Band of Angel (19 page)

With fondest, dearest, gladdest, love,

Eliza

As she folded the letter and put it back in its envelope, Catherine experienced what the Welsh call a
hiraeth
and there is no single word in English that so well describes a pang of love and longing and pride for a place and a person. She could see in her mind’s eye Grandma’s house in the moonlight: the veranda heavy-ringed
with roses, the view of the iron-age fort on top of the hill, hear the tinkle of glasses, the laughter. How sweet Eliza must have been, lit up with love and surprise. How typical of her, too, not to utter one word of reproach. The letter also made more sense of father’s, which, although stiff, was more prepared to see things her way. How proud he must be of Eliza: so steady and contented and feminine.

When she opened the parcel and took out the clothes, Eliza had embroidered her name in neat stitches on the collar of her cloak and two dresses. In the folds of the cloak were a lavender bag and a box of boiled lemon sweets. She put on her blue cloak and, slipping her hand in the pocket, found another of the wooden carvings Deio had done for her, years ago at Whistling Sands. An early version of the lapwing. He’d sat beside her muttering and whittling and making jokes. Seeing it again in the palm of her hand brought a new surge of longing and of pain, and before she knew what she’d done, she kissed it.

One week passed, and then another. She ate and read and gained her strength, and grew impatient at asking Mr. Holdsworth the same question as he stepped through the door each night. And then one night he put a bottle of vintage champagne on the table and showed her a letter. Miss Nightingale had agreed to accept her for a three-month trial period as a probationer. She could start on Thursday the eighth of August, at eleven o’clock in the morning. She had a job!

And then the speed with which her life had changed seemed quite astounding. The following Thursday, after a quick wash, a check under the bed, a last nervous look at her portmanteau, packed and unpacked a dozen times, she was ready to leave, and in a high state of nerves. She felt in the strangest state of mind, as though none of this was quite real and she was watching everything from a distance.

Eliza had sent her a black dress to wear with shiny elbows and five jet buttons on each cuff. She said it had belonged to Mother, but Catherine, suspecting it was one of Gwynneth’s cast-offs, hated its sour, sergy smell and the way it made her feel like a parlor maid or someone’s maiden aunt. But at least for the time being it would save her the expense of having another made. When she went downstairs in it, Mr. Holdsworth, gallant to the last, pronounced her new look a tremendous success, and Margaret, who stood behind him, said it made her look very grown-up and responsible and that Mrs. Nightingale was lucky to have her.

“
Miss
Nightingale,” Mr. Holdsworth reminded her, “a lady with many admirers but no husband.”

Over breakfast, when Catherine said to him quietly, “I shall miss you,” he put his
Morning Chronicle
down between the pats of butter and a silver toast rack.

“And I you.” His endearingly large ears went pink with emotion.

“But I expect you will come to the Home to see Mr. Dalrymple,” she said eagerly, “so I will see you.”

“I hope so.” To her surprise he looked longingly at his newspaper and sounded evasive.

“Will that be difficult?”

“I am not sure. It might be . . . I shall try and explain,” he said. She topped up his teacup to fill an awkward pause. “Although,” he continued, “I can’t promise it will make any sense to you. But the nub of it is, Miss Nightingale might not like it.”

“Not like what?”

“Our being friends.”

“Why ever not?”

He looked at her, sighed, and decided to grasp the whole nettle at once. “Miss Nightingale,” he said, “is the daughter of two aristocrats and, since she took over the home, the entire committee is comprised of society ladies who do good works: Lady Canning, and Lady Herbert, and Lady Bracebridge, and so on. They’ve made a fine job of it, too, compared to those other muddlers. But now . . . his is the difficult point to put across.” He looked so uncomfortable she put her hand in his and squeezed it tight. “Very difficult. Miss Nightingale is adamant that ladies do not make good nurses, and nurses are a lower form of life than ladies. Miss Nightingale has . . .”

His ears went scarlet; he was a man who hated to be unpleasant about anyone. “Very firm convictions about class—like many women of her class and background. In order to get you your position, I had to emphasize the fact that you are a farmer’s daughter—she has an
idée fixe
that farmer’s daughters make good nurses—and so they may do, although I cannot for the life of me see why a sailor’s daughter or a costermonger’s daughter, or indeed a doctor’s daughter, given a proper training and chance,
should not be a nurse. Please never repeat what I’m saying to you. It was hard enough getting you in without spreading sedition among the ranks.”

“So she has no idea that we’re friends?” said Catherine.

“No,” said Holdsworth unhappily. “In Miss Nightingale’s book, there are surgeons and there are nurses, and any relationship between the two should be entirely professional. It pains me to be so blunt, but after a while she will see your worth and I daresay treat you with all the respect and affection you deserve.”

She felt a cringe of shame then a flash of anger: first drover’s clothes, now the parlor maid’s dress. Why must a woman assume so many disguises in order to live an independent life? And now poor Mr. Holdsworth, who had tried so hard on her account, was almost stammering in his dismay.

“She is— You’re— I’m sure she’ll see what a fine young—”

“Is there anything else I should know about Miss Nightingale?” She tried to keep the hurt from her voice.

“Nothing that is unfavorable,” he said firmly. “Indeed, I find her quite extraordinary. She has a first-class mind, and although one would hardly guess it under that gentle, hesitant manner, all the instincts of a born ruler—my friend Dalrymple is already wrapped round her finger.” His eyes were sparkling. For politeness’ sake she stayed at the table and drank a last cup of tea with him, but was suddenly anxious to be gone and to face the source of so many new misgivings. She glanced at her watch.

“I must go and get my things. The carriage will come for me in half an hour.”

“Yes.”

They both rose to their feet.

“Oh dear, I
shall
miss you.” He put his hand out. “You have great spirit. I’m not surprised Eleri thinks so well of you.”

“Thank you for everything.” She put her hand in his. “I feel as if I have known you all my life—oh, I’ve brought you a present.”

She drew from her pocket a marbled notebook and gave it to him. He took the book out of its wrappings of tissue paper. His gentle, precise hands made everything they touched look precious.

“It’s beautiful,” he said. “I shall treasure it and write all my most
secret secrets in it. Now hold your horses for a second, don’t run off. I have something for you, too.”

He unlocked a cabinet and took out a small, tortoiseshell box about ten inches square with silver hinges at each corner and placed it in her hands. Inside it, cushioned in green velvet casings, were a pair of sharp scissors, a tiny thermometer like a bar of light, and a small probe with a tortoiseshell and silver handle and a hook on the end. The sight of them made her shiver with pleasure.

“Thomas Cushen, who made them, is an artist,” he told her. “They were mine when I first became a medical student . . . Oh and take these, too, I have several copies around.” He handed her
Gray’s Anatomy
and Ferguson’s book on physiology. “Read and read them again, my dear, until they are in your bones.”

He thought of adding, “don’t lose your dreams,” but being a shy man, his ears went a shade pinker and he just shook her hand.

They’d picked up another twenty Welsh Blacks from the Shrewsbury markets, and five rough-looking Welsh cobs with hips like coat hangers, presented by a young widow whose husband had died two months before of typhus. She patted each one and told Deio their names. She’d groomed the chief mare, Bonny, and tied a red ribbon in her mane and told him they’d bred her mother, too, and then she put a bag of lace into his hand and asked him to see if he could sell it at Barnet Market in London. A nuisance for him: there was so much pressing business to be done, the vellum book he kept in his pocket was stuffed with instructions: landlords’ rents to be taken to London, twenty geese to be shod and delivered, some cattle to be dropped off at Kenilworth, twenty to be picked up. But he’d taken the lace, and patted Bonny, and said she was a tidy little mare, very well set up, and he’d find her the best home he could, and give her lots of green grass on the way. When he took them away, she hid her face in her apron and wailed. How they loved their horses. He couldn’t bring himself to charge her for the shoeing.

That afternoon, he and Lewis and Rob helped Sion Fawr, a gentle giant of a man, famous for being one of the best blacksmiths in the area. He’d bent over the skittish cobs, lifting up their feet and talking silly nonsense to them to distract them, and when they were done, they helped with the cows, too. The sun was hot on their backs, and it was thirsty work seizing the muzzle of each cow, one hand gripping the horn and wrestling the beast into the dirt. Afterward, in the mild mosquitoey evening, they penned the beasts,
jumped in the river naked, then dressed and sat on the banks under a willow tree, drinking beer and chewing the fat.

And he hadn’t missed her at all; in fact, he told himself, he was glad to be shot of her. This was a man’s world and she was better out of it.

Because Lewis was tight with a pound, they were working their way around the tollgates now from Shrewsbury to Gloucester, across the Berkshire Ridgeway, and then down to Padbury, Wendover, and Barnet Fair. He knew from experience that hard work blocked off the mind, and when they stopped to rest the cattle he began to handle the widow’s cobs, to get them used to being brushed and touched and leaned against, and then, casually, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, he’d hop on. He’d taken to riding Cariad, Catherine’s horse, too, although that brought the bruised feeling back. She was a talented mare, although moody and easily offended, and he was teaching her how to move away from his leg at the merest suggestion from him. He also tested her obedience by galloping her fast and making her stop at an adjustment of weight in his saddle. Lewis, who’d taught him this exercise from his days training polo ponies, would stop by and offer advice. Deio would listen, face impassive, head nodding, and go on with exactly what he was doing. He was too old for advice now. His father knew it, he knew it, and it angered them both.

“They think they know it all,” Lewis told the blacksmith’s father in the ale house. “Arrogant buggers,” and carried on with his reminiscences of Waterloo where both had fought, and where both, if they were honest, had passed some of the most intensely enjoyable days of their lives.

The days were fine for Deio. His skin was darkening in the sun, the horses were growing harder and fitter and more biddable by the day. And being behind a herd of animals, all looking for ways of escape, didn’t encourage dreaminess.

But the evenings hurt. When the sun dipped behind the hills and they built fires and lay smoking and listening to the sleepy sounds of late birds, then there was nothing left to think about but her. Then he’d lie in his variety of beds—the pile of blankets beside the fire on the Ridgeway, the truckle bed in The Plough at
Kenilworth, the four-poster in the Land Agent’s house near Padbury—and feel some illness had struck him, a throbbing ache in some part of him that he hadn’t known existed before, that came from a muddle, a confusion, a sense that he was being torn apart and had two selves. Lord Jesus Christ, he could kill her sometimes for bringing him to this. In the middle of what had felt like the best part of his life, she’d dragged him into a bog of confusion and made him feel a world away from knowing himself.