Tomorrow, Jerusalem

by Tomorrow, Jerusalem (retail) (epub)

  He lifted his head. ‘There’s been an accident,’ he said baldly.

  ‘Accident? What sort of accident?’ Considering the cold panic that had suddenly stopped her heart and dried her throat the words were remarkably composed. Toby! Something terrible had happened to Toby!

  ‘Your friend, Miss Dickson—’

  It took a moment to sink in, a moment to fight the swift and terrible feeling of relief. Not Toby then, at least, ‘Josie? What’s happened to her?’

  ‘She was brought to the hospital the day before yesterday.’ He was still not looking at her, but his voice was cool, clinical. The voice of a doctor. ‘There was an accident at the laundry a week or so ago.’ He lifted his head then, and in his eyes that belied the cool voice was pure pain at what she must be told. ‘She caught her hand – her right hand – between the rollers of the steam mangle.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Sally’s hand had gone to her mouth, her eyes were appalled.

  ‘She was taken to St Mary’s, and the hand was dressed,’ he continued quietly. ‘Four or five days later she went to her own doctor. She was in terrible pain. The hand was poisoned. He sent her to us.’

  She was staring at him, very pale, her hand still to her mouth. ‘What—?’ She could not go on.

  ‘We couldn’t save the hand.’ His voice was very quiet, the words very clear.

  She turned from him, took a distracted step towards a blank, damp-marked wall. Searing images flickered like fire in her brain. She pressed her hands to her eyes for a moment, trying to blot them out. ‘Poor Josie! Oh, poor Josie!’

  Charity phlegmatically consulted the watch that was pinned to her massive bosom, folded her arms, sniffed again, loudly and unpleasantly.

  Ben came around the table, caught Sally by the shoulders, turning her towards him. ‘Sally, come home. You’ve done enough. Miss Dickson needs you.’ He hesitated. ‘Everyone needs you. The children are asking for you. And young Toby – he has a calendar – he marks off every day—’

  ‘No!’ She pulled roughly away from him. Her cheeks were shining with tears. ‘No! I’ve done it and I’ll stick with it. Toby’ll have to wait. And Josie – there’s nothing I can do for her, is there? I can’t—’ she swallowed, ‘I can’t give her her hand back, can I?’ The thought was too much for her. In a sudden, violent movement she buried her face in her hands and sobbed wildly. Josie, of all people. Kind, generous, loving Josie. What harm had she ever done that she should suffer this?

  She felt his supporting arm go about her, but he made no other attempt to soothe or comfort her, nor did he try to stem the flood of tears. He simply held her shaking body, cupped the head that was buried in his chest with a big hand, holding her. At last the tears eased. The shock was ebbing. She steadied herself, drew away from him, took the handkerchief he wordlessly offered. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘There’s no need. It’s perfectly natural. You’ve had an awful shock.’ His voice was very calm, almost impersonal. She slipped away from his still-supporting arm, stood for a moment with her back to him, fighting for control, mopping at her streaming eyes. Then she turned, head up, still sniffing a little, held out the handkerchief. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Keep it.’

  She shook her head. ‘They won’t let me.’

  A spasm of something she could not identify – irritation? exasperation? – flickered across his face. He opened his mouth.

  She held up a swift, absolutely intransigent hand. ‘No, Doctor Patten. Thank you, but no. I don’t want you to pay my fine. I’ll serve my sentence.’ She could not put into words the complexities of how and why it was so important to her that she should see her sentence through. She did not try. Somehow, strangely, she was certain that he knew.

  He surveyed her in an odd, searching silence for a moment. ‘You do know’, he leaned back on the table and folded his arms, ‘that I don’t in fact need your permission? I could pay your fine willy-nilly and out you’d go, bag and baggage.’

  ‘Yes, I know. But you won’t.’

  ‘How do you know that? I’ve paid Hannah’s against her wishes.’

  She shrugged. ‘I just know you won’t. Hannah’s different.’

  He pushed himself away from the table, his square, ruddy face inscrutable. ‘No, Sally Smith,’ he said, ‘I think perhaps you’re the one who’s different. You are certainly the most stubborn young woman I’ve ever come across in my life. Not to say the most wilful.’

  She grinned a watery grin, not her usual style but a creditable attempt. ‘Thanks.’

  His eyes crinkled. ‘I’m not sure it was meant as a compliment.’

  ‘That’s not to stop me taking it as one if I feel like it.’ The jauntiness was a little ragged at the edges, but like the smile it was a good try. The tears that somehow refused to stop still streamed down her face. She ignored them.

  He held out his hand. ‘If you’re sure?’

  She took it. It was hard and strong and very warm. Her own felt very rough and very dirty. She shook his hand quickly and stepped back. ‘Absolutely. It isn’t a life sentence, you know. In three weeks, one day and about three hours I’ll be back to plague you all.’

  He nodded, but a shadow had passed over his face. Again, intuitively, she sensed something beyond the simple words that had been spoken between them. ‘Doctor Patten?’ The ragged edge of grief and panic made her husky voice sharper than she had meant. ‘Josie – she will be all right, won’t she? I mean,’ she swallowed, ‘apart from the hand?’

  He hesitated for too long, confirming the sudden rise of her fears. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t say. She’s very sick. Very sick indeed.’

  ‘But – you can make her well? Can’t you? You – you’re a doctor – she’s in hospital. That’s what you’re for, isn’t it?’ Miserably aggressive she caught his arm, ‘To make people well?’

  He nodded. ‘Yes. That’s what we’re for.’

  ‘I mean – she hasn’t got the plague, has she? People can live with only one hand. Can’t they? She’ll be all right. Won’t she?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Time’s up,’ Charity said tonelessly, heaving herself away from the door.

  Sally’s shoulders slumped a little. She stepped back from Ben, her arms crossed in front of her, holding herself as if against the cold. Her face was set.

  For a brief moment he stood indecisively.

  ‘Time’s up, sir,’ Charity was brusque.

  He nodded, turned to the door, stopped, threw Sally one more questioning glance.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Back you go, Twenty-Three.’ The wardress who had escorted her from her cell had entered the room. Not unkindly she took Sally’s arm. ‘Time’s up.’

  ‘Yes.’ Numbly Sally allowed herself to be ushered out into the corridor. Ben Patten’s firm footsteps sounded upon the stone floor as he walked very fast away from her, his back ramrod straight, his head held at an angle that somehow hinted at anger.

  ‘Doctor Patten!’ Her voice was urgent.

  He turned.

  ‘Give her – Josie – my love?’

  He nodded unsmiling. ‘Of course.’ And then he turned and walked briskly away from her; and if he knew that she stood for a long moment watching after him, yet he did not turn again to look back before he disappeared around the corner of the passage.

  III

  For all her determination, Sally did not in the end, serve out her sentence. For when Ben Patten came to the prison again, just twelve days after that first visit, one look at the austere face and troubled eyes told her that this time no choice was being offered. This time he would not take ‘no’ for an answer. In those twelve intervening days the thought of Josie’s tragedy had haunted her, in the true sense of the word, always at her shoulder, trailing in her footsteps, hounding her dreams. Her already broken nights had been punctuated with nightmares, the long, mind-numbing days full of miserable worry. The tension in the end had betrayed her into a loss of temper and control that had landed her in the pu
nishment cells on bread and water for three days, her only consolation the recollection of the satisfying crack her heavy shoe had made as it had connected unerringly and violently with Charity’s shin.

  On the nineteenth day of her confinement, back in her own cell which after the punishment cell she noted with grim amusement felt almost like home, as she woke to the bells and the tramping feet there was nothing to indicate that the day would be any different from any other. Not until mid-morning when, as she sat huddled over her sewing, the door crashed open to reveal Charity, grimfaced as always, was the monotony broken.

  ‘On yer feet, Twenty-Three.’

  Sally stood.

  Charity jerked a dirty thumb. ‘With me.’

  ‘Where to?’

  The rough grey head turned. ‘Ter the Guv’nor’s office, no less.’

  Defensive alarm stiffened Sally’s spine. ‘What for?’

  The woman slouched against the door, her fleshy mouth turned down in a parody of an unpleasant smile. ‘Seems you got friends in ’igh places. ’Oity-Toity.’

  Puzzled, Sally followed her through the maze of passages and staircases to the Prison Governor’s office. And there, standing by the window, was Ben. Sally’s eyes were riveted to him from the moment she entered the room.

  ‘You’re being released, Smith.’ The Governor, a tall, thin woman, sallow-faced and severe, was peremptory. ‘Your things are in the ante-room. Sign for them and change, please.’

  Sally was still looking at Ben. ‘I asked you’, she said quietly and stubbornly, ‘not to pay my fine.’

  ‘I haven’t.’ Not by a flicker did Ben betray the shock that the sight of her had dealt him. Pasty-faced, thin to gauntness, her bones stood through skin that looked paper-thin and the usually clear hazel eyes were dull and strained.

  The Governor looked up from the papers she had been studying. ‘You are being released into Doctor Patten’s custody on compassionate grounds.’

  ‘Compassionate?’ Sally stopped. Her anxious eyes scanned Ben’s sombre face. ‘Compassionate grounds?’ she asked very softly, a thread of painful question in the words.

  ‘Get your things, Smith.’ The Governor was impatient. ‘And for God’s sake have the sense to stay out of trouble. I don’t want to see you here again. God above, haven’t we got problems enough without you people?’

  ‘Get changed, Sally,’ Ben said very quietly. ‘I’m taking you home.’

  It was half an hour later, when they were sitting in the hansom that was taking them back to Poplar that Sally finally asked the question which had hammered in her head ever since the first sight of Ben Patten’s face. In all her prison dreams of freedom she had never – could never have – foreseen such an unjoyful release. ‘It’s Josie?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s not—?’ She stopped.

  He shook his head. For the first time she noticed how tired he looked. He turned a compassionate face to her. ‘No. She isn’t dead. But there’s very little hope.’

  She had known it – somehow she had known it – but nevertheless the shock was awful. ‘But, how can that be? She can’t die! Not like this! She can’t!’

  Ben said nothing. The hansom swayed and rattled on cobblestones.

  Sally shook her head. ‘She can’t!’ she said again doggedly.

  Ben reached out and took her thin, dirty, hardened hand in his. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  And Sally, staring at him in misery, thought she had never heard anything so horrifyingly final as those two simple words.

  She stared at him defiantly. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t – I won’t – believe it.’

  Ben said nothing.

  The hansom rattled steadily through the summer streets to Poplar.

  Chapter Seven

  I

  Josie Dickson was dying; worse, she knew she was dying, though she did her calm and gallant best to keep that knowledge from those she loved.

  ‘Oh, I’m miles better, love,’ she said smiling, sweet and dismissive, at Sally. ‘I’ll be out of here in no time. I’ve been asking and asking to go home, and I’m sure Doctor Patten would let me. Even Dad agrees I’d be better off at home. It’s just silly Dan that’s making me stay. But Sally! Just look at you! You’re thin as a rail! What on earth have they done to you?’

  ‘Well, Holloway isn’t exactly the Savoy.’ Sally was still struggling to master the shock of her first sight of Josie, warned though she had been – warm, clear-skinned, bright-eyed Josie, who had become skeletal in her brief illness, her skin like thin and bloodless silk stretched too tightly over fragile bone, an unhealthy flush in her cheeks, her brown eyes sunken and burned out with recurrent fever. Her left hand lay as if already lifeless upon the starched white counterpane. The right arm of her nightdress was pinned in awkward emptiness across her breast. Two days before, in a final attempt to stop the spread of the poison that was slowly but certainly killing her, the surgeon had amputated to the elbow. Sally, weak still from her own recent ordeal and less in charge of her emotions than she cared to admit even to herself had been shaken almost to tears at first sight of her friend; but Dan, before ever allowing her to the bedside, had been fierce. ‘I tell you flat, Sal – I don’t want any tears. Whatever you do, don’t cry. Don’t let her see that the sight of her upsets you. I won’t have it. She needs help. She needs strength. She needs to see a smiling face. She needs normality. The last thing she needs is anyone weeping over her. If you can’t manage it, then you’ll have to stay away from her. We won’t save her by collapsing all over her in tears. She needs hope. If you can’t give her that then I tell you straight I won’t let you see her.’

  And Sally, understanding, had promised and had fought the horror that had gripped her at the sight of that gaunt, pain-filled face. Yet still she had to clear her throat awkwardly before continuing. ‘You don’t get fat on prison gruel.’

  The thin left hand moved a little. Sally took it and squeezed it gently, afraid even in her own weakened state of crushing the brittle-feeling bones, of tearing that hot, fine-drawn skin. ‘I think you were ever so brave.’ Josie smiled again, the old, sweet smile, ‘I was ever so proud of you. I couldn’t have done it. Not for anything. It must have been awful.’

  Sally grinned lopsidedly. ‘You forget – I’m an old lag. I knew what to expect.’

  ‘That makes you more brave, not less.’ Josie’s voice was positive. ‘Miss Patten said so too. When she came with Doctor Patten to see me. She said everyone was proud of you.’

  Sally shrugged and shook her head. ‘And what about you, then? Lord – I can’t leave you for a minute, can I? Look at the state you get yourself into the moment I take my eye off you!’

  Josie moved her head on the pillow and laughed a little. Her eyes were heavy-lidded. As Sally watched they drooped with sickly weariness.

  ‘You’re tired,’ she said anxiously. ‘Should I go?’

  The hand that lay in hers moved spasmodically. ‘No. Don’t go. Stay a while. I’ll be all right in a tick.’

  They sat in silence. Josie propped against her mountain of pillows with her eyes shut, apparently dozing, Sally tense as a leashed animal upon the chair beside her watching her, willing strength into that terrifying frail body, resolution into the failing will. Around them the bustle of visiting time washed like a sea of movement about the still island of the high, narrow bed. Nurses in their long dark skirts, high collars, frilled caps and vast pinafores swished past, rustling with inevitable, starchy indifference. Other visitors murmured to their bedridden friends and relatives, or sat in difficult silence too distressed or perhaps simply too awkward to speak. Beyond the narrow window, behind Josie’s still, gaunt face, warm June sunshine flooded the sky and turned the air, even in the dust of the overcrowded city to summer gold.

  ‘Sally?’ Josie’s eyes flickered open suddenly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘You – you have made it up with Dan, haven’t you?’

  Sally nodded, faint colour in
her cheeks. ‘Course.’

  ‘I can’t bear you to be bad friends.’

  ‘We’re not. Course we’re not.’

  ‘He can be pig-headed I know—’

  Sally grinned at that. ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘—but he loves you.’

  Sally ducked her head, looked at their two hands linked upon the counterpane, her own thin, hard, full of strength, Josie’s with pale, oddly blotched skin and fingers that could barely curl about the narrow hand that held them.

  ‘Sally—’ the low voice was insistent.

  Sally lifted her head.

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘He does love you.’ The lax fingers twitched a little. ‘Please – don’t hurt him.’

  ‘I won’t.’ The words were guarded. ‘You know I won’t.’

  The reassurance seemed to satisfy the sick girl for all its ambivalence. She sighed a little. Closed her eyes again.

  Sally waited until the even rhythm of her breathing spoke of true sleep then gently disentangled her fingers from the limp hand and stood up. At the door of the long ward Dan stood waiting. For a brief, silent moment her eyes met his stubborn, unflinching gaze. Before she could speak a brisk nurse paused by her side. ‘Miss Smith?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Doctor Patten asked that you spare him a moment.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Will you follow me, please?’

  Before following the nurse Sally stopped for the space of a heart-beat by Josie’s silent brother, put up a hand gently to touch his cheek as she passed. His slow smile was difficult, edged with the misery he doggedly refused to acknowledge. She followed the nurse down a dreary, seemingly endless corridor, their footsteps echoing sharply from the impersonal tiled walls. In the brown-painted, cluttered office into which Sally was shown were a desk and chair, a huge wooden filing cabinet, a screen folded haphazardly against the wall and a high couch covered with a brown blanket. There was paper everywhere. A glass-fronted cupboard in the corner was filled with neat rows of jars and bottles. There was no sign of Ben Patten.