“Is it?” The big girl swung a look at me. “Will she last longer than the last one, then?”
“That was unfortunate,” said Nurse Fellows. “Matron has taken it under advisement.”
Now the look swung back to Nurse Fellows. “Will she take it under advisement that Martha and I have been doing double duty for four days?”
“Nina,” said the girl on the bed weakly.
Nurse Fellows’s returning stare was icy. “Matron is well aware of the staffing levels here, I assure you. That is why we have a replacement. The two of you will have to train her, as I am far too busy. I expect you to teach her properly.” She turned to me. “I’ll get you one of the uniforms from the cupboard. I’ll remind you that you are expected to wear your uniform at all times.” She darted a glare at Nurse Beachcombe, who was still sitting shoeless on the bed. “Even during breaks. I’ll see the three of you in fifteen minutes.”
“Where does she get off?” grumbled Nurse Shouldice after Nurse Fellows had gone.
“It was only my shoes,” Nurse Beachcombe said uncertainly as she scooted off her bed. “I’d no idea it was against regulations.”
“Of course not,” the bigger girl replied. “Too busy? Too busy doing what, I’d like to know.”
I stared at the heaping pile of cloth Nurse Fellows had deposited on the bed. The outfit looked ridiculously complicated. “I’ll never get into all this,” I said.
Nurse Beachcombe slid her shoes on and stood next to me. “It isn’t so hard. I’ll help.” She assisted me out of my blouse and skirt and gave me a shy smile. “I’m Martha,” she said to me, “and this is Nina. Where are you from?”
“London,” I said. “And I’m Kitty.”
“I like that name,” said Martha. “I’ve only been to London once myself, and wasn’t it wonderful! You see, this is rather simple—underskirt, skirt, then blouse and collar. The apron goes on last.”
“So you’re the new girl,” said Nina. She was watching me with a wariness I couldn’t quite fathom, as if she thought I’d steal her valuables, whatever they might be. “You’ve already met Boney, I see.”
“Boney?” I frowned as Martha helped me with the skirt, trying to place the reference. “You mean Napoléon?”
“Oh, you’re an educated one, then.” This was said with disdain. “Yes, our little dictator. That’s what we call her, though not to her face, of course. Matron’s pet, she is, don’t you think?”
“I’ve no idea.” Without knowing the lay of the land, I wasn’t about to insult another girl behind her back—even if she was obviously Matron’s pet. “I’m not educated,” I said. “I just read books.”
“Well, there won’t be any time for that here.” Nina’s glasses glinted in the waning light from the windows. “You’ll be worked off your feet. Six o’clock we’re up, and on duty at seven. You’re on duty until nine thirty, lights out at ten. Then it starts all over again.”
“Nina’s engaged,” said Martha. “To a man named Roland. He’s coming to collect her next month. Isn’t that romantic?”
“Martha, hush,” said Nina, though she couldn’t quite keep the superiority from her voice. “We’ve only just met her.”
“Well, she’s one of us now, and shouldn’t she know? I think it’s so exciting. I had a boy back in Glenley Crewe, but I had to come here for work, and he married someone else. Do you have a fellow, Kitty?”
In every group of girls I’d ever encountered—girls working together on a factory shift, girls living together in boardinghouses—the girl who was engaged had the highest status. It was probably the reason Boney, so fond of her superiority, disliked Nina so much. I would have to tread carefully. “No, I don’t.”
“Oh, that’s too bad. You shouldn’t have trouble with the men here—they’re not a bother in that way. Some of them don’t much know what’s going on, really, so they don’t get any ideas.”
“Ideas?” I tried to button the detachable collar with fingers that were suddenly cold and clumsy. “What do you mean?”
“For goodness’ sake, Martha,” Nina chided. “They’re patients. And madmen.”
Martha shrugged. “It doesn’t mean they can’t get ideas, does it? That’s all I was saying. There, now you fit right in.”
I stared down at myself. My long, slim serge skirt and serviceable blouse were gone, replaced by layers under a full apron that nearly brushed the floor. There had been grumblings that hems six inches from the ground were too short to be proper on a girl, part of the immorality we girls had learned during the war, though the grumblings never discouraged us from wearing the shortest hems we could find. Now I’d gone back in time, like a woman in an old photograph, one of those stiff biddies with sour expressions. The blouse’s shawl collar sat heavy on my shoulders, and the long, puffed sleeves ended past my wrists and halfway up my hands. How was I supposed to work in this?
“Your shoes,” said Martha. “Are those your only ones?”
I looked at my only pair of oxfords where I’d discarded them on the floor, their leather starting to separate from the soles. “Yes.”
“Oh, that won’t do. The floors are cold here, and you’ll be on your feet all day.”
“Didn’t you need thicker shoes in a London hospital?” This was Nina, regarding me closely from behind her glasses, with the suspicious look again.
“No,” I fumbled. “That is—there was no regulation. For shoes.”
“No matter.” Martha bent next to my narrow bed and rummaged on the floor. “The last girl left her boots; they’ll fit just fine, I think. She was the same size as you. There, do you see? How lucky!”
I took them from her. They were ankle boots of thick leather, well made and low heeled, like something a girl would wear on a farm. I pulled them on—they did fit surprisingly well—and stared at my feet in dismay. I had no desire for elegant clothes, and no money for them if I had, but I barely recognized myself. What had I gotten myself into? And what kind of girl, I wondered, left her boots behind when she left a job?
“We’ll just add the cap,” Martha was saying. “It has to be worn straight, see? If you put it on an angle, Matron will notice.” She took a closer look at my head. “Your hair is just perfect for it. Did you do these braids yourself?”
I ran my fingers along the pattern of hair where I’d wound long braids around the back of my head. “Yes.”
“It’s so pretty. Don’t you think, Nina?”
“I think we’re going to be late.”
Martha reached up to place my cap, and I saw her forearms were bare, her sleeves shorter than mine. It took me only a minute to puzzle it out—I noticed small fabric loops along her cuff as she adjusted my cap. So that’s how one works in this dress. Detachable sleeves. Clever.
I slid my fingers along my own sleeves, finding the buttons and undoing them one by one. I kept my expression calm, almost bored, as if I had known all along.
“I hope I won’t need these,” I said, dropping the sleeves on the bed when she finished.
Nina stared at me uneasily, then headed for the door. “You’ll need them for inspections, so keep them ready.”
“I won’t lose them,” I said.
“See that you don’t. Come now, or we’ll be late for supper.”
CHAPTER THREE
Twenty minutes later, after hastily eating a bite of bread and cheese and taking a gulp of lukewarm tea, I was standing again in the doorway of the grand dining room. I was finally getting my first look at the patients, the madmen of Portis House.
They filed past me into the room, quiet and orderly. They were of all kinds—tall and short, skinny and fat, light and dark. Each man wore a uniform of oatmeal-colored heavy linen: a simple pair of trousers and a long-sleeved buttoned shirt with the words PORTIS HOUSE HOSPITAL stenciled across the front and the back. I realized I had been picturing them all in military u
niforms and puttees, as if the war were still on; to see them dressed in hospital dress was disconcerting and somehow diminishing.
They didn’t look at me. They spoke to one another in murmurs, if they spoke at all, as they took their seats. They seemed almost docile, and my first, incongruous thought was: They don’t seem mad.
Nina sidled up beside me. “No belts or suspenders,” she said. “If you see either, you’re to confiscate it. Straight razors, too.”
She watched for my reaction from behind her lenses. I kept my face straight, but I noticed she was right: Not a single man in the room wore a belt or suspenders on his trousers. The trousers seemed to have just a drawstring. String being, perhaps, deemed too difficult for a man to hang himself with.
I cleared my throat, spoke as softly as I could. “How do—how do they shave?”
“Safety razors only. Most of them are used to it from the war. There are one or two complainers, but we’re not to take chances. No matter what a man says to you, there are no exceptions to the rule.”
I nodded, trying not to picture what would make a man want to leave this place so badly that he could not be trusted with a straight razor—trying not to think that the rule must have grown out of experience.
Nurse Fellows—I’d already started thinking of her as Boney—joined us, Martha at her shoulder. “We’re ready,” she said. “The kitchen is loading the food now. Nurse Shouldice, take a tray to Mr. West—his legs are particularly bad today, and he is in bed. Mr. Childress will also need his broth in the infirmary.”
“I’ll do them both,” said Nina. “Mr. Childress usually eats something when I coax him a bit.”
“Very well. Nurse Beachcombe, you’re to take a tray to Patient Sixteen. I haven’t heard from him, but I assume he’ll want something.”
Martha brightened. “Yes, Nurse Fellows.”
“Who is Patient Sixteen?” I asked.
Nina and Martha exchanged a look, but Boney ignored the question. “You’re to supervise the dining room,” she told me. “I’ll help you serve, but then I must see Matron and supervise in the kitchen. They seem in a decent mood tonight. Can you handle it?”
I glanced out at the men sitting at two tables under the extravagant vines plastered into the opulent ceiling. I hoped my bravado was convincing. “Of course.”
“Good. Get moving, or Matron will hear of it. Let’s go.”
The orderlies—four men in white linens, one of whom was massively tall and large—had wheeled carts into the dining room. The tall one unlocked the panel to a dumbwaiter and opened it. With a loud creak of pulleys, a platform containing plates of food appeared, presumably from the kitchen. The orderly emptied the plates onto his cart, shouted “Hup” down the shaft of the dumbwaiter, and the platform lowered again. I watched, mesmerized, as this was repeated many times over. I’d seen dumbwaiters in restaurants, but never in a house before.
Boney turned to me as the other two nurses loaded trays and vanished toward the stairs. “We used to say a prayer at meals, but some of them couldn’t sit still for it and it had a disrupting effect on the others, so we stopped. I’ll pour the water. Each man gets a plate. And set them down gently. For God’s sake, no loud noises. Do you understand?”
“No loud noises?”
She pursed her lips. “They can’t handle it. I’ve yet to work with a nurse who takes the proper care. No bangs, claps, or sounds of that sort—half the men will hit the floor, thinking they’re in a trench. Portis House is supposed to be a restful place of healing, and lack of stressful sound is part of the treatment. Doctors’ orders.”
I glanced into the room again. Half of them will hit the floor. “I understand.”
I picked up plates from one of the carts as she took a large pitcher of water and poured for each man. With three patients—Mr. West of the bad legs, Mr. Childress in the infirmary, and the mysterious Patient Sixteen—out of the room, we had only sixteen men in the dining room, eight to each table. Each plate contained a square of beef, a lump of potatoes, and a spoonful of watery peas. I set down one plate, then another, taking care to set them gently. I had been hungry, even after the bread and cheese, but as I looked at the plates of food, my appetite drained away.
The men ate without complaint. Boney finished with the water and gave me a nod before leaving the room. A hush fell, heavy and pregnant, as soon as she was gone.
“A new nurse,” came one man’s voice. It was impossible to tell which, as no man raised his head.
“A pretty one, too,” said another.
I quietly set down another plate.
“Where’s the freckled one?” This came from a blond man with a short beard who was in my line of sight. “We haven’t seen her in days, and she’s not on night duty, either.”
None of the nurses had freckles; this must have been the last girl, whose boots I was wearing. “Yes, where is she?” said a man with big shoulders and bright red hair who was sitting farther down the line I was serving. The look he gave me was jeering. “Do tell us poor fellows, won’t you, sister?”
“I’m not your sister,” I shot back at him.
To my surprise, he laughed, as did the man next to him, though no one else joined in. I set a plate in front of a tall, gangly man who had spectacles placed atop his large Roman nose. He looked up at me kindly. “I believe Creeton means a nursing sister,” he said, his accent proclaiming Oxford or Cambridge. “A member of your order.”
“Order?” I couldn’t disguise my horror as I stared at him. “You mean like a nun?”
“A nun!” The red-haired man laughed again. “Thank God she ain’t one of those!”
“A nursing order,” said Roman Nose. He lowered his voice confidentially and looked down as he cut into his square of beef. “It is a term, I believe, for a nurse of some seniority.”
I reddened. Ten minutes into my first supper and one of the men was already covering for me. I was usually more adept than this. I’d worked for more than six months at the factory without anyone discovering I wasn’t the school friend of the owner’s daughter; before that, the owner of a perfume shop in Mile End still thought the shopgirl who had worked for him for nearly a year was named Theresa Baker. For God’s sake, get it together or they’ll pitch you out of here. “I’m not a nursing sister,” I said to the room at large, moving down the table. “I’m only a nurse. My name is Nurse Weekes.”
“Jolly good!” came a voice from somewhere behind me. “You’re the prettiest sister we’ve had.”
“I say,” agreed the red-haired man. “You can tuck Captain Mabry there into bed, then, can you? I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”
There was laughter, and from the way Roman Nose reddened, I guessed he was Captain Mabry. I glanced at the door, but there was no sign of Boney or anyone else. Where had the orderlies gone? “I’m not tucking anyone into bed,” I said.
I had reached the last place setting, which happened to be that of Creeton—the big-shouldered redhead. He looked up at me with a wide smile. “Ah, come now, sister. It’s just a bit of fun.” And as I lowered his plate, a big, beefy hand landed on my behind and squeezed me painfully through my skirts.
I jumped. The plate banged on the table, rattling silverware and ringing against the water glass. Silence fell, deafening, the air stretched with expectant strain; then a high-pitched sound came from one of the other men, a keening almost like laughter.
“I’m sorry,” I said, moving away from Creeton and down the table. “I’m sorry. I—”
The man making the sound had dropped his fork, and peas spilled over the edge of his plate and onto the table. He raised his hands to his face, as if embarrassed at the sound that was coming from him, and I realized the sound actually was laughter—hysterical, uncontrolled. He rocked forward and back again, his face reddening, the sound coming from deep inside him in loops and whorls.
“I’m sorr
y,” I said again.
“Look what you’ve done!” said Captain Mabry, but he was directing this at Creeton. “You’ve set him off now.” His tone held almost a note of fear.
“Somersham!” said Creeton to the laughing man, who continued to keen. “Crazy as a loon, are you? Somersham!” He lifted his plate and banged it on the table again, sending droplets of gravy flying. And again. “There! What do you think that is? Where do you think you are, then? The bloody Somme?”
The man laughed harder. The air seemed to have gone from the room, and I could barely breathe. “Stop it!” I shouted. “Stop!”
“Somersham, for God’s sake,” Captain Mabry’s voice was almost pleading. “You have to stop.”
Somersham pressed his hands to his cheeks. “I’m not a coward,” he said, to no one. “I’m not.”
I felt a gentle touch on my arm and looked down to find a pudgy man looking up at me, his face unlined and calm. “You mustn’t be too hard on these men,” he said. He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “I think they’ve been in a war.”
I took a step back, and then another. And then I was out of the room, alone in the corridor, with the empty carts and the deep, growing gloom. I made my way to the end of the corridor, where there was a window, my steps echoing strangely off the walls, and looked hopelessly out at the dark drifts of fog.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. I’d been so certain, but I’d miscalculated. That hand on me—I could still feel it, and it made me sick. I’d thought I’d be caring for madmen, simpletons, drooling idiots. I hadn’t thought they’d be men.
And now I was locked up with them in this place, miles from anything.
I put my palm on the glass, felt its cool dampness, the slick chill of it. Watched the fog go past my fingers. The paint was chipping along the sill and coming off the top of the window in strips. Strange, to see paint peeling already in a house apparently so new.
I closed my eyes. From the dining room, the laughter had stopped, and there was an ominous silence. Calm came over me, almost cold, along the back of my neck and shoulders. It robbed me of my fear and made me feel strong again. Did the door to the nurses’ bedroom have a lock on it? Was there anything in Portis House I could keep as a weapon, just in case?
Silence for the Dead Page 3