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LOUISA FOUND NELLIE IN THE KITCHEN IN A GREAT STORM of activity. She was wearing her maid’s uniform, a grey skirt, good white apron and bonnet, which she normally only wore when Louisa had visitors. Her face was flushed pink. ‘We have the Yardsleys coming,’ Nellie said.
‘I completely forgot.’ Louisa looked at her watch. It was just gone six pm. ‘There was a fellow … Oh, never mind now. What time are they coming?’ Louisa said, all thoughts of her pleasant drive home disappearing into a panic. How could she have forgotten Lord Yardsley?
‘Seven,’ Nellie said. ‘I’ve done a roast and fought Catherine off the lemon delicious but I wondered what you want to serve for drinks.’
‘Something from the cellar. Let me go. Lord Yardsley needs to give me more money, and he won’t want to. We’ll ply him with drink. You, Nellie, are a gem.’
‘He’s rich then?’
‘Don’t you know him?’
Nellie shook her head. ‘I don’t meet all that many lords, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh, well, he is rich, yes. And his wife is so very tiresome. I always have the strangest urge to giggle when she speaks to me. She couldn’t be ruder if she tried.’
‘And that makes you want to laugh?’
‘As a matter of fact it does. Where’s Catherine?’ she asked just as her niece came in. Louisa found herself smiling. ‘Well, Catherine, what are we to do with you?’ She tried to say it gently.
Nellie looked at them both. ‘Louisa, if I may, and I know we’re busy getting ready and we don’t have time to talk now, but I did want to make sure you know that there was a girl at the school who’s been right nasty to Catherine. I hope Catherine won’t mind my saying that this girl was the one who not only urged Catherine to swim the river, but also told the principal. A real piece of work, to my mind.’
‘Really,’ Louisa said. ‘Is that true, Catherine?’
‘Yes,’ Catherine said. ‘And I’m sorry it caused so much trouble, Aunt Louisa. I didn’t think about it being wicked. I thought it would show them what I can do. I can’t do so many other things at that school, but I can swim.’
‘You can swim,’ Louisa said. Catherine nodded. It was perfect. Louisa would take Catherine to America. Catherine could visit the women swimmers Black spoke of, and then she and Catherine could go on to Baltimore and spend some time together. It would give Catherine a break after the unpleasantness at Henley, and when they came home they could find a more suitable school. ‘Well, Catherine, we don’t have to worry about it right now,’ Louisa said. ‘You weren’t happy there anyway, by Nellie’s account, and I don’t think every school in the world would make you this unhappy.’
‘Yes,’ Catherine said hopefully. ‘I was so happy at school on the island. I loved it more than anything.’
‘Yes, well, we’ll talk again, my dear. But for now, the Yardsleys are coming.’
‘Which means I have work to do,’ Nellie said. ‘Off now, Catherine, and set the table.’
Millicent would have loved Catherine, Louisa thought. The girl was so untouched by all the things Millicent hated, pretentiousness in all its forms. She was totally without guile. She was also without a number of skills that she might need one day. But really, what did any of it matter?
Louisa followed Catherine into the dining room where the tablecloth had already been laid. ‘We haven’t shown you how we set table here, have we?’ Louisa said. ‘It’s probably different from what you did on the island.’
Catherine shrugged. ‘I don’t really remember anyone setting the table.’
‘Well,’ Louisa said, ‘it’s useful information. Do you know what goes on the outside?’
Catherine shook her head.
‘The first thing you use—which tonight will be the soup spoon—on the side you use it, which is mostly the right. And then you just work your way in. It’s very sensible, really.’ Louisa opened the drawer on the sideboard and pointed out the silver.
She had intended to set one place and then leave Catherine to do the rest, but she ended up doing them all. ‘See, easy?’ she said and smiled. Catherine just looked at her.
‘I can’t thank you enough for getting us ready for tonight,’ Louisa said to Nellie when she returned to the kitchen. ‘I can’t believe I forgot the Yardsleys, but I did. And thank you, Nellie, for letting me know about Catherine. I need to do more. I know that now.’ She left Nellie to the rest of the preparations.
Catherine came down soon after, in one of the blue woollen skirts and cream blouses they’d bought in Sydney. She looked presentable enough, except for her hair, which hadn’t seen a brush all day. ‘Catherine, you could have done more with your hair.’
‘If I spent hours,’ Catherine said. ‘And it would still be hair at the end of it.’
It reminded Louisa of an interaction she’d had with Millicent. Brush your hair, or you’ll not come down to meet the visitors, Louisa’s mother had said. Louisa had refused, and had stayed in her room through a luncheon. Ruth Luxton was right. Catherine was young and finding her way. And Louisa hadn’t always been as compliant as she told herself she had. Millicent met Louisa’s attempts at self-assertion firmly. Had it helped? Not really, Louisa thought now. She said, more gently, ‘I want us on our best behaviour this evening. I need Lord Yardsley to give me money.’
‘Oh, Louisa, is money all you care about?’ This was Nellie, who’d come up behind Catherine.
‘As a matter of fact, it is,’ Louisa said. ‘Half of my patients depend on my being able to attract money from the likes of Lord Yardsley.’ She thought of Mr Black then, who’d said he’d pay whatever it cost. Imagine having money like that so that you could just do whatever you wanted. Louisa had spent her adult life barely getting by. Although George had done well in shipping, it was Alexander who’d made the most of the family business, and Alexander who’d inherited the wealth. He’d never offered to help Louisa with the clinic and she’d never asked him. Oh, he’d not see his sister destitute, of course, but he didn’t see it as his responsibility to provide for what he saw as a pet interest.
Louisa and Ruth Luxton had started their clinic in Princes Square when the Salvation Army vacated their hostel on the site in 1919. They’d worked together in a hospital near Paris during the war. For Louisa, it had been a life-changing experience. No one minded about them being women doctors then; every doctor was needed. When they came back to London, though, things quickly went back to the way they’d been before the war. Louisa and her female colleagues were relegated to women’s and children’s health. Louisa had loved being able to practise to the full scope of her training as a surgeon, so she came up with the idea to establish her own hospital. They’d started with a day clinic. Other doctors had joined them, all women, and Louisa wanted more than anything to be able to offer surgical services. Eventually they set up a theatre and opened the in-patient service. Now they had the clinic, hospital and a hostel for pregnant women who couldn’t afford to go anywhere else.
Some of the women Louisa treated in the rooms in Harley Street were generous enough to donate to the clinic. Others were not. The one thing Louisa had learned from working between London’s well-to-do and London’s poor was that poverty was not the characteristic that made people ugly. Poverty did not discriminate between good and bad, clean and dirty, caring and uncaring, or intelligent and stupid. It only changed things like having a roof over your head or not, having enough to eat each day or not. Women in the East End had nothing to fall back on. Many had lost husbands and sons to the war and now wandered the streets all day—they were told to move on if they sat in parks—and then at night went to shelters like the Sally Ann in Hackney or the workhouses closer to Louisa. Even families that were still intact suffered unemployment, which left them destitute. Sometimes it felt to Louisa that the world must change soon, for it was impossible to have so many living so poorly while others lived so well.
Lord and Lady Yardsley were estate owners from Surrey with three grown daughters, a
ll now married with their own families. The Yardsleys had known the Quicks, and Louisa had asked them for money before. Lord Yardsley had always obliged. While the dinner was a thank you, Louisa was also hoping to secure funding for a new X-ray machine; though she needed more than just an X-ray machine now that Princes Square was to be inspected. But Mr Black might provide for this larger cost. She’d push Yardsley to help where he could.
The doorbell rang and Nellie bustled down the passage to answer it. She always greeted guests and took their coats and sat them in the parlour. But when she came back to the hallway on this occasion, she was as white as a sheet, her palms flat against her apron. ‘Whatever’s the matter, Nellie?’
‘Nothing, Miss. The guests have arrived. Actually … No, nothing.’ Nellie’s face was pale.
‘Are you quite sure you’re well, Nellie?’ Louisa asked. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘No, Miss. I … The visitors …’
‘All right,’ Louisa said. ‘But if you’re ill, go to bed. I can look after the Yardsleys.’
But Nellie just shook her head and hurried back into the kitchen.
As Louisa turned to go down the hallway to greet the guests in the parlour she saw Lord Yardsley himself next to the hat stand. He was looking at Louisa wide-eyed, as if he’d had a blow. And then she knew.
Nellie had come to Louisa through the clinic three years before on a bitter February morning. She’d waited on the stoop through the night, the nurse told Louisa quietly. A street girl, the nurse said, sniffing loudly. Louisa came into the waiting room to see a child, no more, with light blue eyes and dark hair, greasy but tied neatly, a skirt caked with mud at the hem, ancient shoes and a dirty blouse. Her fever was high, she had a nasty cough on her chest, and she was in the early stages of pregnancy. She was just turned eighteen, she told Louisa in a tiny voice. By then she’d been living on the street for over a year.
Nellie’s family was from Braintree in Colchester, she said, where her father had been a school teacher. Her parents and brother had been taken by the influenza after the war and Nellie alone had survived. She was fifteen. There was nothing put aside, so the family doctor arranged a position for Nellie in a house in London. After two years the young master came home from school. Nellie wouldn’t say what had happened but Louisa surmised that the young man had taken advantage of Nellie. She left the house and was living under the Hackney bridge for a time. She was working the docks area now. She didn’t know she was pregnant. Well, Louisa thought. This is what we’re here for.
When Nellie had told the story, Louisa was struck by the heart of the girl, which was intact, you could see. She was a good girl, but what chance did she have? Louisa thought to herself that night. The veneer of propriety was so thin. You could tear through it and then have nothing of the civilised world left. The vile creatures who would take advantage of a child like Nellie were there always, ready to rise up from their slime when they saw an opportunity.
The next day, Louisa asked Nellie if she’d be interested in another housekeeping position. There would be a small weekly wage, and room and board. Nellie was hesitant, after her previous experience. ‘Where would it be, Miss?’
‘It would be at my house,’ Louisa said, ‘and there are no masters there but me, Nellie—and the two Scotties, of course, the real masters.’
Louisa had thought long and hard about the matter of Nellie’s pregnancy. Her responsibility was to tell the girl the truth and give her options but she also knew that Nellie would be faced with a decision she shouldn’t have to face at her age.
‘She might want the child,’ Ruth Luxton said when Louisa consulted her.
‘She won’t want the child,’ Louisa responded, feeling annoyed with Ruth, a rare experience. Louisa and Ruth were generally of one mind on clinical issues.
‘She might decide to keep the baby,’ Ruth argued. ‘Or she might want to give the baby away; these girls often do.’
‘Are you against abortion?’ Louisa had said, intending to wound.
‘It’s never a simple decision,’ Ruth said. ‘And it’s hers, not yours.’
‘I disagree,’ Louisa said, although Ruth’s objections rattled her—abortion divided her colleagues, she knew. Some doctors used the law as a way to shirk their responsibilities to their patients, as far as Louisa was concerned. Abortion could be performed if the mother’s life was at stake. It often was, as far as Louisa was concerned. Other doctors would fail to act or pass the decision on to a child like Nellie. For goodness’ sake, what was the girl supposed to do? She couldn’t even look after herself. If she had a baby, it would end any chance she’d have of amounting to anything.
Louisa told Nellie that she had an infection, which was why her period had stopped. Nellie would need to undergo a minor procedure to fix it. The girl readily agreed. When she was well enough to leave the hospital, Nellie moved into Louisa’s house at Wellclose Square. She was fine company, with a good brain and a sharp, practical wit that appealed to Louisa. It was soon clear she was not the meek, quiet girl frightened to say her own name who’d come to the clinic that first day. It enlivened Louisa’s evenings knowing she was going home not just to the two old dogs and cold meat for dinner but to someone who would challenge her and, more often than not, provide a hot meal. Nellie had a finer moral compass than Louisa, Louisa often thought, a better understanding of right and wrong and of people. Once or twice Louisa wondered if she’d done the right thing in her medical treatment of Nellie. The girl was happy, but Louisa wasn’t sure whether she might have wanted to make the decision herself, as Ruth Luxton had suggested.
As for Lord Yardsley, who was standing stupidly in Louisa’s hallway now, how could he do that to a child? Louisa wondered. He must have visited Nellie when she was on the street. ‘Oh, Lord Yardsley,’ Louisa said in a loud voice, ‘clearly you’ve met our wonderful Nellie.’ How could he? she thought again. She turned her face away from him, finding him repugnant. ‘And where’s dear Lady Yardsley?’ she managed to say.
He turned behind him dumbly and there she was, a jewel in emerald green silk. ‘Oh, Lady Yardsley, have you met Nellie? She’s been with us since … We won’t speak of that here.’ Louisa looked at Yardsley, held his eye until he looked away.
‘Dr Quick,’ she said. ‘So kind of you to invite us. And your little house. It’s so … quaint.’ Lady Yardsley looked up and down the tiny hallway. The paint was peeling from the ceiling, and the rug in the hall looked like a team of hounds had slept on it every night for a decade. At least the lights were dim, so the scene was somewhat softened. The bulbs were blown in the electrical lamps and Louisa hadn’t brought the ladder down from the attic to change them, so they had a gas lamp instead. She saw their home as Lady Yardsley might. At least the Scotties were shut up in the upstairs bedroom.
Louisa introduced Catherine, who was standing at the bottom of the stairs. The girl was staring.
‘Charmed, I’m sure,’ Lady Yardsley said in a way that suggested she wasn’t at all charmed. ‘You must be the one from the colonies?’
Louisa ushered them into the parlour.
‘And you have a tiger,’ Lady Yardsley said.
Better than the wolf you have, Louisa might have said but refrained. Instead she smiled at Lady Yardsley. ‘We put everything towards the clinic, Lady Yardsley, and there’s not much left, I’m afraid. Home is where the heart is. Now if you’ll just excuse me a moment …’
Louisa went into the kitchen. ‘I can serve up if you’re not well, Nellie.’
Nellie looked up, her jaw set. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I want to.’
‘Do I have to sit through this?’ Catherine whispered when Louisa was on her way back to the parlour. She’d come out to the hallway, leaving their guests alone.
‘For the clinic, my dear, for the clinic,’ Louisa whispered. And then she thought better of it. ‘Actually, can you go and talk to Nellie? She’s upset. She’ll talk to you, I think.’
Lord Yardsley was usually a
n improvement on his wife but tonight he was without his unusual bonhomie. He was standing in the middle of the parlour still in his gloves and hat. He cleared his throat loudly. ‘And so, Louisa, we hear wonderful things about your work.’
‘Hat, Yardsley,’ his wife said.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, removing the hat and gloves and handing them to Louisa, who deposited them in the hall.
‘You know,’ Louisa said when she returned, ‘it’s the generosity of folk like yourself and Lady Yardsley that makes the clinic possible.’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But we’re not doing the work. You are.’
‘Oh, you’re doing quite a bit,’ Louisa said. ‘But you’re right. We always need more.’
Lady Yardsley spoke then, about someone Louisa didn’t know, or perhaps she did, but she lost the beginning and was finding the story difficult to follow now, something about a fish having a spike that someone may have got in their foot. Was it a health story? Perhaps it was.
Catherine came back in. She had a fierce look on her face. ‘Catherine, dear,’ Louisa said. ‘Nellie’s made a wonderful dinner. We’ll make sure we thank her.’
Catherine nodded tightly. She looked as though she wanted to give Yardsley a piece of her mind. Louisa hoped her niece would be able to hold her tongue.
The dinner was interminable and Louisa felt for Nellie, who came out to serve as usual but looked mortified each time. Lord Yardsley was uncharacteristically quiet throughout the meal, which meant his wife spoke incessantly about nothing. Catherine continued to fume.
Louisa saw her chance. ‘Catherine,’ she said after the plates were cleared and Lady Yardsley was refreshing herself, ‘I worry that Nellie is unwell.’ She looked straight at Lord Yardsley as she spoke. ‘Go in and help her, my dear. Perhaps you could bring dessert and Nellie could retire early tonight.’
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