He sat down beside Clara and put his arm around her shoulders.
“Prepare for the worst,” he said to Clara. “I don’t think Billy will make it to morning.” His eyes filled with tears. “I brought Billy into the world. I never thought I’d see him out. What have we done to deserve this flu, after losing so many to win the war?”
Billy’s temperature stayed relentlessly high. Clara’s arms had become expert at knowing when a life had succumbed, and in the early morning, one week after the glorious truce, Billy died.
Dr. Westoll told Clara what she already knew: “Had Billy survived such severe convulsions he would have lived the rest of his life handicapped or brain damaged in some way.”
Clara grieved to the point of sickness, but returned nevertheless to Maidenhead Hospital after two weeks, believing she could bury her sorrow. But trying to save the lives around her only highlighted how helpless she had been to save her own son. As she cared for the wounded soldiers she tried to comfort herself that some mother would be happy. But her drawn face and thin body were visible reminders that she had suffered a double loss. Seeing Clara sobbing in a supply cupboard, the matron ordered her to take more time to grieve.
“Young Ivy will be a comfort to you if you return home for a few weeks,” the matron said. “We can manage.” She unexpectedly put her arms around Clara and smiled. “I know you don’t believe that, Sister Durling.”
Clara’s eyes smiled through her tears.
By late spring, Billy’s death had become a diffuse ache through Clara’s entire body. She scratched about in his small rose garden imagining her son’s delight at the appearance of early buds. Billy would have checked on the new growth repeatedly, not wanting to miss the first flowering. Clara had met her son’s expectant behaviour with “Watched kettles never boil.” The memory of her adage produced a flood of tears, but she brushed them away and forced her thoughts beyond the garden.
Dr. Newbury, preparing to return to Edmonton and seeing Clara’s despair, pressed her even harder to move to Canada. Once back in Alberta, he wrote a letter urging her to respond to the advertisement for a lady superintendent at his alma mater, the Galt Hospital in Lethbridge. He explained that this position was the same as a British matron. “The lady superintendent is responsible for all hospital staff except the doctors,” he wrote.
Clara had spent two weeks discussing the possible move and reflecting on what decision would be better: to try a new life or stay and struggle on in England. Staring at the prickly rose stems, she felt they held the answer. The garden was brown and flowerless when Billy died, she thought, and now it’s ready to bloom again. Clara clipped a rose and placed it in an envelope of parchment paper. Her decision to move to Canada was made, and the rose would be her reminder that Billy’s short life had been a happy one. She wrote to Dr. Newbury asking him to write a letter of recommendation to the Galt Hospital board. Very shortly afterwards, he sent her a copy of the letter he had written to Mayor Harwood. Clara smiled as she read, thinking that all she knew about the mayor was his lenience toward prostitutes. Lethbridge, she mused, will be a challenge.
Dear Alistair,
I hope this letter finds you well and Mrs. Harwood on the mend. Morris has kept me informed about your wife’s illness. Your worries about the Galt Hospital are well founded. Before I left for England, I was quite concerned by the deterioration of the place. Nursing standards had slipped badly, as you know from your own wife’s unfortunate stay in the hospital.
While Acting Surgeon at the Red Cross Hospital in London, I worked closely with a nursing sister, Mrs. Clara Durling. She comes from a lovely family, whom I also had the privilege to meet. I believe she is the person we need to bring back the Galt. I have worked cheek-by-jowl with her, and she is quite simply the best nurse I have ever encountered. She received her training at St. George’s Hospital in London and was Assistant Matron at St. Bartholomew’s until she married her husband, George. Unfortunately, he died before war’s end from gas exposure. In spite of her grief, she continued to work tirelessly. But tragedy did not end there. As the war ended, her six-year-old son died of the flu.
Mrs. Durling remained a consummate professional and faithfully kind to her patients. The soldiers could not have received better care. The one drawback is that she will need someone to be responsible for her five-year-old daughter, Ivy, while she is running the hospital. I might add Ivy is a lovely little girl.
Alistair, I am asking Mrs. Durling to send her résumé directly to you. As hospital chairman, would you be so kind as to send it on to the hospital committee to consider her as the new lady superintendent? I am confident that as matron she will re-establish standards in my alma mater hospital.
I send my fond regards to Mrs. Harwood.
Yours faithfully,
Francis Newbury, M.D.
Chapter 2
Sydney, Nova Scotia, 1912
Two years before the Great War erupted, Lily White entered her graduation year at Sydney Academy. She had applied for a scholarship to teachers’ college in Truro, Nova Scotia, for the following year, but the scholarship was conditional on Lily maintaining at least a 75 percent average in all subjects. Being prudent and heeding her father’s advice that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, she planned to earn money for her tuition during her final school year.
Lily’s father, Robert White, was a pharmacist, and he had taught Lily the value of money when she was only twelve by hiring her to deliver medicines to clients. People in Sydney would smile as she pedalled down the street with a carrier filled with packages. She would return the smile and wave.
The outward happiness did not reveal the real turmoil within. Lily’s mother, Amelia, had always favoured her younger daughter, and Lily felt her preference for Beth very keenly. Beth was a year younger than Lily, but stylish and brash. She had her father’s lapis lazuli eyes and Amelia’s brown wavy hair. Once, during an argument, Beth had taunted Lily with the fact that she didn’t look like either of her parents. This comment made Lily feel even further estranged from her mother and slowly she began to consider the idea that she might be adopted. At sixteen she decided to ask.
She stopped at the door that connected the house and the pharmacy and watched her father shake, stir, pound, and bottle various potions for breathlessness, stiffness, infections, rashes, sleeplessness, coughs, and headaches, wondering how she would ask the question: “Are you my real father?” Her nerve gathered up, Lily stepped forward just as an elderly client tottered into the pharmacy from the street. Robert pulled up a chair for Mrs. Birch then knelt on one knee to see what was bothering her. Lily had to smile while she watched: he looked as though he were going to propose. Mrs. Birch complained of terrible back pain and Robert suggested she might need stronger pain medication. “Or perhaps a new mattress,” he said with a sympathetic grin. “I’ll send Mrs. White over next week with the Sears catalogue and she can help you choose.”
“How did you know I slept on a lumpy old thing?” Mrs. Birch chirped. She looked up at Robert with an adoring smile.
“Because every old-timer in Sydney does the same thing. Or perhaps I’m clairvoyant.”
Lily had tears in her eyes. She adored her dad. “He has to be my real father,” she whispered, wiping her tears away with her fist. Robert helped Mrs. Birch to the door, promising to have the new pills delivered as soon as they arrived at the pharmacy.
Lily
