The Outcast Girls

by Alys Clare

  Marigold sounds cross, but Lily hears real hurt underneath the truculent words. ‘That must be disappointing,’ she says mildly. She has bathed the foot and is now mixing drops of rosewater and lavender into the moisturizing, soothing cream whose recipe is her own invention.

  ‘There’s Claud, too,’ Marigold mutters.

  ‘Claud?’

  ‘Claud’s a tiger, a sleeping tiger, and he’s a jade statue and very valuable. Mama didn’t often have time to put me to bed but when she did, it was wonderful because she’d smell so sweet and be dressed in one of her lovely rustling silk gowns and we’d play our game with Claud which I loved so much, and Mama would bring him in from the mantelshelf in the drawing room and say, Look, here’s Claud, and she’d press his cool, hard, green stone muzzle against my nose, and then she’d say, He is looking for his princess, for he is a prince in disguise and must find her and keep her close, for when the little girl grows into a beautiful woman, a kiss from her on the top of Claud’s head will turn him back into a prince, they will marry and live happily ever after! And I was always half excited and half fearful because Claud had a very severe expression and although he had his eyes closed I was perfectly sure he was watching me, and it was a frightening thing to kiss a tiger. And Mama would see that I was scared and she’d say, Not yet, my darling, Claud will not be ready for his princess’s kiss until she is sixteen years old and that is a long time away! And, oh, Nurse, it’s not so very long now because I am eleven already and I shall very soon be twelve, but when I ask Mama in my letters whether Claud is getting ready for the kiss she’s forgotten, or doesn’t want to play any more, and she never answers! And last year when—’ But she does not go on.

  A fat tear rolls down Marigold’s face and Lily’s hearts twists in sympathy. But what can she say to comfort the girl? She can’t say bracingly that she’s sure it won’t be long before Marigold’s parents come home on leave and everything will be all right because she has no idea if this is true.

  She thinks and then says, ‘It is often the way, Marigold, that when we are away from our home and our loved ones, we think they have forgotten all about us.’ Memory stirs, and she recalls a time in India when she was at her lowest and no letters had come from her grandparents and Aunt Eliza, and she had all but drowned in self-pity as she told herself they didn’t care any more, that she was truly out of sight and out of mind. And of course it wasn’t true, for love does not die because of distance.

  Marigold is looking interested. She wipes away the tear with an impatient gesture and says, ‘You were sent away when you were small too?’

  ‘Not when I was small, no, but when I qualified as a nurse I went to India.’

  Marigold’s face lights up. ‘Oh, where? We used to live in Lucknow, did you go there?’

  ‘I did, yes, but I was posted to a place right up in the foothills of the mountains.’

  Marigold sighs. ‘I’m told it’s beautiful there, and cool in summer.’

  ‘It is,’ Lily agrees.

  There is a brief pause, then Marigold says, ‘I’m rather concerned – well, very concerned – because when Mama—’ But she does not go on.

  Lily wonders if to encourage her, but the child’s face is set and closed; whatever is causing her anxiety, she is not ready to share it.

  ‘Now,’ Lily says briskly, ‘I am going to administer this cream.’

  For some time neither of them speaks. Marigold, having held herself stiffly as Lily began in expectation of pain, begins to relax. Presently she says, ‘You have a very gentle touch and your face does not slide downwards in disapproval.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Lily says.

  ‘In fact,’ – n hact – Marigold goes on, ‘you are a much better nurse than …’ She leaves the comment unfinished, but an exaggerated jerk of her chin towards Matron’s room is explanation enough.

  ‘I liked being a nurse,’ Lily says very softly, and to hear herself say the words comes as a surprise, for she has buried her India memories deep.

  ‘But you’re still a nurse. Aren’t you?’ Marigold sounds understandably mystified.

  ‘Oh, yes, of course I am!’ Lily says hastily. ‘I meant I liked nursing in India.’ Until that dreadful event happened, the unimaginably awful Incident, she adds silently.

  ‘You would have been the best, and I should know,’ Marigold says gently.

  ‘That form of nursing is no longer my chosen profession.’ The chilly response sounds oppressively stiff.

  Marigold’s large, clear blue eyes are intent on her. She says simply, ‘Why?’

  And Lily shakes her head, for she can provide no answer.

  It is very late, utterly silent and profoundly dark, and in her bedroom Lily sits on a hard chair before the partly open window. The night air is bitingly cold and damp, smelling of the Fens; smelling of dark, slithering things.

  She wonders where that thought came from.

  Why? Marigold said.

  Why.

  Why is nursing no longer your chosen profession?

  You would have been the best, and I should know.

  And over the past days, while Lily has been so deeply and fully engaged in caring for Matron and the girls and staff members who are affected with this debilitating cold, she has been a nurse again and it has become her profession once more; being a private enquiry agent is presently coming a rather poor second.

  Why?

  For the first time in almost two years, Lily braces herself to look at that question.

  She sighs, reluctance that verges on abhorrence flooding her mind. She does not want to go back, even in the safety of her little room and the privacy of her own thoughts. She banged the door so tightly on what happened to her in India – on The Incident – that not even the smallest glimmer of that brilliant southern light shows around the edges or through the keyhole.

  She shuts her eyes.

  She distracts herself, wasting a few moments conjuring up in her mind’s eye a stout wooden door with elaborate iron hinges and latch. Heavy bolts are shot home at the top and bottom and she turns a huge old key in the lock.

  But then suddenly she obliterates the image.

  ‘Stop it,’ she says softly out loud. ‘Stop shutting it away.’

  After all this time she cannot quite believe this is happening.

  Is she really going to open the door and go back inside her memories?

  She waits.

  An image of the small town floats behind her closed eyes. The strong, unadorned walls of the military compound. The beauty of the ancient buildings in the civilian section. The river running in its deep cleft separating the two halves of the settlement. The trees, the flowers. And, soaring up in the most dramatic of backdrops, the mountains that form the Roof of the World.

  In her mind Lily is already back there.

  She opens the stout door and walks into her own past.

  When Lily Raynor completed her five years’ training with St Walburga’s Nursing Service – the nuns and the nurses alike known universally as Swans – she was qualified as a battlefield nurse and a midwife. The convergence of two such different areas of medicine was because not a few of the soldiers of the British army serving far from home took their wives and their families with them. Lily was posted to the small barracks town of Pescha, in the far north-east of India, and her first reaction on climbing down from the train was awe at the majesty of her surroundings.

  Pescha was a beautiful spot. It had been a small kingdom for centuries before its monarch had regretfully accepted the protection of the British Raj, and it had earned a reputation as a place to go when one was sick, weary, sad or simply exhausted from the sheer effort of living in the heat, the dirt and the endless, ceaseless, hurrying, urgent crowds of humanity in the vast lands to the south. The capital city was an oasis of verdant lawns, fountains, trees, flowers, some exquisite old buildings and a brash palace. The surrounding countryside ranged from the long, deep valley that wound through the heart of the country to the gr
aceful curves of the cool foothills and the soaring peaks of the Himalayas to the north, where India bordered Bhutan. The people were prosperous, by the standards of the subcontinent; not wealthy (except for their royal family, who were ridiculously rich), but not many people starved to death. The climate wasn’t too bad: summers could be hot, especially in the south of the country and down in the valley, and winters occasionally brutal, but the opinion of the Europeans who lived there was that it could be a lot worse.

  The necessity for an army barracks had arisen because of border strife. Other covetous eyes had lighted upon Pescha, and neighbouring lords and princes wanted her rich and fertile lands, which supported the cultivation of rice, tea, timber and opium. The British army’s presence issued the polite reminder that Pescha belonged to the Pescharese, and that rampaging invaders were not welcome. The British were the British, however, and managed to turn the situation to their advantage: empire-builders are not known for their philanthropy.

  It was not until several weeks after her arrival that Lily saw anything of the country outside the hospital where she spent her days (and sometimes her nights) and the curtained-off cell in the big dormitory that was her own little piece of privacy. Nurses and nuns worked side by side but slept apart, and the nuns’ dormitory was behind a firmly closed door.

  The hospital was made up of four long, low buildings around a central courtyard. All the senior SWNS nurses were nuns; no matter how good at her job, no lay nurse ever rose to a position of superiority over a nun. On arrival Lily was still a junior nurse; by working harder than she had ever worked, she gained her promotion to senior within a year.

  The work was varied and it took her out of the hospital and into the distant places where injured or sick soldiers needed medical treatment. North-East India opened up before her eyes as the hard-working little locomotives pulled the medical train up impossible gradients and over rickety trestles high above valleys so deep that it was impossible to see the bottom. In the outlying stations the work was tough and often bloody: she learned to assist a doctor lopping off a man’s mangled lower leg without wincing, to extract hideous parasites from pale English flesh without revulsion, to hold a young soldier’s hand as he died in agony crying for his mother and keep back her own tears.

  If she ever thought about the future it was in vague terms; she imagined doing precisely what she was doing, perhaps one day becoming a senior sister in charge of a whole wing …

  But then everything changed.

  No.

  No, no, NO!

  Lily’s voice screams inside her head, her eyes fly open and she finds herself back in her room in the school in the cold Fens. She has gone back into the past as far as she dared and it is enough. She cannot go further.

  But she suspects that this is a crucial moment; a pivotal time in her whole life. That it is now or never.

  And she knows she must.

  Early in 1879, Lily was sent to assist the army doctor carrying out the health checks on the girls in the chakla. Lily knew about the chaklas, or she thought she did. As she was instructed in her new role, she realized the depth of her ignorance.

  The troops of the British army in India were men with the usual male appetites, and, other than the minority whose wives and children were with them, they were single and on six-year placements. It was unrealistic to pretend they would not require the services of prostitutes. The women were procured from the villages; whether by choice or under duress was not made clear. ‘Many of these women are near-starving,’ said the stern-faced nun giving the lecture, ‘and use their bodies in order to survive.’

  The army needed its fighting men to be fit. Once in the chakla, the women were examined regularly for signs of disease. Those found with symptoms were sent to the lock hospitals. For the three weeks of their treatment, the women were regularly examined internally.

  It was a practical necessity, Lily told herself as she scribbled in her notebook, keeping up with the instructing nun’s swift words. Nevertheless, her woman’s soul rebelled at the thought of regular internal examinations.

  But then the impassive voice of the nun went on to speak of the Contagious Diseases Act.

  ‘In order to ensure a healthy supply of prostitutes,’ she said, her face utterly expressionless, ‘the law states that all women discovered in the vicinity of army barracks must be detained and examined, and—’

  Lily raised her hand and heard herself speak.

  ‘I beg your pardon, Sister, but when you say women, do you mean prostitutes?’

  The dark eyes turned to stare at her. ‘I mean precisely what I say, Nurse,’ she said.

  ‘But – what if a woman has innocent business and is no more a prostitute than—’ She had been about to say than you or I, but managed to bite back the words.

  The nun regarded her silently for a few moments. Then, without answering Lily’s stammered question – indeed, with no comment whatsoever – she resumed her lecture.

  When Lily entered the medical officer’s building adjoining the barracks on the first morning of her new posting, she had convinced herself that the Contagious Diseases Act was there as a sort of safety net; that women were not really grabbed and forcibly examined for no more reason than proximity to the soldiers’ quarters.

  She was wrong.

  The first thing that truly shocked her was how young the women were. Most of them weren’t even women: the oldest were perhaps eighteen but the youngest looked barely into puberty.

  She endured more than a week of biting back her revulsion and the furious, angry words she longed to utter: ‘Treat them with dignity! Be gentle! They are human beings, not animals!’

  And then Manda came into the clinic.

  Manda was sixteen, frightened, sad and grieving, apparently numb to the indignities perpetrated upon her. Her looks were European, the lustrous dark hair accompanied by pale skin and blue eyes. As Lily tended her – she had open sores that needed treatment morning, noon and evening – Manda gradually broke her silence. At first it was no more than a whispered ‘Thank you’ when Lily apologized for the pain of the treatment. Then a few muttered words when Lily asked why she was weeping. And, bit by bit, Manda’s terrible story emerged.

  She had been engaged as the personal maid and companion to the wife of a colonel. She believed that her pale looks had led her to this privileged post, and she was deeply grateful, determined to work hard and give the colonel’s wife no cause for complaint.

  But then the colonel’s junior officer saw Manda. Dazzled by her beauty, he began to court her; perhaps he even fell in love with her. There was talk of marriage, but then someone – in all likelihood the colonel’s snob of a wife – managed to impart to the young adjutant that there was ‘something a little bit dubious’ in Manda’s background … she might look like a European, but apparently there was an Indian grandmother …

  So the adjutant abandoned the idea of marriage. Manda adored him, so it seemed a pity not to capitalize on that. For a couple of months he bedded her, and then one night when she slipped away to their usual meeting place, he wasn’t there.

  Shocked, uncomprehending, Manda tried desperately to seek him out. What has happened? she longed to ask. What have I done? She began to haunt the adjutant and, embarrassed, the butt of ribald jokes from his fellow officers, he did not know what to do.

  Until an older and more experienced officer told him.

  Following the older man’s instructions, the young adjutant went to the authorities. He implied Manda was a whore, that she had fallen for him and he’d had her, and now she imagined some sort of attachment between them and would not leave him alone. Manda was promptly taken to the lock hospital and examined. She was found to be free of any of the most prevalent diseases but she had some sores on her vulva that required treatment: contrary to her fond belief, she had not been the sole recipient of the young adjutant’s attentions. Utterly bemused, unable to accept that her beautiful loving soldier had told the medical men that she was a whor
e, Manda retreated into herself.

  ‘Manda is a pretty name,’ Lily said one day in a hopeless attempt to raise a smile. ‘Is it short for Amanda?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘No. It is a Hindi name, and it means important.’

  Important.

  Looking at the girl, fighting to keep the pity from her eyes, Lily thought how ironic that was.

  Manda’s treatment came to an end. She expected to be sent back to the colonel’s house, but the colonel’s wife was having none of it. So Manda was sent to the mahaldarni – the madam – who looked her up and down, gave a curt nod and admitted her to the chakla.

  Lily, certain there had been a mistake, a misunderstanding, hurried to beg an interview with her chilly, detached superior. Lily was dismissed, her protest waved away.

  Some of the nurses and nuns took her aside. ‘It is what happens,’ one of the senior nuns told her quietly. ‘What has been done to your young patient is deeply wrong, but it has the tacit approval of the military authorities and it is backed by the law.’

  The army needed to keep its soldiers happy, Lily thought, blind with fury, and to be kept happy the men had to have access to sex. The women with whom they had sex had to be healthy, or else the men would become unfit for work.

  Simple. Ruthlessly logical.

  But Lily could not let the matter rest.

  Finally she was taken aside by the senior army medical officer for the Pescha region.

  She heard his firm, fast footsteps coming up behind her in a deserted corridor of the hospital. ‘You are making a nuisance of yourself, Nurse Raynor,’ he said in glassy public-school accents. ‘I must ask you to desist.’