No Place For a Lady

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No Place For a Lady Page 19

by Gill Paul


  ‘What day was this?’ Dorothea would need a date to check the harbour records.

  ‘I thought you knew. It was the night of 23rd December when Charlie was shot and his burial was on the 24th. On Christmas Day, there was a service at the chaplain’s room in Balaklava, where we prayed for his soul, and I know she was not present at that. I sent someone to tell her about it but she was nowhere to be found.’

  ‘I suppose you are too busy to look after every grieving widow,’ Dorothea said, somewhat sharply, outraged that no one had raised the alarm at this point.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Dodds said, seeming oblivious to her scorn. ‘But I am sure you will find your sister is safe and well and has simply found herself on a slow boat with many stops along the way.’

  Poor Lucy, all alone on Christmas Day, when Dorothea was eating mince pies at a hotel in Constantinople, just across the Black Sea. It was agonising to think they had been so close, and yet so far apart.

  The harbourmaster knew Lucy from Dorothea’s description, but could not be of any assistance in locating her either: ‘I certainly did not find her a berth on Christmas Day. Only a couple of smaller boats went out. The next day …’ He checked a large leather-bound ledger, running his finger along each line as he read it. ‘Yes, the Agamemnon and the Nonpareil left port bound for Constantinople. I suppose she could have got on one of them without me noticing. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. But I can’t think why she would not have come to me if she were seeking passage. We had made each other’s acquaintance some weeks earlier.’

  Dorothea panicked at this. If Lucy had not left Crimea, where was she? She rushed back to the hospital kitchen and burst in.

  ‘Elizabeth, what shall I do? My sister didn’t board a ship after her husband’s death. She has not been seen for months.’ She sat down, trembling, her mind leaping through the possibilities, each more terrifying than the last. ‘Is there a friend no one knows of with whom she is sheltering? Is she dead, her body lying abandoned for wild animals to feast on? Has she been taken prisoner by the Russians? Where do they keep their prisoners? Elizabeth, what shall I do?’

  For once, Elizabeth didn’t have any answers.

  While Dorothea agonised over what to try next in the search for her sister, her days were filled with work on the wards. There were no major offensives in February or March, but still men were being wounded by shelling and rifle fire, as well as struck down by sickness. Dorothea’s patients weren’t just British: some French, Turkish, Maltese and Croatians lay in her wards, and in one corner there were three Russian prisoners. She communicated with them as best she could, using improvised sign language with those who spoke no English, and always made sure to ask if they had seen a pretty blonde English lady, but none had. Spring began to show its face in the fields outside: tiny wildflowers pushed up their heads and unfurled to display white, yellow, pink and blue petals; new types of bird call were heard as migrants passed overhead; and the weather swung from chilly one day to temperate the next.

  On a day in mid-March, the door to one of Dorothea’s wards was pushed open and a large, dark-skinned woman walked in wearing a bright yellow dress, blue bonnet and red hair ribbons. Her hips were almost as broad as the doorway and she had a deep, fleshy cleavage. Every bit of her dripped with jewellery: glittery necklaces, dangling earrings, clinking bracelets, jewelled clips in her hair, and a large gold brooch on her breast. She was wheeling a rickety trolley and called in a loud voice with a West Indies accent: ‘Tea, coffee, lemonade, cakes. Anyone for refreshments?’

  The soldiers couldn’t believe their eyes and neither could Dorothea. She approached the woman but before she could ask who she was, a brown bejewelled hand was thrust out to clasp hers and the woman’s face crinkled into a smile like sunshine. ‘Mary Seacole, late arrived from Jamaica by way of London and Constantinople. Now, my dear, you must tell me which patients are not well enough to sample my wares. I wouldn’t want to harm any of these pore, sufferin’ boys. Here – try one of my sponge cakes; they’re light as clouds, if I say so myself.’

  Dorothea took the proffered cake as she introduced herself, and asked, ‘What is your business in the Crimea?’

  ‘I’m opening a hostelry at Kadikoi. Got me some Turkish carpenters working on the building right now and we’ll open in a coupla weeks. Thought I’d come and offer some of these boys a sample in the meantime.’ She glanced round to see several of them waving hands in the air to attract her attention, keen for a change from Elizabeth’s worthy soups and stews. ‘You don’t mind, do you? Everything’s goin’ free for today, and tomorrow I’ll only charge those as can afford it.’

  Dorothea couldn’t resist biting into her sponge cake, and found it light and flavourful, with a hint of vanilla. ‘I don’t see why not. But how on earth did you make these? There is no butter to be had in Balaklava.’

  ‘I’ll give you the recipe, dear. Some of my formulae are a carefully guarded secret but not this one, which relies primarily on egg whites.’ She winked and turned to push her trolley to the first bed, her huge yellow-clad behind swaying.

  Dorothea tried to stay nearby as Mrs Seacole circled the wards dispensing cakes and drinks. The effect of her extravagant appearance and cheerful nature was almost as uplifting as the treats. ‘I’m a doctress myself, as well as a hotelier,’ she told Dorothea. ‘I hastened over from Jamaica after I heard about the cholera hitting the troops, because I have some infallible treatments for cholera based on long experience. Have you any cases?’

  ‘Not since I’ve been here,’ Dorothea said. ‘I arrived at the end of January.’

  ‘You want to watch when the weather gets warmer. That disease can raise its ugly head out of nowhere.’

  Dorothea told her the latest research in London indicated that the illness was carried in infected water and Mary nodded: ‘That’s as may be. But I can’t believe folks are still prescribing opium, which blocks the gut, instead of purging the toxins.’

  ‘You are an advocate of purgatives?’

  ‘Why, of course I am. Purging and rehydration at the same time. I used my remedies to treat British soldiers in Jamaica during the outbreak of ’52 an’ I believe in all modesty I know more about curing the cholera than anyone else in the world.’

  Dorothea was curious about her methods. ‘I’d be most interested to compare notes with you some time.’

  ‘Come to my hotel, the British Hotel, by the railway sidings at Kadikoi. We’ll be open Thursday next, if I keep bawlin’ loud enough at those Turkish Johnnies. Come be my first guest.’

  Dorothea didn’t make it to the opening day but the following week, she visited the British Hotel along with Elizabeth Davis, thinking it might be a good place to ask around for sightings of Lucy. At first sight it was a ramshackle hut made from planks of wood and sheets of iron held together with odd pieces of rope. Inside there was a counter backed by shelves full of goods, and some tables and chairs were set out. Delicious smells permeated: coffee, lemons, home baking, cinnamon, and some strong herbal aromas that were harder to identify. Mary Seacole came bustling out to greet them from behind the counter.

  ‘Miss Gray, it’s an honour.’ She led them to a table as Dorothea introduced Elizabeth. ‘What can I get you good ladies? I have meat pies, mulled claret and rice pudding, or lemonade and sponge cakes?’

  Both Elizabeth and Dorothea opted for a meat pie and a cup of tea. Mary sat down to chat with them while her assistant, whom she called ‘Jew Johnny’, heated the pies. She explained the struggles she had had to open this place: how the British commanders refused her permission to set up closer to the front, how the local Tartars pilfered every single thing that was not tied down, how hard it was to keep rats out of her storeroom, but how glad she was that she had employed Turkish workers. ‘These boys are starving. They have no supplies coming in. Nothing. The shortages of food at the British camp are as nothing compared to what the Turks are going through. Everyone is so darned mean about those boys, saying they are cowa
rds and talking ’gainst them. I thought we were here to protect them from the Russians but it sure don’t look that way on the ground …’

  When the warmed pies arrived she left them to eat in peace, and Elizabeth and Dorothea marvelled at the tasty flavours. They were sure they could detect cinnamon and there was a kick of a hotter spice as well. The meat had been cooked for hours and was more succulent than anything they had eaten since leaving England.

  As they dined, a woman in a smart plaid riding jacket and skirt arrived on horseback, dismounted and tied up her animal. ‘I’ll have tea and two of your sponge cakes,’ she called, taking a seat two tables away from them.

  She glanced briefly at Dorothea and Elizabeth, and Elizabeth introduced herself, forcing the woman to do the same: ‘Fanny Duberly,’ she said coldly, without extending her hand. ‘My husband is Quartermaster of the 8th Hussars.’

  Dorothea leaned forward. ‘Did you know my sister? Mrs Lucy Harvington, wife of Captain Charlie Harvington?’

  Mrs Duberly sniffed. ‘I made her acquaintance but I didn’t know her well, of course. We mixed in quite different circles.’

  Dorothea ignored the apparent snub. ‘I’m anxious that she seems to have vanished after Charlie’s death. No one knows where she is. I wonder if you have seen her since Christmas Eve?’

  Mrs Duberly shook her head firmly. ‘She simply took off without saying goodbye to any of us. Of course I don’t stay in the camp,’ she added. ‘I have a yacht near Lord Raglan’s. In fact, I’m dining with him tonight.’

  Elizabeth turned her head so Mrs Duberly couldn’t see her rolling her eyes.

  ‘Do you have any idea where Lucy could be?’ Dorothea persisted. ‘I’m really most worried about her.’

  Mrs Duberly tutted and turned away for a moment, as if making a decision. ‘I’m sorry to say this, Miss Gray, but from my knowledge of your sister I would not be surprised to hear that she has already found herself a new husband. She was a most flirtatious girl, who dressed quite inappropriately for the environment here and turned the heads of several of the men. My own husband Henry was seduced by her wiles and ended up going to a lot of trouble to ship her luggage around the peninsula and have it delivered to her. She struck me as the kind of woman who will always find some man to look after her, one way or another.’

  Dorothea rose, every instinct urging her to slap Mrs Duberly across the face. She had never slapped anyone before but that’s because she had never heard anyone insulting her sister. Elizabeth grabbed her skirt and stopped her from committing violence, but answered on her behalf.

  ‘You should keep a better eye on that husband of yours. It’s little wonder he’s running around doing favours for the first pretty girl to come along if the alternative is looking at your sour face all the time.’

  Mrs Duberly was rendered speechless by the insult and Mary Seacole bustled out from behind the counter to restore calm. ‘Ladies, may I offer you all a glass of warmed ruby wine?’

  Fanny Duberly rose with a swish of her skirts. ‘No thank you, Mrs Seacole. I will come back another time when the company is more convivial.’ She knocked over a chair on her way out but didn’t stop to pick it up.

  Dorothea and Elizabeth stared at each other wide-eyed. ‘Have you ever heard the like?’ Elizabeth commented. ‘Such rudeness!’

  ‘Lucy is not at all like that,’ Dorothea rushed to explain. ‘She is gregarious but she would never flirt with another woman’s husband. Never.’

  ‘Some folks just have strange ways about them. I get all sorts in here,’ Mary Seacole soothed, pouring out two glasses of ruby wine. Dorothea quietly slipped hers to Elizabeth when their hostess was not looking, with the result that she became rather more talkative than usual, and a little less steady on her feet.

  *

  April began and the days grew warm and sunny but they brought Dorothea no further letters from home. She wrote to Miss Nightingale at the Barracks Hospital describing her sister and beseeching her to ask her staff if anyone had seen such a lady, but a terse reply came back saying that Dorothea should be aware there was no time to search for missing relatives. She thought of Lucy every morning when she woke, and every night when she went to bed, her heart aching with worry for her poor sister, but in between there was little time to think of anything apart from her work. She knew she needed to go looking for Lucy but she had an obligation to her patients – and where would she even start? On optimistic days Dorothea hoped that Lucy would simply turn up with news of an adventure to explain her disappearance; but on pessimistic days, she began to prepare herself for the worst.

  Rumours spread that the army were to launch a major attack on Sevastopol within the week. Work had been proceeding on a new hospital in Balaklava, close to the ruins of the clifftop Genoese fort, where the operating theatres would be situated. Patients requiring surgery after battle would be taken there, while the General Hospital would treat all the other sick and injured. Miss Langston asked amongst the nurses if anyone was willing to work in the operating theatre and when Dorothea said she was, she was told curtly she should report for work there the very next day.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  When Dorothea arrived at the Castle Hospital – a row of prefabricated huts built along the clifftop overlooking Balaklava harbour – she was immediately questioned about her experience by four different doctors. Looking around, she saw the hospital was well-supplied with new beds and mattresses and more linen than they could possibly use – all sent by well-meaning members of the British public. There were patients of many nationalities, some of them muleteers who had hoped to make a profit from the war and had been injured in the fighting, others recruits from different regions of the vast Ottoman Empire, as well as British and French soldiers. Each doctor was in charge of two or three huts, and they all seemed keen for her to work with them, but it was a tall, ginger-whiskered Scotsman called Mr Crawford who prevailed.

  ‘What languages do you speak?’ he asked in his lilting brogue.

  ‘French, and a smattering of Italian,’ she replied. She had learned them from her governess.

  ‘No Scots? Will we need a translator then?’ he twinkled.

  Dorothea smiled: ‘I can just about discern your meaning so I’m sure we’ll get by.’

  ‘Good! Now, I have my professional peculiarities and like nurses who will humour me. I require my instruments to be rinsed in boiled water between patients.’ He showed her the gleaming set of tools he had brought with him, neatly arranged in a wooden case with a blue satin lining. ‘And at the end of the working day, I like the operating table to be washed down and the floor mopped clean. Does this put you off working with me?’

  Dorothea admitted she had not assisted in an operating theatre before, but added: ‘I attended a lecture on the subject of cleanliness and it sounded convincing to me. The idea of mingling one man’s blood with that of the next seems to me rather grim. Certainly if I were to be operated upon, I should not wish it.’

  He continued: ‘I like to work quickly, not in order to set any national records but so I can give the patient a minimal amount of chloroform. An above-the-knee amputation should take no more than seven minutes if we understand each other’s ways. I hope you will not faint on me. I’ve got no time for fainters.’

  Dorothea promised she would endeavour not to faint, adding that in her work so far she had proved to have a strong stomach.

  ‘In my Edinburgh hospital, the survival rate of my patients is over sixty per cent, but out here so far it is under forty, because the injuries are so very severe. I will need your help to raise it, and I will require superlative post-operative care. So long as you don’t consider it impertinent, I’d like you to accompany me on a ward round so I can check your dressing skills.’

  Dorothea was surprised and at first she felt rather patronised, but they walked together round one ward, discussing the injuries presented, and she liked the way he bantered with the patients. ‘I know your type: you’d do anything to get off s
entry duty,’ he joked with one lad of seventeen years who had lost his right arm. ‘You came here for a rest, did you?’ he asked another with a nasty head wound. She changed the dressings on half a dozen patients under Mr Crawford’s scrutiny, following his instructions on the position of strapping here and the application of a poultice there. She told him of her horror at finding wounds crawling with maggots when soldiers arrived in Scutari, and he surprised her by saying that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

  ‘Repulsive as they may be, maggots can debride rotting tissue without injuring the healthy. In some cases they may prevent the onset of gangrene.’

  Dorothea wrinkled her nose. ‘I hope you will not require me to introduce them to wounds.’

  He thought about it for some seconds: ‘It’s not a crazy idea, but I suppose it would be generally unpopular with you faint-hearted nurses. Let’s see if we can make a difference by more conventional methods.’

  ‘It takes all sorts,’ Elizabeth twinkled when she and Dorothea exchanged notes at the end of the day. She was still working at the General Hospital so they did not see each other until they went to bed. ‘I had a doctor once who made me clip his fingernails and trim his eyebrows. They do have their little ways.’

  Elizabeth had some worrying news to impart: the warm weather had brought a resurgence of cholera and three cases had been admitted to the hospital. They were being kept in isolation, but no one gave them much chance of survival.

  Dorothea had a pang of worry about Lucy. Was she safe from cholera wherever she was? ‘We should purchase some of Mary Seacole’s cholera remedy,’ she suggested. ‘If her baking skills are anything to go by, it could be miraculous.’

  Elizabeth agreed to pass on the suggestion, and added she would buy a bottle for the two of them so it would be on hand in case they should succumb.

  *

  On the 9th April, the long-awaited attack on Sevastopol started. Huge numbers of shells rained down, filling the air with smoke and thunder, and everyone at Castle Hospital braced themselves to receive trainloads of wounded. Two hospital ships were moored and provisioned at Balaklava to transport those who needed long-term convalescence to Scutari. The grumbling about Lord Raglan’s shortcomings as a commander continued, and Mr Crawford was one of the critics: ‘Everyone knew the date on which the bombardment would start; the common soldier was even writing home to his mother about it. There is no doubt the Russians had been informed and their batteries and earthworks well secured,’ he opined. ‘This attack is a reckless waste of lives.’

 

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