“No wonder,” I said, thinking of a girl who would disown a man who’d seen his own legs blown off before his eyes. “She sounds like a useless twit.”
“You should pity her. She won’t get any of my money.” He pointed at me with his cigarette. “My family has piles, you know. You could live like a queen. My older brother died at Mons and it all goes to me.”
Val, I thought. It was a word he said over and over during his bouts. I’d thought it the name of a woman, but now I knew better. “I’m too lower class for a nob like you, then,” I said. “You need a girl who’s been to finishing school. A girl who knows her silverware. Carry on the family line, that sort of thing.”
“You think I’m shamming? I’m not. How much do you think it costs to be in this place? God, the number would give you nightmares. The monthly fee is more than you make in a year.”
“This place?”
“‘An exclusive retreat of peace and solace,’” he said, obviously quoting a brochure. “‘A place in which those of distinction can be assured they’ll find the proper care.’ Our families don’t want us mixing with the lower classes, and they prefer to forget that we did it for years in the trenches, so they pay for the privilege. All of us here are officers except for MacInnes and Yates. Or didn’t you notice?”
I stared at him. With no uniforms on the men, I’d had no idea. There was Captain Mabry, of course, but everyone seemed to call him Captain because he was so obviously gentry. I had no idea of the rank of the others.
“Somersham’s family is in railroads,” said West, ticking off on his fingers. “Massively rich, they are. Mabry’s the only one from old money; his family owns half of Shropshire. Childress’s father is a newspaper baron. Even MacInnes has pots of money; his wife writes tawdry novels that sell like mad, and they live in a mansion in London. Yates is an orphan, but his parents left him their farm, and he doesn’t let on but it’s profitable as hell. I don’t know where Creeton’s money comes from, but there’s lots of it. My own father is in dairy.”
“Dairy?”
“Yes. Not noble, I realize, but you’d be surprised how much money is in milk and butter.” He ground out his cigarette and smiled at me. “I’m your best bet, you know. Most of the men have fathers who hate them. My father pities me, but I’m all he’s got, and at least I can carry on the family business.”
I thought of the parents who had sat with him, awkward and unspeaking. I was reeling. I’d seen blood, piss, vomit, and naked men at Portis House, but none of it had shocked me the way what he’d just said nearly knocked me over. All my life, I’d looked at other people in terms of money. But not here. Never here. This was the only place where I’d forgotten about class.
My own cigarette burned out, forgotten, and I dropped it. Something important tickled in the back of my mind, then receded again. I liked to think of a girl meeting West, falling in love with him, caring for him, making the depression go away. But I’d lived too long in the real world for that. “Then you should go home,” I said, “and learn the dairy business.”
The look he turned on me was friendly, but had sadness like the keen edge of a razor. “Do you really think it’s that simple?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think you were stupid,” he agreed. “Would you wheel me in?”
? ? ?
“Did you know about this?” I asked Martha as we cleared the plates away from supper. “About all the money these men have?”
“I’m sure I never thought about it,” she said, not in her usual good humor. “Besides, money isn’t much if you haven’t got your mind, is it?”
“That isn’t the point,” I replied. “These men are paying a lot of money to be here. A lot. And yet we’re completely understaffed, the house is falling down, and we work twenty-four-hour shifts for barely any pay.”
Now her eyes widened. “You’re not a labor union organizer, are you?”
“Of course not. What I’m saying is that someone is making money from this place. Mr. Deighton, and probably the doctors, too. They’re getting rich.” And if that had been the plan from the beginning, there was a very good reason to get rid of the Gersbachs.
“It’s nothing to me.” She put a plate into the dumbwaiter with something that was almost like force. “I’m just trying to get some work done, unlike some people I know.”
I looked at her. “What’s the matter?”
She put another plate into the dumbwaiter, her bottom lip pouted out now.
“Martha. Out with it. What is it?”
She looked around, saw the nearest orderly leave with a tray of dishes, then leaned in and hissed clumsily in my ear. “You left last night.”
I went cold. “What?”
“I woke up to get a glass of water and you weren’t in your bed. We’re not supposed to leave our room at night, Kitty! Where did you go?”
“Martha—”
“And then I talked to Nina this morning and she said Patient Sixteen went for a run last night.” She looked at me balefully. “I’m not a fool, you know, Kitty. I’m not.”
“I don’t think you’re a fool.” I didn’t; I had seen Martha’s skills outstrip my own too many times. “It wasn’t what you think. We weren’t—you know.”
“No.” Her voice was tight. “I don’t know. And you—you shouldn’t know. Respectable girls don’t. It just—it isn’t done between patients and nurses. It isn’t!”
“Hush. Lower your voice. I told you there is nothing going on between us.” Except he had touched me, and kissed my neck, and I still dreamed about it. “If we don’t go to the kitchen for supper, they’ll be looking for us. And for God’s sake don’t say anything.”
She followed me only part of the way down the corridor, and then she stopped. “It’s easy for the rest of you,” she said.
I turned and looked at her. “What?”
“It’s easy for Boney, because she’s Matron’s favorite and Matron would protect her against anything. It’s easy for Nina, because she has her fiancé. And it’s easy for you—you’ve worked at Belling Wood and you could get a job anywhere even if you do have incident reports. But this job is all I have.” She looked pleadingly at me. “I can’t go back to Glenley Crewe. I can’t. We’ve no money, and it’s a small place. I’m completely humiliated there. If you mess this up, Kitty—and I don’t know what you’re up to, but I know it isn’t good—you mess it up for all of us. If you’re fooling around with patients, we’ll all be tarnished with it, no matter what we’ve done. And it matters to me. It does.”
We looked at each other for a long moment after she’d finished. She stood in the dim light of the corridor, her big eyes tired, her pretty cheeks flush with misery. I hadn’t thought how what I was doing would affect the other nurses. It was what I did: Look ahead, don’t look down, and for God’s sake don’t start thinking about the people around you.