Band of Angel (32 page)

They walked out of the park together, through the gates, then into the noise of London. A man with a billboard at the corner of the street was shouting about the war, something about Sebastopol. A fine row of horses, skittering sideways, held up the traffic as they clattered across the street. He found her a cab, insisted on paying. They parted in silence, not a sign, not a word. It was the most pain he’d ever felt. As the cab drew off, he stood on the corner of the pavement turned to stone, watching her face grow smaller and smaller and finally disappear.

They left that night. A miserable, cold, blank day; one of those days when the sky holds no mysteries.

They took them down to London Bridge. They bundled them through the bustling crowds. No bunting, no bands, no flags, no fuss. They weren’t soldiers. They were women, and some who had come from outside London and never seen crowds before were terrified by them and the thought of the train.

The train was going down to Portsmouth. The women were bundled into the carriages and told to sit there quietly until further notice. Catherine sat near the window; next to her was Sarah Barnes, the widow from Seven Dials, miserable as a dumb animal being led to slaughter at the thought of what she had left behind. Her oldest, she told Catherine, was thirteen, so she’d be all right. She was the head of their family, steady as a rock.

“They’ll be all right,” she repeated several times. “I told them not to come to the station, it’s dangerous going home alone, and the youngest has a bad cold.”

The two nuns sitting beside her nodded and tutted and drew out their prayer books. How soft and unused their hands looked, and how gentle their faces.

The carriage was tiny, airless. Everyone was shy, conscious of where their knees ended and others began, but as soon as they were settled with reasonable comfort the glass door opened and a large, untidy-looking nurse who Catherine recognized from the night before as Emma Fagg, appeared, sniffed a great deal, and sat down, spreading her baggages around her.

Catherine cleared the window with her glove. She’d spent a miserable night, lost in Deio’s pain and her own; and although he was there, like a throbbing tooth, she’d temporarily closed off that part of her mind because it was too much. Now, in spite of the crush of bodies, which she hated, and her poor night’s sleep, she felt keyed up, even excited.

Outside on the platform, a man was playing a pennywhistle. A guard strolled by, his trolley piled high with suitcases and carpetbags, and on top of it she suddenly saw the family suitcase Eliza had sent. It was a good suitcase; Mother and Father had used it once for their honeymoon and never again, but now it was cracked as a riverbed, its middle lashed with rope. Seeing it roll by made her stomach churn. Through her circle of cleared glass she could see a gray-haired nurse saying good-bye to her old parents. They were clinging to her, their worn old faces collapsed with sorrow as she tried to board the train. A woman in a dark cloak stepped between them. Miss Nightingale, smiling, emphatically addressing the nurse, swooping down on her with a quick, fierce, oddly feline gesture, and then saying something to the old people that made them leave almost immediately.

Catherine pressed her face right against the window.

“My God, she’s a cool one.” Emma Fagg was watching, too. “She looks no more bothered than if she was going on a country walk.”

Even the nuns stood up now—all of them wanting to see their new leader, who was now talking to a well-dressed woman in a fur-lined pelisse and muff.

“Lady Hornby.” The Widow Barnes was authoritative. “She done my interview. She’s a friend of Miss Nightingale’s. She’s
already been to the Crimea to collect flowers from the battlefields. She’s got lovely horkids from Alma.”

“Orchids! Oooh, a very useful person to go to war with.” Emma Fagg’s sarcasm was interrupted by a mighty sneeze. Catherine felt the fine mist settle on her cheek. “She said Miss Nightingale was a miracle worker,” said the Widow Barnes. “She done all her paperwork last week, every last bit of it right down to writing out her lessons for the children in her parish.”

The word “children” stopped her flow and she sat down again and put her big red hands over her mouth. Catherine was sorry. With a new world, strange work, and a war ahead of her, she liked hearing the Widow Barnes say nice things about Miss Nightingale. All of them needed to trust, to admire, to ascribe to her almost supernatural powers of endurance and organization. The same bewildered mix of need and loyalty that leads children to support cruel and hopeless parents, not that Miss Nightingale was either of these things, but none of them really knew her well, and it was all so new.

At Portsmouth they caught the boat to France. A small crowd saw them off and a band played “Don’t Go Johnny” and “Wave the Flag for England.” The crowd threw confetti and jostled one another to get a view of them as they stood in their uniforms and waved back from the first deck. A woman held a baby up above the crowds, helping it clutch a paper Union Jack in its podgy, useless hands and wave it. And then Sarah Barnes broke down. Too big to cry with grace, she was like a big dumb animal in pain.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she sobbed, as the whistle blew and the gangway and the lines were cleared, “I shouldna come. I don’t want to go.”

One of the ladies, who had been keeping an eye on the nurses from an upper deck, swooped down, said something sharp to her about England and led her off downstairs, out of the public gaze. It was ungrateful, she was told, to cry in front of people good enough to turn out on a cold day to wave good-bye to them.

“I’ve got three little ones,” said Sarah Barnes, bending over and
clutching her stomach as though in physical pain. “I’ve left them in London with the two eldest.”

“That
is
hard,” agreed Lady Hornby, “but we’re all making sacrifices.” She felt sympathy for the woman, but was eager now to be back on the upper deck with Florence, who was behaving superbly.

The boat pulled out a little more and a few feet of water separated them now from England. The bands, the songs, grew fainter, the paper streamers began to snap, and one by one they saw the faces of the people on the shore rubbed out.

Deio arrived too late to see them go. His carriage had been held up in Ashford by a torrent of rain that had turned a pothole in the road into a temporary lake, and then by a herd of cows a boy was moving so ineptly he’d got out and helped him, couldn’t stop himself. Now, he stood on the quay soaking wet, his hair plastered to his temples. The crowd had mostly gone, leaving sweet wrappers and soggy colored bunting in their wake. The steamer was a dot on the horizon.

“What time did that ship leave?” he asked an old sailor who stood next to a pile of sodden rope.

“No more than half an hour ago, less maybe,” said the man.

“Goddamn,” said Deio, facing the wilderness of the sea. His face was white with rage. He thumped one fist into the other and watched the steamer disappear. He was too late. She was gone.

Scutari and the Crimea

Constantinople, November 2, 1854

They traveled east in an old mail boat called the
Vectis
, and as it drifted toward the shore, Catherine and Lizzie stood on the deck together watching the city’s hills, trees, spires, and churches take shape.

It was snowing; a gauzy, sunlit snow like the inside of one of those children’s toys that, when shaken, suggests magical Christmas scenes. The snow lay on the domes of the mosques, the points of minarets, and on the tips of trees. It sparkled and swirled in the air, making a soft drapery of light behind which the city trembled.

“Did you ever imagine it would be so beautiful?” said Catherine.

“Never.” Lizzie gave a soft groan.

Catherine longed to know immediately where the Barrack Hospital was, but for the moment kept her mouth shut. Lizzie had been so seasick during the second of two big storms on the way out that Catherine thought she would lose her. Now, thin and pale and covered in bruises, she leaned her head on the rails and watched the shimmering city.

“We made it, Lizzie.” Catherine put her arm around her and gave her a gentle hug. “You can put your shoes on again,” she teased, for Lizzie had been barefoot for most of the voyage, frightened that seawater would spoil her one pair of boots.

“Boil your head, missie” came the mumbled reply.

* * *

They dropped anchor off Seraglio Point. The fishy smell, the screech of seagulls, and the slap of water against the boat reminded her of home, of Aberdaron. Then boats appeared out of the mist: brilliantly painted, gondola-shaped boats called caïques, which seemed to float above the sea and skim through the snow. A man in a fishing boat sang what sounded like
Behommmmen naaah, bee oommmeeen nah
. He was dressed in wide, baggy, blue trousers; his lips were blue with cold.
Beh ommmmmeen naaah.
A brave, free sound like a drover’s cry. A man braced against the elements singing, and her soul singing, too. They were alive! After ten days of storms, of seasickness, of overflowing water closets and boredom and basket-making, and the listless circular conversations of fifteen women in a too-small cabin, they were alive and could leave the ship.

“Listen, Lizzie! Look! Isn’t he wonderful?” The boat had drawn up below them and was bobbing in their wake. The man caught her glance and held it, and his cheerful expression changed to a look of deep disgust. She drew back quickly.

“Why did he look at me like that, Lizzie?” she cried.

“Eeerrrr.” Lizzie lifted her head from the railings; the skin under her eyes was blue with cold and fatigue. “He don’t like us much, does he? What a funny look.”

A bell rang and men began shouting in foreign tongues. Then, one by one, ghostly apparitions against a white sky, the nurses and sisters appeared on deck. Their faces were pale, their eyes ringed with sea salt, their uniforms sodden and grimy. It was the first day of their new life and they looked worn out before they had begun.

“Poor bleeders,” said Lizzie, looking at them. “Do we look as bad as they do, Catherine?”

“Yes, we do,” said Catherine. They began to giggle weakly, and Lizzie slipped down the rails and had to wipe her eyes on her apron.

“You’re a bad influence on me, Catherine,” she said, giving her a weak punch, “a silly little sod.”

Emma Fagg came up first, leaning heavily on the stair railings and gazing around her slowly like a stupefied animal. She’d been sent to bed for three days on the voyage for conversing with a sailor and was still angry about it. Next came Widow Barnes, shrunken and pale. Then one of the Norwood nuns, walking warily as if she
still couldn’t believe in a ground that did not give way, or a sky not waiting to drop things on her head. During the voyage, the nuns had exchanged becoming black habits for ugly dresses of coarse white serge with a linen headdress, which gave them a ghastly, spectral appearance.

Two nuns were embracing and thanking God for their survival when Lady Bracebridge, in a green crinoline with a huge sea stain on its hem, was suddenly hoisted up the flight of stairs by a French sailor. In her arms was a tiny poodle, hunched and shivering, a green jeweled collar around its neck.