by Mary Wood
‘I believe you, and I am so sorry. But Harold is afraid, and is acting irrationally because of his fear. He has convinced himself, and the rest of the family, that Flora set out to find you and married you incestuously, to spite them all. They found out, because your father had a relapse just after he’d asked for a letter to be sent to his solicitor. Harold read the letter that your father was answering. It was from his solicitor telling him what your mother had found out. Harold verbally abused your father, saying that his so-called daughter had had the last laugh, by marrying his bastard son. Your father admitted that he had been paying an allowance to his son and his mistress, whom he still loved and would have gone to for good, but for his illness.
‘This set your mother off, Flora. She was hysterical and a doctor had to be called. Your father had a relapse, and Harold forced him to sign a letter to the bank to stop the payments to you, Cyrus, and to your mother. And then ripped up the letter your father was going to send, and wrote one himself to his father’s solicitor, and made his father sign that, too. He is now consulting solicitors as to the impossibility, and the illegality, of you being recognized as the heir to your father, Cyrus.’
Bitterness entered Flora. ‘Did none of them think that if they had not rejected me, this wouldn’t have happened? That, in the normal run of things, I would have brought Cyrus to our home to meet my family; and that Father, on hearing all about Cyrus, would have realized the truth and the marriage would not have gone ahead? They are to blame. They forgot they had a daughter and a sister, and left me floundering on my own. But none of this matters at the moment. Only that you believe us, Mags, when we say that we are innocent of what Harold accuses us of. And, even more than that, we love each other so very much, and at this moment are facing the awful prospect of losing our daughter, and each other.’
‘Oh, my darling Flora, don’t think of either of those things happening. We will find a way. We have to,’ Cyrus urged her. ‘I can’t bear to be apart from you, and can never be a brother to you. You are my wife, my everything.’
‘Flors, I’m so sorry. Try to hold on to the fact that Alice is in the best hands possible. As for yourselves, there will be a way, as Cyrus says. You will have to be very careful not to be seen to be carrying on as husband and wife, now that you know what your true relationship is. Then, as soon as you can, you must go away somewhere, where Harold cannot do you any harm. He is very bitter at the moment, and could take action that could see you both going to prison and your children taken from you. I have been very worried for you since news of this broke. I didn’t know what to believe, or what to do. I should have warned you and kept faith in our friendship, Flors, but Harold is powerful, when he sets his mind to something.’
‘Please don’t worry. None of this is your fault, Mags. But, you know, although I don’t like to admit it, I am like Harold in some ways, because I would ask you – even though it is a terrible betrayal of our friendship – to use the power you have over Harold to help us.’
‘How can I do that? And what power?’
‘By threatening to leave him, if he carries out his threat of going to the police. You say he needs to marry you? Well, that gives you power over him to help us – please, Mags. And, if you can, please forgive me for asking this of you, but I cannot bear to see Cyrus go to prison, and the threat of that hangs over me, too. And to lose our children . . . Oh God. What have we done to deserve all that?’
‘I will help you. I will, Flors, but I will make conditions. These are to secure my future happiness with Harold. I won’t blackmail him, but I will help you financially, and make sure that he does, too, to get away – somewhere abroad, where the law of England cannot touch you, and no one there will know your status, thereby enabling you to continue to live as man and wife. But you must do something for me. You, Cyrus, must renounce all claim to your father’s fortune.’
This shocked Flora, but as it was a way out for them, she was willing to agree. However, she had no time to, because the door to the waiting room opened. ‘Mr and Mrs Harpinham, the doctor would like to talk to you.’
‘Sister, is our daughter all right?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Harpinham, but I cannot speak to you about your daughter’s condition. You need to ask the doctor. Please come this way.’
‘M – Mags, come with us, we may need you.’
‘Who is this lady? Is she a relative?’
‘Soon to be my sister-in-law, and aunty to Alice. We would like her with us.’
‘Very well, come this way, please.’
Flora held on to Cyrus’s hand as if her life depended on it. She had nothing else but his love. Her mind cast aside for the moment the thought that they could be forced apart, as they were still together and facing something much bigger than any of their other problems.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Harpinham, but your daughter is dying. How long has she had a cough? Did you not seek to have her medically checked out? There might have been a chance.’
Cyrus folded. This gave Flora strength. ‘She had a childhood cough. I have been a nurse, and I thought it was croup. I – I did what was necessary . . . I—’
‘Oh, where did you train? Why did you think that being a nurse gave you enough skill to diagnose your child and treat her?’
Flora wanted to say that she loved her child, that she didn’t want Alice to die, that she would give her own life for her, but all of this sounded hollow in the face of the neglect that the accusing voice seemed to level at her. Her head bent over in defeat.
Mags spoke up. ‘You are talking to someone who single-handedly ran a hospital in Belgium, after the Germans invaded, with only two other volunteer nurses and a few staff to help. In that situation she often had to be the doctor, and did a sterling job of saving many lives. Not only that, but when she got out, she then went to the Somme and gave of her all there. She is a devoted mother, who has fallen on hard times. If you doctors gave of your services to those less fortunate, as my friend has done, this situation wouldn’t have arisen!’
The doctor was taken aback for a moment. ‘I apologize. I see a lot of cases of neglect. I misjudged the situation.’
‘Neglect or an inability to change things, Doctor?’
‘Madam, I am not on trial here. I want to help these parents and their child. There are charitable organizations . . .’
‘Please, it doesn’t matter. I accept your apology. Please, Doctor, tell me and my wife what, if anything, can be done for our child.’
Flora was relieved at this intervention by Cyrus, but felt a little pride at how Mags had reacted. This was the old Mags, the spirited Mags. She would always do the right thing as she saw it, and would fiercely defend those she loved. Flora just wished she didn’t number Harold amongst them.
‘I have to say there is very little that can be done. Living in a country where the air is full of oxygen, such as Switzerland, is one treatment, but I’m afraid this would only delay the inevitable. I regret to say that tender care is all that can be offered. We have an isolation ward where this can take place.’
‘I want her home. I want to nurse her myself.’
‘That is very noble, and I am sure that you are highly capable, but, my dear, you have to consider how TB spreads. You have to think of yourself, your husband and any other family you may have.’
‘I am, and I will. I will isolate one of our rooms at home. I will take every precaution that the nurses here will take, when entering and leaving that room. I must take care of my own child. I have done so for so many other mothers, and I need to do this for my own child.’
‘Very well, I will discharge Alice to you. And, because of what your friend has said, I will visit and prescribe medication at no cost to you. You, young lady, have awoken my conscience and that isn’t a good place for me to visit.’
The doctor and Mags smiled at each other, but Flora couldn’t smile. Her world had collapsed.
Chapter Thirty
By the time they reached home, Alice’s breathing was labouring so
badly that Flora’s fears for her increased. Mags had insisted on coming home with them to help them set up the isolation room for Alice.
They found Olivia asleep in the chair by a dying fire. On waking her, Cyrus sat with her and told her what had happened.
As Flora and Mags worked to turn the front room into a sanatorium, they could hear Olivia’s cries of despair. Flora blocked out the sound as much as she could, as she directed and helped Mags and Cyrus to fill buckets of hot water and scrub the room clean. Between them, they moved furniture, taking one of the sofas into the living-room-cum-kitchen, leaving one for Flora to sleep on, and bringing a bed downstairs for Alice.
The carpet was rolled up and the wooden floor scrubbed, and all the lace curtains were taken down from the windows of the house, then made into a tent for the bed by nailing them to the ceiling. ‘This will enable me to keep her out of a draught and yet have the windows open, so that she has a constant supply of fresh air.’
Through all of this, Alice slept on the sofa, helped by the drugs given to her at the hospital.
When everything was ready, and they had all scrubbed their hands clean, Flora hugged Mags goodbye and waved her off as she got into the cab, which she’d paid to wait for her.
On closing the door, Flora clung to Cyrus, telling him as they came out of the hug how much she loved him. ‘This must be our last physical contact for a while, for fear of spreading the infection. I will bath and prepare myself, then you must bath. All our clothes will have to be boiled, and we must constantly wash our hands. I will make more masks out of the edges of lace curtains that are more closely woven, and which I cut off for that purpose. I will leave these on a chair outside the room.’
Speaking to both Cyrus and the now-calm Olivia, Flora told them that they must always wash their hands and don a mask before entering the room, and wash their hands on leaving, then boil the mask they had used.
‘I can help make the masks, Flora.’
‘Thank you, Olivia.’
‘F – Flora, I—’
‘Don’t say anything. We none of us blame you. It was a million-to-one chance that Cyrus and I should meet as we did. Especially as you had moved away from London. I do have a lot of questions, after what Mags has told me happened once you contacted my father. And I wish you had spoken to us before you did that. But I have to give all my attention now to looking after Alice. We will talk at a later time. For now, I want you to stay. We both need you, as will our little Freddy.’
Olivia nodded in a way that showed her relief.
After her bath, Flora donned the nurse’s frock and one of the many aprons lent to her by the sister at the hospital, as being so much easier to keep her from spreading infection. Next, she put on one of the masks; these, along with other items given to her that she might need – a bowl for sterilizing, a bedpan, a pack of disposable paper gloves and a feeding cup – showed that Mags had worked a miracle with her outburst, and that not only the doctor’s conscience had been pricked.
With Alice still asleep and now tucked up in bed, Flora looked down at her and allowed despair to creep into her heart. How am I going to bear losing you, my darling? How, how?
The door opened. Cyrus stood there in his pyjamas, wearing a mask. ‘I haven’t got a uniform, but I thought, as these are boilable, I could come in wearing them and take my turn, or sit together with you. Please don’t shut me out, Flora, my darling. I can’t live through all of this without you by my side and being unable to hold you.’
‘Oh, Cyrus, I don’t know what to do. We have to face it that, whatever we decide to do, we cannot save our darling child. But I want to protect Freddy, and you and Olivia. I have been reckless bringing Alice home. I thought only of my own pain, and of hers, if she should wake and neither of us was there.’
‘I understand. But I also know that we need each other at this time.’
‘We do. Oh, we do, darling. But we must take every care that we can.’
‘We will. Please agree, darling.’
She was in his arms, a place she didn’t think she would be for a long time, if ever again. ‘I do, I know that I cannot get through this without you.’
Coming out of the hug, Cyrus looked down at her. ‘Let’s sit a moment.’ He guided her to the sofa. ‘I’m sorry, I know it doesn’t seem like the right time, but there is an urgency in our situation, and we must talk. I think that both your own and Mags’s solutions were good. I can never miss something that I didn’t have, so I don’t mind renouncing my entitlement to any inheritance that might have come my way. I know that your father – our father – has treated you badly, but until he was forced not to, he continued to take care of me.’
‘That hurts me, as he cut me off so easily. But then he still loved your mother, so maybe he wanted to please her.’
‘Yes, that would be the reason. And was probably why I was sent off to school, so that I wouldn’t be in the way of any visits he made. Was he away from home a lot?’
‘I think so. I have so few memories of my time at home, and none of them happy.’
‘Life has been so unfair to you, my darling.’
‘It has to all those of us in our age range. But don’t forget that I had dear Aunt Pru and Freddy, and they filled my life with love and caring. I miss them both so much.’
Cyrus held her close once more. ‘How are we to bear everything on our shoulders, darling? Our little Alice . . .’
There was a sob in his voice, which caused her own tears to spill over. They clung together, trying to give and receive comfort and strength from one another.
A loud knocking on the front door shot them apart. ‘Police! Open up!’
‘Oh, my God! Harold has done it. He’s informed on us. Oh, Cyrus. Go – go out of the window. You can get away down the alley. I’ll tell them that we split up the moment we heard. Go to Rowena, she will help you. I’ll contact her when I can.’
‘But I’m not dressed!’
‘Never mind that, go!’
The knocking persisted. Grabbing a pair of paper gloves, Flora ran from the room, putting them on as she went. Olivia came down the stairs leading to the kitchen just as Flora got there.
‘I’ll see to it. Cyrus has gone. We are to say that after we came back from the hospital, he left to try to find alternative accommodation.’
When Flora opened the door, the policeman standing there, with an oil lamp in his hand, jumped back. ‘Sorry, Nurse, I wanted to talk to Cyrus and Flora Harpinham.’
‘Come in, Officer. I am Flora. I am nursing my dying child. I am dressed like this to prevent the spread of the TB that she has. Cyrus does not live here, from today. I think you may have come here regarding the unfortunate position that Cyrus and I found ourselves in. Sit down, and I will explain everything.’
‘I have a warrant to arrest you.’
‘Please don’t, my child’s life depends on me.’
‘Well, in the circumstances I’ll hear you out, and take the information back to my sergeant. We have a report that you are living with your brother in an incestuous relationship, and that you married, knowing that you were kin. Is this true?’
‘Not wholly, no.’ Flora told him the truth of how they had only found out about their relationship today, and how their daughter had been taken ill; and then added the lie that Cyrus had left as soon as he could, after their return from the hospital. She told of their shock and that they knew they could never live together again. ‘You have to believe me. We didn’t know. We met . . .’
At the end of her story, during which the officer took several notes, he said he would have to search the house to make sure Cyrus wasn’t there. ‘Do you have anyone who can verify your story, Miss?’
‘I can, Officer, and so can Flora’s father,’ Olivia said. ‘I informed Flora’s father – my . . . lover – when I realized the awful truth. I didn’t know how to tell Flora and Cyrus. I did wrong. I should have told them the moment I knew.’
She went on to explain how the war had
separated her and her son, and how she had spent most of it in Switzerland with her sister, while he was in a prisoner-of-war camp. ‘I only knew that he had married a girl called Flora. I didn’t know her surname, or that George – her father – had a daughter. He only ever told me of the birth of his sons. He . . . well, he said he had broken off intimate relationships with his wife, and I believed him. It was a shock to hear that he had a further child with his wife, and one with another mistress.’ Olivia continued telling the whole story, leaving nothing out.
‘Your story has the ring of truth to me, and gives a reason why Harold Roford would be so vindictive as to tell us a different story. He obviously wants his older half-brother discredited. I have written down what you have said, albeit in a brief way. I need you both to sign your statements. I will do my search of the house, then report back to my sergeant.’
‘Thank you, but I must insist that you protect yourself from infection by putting a mask on when you go into the front room, which is now a sanitized room for my daughter.’
‘I’ll just pop my head around the door. I’m very sorry for your plight, Miss, and hope that you and your . . . well, Mr Harpinham, are not prosecuted, but that’s not down to me. I would speak to a solicitor as soon as you can, if I were you.’
After he’d gone, Flora leaned on the door. Her legs felt as though they would give way and her heart held an avalanche of tears – tears that she could not give way to. ‘Thank you, Olivia, it must have been very difficult for you to admit to everything, knowing that it may become public, if all of this goes to court.’
‘Do you think it will?’
‘Yes, I think it has to, if only to put an order on Cyrus and me that forbids us to live together as man and wife.’
‘I’m so sorry. I have never seen my son happier than he is with you. The love you share is unique and has never shown any cracks; you were made for each other.’
‘We’ll find a way. We have to. We cannot live without each other. And as you know, I am with child again.’
‘Oh, my dear, how can you bear it all?’