CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
That night, I had changed into my nightgown and was sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing my sore feet while Martha brushed out her hair and Nina fastened her stockings for night shift.
“What dress will you wear?” Martha asked Nina. “For the wedding?”
Nina clasped a garter to a stocking and shrugged. “My mother’s, I suppose.”
“You suppose?”
“Well, she’ll have to dig it up, won’t she? It’s in the attic somewhere. The moths may have eaten it to pieces.”
“What color is it?”
“Lavender.”
“Oh, that will look well on you.” I could not imagine lavender looking well on Nina, but I rubbed my feet and said nothing. Martha went on. “What does it look like?”
Nina threw the hems of her skirts down over her substantial legs. “Like a dress, I suppose.”
“Nina, you are the worst! What of the sleeves, the hem? Does it have lace?”
“There’s lace at the throat, I suppose. I’ve only ever seen it in my mother’s photograph, so what do I know about the hem? Who cares about hems, anyway?”
“I do! You know it’s how I live, through picturing your wedding. I don’t think I’ll ever have one of my own. I’ll be at Portis House forever.”
She said this with such infallible good cheer, the same cheer with which she scrubbed bedsteads and mopped tiles, that I couldn’t help but look at her curiously. “Doesn’t it bother you?”
“Doesn’t what bother me?”
“Being stuck here. So far from home. From anywhere. In this place.”
She had finished brushing her hair, and she set the brush on her nightstand. In the light of the bedside lamp, the marks of tiredness and hard work faded from her face. Her dark blond hair had been carelessly tossed over one shoulder. “It isn’t so bad here,” she said, “especially in summer. This is a good job.”
Don’t you see the ghosts? I wanted to ask. Don’t you hear the nightmares? But Jack had said the nurses and the orderlies never saw or heard things. Only the men, who were mad in the first place. To try to convince these two of what I had seen seemed pointless—an attempt to make them as frightened as I was.
“Besides,” said Martha, “you said yourself that you don’t have a beau.”
“No. I most definitely don’t.”
“Well, some of us are just destined to be lifelong nurses, that’s all. It isn’t easy to be a married nurse, you know.” She lifted her chin. “We’re dedicated to our calling. Like Boney.”
“Or Matron,” Nina said.
“No,” Martha replied. “Matron was married.”
“What?” I shot back up in bed.
Martha’s eyes widened as she saw our expressions. “Boney told me. She really isn’t so bad, you know, if you give her a chance. Anyway, Boney said Matron used to be married, and she even had a son. But he died—Boney wouldn’t say what happened, but I think it was very sad—and her husband either went away or died. I don’t know which.”
We all digested this for a long moment. Matron, mannish Matron, had had a son?
“Well.” Nina’s voice was gruff. “She’s a career nurse now—that’s for certain.”
“Like us,” said Martha.
I sighed and swung my legs up on the bed, lying down. “That’s very flattering, Martha, but I’m sorry to say I’m not going to be a lifelong nurse.” And I was sorry, now that the words came out. It was nice to have at least one person’s good opinion. “I already have incident reports against me, and the chances are Mr. Deighton is going to sack me when he reads them.”
Martha gasped, and even Nina stopped and stared at me. “I’ve never had an incident report,” Martha said.
“You’ll get us all in trouble,” complained Nina.
“You won’t have to worry about it after I’m gone.” I lay back down and put my arms behind my head, pretending that raw, naked fear wasn’t eating at me as I said it. “Perhaps as my last act at Portis House I’ll ask Boney how she gets her hair so yellow.”
Martha giggled guiltily, but Nina said, “It’s natural.”
“It never is!” said Martha.
“If that color’s natural,” I said, “I’ll eat my cap.”
“It’s true,” said Nina as Martha got into bed and turned her lamp down. “Where would she get hair dye in a place like this? Besides, her mother came to visit once and her hair was exactly the same.”
Martha was laughing through her nose. “Kitty, you have to eat your cap.”
“Shut up,” I said, throwing my hairbrush at her, though she parried it easily. “You eat yours if you’re so convinced.”
“Don’t leave like the others,” said Martha. “I like you.”
“More fool you, then,” I told her, blushing in the dark. “Go to sleep.”
? ? ?
I found the clearing just past the trees, as Maisey had described. At some point, perhaps, the lady of the house had set it up as a pretty garden spot: Two wrought-iron benches were arranged at right angles to each other, looking off toward the marshes and the sea, as if guests would come out here for tea. But the lady and her guests would have had to make their sweaty way over the uneven ground, covered in clumps of grass and overgrown weeds, as no path had ever been built. The place looked disused, abandoned and left to rot.
I arrived only a few minutes past two o’clock, having successfully strong-armed Matron into giving me an hour off as Maisey had suggested. I pulled off my cap and apron as I walked, liking the feeling of shedding them even for a few moments.
A red-haired young woman sat on one of the benches, wearing a smart tweed jacket and matching skirt. Her hair was pinned up in effortless style, her gloved hands in her lap, but the ladylike impression was ruined by the wisps of red hair that escaped to frame her cheeks, the hat that sat crumpled and forgotten on the bench next to her, and the mud-splattered bicycle that had been propped carelessly against a nearby tree. She rubbed a gloved finger nervously up and down the bridge of her nose and jumped to her feet when she saw me coming.
“Oh, hullo,” she said. “You must be Kitty, then.”
I nodded and took her outstretched hand. She froze when I came closer. She stared at the marks on my neck. I nearly flinched, but I held myself still.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s happened to you.”
“I’m fine.” I looked around the clearing, which was overgrown with weeds. “I’ve never been here before,” I said.
“Hideous, isn’t it?” She recovered herself and smiled at me. One of her front teeth was crooked, just enough to make her face look charming and off-kilter. “It was one of Mrs. Gersbach’s projects. She thought she’d have garden parties. But the wind comes in terribly off the marshes, and there’s no view to speak of, so she abandoned the idea.”
I blinked. “You knew the Gersbachs.”
“Oh, yes. I came here scores of times. We’re getting a bit ahead of things, though I do want to tell you all about it. I want to tell you everything.”
She was keyed up, excited. Her fair complexion, so easily aggravated, was flushed. I looked past her shoulder again at the bicycle behind her. “Did you ride that here?”
“Oh, that?” She glanced at it as if she’d forgotten. “Yes, of course. You can ride one over the bridge if it isn’t too windy, though it’s jolly hard on the legs.”
I stared at it. I’d never ridden one. We didn’t have much use for them in London, where you walked, or took the tube when you could afford it, and anyone trying to ride a bicycle through the crowded streets would be taking his life in his hands. “Do you ride it in skirts?”
Maisey shrugged. She really had ridden in skirts, I realized—she must have hiked her hem up over her calves to do it. I looked her over again. She was careless but not slatternly, sporty with her sun-red nose and windblown hair. I would never have ruined such an expensive suit by bicycling across a bridge in it, but her thoughtlessness suggested she had a closet full of even nicer clothes.
We sat on the benches, and I riffled in my pockets before I could forget. “Here,” I said, holding out the locket.
“Right.” She took it from me, rubbed her thumb affectionately over it, and dropped it in her pocket. “Anna Gersbach gave it to me, you know. You can keep the boots.”
I flushed. “I told you in my letter I’d pay you for them out of my salary. And the book is just a loan, until I’m done reading it.”
She shrugged again. “It’s nothing to me. Really. I can’t believe they fit you so well. I never liked them much, which is probably why I left them. They’re better on you.”