Even with the dust motes clinging to his beard, Frank looked fantastically conspicuous in the room. Alice and her colleagues had initially been perplexed at the idea of a man turning up whenever he felt like it to observe them at work, but his humour had put them quickly at ease. Beneath his buffoonery lurked a sharp mind and keen intuition, something he appeared keen to keep under wraps.
Quietly, Alice edged past the pair into the room. Frank shifted his weight subtly from one foot to the other to aid her passage. A ripple of interest at the arrival of yet another stranger rolled over the children. The young boy who was in the process of pinching his older sister sprang to his feet and walked over to her. ‘Hello,’ Alice said softly, crouching down in front of him. ‘What’s your name then?’
‘Jack,’ the boy answered and began fiddling with the sleeve of Alice’s cape. ‘You one of them busybodies?’
The almoner smiled then removed her hat and rested it on one knee, instantly softening her features. Some of Alice’s nursing colleagues were beginning to experiment with cosmetics, something that would have been considered vulgar before the war. When readying themselves for a night out, they would cajole her into darkening her lashes with a mixture of crushed charcoal and Vaseline, the more exuberant characters outlining their eyes in a dramatic sweep. Alice generally went make-up free when on duty, taming her long brown curls in a tight chignon at the back of her head. It was a style that gave her square jaw and high forehead prominence over her softest feature: her large, thickly lashed brown eyes. The resulting rather prim look came in useful when dealing with the least cooperative of patients. ‘Erm, I suppose some might say so.’
‘Mummy usually sends you lot packing.’
His older sister shifted around and gave a shake of her head. Alice pressed her lips together, eyes shining. ‘And who is this?’ she asked, kneeling in front of the young boy who was sitting on his older sister’s lap, bare knees dangling beneath a worn blanket. About two years old, the child regarded her shyly and buried his face in his sister’s chest. The latter planted a brief kiss on top of his hair. When she pulled away, her eyes remained downcast. The logs crackled in the grate as Alice stilled, waiting for an answer.
The girl, though wearing a morose expression, was pretty. Her cheeks were plump and prominent despite the thinness of her wrists, her eyes a feline green. After a few moments she met Alice’s gaze. ‘John,’ she mumbled, regarding the almoner with the sort of suspicion that anyone involved in social work quickly becomes accustomed to.
‘Hello, John,’ Alice said, with a brief touch to his knee. She looked up at his sister. ‘And you are?’
‘That’s Charlotte,’ Jack offered, stealing Alice’s hat from her knee and planting it lopsided on his own head. ‘She’s trouble, Mum says. Him’s Henry,’ he added, pointing to the young boy almost asleep on the floor. ‘And Elsa’s over there.’ The young girl sitting next to Henry chewed her lip and regarded Alice from beneath lowered lashes. Charlotte rolled her eyes and glared.
The tell-tale signs of a scabies infestation were visible along John’s forearm. Track-like burrows ran around his wrist where a mite had tunnelled into the skin, the tiny black dots of faecal matter visible around an angry rash. It was something Alice and the other VADs had often seen in the field hospitals; soldiers driven half-mad by the intense, irrepressible itch. The entire family would need to be treated with benzyl benzoate emulsion. ‘Not at school, Charlotte?’ Alice asked, in a precise but friendly tone.
It was a question designed to engage, rather than a genuine enquiry. The almoner had been taught specific interviewing strategies in training that helped her to disguise carefully planned interviews as casual chats, thereby gaining valuable insight into the living conditions of her patients: their relationships, finances, thoughts and fears. By examining individuals in the context of their social setting she was able to identify issues that might be impacting negatively on their health. Practical help honed to individual needs could then be offered, improving outcomes and the chances of a good recovery.
One way to encourage an interviewee to relax was to start a conversation with questions that were most easily answered, in much the same way as the devisers of written exams open with a problem easily solved. Since patients almost universally enjoyed talking about themselves, she learned that a readiness to listen, a keen interest in people and a sincere desire to help were all that was needed to encourage loose tongues.
‘I’m fifteen,’ the girl said, sounding offended. ‘I left ages ago.’
Alice nodded. ‘So are you working outside of the home now?’ The almoners knew it wasn’t unusual for older children to take a job so that they could contribute towards the family purse, even skipping school to do so. The income generated was often kept under wraps by families being assessed. Alice had been taught to be thorough in her questioning to uncover a true picture of a family’s finances.
‘Not really,’ Charlotte answered quickly. Her thin chilblained fingers worked continuously at the blanket on her brother’s lap, as if she had more to say. Alice waited, but the girl’s eyes flicked over to her mother and then her expression suddenly closed down. Her shoulders rounded further away so that the child on her lap wobbled and almost lost balance until she reached out and wrapped her arms around his waist.
Alice pressed her lips together, rescued her hat and rose to her feet. Over by the door, Frank’s charms were working a treat, Mrs Redbourne smiling up at him coyly. She barely seemed to notice when Alice slipped past. Behind her, Charlotte sat quietly, eyes watchful.
In the hallway, Alice hesitated. She stood in solitary silence for a few seconds, head cocked as if listening. After a moment she turned sideways to squeeze past the pram and then moved towards a closed door at the end of the hall. A soft thump stopped her in her tracks. There was a creaking sound, and then the door gave way, a pair of eyes peering through the crack.
After a short pause in which no one moved, the door was opened to reveal a fleshy, puffy-eyed man with a glossy sheen across his forehead. Alice strode towards him, thrust out her hand and smiled, as if a meeting had been planned between them. ‘You must be Mr Redbourne?’ she said. ‘Alice Hudson. Pleased to meet you.’
The man looked down at her and passed his tongue over his lips, then took her proffered hand. ‘You’ll be from the hospital,’ he said in an uncertain voice. ‘The wife could do without the added pressure,’ he added, when Alice confirmed her occupation. ‘We do what we can, but you can’t expect us to give what we don’t have.’
He followed her to the living room, but when his wife caught sight of him she shooed him away with her hand. ‘I thought you were at the market, George? Get going will yer, there’s things we need.’ Mr Redbourne pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, took one into his mouth using his teeth, then, without another word, slipped out of the house.
When the front door clicked to a close, Alice entered the room he had just vacated. The back parlour was a dark room with a single bed in the centre, the wooden base held up by a pile of bricks at each corner. There was a bite to the air, the room colder than the street outside. A dozen shirts hung from a rope stretched diagonally across it, one end caught between the slightly open window and the other wedged between the top of a Welsh dresser and the wall.
Alice closed the door and peered into the nearby kitchen. Through the small window at the end of the room, a partly stone-flagged backyard was visible, a patch of bare earth beyond. An old lean-to housing the lavatory blocked what little winter light there was from entering the kitchen. There was no sign of running water; most working-class families were still filling buckets from a pump at the end of their street. The approaching twilight bathed the small area in shadows, the air fermenting with the smell of old dinners. With so many people living in the house the room was likely a place of much activity but, aside from a few