by Marie Joseph
‘Children can be up one minute and down the next,’ she remembered him saying more than once, smiling at her from the foot of her bed during one of her frequent bilious attacks. ‘Let me know how she is in the morning. If it’s going to turn to measles the spots will be out by then. Look for them first inside her mouth.’
Spots! Daisy ran back up the stairs. Measles! There was nothing to measles. Every child got measles. It was part of childhood. Nothing to worry about. Vaguely she recalled having to lie in bed with the curtains drawn all day to keep the light from her eyes in case she went blind. Her blood froze. Jimmy had been walking around all day with measle eyes, letting the light in and destroying his precious sight. Her blood froze harder. Or maybe the kitten had some terrible disease and had passed it on to Jimmy already? Rabies? But then, wouldn’t Jimmy have lockjaw? He was tossing his head from side to side now on the pillow and moaning.
‘Mummy? I’m a good boy, Mummy.’
‘You’re the best boy in the world.’ Daisy pulled the blankets up round his chin.
‘My head hurts, Mummy. …’
Meningitis! Daisy remembered a girl in the next street to the pie shop dying of it. Martha had insisted they show respect and call at the house with a sultana cake to cut at, because she knew there’d be no baking done for the next few days.
The dead girl – her name was Phyllis – was the same age as Daisy, seven, a member of the Junior Sunday School and a Brownie in the Pixie Patrol with Daisy.
‘Here we come the merry Pixies. Helping people when in fixes.’
She lay in her coffin in the front parlour, wearing her Brownie uniform, with the badges sewn down a sleeve proving she could light a fire, clean a room and write a letter. Her hands had been neatly folded on her chest. Pot hands, Daisy remembered, cold and hard looking. Someone had combed Phyllis’s hair and fastened it to one side with a tortoiseshell slide in a style she didn’t suit. Phyllis had always worn her hair brushed straight back, held in place with an Alice band from Woolworth’s, and now the strange flat style and the pot hands had turned her into a terrifying monster.
Jimmy’s hands were scrabbling at the turned-down sheet. He rambled in a peculiar high voice, thin with fever.
Daisy turned an anguished face to the door to see Florence and Mr Penny standing there, scarf-wrapped and red-nosed, glowing from their long walk.
‘I found him like this,’ she said piteously.
Mrs Mac said you’d have thought a man with plenty up top like Mr Penny would have known where the nearest doctor lived. It wasn’t far, she told them, so he should be back soon, even though the new doctor was so young she doubted if he’d even started shaving.
Mrs Mac wasn’t going to pry because now wasn’t the time, but she felt sure the man on the motorbike that had woken them all up at gone midnight was this little lad’s father. She hadn’t made up her mind about the mother, but if it was the long-nosed Miss Livesey, then he must have put a bucket over her head before he ravished her.
‘If this new doctor comes up with the right diagnosis, then it’s nobbut beginner’s luck,’ she told Daisy. ‘He’d give you a bottle of stomach medicine for your bunions, this young chap would.’
She was like a death’s head at the feast, but she was kind. ‘Typical of her ilk,’ Florence whispered to Mr Penny when he came back with the doctor in tow.
A pink young man, his diagnosis was swift and definite.
‘Scarlet fever,’ he pronounced, showing Daisy the red rash now emerging. He rolled up his stethoscope and stored it away in a brand-new bag with his initials tooled in gold on the side. ‘This year isn’t a bad year for it, whereas last year’s epidemic was a stinker. I’ll go back to the surgery and telephone for the ambulance.’
‘Does he have to go into hospital, Doctor?’ Out on the landing Daisy lowered her voice. ‘He only arrived up here yesterday. From London. To put him in hospital now would be a bad thing. I’m quite prepared to nurse him here.’
The doctor fingered his smooth chin. ‘Well, I don’t know, Miss …?’
‘Bell.’ Daisy’s expression dared Florence to stick her oar in. ‘If he would be in any danger, then of course he must go, but we can manage.’ She nodded towards the bedroom. ‘I can have a fire lit. There aren’t any other children in the house. The district nurse would come and keep an eye on him, wouldn’t she?’
‘Total isolation, Miss Bell.’ The doctor started down the stairs. ‘I have to report it, of course, and they’ll send someone round from the Health Department, but there’s no rule against a child being nursed at home – if the conditions are strictly adhered to.’
‘You’ll call in again tomorrow?’
‘In the morning.’ He was very earnest, very sincere. ‘They are sleeping two to a bed at the hospital, so I’m not insisting on admission.’ His shrewd glance took in the purple shadows like bruises beneath Daisy’s eyes. ‘He will need his own crockery and books. His pyjamas boiled, and the room stoved when he’s better. He won’t feel like swallowing much more than milk puddings and egg custards for a while.’ A glance at his watch. ‘He’s a sturdy little chap. You mustn’t worry overmuch.’
Daisy followed him to the door. ‘His father lives down south.’ She blushed. ‘Shall I send him a telegram? I’m the boy’s guardian you see, and I feel responsible. I’m sure he would come up right away if you feel it’s necessary.’
‘Not at the moment.’ The doctor turned up his collar. The situation was none of his business, unusual though it seemed, to say the least. But the boy was obviously clean and cared for, and from the anxious faces grouped at the foot of the stairs there’d be no shortage of willing helpers. Head lice up at the hospital was driving the Sister of the fever ward crazy. Two of her best nurses were allocated to the diphtheria wing of the hospital, where young patients were dying every day. He stepped out into the wind and the rain. If the child had turned out to be a diphtheria case, that would have been another matter. A child could choke on its own spittle without immediate life-saving surgery. He was very concerned, very keen to do the right thing.
‘Have you had scarlet fever, Miss Bell?’
‘Yes, I have. Me mother nursed me at home.’ Daisy smiled her reassurance. She was feeling unaccountably light-headed. What was scarlet fever compared to inflammation of the brain, or leprosy, just to mention two of the dire possibilities she’d imagined. ‘I’ll sleep in his room on a camp bed.’
‘Don’t neglect yourself entirely, Miss Bell.’
The doctor did a little embarrassed shuffle with his feet before striding off into the black wet night, his fair hair bared to the driving rain.
‘You must send for Sam.’ Florence was adamant. ‘You must send him a telegram first thing in the morning. Or better still, go out to a phone box and ring his boss. If he lives in a house with a Rolls-Royce in the garage, there’s bound to be a telephone.’
After helping to put up the camp bed in Jimmy’s room, Mr Penny had gone tactfully to bed. Mrs Mac had gone back next door, telling Daisy that scarlet fever was responsible for more children growing up with rheumaticky hearts than she’d had hot dinners. Mr Schofield, oblivious to the drama, had come in through the front door and soft-shoe-shuffled his way upstairs, whistling ‘Cheek to Cheek’ between his teeth.
‘No!’
Daisy looked white and worn, but Florence hardened her heart. ‘What do you mean, no?’
‘I’m not going to tell Sam anything just yet. Not unless Jimmy gets worse.’
‘Why?’ Florence clapped a hand to her forehead. ‘Oh, don’t tell me. You don’t want lover-boy to worry. Is that it? You don’t want that noble brow furrowed with even the teeniest wrinkle of anxiety. You are looking forward to playing Florence Nightingale, then he’ll think how wonderful you are, how marvellous, and how he must be the luckiest man in the world to have met someone like you. You want him to be in your everlasting debt, don’t you?’
‘I just want to spare him being hurt more than he’s been hurt already
.’ Daisy’s pale face gentled into love. ‘He’s so troubled. You can’t begin to know how upset he is. He can’t risk losing his job by asking for time off just now.’ To Florence’s dismay, Daisy groped up the sleeve of her knitted cardigan for a handkerchief. ‘If he loses that he loses the very roof over his head. Then where would he go?’
‘Back to his wife?’
‘Impossible. The house is in her name. She’s the one with the money. Anyway, Sam says she had the locks changed.’ Daisy dabbed at her eyes. ‘Besides, Mr Evison isn’t going to put up with Sam constantly asking for days off to come up here. He could replace Sam the same day. They have a lot of unemployment down there, in spite of what we’re led to believe?’
Daisy looked so defeated Florence wanted to hit her. ‘You’re really gone on him, aren’t you? So besotted you can’t think straight. You’re like a silly woman in a silly film, thinking with your heart instead of using your loaf. We’ve only just got here and started to get things organized the way we planned, and yet in that short time you’ve slept with him. …’
‘Not in the way you mean!’
‘You’ve slept with him, adopted his son, arid decided to take it on yourself to shoulder all his problems.’ Florence made for the door. ‘It’s a man’s world all right. If he’s lucky enough to have a job then nothing must stand in his way to keep that job. But if a woman has a job – just a little sideline say, like running a boarding-house – she has to cope with other people’s problems at the same time.’ Florence was on her soap-box now, oblivious to anything but the force of her own rhetoric. ‘Let a woman, in spite of doing five jobs at the same time, turn out to be a success, he regards that success as a personal affront to him, a fluke, a stroke of luck. Or possibly because she’s flaunted her femininity. Slept her way to the top, if you want it spelt out.’
Daisy let her go on. There was nothing left to say, anyway. Florence could best anybody when it came to using words as weapons. In spite of her distress Daisy recognized, not for the first time, that Florence had a brain as sharp as a newly-stropped razor. She should have stayed on at school, gone to college, not left at fourteen to look after her mother, forced to take a job with nothing to recommend it but the hours that fitted in with a semi-invalid’s needs.
Florence would have made a marvellous teacher … Daisy began to fill a tray with things she knew she would need for the long night ahead of her. Florence had every right to be angry with what life had dished out to her. And since coming here, Florence seemed to have been angry all the time.
Balancing the tray on one hip and carrying a hot-water bottle underneath an arm, Daisy climbed the stairs and went into Jimmy’s room.
Jimmy was half awake and half asleep, hot and feverish, turning his head from side to side on the pillow, muttering unintelligible nothings, glittering eyes showing like slits through pink puffy eyelids.
By the side of his bed Florence was busily wringing a flannel out in a bowl of cold water and laying it over his forehead. She was wearing the hideous horse-blanket dressing-gown, her hair hanging thin and wispy round her face.
‘I can manage now.’ Daisy took her nightdress from beneath the pillow on the camp bed. ‘Thank you, Florence.’
Without turning round Florence dipped the flannel into the water and laid it over Jimmy’s forehead again. ‘Turn and turn about,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m staying with him tonight. You go and get some sleep. There’s no point in both of us looking like something the cat brought in. Goodnight, Daisy.’
‘But he’s my. …’ Daisy felt the stupid tears prick behind her eyelids again. ‘You know what you said downstairs just now. And you were right. I’ll send for Sam in the morning.’
‘Goodnight, Daisy.’ Florence tucked Jimmy in firmly. ‘I’m sure he’s starting to sweat. That means the fever is beginning to break. And he’s sipped some water without bringing it back. Goodnight, Daisy!’
It was all too much. Florence’s fury was far easier to take than her kindness. Lack of sleep had heightened Daisy’s emotions. Tears ran down her face as she climbed into her own bed. She let them drip, tasting the sad saltiness of them as they ran past the corners of her mouth.
She was asleep almost before her head had touched the pillow.
Dear Sam. Very dear Sam,
I wrote to you two days ago, but I’ve torn it up. It was a terrible letter, not the way I was really feeling or anything. It’s no good. Even if my name is dragged through the divorce courts and you name me as the other woman, with my picture in the News of the World, I just can’t write to you as if you were my brother or just a platonic friend.
I can’t tell you how much I am missing you already. So much has happened since you went away, and I promise you I am going to tell you the absolute truth. I thought there might be a letter from you, but I realize how busy you are, my darling. I’m sure there will be one on Monday, after the weekend.
I have to tell you that when I went up to see if Jimmy was asleep that first night he was running a temperature, so Mr Penny (one of the lodgers) went for the doctor who said that Jimmy has a fairly mild attack of scarlet fever. Please don’t panic. He was poorly for two days but now his temperature has gone right down. His throat is sore, but he managed to eat some ice cream which Mrs Mac from next door got from the newsagent’s shop on the corner of the next street. The newsagent makes his own from the very best ingredients. It’s really more like frozen egg custard and will help to build Jimmy’s strength up.
Honestly he is on the mend. So don’t worry too much, and don’t blame me too much for not sending for you, but the doctor said he wasn’t seriously ill. So I took a chance, knowing how difficult it would be for you to get away again so soon.
I know you will feel like borrowing the motorbike again and driving up, and you know how much I would love to see you, but I have explained to Jimmy and he understands. He is being spoilt rotten with Florence and Mr Penny taking it in turns to read to him, and he has a kitten which he calls Montague, although I suspect he is a girl.
The doctor said Jimmy must have been feeling off-colour for at least a week before his throat turned really sore, so that was why he was so sick on the drive up, I suspect.
I promise you that he is all right. I refused to let him go into the fever hospital because can you imagine how awful it would have been for him on top of coming up here?
Things are pretty chaotic. Mr Leadbetter, the builder, is about to turn the water off, so we are going round filling buckets and bowls. He seems to find this hilarious! Do you remember him? He was the little man coming in as you went out the other morning. He brought Jimmy two Jaffa oranges and a yo-yo, which will have to be burned when he is better. They sent someone round from the Health Department, and the room will have to be stoved and all the things taken away to be treated with chemicals. The district nurse has been to show me how to give him blanket baths, and Jimmy is insisting that everything done to him has to be done to the kitten as well!
You told me you could trust me to the end of the world, so you have to believe me when I tell you that Jimmy is truly on the mend. He didn’t know what to call me so I said he could call me Daisy, and Florence said he can call her by her first name, too, but we had to laugh when Jimmy wanted to know Mr Penny’s name. It is Joshua! Mr Schofield is Bobbie. So you see how matey we all are! Jimmy is sitting up in bed with the door open and ordering us all about in a hoarse little voice. He knows he has us all on a string, I can tell you.
Dear Sam. This is the first love letter I have ever written, and I am not very good at it, I’m afraid. The words are in my heart, but they don’t come out well in black and white. Talking about black and white, please destroy this letter when you’ve read it. I wouldn’t like to do anything which could stop your divorce going the way you want it to, and you did say our relationship must be a secret for the time being. I have never been mixed up in anything like this before, and even now I don’t know if I am doing the right thing in writing to you so openly. But I miss y
ou so much. I felt very alone when Jimmy was poorly that first night. I confess I hadn’t realized the responsibility. He is such a dear little boy. Mr Penny, I mean Joshua, is going to see a teacher friend of his this weekend, though I promise you Jimmy won’t be going to school until he is quite, quite better. The air here will do him good and put the roses back in his cheeks.
God bless you, my darling. And write soon.
All my love,
Daisybell
(No one but you has ever said my name in quite that way.)
Dear Daisybell,
I am answering your letter straight away. I am sorry that Jimmy has been off colour, but he has great powers of resistance, young Jimmy, and he seems to be enjoying playing the invalid! No, I am not going to panic. I trust you completely and know you will always tell me the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!
I think you know that I would come up at once if you told me you thought it necessary.
I went round to tell Aileen. I thought she ought to know about Jimmy being ill and that he was in good hands, but the house was closed up. I saw the next-door neighbour, but she couldn’t tell me where Aileen has gone. She did tell me that Dorothy was just getting over a fever. I wonder if she meant scarlet fever? Trust Aileen not to let me know.
Give young Jimmy my love, and tell him I’ll send him a book. On second thoughts I’ll enclose a postal order and perhaps you can get one and tell him it’s from me.
I agree with you about the need to be circumspect. My wife is the guilty party after all and I’m damned if I’ll spend a night in a Brighton hotel with a tart just to provide her with the evidence. Let her work a few things out for herself.
I told her, of course, that Jimmy is staying with friends of mine. At a boarding-house by the sea, I said. Joshua, Bobbie, Florence and Daisy. She said she didn’t know I had any friends! It’s funny the way things turn out, isn’t it?
What more can I say about you keeping him like that? I might tell you I was at my wits’ end. I even think I prayed a little, and when I prayed yours was the face I saw. You have given me the chance to make something of my life. I made a mess of my last set of questions and no wonder.