Lime Street at Two

by Helen Forrester

  26

  LATE in the same autumn that I became acquainted with Eddie, I arrived home one evening in time to hear Edward, now a tall, thin ten-year-old, complaining of a sore throat.

  "You're probably getting a cold," replied Mother, and then added, with some exasperation, "If you will go out in the rain without a mackintosh, you can expect to get a chill."

  The next morning the throat seemed worse, and, over breakfast, he complained of weakness and said he did not want to go to school. He was, however, bustled off by Mother, with the assurance that it was indeed only a cold. She had to get to work.

  By the next day it was obvious that he was ill. He was feverish, and when Mother thrust a spoon handle down his throat to see if his tonsils were swollen, white patches were clearly visible. "Tonsillitis," announced Mother. "Perhaps we should go to the doctor."He was, however, too weak to walk and was near to tears. Mother put him back to bed, and walked down to the telephone box at the corner to call our explosive, overworked general practitioner.

  According to Mother the doctor, after examining Edward, was very rude.

  "Good God, woman!" he shouted. "Why didn't you call me before? The child has diphtheria—and badly, too."

  The ambulance arrived within half an hour, and a very scared youngster was whisked off to the isolation hospital.

  "Who would think of diphtheria?" Mother asked me plaintively. She had not been allowed to accompany Edward to the isolation hospital, and she was naturally upset. I had made her a cup of tea, Mersey-side's cure-all, and was feeling very sorry for her.

  "Well, I must say that I didn't," I assured her. Frail, underfed Edward! I was sick with fear.

  When he heard the news, Father, too, was genuinely distressed and, armed with a new subject of conversation, he went down to the local hotel for his usual rounds of beer.When he mentioned diphtheria to his fellow gossips nodding over their glasses of thin wartime beer, he was surprised to be told, "Aye, there's quite a lot of it around. Three kids in a family by us have got it. They've started to vaccinate them in the schools."

  From house to house the infection spread. Deaths began to be reported. In the next road to us a family of six died, and we felt the same helpless fear that Londoners must have suffered when visited by the plague.

  "There's a carrier somewhere in the village," people whispered, and they eyed each other speculatively.

  All the teachers and children in the local schools had their throats swabbed, and by this method several cases were caught in their early stages.

  The headmaster of one school worked unceasingly amongst his stricken charges and their families. He hardly slept while he supervised the examination and swabbing of every child in his school, and then had the school specially cleaned, in case the infection lay there. The only person in the school whose throat was not swabbedin the frantic haste was his own, until very late in the epidemic.

  He proved to be a carrier of the disease, and it was heartbreaking to see the man's distress. Friends and parents and family, fearing that he might commit suicide, closed around him to comfort him. But I think it was a long time before he stopped blaming himself for the death of some of his pupils.

  Mother took days off in order to visit poor Edward, who was, of course, kept isolated. As I remember, she was allowed to look at him through a pane of glass, so that she did not pick up the dreaded disease.

  About ten days later. Father came home from work unusually silent. Instead of standing his umbrella in the kitchen sink to drip, he propped it in a corner by the door, where the water slowly ran down its shiny blackness to form a puddle. He took off his mack and draped it over the kitchen door to dry. Then he said heavily to Mother, who was herself still arranging her wet coat over the back of a chair, having only just come in, "My throat feels veryodd. I think I'd better see the doctor when his surgery opens."

  By the time I got home, he had already gone, and Mother was optimistically assuring Avril and Tony that it was nothing serious.

  I had hardly washed the dishes stacked up on the kitchen draining-board after tea, when he was back.

  He sank down on a kitchen chair, his face drained of its usual redness, to the point where he looked yellow. "The ambulance will be here shordy. Have I got any clean pyjamas?"

  We looked at him appalled, while something akin to terror ran through us. Fear for him, fear for ourselves.

  "Doctor said I probably caught it from a dirty glass in the pub," he told us.

  With his bad heart and his generally undernourished condition, we knew and he knew that he had received a death warrant.

  As with Edward, no one was allowed to go with him in the ambulance, and it seemed so cruel to me that he was going away to die alone, without family roundhim. We dared not even kiss him. Even Mother was silent and deflated.

  Mother usually took a bus from Moreton to Birkenhead Park, and then caught a train to Liverpool. While she was waiting at the bus stop the following morning, the doctor passed her as he hurried from his car to a patient's house. She ran after him and asked him, in despair, if there was anything she could do to save the rest of her family from infection. "Where does the germ come from? Is it only from other people?"

  It could be anywhere," she was told. In the drains, in the dust in the house, the curtains. You could try boiling all your dishes and linen—all the clothing. Wash down the entire interior of the house with strong disinfectant. Sluice every drain with more disinfectant. Wash down the furni-

  ture."

  Thank you."

  And don't forget to have all your throats swabbed," he called after her, as she got on the bus.

  The next day, a Saturday, was clear and warm. A flawless blue sky looked so peaceful that it seemed impossible that it

  could ever be the stage of ruthless aerial combat. But Mother and I were bent on another battle. Neither of us now worked on Saturdays, so, with the aid of Tony, we moved every stick of furniture, except the bedframes, out of the tiny bungalow. Avril went back and forth with small items.

  On the aged gas stove we boiled all the dishes. Into a gas boiler, which Mother had recently bought on the hire purchase system, went our scant supply of clothing and bedding, to bubble like some ancient cauldron until everything looked cleaner than it had ever done before.

  We brushed the mattresses and then wiped them with cloths steeped in undiluted pine disinfectant. The settee and easy chairs, which belonged to the landlord, got the same treatment. Then we scrubbed them with soapsuds and a scrubbing brush, removing years of grime. A week later, when they were thoroughly dry, they looked very much nicer, though very frayed around the arms, and very sunken of seat. Standing on the yellow grass of autumn, we washed down all the wooden furniture and left it to dry in the sun.Then we started on the bungalow itself. Disinfectant, followed by kettles and saucepans full of boiling water, went down every drain. The revoltingly clogged outside drains, still a feature of most English homes, were prised clean with the aid of a stick from the garden, and were then given a dose of undiluted disinfectant.

  Standing on wooden chairs brought back in from the garden, we attacked the walls and ceilings, and with swollen red hands we scoured them with hot water. Vim and more disinfectant. The result, while wet, was grey and streaked, but by the time they had dried something of the original colours of paint and wallpaper had emerged.

  Every so often, Tony was dispatched to the tiny shop at the bottom of the road for yet another bottle of pine disinfectant, for which I had to produce the money, since Mother did not have any.

  We washed door handles and tap handles and the lavatory chain with particular care. We wiped picture frames and the wires and shades of the single light in the centre of the ceiling of each room, and we scrubbed the front and back door-steps and a couple of feet of concrete in front of each. We cleaned the shoes and washed their soles.

  By late afternoon we were exhausted. Everything that we could think of had been washed, except the clothes we stood up in, and as soo
n as a change of garment was dry, we would wash those, too.

  While I pegged the clothes and linen out on the line or spread them to bleach on bushes. Mother went indoors and made tea and brought it into the garden, with bread and cheese and the newly boiled cups and jam jars we used for drinking purposes.

  We sat down thankfully on the grass, still damp from the downpours earlier in the week. The back garden looked as if an auction were in progress. The front garden was almost covered by the sitting-room rug, which had been beaten and then scrubbed on both sides. It belonged to the landlord, and I was surprised to find, as it dried, that a faded flower pattern had emerged and that it looked quite presentable, except in the middle where it was worn through to the backing.

  "Heavens," Mother groaned. "We've still got to lift everything back into thehouse." Her hands, like mine, were scarlet and wrinkled from hot water and the strong cleansers we had used, her face was haggard, and her hair, damp with perspiration, straggled round her face. The front of her cotton dress was soaked where it had been splashed. I was in no better state of repair.

  I sipped my tea gratefully. "Where's Fiona?" I asked suddenly. I had seen her at breakfast. I had not thought of her since. She worked in the morning on a Saturday, but she should have been home soon after noon.

  "She had a date this afternoon, straight after work."

  Smart Fiona, I thought unkindly, as I stretched my aching back and arms.

  Mother looked as if she would collapse if she did much more, so I suggested to her, "What about lying on the grass for a bit, to rest, while I do these dishes. They can go straight back into the kitchen cupboard now."

  Without demur. Mother lay down on the warm, rough grass, regardless of its inherent dampness, and I took the dishes into the kitchen. Despite their poor, whitechina, our cups were very precious. Mother had found them in a shop in Hoylake, and I washed them carefully. With a bit of luck, we might acquire one or two more secondhand, and thus be able to discard the rest of the jam jars.

  I put the dishes into the cupboard and closed its doors slowly. Like every other door in the house, it was warped, and hable to spring open again. I leaned my head against it. God, how I ached.

  From the direction of the front door came a cheery inquiry, "Anybody home?"

  "Eddie," I yelled, fatigue forgotten, as I flew to the open door. "Come in. Come in. How are you?"

  As he entered and took off his forage cap, he grinned down at me. Then he looked round the empty room. "What's happened? First time I've ever seen a carpeted front garden. Are you moving?"

  I was suddenly sobered. "Eddie, you must turn round and go straight home. All Moreton is rotten with diphtheria, and that includes us. We've been disinfecting everything." I went on to explain about Edward and Father. "And we might give it to you," I finished up, realising that Icared very much that he should not be endangered, though all of us in going to work or to school probably endangered others.

  "You OK?"

  "Yes, I think so."

  "Humph, I've never been sick in my life, to speak of." He moved further into the room, swinging his cap between his fingers, as he looked up at the streaked ceiling.

  "It's dangerous, Eddie. I wouldn't like you to catch it."

  His ruddy face broke into a grin again, the hazel eyes dancing. "Not to worry. I doubt I'll catch it."

  "Come through then. Mother's in the back garden, taking a little rest. We've been on this job since seven this morning."

  "I'll give you a hand," he offered, as he strode after me, through the little bungalow. "Got nothing to do for several hours."

  How did you get leave?" I asked. I'm not on leave. I brought a prisoner up. Got to go back at first light tomorrow."

  It was clear, as Mother rose gracefully from her grassy couch, that she still did not like this big, ugly man. But he was over six feet tall and well-built, so he was the best sight she had seen all day, and she shook his hand as he offered to help us.

  "Sit down," she ordered, gesturing vaguely towards the grass. "I'm sorry we are in such a state. Helen, go and put the kettle on again. Let's have some more tea."

  Tony and Avril had wandered off to play somewhere, so we drank our way through another pot of tea. The sun seemed brighter to me, as Eddie's witty tongue soon made a joke of our predicament and made us both laugh. "They know how to deal with diphtheria nowadays," he assured us. "You'll soon have your husband and son home."

  He put down his cup on the grass and heaved himself to his feet. "Now, where do we start?" he asked.

  While Mother went to call Tony and Avril from their game of catch in the front street, Eddie and I folded the carpet up and hauled it indoors. Like the rest of the house it reeked of disinfectant and it hadno little mud on its underside. We surveyed the untidy pile of it, after we had dumped it on to the living-room floor.

  "Out here, the damp is so great it'll take weeks to dry properly," I said, with a sigh.

  "Once you get a fire going in here, it won't take so long," Eddie comforted, and then gave his attention to heaving it into place.

  While Mother put back the contents of the kitchen cupboard, Eddie, Tony and I brought in the mattresses and laid them on the beds, which we had not attempted to move out on to the grass before washing. I was ashamed of the grubby, stained striped covers of the thin palliasse-type mattresses, and was relieved that the bed linen was still drying on the bushes, so that he would not see that at close range.

  When we went back into the living-room, the sun was streaming in through the curtainless windows. The window-panes glittered with newfound cleanliness and the papered walls and whitewashed ceiling looked quite spruce, now that they were dry. Feeling more cheerful, I helped Eddie and Tony bring in the settee and easy chairs and place them on the dampcarpet. Then we moved in the remainder of the furniture.

  Mother looked up from poking the living-room fire, which she had just persuaded to burn. "Would you like to stay to tea?" she inquired. The invitation was much more civil than on the first occasion.

  "No, thanks. Promised my Mam I'd be back for tea."

  I said, "Take a seat for a moment, and I'll just tidy myself and walk with you down to the bus stop." He turned, with a nod, to one of the easy chairs, and I shrieked, "Not on one of those—you'll be wet through!" I lifted a wooden chair towards him, and he laughed and plonked himself on to the scratched bentwood chair that I gave him.

  I hurriedly washed my face and hands and put on a clean dress, thankful that Fiona had not borrowed it—Saturday was a great borrowing day, as far as she was concerned, because she usually had a date and wanted to look nice. I hastily rubbed vanishing cream into my face, from a little silver-grey tin labelled Snowfire, and then powdered it, combed my long hair care-fully and tied it up, rolled over a shoestring round my head. I was ready to further my acquaintance with Eddie, and I felt elated that he and Mother had got on together a little better.

  We wandered slowly down to the bus stop. The sun was warm on our backs and we were so relaxed that it did not seem necessary to talk much.

  As we waited for the bus and watched the sparse traffic pass—mostly women going home on bicycles, with a shopping basket on the front piled perilously with groceries—I apologised for putting him to work during his visit.

  "It was nothin'. First useful thing I've done for weeks."

  The bus came in. It was early and the driver and conductor got down and stood in the sunshine to smoke, while we looked at each other shyly.

  "Hope your Dad and your brother get better," he said.

  I sighed. "Yes. We're really worried about Daddy."

  "Goddamned awful thing to happen."

  The driver, fat and red-faced, was slowly climbing into his seat again. Theconductor threw away his cigarette end, swung on to the platform and up the stairs to the upper deck.

  I held out my hand and he took it and held it for a moment, looking down at me with piercingly shrewd eyes. I smiled at him, and the rather forbidding face became quite gent
le. "Take care of yourself," he said. "See you next leave."

  I watched the bus out of sight, and then turned homeward.

  A very washed out Edward was returned to us by the Isolation Hospital. Physically, he recovered from his ordeal quickly, though I often wondered what scars this narrow escape from death must have left upon his mind. The isolation itself must have been terrifying to a youngest child used to being petted by a large family.

  The fear of Father's dying lay heavy upon us all. Though we were far from being a happy family, faced with death we tended to huddle together. Unlike most families, we had no real circle of friends who knew us all and who would support us with their presence and sympathy, and the loss of Father would leave a frightening gap in our small ranks. I do notknow if any of the younger children truly loved their father. He was kinder to them than he had been to Alan and me when we were little, though he never played with them and he lived a social life completely separate from all of us. There was, however, genuine relief when Mother announced that Father had passed the crisis point and would return home in a week's time.

  After a few days at home, he was strong enough to walk slowly down to see our doctor to have his sick note renewed so that he could send it to his office to justify his absence.

  When he entered the surgery, the doughty Scottish doctor gazed at him in astonishment, and then rushed round his desk, to wring his hand and say, "Good God, old man! I never hoped to see you again."

  Poor Father did not get much care at home, but he went to bed early and walked by the sea, and gradually he was restored to his old self.

  Eddie wrote to inquire how he was, and this pleased both Father and me. At the sight of the familiar handwriting, Iremember thinking wistfully that I seemed to be quite rich in men friends—as a good dancer, I met quite a number of pleasant men—and yet the emptiness in my heart was often hard to bear. As I lay in bed, I would still occasionally burst into tears, and have to swallow the grief, because I might wake Fiona or Avril.