“I will not discuss your background, or lack of it, with anyone for now. But you are expected to perform all the duties of a nurse, to the level of your fellow nurses. How you do that is your problem. Is this fully understood?”
“Yes, Matron.”
“Fine, then. I’ll have Nurse Fellows show you around the place.” She stood.
I stood as well, but I didn’t follow her to the door.
“Well?” she said irritably when she opened the door and turned back to see me standing there. “What is it?”
“Why?” I said. “Why did you accept me, really? You don’t like me at all. Why didn’t you turn me away?”
I could see her deciding whether to answer, but her distaste for me won out and she went ahead. “Very well. Because I think the only girls who will stay here will be the ones who have nowhere else to go,” she said bluntly. “Normal girls haven’t worked, but someone desperate might do.” She shrugged. “And now I’ve found you.” She turned to the open doorway. “Nurse Fellows, please show Nurse Weekes to her quarters.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Linens in the second cupboard,” said Nurse Fellows. “Matron keeps the key and I keep a copy. One pillow, one sheet, and one blanket for each man—no extras allowed. In winter we add a second sheet and a second blanket, but it’s only June, so they’re to have summer blankets only. The third cupboard under here is for disinfectant—refilled once per week; take note, you’ll need it. Sponges on the shelf here. For larger spills call Paulus and he will bring the other orderlies. This button here rings Paulus’s office. Orderlies are to be called only for emergencies, not for everyday problems, or Matron will hear about it. Are you following me?”
“Yes.” I hefted my valise in my hand. They’d offered to have an orderly come take it for me, but I’d refused. I didn’t like the idea of a strange man pawing through my things.
Nurse Fellows was spare and thin hipped, perhaps twenty-four, though the pockmarks on her face and the thin line of her lips made her look older. She wore the shawl-collared blouse, long pale blue skirt, and full apron that was the Portis House uniform, the apron tied at her boyish waist. Under the starched cap her tightly pinned hair was of a bright yellow hue I’d never seen in nature.
“Breakfast is at seven sharp, followed by morning exercise. Luncheon is at noon, afternoon tea at three o’clock, and supper at six thirty. Curfew for the men is nine thirty, no shirking, and ten o’clock for the nurses. Any disturbances past ten o’clock will be reported directly to Matron.”
We left the back corridors, lined with supplies and storage closets, and started up a servants’ staircase. The house was much larger even than it had appeared when I approached; I hadn’t yet seen anything but the servants’ quarters, and those were finer than anyplace I’d ever lived. The floors were worn, but the wood was fine; the banister of the winding servants’ stairs was smooth and heavy beneath my hand. I wondered exactly how rich the Gersbachs had been.
Nurse Fellows kept talking, seeming to need no reply from me. “The doctors come every second Wednesday to see the patients. They do inspections, so be sure the patients are quiet and everything is clean and ready for presentation.”
“The doctors don’t live here?”
She gave me a look. “I’m not sure what hospital you’re from, but no. Doctors don’t usually live on the premises.”
Cold sweat on my neck again. “Well—no, of course not. I just thought—”
“Perhaps you’re used to casualty cases. Injured men requiring round-the-clock care?”
“Yes—I am.”
“Right. You’ll have to adjust. We aren’t dealing with sick men here, Nurse Weekes. Not truly sick, anyway. They are treated with rest, quiet surroundings, and routine. The doctors just come to mark their progress.”
“I can handle that.”
“Don’t be so certain. Without discipline, the men can be unruly, and some of them are sly. I wouldn’t trust one of them past the end of my nose. Meals are served in the dining room here.”
We were in the main house now, walking a wide corridor lined with dark wainscoting. There was the scent of wood polish, but underneath it was a damp smell, as if the fog were creeping through the windows. We turned a corner and she opened a set of double doors, revealing the room beyond. “Oh,” I said.
Whatever the original furniture had been, it was gone now, replaced with two long tables and rows of chairs running the length of the room. Molded plaster in the shape of leaves crowned the high walls where they met the ceiling, itself decorated with vines crawling between its thick beams. Two windows adorned one wall, heavy brocade curtains framing an indistinguishable view of fog. Blank squares mapped where the family artwork had hung, and the uncarpeted floor rang with the empty echo of our footsteps. The room looked stripped, as if it had come down in the world, but the elegance was still there, like an aristocratic woman in a simple set of clothes.
The sheer size of it amazed me. “This was a dining room for one family?”
“Well, yes. This was a private home. Didn’t they tell you?”
It sat twenty people easily along the tables, and where I’d come from, a room like this could have housed two families. “Did they move because they had no money?” I asked.
The look she turned on me was incredulous. “How in the world should I know? It’s nothing to me, and it’s nothing to you, either. Why would you even ask such a question?”
I looked at her and realized that under the brusque manner that she probably used on everyone, she genuinely disliked me. Well, well. “I’m just curious about the rich, that’s all. Aren’t you?”
“I am not. If you want my advice, you should keep a quiet tongue in your head if you want to get by here. The doings of people who own grand houses are none of our business.”
“Fine,” I said, but I narrowed my eyes at her behind her back as she turned away.
“We have nineteen patients here,” she continued as we left the dining room again, I still carrying my valise. “Each man has his own room, which he should certainly be grateful for. There’s the nurses’ room, separate quarters for Matron and myself, four temporary rooms used for the doctors, families of patients, and Mr. Deighton. Quarters downstairs for orderlies, kitchen staff, and the gardener. Even with all that, there’s a section of the west wing closed off. That’s how big the house is.”
“Where are the patients now?”
“In their rooms. It’s part of the schedule for late-afternoon rest. Supper is in an hour, and after that, they’re allotted ninety minutes of leisure time in the common room.” She swung open another door at the end of the hall. “That would be this one.”
This room was larger than the dining room; even stripped of its artwork and furniture, it was grand. It was opulently paneled, with a lower section connected to an upper section by three wide steps. At the far end of the upper level a bank of French doors—three pairs, I counted—looked out on a verandah and a set of manicured gardens beyond. The doors were latched closed now against the fog, the verandah damp and empty, the gardens only shadows of trimmed hedges hunched in the mist.