The Wonder(5)

Fellow feeling, too, for the other woman lured into this morass. “The second nurse, I don’t suppose I know her?”

The doctor frowned. “Didn’t you make Sister Michael’s acquaintance at supper?”

The almost speechless nun; Lib should have guessed. Strange how they took the names of male saints, as if giving up womanhood itself. But why hadn’t the nun introduced herself properly? Was that what that deep bow had been supposed to signify—that she and the Englishwoman were in this mess together? “Was she trained in the Crimea too?”

“No, no, I’ve just had her sent up from the House of Mercy in Tullamore,” said McBrearty.

One of the walking nuns. Lib had served alongside others of that order in Scutari. They were reliable workers, at least, she told herself.

“The parents requested that at least one of you be of their own, ah…”

So the O’Donnells had asked for a Roman Catholic. “Denomination.”

“And nationality,” he added, as if to soften it.

“I’m quite aware that there’s no love for the English in this country,” said Lib, summoning a tight smile.

McBrearty demurred: “You put it too strongly.”

What about the faces that had turned towards the jaunting car as Lib was driven down the village street? But those men had spoken about her because she was expected, she realized now. She wasn’t just any Englishwoman; she was the one being shipped in to watch over their squire’s pet.

“Sister Michael will provide a certain sense of familiarity for the child, that’s all,” said McBrearty.

The very idea that familiarity was a necessary or even helpful qualification for a watcher! But for the other nurse, he’d picked one of Miss N.’s own famous brigade, she thought, to make this watch look sufficiently scrupulous, especially in the eyes of the British press.

Lib thought of saying, in a very cool voice, Doctor, I see that I’ve been brought here in hopes that my association with a very great lady might cast a veneer of respectability over an outrageous fraud. I’ll have no part in it. If she set off in the morning, she could be back at the hospital in two days.

The prospect filled her with gloom. She imagined herself trying to explain that the Irish job had proved objectionable on moral grounds. How Matron would snort.

So Lib suppressed her feelings, for now, and concentrated on the practicalities. Simply to observe, McBrearty had said. “If at any point our charge were to express the slightest wish, even in veiled terms, for something to eat—” she began.

“Then bring it to her.” The doctor sounded shocked. “We’re not in the business of starving children.”

She nodded. “We nurses are to report to you, then, in two weeks?”

He shook his head. “As Anna’s physician—and having been dragged into this unpleasantness in the papers—I could be considered an interested party. So it’s to the assembled committee that you’re to testify on oath.”

Lib looked forward to it.

“Yourself and Sister Michael separately,” he added, holding up one knobby finger, “without any conferring. We wish to hear to what view each of you comes, quite independently of the other.”

“Very good. May I ask, why is this watch not being conducted in the local hospital?” Unless there was none in this all too dead centre of the island.

“Oh, the O’Donnells balked at the very idea of their little one being taken off to the county infirmary.”

That clinched it for Lib; the squire and his lady wanted to keep their daughter at home so they could carry on slipping food to her. It wouldn’t take two weeks of supervision to catch them out.

She chose her words tactfully because the doctor was clearly fond of the young faker. “If, before the fortnight’s up, I were to find evidence indicating that Anna has taken nourishment covertly—should I make my report to the committee straightaway?”

His whiskery cheeks crumpled. “I suppose, in that case, it would be a waste of everyone’s time and money to carry on any longer.”

Lib could be on the ship back to England in a matter of days, then, but with this eccentric episode closed to her satisfaction.

What’s more, if newspapers across the kingdom were to give Nurse Elizabeth Wright the credit for exposing the hoax, the whole staff of the hospital would have to sit up and take notice. Who’d call her uppish then? Perhaps better things might come of it; a position more suited to Lib’s talents, more interesting. A less narrow life.

Her hand shot up to cover a sudden yawn.

“I’d better leave you now,” said McBrearty. “It must be almost ten.”

Lib pulled the chain at her waist and turned her watch up. “I make it ten eighteen.”

“Ah, we’re twenty-five minutes behind here. You’re still on English time.”

Lib slept well, considering.

The sun came up just before six. By then she was in her uniform from the hospital: grey tweed dress, worsted jacket, white cap. (At least it fit. One of the many indignities of Scutari had been the standard-issue costume; short nurses had waded around in theirs, whereas Lib had looked like some pauper grown out of her sleeves.) She breakfasted alone in the room behind the grocery. The eggs were fresh, yolks sun yellow.

Ryan’s girl—Mary? Meg?—wore the same stained apron as the evening before. When she came back to clear away, she said Mr. Thaddeus was waiting. She was out of the room again before Lib could tell her she knew no one by that name.