Band of Angel (31 page)

Grace was said, the bread and cheese wolfed down, and, after a few chews, the woman next to Catherine said, “I don’t like the cheese—too salty.” She had small, suspicious eyes and a chin of several wobbling terraces.

“Very, very cheesy,” said another, with a shudder. The woman opposite, stout and with so little hair she looked bald, scowled and told her to “get it down you miss fine-mouth—it’s the best meal you’ve had this week.”

Although the bald woman was delighted with this sally, no one laughed, no one responded. They were hungry women at the trough. The woman who hadn’t liked the cheese took a long swig of ale and belched loudly.

Catherine, buoyed still by the drama and the urgency of Sidney Herbert’s words, was determined not to take against them from the start. She knew enough about nurses by now to be aware of what hard lives they led. As a group they were generally reviled and, knowing that, why should they not seem cynical and wary and quick to take offense? Yet still, a kind of horror leaked out as she watched them eating with their mouths open, slurping down their ale and grumbling and picking their teeth. She tried to catch Lizzie’s eye but Lizzie, who was used to these women and who had, after all, tried to warn her, looked away. After a while, when she could stand the low murmur of complaints no longer, and because in her family it was rude to eat without some attempt at conversation, she plucked up the courage to say: “Excuse me, but I do not know anybody’s names. Might it not be a good idea to say who we are?”

A couple of women voiced agreement, but most of them looked back at her like a herd of cows being asked to move against their wills.

“My name,” she said in a firm voice, “is Catherine Carreg. I come from Wales.”

“Well, bully for you,” said the woman with the chins.

“And perhaps,” Lizzie came to her rescue at last, “we could tell
where we have been working, too. We’ll be living very close from now on. My name is Elizabeth Smart. My friends call me Lizzie. I was born in London and have been a nurse at St. Thomas’s Hospital for seven years. What about you then?”

She looked at a red-faced woman with large red hands and unhappy blue eyes, who said, in a strong cockney accent, her name was Sarah Barnes. This was followed by a long pause, during which she chewed the rest of her bread and cheese, before adding, “I’m a widder from Seven Dials. My husband died of typhus last year.” She folded her arms and closed her mouth as if that was all that could be said about her.

“And may I ask why you are going?” Lizzie had lovely manners no matter who she spoke to.

“You may if you like,” said the woman. “I’m going for the money.” This brought the second good laugh of the evening, and murmurs of encouragement and assent.

“I have five children to support, two of them ill, and no settled occupation,” continued Nurse Barnes. “I can get twice as much as a nurse with Miss Nightingale, and if I die out east the government will pay my children. If I snuff it here they get nothing.”

The next woman, tall, thin, marble-pale, and with a long undershot jaw, told them her name was Harriet Erskine. She spoke in a whisper and was sharply told by the other nurses, who were beginning to enjoy the show, to “Spit it out! Get on with it!” which made her whisper worse.

“I was trained, at Miss Sellon’s, a High Anglican Sisterhood. I am going east to do what Mr. Herbert says and to help the soldiers. I have not been able to eat or think since I read of their sufferings.”

Another murmur of assent at this, but one woman, who was small and hard-eyed, and who obviously fancied herself a wag, said, “Well, if you can’t eat your victuals love, I’ll eat them, and you’ll be a stiffy before we get there.”

Hearty laughter broke out.

“Pardon me, ladies.”
The landlady, jailerlike, a bunch of keys on her waist, opened the door. “If you have finished your repast, you may go to bed directly. Quietly please!” It was all very confusing, thought Catherine, walking wearily upstairs again, worn out now
by the high drama of the day. One moment they were treated by Sidney Herbert like selfless heroines with a chance of doing real good in the world, the next like a group of escaped convicts.

After she’d hung her salt-and-pepper dress on the hook provided and put on her nightgown and cap, she stood shivering behind the curtain and hearing other women shiver and shudder, too. She turned to Lizzie, whose shadow billowed behind her curtain. She wanted to ask her advice about how to speak to Deio, and to ask how things had gone with her gentleman friend that afternoon. But Lizzie looked so low she kept her own mouth shut, and lay on the hard narrow bed wondering if Florence Nightingale had a sweetheart to whom she was now saying a tearful good-bye. It seemed unlikely. She thought of the widow Barnes’s five children and this hateful night for them, and for their mother, too. She wanted to rise above these melancholy thoughts and hold on to the excitement of the day, but when she fell asleep she dreamed of Deio, a confused dream down by the hut at Whistling Sands. The horses were tied up. The sea was flapping. He was pouring sand in her ears.

The following day, Deio came up to London early, left the horses in stables at the barracks, and rushed up to the corner of Green Street and Park Lane. She arrived ten minutes late, flushed, apologetic, beautiful and slightly thinner, in the blue dress he loved. They sat down on a bench together, and he smelled her smell of lavender and green grass and clean skin, and tried to stop grinning, and then tried not to look disappointed when she said she was too busy to go and see the horses working. She said she had to go back to the boardinghouse. “My time isn’t my own anymore,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

She was grinning, too, as if she couldn’t believe he was there, and buried her head in his chest crying, “Oh Deio!” and he had to hold himself in. It was just so shocking and sudden, dreamlike and odd, to see her there—her pale skin, her eyes, the scattering of freckles on her nose.

At first, she was nothing like as angry as he’d expected her to be after the night in Llangollen. She even let him take her arm as they walked down Park Lane, and it was wonderful to feel her there and to walk with her through the dazzling light of an early autumn day. He took her to a chophouse he knew called William’s near Shepherd’s Market. It was not a good choice—although it was early lunchtime it was crammed and the din made it hard to talk. She seemed happy enough though, and attracted a good deal of attention when she walked in. She was so irresistible when she was lit up. As she sat down, she took off her bonnet, and her eyes sparkled. She said it was fun to be out, and when he ordered a glass
of ale, she looked a little shy then asked for a glass of porter, which for some reason shocked him very much.

“Deio!” she said. “I’m not a child, so don’t give me your aunt Gwynneth look.”

“There now, dear child,” he said in his aunt Gwynneth voice, “no need for silliness at all, at all!” And then he realized he hadn’t really laughed with anybody in a long time, and it felt so good, and then he wanted to take her in his arms and hold her tight. Instead, he ordered her some of William’s famous grouse pie and a whole jug of wine. She ate with enjoyment just as she always had, and he watched her covetously, drinking her in. When they had finished, the wine, the warmth of the room, the magic of being with her again, felt so right that when he said he had something to tell her, and she said she had something to tell him, too, his heart swooped with joy, for he had a premonition that she was going to tell him that she had come to her senses and done with London now, and would go home and wait for him.

“You first,” she said.

So, feeling serious and proud, he told her about the horses, the boat, how they’d dangled the idea of a commission in front of him. “Oh my God,” she’d said softly. “Oh God.” He said how short they were of horses out there, and how he’d make a lot of money but would be back soon.

“Oh Deio.” She looked confused and said something odd about her having a friend out there. Not the response he’d expected. Then she’d asked if he would be going home to the Lleyn before he left, and produced two letters—one for her father, one for Eliza—and asked him to take them.

He’d stared stupidly at the letters, and been so caught up in his own version of how things would be that he’d said she could take them home herself now. He could find out coach times, or would she prefer the train? He felt protective again, glad to be looking after her.

The chophouse grew less busy and the waiter, thinking they looked a romantic couple, moved them to a quieter alcove near the fire. The noisy party near the bar had left. Deio felt an immense tenderness. His girl, and possibly in shock now and saying funny things.

Then she looked at him and said, “Deio, I’m not going home either. I’m going to Turkey. I’ve been asked to join a party of nurses at a military hospital at a place called Scutari. We’re leaving later tonight.”

“Catrin,” his eyes went black. “Is this a joke?”

“I’m going with Miss Nightingale. She’s been asked to take the first nurses ever to go to war.”

He was staring at her, still not believing.

“Don’t Catrin.”

“I am going.”

“Oh my God,” he said, “this gets worse and worse.”

“Would you like some more porter, sir?” The waiter had appeared.

“No,” said Deio. “Leave us.”

“I’ll be there before you, but we’re not going to where the fighting is, but to a hospital in Scutari . . .” her voice was faltering. “I hoped you’d take these letters home.”

There was a surge of noise as some officers came into the restaurant and started to order drinks and call out to one another. The waiter came over again and asked if they’d been happy with their meal; the handsome young couple looked so pale and so strange.

“You don’t understand, do you, Deio?” she said at last.

“No,” he said, after a long moment in which the room seemed to spin and somewhere dimly inside him he was aware of a sickening disappointment and fear. “I don’t. This is a horrible idea.”

“Men are dying there,” she said, “because conditions are so bad.”

“I don’t give a damn about that at the moment. I may later. Are you sure you’ve got this right? They’ve never sent women to war before?”

“Never before, Deio.” Her turn to look proud, scared. “It’s the first time ever.”

“Nurses,” he said stupidly, “but you’re not a nurse. This is a joke.”

Then she’d got riled, and had gathered her coat around her. “You’re making me angry, Deio; you have no idea what I do now. I’m in training.”

“Training! For what?”

A middle-aged man, drunk but harmless, came toward her from
the bar, made a cheers sign with his glass, and wavered toward the door. Deio stood up and was about to knock him senseless.

She stood up, too. “I’m going.”

“Catrin, sit down. Please.”

“I don’t have very long now.”

Then he let her have it. He shouldn’t have but he was desperate. He pointed toward the men at the bar and said in a low furious voice, “Do you have any idea how men like that see nurses? They call them skirts, cracks, crumpets. Those are the polite words.”

She didn’t let him finish. She scraped her chair back, her face went white, and then red, then she smacked him across the face.

“You bastard.”

“Nice language, Catrin. You’re already beginning to sound like a nurse.”

“You taught me first, you hypocrite.”

A cheer from the men at the bar. He flung some coins down on the table and watched her slam through the door and zigzag through the thicket of carriages on Park Lane. He caught up with her running through a line of oak trees parallel to Rotten Row. He held her from behind, pinned her against a tree, practically sobbing into her hair.

“It can’t be right. It can’t be so. Please don’t go.”

“You are disgusting, Deio,” she raged. “How dare you say things like that to me, they are some of the finest women I ever met. And don’t you ever, ever, ever speak to me like that again.” She tossed her hair back and glared at him. “Once again you have the mistaken idea that I come to you to seek permission to lead my own life. Well I don’t. I simply asked you to take a letter home to Father and to Eliza.”

“Well, I won’t.” He drew back from her, almost colliding with two women in silk habits, gossiping as they rode down Rotten Row. “I am not running a messenger service for stupid runaway girls.”

As he drew his fob watch from his top pocket the sunlight winked on the case, just as it had all those years ago when they were soul mates and his grown-up ways had enchanted her. He said some more things that he regretted later, warned her that if she did
this her reputation was gone forever and that she never ever would be able to go home again, and then, seeing the expression on her face, he stopped.

“I have an appointment at four,” he said at last. “Shall I find a hansom for you, or do you ride in a cab?” Everything was slipping away and there was nothing he could do about it. “Do you have any money?”

“Do not trouble yourself,” she said. “I am paid for my work.”

The final indignity: there was nothing he could do for her.