‘Excuse me, would you be so good as to tell me the way back to the East India Dock Road?’
A seamed old face peered back at her. ‘I couldn’t tell yer, Miss,’ moving on. ‘This un’s Limehouse Cut,’ gesturing at the stinking water as he shuffled on.
May realised that she could not even find her way back to the Vicarage, not that she would ever ask the help of Walter Lisle, she thought with a small flash of spirit. The memory of his remarks in the hall brought back some warmth to May’s cheeks. She must pull herself together, she was only in London, for goodness’ sake – Limehouse Cut was hardly the Orinoco.
She took several deep breaths and tried to regain her self control. She must find a place where there were more people, then she could ask about public transport; fortunately she was carrying some small change. Her first priority was to get back to the hospital on time for her evening duty. The road beyond the Cut seemed wider – better take a gamble and press on.
May stepped forward briskly, hugging her cloak around her in the cold, dank air. Soon, there were more people about. She waited until she saw a respectable-looking woman dressed in black and went up to her, asking for the nearest railway station.
‘Why, Miss, you’re only a step from Bromley; keep going, it’s straight ahead.’
With a sigh of relief May pressed on. Suddenly she heard the welcome hiss of escaping steam, and there were the station steps. She rushed up them and into the booking hall. The clerk was young, but efficient.
‘East India Dock Road, Miss? St Katharine’s? You really want the North London line to Poplar, that’s Bromley South Station, but it’s a tidy walk, especially in this weather. Best use the Great Eastern instead: go down to Stepney, there’s one due in three minutes, you’re in luck. Then catch the Blackwall train, watch for the board on the front. It’ll drop you the wrong side of the Dock, but I’d say it was your best bet.’
May only had enough to pay for a third class ticket, but this was no time for niceties.
‘Platform One, Miss.’
‘Thank you, thank you so much.’
Once on the train she sank onto the narrow seat with a sigh of relief. The journey back was blessedly uneventful. On arriving at Stepney she found she only had ten minutes to wait for her connection. A glance at the clock and a quick calculation reassured her that, as long as she moved quickly, she would be back on the ward on time.
May had opened the door and leapt out of the carriage before the train had properly stopped. Ignoring an indignant: ‘Mind yourself, Miss!’ from a porter she raced for the exit, flew down the steps into Black Wall Way, dodged a grocer’s van as she sped over the tunnel entrance and turned right into Robin Hood Lane. By the time she reached the Dock Road she was hot and panting, but her goal was in sight. There were no trams coming so she ran behind a cart, waited for a wagon to pass and then headed for the high archway.
Jenks was on duty. He beamed at her as she shot in. ‘You’ll make the Derby this year, Nurse Winton, sure you will.’
May gasped a greeting and slowed to a more decorous pace as she came within the hospital precincts. It wouldn’t do to be stopped by an irate Sister at this stage. The hands of the big clock on the tower stood at five to five: she had just made it.
The worst ravages of her hair had been restored on the train, so with a quick splash to wash her hands and face and a hasty donning of apron and cap she was ready.
Sister Martha looked her over suspiciously. ‘You seem a trifle heated, Nurse Winton.’
‘I had to run from the station, Sister, I was a little late.’
Sister shook her head disapprovingly. ‘You young nurses, travelling everywhere by train and omnibus – you should be out getting exercise, tramping the streets, like I did in my young days.’
‘Yes, Sister.’ May thought wryly that she just couldn’t please anybody, today.
For the rest of the evening May felt dull and clumsy. She fumbled with the first fomentation, scalding her hands, and having to start again. When they came to dress old Carrie’s leg the foetid odour of the pus seemed more foul than before, and as they took the bowls back to the steriliser Staff Nurse Lee voiced May’s fears.
‘I’m afraid she’ll have to be transferred to Isaiah Ward, Winton.’
‘Oh, Staff, she’ll be so upset: she’s made friends here.’
‘She’ll do no good to her friends if she stays here. It’s too risky to keep her.’ May knew that this was true, but felt very sorry for the uncomplaining old lady.
Hetty asked about her visit to the vicarage. May found it an effort to answer cheerfully, but Hetty seemed pleased that she had seen Mrs Lewis and chatted about her grandmother’s leg. ‘It comes and goes, Nurse, sometimes it’s there, and sometimes it’s not.’ May smiled and moved on.
Sister Martha was late dismissing them, and they all had to bolt their suppers, under the accusing glare of Home Sister. May sat next to Ellen, but for once she didn’t feel the urge to confide in her. The scene with Mrs Tranter had hurt. She tried not to think of it.
‘Cocoa, May?’ Ellen asked when they got upstairs.
‘No thanks, Ellen, I’ve got rather a headache. I think I’ll go straight to bed.’
Ellen looked at her searchingly. Then she pressed May’s hand and said, ‘Well, you know where we are if you want us. Look after yourself, May.’
But once she was in bed, sleep would not come. The events of the afternoon crowded in upon her. With unpleasant clarity she heard again Mrs Tranter’s condemnation: ‘Pert – redfaced – blowsy – did you see the state of her hands?’ Well, she was not ashamed of her hands, they were roughened by hard work, but ‘pert’, ‘blowsy’, – how dare she call her so! And Walter Lisle, how could he have laughed when she was being insulted? But as she replayed the scene in her head May remembered a tiny sound, ignored in the heat of the moment: the click of the other door opening. Suppose he hadn’t heard the earlier strictures at all – only Mrs Tranter’s comment on her bosom? He was still guilty of gross indelicacy, May told herself firmly, but – but not of the unkindness she had been laying to his charge. And she should never have seized hold of him like that, whatever the provocation. What must he be thinking of her now? No wonder the bishop’s widow had called her a shameless hussy!
By now May felt cold and wretched. She pulled the hot water bottle up from her feet and clutched it to her chest. Fighting off the threatening tears she finally fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty Eight
May knew that her distress over the scene in the Vicarage had assumed ridiculous proportions. After all, Walter Lisle’s parish was well to the north of St Katharine’s. She was unlikely to come face to face with him again. And unpleasant though the confrontation with the Bishop’s widow had been May felt that her behaviour, though unmaidenly in appearance had not been so in intent – surely Mr Lisle had realised this? In any case, what of his own comment, hadn’t she been entitled to be angry at that? But reason alone did not calm her. She felt bruised by what had happened, and did not even tell Ellen, although she knew her friend’s good sense would have helped her to regain her sense of proportion.
Fortunately for May the Staff Nurse on Elizabeth Ward chose this moment to go down with measles, and a severe attack at that. The only other available Staff Nurse with experience of nursing children announced that she was breaking her contract to marry a wealthy undertaker, and the pool of private nurses was fully engaged – the spring seemed a particularly sickly one. In consequence May found herself in Matron’s office being informed that she, Nurse Winton, was, as a great concession, to be appointed temporary Acting Staff Nurse; not, of course, on Staff Nurses’ pay, Matron added hastily. She was to stay on Elizabeth Ward until Jameson was fit for duty again. May was well aware of the chain of circumstances which had forced Matron’s hand, but she was grateful. She liked Elizabeth, and knew the temporary promotion would delay the onset of nights – besides, she was flattered that she had been chosen. With this new interest, St Barnabas�
� Vicarage, together with its occupant, began to fade from the forefront of her thoughts.
On her second day on Elizabeth an anguished mother arrived, panting in the wake of a Receiving Room porter who was carrying her badly burned child.
The mother moaned, ‘I’ll never fergive meself – I fell asleep, I were so tired.’ May glanced at her swollen belly heavy with pregnancy. ‘She wanted ter cook the dinner, as a surprise, an’ she fell in the fire. She’s only seven, Sister, she were tryin’ to ’elp. Oh, my Louie!’
Sister Elizabeth was soon busy with the child. May gently led the mother to a chair and whispered, ‘Try to stay calm, Mrs Brown, We’ll do all we can for Louie.’
The other children were hushed and round-eyed as Sister wrapped the little girl in a warmed blanket, and placed her near the fire, carefully dropping brandy and water into the small mouth twisted up on the left where the flames had licked up. May prepared a warm bath of boracic and behind the screens they floated off the charred remnants of clothing. Then May and the probationers attended to the other children while Sister and Dr Rawlings applied zinc-smeared lint and followed with fomentations.
They had little hope, since the area of the burn was extensive for such a young child, but Louie hung onto life with a desperate intensity. After three days the routine of daily changes of dressings had to begin, and however careful May and Sister were these had to be excruciatingly painful. But the child gritted her teeth and only whimpered, though her eyes were round and staring. May’s respect for Sister Elizabeth went up by leaps and bounds. Her skill was such that the offensive smell so often met with in these cases was kept at bay, while by a judicious mixture of coaxing, pleading and nagging she persuaded Louie to take food into her distorted mouth.
As a prevention against contraction the little girl’s arm was splinted, and they made her lie with her head overhanging the bed to stop the burns on her neck pulling her jaw down onto her shoulder. Yet somehow Louie survived, and unbelievably soon was showing a keen interest in the doings of the ward: whispering question after question of the nurses and holding furious hissing arguments with the other children from her upsidedown position.
Louie’s mother staggered up the stairs every visiting day, ‘Me man’s good with the kids, Nurse, I’m very lucky,’ and Louie confided in May one day that two babies were soon expected, not just one. May had long ceased to be surprised at the precocious knowledge of East End children. She was relieved that Louie appeared to be looking forward to this event – far more so, May suspected, than her mother was.
Babies came in – ill, emaciated, wounded. Some of them died, one with his thin chest still bearing the clear marks of his father’s hob-nailed boots. ‘’E was drunk, Nurse, didn’t know what ’e were doin’ – ’e luvs the kids when ’e’s sober, ’e’s just not often sober.’ May watched other parents slowly drag themselves away from small bedsides, and walk, defeated, from the ward; but Louie confounded the experts and set out on the road to an uneventful recovery. Somehow she avoided septicaemia and pneumonia, and even that common complication of children’s burns, scarlet fever. Her body would be scarred for life, and the disfigurement of her face and neck could not be hidden, but she had an indomitable will, and May felt she would cope. Meanwhile, she was their living miracle, and May knew they needed her as much as she needed them.
* * *
In the West End the Season unrolled its luxurious carpet of balls and receptions, operas and concerts, dinners and theatres; but May’s chances of stepping onto this carpet were few and far between. Many functions did not even start until after the time that Home Sister locked the doors of the Nurses’ Home, and though she managed to get back from the odd short play, or miss the ending of the longer ones, her only opportunity of staying to the end of an event was on the evening before her monthly day off, when a sleeping-out pass could be obtained. Otherwise, as Archie pointed out, she did considerably less well than Cinderella.
But May did not waste much time in repining: the nurses had their own amusements, there was always somebody around, or something going on, even if it were only a lively piano-playing session in the Nurses’ Sitting Room. May found she was becoming more and more detached from the life of High Society – she felt it was like caviar – delightful in small quantities, but too much soon produced a surfeit.
Lady Clarence seemed to understand May’s feelings, but Lady Andover bewailed her unavailability, ‘My only unmarried granddaughter, an heiress, and your looks, incredibly, unaffected by all the awful people you mix with – yet I’m not able to show you off! You disappoint me, May, you really do.’ But she laughed as she spoke, and May felt little compunction, as she knew her grandmother revelled in Society for its own sake; May would only have been the icing on the cake.
However, Lady Andover was well aware of May’s Achilles’ heel: her luncheon and dinner parties drew like a magnet. The hospital food, though more sustaining these days, was often dull. The promise of one of Chefs masterpieces made May reach for her diary. So on the Thursday of the last week in June May hurried off-duty and jumped into a cab with a quick, ‘Arlington Street, please, Andover House.’ Friday was her day off that month. She would be able to spend a leisured evening at Lady Andover’s dinner party, followed by a night in feather-bedded luxury, with perhaps a session at the Bath Club, or a stroll in the dazzling mélée of the Park to follow.
Her grandmother greeted May in her boudoir, already dressed.
‘I’ve changed early, so that Collins can spend the time with you.’ May was touched by her thoughtfulness.
Collins, plump and cheerful, ran May’s bath for her and sent her along to it while she laid out the dress for the evening. May lay back and soaked the cares of the day away in the scented bath water. She stretched out and raised her feet in the air, and as she did so the memory came to her of lying in the bath at her parents’ house, before another of Lady Andover’s dinner parties. Then she had been anticipating the Hindlesham Ball, where she had met Harry Cussons. She remembered him slipping her shoe back on, and smiled indulgently at her younger self. It was only three years ago, yet how much she had seen and learnt since then! And what other changes had there been? Lord Hindlesham was alone in his splendid house, while beautiful Della languished in the country, still not re-married, though Harry Cussons was about Town again – typical of a man, they always get the best of a bargain, May thought. Emily was still in India, but her new daughter was a sturdy baby, and though not forgetting her son, she had come to terms with her loss, and seemed to be enjoying the compensations of life in the East. Louise Dumer was Lady Canfield now, and Bertie, so rumour had it, had packed her mother off back to America on an extended visit. May suspected this was Louise’s doing – Bertie was too easygoing to be bothered. Still, Archie remained footloose and fancy free, and would be at the dinner tonight, so May would be able to enjoy his good-humoured banter, and try to cap his teasing jokes.
Three years! Did she look three years older? May pushed herself up out of the bath and surveyed herself in the full-length mirror. She gazed critically at her body, pink from the heat of the water. Her legs were long and supple, her waist as narrow as ever, her breasts firm and shapely. She bent closer and peered at her face. There were tiny lines of laughter and care around her eyes, but they were too fine to be noticed except on close inspection; her irises were as blue as ever, and her lashes long and thick. The glass steamed up, but May was satisfied. She stepped out onto the thick rug and wrapped herself in a host of fluffy towels, clean and warm.
Collins was waiting for her in the bedroom.
‘This corset is very light for evening wear, Miss May.’
May laughed. ‘I know, I had them specially made – I hate feeling trussed up like a chicken.’
Collins sniffed, but soon forgot her disapproval in the pleasure of dressing May’s tall figure. ‘Your grandmother is a wonderful woman for her age, Miss May, but it’s nice to turn a young lady out for the evening.’
May was
startled when she saw herself, dressed, in the mirror. She had chosen the gown almost on impulse, drawn by the glowing apricot which had been described as ‘one of the colours of the Season’, and the elegant lines so different from those dresses designated as suitable for a débutante. But now she was slightly shaken by the effect. The heavy crepe mastic silk fell by its own weight into folds which draped themselves round her body and clung sinuously to the curve of her hips. The line of the bodice was simple yet perfect, accentuating the fullness of her breasts with soft draped chiffon of the exact matching shade. A narrow lace tucker emphasised the depth of her neckline rather than veiling it. The wide corselet band was almost barbaric, with its dull gold and silver bullion studded with stones, but it showed off dramatically May’s slender waist.
Collins gave a soft ‘Ah’ of satisfaction and pride, then said briskly, ‘Sit down, please, Miss May, so I can attend to your hair.’
In the mirror May watched the swift, sure fingers twisting and shaping, until the flowing waves and soft curls had appeared. Ada had been right – the shade of the dress subtly altered and changed the colour of her hair, so that it glowed almost pink, like a ripe peach, in the light of the dressing table lamp. Collins pushed home the last invisible pin, and she was ready. Lady Andover had offered her the run of her own jewel box, but May had decided this dress would need no adornment; now she knew she was right.
As she came down the wide staircase Archie was crossing the hall. She called down to him; he looked up and stood frozen, watching her descend. Then he came across, took her hand and raised it to his lips. May laughed, but Archie said, seriously, ‘May, you look magnificent, you really do – you’ll knock their eyeballs out tonight!’
‘Well, tell me who’s taking me in. Have I made all this effort for Sir Robert, or old Lord Oulton?’
Mayfair Rebel Page 25
