Sister was crossing the courtyard. ‘Is that you, Nurse Winton?’ she called. ‘Hurry along, girl, and have your tea, or you’ll be late back on duty.’
‘I’m sorry, Sister. I’m quite ready.’
Chapter Seventeen
‘Seven-thirty, Nurse.’
Head aching, body heavy and unrested, May dragged herself out of bed and across to the water jug. She pressed damp fingers into her eyes, and then, with slow, clumsy movements, began to dress.
The Christmas period had passed in a daze for May, alternately haunted by Bob Tyrrell’s agonising death and the disturbing scene in the Tunnel Gardens. On Boxing Day ward changes were announced and May was told to come off duty at midday so that she could report to Isaiah Ward that night. She made her farewells to Sister Simeon, moved her belongings to the top floor, reserved for night nurses, then undressed and lay sleepless in bed over the long afternoon.
She had been on night duty for ten days now, and felt as though she had entered another life – a life where the previous comfortable, unthinking acceptance of her body was a barely remembered dream; now every movement demanded a constant exercise of willpower. As she came off duty in the morning she felt like a broken-winded cab horse, which needed whips and curses to goad it into activity. May bitterly recalled her former pride in her strength, her stamina, her ability to sleep deeply and well and rise refreshed and full of energy in the morning. Now, the needs of the institution had caused her to be picked up and turned upside down, and she had to face the humiliating truth that she could not properly function so; only endure, and that with difficulty.
In the morning she felt she might perhaps have been able to collapse into the oblivion which both her mind and body craved; but the system and Home Sister would not allow this. By the time the approved hour came round she was beyond sleep, and could only toss, restless and tormented between brief snatches of unconsciousness, until the maid’s call came, when she dragged herself to her feet to start the whole punishing cycle again.
To compound the nightmare, fog had descended on the city. For five days now the dense, sulphur-yellow cloud had clasped the hospital in its cold, clammy embrace. The noisy Dock traffic was reduced to a mulled, kerb-hugging crawl, and oily brown drops coated and smeared every surface. Inside the wards the wea
ker patients gasped and choked, slowly losing their unequal fight for breath, while May watched helplessly; and each day the death toll mounted.
Isaiah Ward was in the basement, next to the mortuary. This was the oldest part of the hospital, where the ceilings were low, the windows small and the rooms gloomy even at midday; at night the shadows barely retreated from the flickering light of the oil lamp. Despite the never-ending round of scrubbing and cleaning, the wards here smelt sour and musty, and the ill-ventilated sluice rooms stank. Isaiah was not one single large ward, but a scattered collection of different-sized rooms, so that, despite her inexperience May was often left to govern her own empire, while the senior ruled elsewhere. Her unwilling sway was exercised over cases whose infected wounds stubbornly refused to heal; they had been moved down from other wards to lurk, delirious or despairing, as an evil-smelling decay in the bowels of the hospital. They were not forgotten; Sister Isaiah, round-faced and determinedly optimistic, laboured over them all day, and left May and her colleague a full programme of fomentations to be carried out all through the night: some four-hourly, some two-hourly, a few every hour. And this was as well as the normal routine of giving drinks, washing, turning and preparing for the day staff.
At three in the morning there was a short break; each nurse was allowed to sit down and drink a cup of tea – prepared in their own special pot and drunk from their own, hopefully uncontaminated, crockery. On this night May did not bother with the tea. She decided that the effort of making it would outweigh the reviving effects of the drink. So she simply sat down in the ward and gazed from under heavy lids at her unwelcome kingdom. As she sat there, the air around her began to take on substance and shift unnervingly before her eyes; then she was floating, light-headed, yet weighed down. She felt as if she were about to tip forward off the chair, yet was powerless to stop herself. She tried rubbing her eyes, blinking rapidly, concentrating on her breathing, pinching the pad of her thumb – but it was no use, unconsciousness was overtaking her in irresistible waves. The two lines of white beds danced into the shadows; she was cushioned by the seductiveness of sleep. With a last mighty effort she forced herself to her feet and staggered off down the endless ward. She thrust open the kitchen door and fell against the sink; then she managed to turn on the tap and bend down and push her face into the icy flow. The shock brought her round. Face dripping, she filled the palms of her hands with cold water and lapped it up.
Full consciousness came back, as she stood shivering in the draughty kitchen, cap awry and apron damp. ‘Whatever am I doing here? It’s the middle of the night, I should be in bed, warm and asleep!’ She felt the outrage in her voice as she spoke aloud. Like an exile she remembered other nights when it had been a pleasure to be woken by the cry of a dog fox, for the sheer joy of turning over and snuggling down again into her soft enveloping bed.
A cockroach scuttled out from under the sink and headed busily across to the darkness under the dresser. May lacked the energy even to stamp on it. Rather, she felt a faint sense of relief that some other creature was awake and alert. The cold, the harsh, starched edge of her stiff collar biting into her neck, and the pounding ache beginning to engulf her temples all combined into a feeling of such utter wretchedness as she had never before known. Misery and self-pity washed over her.
She would go, now. She would walk out of the kitchen door, into the passage and through the ward entrance. She would pass along the dark stone corridor, up into the foggy courtyard, and find her way up, up, to her narrow bedroom with its hard bed. There she would throw herself down, shoes and all, and sink into oblivion. And in the morning she would leave; break free from the high prison walls and the filthy streets and the yellow, sulphurous air, and go to crisp, clean, calm Suffolk.
May recognised that she had been defeated. She did not care. One foot had actually been placed in front of the other on the worn linoleum when she heard it: the feeble, whining cry, ‘Nurse’. Deliberately May hunched her shoulder against the direction of the ward, and began to move, crablike, towards freedom. ‘Nurse’, the note was higher, keening now. Dimly there formed in May’s consciousness the sullen awareness that that meant her; there was no other nurse within earshot. Her reason, huddled in the corner of her mind, argued that old Mrs Slinger was safe in bed – if she soiled the linen, what did it matter? Just another set of sheets to keep the fallen girls in the laundry busy. But another, painfully learned response was taking over. Night Sister’s rasping voice echoed in her memory: ‘You will attend to the patient first, Nurse. You are here for her benefit, not she for yours. Go now.’
So, back into the dark, malodorous ward, feet leaden and heart unwilling, May went.
* * *
Night duty dragged on interminably. After her crisis May forced herself into a rigid routine: she made herself walk briskly every morning, whatever the weather, and then came back and sat in front of her medical textbooks, compelling herself to concentrate on every word until she had bludgeoned herself into sleep. But it was never more than bare endurance. A moment’s inattention on her part and she knew she would slip back into surrender: she was fighting a war in which the only hope of survival was constant vigilance, and this took a heavy physical toll.
Yet there were some rewards. Gradually she learnt to push out of her mind the despair and hopelessness generated by her basement patients, and to recognise that the few emaciated figures who finally left their beds were a kind of victory.
Her senior nurse was the stolid Grayson, with whom she could at first make no relationship; but slowly she began to respect the woman for her competence and sheer stamina, and she got used to her expressionless face and long silences. Indeed, she grew to understand them after one night, when she had turned to Grayson as they waited for the mortuary trolley and burst out, ‘Don’t you hate this job, sometimes?’
Grayson deliberated, slowly, then said, ‘No.’ Seeing May’s downcast expression she had made an effort to explain. ‘I was brought up in an institution, a school for orphaned clergy daughters. The High Mistress was vicious and spiteful to us, and to the younger teachers. We hated her, and we feared her.’
May waited, half-repelled, half-fascinated, for some ghastly revelation, but none followed. Grayson added simply, ‘You can stand anything, you know, if you have to.’ She went to attend a restless patient. May began to recognise the stolidity as stoicism, and to feel ashamed of her own squeamishness.
Sometimes, when her hands were occupied with a mechanical task, May’s mind would wander and ask the unanswerable question. Would she have refused Harry Cussons so abruptly if she had not been so stunned by Bob Tyrrell’s tragic death? Where would she be now if she had said ‘Yes’? Certainly not in this dark insect-ridden basement, where one had to bang the door as one went into the kitchen, to frighten away lurking rats. Marriage to Harry Cussons would have been an honourable escape; even Matron could scarcely have objected. Nursing seemed to offer little at present. It took all her energies just to keep going; there was no enjoyment in it in Isaiah, and scant satisfaction. He had come to seek her out; he had forgiven her resounding slap and impetuous departure that evening. Dimly, May recognised that she had had reasons for her actions, but the weeks underground were blunting her critical faculties. Like a tongue prodding an aching tooth she tormented herself with visions of being escorted round Harry’s relatives – introduced as his affianced bride – made welcome, as she would have been, being young, of good family, and an heiress too. To be squired by Harry Cussons, debonair and amusing, and to be touched by him! May shied away from the thought, blushing even in the privacy of the damp kitchen, remembering his hand on hers, and the feel of his lips on her wrist.
Perhaps he would not take no for an answer, and would come to find her again – no, May thought of her face in the telltale mirror, eyes dark-shadowed by exhaustion, staring out from under hair that was dull and lifeless, showing all too clearly the ravages wrought by nights – no, not yet, he might disdain her now. But perhaps, later,
when London filled up again and the Season began, then she might see him. He would come towards her, his hands held out, his voice warm and alive: ‘Miss Winton, May,’ but beyond this point May could never imagine what would be said, or what would happen. In any case, she was usually interrupted by Grayson’s phlegmatic yet authoritative voice, ‘You must work faster, Winton, we have a lot to get through, tonight.’
* * *
It was halfway through March that May realised that the end of her sentence was finally in sight. Her monthly days off could at last be claimed, and she would have three glorious nights in bed – not in the narrow iron bedstead at St Katharine’s but lapped in the luxury of feathers and linen, behind velvet curtains with a crackling fire in the grate, at the Winton’s Town house. Lord and Lady Clarence were coming up ahead of the Season especially so that May could spend the time with them.
The last week, the last night – it had finally come; now May no longer thought of Harry Cussons, she could think of nothing but the rest in front of her for her leaden limbs and heavy head. Then, as she and Grayson sat in the largest ward over their midnight meal May realised that the ache in her neck, with which she had woken, was getting worse. When she tried to swallow the toast rasped her throat, and left it on fire. By the morning she felt burning hot, yet could not stop shivering; the floor seemed to recede and waver as she put her foot on it. She could barely croak and her throat was agonisingly painful. Night Sister looked at her sharply, and when May barely managed to reply to her question she tipped May’s chin up and held her lamp high so that she could look into her mouth. What she saw made her shake her head.
‘You must report sick to Home Sister as soon as you go off, Nurse Winton.’
May squeaked frantically, ‘But I’m going home today, it’s my nights off.’
Night Sister was kind but firm. ‘I’m sorry, Nurse Winton, but you are not going anywhere with a throat like that. You might spread infection.’
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