Hetty rarely opens his closet. Laura does the washing and ironing, Laura makes sure all Peter’s shirts are returned to hangers, his shoes, shined and treed, are lined up neatly in pairs, the shoulders of his jackets sit straight, his pants hang neatly pressed, creases sharp. She chooses a dark suit, a dusty black, out of consideration for her hair and earthy skin tones. Also black is dramatic, and the transformation, if there is going to be one, demands some flair. She locks the bedroom door; no one is due back for hours. Still, her skin thrills in anticipation and some fear. She slips off her dress and petticoat and steps into the pants. They are of course much too large around the waist, and when she lets go they puddle around her feet. Stepping from them she unlocks the bedroom door and goes in search of Laura’s sewing basket, which she eventually finds in the airing cupboard on the landing. Extracting half a dozen long pins, Hetty returns to the bedroom and turns the latch again. Four tucks, one on either side, front and back, and the pants fit beautifully; at least they are no longer inclined to fall off. Trailing six inches of hem she shuffles towards the long mirror that hangs on the door of her wardrobe, an elegant piece of oak furniture Peter had commissioned from a local craftsman once they arrived home after the wedding and he had taken stock of his new wife’s expansive wardrobe. She slips on the jacket, fastens the buttons and appraises herself. She looks like a child, a boy dressed up in his father’s clothes. How disappointing. She looks nothing like the girl from the stranded schooner.
A hammering starts up beneath her feet. Someone at her front door. Hetty clutches at the lapels of the jacket, knuckles white, heart whiter. Laura? Peter? Who else can it be? He knows what she’s up to, standing in front of the wardrobe mirror dressed in his clothes. But how? And why would he beat on the front door like this? The hammering starts up again, louder still, the windows rattle in their frame. A neighbour perhaps, wanting to borrow something in a hurry. Hetty wills herself to move, fumbles with buttons, suspenders, pant legs, flings the lot on the bed and slips back into her dress. Bang, hammer, bang, the door jumps and thuds against the jamb, and Hetty, woman again, runs down the stairs, impatience gathering with every step. She has a mind to tear a strip off whoever is venting his spleen on her property. It’s enough to summon her neighbours to their stoops, where they will stand, arms folded across ample chests
Hetty yanks the door open, hand on her hip, words on her tongue, but is rendered wooden by the person standing in front of her. It’s the girl from the ship. And standing behind her, hands thrust in his pockets, is Noble Matheson.
“Hetty Douglas?” Hetty can only nod. Noble Matheson’s truck is sitting in the driveway, the engine running. Obviously he’s given the girl her name and brought her here. Hetty can’t bring herself to look at him.
“Noble here tells me you’re a nurse.
“That’s right. Well, I used to be.” She’s wearing a woman’s blouse and what would appear to be a pair of riding breeches. Narrow-legged and tan-coloured, the pants hug the girl’s hips, graze her calves. Hetty feels a shift in the air pressure, her world adjusting itself, preparing for change.
The girl reaches for her hand. Hetty flushes, surprised at the roughness of her skin, how wiry and strong her hands feel. Like a man’s. The only girlish thing about her is the ring on her little finger — rubies in a heart-shaped setting.
“We need your help.
“My help?” “Noble Matheson’s presence is making Hetty uncomfortable. Village eyes and ears. She wants her hand back. God knows who else may be watching. She glances over the girl’s shoulder and across the road, though the houses are too far away to detect twitching net curtains. Years of bucking propriety in Halifax have left her unprepared; it has taken this village less than twelve months to unhinge her insouciance.
“John James. He is very bad.”
“I don’t know any John James.” Hetty pulls her hand free, fusses with the neckline of her dress.
“He’s down in the crew’s quarters. Please. Could you come with us now? Are you busy?”
“Well, no. But —”
“I told them you wouldn’t mind being asked,” Matheson says, steps from her stoop and makes his way back to his truck.
The nerve. Who is he to say what she would and wouldn’t mind? The girl tries to take her hand again.
“What is your name?” Hetty stares into eyes the colour of honey, like a tiger’s.
“Esmeralda.”
“Like the schooner.”
“My father’s idea.”
“Your father?”
“The captain.” She tries out a smile, but her face is tight with worry. “Please?” Esmeralda tugs, pulling Hetty across her own threshold.
More intrigued than afraid, and strangely excited by the rough feel of Esmeralda’s hand gripping hers, the sharp point of the heart-shaped ring jabbing her, Hetty reaches for the handle and pulls the door closed. She lets herself be led to Matheson’s truck, then almost changes her mind. Esmeralda gestures towards the passenger seat.
“I can sit on your knee or you can sit on mine.” Muscles shift under the girl’s skin, in her arms and neck. She is all planes, no soft curves.
Hetty looks away. “I’ll sit on your lap.”
The schooner is stranded on the mud flats, water lapping at her keel, the tide either on its way out or creeping back in — Hetty despairs of keeping track of the tide’s daily hour-or-so change with the ease of the villagers, who count from the last new or full moon. Esmeralda climbs down the wharf ladder first, then extends her hand to Hetty, who struggles with her dress and worries about her shoes.
“It’s easier to board on the tide.”
“I would think it’s easier to board in trousers,” Hetty responds. She bruShes her hands over her clothing, as much to rid herself of the disconcerting feel of Esmeralda during the ride to the wharf — thin, strong hand about her waist, muscles in her lean thighs adjusting beneath her — as to straighten and dust her dress.
“Possibly.” Esmeralda seems even more distracted now they are aboard. Hetty, standing at a slant on the deck of the schooner she was spinning fantasies around only hours before, feels the same; Esmeralda’s fretting is contagious, and Hetty is not without misgivings, is not naïve enough to believe her actions won’t have consequences. Peter will want an explanation. His wife, hurried out in the middle of the afternoon by Noble Matheson and a beautiful young female sailor in men’s clothing. Already she is editing the tale for his benefit.
Esmeralda vanishes down a set of dark narrow steps at the bow of the ship, and, her pulse racing, Hetty follows. At the foot of the steps she bumps up against one of the crew members and almost leaps backwards. The skinny man she saw that first day. Except that isn’t a birthmark on his face. A carbuncle has spread its poison across the man’s left cheek like a knuckled port wine stain, disfiguring him. Carbuncles, one of the doctors had said repeatedly during Hetty’s years at the Nova Scotia Hospital Training School for Nurses, manifest themselves in the weakest part of the body but gather their corruption — here he rolled his Scottish r’s with relish — from every organ, limb and digit.
“I’m sorry. You made me jump.” The air is close down here, almost wet with moisture. He grins, but his eyes stay cold — like a dead fish, Hetty thinks, watching him disappear up the stairs. He isn’t the patient she’s come to see, but someone should lance and drain that thing on his face.
The dim light, the lack of air, the angle of the floor on which she is standing are all disorienting. Esmeralda has disappeared into the gloom. When Hetty reaches out to the side someone grabs her hand. Noble Matheson. Her first instinct is to pull away, but, her eyes still adjusting, she allows herself to be guided towards the bunk beds corralled on the side of the mess. Hetty smells the man she is here to tend before she can make out his form in the narrow berth. Breathing thickly through her mouth, she approaches the cot.
A young man. Someone standing in the shadows hands Esmeralda a kerosene lamp and Hetty takes in his sweat-drenched face, his pallor, his eyes, glassy with pain. John James is scarcely more than a boy.
“John James,” she says gently. For some reason children always better handle their pain than they do their fear.
“J.J. This lady has come to make you better. She’s a nurse.”
“I’m not any —” Hetty begins but Esmeralda taps a warning on her arm. When Hetty turns around she all she can see is the lamp Esmeralda is holding. When she looks back at the comatose boy in the bunk, spots dance before her eyes.
“He has a bit of a fever. Not much, though, not enough to make him this ill. He is a strong man usually.”
Man? Exactly how old is this man, Hetty wonders, with his plump lips, his skinny hairless chest and the faintest burr of a moustache on his upper lip? No more than sixteen, for sure. Esmeralda leans forward and, pulling the grubby sheet back from J.J.’s legs, reveals a wound in the flesh of the boy’s inner thigh, just above his knee. The stench of rot is stomach-turning. Hetty feels her nurse’s demeanour slip like a second skin over her face. Pustulence and the telltale blackened skin of necrosis. Part of this boy’s leg is already dead. She squeezes his hand. J.J. doesn’t stir; in fact he seems to have no sense of the people around him. How long has he been lying like this?
“How did this happen?”
A silence fractionally longer than it should be, and the back of Hetty’s neck prickles. “This wound. What caused it?”
“He slipped on deck, the circumstances are a little confusing. Somehow he managed to impale himself on a grappling hook.”
Somehow indeed. “The bone is shattered.” Crepitus. She kneels on the floor of the cabin, not wanting to cause the boy more pain by disturbing the fractured bone. Her statement is met with silence.
“So there is nothing still in his leg?”
“Such as?” An edge has crept into Esmeralda’s voice.
“Debris, a piece of metal. Even a shred of fabric, something from the pants he was wearing can bring on this kind of infection if it’s left too long.” Bullet. Only a bullet could have caused such destruction. She opens her mouth to say as much but it is as if Esmeralda has drained the air from the cabin and Hetty can no longer breathe.
“It was cleaned out,” Esmeralda says eventually, and air flows back into the tiny cabin, Hetty’s jaw unclenches.
“When was that? How long ago?” By whom? For she would like to wring his neck. It is just such meddling that has caused the infection. What had he used? A dirty penknife from his back pocket? Or had he taken the knife the cook just finished preparing dinner with?
“Yesterday.”
“He’s been sick this long? Why didn’t you take him straight to the doctor?” She holds the back of her hand to his burning forehead. “J.J.,” she says again softly to the boy, who might or might not be able to hear her. She takes his pulse as he mumbles in reply. Nonsense words. Delirium is a late symptom. His heart is racing. “He was fine until this morning.” Now Hetty knows she is lying. This wound has been festering more than a few hours. “And then his leg swelled and . . . everything just happened so fast.”
“He has gas gangrene.” The cabin is deathly quiet. Gas gangrene. The soldier’s nightmare. “See the bubbles of air under his skin, the bronze discolouration.” She says it out loud, partly to reassure herself of her own diagnosis. Hetty hasn’t had any real experience with gas gangrene, but she’s heard tales. It is a front line disease mainly. Not that you couldn’t develop it from an industrial wound, a cut from a ploughshare that turned because it wasn’t treated quickly or aggressively enough. The wounds of boys she’d met in that last year of the war became infected because the mud they had crawled through had been farmed for generations, was contaminated with centuries of manure and now body bits — soldiers, horses, dogs. But they’d usually had the offending limb or limbs amputated in the Casualty Clearing Station in Europe long before they came under her care.
“I’ll need some things,” she says, her own pulse quickened with the act of taking charge. No time to waste. Blood poisoning is the next and, given the circumstances, fatal stage. The dead tissue needs debriding. A doctor’s job usually, but she knows the procedure. “Iodine. Peroxide. Do you have any?” They should have something about for cleaning wounds, stuck out at sea for weeks on end. “Carbolic acid will do. Some clean rags. And a knife. It should be razor sharp.”
Esmeralda turns and mutters instructions to the lamp bearer. The lamp is passed to Matheson and the first man scurries away.
Minutes pass and Hetty hears feet coming down the companionway. Now there’s a press of people at her back, thickening the already stale air. Another lamp is lit, and a third. The lamps are held aloft. Other hands come and go, assembling the necessary items on an upturned crate by the side of the bunk. Esmeralda slips an apron over Hetty’s head. Hetty mumbles a thank-you. She’d rather have gloves to protect her hands from J.J.’s wound, but she appreciates Esmeralda’s concern for her dress.
Pouring peroxide on the rag, a much-laundered undershirt, Hetty wipes her hands: backs, palms, fingers, nails. Choosing the smaller of the two knives laid out for her — what looks like a paring knife — she sterilizes first the blade, then the handle, then braces her left hand on J.J.’s right knee for support, and approaches the wound. His skin is already cold. Hetty flinches, grits her teeth. Though J.J.’s unfocussed eyes roll in his head the fire is elsewhere in his body. Having long since lost all sensation in his lower leg, he does not stir at her touch.
Air thick with the high sweet scent of decay, hot and humid. Beneath Hetty’s undergarments her skin is slick with sweat. More peroxide. She pours it undiluted over the wound, and begins scraping. Like a rotten pear the dead flesh yields to her knife and falls away; brown pus runs over her hands. Someone places a bowl on the bed beside her and she fills it. Knife, peroxide, another dripping rag. Quickly she is down to the bone, glistening white. It is always a shock, the healthy whiteness of bone. Peroxide again. She could run out before she finiShes. Then what? But she doesn’t have time to consider. Staring hard at the thin wavy red line on J.J.’s skin that marks the border of the gangrenous tissue, Hetty swears she can see the infection advancing before her eyes, creeping up his thigh, the surrounding flesh swollen hot and tight.
“Someone is going to have to go for the doctor.” Why Esmeralda hadn’t called for him in the first place is beyond her, given the severity of the boy’s wound. “I can’t treat him. It’s too far gone.” Esmeralda is biting her lips.
“There’s nothing you can do?”
Hetty stares numbly at the red line on the boy’s leg, feeling a part of herself retreat, wishing herself well away from here and the demands being made of her. She is a mill owner’s wife now, her hands are soft and she wears pretty dresses and party shoes. She cannot summon what she needs here.
“Your village doctor, Dr. Baker, he’s away delivering a baby out at a farm somewhere. It’s too far away. His wife says she doesn’t expect him back for hours yet.”
Hetty wipes the sweat from her face with the back of her arm and bites herself, the edges of her teeth sinking into muscle, trying to stem her threatening tears. Why ever did She answer the damn door?
“Please say you can do something, that you can make him well again.”
Make him well again. Who has put all this on her weakened shoulders? It isn’t fair. Her back is so stiff and sore she thinks all She can manage is to lie down beside J.J. and weep until the pressure in her throat eases. Where is that feisty young girl who leapt at fate and threw herself into caring for the wounded the morning of the Explosion? Where the practical nurse in her sensible shoes, her black leather bag crammed with remedies and her head with no-nonsense advice? What have Peter Douglas and Kenomee village fashioned her into? Just who has she become? so many eyes on her, she can feel them on her skin, in her hair. Is she being selfish? She’s only ever assisted once. She looks down at John James again. He is just a boy, with a mother somewhere, missing him.
“Do you have any laudanum?”
“Laudanum. We may have some.” Esmeralda turns to one of her troops. “Laudanum. Go on. Go.”
Hetty raises her hand from her lap and, well clear of the red line, draws a finger across J.J.’s leg.
“A tourniquet. Something strong, like a leather belt.” A deep breath. “And I’m going to need a saw.”
When Hetty emerges from the hold of the Esmeralda, she can tell by the angle of the sun and the length of the shadows on the shore that it is well past suppertime. Worried, Peter will have dispatched Laura and, depending on his degree of alarm, possibly others to go search. Her dress damp with sweat, Hetty shivers in the cool evening breeze. Her hands feel numb, her fingers gnarled and aching. She tries stretching them out but they curl back on themselves like autumn leaves. She stares at them: how had they ever held needle and thread?
Esmeralda follows her up on deck. “I’m so sorry about your beautiful dress. I should have realized that the apron wouldn’t be enough.”
“It’s all right,” Hetty says. The dress is ruined. Dark patches stain the skirt, and there is a small tear where the teeth of the saw had, in one jerk, caught the fabric and broken her own skin. It still stings, though the cut is whisper deep. Such a low pain threshold. She feels ashamed. How will J.J. feel when the laudanum and brandy wear off? She closes her eyes against a wave of nausea, feeling again the resistance of the boy’s healthy skin before the sudden give, then the jarring pain in her own bones as she pushed and pulled the blade through his. And all through the brandy and the rag clamped in his teeth and the blood — so much blood! — the boy had moaned and hollered. Today She carved up a child. It isn’t something she will ever forget.
“Here,” Esmeralda says, pulling a hip flask from the waistband of her pants. She unscrews the lid and hands it to Hetty. “It will warm you up and calm your nerves.”
Give her the courage to face Peter and those four walls that, only a few long hours ago, she had been roused to defend? Hetty takes the flask from Esmeralda’s hand and tips it to her lips. Her eyes water but this is no backwater hooch, it slides silkily smooth down her throat, heat trailing in its wake. Hetty feels all her nerves snapping awake, her eyes growing wider, her skin tingling as blood rushes to the surface. She closes her eyes for a moment but J.J.’s face is waiting for her, head back, mouth straining at the gag.
“Take this to keep you warm.” Esmeralda holds out a red and black patterned shawl with a long tasseled fringe. It looks like a relic from the stage. Hetty takes it and wraps it around herself.
“It’s so soft,” she says, fingering its velvety texture. Next to her skin the shawl seems transformed. “It’s beautiful.” She runs her fingers over the age-softened pile.
Esmeralda smiles shyly. “It was my mother’s.
“But then I couldn’t.”
“Of course you can,” Esmeralda says. “You’re cold.”
“No, really.” Hetty begins removing the shawl but a sudden warm weight about her shoulders stops her. Noble Matheson’s jacket. It smells faintly of tobacco and the damp.
“Thank you,” Hetty says, as the warmth from the jacket relaxes her a little.
“You need it more than I do,” Matheson says, voice flat. The two women share a wan smile.
Hetty has so many questions, but brandy can keep exhaustion at bay for only so long. She has a husband and a home to return to and she suddenly realizes She is lightheaded with hunger.
“I must be getting back.”
Esmeralda takes her hand. “I can’t thank you enough. You’ve saved J.J.’s life.”
“He isn’t saved yet.” She’d been as scrupulously clean as possible but secondary infections are common.
Esmeralda presses her other hand on top of Hetty’s. “He would have died today if you hadn’t come. I won’t forget this. None of us will.” She pulls her hands away to produce a bundle of notes from the pocket of her pants. Hetty looks alarmed.
“Oh, please no. It isn’t necessary.” She shakes her hand in the air, shooing away Esmeralda’s money.
“But my father insists. You have worked hard. We took you from your day. You deserve to be paid for all this. Besides, your dress is spoiled.”
“Tell the captain I thank him for his offer, but I did what I could in the hopes of saving the boy’s life.”
“Which makes your services worthy of payment, surely?”
“Not at all. I wouldn’t feel right accepting your money.” Hetty rubs at her arms. She’ll have to burn her dress.
“As you wish then.” Esmeralda slips the notes back in her pocket and stares over Hetty’s shoulder in the direction of the village.
Did Esmeralda sound curt just then or is it Hetty’s overwrought imagination? Maybe she offended the girl. Your money. Meaning dirty money. She stares at the deck and is now suddenly and horribly conscious of Noble Matheson in his worn-out shoes standing to one side in the shadows. Perhaps she should have taken the money and found some way of giving it to him. He could probably do with it. He’s spent the day on board too, but Hetty hasn’t noticed any payment changing hands.
“You will make sure the doctor takes a look at J.J.’s leg as soon as possible?”
“I’ll take care of the doctor, don’t worry. In fact it’s probably best you both keep quiet about what happened here. It’s the kind of day best forgotten, don’t you think?”
Hetty musters the courage to look at Esmeralda. So it wasn’t an accident after all, and She’s probably right about the bullet too. What had young John James been doing to get himself shot? Matheson holds out his hand to help Hetty onto the wharf from the ladder. They glance away from each other. Keeping mum is hardly an issue for Hetty. She can’t think of anyone She would want to tell. Peter has trouble with the idea of her cutting up beef shank for stew. There is no guessing how he will react to her newly acquired amputation skills.
“But the doctor should visit at least. He’s going to need something for the pain. And anyway someone needs to check that I did everything properly.”
“You did just fine.”
Hetty and noble begin making their way over to his truck.
“Remember!” they both turn to see Esmeralda raise her finger to her lips.
Noble opens the passenger door and Hetty sinks into the seat, even her bones ache from pent-up tension. She allows her lids to close while Matheson steps around to the driver’s side.
“You did some work on the schooner?” Hetty says eventually. She could fall asleep sitting on a floating shoebox, but feels obliged to make small talk.
Matheson, hunched over the steering wheel, fingers tapping to some internal rhythm, clearly isn’t driven by the same impulses. “Yeah, Some.”
“I saw you the other morning. Thursday.” the Esmeralda showed up thursday morning. Was it only Friday today? Matheson offers nothing more and Hetty gives up, relaxes back into her seat. He’s probably sore about the money. They travel the rest of the distance to her house in silence.
The truck’s headlights bounce about on the side of the barn as noble and Hetty pull up the Douglas driveway. There’s a light coming from under the stable door. Peter must be rubbing down shadow or feeding her a bran mash. Such time and affection he showers on his horse. The thought swims up on her, unbidden: what an attentive, loving father he would have been. Hetty puShes at the door and scrambles out before Matheson can make a move to help her. She pauses to collect herself, removes his jacket and places it on the passenger seat. What to say in a situation such as this? thank you? But is She thankful for today’s experience? Matheson is staring at his hands, folded over the top of the steering wheel. He looks as uncomfortable as She feels. Hetty closes the truck door and enters her home.