William Monk 14 - The Shifting Tide

hand and touched the woman’s neck, just to make sure there was no pulse.
    Ruth’s eyes opened. “What is it?” she whispered crossly.
    It was the first time Hester had heard her speak, and her voice was startling. It was low, soft, and pleasing, the voice of a woman of some education and culture. Hester was so startled she flinched. “I . . . I’m sorry,” she apologized, as if rather than ministering to a sick patient she had crept into someone else’s bedroom. “I wanted to see if you were still feverish. Do you feel better? Would you like something to drink?”
    “I feel awful,” Ruth answered, still speaking as if her throat were parched.
    “Would you like some water?” Hester repeated the offer. “I’ll help you sit up.”
    Ruth frowned at her. “Who are you?” She looked around the room as much as she could see without moving her head. “What is this place? It looks like a brothel!”
    Hester smiled. “That’s because it is—or was. Now it’s a clinic. Don’t you remember coming here?”
    Ruth closed her eyes. “If I remembered coming, I wouldn’t ask!”
    Hester was taken aback. She realized with a shock how used she had become to gratitude from the sick and injured who regularly found shelter there. She had come to take it for granted, and this woman looked at her with no admiration at all, no sense of respect towards a rescuer.
    “Do you remember Mr. Louvain, who brought you here?”
    The change in Ruth’s face was subtle, so slight it could have been no more than the struggle to focus her mind, or the fear that she was losing control of what was happening to her.
    “He brought me here?” Ruth said quietly.
    “Yes.” Hester should have asked again if she wanted water, but curiosity stayed her for another moment, waiting.
    An odd smile touched Ruth’s face, ironic, as if there was a terrible humor to her situation that even in her state of wretchedness she could still appreciate. “What did he say?” Her eyes, meeting Hester’s, were hard and angry. She would accept help, but she would not be grateful for it.
    “That you were the mistress of a friend of his who had put you out because you were ill,” Hester replied. The answer was cruel, but surely a woman who had followed such a path, chosen or not, must be used to facing truths.
    Ruth closed her eyes as a wave of pain washed over her, but the smile did not fade away entirely.
    “Mistress, is that what he said?” she whispered derisively.
    “Yes.”
    “Did he pay you? Is that why you sit here nursing me?”
    “He did pay us, yes. Or more accurately, he gave me a donation sufficient to cover the cost of caring for you, and for several other women as well. But we would have taken you anyway. We have plenty here who have nothing to give.”
    Ruth was silent. She was finding it difficult to breathe again, and her face was flushed. Hester stood up and fetched half a glass of water from the stand and brought it back. “You should take this. I’ll help you to sit up.”
    “Leave me alone,” Ruth said irritably. “You’ve been paid to look after me. Consider yourself acquitted.”
    Hester controlled her tongue. “You’ll feel better if you take some liquid. You have a high fever. You need to drink.”
    “A fever! I feel worse than I ever thought a human being could—”
    “Then stop being so perverse and let me help you take a little water,” Hester insisted.
    “Go . . . go to . . .” Ruth was gasping for breath again, and her face was scarlet.
    Hester put the cup down, leaned forward, and put her arms around Ruth’s shoulders, heaving her up and sliding another pillow behind her. With great difficulty she put the cup to Ruth’s lips. The first mouthful was lost, sliding down her neck onto her chest; of the second she swallowed at least half. After that she yielded and took almost all of the rest, and finally lay back exhausted.
    Hester took away the pillow and helped Ruth lie back, then began again with the cloth and the cool water.
    A little after two she left Ruth for a while and went around to the other patients, just to make certain that everyone else was as well as was possible, then she went down to the kitchen and boiled the kettle. She made herself a cup of tea and had drunk most of it when there was a banging at the front door. She roused herself to go and answer.
    There were two women on the step: Flo, whom Hester had seen many times before; and leaning against her, white-faced and holding her arm