Chapter 1 — Updated Oct 20, 2012 — 16,374 characters
The Times
LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1919
DIED OF WOUNDS
ELKINS - on 13th October on the troop ship HMCS Canada, docked in Liverpool. Sergeant Edward Elkins, well loved brother of George Elkins J.P. of Southwell, Nottinghamshire, aged 35.
That was her husband. Philippa’s tea-cup clattered in its saucer and a few heads turned in her direction. She ran her fingertip around the announcement. If the earlier customer had not abandoned his newspaper, she would never have found out. She felt relief surge through her body, followed by an urge to tell someone. She forced the thought aside. No-one in Winchester knew that she was married.
She glanced at the clock above the counter; it was two minutes to eleven. As unobtrusively as she could, she tore the page out of the newspaper and slipped it into her handbag. She paid sixpence for her tea and scone, collected her coat and headed for the door. The High Street had come to a standstill: engines idling; horses reined in; every person motionless. She found a gap between a matchseller and a boy dressed in an oversized coat. Only just in time. Suspended over the street from an ornate black and gold joist, the hour hand of the City clock juddered silently onto eleven. There was a pause, like a supressed gasp, and then the Cathedral bells rang out. The first peal of twelve was loud and distinct, the second muffled. The silence began.
All the men had pulled their shoulders back. Those in uniform thrust their chins forward, thumbs pressed down the seams of their trousers. One of the officers had a scrap of blue paper, a pawn ticket it looked like, pinned to his left lapel. Tears streamed unchecked from the eyes of a man in a wheelchair, cut-off trousers tucked under his stumps. The boy gripped his mother’s hand and stared at his shoes.
How had Edward ended up on that troop ship? She knew that he had sailed to Canada; he had written to his brother George with a forwarding address in Vancover.
‘Couldn’t have got himself much further away,’ George had said with a mixture of glee and pity.
She found it hard to believe that he would have volunteered; he must have been conscripted over there. In Southwell, they would be quick to blame her, as they had always done: he wouldn’t have run away to Canada if she’d been a proper wife to him. His death would become her fault. Something brushed her arm. The boy’s mother had grasped her hand, an unconscious act as was clear from the woman’s pale cheeks and unblinking eyes. People would expect her to feel like that.
The tolling of a single bell signalled the end of the silence. It was over and she had not even prayed. She eased her fingers out of the woman’s hand, wove her way through the crowd and turned into the passageway by the City Cross. Her route crossed the Square with its huddle of shops and eating houses and onto the tree-lined avenue leading to the Cathedral’s west front. It had rained overnight; droplets as plump as buckshot were still dripping from the bare branches and a musty smell rose from the damp earth. She walked beneath the first flying buttress on the south side, clutching her coat collar to her neck as the wind gusted around her, and then set off across the Inner Close towards Kingsgate. A group of men were standing in the corner by the south transept wall, their heads bowed. They were surrounded by crates of all sizes, Diver’s Gang scrawled on every surface. A hose emerged from inside a huge metal wardrobe and snaked across the grass. All but one of the men wore stained flannel trousers and pressed cloth caps to their chests. The other man, a tall figure dressed in black, waved a gangly arm and beckoned to her.
She left the path. She liked Canon Creswell Strange; he had been filling in as College chaplain since the start of the War and always took the time to ask about her patients. He strode over to meet her, a brief smile flickering across his narrow face. He took her arm and guided her into the midst of the men.
‘Gentlemen, this is Nurse Lambert from the College’s Sick House.’ A patched army greatcoat lay on the grass. He grasped the hem and removed the coat with a flourish. ‘So, what’s the verdict?’
The woman was dead; that much was certain. Her arms and legs were splayed in a star, mouth open to reveal yellowing teeth, blanched skin marked by pink blotches. Her tweed coat was buttoned up to the neck. The sleeves had bunched around her elbows revealing swollen, wrinkled finger-ends. As if she had spent too long in the bath. Philippa knelt and touched the woman’s dark, curly hair. It was wet, dirt and thin twigs caught in the strands, and dyed. The roots were silvery grey. And through the coat, three, four…no, five slits rimmed with watery blood. Died of her wounds.
‘It’s as if she’s been bayonetted,’ Strange muttered. He crossed himself - in a rather perfunctory way she noticed.
‘Who is she?’
‘I don’t know. The face seems familiar,’ he added, as if to himself.
‘Did you find a handbag?’
‘Ah ha, one was fished out from in there.’ He pointed to a trench that had been dug at right angles to the Cathedral wall. ‘It was empty I’m afraid.’
‘Where does that trench go?’
‘To the foundations below the waterline, where the concrete was put in before the War. The Dean mentioned it to me only the other day, as it happens. He’s asked the diver to check that the foundations are still sound.’
‘She was down there too?’
Strange nodded. ‘Someone had tried to weigh her down but she didn’t sink properly.’ He placed a hand on the shoulder of the stocky man beside him. ‘Gave you quite a shock eh Jim. Why don’t you and the lads head down to the Eclipse. I’ll join you later.’
The Diver’s Gang did not need to be asked twice and soon she was alone with Canon Strange and the body. He was standing in the sort of stooped stance often adopted by tall men. A thick strand of fair hair screened his eyes and she could not tell if he was praying. At last, she broke the silence.
‘Do you think she was dead when she went in?’
‘I don’t know; I hope so.’
‘If she was, how did the body get here?’
‘Now, there’s a question. The men were working until about 7 last night to finish the trench and the gates were locked at 8. I’ve looked at the ground surrounding the trench; there’s no sign that anything’s been dragged over it.’
‘She could have been carried.’
‘Risky, don’t you think.’ Strange wrapped his black cloak across his chest. ‘I swear this Cathedral has weather all of its own.’
She bent down and peered into the trench: a shallow muddy slope leading into darkness. ‘Someone was bound to find her.’
‘So it would seem.’
She returned to the body. ‘May I take a closer look?’
‘Of course, if you wish.’
She felt inside the coat pockets. The left one was empty. In the right, she found a fabric purse containing a few shillings, an empty cigarette case and one glove: soft leather and lined with thick fur.
‘These gloves must have cost a bit,’ she said.
‘Is that so? I’m no expert on these things.’
She unbuttoned the coat as far as the waist. The woman was wearing a cherry-red velvet dress, with a square neckline rather low cut for someone of her age. The bust was misshapen. She slipped her hand tentatively inside the dress.
‘There’s something in here.’ She extracted a soggy envelope.
The Canon’s hangdog expression was transformed by a broad smile. ‘Open it then.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for the police?’
‘No need.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Yes,’ his voice held a note of irritation, ‘no time like the present.’
Two folded sheets of paper were inside. She peeled them apart eagerly and held the first up to the light. The writing had dissolved into feathery streaks.
‘Never mind.’ Strange stretched out a surprisingly burly hand. ‘Give the letter to me. I’ll dry it out at home. Something may be salvageable…Ah, the paper is unusually thick. Well, thank you Miss Lambert. I won’t detain you further.’
‘Oh…’ It suddenly hit her how much she dreaded returning to the over-heated Sick House and the whining over-privileged school boys with their invented maladies. All but one, that was. And with no-one but the boys to keep her company, she knew that Edward’s death would preoccupy her thoughts. ‘What happens now?’
‘The process of law and order will grind into action.’ Strange widened his eyes mischievously. ‘I’ve helped the police out once or twice in the past, so they might ask me to look into it. I wasn’t always a clergyman, you know.’
She would have given a good deal not just to be Nurse Lambert from the College Sick House. ‘I would be very happy to assist you Canon,’ she blurted out, ‘if they were to ask you to investigate that is. I could keep the records and you may need a medical opinion…’ She tailed off. She sounded ridiculous; what could she offer this man?
Strange pursed his lips. ‘It would be rather irregular,’ he murmured.
She sighed; why had she expected the Canon to be different to all the others? ‘I understand,’ she said.
His brown eyes regarded her searchingly; it was not an unkind stare.
‘I will consider it,’ he said. ‘Will you be at Chapel tomorrow morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I’m taking the service. Let’s talk again afterwards.’
* * *
On her way back to Sick House, Philippa popped into the porters’ lodge beneath Main Gate where, as usual, her pigeon hole was empty.
Frank, the head porter, was leaning on the counter reading the Daily Mirror. He looked up and smiled, deep wrinkles extending from the corners of his eyes, like the rays on a childish drawing of the sun. ‘No news is good news, I always say miss.’
‘I suppose so. How are things?’
‘Can’t complain.’
‘Boys behaving themselves?’
Frank chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly but nothing that can’t be handled. I ‘ad some junior Collegeman in ‘ere earlier, saying how it was so cold in his dorm that he’d be able to build a snowman on ‘is bed. If there’d been any snow, that is.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘What I say every year – I told ‘im he’d soon get used to it. You keeping warm enough in your rooms miss? You just say, and I’ll get you some more logs.’
‘Thank you Frank.’
She left the lodge and entered the yard outside the Warden’s house. Apart from a tall man who was retreating towards the stables, the yard appeared deserted. Suddenly, from behind the gateway wall, a woman backed into her path. She was muttering to herself, guttural, hissing sounds almost like a foreign language. She knocked against Philippa’s arm, stumbled and fell back against the wall.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Philippa began automatically and then recognizing the Warden’s wife, ‘Oh, Mrs Urchfont, are you hurt?’
Teresa Urchfont examined her stockings and then looked up with a smile. ‘No harm done. Entirely my fault, my dear. Tell me, has my husband ordered the new medicine cabinet that you wanted?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Leave it with me.’ Teresa took Philippa’s arm and squeezed it between slender fingers. She smelt of lavender. ‘I’ll have a word. Can I walk your way?’
Teresa walked as if trying to conserve energy, carefully side-stepping puddles and piles of leaves. She was one of those women who seemed swathed in a haze of elegance - her outfits chosen to accentuate her long limbs, conversation a string of charming enquiries and anecdotes. Philippa felt like a frump next to her. She insisted on coming all the way to the Sick House door. Philippa wondered if she had ever been this far beyond the main buildings before.
As Philippa entered Sick House, four of her charges glanced around in alarm, their fans of playing cards suspended in mid-air.
‘Feeling better I see.’
‘No, Miss,’ Digby, the oldest, said. ‘Prentis was bored. We were just trying to cheer him up. We’ve signed his cast and…’
‘Back to your beds. Now.’
Digby uncrossed his legs reluctantly and jumped down from Prentis’s iron-framed bed. The other two followed, shuffling on heel-trodden slippers and flopping dramatically onto rumpled sheets.
‘I’ll be along shortly to check on each of you.’
The boys immediately began a chorus of coughing and sniffing. She ignored them and made for the far end of the ward where a low fire glowed in the grate. She threw on a log and then turned her attention to her fifth patient. A shaft of sunlight weakly illuminated Christopher Steele’s sleeping face. His fair-haired head was twisted so that he lay on his left cheek, his hand tucked beneath it. He was still so pale. She pulled back the tent of bed-sheets that she had erected over the entire right-side of the boy’s body. The bandages on his arm and chest were dry. That was encouraging. Christopher had arrived in August, a transfer from military hospital, and for weeks afterwards, his bandages would become soaked with yellowy-white puss within a few hours of being replaced. To an untrained eye, his skin seemed normal, exceptionally soft and pasty perhaps, but undamaged. In fact his skin had been boiled by a mortar’s hot blast.
‘God knows what’s happened to his insides,’ his Captain had said, ‘the doc did all he could. “Keep him warm, well-fed and infection free,” he said. “The rest is up to nature.”’
‘I’ll do my best, but why was he allowed to sign-up? He was only 15 then.’
‘He told the recruiting sergeant he was 19.’
Anyone who had seen Christopher’s soft features, narrow shoulders and concave chest would have known that to be a lie.
She gently unwrapped the bandages that covered the stump just below Christopher’s right knee. The military surgeons had done a neat job. The skin had already fused around the end, reshaping the birth mark that used to run from his lower thigh to upper calf. Suddenly he let out a sharp cry, a cry of dreaming terror, and then was still. The other boys had fallen silent and were staring at him with frightened curiosity.
‘Will Steele be alright, Miss?’ Digby whispered.
‘Of course he will.’ Philippa replaced the bandages and turned her attention to Digby. ‘Now, let’s take a look at your throat. Say “ah.” Wider. Much better. Back to lessons tomorrow I think.’
‘Oh, Miss.’
The door to the ward opened and Dorothy Bristow strode purposively towards Christopher’s bed. She had a swaying walk that Philippa guessed was due to a rickety pelvis. She was wearing a wide black hat and long charcoal-grey coat with a sailor collar. She stretched out a gloved hand.
‘Philippa, I was passing…how’s my brave boy today?’
‘Much the same as last week. He’s asleep at the moment.’
‘I won’t disturb then. Just a quick glance. My fellow Councillors do like to know how he’s getting on.’
Philippa smiled; and visiting a young war hero would certainly not do Dorothy Bristow’s election prospects any harm.
‘Has he had any other visitors today?’ Dorothy continued.
‘His sister Bella, this morning. She brought one of the new puppies to see him.’
‘How nice. If you don’t mind my saying dear,’ Dorothy glanced up from Christopher’s face, ‘you’re looking rather out of sorts.’
‘Oh, I’m fine. I’ve just come from the Cathedral. They found a body in a trench.’
‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know. A woman.’
Dorothy sighed. ‘So much violence around these days. Our young men have been infected by the terrible things they’ve had to endure. And some of them have returned home to find that they’re not welcome or there’s no work or someone’s taken their place. No wonder…’ She paused. ‘What news from the teaching hospitals?’
Philippa hesitated; it was a subject that she had tried to put to the back of her mind. ‘All of my applications refused, I’m afraid,’ she said, deliberately keeping her voice bright.
‘What, all of them?
‘Yes.’
‘What reasons did they give?’
‘None: a couple of lines with a barely polite “thank you but no thank you”. Not to worry, I’ll apply to be a registered nurse once the new law goes through.’
Dorothy frowned and banged the tip of her umbrella on the floorboards. ‘It’s high time things changed. We know why they refused you.’ She paused and glanced around at the boys in their beds as if seeking an audience. ‘When I’m returned to Westminster, I’ll fight to make the professions truly open to women.’
Philippa nodded; a shame then that she was still too young to vote.
The Times
LONDON, TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 1919
DIED OF WOUNDS
ELKINS - on 13th October on the troop ship HMCS Canada, docked in Liverpool. Sergeant Edward Elkins, well loved brother of George Elkins J.P. of Southwell, Nottinghamshire, aged 35.
That was her husband. Philippa’s tea-cup clattered in its saucer and a few heads turned in her direction. She ran her fingertip around the announcement. If the earlier customer had not abandoned his newspaper, she would never have found out. She felt relief surge through her body, followed by an urge to tell someone. She forced the thought aside. No-one in Winchester knew that she was married.
She glanced at the clock above the counter; it was two minutes to eleven. As unobtrusively as she could, she tore the page out of the newspaper and slipped it into her handbag. She paid sixpence for her tea and scone, collected her coat and headed for the door. The High Street had come to a standstill: engines idling; horses reined in; every person motionless. She found a gap between a matchseller and a boy dressed in an oversized coat. Only just in time. Suspended over the street from an ornate black and gold joist, the hour hand of the City clock juddered silently onto eleven. There was a pause, like a supressed gasp, and then the Cathedral bells rang out. The first peal of twelve was loud and distinct, the second muffled. The silence began.
All the men had pulled their shoulders back. Those in uniform thrust their chins forward, thumbs pressed down the seams of their trousers. One of the officers had a scrap of blue paper, a pawn ticket it looked like, pinned to his left lapel. Tears streamed unchecked from the eyes of a man in a wheelchair, cut-off trousers tucked under his stumps. The boy gripped his mother’s hand and stared at his shoes.
How had Edward ended up on that troop ship? She knew that he had sailed to Canada; he had written to his brother George with a forwarding address in Vancover.
‘Couldn’t have got himself much further away,’ George had said with a mixture of glee and pity.
She found it hard to believe that he would have volunteered; he must have been conscripted over there. In Southwell, they would be quick to blame her, as they had always done: he wouldn’t have run away to Canada if she’d been a proper wife to him. His death would become her fault. Something brushed her arm. The boy’s mother had grasped her hand, an unconscious act as was clear from the woman’s pale cheeks and unblinking eyes. People would expect her to feel like that.
The tolling of a single bell signalled the end of the silence. It was over and she had not even prayed. She eased her fingers out of the woman’s hand, wove her way through the crowd and turned into the passageway by the City Cross. Her route crossed the Square with its huddle of shops and eating houses and onto the tree-lined avenue leading to the Cathedral’s west front. It had rained overnight; droplets as plump as buckshot were still dripping from the bare branches and a musty smell rose from the damp earth. She walked beneath the first flying buttress on the south side, clutching her coat collar to her neck as the wind gusted around her, and then set off across the Inner Close towards Kingsgate. A group of men were standing in the corner by the south transept wall, their heads bowed. They were surrounded by crates of all sizes, Diver’s Gang scrawled on every surface. A hose emerged from inside a huge metal wardrobe and snaked across the grass. All but one of the men wore stained flannel trousers and pressed cloth caps to their chests. The other man, a tall figure dressed in black, waved a gangly arm and beckoned to her.
She left the path. She liked Canon Creswell Strange; he had been filling in as College chaplain since the start of the War and always took the time to ask about her patients. He strode over to meet her, a brief smile flickering across his narrow face. He took her arm and guided her into the midst of the men.
‘Gentlemen, this is Nurse Lambert from the College’s Sick House.’ A patched army greatcoat lay on the grass. He grasped the hem and removed the coat with a flourish. ‘So, what’s the verdict?’
The woman was dead; that much was certain. Her arms and legs were splayed in a star, mouth open to reveal yellowing teeth, blanched skin marked by pink blotches. Her tweed coat was buttoned up to the neck. The sleeves had bunched around her elbows revealing swollen, wrinkled finger-ends. As if she had spent too long in the bath. Philippa knelt and touched the woman’s dark, curly hair. It was wet, dirt and thin twigs caught in the strands, and dyed. The roots were silvery grey. And through the coat, three, four…no, five slits rimmed with watery blood. Died of her wounds.
‘It’s as if she’s been bayonetted,’ Strange muttered. He crossed himself - in a rather perfunctory way she noticed.
‘Who is she?’
‘I don’t know. The face seems familiar,’ he added, as if to himself.
‘Did you find a handbag?’
‘Ah ha, one was fished out from in there.’ He pointed to a trench that had been dug at right angles to the Cathedral wall. ‘It was empty I’m afraid.’
‘Where does that trench go?’
‘To the foundations below the waterline, where the concrete was put in before the War. The Dean mentioned it to me only the other day, as it happens. He’s asked the diver to check that the foundations are still sound.’
‘She was down there too?’
Strange nodded. ‘Someone had tried to weigh her down but she didn’t sink properly.’ He placed a hand on the shoulder of the stocky man beside him. ‘Gave you quite a shock eh Jim. Why don’t you and the lads head down to the Eclipse. I’ll join you later.’
The Diver’s Gang did not need to be asked twice and soon she was alone with Canon Strange and the body. He was standing in the sort of stooped stance often adopted by tall men. A thick strand of fair hair screened his eyes and she could not tell if he was praying. At last, she broke the silence.
‘Do you think she was dead when she went in?’
‘I don’t know; I hope so.’
‘If she was, how did the body get here?’
‘Now, there’s a question. The men were working until about 7 last night to finish the trench and the gates were locked at 8. I’ve looked at the ground surrounding the trench; there’s no sign that anything’s been dragged over it.’
‘She could have been carried.’
‘Risky, don’t you think.’ Strange wrapped his black cloak across his chest. ‘I swear this Cathedral has weather all of its own.’
She bent down and peered into the trench: a shallow muddy slope leading into darkness. ‘Someone was bound to find her.’
‘So it would seem.’
She returned to the body. ‘May I take a closer look?’
‘Of course, if you wish.’
She felt inside the coat pockets. The left one was empty. In the right, she found a fabric purse containing a few shillings, an empty cigarette case and one glove: soft leather and lined with thick fur.
‘These gloves must have cost a bit,’ she said.
‘Is that so? I’m no expert on these things.’
She unbuttoned the coat as far as the waist. The woman was wearing a cherry-red velvet dress, with a square neckline rather low cut for someone of her age. The bust was misshapen. She slipped her hand tentatively inside the dress.
‘There’s something in here.’ She extracted a soggy envelope.
The Canon’s hangdog expression was transformed by a broad smile. ‘Open it then.’
‘Shouldn’t we wait for the police?’
‘No need.’
‘Are you certain?’
‘Yes,’ his voice held a note of irritation, ‘no time like the present.’
Two folded sheets of paper were inside. She peeled them apart eagerly and held the first up to the light. The writing had dissolved into feathery streaks.
‘Never mind.’ Strange stretched out a surprisingly burly hand. ‘Give the letter to me. I’ll dry it out at home. Something may be salvageable…Ah, the paper is unusually thick. Well, thank you Miss Lambert. I won’t detain you further.’
‘Oh…’ It suddenly hit her how much she dreaded returning to the over-heated Sick House and the whining over-privileged school boys with their invented maladies. All but one, that was. And with no-one but the boys to keep her company, she knew that Edward’s death would preoccupy her thoughts. ‘What happens now?’
‘The process of law and order will grind into action.’ Strange widened his eyes mischievously. ‘I’ve helped the police out once or twice in the past, so they might ask me to look into it. I wasn’t always a clergyman, you know.’
She would have given a good deal not just to be Nurse Lambert from the College Sick House. ‘I would be very happy to assist you Canon,’ she blurted out, ‘if they were to ask you to investigate that is. I could keep the records and you may need a medical opinion…’ She tailed off. She sounded ridiculous; what could she offer this man?
Strange pursed his lips. ‘It would be rather irregular,’ he murmured.
She sighed; why had she expected the Canon to be different to all the others? ‘I understand,’ she said.
His brown eyes regarded her searchingly; it was not an unkind stare.
‘I will consider it,’ he said. ‘Will you be at Chapel tomorrow morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I’m taking the service. Let’s talk again afterwards.’
* * *
On her way back to Sick House, Philippa popped into the porters’ lodge beneath Main Gate where, as usual, her pigeon hole was empty.
Frank, the head porter, was leaning on the counter reading the Daily Mirror. He looked up and smiled, deep wrinkles extending from the corners of his eyes, like the rays on a childish drawing of the sun. ‘No news is good news, I always say miss.’
‘I suppose so. How are things?’
‘Can’t complain.’
‘Boys behaving themselves?’
Frank chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t say that exactly but nothing that can’t be handled. I ‘ad some junior Collegeman in ‘ere earlier, saying how it was so cold in his dorm that he’d be able to build a snowman on ‘is bed. If there’d been any snow, that is.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘What I say every year – I told ‘im he’d soon get used to it. You keeping warm enough in your rooms miss? You just say, and I’ll get you some more logs.’
‘Thank you Frank.’
She left the lodge and entered the yard outside the Warden’s house. Apart from a tall man who was retreating towards the stables, the yard appeared deserted. Suddenly, from behind the gateway wall, a woman backed into her path. She was muttering to herself, guttural, hissing sounds almost like a foreign language. She knocked against Philippa’s arm, stumbled and fell back against the wall.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Philippa began automatically and then recognizing the Warden’s wife, ‘Oh, Mrs Urchfont, are you hurt?’
Teresa Urchfont examined her stockings and then looked up with a smile. ‘No harm done. Entirely my fault, my dear. Tell me, has my husband ordered the new medicine cabinet that you wanted?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Leave it with me.’ Teresa took Philippa’s arm and squeezed it between slender fingers. She smelt of lavender. ‘I’ll have a word. Can I walk your way?’
Teresa walked as if trying to conserve energy, carefully side-stepping puddles and piles of leaves. She was one of those women who seemed swathed in a haze of elegance - her outfits chosen to accentuate her long limbs, conversation a string of charming enquiries and anecdotes. Philippa felt like a frump next to her. She insisted on coming all the way to the Sick House door. Philippa wondered if she had ever been this far beyond the main buildings before.
As Philippa entered Sick House, four of her charges glanced around in alarm, their fans of playing cards suspended in mid-air.
‘Feeling better I see.’
‘No, Miss,’ Digby, the oldest, said. ‘Prentis was bored. We were just trying to cheer him up. We’ve signed his cast and…’
‘Back to your beds. Now.’
Digby uncrossed his legs reluctantly and jumped down from Prentis’s iron-framed bed. The other two followed, shuffling on heel-trodden slippers and flopping dramatically onto rumpled sheets.
‘I’ll be along shortly to check on each of you.’
The boys immediately began a chorus of coughing and sniffing. She ignored them and made for the far end of the ward where a low fire glowed in the grate. She threw on a log and then turned her attention to her fifth patient. A shaft of sunlight weakly illuminated Christopher Steele’s sleeping face. His fair-haired head was twisted so that he lay on his left cheek, his hand tucked beneath it. He was still so pale. She pulled back the tent of bed-sheets that she had erected over the entire right-side of the boy’s body. The bandages on his arm and chest were dry. That was encouraging. Christopher had arrived in August, a transfer from military hospital, and for weeks afterwards, his bandages would become soaked with yellowy-white puss within a few hours of being replaced. To an untrained eye, his skin seemed normal, exceptionally soft and pasty perhaps, but undamaged. In fact his skin had been boiled by a mortar’s hot blast.
‘God knows what’s happened to his insides,’ his Captain had said, ‘the doc did all he could. “Keep him warm, well-fed and infection free,” he said. “The rest is up to nature.”’
‘I’ll do my best, but why was he allowed to sign-up? He was only 15 then.’
‘He told the recruiting sergeant he was 19.’
Anyone who had seen Christopher’s soft features, narrow shoulders and concave chest would have known that to be a lie.
She gently unwrapped the bandages that covered the stump just below Christopher’s right knee. The military surgeons had done a neat job. The skin had already fused around the end, reshaping the birth mark that used to run from his lower thigh to upper calf. Suddenly he let out a sharp cry, a cry of dreaming terror, and then was still. The other boys had fallen silent and were staring at him with frightened curiosity.
‘Will Steele be alright, Miss?’ Digby whispered.
‘Of course he will.’ Philippa replaced the bandages and turned her attention to Digby. ‘Now, let’s take a look at your throat. Say “ah.” Wider. Much better. Back to lessons tomorrow I think.’
‘Oh, Miss.’
The door to the ward opened and Dorothy Bristow strode purposively towards Christopher’s bed. She had a swaying walk that Philippa guessed was due to a rickety pelvis. She was wearing a wide black hat and long charcoal-grey coat with a sailor collar. She stretched out a gloved hand.
‘Philippa, I was passing…how’s my brave boy today?’
‘Much the same as last week. He’s asleep at the moment.’
‘I won’t disturb then. Just a quick glance. My fellow Councillors do like to know how he’s getting on.’
Philippa smiled; and visiting a young war hero would certainly not do Dorothy Bristow’s election prospects any harm.
‘Has he had any other visitors today?’ Dorothy continued.
‘His sister Bella, this morning. She brought one of the new puppies to see him.’
‘How nice. If you don’t mind my saying dear,’ Dorothy glanced up from Christopher’s face, ‘you’re looking rather out of sorts.’
‘Oh, I’m fine. I’ve just come from the Cathedral. They found a body in a trench.’
‘Who is it?’
‘I don’t know. A woman.’
Dorothy sighed. ‘So much violence around these days. Our young men have been infected by the terrible things they’ve had to endure. And some of them have returned home to find that they’re not welcome or there’s no work or someone’s taken their place. No wonder…’ She paused. ‘What news from the teaching hospitals?’
Philippa hesitated; it was a subject that she had tried to put to the back of her mind. ‘All of my applications refused, I’m afraid,’ she said, deliberately keeping her voice bright.
‘What, all of them?
‘Yes.’
‘What reasons did they give?’
‘None: a couple of lines with a barely polite “thank you but no thank you”. Not to worry, I’ll apply to be a registered nurse once the new law goes through.’
Dorothy frowned and banged the tip of her umbrella on the floorboards. ‘It’s high time things changed. We know why they refused you.’ She paused and glanced around at the boys in their beds as if seeking an audience. ‘When I’m returned to Westminster, I’ll fight to make the professions truly open to women.’
Philippa nodded; a shame then that she was still too young to vote.
