The Pull of the Stars(74)

Into the pipe, I thought. I nodded.

The doctor said under her breath, Once this is over, Miss Ffrench-Mullen and I are hatching great plans to found our own hospital specifically for the infants of the poor.

How splendid!

Won’t it be, won’t it just. Rooftop wards, good nurses of any denomination, all the women doctors we can hire, nanny goats for fresh milk…

I caught Bridie’s eye and almost laughed; it was the nanny goats.

Dr. Lynn added, Also a holiday home in the country to restore the mothers.

Mary O’Rahilly said, That sounds lovely.

I’ll send up orderlies for Mrs. White, the doctor told me on her way out.

No next of kin on the woman’s chart, I remembered. That meant—I flinched—a pauper’s burial.

I took the nail out of the wall and readied my watch for the scratch.

Bridie whispered: Can I do it?

If you like.

I passed over the watch and nail.

She turned away from Mary O’Rahilly discreetly. She found a space and scored the silver with a deep, neat circle for Honor White.

I wondered how many more mothers I’d have to mark on my watch over the decades to come. The lines would overlap, lying together, tangles of hair. My words came out huskily: Such a number.

Bridie said, But think of all the others. The women going about their lives. The children growing.

I stared at the White baby. Arms little thicker than my thumbs flung wide on the crib mattress as if to embrace the world.

Groyne marched in, carrying a stretcher as he might a shield. Nurse Power, I hear you’ve lost another one.

That made me sound like a careless child dropping pennies.

Behind him, O’Shea clasped his hands to hide their tremor.

Groyne looked at the cot on the left. Ah, so the scarlet woman’s gone west.

I ignored that slur on Honor White and wondered who’d told the orderlies she wasn’t married.

In the shades now, he said to O’Shea with a melancholic relish. Riding the pale horse…

I asked, Is it all a pure joke to you, Groyne? Are we just meat?

Everyone stared at me.

After the event in question, you mean, Nurse? He slashed his throat with one finger, smiling. In my view, we are. Napoo, finito, kaput.

He tapped his sternum and added, Your humble friend included.

I couldn’t think of a riposte.

Groyne made me a stiff little bow and laid the stretcher on the floor.

O’Shea helped him set Honor White’s draped body down on it, and they carried her out.

Her baby, in the crib, showed no sign of knowing what he was losing.

I busied myself stripping her cot.

Bridie asked softly, Why are you so hard on Groyne?

I bristled. Don’t you find him grotesque? The constant ditties, the morbid vulgarity of the man. Went off to war but never got within whiffing distance of a battle, and now he swans around here, the greasy bachelor, trying out his music-hall numbers on women in pain.

Mary O’Rahilly looked disconcerted.

I knew I shouldn’t be speaking this way in front of a patient.

Bridie said, He’s not a bachelor, actually. What’s the word? Not just a widower, but someone who used to be a father.

My heart was hammering. When was this?

Years and years ago, before the war. Groyne lost his whole family to the typhus.

I cleared my throat and managed to say, Sorry, I wasn’t aware. I suppose the word is still father, even if…how many children?

He didn’t tell me.

How did you learn all this, Bridie?

I asked had he a family.

I was so ashamed. I’d assumed Groyne had made it to this point in his life unscathed because he’d come home from the war with a steady grip, an unmelted face, his conversational powers unimpaired. I’d never managed to look past the jokes and songs to the broken man. Hale and hearty and in torment; trapped here without those he loved, serving out his time. Groyne could have drunk away his military pension, but no, he was here every day by seven a.m. to carry the quick and the dead.

Mary O’Rahilly said, I don’t mean to bother you, Nurse Power…

After some hemming and hawing she admitted that her nipples were very painful, so I took down a jar of lanolin to rub into them.

I checked Honor White’s baby but his nappy was still dry. So weak and small he looked to me all of a sudden; was Sister Luke right not to rate his chances?

I said to Bridie, We need to baptise young Mr. White.

Now? she asked in a startled voice. Us?

Well, there’s no priest at the hospital today, and any Catholic’s allowed to do it if it’s urgent.

Mary O’Rahilly asked with an uneasy thrill, Have you christened babies before, Nurse?

Not yet, but I’ve seen it done on a few.

(Dying ones, I didn’t say.)

I can remember the words, I assured her.

Bridie objected: But we don’t know what she wanted to call him.

True, and that troubled me. Honor White had been so veiled and bleak, and I’d thought there’d be time…

Bridie said grimly, Still, I suppose it’s better we pick a name than the staff wherever he ends up.

I asked her, Will you be godmother?

A half laugh.

No, but will you, Bridie? It’s a solemn thing.

As if she were at a circus, Mary O’Rahilly cried, Go on!