Anne Perry - The Shifting Tide

“Can I help yer wash ’em?” the girl offered, pointing to the sheets.

Hester looked at her pale face and the slight beading of sweat on her brow. “No, thank you. Go back to bed for a while. It doesn’t take two to do this.”

That was not strictly true-it would have been much easier with someone else to assist her-but she stuffed the soiled linen into two pillow slips and put them over her shoulder, then carried them downstairs.

Once in the laundry room, she checked the coppers and found the first one more than half full. Squeaky must have been working swiftly, in spite of his complaints. She put all the linen into the copper, stirring the sheets around with a long wooden dolly until they were thoroughly soaked. She brought another scuttle of coke across and added it to the boiler, then carried the empty scuttle back.

Next she took the last of the soap to add to the water in the copper, and set about one of the jobs she disliked most, the making of more soap. It was not a difficult task so much as a heavy and tedious one. They bought the potash from a dealer a few hundred yards along the street, in Farringdon Road. It was made from burned potato stalks, not necessarily the best, but the cheapest because it produced a dozen times as much potash as the same weight of any wood. One pound of caustic potash combined with five pounds of clear grease would make five gallons of soft soap. For their purpose the smell of it was unimportant, and funds did not run to adding perfume.

While she was working, Squeaky came in with two more loads of water, scowling so hard she was surprised he could see where he was going. “I ’ate that stuff!” he said, wrinkling his nose. “When we was a proper brothel, we bought soap!”

“If you’ve got money to spare I should be delighted,” she replied.

“Money! Where’d I get money?” he demanded. “Nobody around ’ere makes bleedin’ money! Yer all just spends it!” And before she could make any reply he tipped the pails of water into the second copper and marched out again.

They admitted two more women in the middle of the day, and in the early afternoon Margaret came in and willingly helped scrub the kitchen floor with hot water and vinegar. Later she took another two pounds and went to pay the coal merchant’s bill, and brought back a pound of tea and a jar of honey.

Another woman came in with two broken fingers on her right hand which took all Hester’s skill to set and bind. The woman was exhausted with the pain of it, and it was some little time before she was composed enough to leave.

At quarter to six Margaret went home. Hester intended to take a few minutes’ sleep herself, then see Ruth Clark again before heading home, but she woke with a start to find it completely dark outside and Bessie standing over her with a candle in one hand, her face creased in concern.

Hester pushed her hair out of her eyes and sat up. “What is it?” she said anxiously. “Another admission?”

“No.” Bessie shook her head. “It’s that Clark woman. Wot a miserable piece o’ work she is, an’ no mistake! But she’s real poorly. I think as yer’d better come an’ take a look at ’er.”

Wordlessly, Hester obeyed. Without bothering to pin up her hair she put her boots back on and followed Bessie to Ruth Clark’s room.

The woman lay half on her back, her face flushed, her hair tangled. The sheet was crumpled where her hands had clenched on it. Her eyes were half open but she seemed only barely conscious of there being anyone else in the room.

Hester went over to her and touched her brow. It was burning.

“Ruth?” she said softly.

The woman made no answer except to move her hands fretfully, as if the touch bothered her.

“Get me a fresh bowl of cold water,” Hester directed. The woman’s condition was serious. If her fever didn’t decrease at least a degree or two, she might well become delirious and die.

Bessie went immediately, and Hester picked up the candle on the bedside table and looked more closely at Ruth Clark. She was breathing erratically, and her chest seemed to rattle as if it were full of congestion. Pneumonia. The crisis might well come tonight. Hester could not leave to go home. If she did everything she knew, she might save her. She looked a robust woman, definitely someone’s mistress rather than one of the women who walked the streets selling their bodies to anyone with the money to pay. Often the latter spent their nights cold and hungry, and in the bad weather with wet feet and possibly wet clothes altogether. She put the candle back.

Bessie returned with the water and cloths and set them down on the floor.

Hester thanked her and told her to go and see what she could do for the other patients, then take a chance to sleep herself.

“Not while yer tendin’ to ’er all on yer own!” Bessie said indignantly.

“This isn’t a job for two,” Hester answered, but she smiled at Bessie’s loyalty. “If you rest now, you can take a turn in the morning. I’ll call you if I need you, I promise.”

Bessie stood her ground. “I’ll never ’ear yer!”

“Take the room opposite, then you will.”

“Yer’ll call?” Bessie insisted.

“Yes, I will! Now get out of my way!”

Bessie obeyed, and Hester put the cloth in the cold water, wrung it out, and placed it on the sick woman’s forehead. At first it seemed to irritate her and she tried to turn away. Hester moved the cloth and gently put it over her throat. She wrung it out again and tried her forehead a second time.

Ruth groaned and her eyelids flickered.

Again and again Hester dipped the cloth in the water, wrung it out, and bathed the woman with it, at first only her face and neck. Then, as that seemed to have little effect, she stripped back the sheet and blankets and laid the cloth over the top of her chest as well.

The time crept by. She looked at her watch and it was ten in the evening.

Then some time around midnight she became aware that Ruth had not moved for a while, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes. Hester leaned forward. She could not see the rise and fall of Ruth’s breathing. She was far too familiar with death for it to frighten her, but it never left her without a sadness. She put out her hand and touched the woman’s neck, just to make sure there was no pulse.

Ruth’s eyes opened. “What is it?” she whispered crossly.

It was the first time Hester had heard her speak, and her voice was startling. It was low, soft, and pleasing, the voice of a woman of some education and culture. Hester was so startled she flinched. “I. . I’m sorry,” she apologized, as if rather than ministering to a sick patient she had crept into someone else’s bedroom. “I wanted to see if you were still feverish. Do you feel better? Would you like something to drink?”

“I feel awful,” Ruth answered, still speaking as if her throat were parched.

“Would you like some water?” Hester repeated the offer. “I’ll help you sit up.”

Ruth frowned at her. “Who are you?” She looked around the room as much as she could see without moving her head. “What is this place? It looks like a brothel!”

Hester smiled. “That’s because it is-or was. Now it’s a clinic. Don’t you remember coming here?”

Ruth closed her eyes. “If I remembered coming, I wouldn’t ask!”

Hester was taken aback. She realized with a shock how used she had become to gratitude from the sick and injured who regularly found shelter there. She had come to take it for granted, and this woman looked at her with no admiration at all, no sense of respect towards a rescuer.

“Do you remember Mr. Louvain, who brought you here?”

The change in Ruth’s face was subtle, so slight it could have been no more than the struggle to focus her mind, or the fear that she was losing control of what was happening to her.