The Twisted Root

will turn your considerable energies towards the true welfare of both the nurses here and the patients, and attend to their cleanliness, their sobriety and their obedience to do what they are commanded, both punctually and exactly. Good day." And without waiting for her reply, which he seemingly took for granted in the affirmative, he strode away purposefully towards the operating theater, satisfied he had dealt with the subject finally.
    Hester was too furious to speak for the first few moments, then, when she could have spoken, no words seemed adequate to express her disgust. She marched in the opposite direction, towards the physicians’ waiting room.
    There she found Cleo talking to an old man who was obviously frightened and doing his best to conceal it. He had several open ulcers on both his legs which must have been acutely painful and looked as if they had been there for some time. He smiled at Cleo, but his hands were clenched till his knuckles were white and he sat rigidly upright.
    "You need them dressed regularly," Cleo said gently. "Gotta keep them clean or they’ll never heal up. I’ll do it for you, if you come here and ask for me."
    "I can’t come ’ere every day," he answered, his voice polite but with absolute certainty. "In’t possible, miss."
    "Isn’t it, now." She regarded him thoughtfully, looking down at the worn boots and threadbare jacket. "Well, I suppose I’ll have to come to you, then. How far, is it?"
    "An’ why would you be doing that?" he asked dubiously.
    " Because those sores aren’t going to get any better otherwise," she replied tartly.
    "I in’t askin’ no favors," he said, bristling. "I don’t want no nurse woman comin’ into my ’ouse! Wot’ll the neighbors think o’ me?"
    Cleo winced. "That you’re damn lucky at your age to be pulling a nice-looking woman like me!" she snapped back at him.
    He smiled in spite of himself. "But yer can’t come, all the same."
    She looked down at him patiently. "Call yourself a soldier, and can’t take orders from someone who knows better than you do—and make no mistake, I’m your sergeant w’en it comes ter them sores."
    He drew in his breath, then let it out again without answering.
    "Well?" Cleo demanded. "You going to tell me where you live, or waste me time having to find out?"
    "Church Row," he said reluctantly.
    "And I’m going to walk up and down the whole lot asking for you, am I?" Cleo said with raised eyebrows.
    "Number twenty-one."
    "Good! Like drawin’ teeth, it is!"
    He was not sure whether she was joking or not. He smiled uncertainly.
    She smiled back at him, then saw Hester and came over to her, trying to look as if she were not out of composure.
    "I’m not going to do it in hospital time," she said in a whisper. "Poor old soul fought at Waterloo, he did, an’ look at the state of him." Her expression darkened, and she forgot the appropriate deference to a social superior. Anger filled her eyes. "All for soldiers, we was, when we thought them French was gonna invade us and we could lose. Now, forty-five years on, we forgotten all about how fit we was, and who wants to care for some old man with sores all over his legs who’s got no money an’ talks about wars we don’t know nothing about?"
    Hester thought vividly of the men she had known in Scutari and Sebastopol, and the surgeons’ tents after that chaotic charge at Balaclava. They had been so young, and in such terrible pain. It was their ashen faces that had filled her dreams the previous night. She could see them sharp in her mind’s eye. Those that had survived would be old men in forty years’ time. Would people remember them then? Or would a new generation be accustomed to peace, and resentful and bored by old soldiers who carried the scars and the pain of old wars?
    "See that he’s cared for," Hester said quietly. "That’s what matters. Do it whenever you wish."
    Cleo stared back at her, eyes widening a little, uncertain for a moment whether to believe her. They barely knew each other. Here they had one purpose, but they went home to different worlds.
    "Those debts cannot ever be understood," Hester answered her. "Let alone paid."
    Cleo stood still.
    "I was at Scutari," Hester explained.
    "Oh ..." It was just a single word, less than a word, but there was understanding in it, and profound respect. Cleo nodded a little and went to the next patient.
    Hester left the room again. She was in no mood now to see that moral standards were observed