Daisy's Betrayal

by Nancy Carson

  Through the piercing screams, Daisy heard a knock on the door downstairs and ran down to answer it.

  ‘Come in, Mrs Bowen. Thank goodness you’ve come.’

  Mrs Bowen stepped inside. ‘How often am the contractions a-coming?’

  ‘Often. Her water broke a little while ago. She must have been in labour four hours at least.’

  ‘It still might be some time yet, my wench. Doh thee fret. I’n ’ad fifteen meself so I should know … Have yer got plenty wairter on to bile?’

  ‘What you can see there. But we’ve got no more coal.’

  ‘No more coal? Then yo’d best get on and see if yo’ can borrer some from next door while I see to the poor wench upstairs. We’ll need a load of it.’ Mrs Bowen cast a professional eye over Titus sitting propped up in his chair as she opened the stairs door. There would be another easy fifteen shillings before long, by the looks of him, she thought … to lay him out.

  Sarah’s baby, a boy, was born shortly after seven o’clock that evening. It weighed less than four and a half pounds, a scrawny, screwed-up little bundle.

  ‘It’s the most puny thing I’n sid in many a year,’ Old Mother Bowen said downstairs as she pocketed her fifteen shillings. ‘I doubt whether it’ll see the wik out. Even if its mother can feed it.’

  ‘I’ll get Dr McCaskie in to examine the child,’ Daisy said.

  ‘I should … And while he’s here, yo’d best get him to look at the young madam an’ all. There’s no bleedin’, nor nothin’ like that – I doh think as ’er’s got an ounce o’ blood left in her. I’ve never seed anybody more anaemic. Your sister, is it, did yer say?’

  Daisy nodded. ‘I’ve been abroad fifteen months, Mrs Bowen. I got back today … To all this …’

  ‘Some ’ome-comin’, I’ll be bound. Well, ’er needs to stop a-bed an’ rest. Get some sweet stout down her neck and plenty eggs and meat. There’s no flesh on her bones. I’n seed more fat on a butcher’s apron.’

  ‘Do you think she’s not been looking after herself properly, Mrs Bowen?’

  ‘I’d say it’s bin a damned long while since her had a good meal.’

  Daisy sighed. ‘My mother died just a fortnight ago. I suspect Sarah was looking after her till the last – neglecting herself.’

  ‘Oh, this is longer neglect than that, my wench. ’Er ain’t looked after herself properly for months. Any road, yo’ can tell by the weight o’ the babby. The poor little bugger’s starved to jeth an’ all while ’er’s bin a-carryin’ ’im.’

  ‘Are you sure, Mrs Bowen?’

  ‘Ask Dr McCaskie. I used to see yer sister knockin’ about. Pretty young thing, I always thought.’

  Daisy thanked Mrs Bowen for her attendance.

  ‘I’ll pop by termorrer and have a look at ’em both. All part o’ the service.’

  Daisy had been able to borrow a couple of buckets of coal from next door while Mrs Bowen was attending to Sarah, so they had some heat for a while. She had lit a fire in Sarah’s bedroom so that she and the baby could benefit from the warmth. Tomorrow, she would go to the coal yard and fetch a hundredweight, providing her father’s old handcart was still serviceable. She found some potatoes that had started sprouting, some flour, butter and some cheese and made a cheese and potato pie. Titus ate it though not heartily, and Sarah woke up to have a little. Then, when she’d cleared up, Daisy decided to get her father upstairs and give him a bed bath in order to reduce the malodours that were an invisible but eminently perceivable aura around him. She took Sarah a hot drink and wondered if the baby would take any food yet. The mite hadn’t stirred. One thing was certain, Sarah would have to try and feed him soon and to do so, she must feed herself first.

  When she felt she had done as much as she possibly could, Daisy went to bed. She lay weeping and could not stop. She wept over many things; the loss of her mother, the state of her father and Sarah. Was this chilling predicament that afflicted them the result of her leaving them in anger and despair more than fifteen months earlier? Was this the direct consequence of that decision? She could hardly have foreseen it. Surely, she could not be blamed entirely. She could hardly be blamed for her mother’s cancer. Her mother had seemed fit and well and perfectly capable of looking after her father when she left. Sarah, too, was settled in a new, well-paid job at Hillman’s, and excited at the prospect of meeting a decent lad.

  She heard a faint cry from the baby and pulled the pillow over her head. Sarah must look after the child herself. The girl’s stupidity – or had it been good intentions? – had resulted in her pregnancy, so she must shape up and take the consequences.

  But all these tears … Everything was made worse because she was also missing John so acutely. She missed him beyond belief. When she’d arrived at Turin on her way back to England she’d looked on a map in the railway carriage and seen how relatively close Bologna seemed. If she’d had his address she would have called on him, surprised him, and explained that she was going to pay her last respects to her dying mother and that she would be back at Paradiso long before him. Whatever happened now, it would be at least another week before his first letter arrived. Oh, Gianni … Are you well without me by your side? Are you missing me as much as I’m missing you? Oh, Gianni … She wanted so much to return to Italy, to John, to the idyllic life they had made for themselves; the sunny, kindly, generous, easy-going life in the hills of Sorrento. She wanted to hear the constant roar of the sea, feel the sun and the warm breeze on her face, look forward to seeing Gianni’s next painting. She wanted to see that intoxicating, perplexed look on his face when he was unsure of himself, as he so often was. She wanted to see her vines growing, her lemons, her oranges, her olives, her tomatoes. She wanted to receive the affectionate smiles and greetings of Concetta, of Pasquale, of Francesca, of Pietro … and of young Serafino.

  Being away from her loved one made her feel love all the more acutely. Yes, absence did make the heart grow fonder. She could never take for granted what was normally there to enjoy. Now she found it hard to see herself as she used to be – living her cosseted yet mundane and ultimately deceived existence with Lawson Maddox. That was another lifetime, she was somebody else then. Having discovered this life with John she could not conceive of anything different. But now, suddenly, life was different and the cruel difference was inducing this endless weeping. Oh, she wanted to help her poor father and her unfortunate sister, there was no question about it, but she also wanted to returned to John. The last thing she wanted was to lie sobbing in this unaired bed because of them.

  Daisy wiped her tears on the pillow and heard the child mewling again. Perhaps she should go and investigate, try and encourage Sarah to deal with it. So she slipped out of bed, lit her candle and tiptoed into Sarah’s room. Experimentally, she put the knuckle of her forefinger to the baby’s mouth and he tried to suckle it. Daisy was astounded at the instinctive reaction of an untutored child. Of course, he was hungry at last. She roused Sarah. Sarah awoke, drowsy.

  ‘Your baby’s hungry, Sarah,’ she whispered. ‘You must try and feed him. It’s time.’

  ‘I can’t, Daisy,’ Sarah bleated meekly. ‘I’m bone weary. And I feel all hot. Can you open the window?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll open the window. But you must sit up and try to feed the baby.’ Daisy slid the sash down a couple of inches. ‘There … Come on, I’ll help you sit up.’ She put her arms under Sarah’s armpits with the intention of lifting her. ‘God! You’re ringing wet with sweat.’

  ‘I told you … I’m so hot.’

  ‘Hot or no, try and feed the child.’ Daisy lifted the baby out of the half-open drawer in which it was lying and put it into Sarah’s thin arms.

  Sarah unbuttoned her nightdress and watched as the baby suckled her meagre breast. For the first time since her return Daisy detected the faint flicker of a smile on Sarah’s prematurely aged face.

  The next morning, Sarah seemed no worse. She was still hot, pale and complained of sweating, she was still weak and leth
argic, but Daisy was convinced she was on the mend. She went downstairs to light a fire while Sarah fed the child again, but whether the child was actually drawing milk she did not know, and Sarah was not certain either.

  Daisy left them to rest and got her father up. With a struggle she helped him dress and with further difficulty managed to help him downstairs to his chair, his drawn face an icon of agony.

  ‘Maybe you should stay in bed, Father,’ she suggested, aware that her work would be cut down if he did.

  ‘Folk die a-bed,’ he replied curtly.

  She made toast and brewed a pot of tea. Titus messed his breakfast about unenthusiastically and Sarah ate only part of hers with an equal lack of interest, although she finished her cup of tea. When she had cleared everything away and made up the fire Daisy put on her hat and coat and went to the town to buy groceries. First, though, she made her way to the churchyard of St Thomas’s church – Top Church – with the intention of finding her mother’s grave. She found it, near the black wrought iron railings that separated the churchyard from High Street at its junction with Stafford Street. The grave was just an elongated mound of earth with the name Mary Drake burnt into a rough wooden cross that had been hammered into the cold ground at one end. Daisy knelt in the damp, muddy earth beside it and wept. Why could her mother not have lived until she returned?

  But then … what if she had lived? What if she had survived merely to witness the heartbreaking state of her younger daughter in such a distressing decline and suffering the agonies of bearing a bastard child, her first grandchild? Had the knowledge of the trouble Sarah was in hastened Mary’s demise? Well, it could not have helped.

  ‘God bless you, Mother,’ Daisy whispered, tears streaming down her soft, round cheeks that were cold from the wind and the rain. ‘Please forgive me for not being with you when you died. I’ll do my best for Sarah and for Father, but he’s grieving terribly. God bless you, Mother.’

  Daisy stood up. She would return as soon as she could and bring some flowers. She would make sure a suitable headstone was erected, bearing an appropriate inscription.

  When Daisy returned to the house, Sarah had thrown off all her bedclothes. She was groaning, talking to herself unintelligibly in her unconsciousness. Daisy felt her brow. It was hot, clammy, sweaty. She went downstairs and brewed a pot of tea, handed a cup to Titus and took one upstairs to Sarah, rousing her from her troubled sleep.

  ‘I’ve brought you some tea, look.’

  Sarah nodded, singularly indifferent. Daisy placed it on her bedside table.

  ‘Do you want me to make the fire up?’

  ‘No,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m boiled.’

  ‘Why not try and feed the baby again?’

  Daisy helped Sarah to sit up and went to hand her the child. But the baby was soiled and needed cleaning and changing. When Daisy had tended to it, she handed him over to Sarah who put him to her breast. But as she was feeding, she dropped off to sleep again.

  This can’t be right, Daisy said to herself.

  Mrs Bowen called. Daisy mentioned Sarah’s fatigue, her sweating, her feverishness. The midwife pulled down the bedclothes and lifted up Sarah’s nightdress.

  ‘Milk leg, see? There’s no milk gone to her bresses. It’s all in her legs. Dover’s Powders am the thing. Her needs some Dover’s Powders. Keep an eye on the wench. If ’er gets any wuss, fatch the doctor.’

  ‘I will,’ Daisy replied.

  Daisy went out again. She shoved Titus’s old handcart, its wheels squealing for want of oil, to the coal yard in Bath Street by the gasworks. There she paid for a hundredweight of coal which a man, black with coal dust, tipped into the handcart. Oddly, she considered how difficult it would be to have an illicit affair with him without his ample smuts contaminating her own clothing giving the game away. Before she left to shove the loaded cart up Constitution Hill’s steep and rutted incline, she requested and paid for a further five hundredweight to be delivered to the house by horse and dray.

  When Daisy arrived home, she paid back the coal that she owed next door, then went to tend her three patients. None of them seemed any different from when she had gone out. All three were depressingly ill. Sarah had had diarrhoea, just to add to her ailments.

  During the night, Daisy felt that Sarah had taken a turn for the worse, so first thing next morning, she visited the surgery of Dr McCaskie.

  ‘Indeed, I was not aware your sister was pregnant,’ the doctor said defensively, as if she was blaming him. ‘However, I must declare that each time I called on your poor mother, the girl was not in attendance.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Well I never saw her. She was never there when I was.’

  ‘Whether or no, she’s in a bad way,’ Daisy said. ‘I’d like you to see my father as well. He’s not half the man he was before I left for Italy.’

  ‘Your father’s condition, of course, is a deleterious one. And at the stage it’s in, you must never expect him to be any better. He will only ever get worse.’

  ‘All the same, I’d appreciate your having a look at him. I mean, not only is he ill, but he’s grieving over Mother.’

  ‘Of course. I’ll call this afternoon …’ Dr McCaskie hesitated. ‘But, er … I’m afraid there’s also the small matter of my fees for the last three visits …’

  ‘Oh,’ she responded in embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor. I didn’t realise … I’ll pay what’s owed when you call. I have money enough.’

  By the time he called, Sarah seemed even worse. Her breathing was laboured and she was running a high fever. She was sweating profusely, shivering and was a sickly grey. The child had given up crying and Daisy suspected that Sarah had had no milk to give him after all.

  Dr McCaskie examined her and shook his head. ‘Puerperal fever,’ he said gravely. ‘Childbed fever. I shall prescribe a combination of calomel and Dover’s Powders. Who delivered the child?’

  ‘Mrs Bowen from Constitution Hill. But she seemed very able. She was very concerned for the health of both of them.’

  ‘Did she come directly from home?’

  ‘She came from laying out somebody who died of scarlet fever the night before.’

  The doctor shook his head again. ‘And no doubt she didn’t bother to change her clothes nor wash properly afterwards. I do wish these people would take the trouble to understand basic hygiene. Especially when they are attending a parturition. Your sister could have picked up the infection from Mrs Bowen. You see,’ he explained, ‘germs so easily enter the raw surface of the uterus after separation of the placenta.’

  ‘So she has scarlet fever as well?’

  ‘No,’ he answered firmly, ‘she has childbed fever.’

  ‘I, er … I had to put dirty towels under her, Doctor, when her waters broke,’ Daisy admitted sheepishly. ‘There were no clean ones in the house. Could that have caused it?’

  ‘Hmm … Well, you see, that’s not ideal either, Miss Drake.’

  ‘Maddox. Mrs Maddox.’

  ‘Despite that, the girl is a shadow of what she used to be. And it’s not entirely due to giving birth. I do remember her, a healthy young girl, bright and breezy, always with a cheerful smile. Never thin. What has brought her to this? Do you know?’

  Daisy shook her head.

  ‘You only have to see the condition of the baby to see that she’s neglected herself, or has been neglected for a long time – months. She is acutely anaemic. Iron is what she needs to rectify that, so I shall put her on a course of Blaud’s pills.’ He leaned over Sarah and spoke quietly to her. ‘Tell me, Sarah, have you been taking any opiates regularly?’

  ‘Opiates?’

  ‘Yes. Morphia or laudanum for instance?’

  Sarah shook her head, looking confused … Then some rudimentary understanding of what Dr McCaskie was asking made her change her mind, and she nodded. The doctor looked ominously at Daisy.

  ‘What have you been taking, my dear?’

  ‘I dunno exactly … Some sort
of powder. They call it dope.’

  ‘By mouth or by hypodermic syringe?’

  ‘By mouth.’

  ‘How often?’

  ‘Almost every day.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘Six or seven months, I s’pose.’

  Dr McCaskie sighed. He turned to Daisy. ‘It’s as I feared. All the signs are there. Your sister has become what the medical profession calls an habituée of opiates. How and why she has, we need to understand. The drug has had its effect in several ways. It has suppressed her appetite, so she is now very thin and undernourished. Not only that but the relentless seeking to acquire it has taken priority over everything else, including her eating. No doubt she has spent whatever money she earned in paying for the stuff, and fed her craving till she was no longer capable of working. Since she has not had the drug for perhaps some days she is now showing the symptoms of deprivation. Certainly, she is hardly capable of looking after her child.’

  ‘But how on earth did she get like this?’

  ‘I would dearly like to know,’ he said earnestly. ‘One can only hazard a guess. But there’s more, Mrs Maddox …’ He looked at Daisy with sympathetic eyes. ‘Her poor child is also in a state of narcomania – the effects of deprivation, that is – through your sister, naturally. I suspect it is already suffering these effects in the same way she is. I fear it will not have the strength to survive the week.’

  ‘So Sarah not only has childbed fever, but this … this “deprivation” as you call it?’

  ‘Precisely. She is going to need quite some looking after, believe me, if she is to get over either.’

  ‘Can you give her something to alleviate her suffering? The baby, as well?’

  ‘I could administer an appropriately small dose of morphia which would relieve at once the anatomical effects of the deprivation in your sister, although I do it against my better judgement. However, I do believe she warrants some respite to help her get over the childbed fever. The Dover’s Powders will help, of course. They do contain a small percentage of opium anyway. Once – that is, if – she recovers from the childbed fever, I am of the opinion that she should be left to overcome the narcomania without resorting to the source of it. And I think she will overcome it providing she has the required grace and grit and, of course, a great deal of encouragement from you. Thankfully, it is only a recent habituation, not of long standing. There is every chance that she will overcome it. Meanwhile, she will feel extreme anxiety, depression, headaches, severe stomach pains and suffer recurrent bouts of diarrhoea. She will sweat profusely so she must be given water to drink frequently, else she will dehydrate.’