WINTER 1914
As dawn broke, a pale winter light filtered through the high windows, seeping into the white-tiled sanatorium. Every part of her felt as if it was on fire, and her limbs, jerky and uncoordinated, twitched violently beneath the leather constraints that bound her to the rusty iron bed.
The slightest touch left the girl in agony; even the weight of the bed sheets against her skin was a pain that could not be borne, so much so that her physician had ordered that they be suspended over her body in a bed cradle. Six weeks she had lain like this, unable even to move her head without volts of hot pain slicing through her, day following torturous night . . . Apart from her mother’s fortnightly visits, she had scarcely seen a soul, her loneliness sharpening her suffering. Soaked in sweat, at the height of her fever she had even begun to hallucinate, sworn she had seen the mythical Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, cap in hand, pleading at the end of her bed.
The door swung open and the nurse entered to perform her morning treatment, clutching a white enamel dish in her hand. The patient followed the nurse with her eyes, her pupils dilating in horror as she realized it wasn’t the usual lady on duty. The younger nurse with the soft, wavy hair and delicate hands always performed her treatments slowly, gently and rhythmically, so as to impose minimum suffering, and took time to carefully feed her spiced barley water and beef tea afterwards. The sour-faced nurse marching towards her now with a heavy step and florid cheeks possessed neither her deftness nor her compassion.
‘Now, then, young lady, don’t start with the trembling lip,’ she ordered. With that, she cast aside the bed cradle, pulled out a brush and began to paint her limbs roughly with oil of wintergreen. The pain was exquisite, every touch like being brushed with shards of glass, and the girl wept hot tears of pain and fear.
‘Well, whatever did you expect?’ the nurse admonished briskly, when she had finished. ‘It’s the very nature of the beast. Licks the joints and bites the heart.’
The girl closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the nurse was gone. She didn’t need her bitter sermonizing: she was all too familiar with her disease. This was her third attack in three years, each episode irrevocably damaging her body that bit more. She was deeply grateful to the guardians of the Poor Law, who sanctioned her stays, but the fear of the future was riveting, casting an even darker shadow over her adolescence. She was only ten, after all, a girl whose body was already giving up on her.