“Good gracious no! Oh dear, I did not introduce myself. How remiss of me. I am Deirdra Farraline-Alastair’s wife.” She looked inquiringly at Hester to see if her explanation meant anything, and saw from her face that she already knew who he was. “Then there is Oonagh,” she continued. “Mrs. Mclvor, who wrote to you, and then Kenneth, and Eilish-who is Mrs. Fyffe, although I never think of her like that, I don’t know why-and lastly Griselda, who now lives in London.”
“I see. Thank you.”
Hester sipped her tea and bit into the shortbread. It tasted even better than it looked, rich and crumbly, melting on the tongue.
“Don’t worry about Eilish,” Deirdra went on conversationally. “She never gets up at a decent hour, but she’s perfectly well. One has only to look at her to see that. A charming creature, and the loveliest woman in Edinburgh, I shouldn’t wonder-but also the laziest. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m very fond of her,” she added quickly. “But not to deny her faults.”
Hester smiled. “If we cared only for perfection, we should be very lonely.”
“I quite agree. Have you been to Edinburgh before?”
“No. No, I have never even been to Scotland.”
“Ah! Have you always lived in London?”
“No, I spent some time in the Crimea.”
“Good gracious!” Deirdra’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh. Oh, of course. The war. Yes, Oonagh said something about getting one of Miss Nightingale’s nurses for Mother-in-law. I can’t see why. She only wants a little dose of medicine, hardly an army nurse! Did you sail out there? It must have taken ages.” She screwed up her face earnestly and took another piece of shortbread. “If only man could fly. Then one would not have to go ‘round Africa at all, one could simply go straight across Europe and Asia.”
“One doesn’t have to go ‘round Africa to the Crimea,” Hester pointed out gently. “It is on the Black Sea. One goes through the Mediterranean and up the Bosphorus.”
Deirdra waved away the irrelevance with a small, strong hand. “But one has to go ‘round Africa to get to India, or China. It is the same principle.”
Hester could think of no suitable reply, and returned to her tea.
“Don’t you find this terribly… tame… after the Crimea?” Deirdra asked curiously.
Hester might have assumed that the remark was idle conversation, had she not seen the intensity in Deirdra’s face and the obvious intelligence in her eyes. She wondered how to answer her. The chores of nursing were frequently tedious, although patients seldom were. Certainly the danger and the challenge of the Crimea were gone, as was the comradeship. But then the hunger, the cold, the fear and the terrible rage and pity were gone also. In its place had been the emotional tumult of working with Monk. She had met William Monk when he had been a police inspector investigating the Grey case, and then, through Callandra, she had assisted him with the Moidore case so shortly afterwards.
But he had stormed out of the police force and been consequently forced to practice as a private agent of inquiry. She had again found herself calling for his help for Edith Sobel when General Carlyon had been murdered. And she had been the ideal person to take a position in the hospital when Nurse Barrymore’s body had been found.
But the relationship with Monk was far too complicated to try to explain, and certainly not something likely to recommend her to a highly respectable family like the Farralines as a suitable companion for their mother.
Deirdra was still waiting, her eyes on Hester’s face.
“Sometimes,” she admitted, “I am delighted to miss the conditions, but I miss the companionship also, and that is hard.”
“And the challenge?” Deirdra pressed, leaning forward over the table. “Is it not a wonderful thing to try to accomplish something immensely difficult?”
“Not when you have no chance of success, and the pain of failure is other people’s suffering.”
Deirdra’s face fell. “No, of course not. I’m sorry, that was heartless of me. I did not mean it quite as it sounded. I was thinking of the challenge to the mind, to the inventiveness, to one’s own aspirations-I…” She stopped as the door opened and Oonagh came in. Oonagh glanced from one to the other of them, then her face softened in a smile.
“I hope you are comfortable, Miss Latterly, and being well looked after?”
“Oh yes, indeed, thank you,” Hester answered.
“I have been asking Miss Latterly about her experiences, or at least some of them,” Deirdra said enthusiastically. “It sounds most stimulating.”
Oonagh sat down and helped herself to tea. She looked across at Hester doubtfully.
“I imagine there are times when you must find England very restricting after the freedom of the Crimea?”
It was a curious remark, one that betrayed a far more intelligent consideration than was usual. It was no idle piece of conversation made merely for something to say.
Hester did not reply immediately, and Oonagh sought to explain herself. “I mean the weight of responsibility you must have had there, if what I have read is anywhere near the truth. You must have seen a great deal of suffering, much of it quite avoidable, had more sense been exercised. And I imagine you did not always have a senior officer to hand, either medical or military, every time some judgment had to be made.”
“No-no we didn’t,” Hester agreed quickly, startled by Oonagh’s perception. In fact, now (hat she sat here in this quiet dining room with its polished table and handsome carved sideboard, she realized that the trust and responsibility, and the power to act for herself, were two of the aspects of the Crimea that she missed the most profoundly. Now so many of her decisions were trivial.
It must be even more so for a woman like Oonagh Mclvor, whose responsibilities were largely domestic. What should Cook serve for dinner? How should she resolve the squabble between the kitchen maid and the laundry maid? Should she invite so-and-so to dine this week with the Smiths-or next week with the Joneses? Should she wear green on Sunday, or blue? Looking at the intelligence and the resolve in Oonagh’s features, Hester saw that she was not a woman to waste her energy on such things, which mattered not in the slightest, even today, never mind in the course of one’s life. Was it envy she could hear in the curious timbre of Oonagh’s voice?
“You have a remarkable understanding,” she replied aloud, meeting Oonagh’s steady gaze. “I don’t think I had even phrased it to myself so well. I confess that at times I have found myself almost suffocated by the necessity of obedience, when I had been used to action, simply because there was no one else to turn to and the urgency of the situation did not allow us to delay.”
Deirdra was watching her closely, her face quickened with interest, her tea forgotten.
Oonagh smiled as if the answer in some way pleased her.
“You must have seen much waste, and a fearful amount of pain,” she observed. “Of course there will always be deaths, when one is occupied with medicine, but there can be nothing like the battlefield in a hospital. That aspect of it must be a relief to you. Does one get hardened to seeing so much death?”
Hester considered for several moments before replying. This was not a person who deserved, or would accept, a trite or insincere response.
“It is not that you become hardened,” she said thoughtfully. “But you learn to govern your emotions, and men to ignore them. If you allowed yourself to dwell on it you would become so wretched you would cease to be any use to those who were still living. And while it is very natural to pity, it is also quite pointless in a nurse, where there is so much that is practical to do. Tears don’t remove bullets or splint broken limbs.”
A look of calm filled Oonagh’s eyes, as though some irritating question had been resolved. She rose from the chair, ignoring the rest of her tea, and smoothed her skirts. “I am sure you are exactly the person to accompany Mother to London. She will find you most stimulating, and I have every confidence you will be ideal to care for her. Thank you for being so frank with me, Miss Latterly. You have set my mind at rest entirely.” She looked at a fob watch hanging from a ribbon at her shoulder. “It is still some time until luncheon. Perhaps you would like to spend it in the library? It is quite warm in there, and you will not be disturbed, should you wish to read.” She glanced at Deirdra.
“Oh yes.” Deirdra stood up also, “I suppose I had better go and check through the accounts with Mrs. Lafferty.”
“I’ve already done it,” Oonagh said quietly. “But I haven’t been through tomorrow’s menu with Cook yet. You might do that.”
