Rich Girl, Poor Girl Page 14

  ‘That’s a shame, that he didnae have tae, I mean. I’d like fine tae prove that the rich are nae better nor the poor.’

  ‘I’m quite sure they’re not, Ma, but I was only joking. What I wanted to explain was that I’m taking cases in the district for practice in midwifery. I’m out at all hours. You know better than anyone about the times babies choose to arrive. Sometimes a qualified doctor goes; he gets one pound if he attends a birth; sometimes a nurse training as a midwife comes with me. The women like them but they like me better. Last night we were out. God, Ma, you kept us in luxury compared to how some exist in this city. Two o’clock in the morning. There’s this lassie on a filthy rug on the floor; nothing else in the room but a rickety table and a chair with three legs and the stuffing and springs coming out of the seat. Oh, yes, there’s some sacks on the table: that’s what she does for a living, sews sacks. Everything is dirty, filthy. A neighbour comes in to help; she’s dirtier than the lassie on the floor, so I don’t let her touch anything. “Boil some water,” I tell her and “Where’s her man?” I ask, but she looks funny and says nothing. I cleaned a basin with turpentine and . . .’ Rose looked at Elsie and tried to read the expression on her face. Better not to go into the details of the fairly straightforward birth. ‘The baby was born and I washed him. Did you know it’s thought unlucky for anyone but the doctor to wash a new-born baby? I washed him, wrapped him in newspaper – newspaper, Ma, not a wee frock in the place – and gave him to his mother. Her face, Ma, like there was a candle in her skull. “Is ma bairn a’ a’ richt?” she says. You know, Ma, every woman I’ve ever delivered has said exactly that. “Is ma bairn a’ richt?” Then the neighbour made us some tea and I had to drink it for the lassie’s talking to me. “Oh, doctor,” she says, “I couldnae tell the ither doctors but I can tell you a’ aboot it.” It was her father, Ma: her own father, a drunken sot that abused her from the time she had any memory, and there’s nothing I can do.’

  Rose fell silent and Elsie looked at this daughter whose experiences she could barely fathom.

  ‘She’ll no be the last, lassie. It’s a fact o’ life. Now tell me whit else ye get up to.’

  ‘There’s a professor that’s a real click, Ma. Professor D’Arcy Thomson. Everyone agrees he’s devastatingly handsome.’

  ‘Like one o’ they stars in the melodramas,’ breathed Elsie.

  ‘Oh, ten times better, Ma. He’s tall and broad and has a full beard like a lion. Very friendly but, well, you wouldn’t take liberties. Then there’s Professor Weymouth Reid. He teaches physiology and his particular interest is the study of insulin.’ She stopped. Physiology and insulin were new words to Elsie.

  ‘That’s the stuff that controls the glucose in your blood, Ma. Glucose is sugar, and you’ve got to have just the right amount or you get sick. Well, there is nothing the professor doesn’t know about sugar and last week he taught us all how to boil sugar to make sweeties: great fun. One day we’ll have a fund-raiser for the new university, but the next time I’m home I’ll make some for us . . .’ When would she be home again? She thought of the peace and quiet of her room, the plain but unbroken furniture, the clean wallpaper, and admitted to herself but not to her mother that she never ever wanted to live in that room and kitchen again. Elsie’s hard work could defeat dirt but it could not defeat poverty. When I’m qualified, when I’m qualified, I’ll make it all up to you, Ma, she said over and over again inside her head.

  ‘Then on Monday mornings I’m up at the Royal Infirmary to see surgical outpatients: all the cuts and bruises and broken bones from Saturday night. That can be funny sometimes. I had a big bruiser in this week. I doubt his own mother would recognize him, the mess he’d made of his face, but he says, “Aye, lassie, it hurts right enough, but aw it wis a grand fight.” There’s just something about the human spirit. Here, I’ll let you have a listen through my stethoscope.’

  Elsie wiped her hands down the sides of her dress before she took the instrument and inserted it in her ears. ‘I cannae hear nothing.’

  Rose waited and then saw the look of incredulity on her mother’s face.

  ‘I hear an awfie noise, lassie. Here, have them back. I wouldnae like them spoilt. Whit dae you hear?’

  ‘Oh, I’m beginning to hear, Ma, with my understanding as well as my ears. That’s what Professor Stather says we have to do, “listen with understanding”. And I can administer chloroform. That’s the thing, the anaesthetic, that makes you sleep so you don’t have pain during surgery or childbirth. I don’t really like doing that; it’s scary.’

  ‘Don’t do it then, lassie. God meant women tae suffer in childbed.’

  ‘Away you go, Elsie Nesbitt. You sound just like a man.’

  It was good to laugh and joke with her mother away from Donaldina’s sullen animosity. She ran from the university up through the wynds and parks to the infirmary. With her fellow students, men and women. They made her forget everything but medicine. Together they chanted the Dundee medical students’ doggerel. ‘Come in, come in, put out your tongue. Have you got a bottle? Next please.’

  Their tired young voices rang in the clear air.

  *

  Rose was so busy that she barely noticed the announcement of the death of Queen Victoria or the wave of real grief and nostalgia that washed the country. She did not know that the new king had typhlitis and that his coronation had had to be postponed. She was more interested in applying for a summer job as an assistant dispenser at a chemist’s shop on the Perth Road. At least two of the male students had applied for it and they, like Rose, were well qualified. She did not know that she got the job because she was a woman and could be paid less. Rose was thrilled to be out of the berry fields and earning one pound each week for, it seemed to her, nothing but measuring out ten grams of phenacitin into clean little papers and selling them to headache sufferers for a penny each.

  She saved the summer money and bought herself a new costume made of soft golden-brown wool. It had a straight plain skirt and, the latest fashion, a three-quarter-length sac coat which just skimmed her knees. With it she wore a plain brown felt toreador hat trimmed with a quill. In the fitting room she looked at herself in the mirror and liked what she saw.

  ‘New shoes and gloves,’ she vowed, ‘and even my mother wouldn’t recognize me.’ She ignored the glow of pleasure that told her that she was a very pretty girl.

  The costume, wrapped in a sheet to keep it clean, hung behind her bedroom door. She was saving it for something special.

  The university planned a fund-raising bazaar for October 1903. Rose and her classmates made their mouthwatering sweets and Rose herself worked on their stall. She loved every minute, not only of the camaraderie and fun of the bazaar itself but all the hours of work that she and other exhausted students, not just medical students, had put in before the event. Excitement added some colour to her usually pale face, and that was how Kier and Lucy saw her as they wandered from stall to stall.

  Lucy saw Kier’s eyes light up and at first she did not recognize the small golden-brown figure laughing and joking behind the table.

  ‘Come on, Lucy, it’s little Rose Nesbitt. I haven’t seen her in years.’ He pulled Lucy along and she went willingly enough.

  ‘Have some of my delicious toffee, sir,’ said Rose in her new persona. ‘Dental students at the next stall will take care of any damage done – at a reasonable . . . cost,’ she finished lamely as she recognized her customer.

  He laughed down at her rosy face, now red with embarrassment as well as excitement. ‘We’ll have a pound of whatever you made yourself, Miss Nesbitt, won’t we, Lucy? You remember Miss Nesbitt, don’t you, my dear?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lucy, although she had not thought of Rose Nesbitt for years. ‘How are you, Miss Nesbitt?’

  Miss Nesbitt could feel her new-found confidence ebbing away under the eyes of this elegant, sophisticated woman, and Lucy saw it go and tried to make amends.

  ‘What a wonderf
ul occasion, Miss Nesbitt. I can’t think how you have all managed to do so much. No sleep at all, I should imagine?’

  Rose stammered something and Kier stepped in.

  ‘You’re right, Lucy, and probably no food either. A puff of wind will blow you away, Miss Nesbitt. We insist that you come and lunch with us, don’t we, Lucy?’

  If the suggestion was an unwelcome shock to Lucy, she recovered quickly. ‘Absolutely,’ she said.

  Rose hesitated.

  ‘Doctor’s orders,’ teased Lucy. ‘Do come, Miss Nesbitt,’ she coaxed. ‘I should like to hear how the medical school has responded to the invention of the electro-cardiograph.’

  ‘Oh, yes, doctor.’ Rose was excited again. ‘And phenobarbitone . . .’

  ‘Ladies, I refuse to lunch with pills and potions. Next you’ll be talking about votes for women, and that I will not have.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Miss Nesbitt. He’s a powerful advocate for the rights of women. Are you free for lunch?’

  She checked the time on the delicate gold watch on her wrist while Rose looked at her own serviceable one.

  ‘I’m free in ten minutes,’ she said.

  ‘We’ll come back to fetch you,’ said Kier and turned away. ‘Come along, Lucy. I must just confirm that Mother is lunching with Lady Donaldson.’

  His voice receded into the distance and Rose looked after him until a bag of toffee, pushed almost into her face by a grubby urchin, recalled her to her duties and she exchanged the sweets for a sticky coin.

  ‘Well, you are a dark horse, Rose,’ said Eddie Reid, the third-year student who was manning the stall with her. ‘Here’s me been trying for weeks to have you come for a buster with me. “You’ll get nowhere with Rose,” said the other lads. “Keeps herself to herself.” That wouldn’t be the Lady Donaldson who just happens to be married to the principal of St Andrews University, would it? No wonder you don’t have time for us when you go around in that company. Must help . . . with lots of things.’

  ‘Don’t be sillier or nastier than you have to be, Eddie. I don’t know Lady Donaldson . . .’ Rose stopped. No, she would not justify or defend herself. She had nothing of which to be ashamed. Eddie was very young after all. ‘I’m off to have lunch, Eddie. See you at the hospital on Monday.’

  She pulled her lovely new brown hat with its jaunty feather down over her yellow curls, picked up her bag and smoothed her first pair of leather gloves over her almost soft hands.

  Lucy saw her standing there, small and erect and very lovely. ‘Well done, little Nesbitt,’ she thought and she smiled and went towards her. ‘Miss Nesbitt, what a charming hat. Are you ready? Kier’s gone off for a cab. The street is absolutely jammed.’

  Rose felt herself almost pulled along by Lucy’s personality, and she hurried along and tried to answer the questions that were raining down on her. Not that any of them were personal or difficult. She did not realize that, in a different way, Lucy was as nervous and ill at ease as she was herself, or that she was annoyed to be experiencing that same nervousness.

  Was she not the daughter of a diplomat? Had she not been trained from earliest childhood to make people feel at ease? I forget the lesson on being at ease myself, Lucy thought wryly as they reached the doors of the crowded hall.

  And there on the pavement was Kier.

  ‘What a mad crush,’ he said as he helped first Lucy and then Rose into the cab. ‘The university coffers must be overflowing.’

  ‘I was just telling Doctor Graham that we had taken almost seven pounds,’ Rose managed to say.

  ‘Gosh, and since you paid five pounds for that ghastly clock Mother’s been trying to lose for twenty years . . . where is it, by the way?’

  ‘I lost it,’ said Lucy and together they dissolved into laughter and Rose watched them and envied the ease of their relationship.

  Lucy recovered first. ‘How awful you must think us, Miss Nesbitt, but it really was a most ugly clock.’

  ‘And notoriously unreliable,’ said Kier. ‘Where did you put it?’

  ‘Actually, I gave it to a little girl as a gift for her mother.’

  ‘How unkind of you,’ laughed Kier, ‘but seriously, I’ve told the cabbie D.M. Brown’s. Does that suit, ladies?’

  ‘Five pounds,’ thought Rose. ‘More than the price of my costume and my hat, and she can afford to just give it away.’

  ‘D.M. Brown’s would be lovely,’ she said. ‘I believe they have started afternoon teas too.’

  It was the new clothes, of course, and the gloves that covered the almost soft hands. They gave her confidence. She was able to smile, to chat, to relax, and Lucy saw her at her best and liked what she saw.

  ‘We should stay for tea, too,’ said Lucy. ‘Certain people in this world, Miss Nesbitt,’ she solemnly gestured towards Kier, ‘will always find time for tea but others, like you and I, have to take our food when we find time.’

  It was a delightful afternoon. Rose forgot, for once, the huge gulf that she always felt existed between her and people like these two, and she did not realize how hard they both worked to make her feel welcome. They did not speak of her career plans until they were in another cab on their way back along the Perth Road to Rose’s lodgings.

  ‘I’ll give you my card, Miss Nesbitt,’ said Lucy, reaching into her handbag. ‘When you are qualified I should be happy to give you some experience in a general practice.’

  ‘General, Doctor Graham? I had thought you had only female patients.’

  ‘At first, yes, and still the bulk of my practice is female, but women have brought their children and now there are even one or two men. I can truthfully say “General Practitioner”. Are you interested in general practice?’

  ‘Yes, but I am mainly interested in the health of women, their pre-natal and ante-natal care.’

  ‘Ah well, that is the least interesting part to me. I think, perhaps, I should have gone on to specialize in surgery but there were and are so many closed doors.’

  ‘You are pioneers, Lucy, you and Miss Nesbitt. She will find it easier than you, because at least she has been allowed to enter a university.’

  ‘Pioneers,’ said Lucy, and her mind went back to an early autumn afternoon. She could almost hear the swish of Amos’s broom against the leaves and a beloved voice: . . . ‘butterflies in December’. Was Rose a butterfly too?

  ‘When you graduate, Miss Nesbitt, do call on me. I would love to visit my father, who lives abroad, and a good locum would be worth her weight in gold.’

  Kier walked Rose up the steps to the front door of her lodging house. ‘I shall not lose you again, Miss Nesbitt. May I call on you sometime?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Anderson-Howard,’ said Rose, aware that it was the first time she had used his name.

  He smiled. ‘That wasn’t too hard, was it? Keep in touch with Doctor Graham. She does mean to help you and help will be necessary. Qualifying, I think, may well be the easiest of the tasks before you.’ He surprised Rose by quickly changing the subject. ‘Do you enjoy the opera?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rose rashly.

  ‘Good. I’ll get some tickets.’

  He lifted his hat and was gone and Rose would have liked to watch him drive away, but felt that it would be better just to slip inside without gazing after him like a besotted little fool.

  She was about to open the door when she heard someone call her name from the other side of the street, and she turned to see Donaldina running across.

  ‘Eh wisnae sure it wis you, getting oot of a private cab and dressed like a dish o’fish. Nae wonder ye’re niver hame wi’ a bonnie click like thon.’

  ‘I’m not allowed visitors,’ Rose lied. ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘I’m no wantin’ in yer fancy digs. I widnae be here at all if it wisnae for Ma.’

  Rose felt cold suddenly. The beautiful glow caused by the afternoon left and never returned. ‘Ma?’

  ‘She’s fell sick.’

  Rose felt her stomach
turn right over. Ma, Elsie, sick. It had never occurred to her that Elsie could be sick. Elsie was indestructible: she had always been there and would always be there, taking care of everyone else.

  ‘Sick,’ she said stupidly.

  ‘Are ye deef tae? If ye’d been near us ye’d hiv seen fir yirsel. Ye’ve been that busy ye havnae seen her for months. Are ye comin?’ Donaldina looked at her sister, at the elegant fashionable clothes, the jaunty hat. ‘Ye’d maybe better change. Ye’ll get jumped for that costume, or are all yer claes that guid noo?’

  Rose shook her head in answer to that question. She understood the envy and anger in her sister’s voice. ‘How far I have come,’ she thought, ‘and all due to Elsie.’ Oh to be Lucy Graham, and casually to order a private cab to take her to her mother.

  ‘Let’s hurry. There’s a horse-bus due in a minute.’

  Donaldina did not sit beside her sister in the bus, but whether from dislike or embarrassment, Rose could not tell. They changed buses in the centre of the city and again Rose sat in solitary state and saw nothing but visions of Elsie. Elsie telling her to whistle so that she could not eat the fresh young peas. Elsie crying her eyes out at her graduation and making a Greek mask of her face. Elsie listening in wonder to her own heart through her daughter’s stethoscope.

  The house smelled. Never before had Rose been so aware of the smell of poverty, but with the poverty there was a smell she knew only too well. It was the smell of death: a horrifying death from syphilis.

  Elsie was lying in the box-bed and for a second her eyes lit up as the shining daffodil that was her daughter dispelled the darkness of the ugly room.

  ‘Rosie.’ The voice was a croak.

  ‘It’s me, Ma. I’m here to take care of you.’ She turned to Donaldina. ‘Boil some water. A wash will make her feel better, and these blankets are soiled. Could you not have washed them?’ And all the time, against Elsie’s feeble protests, she was probing, examining. This disease-ridden body is not my mother, her mind kept saying as the bile rose in her throat.