by Ian Porter
“Nor!” bellowed Nash across the street, when he heard her call after him.
With some relief evident in her voice that she had found a member of the Nash household, Norah informed him that she needed to contact Ruby urgently, but she wasn’t at home. She had spoken to Maud but she had seemed a little preoccupied and had not been able to help. The problem was that one of Sylvia’s helpers on the Dreadnought newspaper, had gone down with the flu. She was supposed to have picked up an article last night which Ruby had written under a nom de plume, ironically enough about the Spanish flu. Could Nashey pop home, pick it up and bring it to Sylvia? It was needed within the hour because the government were threatening to close down Mr Arber’s printing press because Sylvia was printing things about the flu that were far too accurate for their liking. It was a chance to get one last newspaper run out before the inevitable happened.
Norah started to apologise, not only for any inconvenience but for asking him to do something which carried a level of risk, but Nash cut her off.
“Leave off Nor. Be a fine thing if I couldn’t help the likes of you out when you needed it. I saw Ruby writing something the other night as it happens. Think I know where she left it. Don’t you worry, I’ll have it round to Sylvia in two shakes of a lamb’s.”
After passing the time of day for a while, Nash wished his friend all the best, and headed for home. He was almost there when he saw Maud standing still on the pavement ahead of him, head down, hands on the pram, with her weight bearing down so the little contraption was standing on just its back wheels, like a tiny black stallion rearing up on its hind legs.
Nash flew into a panic. Christ, the baby’ll fall out!
He rushed to her side, but had underestimated how well Rose had been tucked in by her mother. He didn’t bother to ask the obvious question. Maud was clearly ill. Nash took the handle of the pram in one hand and put the other around her waist. The ground was thankfully flat so he was able to leave the pram where it stood. It had only been the mind over matter of a mother with a child to care for that had kept Maud upright. And now, with help having arrived, she was able to let herself go. Nash lowered her gently to the pavement and propped her sitting against a wall, reassuring her as he did so that he would get Rose home and then return. Moments later he was running at full tilt, pushing the pram in front of him, like a bobsleigher at the start of a descent, to deposit its precious cargo home. He then returned to Maud, picking her up off the ground, and with one arm round her he half walked, half dragged her home. She was soon laying on her bed, next to her crying child.
******
Ruby had popped along to the munitions factory to let them know of Maud’s predicament. The supervisor gave Ruby a message to pass on to his stricken member of staff.
“Tell her not to come back. There’s no job here for her now. I’ll see she gets sent what she’s owed.”
Ruby looked at him as if he was something stinking and squelchy she had just stepped in while crossing the street. But she left it at that. Why waste your breath? She knew what the answer would be to anything she said. If Maud could not get to work, there were plenty of people ready to jump into her place. And the war didn’t wait for anyone.
Not that Maud was in any condition to worry about her job. But she was reassured by Ruby that Rose was being looked after. The nursery childcare was cheap but it was not usually free, so Ruby had spoken to Sylvia and it had been agreed that Maud would not have to pay for the nursery place until she was back on her feet and earning a wage again.
The next door neighbour, a woman called Billie, was looking after Rose outside of nursery hours. While picking the little girl up she had told Maud that she had heard a rumour that the new wave of illness was different from normal flu because it was a form of Hun germ warfare put ashore by their u-boats. This nonsensical scaremongering was not the best bit of bedside manner. It had made the patient feel worse, if that were possible. Flu, however bad, she might eventually overcome. But germ warfare? She wondered if the rumours could be true. That would certainly explain why it was such a killer and why there was so little mention of it in the newspapers.
Everyone was doing their bit as best they could. Ruby was popping her head through Maud’s bedroom door whenever she got the chance, but a rail strike for better pay and shorter hours had now paralysed the nation, and this was producing a lot of extra work for the police, so she was working double shifts. Maud’s cousin had sent round some soup and half a loaf. Billie was doing Maud’s washing. Norah was picking up the little girl from Billie’s in the mornings and taking her to the nursery. Nurse Drebbes was dropping her back when the nursery closed. Dr Alice had waived all her costs. The woman next-door-but-one had popped along to the corner shop and asked for credit on behalf of her neighbour.
And now the vicar’s wife, Jenny, had brought round some porridge. Nash opened the front door and on seeing who it was, and what she was delivering, couldn’t resist some decidedly cruel, inappropriate humour.
The previous year, when German u-boats had been threatening to starve Britain into defeat by sinking a high proportion of its imported foodstuffs, the British government had asked its people to start an allotment campaign to grow and eat as much of their own food as possible. The vicar’s favourite dessert, tinned rhubarb, had been unavailable for some time to all but those who could afford to dine at the best West End restaurants, so he had decided to grow some sticks. But he had been born and bred in the East End, where if you saw something pink, thin and a foot long, it had Blackpool or Brighton printed through it. And waste not want not; those huge leaves could make a decent soup.
The poor man had swopped his dog collar for a hospital gown in the critical ward for several days. The poisonous leaves had almost killed him. But he was fully fit again now, and therefore it was open season on him as far as Nash was concerned.
“Porridge Jen? Thought you might have brought round some nice soup. Or better still some custard. We were just about to give Maud some rhubarb for her tea.”
“May I have say that is in extremely poor taste Nashey,” scolded Jenny.
“Not as bad a taste as…”
“Yes, yes, yes,” interjected Jenny with a hand up, stopping the obvious joke in its tracks. “Now, see Maud gets this while it’s still hot will you?”
Nash winked at her and despite herself she gave him a little look and shake of the head which hinted that she had not taken offence. If it had been anyone else it would have been a different matter, but there again nobody else would have dared make such a joke to the vicar’s wife in the first place. Jenny bid the reprobate a curt good day and left him to do as he was told.
Ruby was at home so Nash took her with him into Maud’s bedroom. They had devised a little one scene play for their captive audience.
Perched awkwardly on a bedside crate, Ruby spooned porridge through Maud’s lips as she told her husband matter-of-factly that an enemy plane had been shot down nearby. It had landed in a lake and its fuselage had survived the impact. It had been fished out and was going to be on display at The People’s Palace in Mile End tomorrow. But there wasn’t a large enough motor vehicle available to take it, so it was going to have to be taken to Mile End by horse & cart. She and Pemberton were to guard it later today along the route and then at the Palace tomorrow morning when a big crowd was expected to see it.
Ruby then asked her husband how his day had gone. Nash equally matter-of-factly told his wife that he had been laid off at the wood yard but he had heard Charlie Selby was so snowed under that he needed another pair of hands at his undertakers firm in Bow Road, so he went round there and got himself a new job, starting on Monday.
So far, so mundane. The chit chat of a married couple discussing their respective working days. Nash then went on to mention that he had passed through Roman Road market on his way home, and they were selling stuff off cheap so he had bought some food for their supper.<
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“Since when did you go marketing?” asked Ruby. But she didn’t give her husband time to answer before continuing. “I’ve already got food in for us. And if they were selling it off cheap it’ll be on the turn for sure. It won’t keep. We’ll have to chuck it.”
“That’s the last time I help with the marketing, I only did it because I knew you were on late turn, and were back on again tomorrow morning,” said Nash, appearing to bristle at his wife’s lack of appreciation for his efforts.
Ruby became more conciliatory, no doubt feeling some remorse for her behaviour.
“Sorry Nashey. Your heart was in the right place. What did you get anyway?”
“Spuds, cabbage, scrag of lamb, hearts, bacon, fruit.”
“That all?” said Ruby sarcastically, before she softened her tone again. “Well, you did all right as it happens. I can make larded potatoes and cabbage mush. That’ll keep. I can do lamb and sugar pie and I can do stuffed hearts and candied peel. The sweet will keep the meat for a while if it’s not too far gone. I’ll make bacon pudding and fruit junket. That might keep. That’s good meals there. We might be able to save our ration cards till next week now.”
“Good,” said Nash brightening. “Mind you, we won’t be able to eat all that lot before it goes off, will we Rubes?”
“No, Maud here and little Rose will have to help us out,” said Ruby, as if she was asking for a favour. “You’ll need to eat to keep your strength up Maud. Nashey made me eat when I had it and I was up and about soon enough. And don’t listen to any of that old codswallop Billie told you. U-boats indeed. It’ll be over soon enough, you mark my words.”
Her head may have been spinning, making concentration difficult, but the little play had not fooled Maud for a moment. If she had not felt so terrible she would have been amused that Ruby and Nashey did not realise that when they were really having an argument, hardly a sentence went by without them calling each other ‘darling’. There had not been a single darling throughout their apparent argument. Nashey had also been far too timid. He would never have let Ruby get away with speaking to him like that without giving her as good as he got. And since when was Ruby able to think up four recipes just like that? You would never find her in the kitchen if the oyster man or pie man had just been round. No, she concluded, it was clearly a put-up job they had rehearsed for her benefit. They obviously didn’t want her to think she was being offered charity, especially from people who were not doing too well themselves. She knew Nashey didn’t make much out of either of his jobs, and from what she had heard Ruby was not really cut out for being a police officer, and surely wouldn’t last in the job. So they couldn’t spare much. And normally they would have been right that she would not have been prepared to accept charity. But this illness had knocked her for six. And Rose could catch it too. She knew she needed all the help she could get. But there had been a half-truth in what Ruby had said. From what Maud had heard about this new flu, it would be over quickly, one way or the other.
“That’s kind,” she wheezed, before passing out.
Chapter 31
“Lives might have been saved, spread of infection diminished, great suffering avoided, if the known sick could have been isolated…but it was necessary to ‘carry on’ and the relentless needs of warfare justified this risk… and the associated creation of a more virulent type of disease.”
Sir Arthur Newsholme,
Chief Medical Officer,
London Government Board 1918
Dr Alice had never felt so helpless. Almost all of her large number of house calls today had been to minister to patients with influenza. She was dolling out quinine for relief of fever; morphine for the pain and in one house digitalis to strengthen the heart. But her experience of this new wave of flu told her that bed rest was as good a treatment as any. One thing was for sure, none of the treatments were to actually cure her patients. And when a sufferer mentioned that they had been recommended some remedy or another by someone who knew someone who had recovered, she was loathe to reject it. If a patient had been recommended cinnamon, camphor, ammonia, eucalyptus or an alcohol rub, the doctor of medicine simply agreed that it could not do any harm. She was becoming increasingly concerned that medical science was simply providing palliative care to many.
At the end of her rounds, Alice sloped home depressed. Her shoulders were not the only thing which drooped. Her purse was laden with cash. She felt such a fraud taking money from people for achieving so little, but most of them insisted. They would not take charity. She had managed to reduce her usual shilling fee to a threepenny bit, telling people a little white lie that it was a government initiative because of the wide spreading nature of the flu. But despite only charging a quarter of her usual fee, today had seen her take home her highest ever day’s takings.
She usually bought a newspaper on her way home from the newsboy at the top of her street to get the latest news of the war. The lad was always there, in all weathers. But he wasn’t today. She guessed where he might be. She would be seeing him soon enough no doubt.
There was another newsboy across the street. He sold a different newspaper, one which she did not usually buy, but since the war had started one newspaper seemed pretty much like any other, so she crossed the cobbles to give the lad her custom.
A minute later she was inside her home putting on the kettle. A further minute and she was slumped in a comfy leather armchair, in a position she knew was bad for her back, smoking her first, much needed cigarette of the day. But backache was the least of her worries.
Alice looked at the front page of the newspaper. It was festooned in advertisements relating to the flu. The manufacturers of Oxo were claiming it ‘fortified the system against influenza action’. There was a proliferation of ads for meat substitutes and tonics, while cleaning companies suggested that keeping a spotless home was the way to defeat the illness. Jeyes fluid and other disinfectants had never seemed so enticing.
She turned to the main news pages and read every report pertaining to the war. The Hun, as the newspaper referred to the enemy throughout, were in retreat. As well as news from the Front, there was an awful lot from foreign correspondents reporting on conditions in Germany. The enemy were apparently running out of food, and their Home Front appeared to be collapsing. She then scanned the newspaper looking for medical matters. By the time she had run out of tobacco and her eyelids started to close, she had speed read every word of the newspaper. There was the occasional article that mentioned the flu, but no critical analysis of what exactly the Spanish Lady was, or how it was effecting the war.
“It must be worse than I thought,” she muttered to herself.
She leaned back, rubbing her eyes, pulling fingers down over her closed eyelids and onto her cheeks. The last thing her brain managed to process before sleep overtook her was that the flu pandemic was ending the war. One side or another would collapse under its weight. People cannot fight each other, starvation and a deadly virus all at the same time. Something had to give.
******
The following day Alice was craning her neck at the palatial splendour of the Poplar Board of Works building. No expense had been spared on constructing the gothic pile, with Portland stone and polished granite much in evidence. It had been built in the late nineteenth century, at a time of great deprivation in the surrounding area. She wondered how the Victorian mayor and his cronies could have been so detached from the realities of the local people they represented, that they could justify such opulence.
The good doctor had been called there for a meeting with numerous dignitaries; the local medical officer, the Chief Medical Officer of the London County Council, the mayor, local councillors, and representatives of the local sanitary authority, the Board of Education and a life assurance company. It was an emergency meeting forced upon them by the severity of the influenza outbreak. Though it was only pressure applied by local people’s champion Sylvi
a Pankhurst, which had actually got them to the table.
Alice did not have to wait long before she started to appreciate that the attitude of the people in the building had probably changed very little in the past three decades. The pomposity which must have been in evidence back in the last century, lay as thick in the room as the carpet and cigar smoke.
The local medical officer was the first to speak. He advised against piecemeal attempts to stop contagion.
“Drastic action is impossible and tinkering is not worth the price.”
Alice suspected that she had only been invited to the meeting as window dressing to keep her friend Sylvia happy. No doubt she was not expected to actually contribute. So it was somewhat of a shock to everyone when she cut in to the medical officer’s diatribe.
“We have to shut our schools. I have been told that schools outside London, which haven’t as yet been as badly affected, have already been closed. I believe the worst hit areas of all are Bermondsey, Lewisham and Lambeth, areas close to London Bridge and Waterloo stations. Alighting points for soldiers returning from France. It is clear that this is where the infection is being spread from. We’re just across the river from these areas, and Whitechapel’s London Hospital is now full of infected soldiers, so it would seem only a matter of time before the situation becomes equally dire here. And now, due to the shortage of teachers in our areas because so many have already been struck down, children are having to congregate in ever more crowded classrooms which amplifies infection. We must…”
At this point the Chief Medical Officer cut in. He had heard enough. Who on earth did this woman think she was?
“My good woman, we do not close schools in London as a matter of routine on account of influenza. Closing schools is simply impractical.” At this point he turned to face a local councillor whom he now addressed. “I believe the council has taken measures?”