The Pull of the Stars(58)

I blinked and nodded.

I noticed a brown smudge on her collar; I wondered if she knew it was there. There was that opulent fur coat slung over the back of the chair that held her gramophone. Also a folded hospital blanket and a pillow on the floor behind the desk; was the philanthropist locum kipping here like some tramp?

Dr. Lynn followed my gaze. Her voice was jocular: I can’t get home much under the current circumstances.

The influenza, you mean?

That and the police.

Then she must have heard they’d barged into the hospital looking for her. Did she know I’d put them off the scent for now? It felt too awkward to ask.

Dr. Lynn said, When I have to go out, these days, I take cabs instead of riding my tricycle.

That image made my mouth turn up at the corners.

I’ve been trying to pass for an officer’s widow in a coat borrowed from a comrade who’s married to a count, she added with a derisory gesture at the fur. I affect to be a little lame in my left leg.

Now a yelp of laughter escaped me. The whole situation reminded me of a slapstick sequence in a picture.

Then I sobered and said, May I ask…is it true? Not your leg.

Is what true?

Was Dr. Lynn going to make me spell it out—what she was wanted for?

She shook her head and said, Not this time. All we Sinn Féiners were doing last spring was protesting against the plan to extend conscription to Ireland. This so-called German plot was a fiction to justify the police banging us up, with the result that almost all my comrades have been held without charge in British prisons since.

I wondered if that could really have happened, that the gunrunning conspiracy was trumped up. Dr. Lynn hadn’t denied her part in the Rising of ’16, after all, so if she claimed innocence on this occasion, I was inclined to believe her.

Something else occurred to me. If she was in hiding at the moment, lying low at her flu clinic or seeing private patients, why on earth had she agreed to fill in at this big hospital, where we were all strangers to her and many of the staff, like Groyne, would be happy to see her dragged off in handcuffs? Except that…surely even Groyne would have to admit how much we needed competent doctors.

I said suddenly, I fobbed them off this afternoon. The peelers who came looking for you, I mean.

Did you, now? Well, thanks.

She held her hand out, surprising me. I shook it. Hard and warm.

My voice came out shrill: They could be back tomorrow. It’s not safe for you here.

Oh, my dear girl, nowhere’s safe. But sufficient unto the day and all that.

I should have been back on the ward by now, but I lingered. On the desk stood a silver framed photo, Dr. Lynn arm in arm with a smiling woman. I asked, Your sister?

Her smile was lopsided. No, I’m afraid my family tried to have me declared a lunatic when I was deported, and even now they won’t let me come home for Christmas.

I’m so sorry.

That’s Miss Ffrench-Mullen in the picture, the dear friend I live with—when I’m not camping in box rooms, that is. We met in the Belgian refugee relief effort, and she’s funding my clinic.

Clearly Dr. Lynn did nothing in the conventional way. I was suddenly aware that I was being nosy; I muttered my thanks and turned towards the door.

Has the O’Rahilly infant tried the breast?

Oh, she’s latched on well already.

Very good. Nourishment direct from above. Not that these slum women have much to spare, Dr. Lynn added with a sigh. That baby will suck the marrow from her mother’s bones and still have less chance of surviving her first year than a man in the trenches.

That horrified me. Really?

She said sternly, Infant mortality in Dublin stands at fifteen per cent—that’s what living in the dampest, most crowded housing in Europe will do. Such hypocrisy, the way the authorities preach hygiene to people forced to subsist like rats in a sack. Year after year newborns are sent out in their frail battalions, undefended against dysentery, bronchitis, syphilis, TB…and the death rate for illegitimates is several times higher again.

I thought of Honor White’s babies. The difference between them and Mary O’Rahilly’s could hardly be physiological; I supposed those born out of wedlock had so few on their side fighting to keep them alive.

Dr. Lynn rolled on furiously. Ah, well, constitutional debility, the cushioned classes sigh. But perhaps slum children wouldn’t be so bloody debilitated if we tried the experiment of giving them clean milk and fresh air!

I felt rather hectored but also shaken by her fervour.

She put her head to one side, as if weighing me up. In our proclamation, there’s one line that’s very close to my heart: cherishing all the children of the nation equally.

I stiffened at the mention of the manifesto the rebels had pasted up all over the city two years ago announcing their imaginary republic; I remembered skimming a copy (bottom torn off) on a buckled lamppost. I said gruffly, But to found a nation on violence?

Now, Julia Power. Has any nation ever been founded otherwise?

Dr. Lynn held up her palms. And really, she added, would you call me a violent woman?

Tears prickled behind my eyes. I said, I just don’t understand how a physician could have turned to the gun. Nearly five hundred people died.

She didn’t take offence; she looked back at me. Here’s the thing—they die anyway, from poverty rather than bullets. The way this godforsaken island’s misgoverned, it’s mass murder by degrees. If we continue to stand by, none of us will have clean hands.