by Kate Eastham
‘It’s good to meet you now,’ said Alice. ‘And Tommy has told me a few stories about you already. Is it true that you got a job on your first ship by walking the full length of the deck on your hands?’
‘It is,’ laughed Davy. ‘I couldn’t do that now, not with my bad back. Did he tell you the story of how we got together, me and Tommy?’
‘I don’t think so …’
Davy launched straight into the tale of how he, being the ship’s carpenter, had just painted an area on one of the lower decks, when the second mate came along: ‘You remember him, Tommy, Mr Prendergast, in his navy-blue coat with shiny brass buttons? He was always checking, always on to us.’
Alice could see Tommy starting to laugh already.
‘Well, I’d just slapped the last of the paint on and he comes along asking if I’ve stirred the paint. We need this job doing, get on with it! And he plonks himself down on the wooden ledge full of wet paint. He was going to sit and make sure I did the job.’
Tommy was wheezing with laughter now.
‘Well, I didn’t know what to do. I’d be in lumber straight off, I knew I would, so I froze. But then Tommy comes down the ladder, he sees what’s what. And he says, “Mr Prendergast, I need you to come and check the main mast, we need an expert eye.” So up he gets, and we both see a big stripe of white paint all the way down the back of his jacket. He has no idea. Tommy winks at me, and it was all I could do to stop myself from cracking up laughing. And off they walk. You said, didn’t you, Tommy? That not one of the ship’s crew let on about the paint. Prendergast wouldn’t have found it till he took his jacket off. But do you know, he never said a word about it. He just turned up the next day with a brand-new jacket.’
Tommy was still laughing. Alice was glad that he’d already taken his drops.
‘So that was me and Tommy, from that day on, sailor and ship’s carpenter, mates for life, eh, Tommy?’
‘For life,’ repeated Tommy, grabbing hold of Davy’s hand, tears springing to his eyes.
‘I’ll just check with Sister that you’re ready to go, Mr Knox,’ said Alice, wanting to give the two men some time together. ‘I’ll be back in five minutes.’
When she came back, Davy was sitting on the bed, and as Alice approached, he wiped his eyes with the flat of his hand and jumped up.
‘I’ll get the orderlies to bring the stretcher for you, Mr Knox,’ said Alice, knowing that he was far too weak to walk any distance.
‘No, you won’t need to do that,’ said Davy, taking a large rag full of dried paint out of his pocket, to wipe his nose. ‘I’ll take ’im … You just carry the bag for us, miss, and we’re ready to go. Your carriage awaits, sir,’ he said, sweeping Tommy up from the bed and striding off with him down the ward. Alice trotted along behind, trying to keep up.
Davy wouldn’t let the driver move the carriage until he was sure that Tommy was completely comfortable. He’d brought a pillow and a ship’s blanket along to make sure. ‘I help out with the injured men sometimes,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘We don’t have any nurses on board ship, we lads have to do everything.’
Alice was impressed by the expert way he positioned Tommy; he really seemed to know what he was doing.
Reaching in to the carriage, Alice wished Tommy well. ‘I’ll be in to see you tomorrow. And the district nurse should be along later today. Don’t forget to take the drops!’ she called as Davy closed the door.
She felt sad when she walked back on the ward and saw Tommy’s bed, empty. She went to it and stood for a few moments, as if paying her respects.
‘You have done an excellent job with Mr Knox, Nurse Sampson,’ said Sister Law, appearing at the other side of the bed. ‘And he will be well looked after out there by the district nurse. Now, let’s get this bed stripped and cleaned down. We have another patient waiting to come in.’
Less than an hour later, Alice saw Mr Stafford there, at the bed, with the new patient. It made her smile, at least, when she saw the medical student take his pocket watch out with a flourish and grasp the new patient’s wrist, pursing his lips as he checked the man’s pulse. The man in the bed was flat out and looked poorly – Mr Stafford would be struggling to find a radial pulse.
Alice almost went over to check the patient herself, but then another man was shouting from the top of the ward: ‘Nurse, Nurse! Quick, I need help …’ And she was away to her next duty. She never did get back to see the new patient, still in what she thought of as ‘Tommy’s bed’. She was up and down all over the place for the rest of the shift. And then she needed to check Mr Swain’s dressing – the bandage she’d applied had started to unravel. And then the day was coming to an end.
Alice was almost last to leave the ward, but once out through the door, she started to pick up her pace. She didn’t want to be too late going through the city and she knew that Eddy would be waiting.
A voice called to her from behind, ‘Ah, there you are, Alice.’ A voice she knew only too well.
Alice froze instantly. She knew exactly who it was. Nancy.
She turned to look, not wishing to engage with the woman, but feeling that she probably should try and find out what she was up to. Nancy stood in the corridor, her body wrapped in a large shawl, her arm firmly linked in Millicent’s.
‘Yes?’ said Alice, taking a few paces towards her.
‘Dear Alice,’ said Nancy, ‘I just wanted to make sure that you knew, that’s all …’
‘Knew what?’ said Alice, trying to stay calm but impatient to be on her way and quietly infuriated by the tilt of Nancy’s chin.
‘Oh, that you know he’s married,’ said Nancy, taking a few steps and then leaning in towards Alice, her eyes alive with it.
What? thought Alice, her mind clutching at fragments. ‘Who is married?’ she responded, meeting Nancy’s gaze evenly, as her heart hammered in her chest and her mouth started to feel dry.
‘The man I saw you with on Lime Street Station … Roderick Morgan.’
Alice saw her blink, just once, after she’d said his name, and she hung on desperately to herself, still looking Nancy in the eye. Her mind careered all over the place. Married?
‘He and his wife and child, they live in a big house on Princes Road,’ continued Nancy.
A wife? A child?
Something inside of Alice snapped. ‘Of course I know he’s married,’ she almost shouted, gulping down the lump in her throat that was threatening to stop her breathing. ‘Everybody knows that,’ she said, turning away with tears stinging her eyes.
‘Well, that’s good, nobody wants to be made a fool of, do they? Especially someone like you, who has a child of her own to look after,’ Nancy called after her.
Alice stopped in her tracks, turned on her heel, and walked straight back to Nancy. She could feel her cheeks burning red and she must have looked like a fire-breathing dragon because Nancy was visibly shocked as she leant in, face-to-face.
‘None of this is any business of yours,’ she almost spat. ‘Where I go – who I see – and most of all, anything to do with my daughter – is none of your business.’
Nancy leant away and glanced down to the floor for a moment, but then she was straight back. ‘Well, let’s hope that Mr William Rathbone, the patron of the hospital, doesn’t get wind of it … I mean, you think you’ve got the senior staff in your pocket, Alice, but you haven’t got all of them. There are still some with influence, some who would be able to cut short your dream of becoming a trained nurse.’
Alice opened her mouth to speak, but she had Maud’s voice in her head, telling her not to let Nancy see that she was getting to her, not to show any reaction. Just in time, thanks, Maud, thought Alice, taking a deep breath. Standing in the corridor, it was way too risky to continue with this particular conversation. Nancy wouldn’t even need to bother feeding in some kind of rumour to Sister Law or God knew who else, not if Alice herself started shouting about it in the hospital corridor.
As hard as it was to swal
low it down, Alice glanced away and took another deep breath, and when she looked back and saw Nancy afresh, standing there wrapped in her shawl, smirking, deliberate, she knew, in that moment, that she could rise above all of this. Nancy meant nothing to her now. She didn’t work at the hospital, she had no power over her. What’s more, Alice knew that she didn’t need to say anything more, not if she didn’t want to. So she tried to smile. It was probably a very crooked smile, but she did her best, and then she turned, as calmly as she could, and simply walked away.
With every step that she took, she felt her own power increasing and she knew that whatever Nancy did, from now on, she had no hold over her. Even if the worst came, if Nancy somehow managed to get some rumour or complaint to the highest authority, Alice knew that she would be ready to retaliate. And what’s more, she had the support of Ada and Miss Merryweather and even Sister Law. In that moment of elation, as Alice strode away down the corridor, she felt like she could manage anything. As for Roderick Morgan, well, she would speak to him all right. As soon as she got the chance, she would definitely be speaking to him.
16
‘One of our sisters told me that she had often learnt more from her patients than anyone else.’
Florence Nightingale
‘What’s up with you?’ asked Eddy, immediately up on her feet, when she saw Alice marching towards her.
‘He’s married,’ snarled Alice, glancing back before she spoke just to make sure there was no chance Nancy was in hearing distance.
‘Reverend Seed?’
‘No, Roderick Morgan!’ said Alice, grabbing Eddy’s arm and pulling her up the steps to the Nurses’ Home. ‘Nancy just took great pleasure in giving me the news.’
‘Nancy? How did she know?’
‘I’ll tell you everything when we’re walking,’ said Alice. ‘Millicent Langtry will be here in a minute, she was with Nancy. I don’t want her overhearing.’
Alice poured out the story as they walked through the city, holding tight to Eddy’s arm, not letting her get a word in edgeways. Alice talked and talked, almost shouting sometimes. Too furious to even cry one tear. She was livid.
‘Married!’ shouted Marie and Lizzie, together, when she walked into the kitchen, her face like thunder. Hugo shot past her with a yowl, his ears laid back, close to his head.
Still Alice could feel nothing but fury. Then, after she’d poured the whole story out again, she started to feel like a fool. How could she have been so stupid? Especially when she had a child.
She felt like marching straight down to the docks in the morning. She still remembered his address from the card he’d given her, and which warehouse he had waved his hand at, saying that’s where he worked. She started planning it in her head. She would go there early, before going to the ward. But he wouldn’t be there at that time, he’d be at home in his big house with his wife and child.
The fury that Alice felt was alive inside her like some beast. Well, maybe she could go in the afternoon – after all, it was her half-day. But she wanted to make sure she saw Tommy at the Sailors’ Home first; he had to be her priority.
Alice’s fury carried her through her shift on the ward the next morning. She worked like a whirlwind. All her duties were finished and she was able to leave the ward for her half-day, on time. ‘My word, Nurse Sampson,’ declared Sister Law. ‘You’ve made our heads spin this morning!’
As she walked out of the Nurses’ Home after collecting her cape and hat, Alice stopped dead in her tracks. She saw the carriage first, and then she saw him. She wouldn’t have to march down to the docks after all.
She saw him straighten and give her a curious look as she started moving towards him at some pace. Driven on by fury, Alice had no control over herself.
He had a crease between his brows and his eyes were questioning as she paused, square, in front of him, and then she slapped him, hard, across his face. Her instinct had been to punch him with her fist, but at least she’d been able to take back a little control and avoid that. She could easily have broken his nose with the amount of feeling that boiled inside her.
He reeled back, clutching his face. Alice saw his driver start to climb down, saying something, but Alice couldn’t hear anything for the noise in her head.
Her hand stung, but the pain felt astonishingly good. She was calmer now, calm enough to speak.
‘You are married,’ she spat. ‘And you have a child.’
‘I, I, was going to—’
‘No, you weren’t going to tell me,’ she said. ‘You were going to lead me on, toy with my affections, play some kind of game!’
‘No, Alice, no, I swear—’
‘I don’t care, you can swear all you want to whoever you want. But I never want to see you again, Roderick Morgan.’
At last, Alice was starting to feel better, like she’d hawked something up and spat it out. Now she could breathe again. She felt no compunction to say anything else. She simply pulled her cape more closely around her and then turned on her heel, leaving him there, where he stood, with an angry red weal starting to show across his left cheek.
Alice had seen the Sailors’ Home before – everyone in Liverpool knew the tall building on Canning Place, with its ornate towers and mullioned windows and the sandstone liver bird above the entrance. It was a place where returning seamen could receive their pay and find safe, clean board and lodging whilst they were ashore. Eddy had told her once that her father, who worked as a carter on the docks, had witnessed Prince Albert laying the foundation stone for the building. She claimed that he’d spoken to the Prince, but Alice wasn’t sure about that – Eddy had all sorts of stories.
Anyway, although Alice had seen the building, she’d never been up close. She hadn’t stood in front of the ornate wrought ironwork of the gate and she had never imagined that she would, one day, walk through the door. This place was very much the preserve of men.
‘Excuse me, miss,’ said a porter, appearing in front of her. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Sister.’
‘I’m here to see a patient,’ said Alice confidently. ‘A Mr Knox.’
‘Yes, of course,’ said the porter, showing her through to the space inside. It was immediately wonderful to Alice. The central hall was triangular in shape, narrowing down towards one end, like a ship. The place was laid out in galleries with iron balustrades, each decorated with dolphins and mermaids and twisted ropes. Gazing up from the ground floor, she counted five galleries, and it was light in there. The roof of the central hall was a huge skylight, giving the impression that the building was open to the skies.
‘This is incredible,’ she said, turning to the porter, almost breathless.
The man was smiling; Alice could see he was very proud of the building. ‘It is,’ he said, gazing up to the galleries. ‘It’s a magnificent building: designed by John Cunningham, same man as built Lime Street Station; and opened in 1850 for the benefit of the sailors of the world. But we nearly lost it all in a great fire just over ten year ago.’
‘Really?’ said Alice, still gazing up to the galleries, seeing how open the structure was. She could see that the fire would sweep right through. ‘That must have been terrible,’ she said, approaching the porter as he motioned for her to follow him towards a cast-iron staircase.
‘It was. One man died wedged under these stairs,’ he said as Alice started to climb after him, up the iron treads. ‘Trapped by debris, his bones broken, burned and scalded. They pulled him out, but he was dead within the hour.’
Alice felt a shiver go through her body and she took a deep breath as she continued to follow him up the staircase.
The porter stopped again, halfway up, and looked back at her. ‘Sorry, Sister, but Tommy’s on the very top floor. Bit of a climb, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said, slightly out of breath and wondering how on earth Davy had managed to get Tommy up the stairs yesterday.
As they continued to climb, the porter called back over his shoulder, ‘Aye,
he’s in cabin forty-two, top gallery … That’s where the fire started, in that cabin. Ash from a lit pipe falling on the bedclothes. The men up there, they had to break through the iron windows and crawl out on to a stone ledge to wait for ladders. They were crying out to those below. Some as naked as the day they were born.’
Alice paused for a moment and took another deep breath, starting to feel heavy in her limbs as the man continued with his commentary. ‘Did they get rescued?’
‘Oh, aye, they got down the ladders. Some had burns but most lived to tell the tale. There were only two deaths that night. It could have been a lot worse.’
Alice nodded grimly, following the porter along the gallery. She was glad for the wrought ironwork of the balustrade and grateful for the beauty of the mermaids and dolphins. At least they were able to lift her spirits before she went in to see Tommy.
She was so distracted that she almost ploughed into the back of the porter when he stopped abruptly in front of a door. ‘This is Tommy Knox’s cabin,’ he said, tapping on the door, and then continuing on his way.
‘Come in,’ she heard faintly through the door.
‘Nurse Sampson,’ croaked Tommy from his bed, ‘welcome aboard.’ And Alice did feel that she might be on a ship. The small room was exactly how she would have imagined a ship’s cabin to be: a simple, boarded space with a cast-iron bed, one chair, and a cupboard, fixed to the wall.
‘Well, this is very nice,’ she said, pulling the chair from the side so that she could sit by his bed.
‘It feels like home to me,’ he said.
‘Your voice is hoarse, Tommy,’ she said, leaning forward to scrutinize his face. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I’ve been talking to the fellas, that’s all. They gave me a good homecoming and we’ve had a few tots of rum.’