Corridors of the Night (5 page)

‘Crow’s a lot like you,’ Monk finished for him. ‘Perhaps working for Crow would be a good way to start . . . that is, if you really want to, and he’ll have you?’

Scuff looked at Monk, then away again. ‘D’yer think he would?’ Then he wished he had not asked. He really did not want to hear the answer. It hurt when you wanted something really badly.

‘Why do you want to be a doctor?’ Monk repeated.

Scuff had the answer, he was just afraid that it sounded silly.

‘Don’t you know?’

‘Yes! ’Course I do!’

‘Then tell me. I won’t be the only person who asks you.’

No, but he was the one who mattered most. Now he had to tell him.

‘’Cos I like what Hester does, and Crow. They see real bad pain that people can’t help themselves, and they get right in there and try to fix it. It’s difficult, and sometimes they can’t do it, but at the least they stop people being so scared, and feeling alone, and like nobody cares. They treat everyone the same, whoever they are. It . . . it kind of makes us all the same, ’cos take yer clothes off, get washed clean, like, and we all look the same.’

Monk was silent. They were back walking slowly now. He looked very thoughtful.

Scuff felt as if he had to go on. He couldn’t bear neither of them saying anything.

‘I know it’s very difficult, an’ yer gotter study a whole lot, an’ work very very hard. But yer gotter do that for most things. It’s kind of beautiful . . . how it all fits together, and you got somebody live, with hands and feet, an’ feelings inside.’

‘It is wonderful,’ Monk agreed. ‘And I think that’s a very good reason, in fact the best. Do you want to tell Hester yourself?’

Scuff did not want to tell Hester how he felt. He cared too much, and he felt very foolish even to imagine he could do what she did, or anything like it. But he wanted to so much he would not give up.

‘Do you want me to tell her?’

Scuff nodded. ‘Yeah . . .’

Monk put out his hand and touched him briefly on the shoulder. ‘Then I will,’ he promised.

It was over, at least for now. Scuff felt as if he could cry with relief. But that would make him a baby, and he was far too big for that.

Monk waited until the following morning before he told Hester about his conversation with Scuff. She came home from night duty early, and by the sound of her footsteps he could tell that she was unusually tired. He had tried arguing with her before, pointing out that there was no need for her to work such hours. She had answered with a bleak smile that the need was not for herself, it was for the patients. It was temporary. Jenny Solway would probably return soon and that would be the end of it.

Now as he sat up in bed he could hear her moving slowly. He slipped on a jacket over his nightshirt and went downstairs to meet her.

She was standing in the middle of the kitchen. Only the smallest of the gas lamps was lit, leaving the far walls, with their shelves of pots and pans, in shadow. He had left the light for her deliberately.

She turned and saw him, kettle in her hand. Contrition filled her face. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make a noise.’ She smiled at him. ‘It isn’t six yet. You can go back to sleep . . .’

He took the kettle from her and put it on the hob, then bent to open the grate and rake the fire, but it was already beginning to burn up well.

‘I did that,’ she said quietly. ‘It must be what woke you.’

‘Hungry?’ he asked.

She looked pale and there were bruised-looking shadows around her eyes. He guessed she had lost another patient that night. It would be the second one in two days. He knew the work was as important as anything a person could do, he just wished it were resting on someone else.

‘Not really,’ she said, trying to be both gentle and truthful at the same time.

He did not argue but went straight to the pantry. He returned with a small wedge of fruitcake. He cut it into two slices, and then as the kettle boiled he made the tea, with cups for both of them. He did not ask how her night had been. Instinctively he already knew, just as she knew when he had had a day filled with tragedy and a feeling of helplessness. He hated adding to it with Scuff’s fears, but he had promised that he would tell her, and there would be no other time. He hated seeing so little of her, only moments here and there, and too seldom alone.

Monk waited until Hester had eaten her cake and drunk half of her tea before he filled her cup again, and then told her about his conversation with Scuff.

‘Are you sure?’ she said with a furrow of anxiety between her brows. ‘He’s not doing it to please me?’

‘There’s probably a bit of that in it,’ he conceded. ‘He wants us to be proud of him.’ He smiled. ‘And he was terrified I would be upset he didn’t want to join the River Police.’

‘And are you?’ she asked, meeting his eyes frankly.

‘No, not at all. I don’t want to be in command of him. I would have to lean backwards not to be thought to favour him. I think it would be very difficult. And I would be terrified in case he were hurt . . . or worse.’

She relaxed a little. ‘Medicine is very hard. It’s difficult and you pay for your mistakes terribly. You . . .’ She stopped. ‘I’m sorry. You know all that.’

‘You should be proud of him,’ he said, reaching across the table to touch her hand. ‘I’m pretty sure he wants to give something back to the people he left behind when he came to live with us. And he wants to be like you,’ he added softly. ‘Don’t . . . don’t put him off.’

Hester was exhausted and grieving, full of the heavy burden of failures and so proud of Scuff and afraid of the pain of such failures ahead for him that the tears spilled down her cheeks.

‘I won’t,’ she promised.

He stood up and came around the table to kneel beside her and hold her in his arms.

After a short rest, when Scuff was on his way to school and Monk had gone down to the river to catch the ferry across to Wapping, Hester went straight to the ferry herself, also to the north bank and then on the omnibus to Portpool Lane. She walked along in the shadow of the brewery to the large, rambling old warren of houses that had once been a thriving brothel. It was now a clinic for many of the same women whose place of business it had been. Added to them were any others without a home and whose illness or injury had rendered them in need.

Hester had no skill in raising money to sustain the clinic, but she had the organisational abilities and the nursing skill and experience that made it seldom necessary to call in a doctor willing and able to lend his greater knowledge without payment.

She went in through the main door. She had no time for more than a brief acknowledgement of the elderly woman who sat at the desk to admit or deny those who came seeking help, a hot meal, or simply somewhere to lie at peace, knowing they would not be molested or thrown out. It was a completely discretionary decision and Hester seldom interfered with it. She had learned over the years to tell a conniver or a malingerer from a genuine case, but she was still far behind Hetty in the skill. Hetty had been a prostitute herself too long for anyone to fool her. She knew every lie and excuse there was and had tried most of them.

Today Hester only wished her good morning, and went straight on into the warren of passages and rooms to find Claudine Burroughs. She would almost certainly be either in the kitchen storeroom or the medicine room at this time of the day. Claudine was a well-to-do woman, unhappily married and without children. She had offered her services in the clinic several years ago now. To begin with she had seen it as a worthy charity, and something of a defiance of the highly conventional part of society to which she belonged. Slowly she had come to care for the people, even the highly dubious and disreputable Squeaky Robinson, who had originally owned and run the brothel, until Oliver Rathbone had tricked him out of it. Squeaky had rebelled, outraged that he, the master trickster, had wound up outsmarted by a gentleman, even if he was a lawyer as well. His choice had been a long term in prison, or to remain with a home in the clinic and work for his keep by managing the finances of the place, strictly in accordance with the law. Grudgingly he had accepted the latter.

Hester reached the medicine room, and saw the door open and the light on inside. She felt a rush of relief when she saw a very small boy, who looked six or seven years old, thin and weedy and with boundless energy. He was throwing pieces of crumpled newspapers around, his crop of thick, unkempt hair bouncing up and down with each movement.

‘Good morning, Worm,’ Hester said affectionately as she reached him.

He looked up, recognised her, and his face shone with pleasure. ‘I’m working,’ he announced.

‘I can see,’ she replied appreciatively. ‘Do you think you have enough papers there for a load to take downstairs?’

He regarded them gravely, and then looked back at her. ‘Yeah!’ he agreed. There were not so very many, but he understood dismissal from overhearing adult conversation. He was stunted by years of half starvation, and he was actually nearly nine, and very definitely a survivor. He picked up the bundle carefully.

‘They’re for lighting fires,’ he told her, just in case she didn’t know. He set off down the passageway, not dropping any until he was nearly at the stairs.

Claudine came out of the medicine room to greet Hester. She was a big woman, too broad at the hip for grace, but with her beautiful hair and the intelligence in her eyes she was not without charm, although she would have suspected undue charity in the judgement if anyone had told her so. She smiled with affection as she saw Hester. Then with her quick understanding she recognised that Hester was troubled by something deeper than the ordinary day-to-day concerns of the clinic.

‘What is it?’ she asked without prevarication. She knew all the social conventions of talking without saying anything of meaning, and despised it. It was not the way to treat a friend.

‘I’ve got to stay at the hospital longer than I’d expected,’ Hester answered. ‘I can’t leave yet, even if Jenny comes back, and I’ve heard nothing from her. I’ve discovered children there who are . . .’ She gave up trying to skirt around it and, glancing down the passageway to make sure Worm was not within earshot yet, she told Claudine about Charlie, Maggie and Mike, and her whole experience in the hospital. ‘There’s no one else to care,’ she finished. ‘I have to stay. Please . . . will you take over everything here, at least for a while?’

‘Of course,’ Claudine said immediately. For her there was no other answer possible.

Hester looked at her and realised there was something troubling her, and she was annoyed with herself for not even having asked.

‘What is it?’ she asked now. ‘Is it going to be difficult?’

‘No,’ Claudine said too quickly.

‘Yes it is.’ Hester knew it immediately.

Claudine would have been appalled if she knew how obviously vulnerable she was. Worm was somebody else’s child, an urchin off the river-bank, undersized, completely without education, but in the very few months he had been living at the clinic where he had food every day and a bed every night, she had come to care about him as deeply as a good woman cares for any small, lost creature.

‘You’re worried about Worm?’ Hester asked.

Claudine spoke awkwardly, worried about appearing foolish. ‘He . . . he thinks he’s no use here . . . accepting charity, and he prefers going off before someone tells him he has to go. I . . .’ The distress in her face was obvious. She would not say she loved the child, but the truth of it was naked in her face.

‘Find him something to do, even if you work him until he falls asleep on his feet,’ Hester said, smiling, then looked again at the door just as Worm reappeared.

‘Yer done yet?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Don’t be cheeky!’ Claudine reproved him, anxiety sharpening her voice.

Worm looked startled.

Claudine flushed with annoyance at herself. She had reacted too strongly. Deliberately she softened her tone. ‘Mrs Monk has told me of a great deal of work that needs to be done. I shall –
we
shall need you to work very hard. There will be no running off to the river to play. In fact I think it would be best if you were to sleep here all the time, so that if we need you we shall know where you are.’

Worm looked at her with wide eyes. ‘Wot are we goin’ ter do?’ There was excitement in his voice, as if he were being given some kind of special treat.

Hester understood with a deep ache inside her. What Worm needed was to belong. If there were work to do, then he was safe from being sent away.

‘Do you know how to paint?’ Hester suddenly asked.

Worm blinked.

‘Not pictures,’ Hester added quickly. ‘I mean walls. If I gave you a bucket of paint and a big brush, could you paint on to a wall . . . as far as you could reach?’

‘Yes,’ Worm said immediately, staring at her without blinking. He was lying. She knew it, and she knew why. He wanted to please, especially to please Claudine.

‘Good,’ Hester said with complete gravity. ‘You will be very important to us. Will you please be here all the time, until we have it done?’

‘Yes,’ Worm said generously, nodding his head. ‘’Course.’

‘Thank you,’ Claudine replied with great relief.

‘I think I had better make sure Mr Robinson understands exactly what we need.’ Hester looked across Worm’s head directly at Claudine.

Claudine smiled very slightly, but the colour was back in her face.

‘Oh, yes,’ she agreed fervently. ‘Please do.’

‘Paint it!’ Squeaky Robinson said, aghast. He was a lean, scrawny man with a cadaverous face, long, stringy, grey-white hair and wildly uneven teeth. He rose to his feet in outrage as he stared across his littered desk at Hester. ‘Paint what, for Gawd’s sake?’

‘Anything,’ Hester replied. ‘All the door frames to begin with. It can go on from there.’

‘Have you any idea how many doors there are in this place?’ Squeaky demanded. ‘There are dozens!’ he went on without waiting for her to reply. ‘More than dozens!’ he added.

‘Good,’ Hester said quickly. ‘Think what a difference it will make.’

‘I am thinking,’ Squeaky said incredulously. ‘Money! Lots and lots of money. Have you suddenly inherited a fortune you forgot to mention?’ He drew in his breath and carried straight on. ‘And why paint? Why not something we really need, like medicine, or bandages, or new blankets before the ones we’ve got fall to bits? Why not even food, for Gawd’s sake?’