Free The Jeweller's Skin by Ruth Valentine

was still pregnant, and her daughter’s kicks were making a noise inside her like kettle-drums.
    When she woke she remembered the threat.  It was daytime: the ward was washed with a pale grey light.  Someone a few beds away was mumbling.  There were the usual smells, disinfectant and unwashed female bodies and urine.
    She sat up.  She must get dressed.  There were no clothes on the chair beside her bed; the last that she’d worn must have been sent to the laundry.  She got out of bed and looked for an attendant.
    There was no-one around, apart from the old woman talking to herself, and a young girl down near the door, bedclothes thrown off, her hand under her nightdress, masturbating.  As Narcisa passed she raised herself on one elbow and spat.
    She opened the door onto the corridor.  A porter, a big man with a bald head, was pushing a trolley stacked high with brown parcels.  ‘Hello, darling,’ he said.  ‘You looking for someone?’
    Her nightdress felt very thin and clinging.  She wanted to shrink away and close the door.  Instead she said, shivering, ‘Attendant.’
    ‘You need an attendant?  Fine, love.  Leave it with me.’  He winked and went on pushing the heavy trolley.  She watched his broad back in the sepia cotton coat.  At a bend in the corridor he spoke to someone. 
    The attendant Parsons came towards her, half-running.
    ‘Oh, it’s you, Humphreys.’  She pushed her back into the ward, holding her elbow.  ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Better,’ she said, and pointed to her chest.  The English words she’d known came back piecemeal.  ‘Dress.’
    ‘Oh, you’re better, are you?’  She laughed.  She was a cheerful woman, with a smooth face, and large firm breasts under her uniform.  ‘Has the doctor seen you?’
    She knew she had to be clever to defeat them.   ‘No doctor.  Better.  Work now.  Work.’
    ‘Well,’ she said, ‘not many patients ask to work, do they?  I don’t know.’
    ‘Bath?’  she asked.  Her skin felt heavy with lint off the sheets and grease .
    ‘You can’t have a bath, it’s Wednesday, isn’t it?’
    ‘Please, bath,’ she said.  ‘Bath - dress - work.’  She could feel the panic expanding in her stomach.  She longed to be back under the rough blankets, wordless.
    ‘I don’t know,’ Parsons said again.  ‘I should wait and ask Sister.  I’ll tell you what, you have a wash and take your time.’
    Narcisa looked at her, helpless.
    ‘Oh Lord.  You wash’ - she spoke loudly, and the young woman in bed swore - ‘You wash’ - she mimed it - ‘all over - no hurry.  All right?’
    She stood naked at the stone basin, and washed herself quickly with a worn face-cloth.  There was no hot water, and the wash-room was icy.  It should have been luxury to wash alone; but she was anxious, planning the next steps, to get herself sent to work and avoid attention.  She soaped her breasts, and the memory of feeding the baby made her dizzy.  She leaned on the basin.  As she straightened again, she thought she saw her mother, in the doorway to one of the bathrooms.  She called out, but her mother had already gone.
    ‘You all right, Humphreys?’ the attendant called.  She came in and leant against the wall, watching idly.  Narcisa stopped herself shouting go away , the words so close to her tongue they made her cough.  Instead she finished as quickly as she could, and rubbed herself hard with the little towel, for warmth.
    Back on the ward, she put on the clothes Parsons had found her.  The dress must have shrunk in the wash: it was too tight over her chest and the upper part of her arms. ‘Work?’ she asked.
    ‘Oh, you can’t work until Sister has seen you.  Come on, I’ll brush your hair.  You’ve got nice hair.’
    Narcisa stood in front of the woman.  She was rough, pulling the hair out straight with the brush, almost beating at it to tug out the tangles.  Narcisa’s head jerked back with the strokes; her scalp