The Stony Path

by Rita Bradshaw

  Betsy slanted another quick glance at Polly. And she wasn’t eating; scarcely a bite she’d had in days, and everyone knew you should feed a cold and starve a fever. But she didn’t have a cold or a chill. Something had happened that day – she’d bet her life on it. At first she’d thought Polly was going down with the skitters like Croft’s wife and bairns, and old Enoch who had the cottage next to Croft and helped with the cows, but it wasn’t that.

  By, what with Polly, and the weather being so bad, and Emily still tending to Croft’s wife and bairns twenty-four hours a day, Betsy didn’t know if she was on foot or horseback most of the time. And Madam Ruth needed a hot poker up her backside before she’d lift a finger. Even tending to her own grandparents was too much for that little baggage. She just hoped the old lady continued to hold her own, because the way Polly was at the moment it would be the final straw if anything happened to her beloved gran.

  Polly was aware of Betsy’s concern but her nerves were frayed to such a pitch she didn’t trust herself to talk. Any sympathy from her friend and she might well find herself pouring out what had happened, and she mustn’t do that. No one must know, not even Betsy; it was too dangerous for Luke. Her head was constantly muzzy and she felt bone tired, but every time she laid her head on the pillow and closed her eyes, her mind began to replay that walk back from Bishopwearmouth and sleep eluded her.

  She wished she could unburden herself to Betsy. She lifted the last bowl on to the wooden shelf fixed on the dairy wall, her movements slow. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her, but one word spoken out of place, one slip, and Luke would be— Here her exhausted mind ground to an abrupt halt. She couldn’t think of what would happen if anyone found out how Arnold had died, not any more. She had been down that road so often in her head over the last five days, and always with it ending one way – Luke hanging at the end of a rope.

  ‘Why don’t you go an’ make us a nice cup of tea, lass, an’ have a warm by the fire while you’re about it?’

  Polly turned round to find Betsy’s worried eyes tight on her, and she forced a smile as she said lightly, ‘It’s all right, Betsy, there’s life in the old girl yet. It’s only a cold I’ve got.’

  If a cold was the trouble, she was an organ-grinder’s monkey, Betsy thought grimly. ‘Aye, be that as it may, lass, I wouldn’t say no to a cup meself. It’s bad enough in here on a summer’s day, but with the snow up to the windows an’ it freezin’ hard, I can’t think of a worse place right at this minute. I shouldn’t think there’ll be many folk turn out for your aunt’s funeral even in the town.’

  Polly nodded her agreement but she didn’t speak. She had been in bed – courtesy of her ‘chill’ – the day after Eva had died, when Michael had braved the atrocious weather and made the journey to the farm to inform her grandparents of their daughter’s demise, and so she had heard the news second hand. Apparently Michael had also asked if they knew of Arnold’s whereabouts, as they had been unable to find him at his lodgings and he was still unaware his stepmother had passed on. Michael had left saying that no doubt Arnold would call at Southwick Road after his shift at the colliery that afternoon, and moreover he quite understood if – what with the terrible weather and all – no one from the farm was able to attend his mother’s funeral. His visit had proved to be one of reconciliation with the old people, for which Polly had been grateful, although according to Ruth their mother had refused to see him. Which didn’t surprise either of the girls.

  It was just as Betsy had walked through from the dairy to join Polly, who was now sitting at the kitchen table peeling potatoes for the mutton stew they were having for dinner, that Emily burst into the kitchen in a whirl of snow and screams, and brought both women jumping to their feet.

  ‘Missus! Missus! Oh, come quick! Come quick!’

  They had found the body. It was Polly’s first thought and froze her to the spot.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Betsy’s voice was scathing as she glared at Emily, her hand to her racing heart. ‘Scaring us!’

  ‘It’s the baby! Oh, missus!’

  ‘The baby?’ Relief had made Polly sag for a second, but then she straightened immediately, pushing the kitchen maid into a straight-backed chair as she said, ‘Calm down, Emily, and tell us properly. It’s Croft’s baby? What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s . . .’ A fresh wail brought Betsy’s hand rising to clip the girl’s ear, but Polly stopped her housekeeper, saying again, ‘What’s wrong with the baby, Emily?’

  ‘It was all right yesterday, but I went to lift it out of the crib this mornin’ an’ it’s dead.’

  ‘Dead?’ Polly was pulling her shawl over her shoulders as she spoke. ‘Are you sure it’s not just sleeping?’

  ‘No, missus, it’s stiff an’ cold, an’ Mrs Croft’s worse an’ wee Ellen can’t sit up.’

  ‘Why didn’t you come and tell us things were so bad before this?’ Betsy asked crossly. ‘You haven’t got the sense you were born with, girl.’

  ‘Give her a cup of tea, Betsy. I won’t be long.’

  Polly left them to it and hurried down to Frederick’s labourers’ cottages. Croft’s was the first in the row of five terraced dwellings, but this end cottage was twice the size of the other four, suiting Croft’s superior position as overseer. It boasted two rooms downstairs and one large one above which had been divided into three some years ago, and Mrs Croft always kept the house as clean as a new pin despite her limited resources.

  Old Enoch lived in the cottage adjoining Croft’s, which, like the other three, consisted of a large kitchen with one room above. He lived there alone, having lost his wife the year before, but two of his married sons occupied the next two cottages, with Emily’s parents living in the last. Since Emily’s brother had married his Mary he had been working on a farm at East Herrington whilst living with Mary’s parents, and Frederick hadn’t bothered to replace him, as two of Enoch’s grandsons were approaching fourteen and helped on the farm. All the men and lads got on well and Croft was a good overseer, so on the whole it was a happy farm.

  But not today. When Polly entered Croft’s cottage it held the smell of death. Martha Croft was too exhausted with the constant diarrhoea she had endured over the last week to raise her head from the pillow, and her younger daughter, Ellen, looked as though she was going to follow the baby any minute. The other two children, a boy and a girl, weren’t so ill but were still lying wan and listless in their bed.

  ‘They weren’t as bad as this yesterday, missus, honest.’ Emily had followed her over to the cottage and now stood biting on her nails as she and Polly stared down at the wax-like figure of the baby in his crib. ‘In fact Mrs Croft said she was goin’ to try an’ get up today.’

  ‘How’s Enoch?’ This wasn’t normal diarrhoea and sickness; this was much more serious, Polly felt it in her bones.

  ‘Me da says he was right poorly when he went in this mornin’,’ Emily whimpered, tears running down her face. ‘An’ me mam says a couple of the others have it now an’ all. An’ . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I don’t feel well, missus.’

  Snow or no snow, they had to get the doctor here. She’d been telling Frederick that for the last two or three days, but owing to the huge snow drifts and blocked roads he had kept putting it off – partly, she suspected, because she was insisting on it. Since the night it had started snowing they had barely exchanged a civil word, and she knew he was furious because she had called him a liar in front of the others when he had maintained he had waited for her until past four o’clock and then assumed she had taken a horse cab home. He had known what he was doing that night when he had left her in Bishopwearmouth. It had been in the form of a lesson to bring her to heel, and she would hate him for it until the day she died.

  ‘You go home and go to bed, Emily.’ The room was stinking, in fact the whole cottage was stinking, but Polly knew from the amount of time the boiler had been going in the washhouse that the be
ds had been changed umpteen times a day. Enoch’s two daughters-in-law had done nothing but live in there since Croft’s family were first taken ill. ‘We’ll send for the doctor.’

  That was the start of the nightmare.

  They couldn’t get the doctor to the farm until the next day, and only then because Frederick, Emily’s father and Enoch’s two sons worked until they were ready to drop clearing the road between the farm and the outskirts of Bishopwearmouth. The drifts were high and treacherous, and with Croft now ill, along with Enoch and one of his daughters-in-law and her bairns, the farm was barely ticking over.

  It was a while before Polly realised they weren’t going to find Arnold’s body, for it was effectively buried in a wall of ice and snow which only a consistent thaw would melt. In this, if nothing else, she felt fate was on her side.

  When the doctor arrived at the farm he initially examined Martha Croft, who had been the first to exhibit signs of the bowel upset, and when he found the pink spots on her torso and looked at her stools, he asked if she had visited Newcastle in the last weeks. She hadn’t, but she had been to see her brother in Sunderland’s East End.

  Once downstairs again, the doctor took Frederick and Polly aside in Croft’s little sitting room and spoke frankly. ‘This is a bad business, Frederick, and it will get worse before it’s over. I hold out no hope for the woman or the little girl, although the other two children may pull through. It’s typhoid fever, man.’

  Frederick went as white as a sheet, and as Polly held on to the back of a chair, the doctor continued, ‘There was a spot of it in Newcastle in the autumn but they thought they’d contained it. Then it showed up briefly in Bank Street and round the Quays, but again, after what they learned in the last outbreak at the end of ’95, they took measures to keep it enclosed. The last thing we wanted was an epidemic. But I’ve been to two fresh cases this week – this is the third – although the others are in the East End. But Croft’s wife’s brother is in the East End and he died two days ago. If I didn’t know about that I’d be telling you to boil your water and milk, although you can still do that to be on the safe side. But I doubt your water’s infected. Oh, and 1 did tell the lass upstairs about her brother, no need to upset her.’

  ‘Damn slums.’ Frederick’s colour had come back in an angry red flood. ‘People living worse than animals with no drainage and muck up to their doorsteps; my pigs are more particular than some of them.’

  ‘Then your pigs are lucky,’ the doctor said sharply. ‘The conditions some folk are forced to live in is down to the corporations, Frederick, let’s have that plain. I’ve seen rats the size of cats that have taken chunks out of bairns lying in their beds, so don’t tell me the people like it. You were born into comfort and you ought to be down on your knees thanking whatever God you pray to for it. Do you know they’re only now talking about getting a water supply into some of those streets round the East End? You see how you fare when you’re sharing a tap with ten other households and there’s one dry privy and washhouse between the lot of you.’

  ‘A bar of soap doesn’t cost much,’ Frederick said sulkily.

  ‘Have a bit of sense, man!’ And then the doctor moderated his tone as he turned to Polly and said, ‘Scour everything, everything, mind, whether it’s come into contact with anyone who is showing symptoms or not. Boil all the bedding and whoever carries the buckets of slops to the middens needs to wear a towel round their mouth and nose and wash their hands after. Wash your hands all the time, all of you, do you understand?’

  Polly nodded, her eyes wide. For the first time since Arnold had laid his hands on her she wasn’t thinking about that night. They could all die, and what if her grandda and gran got it? They had nothing on them to fight the disease, she thought sickly. She had to get back to the farmhouse and start scouring everything like the doctor had said. ‘How long before we know who’s going to have it and who’s not?’ she asked faintly.

  The doctor shrugged, his face sympathetic. ‘Could be days or weeks, that’s how this thing is. The weather is for you all, funnily enough. It’s worse in hot weather, spreads like wildfire then. You understand I’ll have to notify the authorities, Frederick? The farm will be in quarantine until you’re clear, and you can’t sell any milk or eggs, nothing, for the time being. You understand me?’ he asked again, Frederick’s face being blank. And as Frederick nodded dazedly, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow hopefully, weather permitting.’

  ‘Aye, aye, all right.’

  ‘I’ll take the child with me.’ His voice was sober. ‘And if anything similar occurs it would be best to designate a certain area for the bod — For the folk concerned.’

  Frederick gaped at the doctor before bringing his mouth shut in a snap, and there was a definite note of pleading in his voice when he mumbled, ‘But it’s only the weak that don’t recover, isn’t it? And not everyone gets it.’

  ‘Just do what I have said and you’ll be fine.’ It was said in professional doctor mode and couldn’t have been less reassuring.

  Polly left the two men talking and walked back over the banked snow and ice to the farmhouse kitchen, her head spinning. Typhoid, the dreaded word that was a curse in itself. Could her aunt’s hatred touch her from the grave? First the attack and now this. But no, no, she didn’t, she wouldn’t believe that. She was innocent of any wrongdoing and this was a natural calamity. She wouldn’t let Eva frighten her in death any more than she would have allowed her aunt to dominate her in life.

  Betsy was elbow deep in dough at the kitchen table, her round face enquiring, as Polly opened the door. ‘Typhoid.’ It was succinct but said it all.

  Betsy sucked in the air between her teeth and then let it out slowly before she said, ‘Aye, well, now we know for sure, eh, lass? We can get on with what needs to be done.’

  ‘There’s been one or two cases in the East End, which is where Martha must have caught it. She doesn’t know, but her brother’s dead.’

  They stared at each other for a moment and then Polly said, ‘Where’s Ruth? She’s going to have to help. Emily’s worse and her mam’s feeling bad. It looks like every cottage is going to be affected.’ She didn’t say ‘And I can’t see us escaping it in here,’ but it was what they were both thinking.

  Ruth was in their mother’s room, and for once Hilda wasn’t ready with a pointed remark or a jibe when Polly knocked and entered the room, but was lying very still, her eyes wide and frightened and her lips working one over the other. ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s typhoid.’ And as her mother’s face blanched, Polly said, ‘You are going to have to help, Ruth. Both Enoch’s daughter-in-laws are worn out, and we’ve got to keep the boiler going and the washing done. Come on.’

  ‘Polly, I’m feeling bad.’ Ruth’s face was as white as a sheet and Polly knew immediately her sister wasn’t lying. ‘I’ve been hot and I’ve got a headache, and . . . and I’ve been several times already this morning.’

  ‘Get out of this room!’

  Hilda’s voice brought Ruth jumping to her feet from where she had been sitting on the side of the bed, and both the girls stared at the woman in the bed, who was now straining back against the pillows, the sheet and blankets pulled up protectively under her chin.

  ‘Open the window, Polly! Let some air in. How could you come in here knowing you’re sick?’ Hilda raged at Ruth. ‘Get out! Get out this instant!’

  ‘That’s enough.’ It wasn’t loud, but the quality of Polly’s voice silenced the hysterics. Polly put her arm round Ruth’s shaking shoulders and drew her sister to her. ‘Let’s make one thing very plain, Mother,’ she said coldly to the furious woman in the bed. ‘If you want any windows opening or if you want to eat, then you get up off your backside and do it yourself from now on. I’m going to be busy and so is everyone else who is still standing.’

  She shut the door on streams of abuse, leading Ruth into her bedroom and pulling back the covers as she said quietly, ‘Get undressed and get into bed, Ruth. I’ll bring you a g
lass of water shortly, and . . . and don’t go into Grandda and Gran’s room.’

  ‘Oh, Polly.’ Ruth was sobbing unrestrainedly now, the scene with her mother having upset her as much as anything. ‘I’m not going to die, am I?’

  ‘Of course you are not going to die,’ Polly said firmly. ‘Get that idea right out of your head. Now do as I say and try to have a sleep.’

  Once outside on the landing, Polly stood for a moment, her eyes shut and her body slumped against the stone wall. What else could happen? she asked herself desperately. In the space of a few days her world had been turned upside down. It was as though a giant hand had thrown everything up into the air and nothing of what she had known remained. Would she care if she died? She opened her eyes and stared towards the window, where she saw it was snowing again. Would she? Only yesterday, when her mind was grappling with the memory of Arnold’s body pounding into hers, she might have said no, but now, with the knowledge of death all about them, she knew she wanted to live.