Stars Across the Ocean

by Kimberley Freeman

  Agnes put her arm around Gracie and hugged her tight. ‘I won’t let you trip,’ she said. ‘Now, come and let’s sponge you down. You smell atrocious.’

  •

  It rained that night, and so Agnes had to sleep in her cabin. She woke early, hot and sticky, and lay for a while thinking about Gracie. Agnes wanted the surgeon to make sure everything was all right with her friend, but wondered how she could get him to do that before he took his first belt of brandy on arrival at the surgery.

  Then she had an idea. She rose and gave herself a quick sponge-down at the washstand, then pulled on her dress and pinafore. Dr Angel had given her a key to the surgery, so she let herself in. The weather was grim and the seas high, so it was dim inside and all of his books had slid off the desk again. She could hear bottles rattling against each other in the cupboards. She went behind his desk, opened the bottom drawer and withdrew his flask. Closing the drawer silently behind her, she left the surgery and hid the flask in the centre of a tall coil of ropes just outside the door. Then she went back to her room to make herself breakfast.

  When she returned to the surgery two hours later, Dr Angel was pulling out all the contents of his desk and piling them haphazardly on the table, where they were dropping off to the floor as the ship rocked.

  ‘Doctor Angel?’ she said.

  He looked up. His fair hair was wild. ‘Have you seen my silver flask?’

  ‘No, sir. I wonder if you might come with me to see the pregnant lady in berth fifteen?’

  ‘Yes, yes. As soon as I find my …’ More papers being thrown about. Then he stood and turned to the cupboard. ‘You could help,’ he said.

  She came to stand in front of him. ‘Doctor Angel, I need you to come and look at this patient.’

  Then the door to the surgery opened and a sailor with blood pouring over his face came in. ‘Doc?’ he said.

  Agnes held tight to the railing beside the examination bed. She had never seen so much blood.

  Dr Angel looked up and tried to compose himself. ‘What’s happened here?’ he said, grasping the man’s elbow and moving him to the examination bed.

  ‘I slipped and hit my head,’ the sailor said, lying down. He was a man of about forty, with a grey beard that was now stained red with blood.

  ‘Agnes, clean him up,’ Dr Angel said, once again burrowing in his cupboard. ‘Where is the damned thing?’

  Agnes filled a bowl from the pump over the tiny sink, and using a cloth began to sponge away the blood. The wound was more than an inch long, over his right eyebrow. Once she had most of the blood off his face, she pressed the cloth gently against the wound in the hope it would stop bleeding.

  Suddenly Dr Angel shouted a curse so vulgar that even Agnes was shocked. ‘What is it, Doctor?’ she asked.

  ‘I can’t. Find it.’

  ‘Leave it a minute then, and come look at this fellow’s head. It’ll need a stitch or two.’

  Dr Angel came over and took the cloth away. Agnes felt the blood drain from her face as she saw the depth of the wound. Dr Angel probed it with his finger, and the sailor stiffened with pain under him. ‘Yes, this will need stitching. Agnes, have you seen my flask?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  He turned away and opened one of the cupboards, filling an enamel bowl with items. ‘Keep him still, Agnes. Keep the cloth on that wound.’

  Agnes did as she was told, smiling down weakly at the sailor, who was clearly in terrible pain. Dr Angel joined them, shook some carbolic acid onto a new cloth and patted it on the wound. The sailor’s entire body tensed up.

  ‘I’m going to stitch it,’ Dr Angel said.

  The sailor nodded, setting his jaw. Dr Angel set down the bowl, removed the needle from a slip of velvet, but his hands were shaking too hard to thread it. Agnes intervened, threading the curved needle with the hard thread and handing it back to him.

  ‘Hold the wound together, Agnes,’ he said, so she took a deep breath and gently pressed an index finger either side of the wound.

  With the needle in one hand and scissors in the other, Dr Angel leaned over the sailor. There was sweat on his brow and his hands shook violently.

  ‘Damn it all to hell,’ he muttered, forcing his hands to be still.

  The ship rolled. The bowl fell off the examination table and rattled onto the bare floorboards. Dr Angel steadied himself, the needle poised. But his hands were shaking so much that the needle entered the skin a full inch from where it should. He cursed again, then withdrew the needle. The sailor was quaking with pain and fear, the boat rolled again, and Dr Angel, without his customary breakfast brandy on board, could not control his palsied hands.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Agnes said. She was a good needlewoman, with steady hands. ‘If you instruct me, I’ll do it.’

  The sailor moaned a little, but Dr Angel eagerly handed over the needle and scissors. ‘Yes. Yes, good idea, Agnes. You do it.’

  ‘Where do I start?’ she asked.

  ‘Across the middle. Bisect the wound, that’s it.’

  Agnes pushed the needle into the man’s skin. It did not give easily. Dr Angel held the wound together and the curve of the needle popped out the other side.

  ‘Now tie it and snip it,’ he said, releasing the wound.

  Agnes crossed the thread over itself and made a knot, then cut the thread. The wound stayed closed in the middle.

  ‘Good, good. Next one, Agnes. One either side.’

  Slowly, while the poor sailor writhed in pain beneath her, Agnes stitched the wound. The ship rolled and Dr Angel shouted cursory instructions from his desk, where he still sought his flask of brandy. Every time she entered a new stitch, she met the sailor’s eyes and said, ‘Sorry,’ gently to him, and he gritted his teeth and told her she was doing a fine job.

  Finally, it was done. Agnes helped the sailor to sit and then to stand, and Dr Angel told him he should return to his cabin for two days and then come back so they could see if the wound grew infected. The sailor thanked Agnes and went on his way.

  Agnes stood back and watched as Dr Angel ransacked the cupboards, looking for his brandy.

  ‘Doctor Angel? The pregnant lady in berth fifteen?’

  ‘Rather more pressing matters at hand, Agnes,’ he said. ‘I’ve lost something quite important.’

  ‘Doctor Angel?’

  He stopped. Looked up.

  ‘I know where it is and I will give it to you only after you have seen Gracie Badger with me.’

  ‘What do you mean you know where it is?’

  ‘I hid it. You are forever drunk and it’s bad for the patients.’

  He strode over to her, and Agnes thought he might strike her. His face was red with rage. ‘How dare you pass judgement on me? Did you see my hands shake? That was because I needed my brandy. Do you not understand?’

  Agnes remained cool. What could he do to her now? They were at sea and he needed her. ‘Away with you. I’m not afraid.’

  He took a step back, glaring at her.

  ‘Gracie Badger. Berth fifteen.’

  He seized his little bag from by the door and strode out of the surgery. ‘You may regret this, Miss Resolute.’

  Agnes followed him, quite confident that once he had his morning brandy, he would barely remember what had transpired between them. They descended the ladders to the ’tween decks, and Agnes led him along to Gracie’s berth.

  ‘Agnes,’ Gracie said, putting down her book. ‘And Doctor Angel.’

  Agnes came to stand next to Gracie’s head. ‘Doctor Angel is going to make sure you and the baby are all fine,’ Agnes said. ‘You must tell him all your symptoms, even if you are ashamed to do so.’

  Gracie swallowed hard. ‘Very well.’

  ‘Raise your nightgown,’ Dr Angel said, and she inched it up so that her bloomers were showing.

  Dr Angel pushed it all the way up to her breasts, and put his hands over her round tummy.

  ‘How many months along are you?’ he asked.

 
‘I’m not sure. Perhaps four?’

  ‘Hm.’ He rummaged in his bag, pulled out what looked like a wooden tube with a flare on each end. He put one end against Gracie’s belly, and leaned his ear on the other.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Gracie asked.

  ‘Sh,’ he said sharply. ‘Nothing’s wrong. But you must be silent.’

  Agnes held her breath and waited. Then Dr Angel put away the wooden tube and said. ‘You’re quite big for four months. I couldn’t say for sure, but you might have twins on board.’

  ‘Twins?’ Gracie gasped.

  ‘Can’t say for sure.’

  ‘When might I know?’

  ‘When you’re a little further along you might feel two in there. The best way to know is to birth them, of course. If one comes out with another behind it, well that’s definitely twins.’ He said this without any trace of humour.

  ‘Gracie says she’s been bleeding a little, and there’s been pain,’ Agnes interjected, afraid that Gracie would be too embarrassed, or too shocked by the latest news, to say it.

  Dr Angel pursed his lips. ‘To be frank with you, I’ve never treated a woman with twins before. That could be normal. You look otherwise well. I wouldn’t worry about it. If you get griping in your guts, then get Agnes to give you a dose of salts.’

  Agnes’s heart fell, then. He didn’t know, and neither did she. Gracie was stuck on a ship in the middle of the ocean, pregnant possibly with more than one child, and there was nobody aboard who could help her. She stroked Gracie’s hair. ‘See?’ she said. ‘Nowt to fret over.’

  Gracie smiled up at her.

  ‘Now, Agnes, I believe we have some business to finish?’

  ‘Yes, sir. This way.’ She gave Gracie’s hand a squeeze and led Dr Angel away.

  Once he had his flask back in his hands, Dr Angel’s mood lightened. He warned her not to hide it again and she promised she wouldn’t. What did it matter if she lied to a drunkard?

  •

  That day Agnes took Gracie up on deck again, and spent a little time with her. But Dr Angel sought to punish her for hiding his brandy by having her work in the surgery, cleaning out and organising the cupboards. The heat was intolerable. It seemed the ship stood still under the blazing sun, and all the boards soaked up the heat and trapped it in the airless spaces below. Her dress clung to her. She would have gladly worked naked.

  She brought Gracie to her cabin to eat, and they sat on Agnes’s bed after and talked into the night. Gracie had her knees under her chin, and she looked so young. She was only seventeen years old after all, and the idea that she might have two babies growing inside her was more than Agnes could comprehend. As they talked, she sounded like the Gracie Agnes had always known. ‘Do you remember that time Lewis Antigone climbed in through the senior girls’ dorm window?’ ‘How on earth did Bess Albertus get so big, when she ate the same as the rest of us?’ ‘I believed for a full month that Cook Carmody was trying to poison me because I called her mutton too salty.’ ‘Charlotte Pelican was not so bad. She was just pious.’ They shared memories and laughed and, apart from the gentle rocking of the ship on the swell, Agnes could almost imagine they were back there, at Perdita Hall, when life was simpler.

  Still, Agnes would not go back. Not for anything.

  Eventually Gracie grew tired. Agnes tried to convince her to sleep up on deck with her and Jack, but Gracie said she preferred to be safely tucked away below. Agnes helped her back to bed and then took her pillow and blanket up the ladder.

  Jack moved over for her. ‘It’s going to be hot, even up here,’ she said.

  Agnes slid into place. There wasn’t a breath of wind. ‘This is unbearable,’ she said.

  ‘It always hits us after the equator. A bit later than usual this time, but predictable nonetheless. It will pass soon enough. We’ll get storms in the horse latitudes. That’ll be interesting.’

  ‘Are we moving at all?’

  ‘Probably a little. In a hurry to get to Melbourne, are you?’

  Agnes shifted a little away from Jack. Their body heat was mingling and making the discomfort worse. ‘I’m in a hurry to get one of the passengers to Perth, actually,’ she said. ‘A lass in the ’tween decks. Pregnant, possibly with twins, and poorly.’

  ‘Now, don’t you go getting attached to your patients. They’re hard to bury when you like them too much,’ Jack said darkly.

  ‘She’s an old friend, actually. I went to school with her.’

  ‘Truly? And she’s on this ship?’

  Agnes nodded.

  ‘Still, not the greatest coincidence I’ve heard,’ Jack sniffed. ‘One of the lads told me that one time he followed a fellow for two streets in Calcutta, to slip a wad of pound notes out of his back pocket. Said they were just poking out there ripe for it. Took the money, the fellow turns around: it’s his own brother! Hasn’t seen him for five years.’

  ‘Is that true?’

  ‘True as I’m here in front of your eyes. They fought so violently that our man came back aboard with an eye like a split peach. Sibling rivalry goes deep.’

  They laughed together and made a few more jokes, and then Agnes said. ‘I’m worried about Gracie and her baby, or babies. If you have summat for her—’

  ‘Which berth?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘I’ll make sure she gets some fruit and a nice pudding in her ration sack,’ Jack said.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘In any case, you oughtna worry. You’re a good nurse. You’ll take care of her just fine. Bill Collie was singing your praises today, after you stitched him up this morning. Neatest stitches I’ve ever seen.’

  Agnes looked up at the slack sails and prayed for a breeze. She didn’t tell Jack she had done a good job because she was a seamstress, not a nurse. ‘He was very brave. It must have hurt like the devil.’

  ‘You’re good at this, Agnes. You should stay aboard. We’ll be moored in Melbourne for two days. After your Mam tells you she didnae ever want you, you should come back. You and I could cross the ocean a few more times together. I’d like that.’ She lightly punched Agnes’s arm. ‘You’re better off having a Jack than having a mam that doesnae want you.’

  ‘She might want me,’ Agnes said. Gracie had spoken already in aching tones about how much she wanted her baby to be safe and happy. Surely all women wanted their babies, no matter how much time had passed. ‘You don’t know.’

  ‘Well, I want you,’ Jack said. ‘Even though you are an awful mope sometimes, you’re still a good nurse.’

  ‘I’m not a nurse,’ Agnes said.

  ‘Nurse Assistant. Whatever your title is.’

  ‘I’m not that either. I lied to get the job.’

  Jack stared at her in the starlight. ‘Oh, you didnae, Agnes. Tell me you didnae.’

  Agnes’s pulse thumped guiltily in her throat. ‘I did.’

  Then Jack burst into peals of laughter. ‘Oh you’re a bad one. With all that blonde hair like a halo, and yet you’re a bad thing.’

  Agnes suppressed her laughter. ‘But it’s terrible, isn’t it? What if something serious happens?’

  ‘That’s Doctor Angel’s problem, not yours.’ She waved Agnes’s concerns away with a slender hand. ‘He’s been to a fancy college and he’s been aboard this ship for two years. Nothing too bad will happen, don’t worry.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried until I found Gracie aboard.’

  Jack didn’t speak for a few seconds, and then she said, ‘You worry too much, Agnes Resolute. Your name should have been Agnes Anxious. Anxious Agnes.’ She chuckled at her own joke. ‘Lasses have been having babies since the start of it all.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Agnes conceded. ‘That’s why you and I are here.’

  ‘Yes! You especially. See, it’s so easy that sometimes lasses have them accidentally and abandon them on a doorstep.’ Jack settled on her back. ‘Though maybe you weren’t an accident and she abandoned you because you were a bad baby.’

&nb
sp; Agnes laughed. ‘How bad could I have been at a few days old?’

  ‘Maybe you cried a lot.’

  ‘I never cry.’

  ‘Maybe she could tell you were born a liar and a worrier. She thought, Oh I must get rid of this one or it’ll drive me mad.’ Jack nodded, feigning seriousness. ‘She had no choice.’

  ‘I’ll ask her when I meet her.’

  ‘If you meet her.’

  ‘When,’ Agnes replied.

  Jack grew tired of her joke. ‘Your friend’s biggest problem is feeding and clothing the wee ones when they come out. I take it there’s no father?’

  ‘There is, but …’ Agnes didn’t finish the sentence. ‘You know, if I have to get off with her in Perth and take care of her, then I will.’

  ‘That’s noble of you,’ Jack said. ‘Mighty noble. Mighty foolish, too. That gentleman Julius may not wait for you, then you’ll be sorry.’

  ‘He’ll wait,’ Agnes said, hoping she was right. ‘At the very least, he will understand. Gracie’s the closest thing I have to a sister. I don’t think I have a choice.’

  •

  The weather remained hot and calm for days. Without any sense of direction or motion, the ship seemed trapped between warm sea and hot sky. The humidity and the lack of progress made everybody on board irritable. Fights broke out between sailors, Dr Angel had taken to shouting at Agnes rather than speaking to her, Jack’s dark humour grew black. Only Gracie retained her sweet equanimity, always happy to sit in the shade on deck, watching the horizon with her good eye. Agnes longed for the steamship: the noise and smell were a small price to pay for continuous motion.

  On the fourth day they were becalmed, Agnes went to fetch Gracie in the morning to take her up on deck, but Gracie refused.

  ‘Not today, Agnes. I think I’ll stay here.’

  ‘You’ll die in this heat,’ Agnes said.

  ‘I’m feeling poorly,’ Gracie replied. ‘I just want to lie still.’

  Alarm flashed in Agnes’s blood. ‘What kind of poorly?’

  ‘Pain.’ She rubbed the underside of her belly. ‘I’m sure it’s just something I ate. I’ve been on the pot five times since the midnight bell. It’s passed now, but I think I’ll just stay here and try to sleep.’