‘My dear, my dear,’ Annie said running into Harriet’s arms as soon as she tiptoed into Jimmy’s darkened bedroom. ‘You are so good to come here so quickly.’
‘How is he?’ Harriet whispered. It was unpleasantly hot and airless in the little room, for the curtains were drawn and there was a great fire blazing in the hearth and the whole place was cloyed with the sickly-sweet smell of the illness.
‘My poor, poor boy,’ Annie said. ‘Just look.’
The child lay on his back in his little white bed, asleep but tossing with fever, his nightshirt stained with sweat. His face and hands were completely covered with the huge raised blebs of the pox, some so close to one another that there wasn’t a hair’s breadth between them, and all of them pitted with hideous dark craters. His lips were cracked and his eyelids so swollen that his lashes had all but disappeared. He was so distorted by the disease it was pitiful to see him.
‘I never leave him,’ Annie said, speaking very quietly for fear he should wake and understand what she was saying, for there’s worse to come, so Mr Brownjohn says. The eighth day is the worse. The eighth to the twelfth. Oh Harriet, I’m so afraid.’ In the bronze light from fire and candle she looked haggard and hollow-eyed. ‘I can’t think what to do for the best.’
‘I have taken four seats upon the eight o’clock coach from Bury tomorrow,’ Harriet whispered, feeling she would have to take charge. ‘Have you told Beau and the girls what is to be done?’
‘No, not yet.’
‘Could Pollyanna sit with Jimmy while you do?’
So it was arranged, and Pollyanna came to sit quietly at the door with her sewing. ‘They’re all in the nursery, ma’am,’ she said to Annie. ‘Dotty’s having her little nap and the other two are a-reading of their books.’
But that wasn’t quite accurate, as Annie soon discovered when they’d run quickly through the house to the west wing to reach the nursery. Dotty was fast asleep in her cot in the corner, rosy with health and with one fat thumb in her mouth, and Meg was sitting in her little low chair reading her picture book with happy concentration, but Beau wasn’t in the room.
‘Here’s your Aunt Harriet come to see you,’ Annie said. ‘Where’s Beau?’
Meg looked up distantly from her book. ‘Gone to lie down, Mama,’ she said.
‘When was this?’ Harriet asked Meg.
‘Just this minute,’ Meg said seriously. ‘We was reading, Aunt Harriet, and he said, ‘Oh dear’ and then he went to lie down.’
‘Stay there like a good girl,’ Annie instructed, ‘while we go and see where he is.’
He was lying on the rug before the fire in his bedroom. His face was flushed and his eyes were closed, but when he heard his mother’s voice he opened them wearily and tried to focus them. ‘Ma?’ he said, ‘I do feel ill.’ But he added with touching pride, ‘I got clear away from the girls, Ma.’
‘Oh, dear God!’ Annie said faintly to Harriet. ‘Not another.’ But she was already in action, sweeping forward into the room to kneel beside her poor Beau and feel his forehead.
‘I’ll send Dickon for the surgeon,’ Harriet whispered, smothering her fear in action.
‘Help me get him into bed first,’ Annie said. ‘Could you fill the warming pan?’
The two of them worked together quietly and gently, easing, smoothing, lifting slowly and finally tucking the child under well-warmed blankets. He had such a very high fever he was only partially aware of what they were doing.
‘Shall I tell James?’ Harriet asked, when he was settled.
‘After evensong,’ Annie said. ‘No need to worry him unnecessarily. You might feel better by then, mightn’t you, lambkin?’
But Beau couldn’t answer and they both knew there was very little hope.
Although Dickon took horse to Bury as soon as he was bidden, it was long past evensong before a weary Mr Brownjohn arrived, and by then Beau’s fever was even higher, he’d been sick, and he was complaining of pain in his back and his neck. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind that he had the smallpox too.
‘Yes,’ Annie said sadly. ‘I know what it is I have to do. Is my Jimmy any better, think ’ee?’
But it was too soon to tell.
‘Call me again when the blebs become purulent,’ the surgeon said. ‘Are the other children gone?’
That night Annie sat up with Beau in the west wing and James kept vigil over Jimmy in the east, and Harriet, who was far too worried and upset to sleep, lay on a truckle bed in the girl’s room and said long and earnest prayers, pleading that Jimmy should be brought safely through the eighth day of his illness, that he should not take a secondary fever from the toxins, that he should be permitted to recover, urging that poor Beau should be spared the worst horrors of the disease. ‘If he must have it, Lord, let him have it mildly. And help my poor Annie and her dear, dear James. They suffer so, to see their boys so ill. And protect my dear Will and Meg and Dotty, because we are all at risk.’ For all she knew, they might be carrying the infection with them when they travelled to London in the morning. ‘Protect us all,’ she prayed, adding, because it was the correct thing to say, even though she knew in her innermost and honest heart that she could not mean it, ‘Nevertheless not my will but Thine be done, oh lord.’
I’ve a ticket to spare now, she thought, as she lay wakeful and afraid, listening to the creak and tick of the ancient timbers as they cooled and contracted about her. Oh, would I had not! Poor little Beau! And although she fell into a light sleep some time towards dawn, she was harassed by such dreadful nightmares, she was glad to wake again.
She got up, washed, dressed and crept downstairs to start cooking the breakfast. Pollyanna was in the kitchen before her, baking the bread and making flapjacks.
‘They’ll need a good meal in their bellies afore they go, poor little mites,’ she said, ‘an’ it ain’t time for Mrs Chiddum to come in yet. You’ve not slept much neither, ’ave yer? The Reverend’s gone off ter say matins, him an’ my John together, dear good souls that they are, so I thought I might as well come over and make myself useful.’
Harriet stoked the fire and began to slice the bacon. Chores eased the mind on such occasions, as she knew from her childhood. She was cooking the flapjacks on the griddle when Pollyanna gave a little shriek and ran to the window.
‘Why it’s Pa,’ she said. ‘Look ’ee there. It’s Pa.’
And so it was, driving Matilda’s smart blue briska into the yard, with Edward tucked inside a travelling rug on the seat behind him.
They ran from the kitchen at once, not even stopping to snatch a cloak from the peg behind the door.
‘What is it?’ Harriet said, as Thiss reined in the two greys.
‘There you are, Master Edward,’ Thiss said to the child. ‘Didn’t I say we’d catch ’em. You got another visitor Mrs Harriet, if you’ll be so kind. Young Master Edward here ’ud like ter come ter London along of his cousins.’
‘Who is it?’ Harriet asked, understanding at once.
‘Matty,’ he said, still speaking with deliberate cheerfulness so as not to alarm the boy. ‘Third day yesterday evenin’ if you takes my meanin’. I got a note for yer. Hello, Polly gel. Goin’ on all right, are yer?’
Pollyanna was already scurrying Edward into the house, for it was bitterly cold and morning mist was still rolling off the fields in long chill swathes. ‘Right as ninepence, Pa,’ she called back to him. ‘Come on in.’
‘How is Mrs Matilda?’ Harriet asked as she followed them.
‘Wild with worry, poor soul,’ Thiss said. ‘Mr Billy come down first thing an’ sez ’e’ll stay with ’er. That’s ’is note you got.’
And then they were all in the kitchen and Edward was sitting by the fire and Annie was reading the note and Pollyanna had gone upstairs to wake the girls.
There is no end to this nightmare, Harriet thought, standing with her hand against the kitchen table to steady herself. Who will be next? And she began to make the tea to give herself s
omething to do.
It was the most peculiar breakfast. Thiss went upstairs to sit with the patients. ‘Seein’ I’m in no harm, you just make use of me all you can,’ he said to Annie. ‘I had the smallpox when I was a lad, so I did. Well, you’ve only ter look at my physog ter see that. ‘An’ the one good thing about it is you can’t take it twice.’
The three women were brisk and cheerful despite the anxiety that was crushing them all so cruelly, and the three children ate as much as they could partly because they knew it was expected of them and partly because it was the only way they could placate the tension all around them. Then Pollyanna fetched the bags and carried them out to the briska and Thiss appeared again and leapt into the driving seat, and the children were wrapped in rugs and settled together on the long seat behind him with hot bricks at their feet to keep them warm, and Harriet kissed Annie goodbye before she climbed in.
‘I will write to you every day,’ she promised. ‘Every day in time for the night mail.’
‘You are so good,’ Annie said, kissing her. ‘Oh, you will look after my little ones, won’t you? Oh yes, yes, I know you will. You are so good.’
‘All set?’ Thiss said. ‘Then off we go. What a lark, eh, littl’uns?’
‘Every day?’ Annie implored, as the greys walked away.
‘Every day,’ Harriet promised.
And she kept her word, writing two letters every afternoon, one to Annie and the other to Matilda, and both as reassuring as she could make them. ‘They are all well, and although they miss you they are not distressed. I keep them occupied with lessons and stories and suchlike, but we do not stir from the drawing room, which is now our abode, for fear of the infection.’
But she said nothing about how much she missed seeing her own dear little Will, nor about the little homemade calendar she kept on the last page of her diary, nor of the fluctuating hopes and fears it encouraged. She knew it would be fourteen days before she could be sure that none of her three charges had taken the infection, and fourteen days would not be completed until 11th December, which she had ringed in red ink, but which seemed an eternity away. Every single day was now interminable with anxiety and the nights were hideous, particularly as John was away on his travels.
Matilda and Annie wrote back, if not quite every day, at least as often as they could: ‘Mama Easter arrived yesterday afternoon, for which we were all very thankful. Matty is covered with spots, her face so swollen poor soul, but do not tell Edward.’ ‘I believe Beau a little better since the blebs came out. Mama says she will stay with us until all three children are well again. Would that her determination could make it so.’
Four days after Harriet took the three children to London Annie wrote to say that Jimmy was very ill. The blebs were full of pus and he had high fever again, just as Mr Brownjohn had predicted. ‘It is like to last another four days, poor child,’ she wrote. ‘Pray for us, Harriet my dear. We were never so much in need of prayer. Pray God to give him the strength to live through this dreadful time.’
And two days after that it was little Matty’s turn. ‘I cannot comfort her,’ Matilda wrote, ‘nor recognize her, I fear. Pray for us, Harriet. You are so good. Thiss is such a help to us, having no fear. I don’t know how we should manage without him.’
John returned to London that afternoon with the news that the smallpox was in Oxford and Canterbury, and that doctors were saying that the outbreak was worse than any of the three great epidemics of the previous century. But he didn’t tell her that nearly a third of all patients admitted to the smallpox hospitals were dying. Time enough for that when the danger was past.
‘It could break out in London too,’ Harriet said. ‘The Times says it is raging in Paris.’
‘And in Sweden,’ John said.
‘So many deaths,’ Harriet mourned, ‘and no way of preventing any of them. It is a terrible thing.’ And she said her constant, secret prayer, yet again: dear Lord, please don’t let any of our children die.
Two afternoons later Annie wrote to say that Beau had reached the eighth day. ‘He is very ill,’ she said, ‘but not as bad as his brother, who does seem to be improving a little, so we are a little more hopeful now.’
That night when she’d answered Annie’s letter, Harriet crossed off the eleventh day of her long fortnight. ‘Only three more days to go,’ she told her diary, ‘and then we shall be safe. Caleb wrote me such a kind letter today. His wife died of smallpox and so did his little boy, so he says he knows what we are all suffering. It is a dreadful disease. But we are all so nearly clear of it. Thank the Good Lord.’
It was bitterly cold in Rattlesden. Annie had moved Beau’s bed into Jimmy’s room as soon as the girls were gone, and now she and James kept the fire going there by night and day. It was the first thing Annie attended to, after she’d given her two patients a drink of water, and sponged their swollen hands and faces.
On that thirteenth morning, she woke with a start, wondering why the fire was making such an odd wheezing noise. A piece of slate among the coal, she thought, straightening her spine and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, for she’d fallen asleep in her chair, as she so often did on these long fraught nights. Then, with a shock that squeezed her heart most painfully, she realized that the noise was coming from Beau’s little bed, and she jumped up and ran to his side. He was struggling for air, but lying so still, as if he were paralysed, his swollen face distorted and his eyes shut tight.
‘Mama!’ she called. ‘James! Come quickly, do.’ But they were on the other side of the house, and, although they both heard her, it took them several seconds to run to the room. By the time they reached her, the struggle was over and her dear, dear Beau was dead, lying quietly in her arms, still warm, but irrevocably without breath or life.
‘Oh my dear, my dear,’ Nan said, torn with pity for her daughter. And she and James fell to their knees beside the bed and held poor Annie as well as they could and wept with her. And for the first time since he fell ill, Jimmy actually sat up in his bed, and caught their grief and wept too, with tears running over his terrible black scabs and into his mouth, until Nanna came and sat beside him and put her arms round him, scabs and all, and told him he was her own dear boy and she would love him for ever and ever.
‘On the very day my poor Jimmy is getting better!’ Annie cried. ‘Oh James, I can’t bear it.’
And poor James, who was haggard with fatigue and sorrow, tried to find words of comfort, and for the first time in his life, couldn’t think of any, and put his head in his hands and cried like a baby.
‘Is Beau dead, Nanna?’ Jimmy whispered as his parents wept.
‘Yes, my love, I’m afraid he is.’
‘Shall I die too, Nanna?’
‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘No, you shan’t. Your Nanna won’t let you.’
It was a simple funeral and one of three that day, so violently was the smallpox raging. John and Harriet left the children in London with Rosie and young Tom and Mrs Toxteth, because it would never have done to bring them back into infection, and they travelled on the overnight stage so as to arrive in plenty of time to comfort poor Annie and James. But by then Annie had reached the first calm of grieving and James had mourned sufficiently to take the ceremony himself.
He spoke most movingly at the little graveside, reminding them of the great joy his dear Beau had brought to them all. ‘A child of peace,’ he said ‘and always concerned for others. But it must be said with just enough mischief to bring us laughter. And daring, too, to provoke fear and admiration in us. We shall miss him most terribly.
‘In pleasant times it is easy to bow ourselves to the will of God. When a child is born to bring love into the world, how readily we say “Thy Will be done”. At times like these it is hard for us.’ And the drawn expression on his face showed how very hard it was. ‘Nevertheless, death is Thy will too, like every opposite, beauty and ugliness, night and day, sickness and health, birth and death. When we say Thy prayer, Oh Lord, as we shall do
presently, send us grace, we beseech Thee, that we may mean the words we say … Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy Will be done, in earth as it is in heaven …’
‘He is a very great man,’ Harriet wrote to Caleb, when she was home in London again. It was so easy to write to Caleb these days, for he had become such a friend, and understood so well what they were all suffering. ‘I could not accept the way he does, that I know. I would rail and rail against the injustice of such a death.’
He wrote back to her almost by return of post.
‘My dearest Harriet,
‘Tha’s right. Tha shouldst never accept injustice. Never. Tha shouldst rail and rail and rail against it. And fight against it an’ all. Acceptance is folly. Only by struggle will us common folk ever improve our lot. ’Tis a great cause and a great struggle. Tha’s a fine woman to have joined us in it.
‘By now the fourteen days should be up and your worries over and done with, of which I’m uncommon glad.
‘We are well here, but work is scanty.
‘Your friend in love and admiration,
‘Caleb Rawson.’
It was a comforting letter and she tucked it into her diary so that she could read it and enjoy it again when she wasn’t quite so busy. But her worries weren’t done with. They were beginning all over again.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Bury St Edmunds was a forlorn town that winter. Horses stood idle in the stables and the streets grew dusty with lack of use. The two great inns were blank-windowed and empty, for there were very few visitors and the inhabitants kept within doors as much as they could, scurrying to market for such food as they needed and greeting their neighbours from a distance. The theatre closed and so did the Athenaeum, the courts sat twice and in great haste, and the churches were half empty. It was a town holding its breath, a town whispering, dressed in black, waiting for the next victim.
Fourpenny Flyer Page 44