Free The Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh

rarely, and laughed even less. Frances suspected she was homesick already. She was going to South Africa to be a nurse, and Mariella was needling her.
    “Imagine breathing in other people’s diseases all day long.” Mariella stepped out of her dress, unstrapped her bustle, leant her forearms against the bunk above Frances, and waited for Anne to loosen her laces.
    “There’s a man in steerage who had his arm blown clean off in the mines. Two nurses had to hold him down while they sewed his shoulder blade back in. He said their dresses were so red you couldn’t have paid for scarlet that color.”
    “Mariella!” Frances scolded. Anne was biting her lower lip and looked as if she might cry.
    “Well what?” Mariella bent her head to look in at her. “I should just like to know why, that’s all.”
    “Not all of us, Mariella, are going to the colonies to be married,” Anne said, working on the last of Mariella’s laces.
    “I shouldn’t think you’d turn down an offer if it came your way.”
    Mariella wriggled out of her corset and into a nightdress. She planted a wide, pink foot on the edge of the bunk, her big toe inches from Frances’s face, and heaved herself up. “There aren’t enough men in England to go round. They’ve all escaped to the colonies. I intend to redress the balance.” Despite themselves, the girls laughed. Mariella had a way of getting at the truth.
    Sister Mary-Joseph looked into their cabin to check that the girls were in their beds, and a few minutes later the ship’s bell rang, the signal for all lights to be extinguished. Frances blew out her candle. It was their first night at sea. Finally, that afternoon, the guns had sounded, the sails had been hoisted onto the yards, and they had lost sight of Southampton as it receded into dusk. The second-class berths were towards the bow of the ship, close to the steam funnel, and the room was thick with the heat of the engines. Frances, used to sleeping alone, disliked the warmth and the damp stuffiness of the other girls’ bodies. She asked for the porthole to be left open at night, but Mariella had been shocked. What if a wave came in and drenched them?
    “How can you be so confident that you’ll like what you find in South Africa?” Anne asked when they had settled in darkness. “You’ve no idea what to expect.”
    “No,” Mariella said, “but it can’t be any worse than what I left behind in England.”
    “What about your father? Surely you’ll miss him.”
    “My father is a drunk. I worked fourteen hours a day for three years sewing buttons on coats in a factory in Bristol to support him, and when he finally found work he threw me out of the house to make room for a girl half his age.” Mariella was older than them both, and usually imperturbable. It hurt to hear her sound so bitter.
    “I agree,” Anne said, breaking the silence. “South Africa has to be better. At least there’ll be work. That was the worst thing when my father died. The helplessness. Not knowing how my mother and I would feed ourselves.”
    “I thought you were trained as a nurse?” Frances asked.
    “Not then I wasn’t. My mother took on work as a seamstress, and earned just enough to send me to nursing school. Only for a year, though, and I couldn’t find a hospital to take me at the end of it. Too many girls with more experience.”
    “But you have a position in South Africa?”
    “Yes. I’ll have to start in Cape Town, but I hope to go to Kimberley eventually. There is a nurse there, in charge of the hospital. Sister Clara. She is famous in South Africa. They say she is tireless in her helping of others. Almost a saint. At the age of ten she declared that she wanted to be a missionary, and she managed it, against her parents’ wishes, through sheer determination.”
    “Well, Frances,” Mariella said after a moment. “What about you?”
    “What about me?” she asked, reluctant to tell them.
    “We’ve both bared our souls. Now it’s