by Diane Allen
Jim grunted. ‘Aye, I suppose. That’s the third night in a row, mind. There’s only so much cured pork a man can eat, Rose. No wonder our John’s found a new trough to eat from.’
‘What do you mean?’ Rose was suddenly alert. ‘Is he out again?’ She leaned forward, trying to decipher the expression on Jim’s face.
‘He told me he was at a mate’s, having supper there. I think he’s got pally with a lad that lives on top of Blea Moor. He seems to mention him a lot. Joe or Josh or something similar . . .’
‘As long as he’s not across the way with that hussy, I don’t mind. It’ll do him good to make a few new mates, broaden his horizon – provided they don’t drink.’ Rose carved the cold pork and got out the pickle jar and a loaf of bread and placed it on the table.
Jim prayed under his breath to the Almighty. He hoped he’d be forgiven for telling lies, in the circumstances. The lad was back with Molly and the pair of them seemed happy. He for one wasn’t going to stand in their way.
He looked mournfully at the plate of cold meat in front of him. All day he’d been hoping for a warm meal like the one Reverend Tiplady was probably enjoying right now. Instead she’d served up the same fare as he’d endured last night and the night before. Thank God Rose had finally seen it was too much for her, looking after the Reverend and her own family. Hopefully by this time next week she’d be cooking for him alone.
‘So is your ma going to be a bridesmaid at this wonderful wedding that’s coming off in the dale?’ John asked Lizzie. Molly, who was standing just behind him, washing the dishes, had declared him a terrible tease and refused to say another word on the subject. ‘I hear Starchy Drawers wants to get married at St Leonard’s, and right quickly.’
‘Ma says the wedding’s next weekend and it’ll be a quiet do, but we’re invited. I think we’ll be the only ones there. None of Doctor Thistlethwaite’s family are still alive and she’s from up Scotland. It’s a good job Mam finished my new dress, else I’d have nothing to go in, but I think I look pretty enough in this. At least, George says I do.’ Lizzie blushed and did a small twirl to show off her dress for John.
‘Happen young George is right: you’re pretty as a picture. The bonniest lass up the dale – apart from your ma, that is. She’s the apple of my eye, but you come a close second. I’ll treat you to a new hair comb next time I’m in Ingleton and then you’ll look spot on.’ John laughed as Lizzie kissed him on the cheek and then blushed.
‘Hey, that’s enough of that, young lady! He’s my man, not yours,’ Molly joked.
‘I think you two should get married. Then John could be my dad.’ Lizzie stopped twirling and looked at the couple. ‘Why don’t you? You’ve been friends for months – Doctor Thistlethwaite’s only been walking out with Starchy Drawers a few weeks. Florrie reckons you’d make a perfect couple. She saw the pair of you kissing the other day.’
‘That’s enough. John and I are just good friends, which is how it should be at the moment. And you can tell that Florrie Parker to keep her comments to herself.’ Molly’s voice was warm but stern. ‘Now how about you go to bed – it’s past ten o’clock and I don’t want you twining in the morning when you’ve got to get up.’
‘But, Mam . . . John’s still here,’ Lizzie whined.
‘I’ll be on my way.’ John rose from his chair, embarrassed by Lizzie’s suggestion and Molly’s response.
‘No, stop – I want you to stay. I need to talk to you. Lizzie, I’ll pull the curtain across and then John can’t see you undress. No more lip, all right? It’s bed time and that’s final.’
John sat back down in his chair as Molly drew the curtain that separated the sleeping quarters.
‘Night, John,’ Lizzie shouted from behind the curtain as she blew out the candle next to her bed, the smell of candle wax filling the air.
‘Night, sweetheart. Sleep tight and mind the bed bugs don’t bite,’ John replied, watching Molly carry a bowl of water from behind the curtain. She gently put her hand on his shoulder and nodded her head in the direction of the doorway.
He followed her outside and watched as she threw the dirty washing water into the open drain that ran alongside the huts, then sat down on the hut steps alongside him. It was a cold evening and he put his arm around her, pulling her close.
‘You know I didn’t prompt her to say that.’ Molly laid her hand on John’s knee and looked into his eyes. ‘In fact, little does she know it, but Starchy Drawers was Doctor Thistlethwaite’s second choice. He was stupid enough to ask me first.’ She smiled at the look of surprise that crossed John’s face. ‘Needless to say I said no. And now he’s opted to marry Gladys. Poor man’s desperate for company in his old age.’
‘He’d have been a good catch, worth a pretty bob or two. You could have done worse.’ John knew it would have broken his heart if she had accepted. He loved everything about her: the way her lips quivered when she was upset, the twinkle in those beautiful green eyes when she was happy . . .
‘Oh aye, he’s worth a bob or two, but I couldn’t marry if there was no love there. You can’t share your bed with a man you don’t love.’ Molly’s eyes dropped.
‘And do you love me, Molly Mason? Because every time I look at you, I want to sing. Sing so loud that even the bloody viaduct would tremble with the noise. I want to tell the world how much I love you. Most of all I want to marry you. So how about it? Marry me, Molly Mason; and we’ll run away from all this. For God’s sake, say yes and be mine.’ John squeezed her tight and kissed her hard on the lips. So hard she couldn’t reply for a second or two.
Molly stroked John’s cheek and placed her finger on his lips. ‘You know I love you, but it feels so wrong. For a start, you’re younger than me. And then there’s your mother. What would she say? She’d be heartbroken – two of her sons marrying trollops.’
‘Bugger her! It’s my life. I want you to be my wife and Lizzie to be my daughter. I don’t care about the rest.’
‘Oh, John, I want to marry you so much. I never thought I’d feel this way again. After everything that happened, I’d become all bitter and twisted – and then you came along. May God strike me down dead if I’m wrong . . . but yes, I’ll marry you. Only not yet. Let’s be patient, my love, and wait a while. How about in the summer? But the answer’s yes, John Pratt, I would love to marry you.’
19
It was a strange marriage that took place at St Leonard’s that cold February Saturday. The groom was considerably older than his bride, and with no congregation bar Lizzie and Molly, the church was empty. The vicar blessed the couple and wished them well as they set off in the gig that they had hired for the day. Dark evening clouds enfolded the wedding party as they crossed the moss-covered bridge and climbed the steep hill back to Batty Green.
The vicar blew out the candles one by one and placed his surplice in the small vestibule before putting the church records in a place of safety. It had been a pleasant enough day, a change from the many funerals he’d been called upon to conduct since the railway came to the dale. Even baptisms were poignant affairs now; more often than not he would hold the tiny babe in his arms to enter the house of God one day, only for it to return a few months later in a coffin. It was a hard world and his faith was often tried, but the coming together of a couple made up for it. He was sure the doctor would be happy. Certainly, his new wife seemed overjoyed. But he thought he’d detected a slight pause in the vows and a glance at Molly Mason before Roger Thistlethwaite said, ‘I do.’ Nothing would surprise where that woman was concerned. He recalled all too well the day he caught her child stealing from the church and marched her home, only to find the mother drunk and in the company of a man who was not her husband.
With the final candle blown out, its wisps of smoke curling down the nave, he looked around the small plain church before closing the door behind him. He stood in the small porch and pulled his hat on. This infernal rain – could it not keep fine just long enough for the bride and groom to get home and
for him to dash to the vicarage? He wrapped his cloak about him and stepped out of the porch, only to be stopped in his tracks by John Pratt. The lad was bent double, gasping for breath, his face red and sweaty, his jacket and breeches soaked from the rain.
‘Is the doctor here? Is he bloody well here, man?’ John summoned enough breath to speak between gasps. He shook the vicar roughly by the shoulder. ‘Tell me, is he here? My mam, she’s badly, she looks terrible.’
‘No matter how ill she is, there’s no call to speak to me in that manner, young man. Anyway they’ve gone, they’re on their way home. You’ll have to catch them there.’ He wrapped his cloak tight around him and strutted up the path to the vicarage.
John bent over, still trying to get his breath, kicked the foot scraper next to the church’s entrance. ‘Shit, I knew I’d miss them if I came down by the gill,’ he muttered. Then he wiped his forehead with his cap and set off on the long run home.
Rose Pratt had been shivering and shaking for a few days. She’d thought she was coming down with influenza: her body ached and she’d a raging temperature. But then the spots and blisters started to appear. At first, they just looked like spots, but now they had started oozing pus and they stank. No matter how she lay, she was in pain. She lay alone in her bed, her hair matted, her heaving bosom sticky and sweaty. It exhausted her even to hear the sounds of everyday life going on around her.
‘Jim, Jim, fetch me a drink of water, this thirst is killing me,’ Rose whispered, reaching out a feeble hand from underneath the blankets.
Jim lovingly wiped her brow, mindful of the scabs that had appeared on his bonny-faced wife. ‘Here, love, just a sip. Don’t want to chill your belly now, do we?’ He gently lifted her head and watched her take a small sip, the movement almost too much for her. ‘John’s gone for the doctor. We should have had him sooner – and would have done if we hadn’t listened to you. I know it’s his wedding day but tha’s more precious to me than his special day.’
He patted her hand lovingly, trying to fight back a tear in his eye. Hard northern fellas like him didn’t cry. He sniffed loudly and walked away, trying to hide his feelings. He was standing over the sink, not wanting to look at his wife as she lay groaning in her bed, worry and fear overtaking him as the door flew open and John entered with the doctor by his side.
‘How long has she been like this?’ Doctor Thistlethwaite turned white when he saw her condition. He put his hand on Rose’s forehead. ‘She’s burning up.’ He stepped back and looked at the two burly men. They seemed lost without their matriarch.
‘She started complaining she was tired about a week ago. And then these blisters came out the other day.’ John answered for his father, who had sunk into his chair. The old man knew all too well what his wife had. He’d seen it once before, when he was a child, and he’d never forgotten the devastation that it had caused.
‘I’m sorry but she’s going to have to come into the hospital. I believe she has smallpox. It’s a fearful disease and I can’t tell you what the outcome will be.’
‘Tha don’t have to tell me a thing, Doctor,’ said Jim. ‘I know what smallpox is about, I lost my mother to it when I was a little ’un. I caught it an’ all – look at my neck and shoulders.’ Jim rose from his seat, pulled back his shirt and lifted his long grey hair up to reveal the pits in his skin where the scabs had been. ‘I was lucky – I don’t have any on my face and I lived, but my Rose here looks in a bad way.’
‘We’ll take her into the hospital and try to make her comfortable. She’ll need to be kept apart from the other patients – this is contagious, as you probably already know, Mr Pratt.’
‘Aye, I know. It ripped through our little village, barely a family untouched. I’m sorry we’ve fetched it to your door.’ Jim bowed his head and leaned against Rose’s bed. ‘You’ll be all right, lass, Doctor here will look after you. Our John’s going to carry you into hospital.’
He walked away and gazed into the night while John and the doctor carried Rose out. Her moans brought back to him the night he lost his mother and the pain and anxiety that followed. Wherever she had caught it from, this was only the beginning. Smallpox would cut through the railway camps like a thief in the night, breeding on the squalid conditions that most of the navvies lived in. God have mercy on all their souls – not that Jim placed much store in Him. After watching your mother die and most of your family, you gave over believing in such a cruel trickster.
‘I’ll wash everything in sight and burn the bedding. I remember that much from when I was a nipper,’ Jim called after the doctor. ‘Never thought I’d see it again, though.’ He closed the door and went back into the empty cabin. Rose was so ill, he knew there was little hope she’d survive. He sat in his chair and looked at the unmade bed and the pots and hangings on the walls in the hut that they had made their home for the last eighteen months. The old biscuit box full of earnings was just visible under the bed. He’d give it all away if he could save his Rose. He put his head in his hands and sobbed. She was his rock – a bullying, stubborn rock, but no other woman could hold a light to her. She’d better bloody live, that feisty old bugger . . . else what was he to do?
‘Put her here John, in the end bed. We’ll move the rest of the patients into the other half of the hospital. We really need an isolation ward, but this will have to do. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial and I need to know where she’s picked it up from – she must have been in contact with someone who had the symptoms.’ Doctor Thistlethwaite took off his jacket, his wedding corsage still attached to the buttonhole. He washed his hands in the enamel dish that Molly held and then set about examining Rose.
Much as she had disliked the woman, Molly wouldn’t have wished this on her. She’d never seen anything as bad as what the illness was doing to her body.
‘Her hearts weak, the rhythm doesn’t sound right.’ Doctor Thistlethwaite turned to John. ‘You’d better get your father – I don’t think she’ll last the night.’
Molly touched John’s sleeve as he hurried past her, wiping his eyes. There were no words that would comfort him.
John walked homewards with heavy feet. As he rounded the corner of the track he saw the glow of a fire near the viaduct, the silhouette of his father outlined against the orange and gold dancing flames.
‘Father, Father, come quick! The doctor says Ma mightn’t last the night. She’s bad, real . . .’ He fell silent as his father poked the straw mattress and bedding into the flames.
‘She’s buggered, lad. She’ll not be here in the morning. I’ve seen it before and I don’t think I can take it again.’ Jim didn’t even turn round. He kept his eyes on the blaze and kicking any stray bits of mattress that fell out back on to the fire.
‘That’s why you’ve got to come. She needs you.’ John turned, assuming that his father would follow him.
‘I’m not coming, lad. She’s got her God with her, and I want to remember her like she was. She’ll be the first of many. There’ll be a lot of tears yet.’
‘You’ve got to come – she loves you.’ John pulled on his father’s sleeve. He desperately wanted to get back to his mother.
‘Call that bloody preacher for her – she’ll want him. Rose’ll know why I’m not there.’
John looked at him. He didn’t understand: his wife was dying, surely he wanted to be with her. His foot slipped in the mud, nearly making him fall as he made off towards the hut where Reverend Tiplady lived. He would call for him, she’d like that. His presence would give her solace.
Rose gasped for breath, the pain in her chest was increasing and every minute of life had to be fought for. She gazed around her at the people trying to make her last few hours on earth comfortable. She could just make out the form of Molly Mason; that ginger hair, she was the only one at Batty Green with that halo of burnished copper. She had to tell her, get her forgiveness before meeting her maker. She snatched her hand as she bent down beside her with her cooling cloth.
‘I ne
ed . . . I need to tell you, it . . . it was an accident,’ she whispered in a ghost of a voice.
‘Rose, you need to rest. Never mind about the accident.’ Molly mopped Rose’s brow, taking no heed of the ramblings of a dying woman.
‘I’ve got to tell you . . . I poisoned Tommy . . . by accident.’ The grip on Molly’s hand was so strong and her confession so terrible it stopped Molly in her tracks.
‘Tommy? You’re telling me you poisoned my baby – you killed my bonny lad?’ Molly looked in horror at the woman who had caused her more pain than anyone else in her life.
‘It was an accident . . . I gave him some milk . . . in a bottle. It was John’s poison bottle . . . I didn’t know. Forgive me . . . forgive a dying woman.’ The words were like a shard of glass in Molly’s heart and she watched as another shot of pain hit the pleading old woman.
‘You nasty old bitch! I hope you rot in hell! No amount of praying will save you – and no, I’ll not forgive you, nor any of your family.’ Molly pulled her arm away from Rose’s grip. Her eyes glazing with hatred at the old woman, she threw her dish and cloth down and stamped out of the hospital. Doctor Thistlethwaite shouted after her, but she was too consumed with rage to hear him. Her baby boy dead and her daughter only alive by a miracle – all because of that family. How could she ever look at John without being reminded of that? She stood on the steps of the hospital and caught sight of him making his way across the track with the preacher Tiplady.
‘Aye, get her the preacher, because by hell she needs one! No matter how she prays, she’ll never get into heaven!’ Molly spat the words out like venom.
‘Moll, I haven’t got time for this. I know you don’t like my mother, but I thought you’d find some kindness in your heart for a dying woman.’ John brushed past her with the Reverend Tiplady in pursuit.
‘I’d be careful what you say, Mrs Mason – God has ears,’ warned Reverend Tiplady, hurrying to the side of his parishioner.