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She relaxed a little. ‘Medicine is very hard. It’s difficult and you pay for your mistakes terribly. You . . .’ She stopped. ‘I’m sorry. You know all that.’
‘You should be proud of him,’ he said, reaching across the table to touch her hand. ‘I’m pretty sure he wants to give something back to the people he left behind when he came to live with us. And he wants to be like you,’ he added softly. ‘Don’t . . . don’t put him off.’
Hester was exhausted and grieving, full of the heavy burden of failures and so proud of Scuff and afraid of the pain of such failures ahead for him that the tears spilled down her cheeks.
‘I won’t,’ she promised.
He stood up and came around the table to kneel beside her and hold her in his arms.
After a short rest, when Scuff was on his way to school and Monk had gone down to the river to catch the ferry across to Wapping, Hester went straight to the ferry herself, also to the north bank and then on the omnibus to Portpool Lane. She walked along in the shadow of the brewery to the large, rambling old warren of houses that had once been a thriving brothel. It was now a clinic for many of the same women whose place of business it had been. Added to them were any others without a home and whose illness or injury had rendered them in need.
Hester had no skill in raising money to sustain the clinic, but she had the organisational abilities and the nursing skill and experience that made it seldom necessary to call in a doctor willing and able to lend his greater knowledge without payment.
She went in through the main door. She had no time for more than a brief acknowledgement of the elderly woman who sat at the desk to admit or deny those who came seeking help, a hot meal, or simply somewhere to lie at peace, knowing they would not be molested or thrown out. It was a completely discretionary decision and Hester seldom interfered with it. She had learned over the years to tell a conniver or a malingerer from a genuine case, but she was still far behind Hetty in the skill. Hetty had been a prostitute herself too long for anyone to fool her. She knew every lie and excuse there was and had tried most of them.
Today Hester only wished her good morning, and went straight on into the warren of passages and rooms to find Claudine Burroughs. She would almost certainly be either in the kitchen storeroom or the medicine room at this time of the day. Claudine was a well-to-do woman, unhappily married and without children. She had offered her services in the clinic several years ago now. To begin with she had seen it as a worthy charity, and something of a defiance of the highly conventional part of society to which she belonged. Slowly she had come to care for the people, even the highly dubious and disreputable Squeaky Robinson, who had originally owned and run the brothel, until Oliver Rathbone had tricked him out of it. Squeaky had rebelled, outraged that he, the master trickster, had wound up outsmarted by a gentleman, even if he was a lawyer as well. His choice had been a long term in prison, or to remain with a home in the clinic and work for his keep by managing the finances of the place, strictly in accordance with the law. Grudgingly he had accepted the latter.
Hester reached the medicine room, and saw the door open and the light on inside. She felt a rush of relief when she saw a very small boy, who looked six or seven years old, thin and weedy and with boundless energy. He was throwing pieces of crumpled newspapers around, his crop of thick, unkempt hair bouncing up and down with each movement.
‘Good morning, Worm,’ Hester said affectionately as she reached him.
He looked up, recognised her, and his face shone with pleasure. ‘I’m working,’ he announced.
‘I can se
e,’ she replied appreciatively. ‘Do you think you have enough papers there for a load to take downstairs?’
He regarded them gravely, and then looked back at her. ‘Yeah!’ he agreed. There were not so very many, but he understood dismissal from overhearing adult conversation. He was stunted by years of half starvation, and he was actually nearly nine, and very definitely a survivor. He picked up the bundle carefully.
‘They’re for lighting fires,’ he told her, just in case she didn’t know. He set off down the passageway, not dropping any until he was nearly at the stairs.
Claudine came out of the medicine room to greet Hester. She was a big woman, too broad at the hip for grace, but with her beautiful hair and the intelligence in her eyes she was not without charm, although she would have suspected undue charity in the judgement if anyone had told her so. She smiled with affection as she saw Hester. Then with her quick understanding she recognised that Hester was troubled by something deeper than the ordinary day-to-day concerns of the clinic.
‘What is it?’ she asked without prevarication. She knew all the social conventions of talking without saying anything of meaning, and despised it. It was not the way to treat a friend.
‘I’ve got to stay at the hospital longer than I’d expected,’ Hester answered. ‘I can’t leave yet, even if Jenny comes back, and I’ve heard nothing from her. I’ve discovered children there who are . . .’ She gave up trying to skirt around it and, glancing down the passageway to make sure Worm was not within earshot yet, she told Claudine about Charlie, Maggie and Mike, and her whole experience in the hospital. ‘There’s no one else to care,’ she finished. ‘I have to stay. Please . . . will you take over everything here, at least for a while?’
‘Of course,’ Claudine said immediately. For her there was no other answer possible.
Hester looked at her and realised there was something troubling her, and she was annoyed with herself for not even having asked.
‘What is it?’ she asked now. ‘Is it going to be difficult?’
‘No,’ Claudine said too quickly.
‘Yes it is.’ Hester knew it immediately.
Claudine would have been appalled if she knew how obviously vulnerable she was. Worm was somebody else’s child, an urchin off the river-bank, undersized, completely without education, but in the very few months he had been living at the clinic where he had food every day and a bed every night, she had come to care about him as deeply as a good woman cares for any small, lost creature.
‘You’re worried about Worm?’ Hester asked.
Claudine spoke awkwardly, worried about appearing foolish. ‘He . . . he thinks he’s no use here . . . accepting charity, and he prefers going off before someone tells him he has to go. I . . .’ The distress in her face was obvious. She would not say she loved the child, but the truth of it was naked in her face.
‘Find him something to do, even if you work him until he falls asleep on his feet,’ Hester said, smiling, then looked again at the door just as Worm reappeared.
‘Yer done yet?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Don’t be cheeky!’ Claudine reproved him, anxiety sharpening her voice.
