The Ladies of Missalonghi (22 page)

People literally stopped and openly stared at first sight of Kitty. As if that weren’t bad enough, her mother constantly raved about her beauty to anyone she encountered, including those she encountered every day: a shrilly simpering spate of exclamations that took no notice of the fact that their object, Kitty, was usually within hearing distance, as were the other three girls.

“Did you ever see such a beautiful child?”

“When she grows up, she’ll marry a rich man!”

The kind of remarks that had led to a cheese grater, a rope, and the decision Edda made that all four of them would join the new trainee nursing scheme at Corunda Base Hospital at the beginning of April 1926. For, her sisters agreed, if they didn’t get Kitty out from under Maude, the day would come when Edda might not be on hand to foil a suicide attempt.

Because the only world children know is the one they inhabit, it never occurred to any of the four Latimer girls to question Maude Latimer’s behaviour, or stop to wonder if all mothers were the same; they simply assumed that if anyone were as ravishing (Maude’s word) as Kitty, she would be subjected to the same remorseless torrent of attention. It didn’t occur to them that Maude too was unique in her own way, nor dawn on them that perhaps a child with a different nature than Kitty’s would have relished the attention. All things being as they were, the Latimer girls understood that it was the main task of three of them to protect the vulnerable fourth from what Edda called “parental idiocies”. And as they grew and matured, the instinct and the drive to protect Kitty never faded, never diminished, never seemed less urgent.

All four girls were clever, though Edda always took the academic laurels because her mind grasped mathematics as easily as it did historical events or English composition. The quality of Tufts’s mentality was very similar, though it lacked Edda’s fierce fire. Tufts had a practical, down-to-earth streak that oddly dampened her undeniable good looks; through their adolescent years she displayed scant interest in boys, whom she thought stupid and oafish. Whatever the essence was that boys emanated to waft under the noses of girls and attract them utterly failed to stir Tufts.

There was a male equivalent of Corunda Ladies’ College: the Corunda Grammar School, and all four Latimer girls associated with the boys in the matter of balls, parties, sporting and other events. They were admired — even lusted after, in schoolboy fashion — kissed as much or as little as each desired, but things like breasts and thighs were unplundered.

Rules that were no hardship for Tufts, Kitty and Edda, though irksome for the more adventurous, less bookish Grace. Perpetually submerged in gossip and women’s magazines about film stars, stage actors, fashion and the world of royalty as represented by the Windsor family who ruled the British Empire, Grace was not above local gossip either. Her brain was self-centred but acute, she was an expert at wriggling out of trouble or work she disliked, but Grace had one inappropriate passion: she adored the steam locomotives of the railways. If she disappeared, everyone in the Rectory knew where to find her: down in the shunting yards watching the steam locomotives. In spite of her many undesirable characteristics, however, she was naturally kind, immensely loving, and devoted to her sisters, who put up with her tendency to moan as her nature.

Kitty was the one with the romantic imagination, but was saved from a spiritual beauty the equal of her physical by a tongue that could be caustic, or salty, or both. It was her defence against all those rhapsodies of praise, for it took people aback and made them think there must surely be more to her than just a beautiful face. The bouts of depression (though they called it “Kitty’s dumps”) that assailed her whenever Maude pierced her defences were an ordeal helped only by her sisters, who knew all the reasons why, and rallied themselves behind her until the crisis was over. In school examinations she did well until mathematics reared its ugly hydra heads; she it was who took the essay prizes, and expressed herself extremely well on paper.

Maude loathed Edda, always the ring-leader in opposition to her plans for her girls, especially Kitty. Not that Edda cared. By the time she was ten years old she was taller than her stepmother, and, when fully grown, towered over Maude in a way that complacent lady found as uncomfortable as menacing. The pale eyes stared like a white wolf’s, and on the rare occasions when Maude suffered a nightmare, her dream tormentor was always Edda. It had given Maude great pleasure to talk the Rector out of making the monetary sacrifices that would have let Edda do Medicine, and she counted it her most satisfying triumph; every time she thought of denying Edda her life’s ambition, inside herself she purred. Had Edda only known who exactly had cast the deciding vote in her parents’ debate on her medical career, things would have gone harder for Maude, but Edda didn’t know. Caught between the irresistibly iron pressures of a wife and his own conviction that, in denying Edda, he was sparing her a life of pain, Thomas Latimer never breathed a word to anyone. As far as Edda knew, there simply had not been the money.

Edda and Grace, Tufts and Kitty, all four packed the single suitcase she was allowed to take with her into this hospital world, and at the beginning of April 1926 reported for duty at the Corunda Base Hospital.

“Typical!” said Grace mournfully. “It’s April Fools’ Day.”

3

The Shire & City of Corunda was a kinder and richer rural area than most in Australia, sitting as it did on the southern tablelands three hours by express train from Sydney. It produced fat lambs, potatoes, cherries and pigeon’s blood rubies, though the Treadby rubies, found on cave floors and the like, had run out, leaving the Burdum deposits without rival world-wide.

At this altitude Summer gathered her bounty and departed for other climes at the end of March; April was the beginning of a rather English-flavoured autumn, complete with imported deciduous shrubs and trees as well as a passion for gardening in all styles from Anne Hathaway to Capability Brown. So April Fools’ Day saw the first nip in the air, and the leaves of the native evergreens had that tired, dusty look beseeching rain. The Rector dropped his daughters off outside the main entrance of Corunda Base Hospital and let them carry their suitcases inside unaided, his grey eyes full of tears. How
empty
the Rectory would be!

Though the Latimer sisters were not to know it, Matron Gertrude Newdigate had only been in her job for a week when they arrived, and she was not amused. When she took the Corunda post there had been no mention of new-style nursing trainees, a big reason why she had decided in Corunda’s favour. Now — ! Sydney had been in turmoil over the radical change in nursing, and Matron Newdigate wanted no part of it. Now — !

A glacial figure in white from head to toes, she sat behind her office desk looking at the four young women standing to face her. Expensively and fashionably dressed, all wearing Clara Bow lipstick, powder and mascara, their hair bobbed short, pure silk stockings, kid shoes, purses and gloves, an English inflection in their voices that spoke of a private school…

“I have no suitable accommodation for you,” Matron said coldly, the starch in her uniform so dense that it creaked when she breathed deeply, “so you will have to go into the disused sisters’ cottage the Superintendent, Dr. Campbell, has been forced to refurbish at considerable cost. Your chaperone will be Sister Marjorie Bainbridge, who will live with you but in some degree of privacy.”

Her head, encased in a starched white organdie veil that stood out like an Egyptian headdress, moved just enough to cause the silver-and-enamel badge pinned at her uniform throat to flash: the insignia saying Miss Gertrude Newdigate was a fully registered nurse in the State of New South Wales. Could the girls have identified them, they would have noted that other badges said she was a registered midwife, a registered children’s nurse, and a graduate of the School of Nursing at the world’s second-oldest hospital, St. Bartholomew’s in London. Corunda Base had got itself a very prestigious nurse.

“Officially registered nurses,” Matron said, “are called sisters. The title has nothing to do with nuns, though it came into being centuries ago when nuns did nurse. However, with the dissolution of the monastic and conventual orders under Henry VIII, nursing was relegated to a very different kind of woman — the prostitute. Miss Florence Nightingale and her companions had to surmount incredible obstacles to gain our modern profession its due, and we must never forget that we are her heirs. For three and more centuries nursing lay in disrepute, the province of criminals and prostitutes, and there are still
men
in authority who think of nurses that way. It is far cheaper to employ a prostitute than it is a lady.” The pale blue eyes shot icy rays of terror. “As Matron of this hospital, I am your ultimate superior, and I give you warning that I will not tolerate any misbehaviour of any kind. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Matron,” they chorused in awed whispers, even Edda.

“Blood relationship and names,” the voice went on, growing crisper. “I have decided that you will keep your blood ties among yourselves. Your nursing companions in this hospital have neither your money nor your privileges nor your education. One of the things I personally detest most about you is your upper-class appearance and accent. Your — er — air of superiority. I do suggest you tone it down. Names… As hospitals cannot permit confusion, you will all nurse under different surnames. Miss Edda Latimer, you will become Nurse Latimer. Miss Grace Latimer, you will become Nurse Faulding, your mother’s maiden name. Miss Heather Latimer, you will become Nurse Scobie, your mother’s first married name. Miss Katherine Latimer, you will become Nurse Treadby, your mother’s maiden name.”

The starch creaked as Matron drew a long breath. “Formal instruction in the sciences and theories of nursing will not commence until July, which means you will have three months to grow accustomed to the duties and routines of nursing before you open a textbook. Sister Bainbridge is your immediate superior, responsible for your day-to-day tuition.”

A light knock sounded on the door; in bounced a cheerful-looking woman in her late thirties whose face was devoid of lipstick or powder; she looked at Matron like a half-starved, fawning dog.

“Ah, in good time!” said Matron. “Sister Bainbridge, please meet your charges — Nurse Latimer, Nurse Faulding, Nurse Scobie and Nurse Treadby. Kindly go with Sister, girls.”

Given no opportunity to get their breath back, the four girls followed Sister Bainbridge out.

Sister Marjorie Bainbridge wore the same stiffly starched Egyptian headdress veil of white organdie as Matron did, but thereafter bore no likeness. Her uniform was a long-sleeved dress done high to the throat with detachable celluloid cuffs and collar; her ample waist was encircled by a rubberised dark green belt that sprouted lengths of white tape ending inside her pockets; to these, they would learn in time, were attached her bandage scissors, a mouth gag in case of epileptic fits, and a tiny tool kit inside a change purse. Her starched uniform was of narrow green-and-white stripes, her beige stockings were thick lisle, and her shoes black lace-ups with two-inch block heels. An outfit that added no charms to her square figure, or made the sight of her huge bottom any smaller as it moved like a soldier’s on parade, up-left, down-right, up-right, down-left, not the slightest suggestion of femininity about it. In time the girls would grow so used to the look of a disciplined nurse’s bottom that they acquired it themselves, but on that brisk, chilly April morning it was a novelty.

A five-hundred-yard walk brought them to a sad, dilapidated wooden house that had a verandah across its front. Matron’s use of the word “cottage” had led them to expect something small and dainty, but this looked more like a barn squashed to one storey by a steam hammer. And if Superintendent Campbell had incurred “considerable cost” in refurbishing it, then even Edda’s eagle eye failed to see where. To compound the building’s unsuitability, it had been partitioned off in sections that gave it the interior of a block of flats, and the four new-style trainee nurses were not plentifully endowed with space — or comfort.

“Latimer and Faulding, you’ll share this bedroom. Scobie and Treadby share that one. The two rooms you can access are this bathroom and that kitchen. My quarters are through that locked door cutting off the rest of the hall. Once I’m in them, I am not to be disturbed. I’ll leave you to unpack your cases.”

And off she went, through the locked hall door.

“Well, starve the lizards!” said Kitty feebly.

“Pretty austere,” said Tufts, sighing. They were standing in the kitchen, a small apartment serviced by a gas stove but nothing else labour-saving.

Grace was priming herself for a bout of tears, gazing wet-eyed at the small wooden table and four hard wooden chairs around it. “I don’t believe it!” she whimpered. “No common room except four hard chairs in a kitchen!”

“If you cry, Grace, I’ll personally feed you to the dogs,” said Tufts, running a gloved fingertip along the top margin of the stove. She grimaced. “I could forgive the lack of a new coat of paint, but no one has
cleaned
our quarters properly.”

“Then that’s our first job,” said Edda, sounding remarkably happy. “Just think, girls! They don’t want us here.”

Three pairs of eyes flew to Kitty, the fragile one — how would she take this news she had to know, and the sooner the better?

“Bugger the lot of them, then!” Kitty said in a strong voice. “I’m darned if a Latimer is going to be beaten by a parcel of over-complacent female dogs!”

“Bitches, you mean,” said Edda.

Kitty giggled. “What they don’t know is that they’re in the amateur league when it comes to bitches. We’ve had a lifetime of Mama, who could teach Matron lessons in bitchery.”

Tears dried, Grace stared at Kitty in wonder. “You’re not down in the dumps?” she asked.

“Not so far,” Kitty said, grinning. “I’m too dazzled at the thought that I’m finally leading a life of my own.”