In the Shadow of the Lamp (29 page)

C
hapter 30

I went back to the nurses’ quarters. I didn’t try to hide or pretend I’d been there all along. What good would that have done? I didn’t try to find a doctor either. It was too late for Dr. Maclean. They’d find him soon enough.

No one would expect me to be at his burial. I had already said my good-byes, and it was time to face the future without him. But had I ever really imagined a future with him?

I felt hollow, like someone had tipped me and poured the life out of me and into the Bosporus. I went through the motions of the day in a daze. I’d done those things so often I didn’t have to think about them. No one mentioned anything about me not being in my bed come morning, nor said anything to me they didn’t have to.

I sat eating by myself in the common room. I’d taken to waiting for the others to finish and go to their rooms so no one would have to feel awkward. I was a little surprised when Miss Nightingale came in and sat down across from me at the table.

“There’s a steamer leaving this evening for Marseille. I’ve managed to get you passage on it, Molly.” She talked to me quiet, like somehow she knew about Dr. Maclean and me and didn’t want to upset me. All I could do was nod. I was ready to travel at a moment’s notice. I’d have time on the boat and the train to figure out where to go, what to do when I got back to London. I said nothing, and Miss Nightingale left me to myself.

I didn’t expect anyone to see me off. Early in the evening I walked to the landing where the caiques waited to take passengers across to Istanbul to board the steamers that went to Marseille, to Arabia, to Africa. It was only then I had a single moment’s regret about having to leave. My life had changed so much in Scutari and at Balaclava. Not all the memories were bad. I had Emma, after all. In spite of everything that happened, she was a true friend. I decided to write to her when I got back.

I was already half gone from there, so I nearly jumped when someone tapped me on the shoulder as I stood staring across at the minarets against the sunset. I turned and clutched my coat closed, thinking perhaps it was a beggar looking for coins.

“Molly, I wanted to give you this to take with you.”

I was so shocked to see Miss Nightingale standing there that I hardly realized she was holding something out to me. A letter. As soon as I came to my senses I said, “Thank you, Miss Nightingale,” and curtsied. I turned the letter this way and that, thinking it must have come from Emma, since Will was surely done with me. But it wasn’t for me. It had a name on it, someone I didn’t know. Perhaps Miss Nightingale wanted me to post it in England for her, the mail being rather unreliable from here. But it didn’t have a frank on it for postage, and no direction for the address. “Excuse me, but what is it?” I asked.

“It’s a recommendation, from me to St. Thomas’s Hospital, saying that they should employ you as a nurse, as you have proven yourself very able, but the climate of Turkey disagreed with your health.”

I took the letter in its crisp, white envelope and pressed it to my heart. “But … why?” I had broken rules. I had been as disobedient as any of the other nurses she sent away. I didn’t deserve a recommendation.

“I’m not entirely sure myself,” she said, looking off into the distance. “You were rash and gullible. But you’re also one of the best nurses I have ever known. You understand healing. You understand the need for cleanliness, air, and good food. I have watched you around the patients and see that you know the essential truths of nursing care. You take your job seriously. I can only hope that when you are a little older and wiser, your faults will be smoothed away.”

She didn’t smile when she said any of this. I was sorry I’d not been more perfect—and yet I wasn’t at the same time. I wouldn’t have helped Dr. Maclean save a life. I wouldn’t have given him a second chance to survive. But now that I knew my life ahead would include caring for the sick, I was happier than I had ever been. I didn’t have to worry what I would do when I got back to London. I would go straight to St. Thomas’s. I owed that—and so much more—to Miss Nightingale. I knew I would miss her when I was home as much as I missed my mum while I was here.

We didn’t shake hands, although my heart was so full I could have kissed her. I just thanked her and waved. She watched my caique go until I was nearly across to the other side, then turned away. That’s the last time I ever saw Miss Nightingale.

The journey home was easier than the way there. The season for storms was over, so the Mediterranean crossing was smooth, and I didn’t stop in Paris, so although the train ride was long it seemed faster. How different it felt to hand an actual ticket to the purser on the Boulogne Packet and take my place in a deck chair for the short channel crossing.

I had tea in the tavern where I’d waited outside for Mrs. Bracebridge and the nurses five months before. I paid for my hot scone knowing I had plenty left to take home to my mum, then boarded the London train—third class, to save money, in spite of the fact Miss Nightingale had given me plenty of money for the journey.

But I’d already decided I wouldn’t go home first when I arrived in London. And St. Thomas’s would have to wait a bit too. I owed it to Will at least to visit Lucy and bring her news of her brother. I’d give her the rest of the money I didn’t have for Will when he came to visit me in Scutari. It was supposed to have been hers anyway.

I don’t know how I remembered the way to her house but as soon as I saw the door, I knew I’d found the right place. I hoped Jim was at work so I could talk to Lucy without holding anything back. I knocked.

I heard a baby’s cry somewhere inside coming closer to the door, and in a moment Lucy cracked it open to look out. “May I help you?”

“It’s me, Molly,” I said. “I’m home from Turkey.”

She opened the door a little wider. “Molly! I didn’t expect … Come in.” She pulled the door all the way open and motioned me in with her free hand. Her other arm was occupied with her baby, whose red cheeks and teary face made it obvious she was cutting teeth. The little thing stopped crying in a trice when she saw me, no doubt stunned by my unfamiliar face.

I put down my valise and reached out for her. “I was with your mum when you came into the world!” I said. She squirmed and stuffed her fist in her mouth.

“Let me make some tea,” Lucy said, handing her little girl over to me. Something about her had changed. She was reserved toward me. Although she didn’t turn me away, she seemed hesitant about me being there.

I waited in the parlor, bouncing the baby on my knee, who didn’t once take her round blue eyes off mine. Soon Arthur came in carrying a wooden top. He looked taller than I remembered, but then in five months he must’ve grown some. “My daddy made this for me,” he said.

“How clever! Can you show me how it works?” I asked.

There was something so normal, so quiet, so sweet about the modest house that it made me want to cry. When I thought back over the past several months of my life and how much I’d seen that was the opposite, how men blew each other to bits and suffered terrible disease and hunger on the other side of the world—for what?—I couldn’t make sense of it all. But I’d have to think about a life here, living in a hospital and caring for people, with half days off to visit my family and bring them money. I wondered what my mum would say. Now, with Miss Nightingale’s recommendation, she would have a good reason to be proud of me. I would not shame her again.

Lucy came back with the tea. She looked as though she’d recovered herself a little and had something all ready to say to me. “I didn’t expect you to come here. Will told us you were going to marry a doctor in the east. I’m glad you came, though, so I can wish you joy in person.”

“He died,” I said, too shocked to think of a better way to say it, reeling with the knowledge that Will had thought enough about me to write of me to Lucy.

Lucy stopped with her mouth open, closed it, and poured us both tea. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. We were never anything but friends. Will was mistaken. We didn’t get married.” What point would there be in saying anything else?

“I don’t …” Her voice faded off and her cheeks went red.

I didn’t want her to be embarrassed or uncomfortable, so I thought I’d better make conversation. “I hear that Will has been very helpful to my friend Emma, a widow. Please wish them joy for me the next time you write to him.” I looked down. Much as I’d thought about it, I’d never said the words aloud before. It hurt me more than I expected to let them go like that, as if putting them out there gave them power, made them real.

“Emma? He’s never mentioned any Emma.” A dawning look came across Lucy’s face, like a cloud cleared away and light spread all over.

At that moment the little girl started crying again, perhaps because I was so caught up in what Lucy was saying that I’d stopped bouncing her on my knee. Lucy reached her arms out and I gave the warm, cuddly body back to her, sorry I couldn’t hold on to her longer. “I’ll just put her down for her nap. Wait here … Come, Arthur!” She reached out her hand and little Arthur took it, with a sad backward glance at me as they went through to the kitchen.

I sat in the quiet for a few moments, the muffled sounds of children playing outside making me feel wistful for my home.
I’ll have to leave soon
, I thought, and reached in my valise for the money I meant to give to Lucy.

“Molly?”

I stood up so fast that I dropped the purse with the coins and they scattered over the wood floor.

“Will!”

There he was, in front of me, plain as day. He leaned on a cane. “Will, I thought—”

He walked right up to me, matching each step of his right foot with the cane. “You thought wrong, from what Lucy tells me. The question is, did I?”

At first I couldn’t look into his eyes. I didn’t expect to see him, and yet it seemed so natural that I would. I wondered if I was talking to a ghost, like that time with Mrs. Drake. “I didn’t … I mean, it’s not …”

Will reached out and touched my chin with his fingertips, tilting it up so I’d have to look right at him. His hand was warm. This was no ghost.

And his eyes. They were clear and blue, as I always remembered. But didn’t I also remember that look in them that reached out to me without any tricks, with no hiding or deceit, nothing complicated or shadowy, only something honest and true?

I let my eyes answer his. I felt my heart overflow, like it was reaching out for his, across the space that separated us. How could I not have seen this before? How could I ever have thought that Will wasn’t the one, the only one, who cared enough about me to follow me to Turkey, and who I cared enough about to come to the one place in London where I would find him, if he was home?

“The answer, Will Parker, is yes.”

He smiled. His lips touched mine, like he was afraid I’d change my mind all of a sudden. But I put my arms around his neck and held him to me. I heard his cane drop to the floor as he leaned into me and wrapped his arms around behind my back, pulling me close. We kissed so long I nearly lost my breath.

“You’re not going to go off to Turkey again, are you?” he asked, gently pushing a curl of my hair out of my eyes when we’d separated enough to look at each other again.

“No. I don’t think Miss Nightingale would have me, for one thing!”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.” He nestled his nose into my hair, tipping my hat off and onto the ground.

“But she gave me a recommendation. I can work at St. Thomas’s.”

Will pulled away from me enough to see me. “Very impressive. We’ll have to talk about it, decide what to do.”

“I thought this called for a celebration,” Lucy said, walking back in with a tray, three glasses, and a bottle of beer. She was smiling so wide her eyes crinkled up.