Corridors of the Night (9 page)

‘I doubt he would still be alive if you had been any less diligent.’ Hester meant that. Radnor might well have survived out of sheer will to feed on the relationship. ‘Please come so I can tell you more of what will happen,’ she added.

Adrienne yielded and followed Hester along the corridor to the small room where nurses could take the necessary breaks now and then. There was a small burner where a kettle could be boiled and Hester immediately lit it and began to prepare the teapot and two cups.

There was nothing of real importance to tell Adrienne, but she could make it up easily enough. What she really wanted was to persuade her of the necessity of getting several hours of sleep herself. Tired people made mistakes. Every fear was larger when the emotional strength was worn out. Whatever they did, Radnor would die someday. Adrienne needed to be free of the guilt for living on, being younger, stronger, most of her life still ahead.

She made the tea, piping hot, and they sat together sipping it, along with some excellent biscuits, and she was glad to see that Adrienne ate until the plate was empty. She wondered when Adrienne had last eaten a full meal.

Adrienne had finished her tea. She leaned forward a little as if to stand up.

‘Your father has told me about some of his adventures,’ Hester said quickly. ‘He has seen so many things most of us don’t ever imagine, and he describes them so vividly.’

Adrienne smiled and relaxed back again. ‘Oh, yes. He will live more fully in one year than most men do in their whole lives.’ Her face was bright with admiration.

Radnor had spoken only of himself. Was that self-obsession, or did he assume Hester would take it for granted that Adrienne had been on at least some of his adventures?

‘I have been only to the Crimea, and to America once, at the very start of their civil war,’ Hester said.

‘That doesn’t sound very pleasant.’ Adrienne looked at her with interest, perhaps even a touch of compassion. ‘I’ve been to Paris. It’s a wonderful city, so beautiful, so . . . special. There’s a magic in the air. Does that sound silly?’

‘Not at all. Tell me something about it.’

‘My father took me,’ Adrienne began. ‘It was a little while ago now, but I shall remember it as long as I live.’

Hester listened for half an hour, reboiled the kettle and drank more tea as Adrienne told her about Paris, how her father knew it so well, his passion for the beauty of it, the history, and the little out-of-the-way corners most people never found.

Her face was animated; her eyes bright, her voice lifted with enthusiasm, and admiration, not for the city so much as the man so passionately alive who had shown it to her.

She mentioned nowhere else. Radnor had spoken of a dozen places. Was Paris the only one to which he had taken her?

When at last Adrienne left, still determined to check on her father, Hester finally escaped Magnus Rand’s attention and hurried back to the children’s ward to see Maggie and Charlie. She wanted to know for herself how they were, even though Magnus had assured her that they were doing well. More than that, she had questions to ask them.

She found all three of them sitting on Charlie’s bed, playing cat’s cradle with long pieces of string tied into loops. Until they noticed her, they were all concentrating on weaving patterns with their fingers.

Then some movement caught Maggie’s eye and she looked up. Her face filled with delight and she dropped the thread of string, ran over to Hester and threw her arms around her.

Hester hugged her back before she gave a thought to the impropriety of it, or not.

‘Yer come back!’ Maggie said with delight. ‘Look at Charlie! Yer saved ’im!’ She broke free and turned to point at Charlie, sitting up in bed, still pale and thin, but with a little more colour in his cheeks and definitely very wide awake. Mike, beside him, no longer looked frightened.

‘I think we both saved him,’ Hester answered. She did not want any of them to see her as a miracle worker. ‘I’ve come to see how you are,’ she went on. ‘And to ask you about yourselves. I’d like to know.’

She walked over to the bed and Mike shifted closer to Charlie to make room for her.

First she touched the foreheads of each of them, and then felt their pulses. She was satisfied that the new nurse who had replaced Mrs Gilmore was doing her job well, and she felt the knots of tension ease inside her.

‘You’re doing fine,’ she said with a smile. ‘How did you find this hospital? Do you live near here?’

‘I dunno where we are,’ Maggie admitted. She looked at Charlie, and he shook his head.

‘Greenwich,’ Hester told them. This was not a good start.

‘That’s the other side of the river,’ Charlie told her, shaking his head. ‘An’ down a bit,’ he added.

So they came from the north bank, and upriver a bit, not far from Wapping.

‘Limehouse?’ she asked. ‘Or the Isle of Dogs?’

‘The ’igh Street,’ Charlie told her.

Every neighbourhood had its High Street, so that was some help, but not a lot.

‘Do you remember coming here?’ she asked, looking at each of them in turn.

They all shook their heads.

‘Were you asleep?’

‘Must ’a been,’ Charlie agreed.

‘Did your ma and pa come with you?’

They shook their heads again.

‘Do you remember saying goodbye to them?’ She did not like the picture this was beginning to paint, but perhaps she should not have been surprised. ‘What’s the last thing you do remember, before being here?’

‘Is summink wrong?’ Maggie’s eyes clouded over. ‘Summink ’appened ter me?’

‘I don’t think so. But if you tell me what your mother’s name is, and where she lives, I’ll go and find out,’ Hester promised. What she certainly would find out was why these three children were here alone, and no one had come to see them. There were many possibilities, and the ones she dreaded the most were either kidnapping, or the deliberate sale of children that a poor family could no longer feed. Of course, they might have been abandoned – perhaps their mother had died – but it was unlikely they would then have come here.

Maggie looked puzzled. Maybe she knew her mother only as ‘Ma’? The idea of another name might be extraordinary to her.

‘What’s your last name?’ Hester asked Charlie. ‘Charlie what?’

‘Charlie Roberts,’ he replied.

‘Tell me something about the street where you live. What are the shops you remember? Can you see the river from the street? Can you tell me what are the nearest steps to a ferry . . .?’

It was later in the afternoon than Hester would like it to have been when she got home. Dinner would have to wait, or even be no more than a cold meat sandwich. As soon as Scuff was through the door she told him her plans. Ten minutes later she propped a note on the kitchen table for Monk, and she and Scuff were on the road down to the ferry.

Scuff was deeply nervous. He kept fidgeting once they were on the water, and staring both backwards towards the Greenwich steps, and forward to Wapping.

Hester understood. He had been filled with a mixture of anxiety, fear and excitement for a few days now. He wanted to be a doctor so much he was terrified that he would not be accepted, would not be able even to understand what people were talking about, once it came to the theoretical part rather than the practical. He wanted Crow’s help, and was afraid he would refuse it or, worse than that, Scuff would disappoint him. Perhaps worst of all was the dread that he would let Hester and Monk down, when they had trusted in him and believed he could succeed.

She thought of saying that they would back him whatever he chose to do, but she knew that would make no difference. Nothing would matter until he himself believed he could succeed.

At the far side of the river she paid the ferryman. Then they went up the steps and turned east, down the river from Wapping, and caught an omnibus on the High Street. Crow now rented space in a new building much larger than the old clinic he used to run. There was someone at the door and a room where patients could wait, almost like a regular doctor’s office. Except that many of these patients couldn’t pay. Old and young, some were abnormally ill, some acutely. There was even a dog with what looked like a jagged cut, neatly stitched up and now almost healed.

At first Hester was dismayed to find so many people here. She had judged the time badly. Then she realised that it probably would not matter what time she came, it might still be like this.

She gave her name to the woman at the front and asked that Crow might be told she was here, it was urgent, and she would not take up much of his time.

Ten minutes later Hester and Scuff were shown into his rooms.

Crow was well named. He was of indeterminate age, perhaps close to forty. He was tall, lanky and with jet-black hair, which had not recently been cut, and a huge smile showing very white teeth. He was clearly delighted to see her.

She knew better than to waste precious time with chatter. After the briefest of greetings she told him exactly what she wished for.

‘I have three small children in the Greenwich hospital, aged four, six and seven. I need to find their parents and learn exactly why they’re there. The family name is Roberts, and they live on a High Street, possibly in Limehouse, close to some river steps and behind a butcher’s shop.’

‘I know a couple of possibilities,’ Crow said after a minute or two. ‘But it’s a rough area. You shouldn’t go alone. Does Monk know about this?’

‘Not yet. And there’s another reason.’ This time she hesitated. That was foolish. Crow had no time for dithering; she of all people should know that. She went straight on. ‘Scuff would like to study medicine. I would be very grateful for any help or advice you could give us.’

Beside her Scuff was blushing scarlet and shifting from foot to foot, wishing he were anywhere else.

Crow regarded him with interest, waiting.

‘Well, you’re going to have to want it a lot more than that,’ Crow said after a few more seconds of silence. ‘Help me with the patients we’ve got waiting now, and when they’re clear we’ll go and find Mr and Mrs Roberts. Are you on?’

Scuff looked up at him, eyes wide. ‘Yes . . . sir!’

It was a very long hour and a half for Hester. She helped as well, of course, but all the time part of her mind was worrying about how Scuff was getting on with Crow, and real patients, real medicine.

He had watched her many times, and helped when Monk was ill, and when Hooper had been badly injured. But holding things, passing them when asked, was very different from actually doing anything yourself. Was this not too hasty a way to introduce him to the practice of dealing with people who were frightened and very likely in pain?

Or perhaps Crow was seeing immediately, the hardest way possible, if Scuff had the obedience and the courage even to undertake such a course.

She had to force herself to turn her mind totally to the people she was working with. That was another lesson – from the time you were treating a patient, your own difficulties did not exist.

It was almost sundown, the colour was brilliant across the western sky, when they finally left Crow’s clinic and started to walk together to the first butcher’s shop on the High Street that Crow thought likely to be near the home of the Roberts family, whose three children were in Greenwich Hospital.

Hester was longing to ask Crow how Scuff had fared, what he thought, if he would really help or not, but she could not do so in front of Scuff. What could she say to comfort him if the answer was ‘no’? How could she protect him from the bitterness of the disappointment, and the humiliation?

She couldn’t. If she protected him from this one, then how would he be armed or prepared for the next, or the one after that? Without pain how would he learn compassion? If it were easy, what value was it?

Scuff was a little behind them crossing the road.

‘He’ll do,’ Crow said quietly, satisfaction in his voice. Then he flashed his wide smile at her. ‘Get him to come Saturdays. If he isn’t keen enough to come, then you know it’s not for him.’

Ridiculously she felt a momentary sting in her throat, as if she were going to cry, and she had trouble getting the words out.

‘Thank you.’

He shrugged, brushing it off lightly. ‘I asked one or two people about the Roberts family. They should be around about the next corner.’

They found two butcher’s shops. The first denied all knowledge of a Roberts family, but the second grudgingly gave them directions to a small, shabby house wedged between the back of the butcher’s yard and a pawn shop facing on to an alley.

Crow knocked on the door. He was lifting his hand to knock again when it was opened by a large man, his untidy shirt tucked into his trousers, his face pale and bloated.

‘Mr Roberts?’ Crow enquired.

‘’Oo’s askin’?’ the man said anxiously.

‘They call me Crow. I’m a doctor—’

‘Gawd! Wot’s ’appened?’ the man said with a sudden burst of anger. ‘It weren’t my fault!’

Crow must have heard the fear in him. Hester could all but smell it in his breath and the stale sweat of his clothes. Both knew they would learn nothing of use if they made themselves enemies.

‘I’m not investigating anything wrong,’ Crow said quietly. ‘At least I don’t think so.’

‘I din’t see nothing,’ the man said, still defensive.

‘Are you Mr Roberts?’

‘What if I am? Not that I’m saying so, mind.’

Crow kept his voice level. ‘Well, supposing it is you, do you have three children?’

Roberts froze. His whole body stiffened and the little colour there was drained out of his skin.

Hester felt a pity for him she could not afford to indulge. Was it fear of authority or hatred of it the reason he had not reported his children missing, if indeed they were?

Then she saw a movement behind Roberts and realised that his wife was standing close to him, listening. There was fear in her face too, and indecision, but most of all there was grief.

‘May we come in?’ Crow asked.

Roberts said ‘no’, and his wife said ‘yes’ at the same moment.

Crow waited, Hester beside him and Scuff a few feet behind them both.