Ship Fever

by Andrea Barrett

  Annie would be back any minute, he thought, as he closed his eyes. The breeze that blew through the windows was balmy and carried the scent of roses. A cardinal perched in a pyracantha whistled his four-note summons again and again.

  When he woke, it was almost dark. The door to the library opened behind him, and he lifted his head with a start. “Annie? Could I have my clothes?”

  The figure behind him caught her breath. “Lauchlin?” he heard Susannah say. At first he thought he’d dreamed her voice. “Lauchlin? Is that you? Whatever are you doing here?”

  He rose without thinking, his blanket swirling about him like a cloak. There she was before him, a book in her hand, clad almost as lightly as him in a maroon dressing gown. In the instant before he blushed and turned, he registered how little she had on beneath the glossy silk.

  “I’m so sorry,” he said to the fireplace. “Can you pardon me? When I got here you were out, and Annie took all my clothes and made me wait downstairs while she went to fetch others from my house, and I got so tired of waiting for her that I came up here. I must have fallen asleep…what happened to Annie? Why didn’t anyone tell you I was here?”

  His voice stumbled, caught between his apologies and all he wanted to say and couldn’t. That she was beautiful in this dusky light, that he had not seen her hair loose in years and loved it; that he had dreamed of her, again and again, during his weeks at Grosse Isle. If only he hadn’t been wrapped in this wretched blanket, he might have allowed himself to turn and gain another glimpse of her. But that would be wrong; she was surely just as embarrassed by her own relative state of undress as by his.

  He could hear her backing out of the room, but she was laughing and didn’t seem offended. “Poor Lauchlin! So you ran afoul of Annie’s obsession with dirt,” she said. “I just got in myself—Annie wasn’t in the kitchen when I got home, but I didn’t dare skip my ritual wash. I’m the one who should apologize: my servants mistreating you and then me showing up like this. Just give me a minute to get into some proper clothes. Then I’ll find Annie and see what’s happened to yours.”

  He turned around again only when he heard the door close. His skin was burning beneath the blanket—never, not even as children, had they shared such an intimate moment. He tried not to imagine how it might be to have her appear like this before him willingly; he tried, and failed, and then sank down in the chair with a groan, more jealous of Arthur Adam than he could stand to admit. When the door opened behind him again, he didn’t dare rise or turn.

  This time it was truly Annie, who was vexed. “Your clothes,” she said. She set the pile on the library table and stood with her hands on her hips. “This whole time I thought you’d disappeared—how was I to know you’d let yourself up here? And then Mrs. Rowley creeping in, without even a word to let me know she was back—an hour I’ve been back myself, after running all over town, and when I return there’s not a sign of you.”

  Lauchlin sighed and rested his chin in his hands. “Annie,” he said. She had grown very forward these past months, but he did not feel it was up to him to correct her. Arthur Adam would straighten her out quickly enough, when he came home. “If you knew what I’d been doing these last weeks, or how tired I was—I just came in here to wait for a bit. Where did you think I’d gone, with only this bit of blanket to cover me?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Annie said. “I’m sure, after seeing the state of your household, that I wouldn’t have the least idea what a gentlemen like yourself would be up to. Your Mrs. Carlson sends her apologies about the darned shirt, and says to tell you she couldn’t find another clean, she’d packed everything away against your return. Mrs. Rowley will be down directly.” But then, as if she’d understood for the first time that he was naked beneath his blanket, she relaxed a bit. “You’re looking foolish in that get-up,” she said. “Go on—get dressed.”

  Was that a smile? She shut the door behind her and Lauchlin dressed quickly. By the time Susannah returned, with her hair piled up and her frock demurely buttoned over her shoulders and neck, he was almost respectable himself. “Forgive me for barging in like this,” he said.

  She swept across the room and seized his hands. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m so glad to see you—you’re well? No trouble, I hope.”

  He squeezed her hands gently and then pulled away. “No more than what’s become a matter of everyday. Dr. Douglas sent me back on some business—I return to the island tomorrow. I was just hoping to see you and Arthur Adam briefly. I had no idea he was still away.”

  For a minute Susannah occupied herself with the lamps. “Couldn’t Annie do that?” he said gently.

  “I hate to trouble her.”

  In the warm glow of the lamplight, she looked almost as lovely as she had in the dusk. Perhaps a little cooler, a little harder, as if her clothes had armored her. Just for a moment he found himself thinking of Nora, whose appearance and manner toward him were always the same. Whose eyes had that mysterious ring around their irises…

  “I asked her to bring us some supper, and she’s annoyed enough over that. Arthur Adam will be so sorry to have missed you—you know he’s in London? Still?”

  He didn’t want to talk about Arthur Adam. What he wanted was to build a fire and lie down on the rug before it, his head in her lap, and tell her all he’d seen and felt in her absence. He wanted to pull a strand of her hair over her shoulder, against his cheek, but as long as she bustled about like this, and chattered as if this were a social call, all he could do was respond in kind. “Annie said something about that.”

  Susannah gestured toward one of the armchairs and then seized a folder of papers before settling in a matching chair across from him. “This is what he’s been doing,” she said, ruffling through the folder and pulling out newspaper clippings. “Quebec, Montreal, Boston, London—there’s hardly a first-rate paper he hasn’t written for, about the famine and the emigration problem. Now he’s calling for wholesale reform of the shipping laws. Look at this.”

  She pulled out a long column from a London paper. “‘The entire system of conveying these unfortunate Irish emigrants stands in need of revision. Who, if not the Government, will assist and protect these poor people banished by hunger from their native land? We are bound to regulate matters so as to see that too many are not crowded upon one ship, and that their accommodations are decent. We are bound to see that they have sufficient provisions to endure the voyage in good health, and that medical attendants be on board to see to their needs. We are bound’… well, you get the idea.”

  “I do,” Lauchlin said. He grasped both Arthur Adam’s efforts and the way this evening was to go, at least until supper had arrived and been eaten and then cleared away. Annie or one of the other servants might pop in here at any moment, and it was surely their looming presence that made Susannah so circumspect. “I couldn’t agree with him more, after all I’ve seen this month. You have to admire him, for setting this all down on paper.” He could not help feeling a twinge, as he compared that thick file of articles with his own private scribbles.

  “Well, of course,” Susannah said. “Now tell me about Grosse Isle. Your letters have been so brief.”

  He was reluctant at first, but she pressed him and he found himself telling her some of the details he’d otherwise confided only to his diary. “The worst thing,” he added, “the worst is sending passengers upriver from the island, knowing—knowing—that they’ll be sick within a few days, that they’ll bring the sickness here.”

  “It’s true,” Susannah said simply. “I see it every day at the hospital. Some of the doctors here are very bitter about what’s going on at the quarantine station.”

  “You think we’re not?” Lauchlin said, indignant. “You think any of us would choose to practice this way? If we had even the slightest support from the government, if we had anything like adequate space and provisions and an adequate staff—you ought to see what it’s like, you’d never blame me.”

&n
bsp; “I don’t blame you,” Susannah said. “It’s only the ignorant who do, and even those who blame anyone blame Dr. Douglas. The worst is this fellow called Dr. Racey—he’s set up a private hospital at Beauport, for treating the wealthy unfortunate enough to come down with this pauper’s fever. I went there the other day, with my aunt and uncle. It made me so angry. Dr. Racey has two beautiful clean buildings with excellent ventilation and an armload of good nurses, all for less than a hundred patients. Each of them waited on hand and foot, given tepid baths daily, helped to special drinks and food—he trumpets all over town that he’s only had two deaths. What he doesn’t say is how much he charges.”

  “No doubt,” Lauchlin said. Somehow, despite all Susannah’s good will and interest, he was growing very melancholy. His spirits picked up when supper arrived; nothing could counteract the aroma of oysters swimming in hot milk and butter, or of lobsters swelling above their bisected shells.

  “You’re very kind,” he said to Susannah. “I haven’t had a good meal in weeks.” During the time he was eating, he forgave her for the fact that she didn’t love him and never had. It wasn’t her fault, he told himself. He had not had the sense to find her before he went to Paris; he had not understood how deeply he was bound to her until she’d reappeared married to someone else.

  He finished the oysters, he finished the lobster, he ate three rolls and then Annie reappeared with a beautiful tart. His mood improved and he tried to get Susannah to tell him about her work at the Marine and Emigrant Hospital. She was becomingly, infuriatingly modest. “I just help out where I can,” she said. “Whatever the doctors find useful for me to do.” When he pressed her, she said, “You know what I see, and what I do. Just think of what your own nurses do.” He did, and blushed.

  “You know,” he said, “As a physician I’m very grateful for all the ways you are helping out. But as your friend, and particularly as Arthur Adam’s friend, I have to wonder if he would approve. You put yourself at real risk.”

  Susannah pushed away her plate of raspberry tart. “Oh, risk,” she said. “If Arthur Adam had his way, I’d never leave this house. Too much risk, he says, when I begged to join him in Ireland, or when I beg now to join him in London. Everything I want to do is too much risk. Meanwhile he leaves me here alone for eight months—what does he expect me to do? Shall I tell you something?”

  “If you wish,” Lauchlin said uneasily.

  “I hope he doesn’t come home for a few more months. If he were to arrive tomorrow, he’d lock me in here and keep me from going to the hospital—anywhere—and I tell you, I couldn’t bear it.” She held her hands in front of her, staring into her palms. “He’s not like you—you’d let me come to Grosse Isle and help out if I wanted to, wouldn’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t,” Lauchlin said quietly. “I never would.”

  Susannah rose and stood by the window. “You wouldn’t,” she said. “So you’re like him, that way. Even though you’ll put yourself in the thick of things, you’d still keep me out.”

  “Arthur Adam loves you. He only wants to keep you safe.”

  Annie came in, cleared the plates, and vanished, gazing at Susannah as she closed the door. And now Lauchlin was as miserable as he’d ever been. All evening he and Susannah had been at cross-purposes; every opportunity for a real conversation lost, every real feeling subverted. He could think of nothing to do but to rise and stand beside her and then hesitantly, hesitantly, touch her shoulder.

  She did not pull away from him. Rather she leaned into him slightly, so that their hips touched, and their shoulders and their upper arms. They stood there for a long time, gazing out at the garden as a current of warmth flowed between those few connections. How starved he’d been for the slightest human touch! “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “I spoke badly. But if you knew how much you mean to me…”

  “I know,” she said.

  Did she? But whether she did or not, his heart lightened. After a few more minutes, already far longer than any touch could be justified, they separated by common consent and moved back to the armchairs. They talked lightly then, of other things; Susannah poured glass after glass of brandy for him and then left him—briefly, she said—to take care of a few details with the servants. Eventually, as he had earlier in the evening, he fell asleep. Who covered him with a crocheted throw he never knew; nor who blew out the lamps or closed the windows. Annie, probably, although just possibly it was Susannah herself. But when he woke at dawn, with the sky pinkening through the windows, it was with an extraordinary sense of well-being despite the slight stiffness in his neck and the fact that he’d made no proper farewell to Susannah.

  He crept out of the house as carefully, and as full of elation, as if he’d spent the night doing something illicit. Behind the kitchen he found his old clothes, lying where they’d fallen from the storeroom window but now covered with dew: proof that Annie was not entirely efficient after all. He gathered them in a loose bundle and set off through the empty streets for his own house.

  To his surprise he found his housekeeper waiting for him, slumped on a davenport in the front hall. “Mrs. Carlson?” he said, shaking her gently by the shoulder. “Mrs. Carlson? What are you doing out here?”

  She rose with a start. “Don’t touch me,” she shrieked. “Don’t come near me with those clothes.”

  He’d forgotten about the bundle under his arm. She’d been dreaming, he thought. “It’s me, Mrs. Carlson. Back from the island. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  She backed away from him. “I know it’s you,” she said. “I know all about you. Annie Taggert from the Rowleys’ was here yesterday, and she said you were back and that your clothes were full of sickness and you needed clean, which of course I sent although there’s hardly a scrap in the house that isn’t packed away—those very clothes you’re wearing. She said you had brought fever with you, in your clothes—and then you bring that bundle to me, without the slightest consideration…”

  He stepped backward, opened his own front door, and threw his clothes in the bushes. Had all the servants in this city gone mad? “Fine,” he said. “No more clothes, and you have my apologies. Must you believe everything that Annie Taggert says?”

  “I believe this,” Mrs. Carlson said. “That you have no consideration for this household. You don’t even let us know when you’re expecting to be back—how can I arrange things here? We’d no food in the house for you last night, and then I rushed out to shop and cooked a meal and then you never came at all—how can you expect me to work in such an ill-regulated house? If your father was here he would never permit it.”

  Was it reasonable that he should have to explain his actions to his housekeeper? But there was no one else available, and he had to return to the island; he sighed and set himself to the task of mollifying Mrs. Carlson.

  Later that morning he boiled his old clothes in the kitchen himself, as he could get no one else to do it, and after he hung them out to dry and gathered a few more things he settled down with pen and paper. First a quick note to his father: Please return at your earliest convenience, he wrote. Or make arrangements by post for someone to take care of the house in your absence. I must return to Grosse Isle today, and I can no longer be responsible for matters here. By now you are most likely aware of conditions at the quarantine station; they require my full attention.

  Then, after much thought, he wrote a letter to Arthur Adam as well. He praised Arthur Adam’s articles; he confirmed Arthur Adam’s suspicions that there would be sickness on the emigrant ships; he described conditions at the quarantine station briefly. He would not say outright what Susannah was doing, but finally he added this paragraph:

  Of course by now you have heard that there is fever here in the city as well. I am worried about this; I fear very much for Susannah’s safety, exposed as she is to contagion. There is much going on here worth writing about, and no one better than you to do it. Perhaps you would consider heading home?

  Lastly he wrote to S
usannah: the simplest, shortest note of all. Thank you, he wrote. You cannot know what last evening meant to me, nor how it helps to have the memory of you to carry back to Grosse Isle. I will write from there, when I can.

  [V.]

  Nora hardly recognized Lauchlin when he returned from his trip to the city. When he’d left the island, his thatch of reddish hair, uncut for weeks, had been matted and dry, while his skin had had a greenish tinge. Everything about him had faded: even his eyes, even his beard. The mouse-colored patches beneath his eyes had looked permanent.

  But here he was ruddy and smiling, almost sleek, after such a brief stay away. Perhaps he had slept. He fairly ran up to her, where she was bent over a patient. “Nora!” he said. “Nora!”

  The way he said her name made her catch her breath, but still she finished dipping her rag in water and wiping the woman’s face. Dirty bedclothes, dirty skin, foul breath: Margaret O’Connell. One of the people whom, since she’d been well enough, she’d applied herself to helping. Mostly her help amounted to doing battle with the filth that coated everything. At least Margaret’s face was clean. She put down her rag and led Lauchlin away from the pallet. Was it possible he had news of her brothers?

  But he said nothing about them. “Nora!” he said yet again.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” There could be no news yet of Denis and Ned—unless, perhaps, they had made inquiries themselves, and Lauchlin had seen them…but he would have said. Perhaps he brought some other good news: more doctors, some nursing nuns, better food.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Only…”

  He wanted to tell her something; he was as eager as Ned had once been, on discovering a beetle he wanted to show her. Then his face changed, and she watched him decide to keep whatever it was to himself. He said, “It was so strange there, Nora. In the city. The fever’s there too. And I couldn’t get anything Dr. Douglas wanted, and then the steamer was so slow coming back, and I saw how many more ships were anchored, and the two big steamers headed upriver: somehow I thought you were on one of them. I thought you’d gone to Montreal. I’m glad you’re still here.”