Anne Perry - The Twisted Root

Hester was too furious to speak for the first few moments, then, when she could have spoken, no words seemed adequate to express her disgust. She marched in the opposite direction, towards the physicians’ waiting room.

There she found Cleo talking to an old man who was obviously frightened and doing his best to conceal it. He had several open ulcers on both his legs which must have been acutely painful and looked as if they had been there for some time. He smiled at Cleo, but his hands were clenched till his knuckles were white and he sat rigidly upright.

"You need them dressed regularly," Cleo said gently. "Gotta keep them clean or they’ll never heal up. I’ll do it for you, if you come here and ask for me."

"I can’t come ’ere every day," he answered, his voice polite but with absolute certainty. "In’t possible, miss."

"Isn’t it, now." She regarded him thoughtfully, looking down at the worn boots and threadbare jacket. "Well, I suppose I’ll have to come to you, then. How far, is it?"

"An’ why would you be doing that?" he asked dubiously.

" Because those sores aren’t going to get any better otherwise," she replied tartly.

"I in’t askin’ no favors," he said, bristling. "I don’t want no nurse woman comin’ into my ’ouse! Wot’ll the neighbors think o’ me?"

Cleo winced. "That you’re damn lucky at your age to be pulling a nice-looking woman like me!" she snapped back at him.

He smiled in spite of himself. "But yer can’t come, all the same."

She looked down at him patiently. "Call yourself a soldier, and can’t take orders from someone who knows better than you do-and make no mistake, I’m your sergeant w’en it comes ter them sores."

He drew in his breath, then let it out again without answering.

"Well?" Cleo demanded. "You going to tell me where you live, or waste me time having to find out?"

"Church Row," he said reluctantly.

"And I’m going to walk up and down the whole lot asking for you, am I?" Cleo said with raised eyebrows.

"Number twenty-one."

"Good! Like drawin’ teeth, it is!"

He was not sure whether she was joking or not. He smiled uncertainly.

She smiled back at him, then saw Hester and came over to her, trying to look as if she were not out of composure.

"I’m not going to do it in hospital time," she said in a whisper. "Poor old soul fought at Waterloo, he did, an’ look at the state of him." Her expression darkened, and she forgot the appropriate deference to a social superior. Anger filled her eyes. "All for soldiers, we was, when we thought them French was gonna invade us and we could lose. Now, forty-five years on, we forgotten all about how fit we was, and who wants to care for some old man with sores all over his legs who’s got no money an’ talks about wars we don’t know nothing about?"

Hester thought vividly of the men she had known in Scutari and Sebastopol, and the surgeons’ tents after that chaotic charge at Balaclava. They had been so young, and in such terrible pain. It was their ashen faces that had filled her dreams the previous night. She could see them sharp in her mind’s eye. Those that had survived would be old men in forty years’ time. Would people remember them then? Or would a new generation be accustomed to peace, and resentful and bored by old soldiers who carried the scars and the pain of old wars?

"See that he’s cared for," Hester said quietly. "That’s what matters. Do it whenever you wish."

Cleo stared back at her, eyes widening a little, uncertain for a moment whether to believe her. They barely knew each other. Here they had one purpose, but they went home to different worlds.

"Those debts cannot ever be understood," Hester answered her. "Let alone paid."

Cleo stood still.

"I was at Scutari," Hester explained.

"Oh …" It was just a single word, less than a word, but there was understanding in it, and profound respect. Cleo nodded a little and went to the next patient.

Hester left the room again. She was in no mood now to see that moral standards were observed or that any nurse was clean, neat, punctual and sober.

As she went back along the corridor she was passed by a nurse arriving with her shawl still on.

"You’re late!" Hester said tartly. "Don’t do it again!"

The woman was startled. "No, miss," she said obediently, and hurried on, head down, pulling off the shawl as she went.

Just outside the apothecary’s room, Hester passed a young medical student, unshaven and with his jacket flapping open.

"You are untidy, sir," she said with equal tartness. "How do you expect your patients to have confidence in you when you look as if you had slept in your clothes and come in with the first post? If you aspire to be a gentleman, then you had better look like one!"

He was so startled he did not reply to her, but stood motionless as she swept past him and on to the surgeons’ waiting room.

She spent the morning attempting to comfort and hearten the men and women awaiting care. She had not forgotten Florence Nightingale’s stricture that the mental pain of a patient could be at least equal to the physical and that it was a good nurse’s task to dispel doubt and lift spirits wherever possible. A cheerful countenance was invaluable, as were pleasant conversation and a willingness to listen with sympathy and optimism.

At the end of the morning Hester sat down at the staff dining room table with gratitude for an hour’s respite. Within fifteen minutes Callandra joined her. For once her hair was safely secured within its pins and her skirt and well-tailored jacket matched each other. Only her expression spoiled the effect. She looked deeply unhappy.

"What is it?" Hester asked as soon as Callandra had made herself reasonably comfortable in the hard-backed chair but had not yet begun her slice of veal pie, which seemed to hold little interest for her.

"There is more medicine gone," Callandra said so quietly she was barely audible. "There is no possible doubt. I hate to think that anyone is systematically stealing the amounts we are dealing with, but there can be no other explanation." Her face tightened, her lips in a thin line. "Just think what Thorpe will make of it, apart from anything else."

"I’ve already had words with him this morning," Hester replied, ignoring her own plate of cold mutton and new potatoes. "He was quoting Mr. South at me. I didn’t even have a chance to reply to him, not that I had anything to say. Now I want to ask him if we couldn’t make some sort of particular provision for the men who fought for us in the past and who are now old and ill."

Callandra frowned. "What sort of provision?"

"I don’t know." Hester grimaced. "I suppose this is not a fortunate time to suggest we provide their medicine and bandages from the hospital budget?"

"We already do," Callandra said with surprise.

"Only if they come here," Hester pointed out. "Some of them can’t come every day. They are too old or ill, or lame, to use an omnibus. And a hansom costs far too much, even if they could climb into one of them."

"Who could give them medicines at home?" Callandra asked, curiosity and the beginning of understanding in her eyes. "Us," Hester replied instantly. "It wouldn’t need a doctor, only a nurse with experience and confidence-someone trained."

"And trustworthy," Callandra added purposefully.

Hester sighed. The specter of the stolen medicines would not leave. They could not keep the knowledge of it from Fermin Thorpe much longer. It was ugly, dishonest, an abuse of every kind of trust, both of the establishment of the hospital and of the other nurses, who would all be branded with the same stigma of thieving. It was also a breach of honor towards the patients for whom the medicines were intended.