Children of the Tide (48 page)

‘I haven’t, sir,’ Doctor Sheppard confessed. ‘My main concern was treating the sick – and dying.’ His face was drawn, his eyes shadowed. ‘I haven’t come across anything like this before.’

‘No, they teach you how to look for symptoms at medical school,’ Doctor Fleming said bluntly. ‘But they don’t teach you, can’t teach you, how to cope with the mortally sick.’

Billy passed his hands over his eyes. He had been shocked when Jenny’s friend Dinah had succumbed so quickly, her frail, thin body stretched lifeless on the dirty floor.

Doctor Fleming nipped his cigar out to extinguish it and threw it into the gutter. ‘Very well,’ he said briskly. ‘Let’s get on. You do what you can here, Stephen, and I’ll notify the authorities. They’ll clear the bodies, and then set out tar barrels, I expect. Those who want to can be taken to the hospitals, they won’t get much treatment but they’ll be isolated. Try to persuade them to go if you can.’

‘And if they don’t want to, sir?’ Billy asked. ‘I know that some of the children will be afraid to.’

‘If they don’t want to, they won’t be forced, but somebody will have to look after them here, and you won’t find many willing helpers, too many people remember the last epidemic.’

Doctor Fleming hunched into his coat. ‘That was a bad business. Nearly two thousand people died,
two thousand peopled
,’ he repeated. ‘Five hundred died during one week in September.’

‘There’s no wonder there’s disease,’ Billy cried vehemently, ‘when people have to live under these conditions! Something must be done!’

‘I quite agree, Rayner,’ Stephen Sheppard broke in. ‘These places want boarding up; they’re nothing more than death traps.’

‘Yes, yes, all these arguments have been heard before,’ Doctor Fleming broke in crisply. ‘Yet still no-one can agree. Why, in one cholera epidemic – in ’thirty-three it was, I was a young student then – I can remember the story going around of doctors arguing and even fighting over the cause and the cure. Alderson and Ayre, both respected men, yet neither would compromise.’

Doctor Fleming departed, leaving them with the question of where they would put the people from the cellars, for the courts and alleyways were already overflowing with humanity.

‘They are just stinking middens, most of them.’ Billy bent his head to re-enter the gloomy interior of the cellars. ‘And the people down here think they are living in luxury!’

At times he felt as if he was living in a nightmare. He was so tired that he almost fell asleep on his feet. Men came and went, bringing lamps to light up the cellars, thus revealing the true state of the dank interior; the green vegetation on the oozing walls and the rat holes in the muddy floor; they carried, too, white winding sheets over their arms.

He had heard the sound of retching, the shout of drunkards and the cries of babies, and he’d stooped almost double beneath the archways with a flickering candle in his hand, to reach the far corners of the subterranean shelter to find others sheltering there. Grey faces stared out at him from the darkness, others covered themselves so that they would not be discovered, and he called to them not to be afraid but to come out if they needed help. Women pushed children towards him, and as he stumbled back towards the entrance, with the children holding onto his coat and a baby in his arms, he heard their mothers weeping.

He sat outside on the cellar steps and closed his eyes. He was so tired and dirty, but now he felt that he knew how the people of the courts must feel all of the time. The sense of lethargy, hunger – for he had not eaten for hours – and hopelessness, which he would dispel in some measure, by a bath and a good meal, was forever with them; for them there was no release.

Some of the children had agreed to go to the paupers’ hospital or the workhouse where there was a bed for them, and the regulations were to be relaxed to allow one other person to go with them to attend them or give them water. The air was filled with the smoke and smell of burning tar which had been set alight in barrels in streets around the town, as a preventative measure against further infection, and to warn people of the high-risk areas which they were entering, and Billy felt as if he couldn’t get a deep breath without filling his lungs with the acrid smoke.

He heard someone calling to him. ‘Master Billy! Master Billy!’

He peered through the dusk at the group of young people who were hovering nearby. ‘Who wants me?’

One of the youths who had been at the cellars on
the first night stepped forward. ‘We thought you ought to know about young Tim.’

‘What about him?’ He hadn’t seen the boy since his sister’s body had been taken away. ‘Don’t tell me that he’s sick too?’ he asked wearily.

The boy shook his head. ‘No. Though he’ll be sicker afore long,’ he said cynically. ‘He’s clapped up in gaol. ’Constable caught him smashing windows in ’Market Place. He was in a right state, they had to put him in a strait coat.’

Billy stared aghast. ‘But why? He’s a good lad! Why would he do that?’

‘He said somebody had to pay for his sister. He’s got nobody now. We said we’d look after him, but he wouldn’t listen.’ These youths were set apart from the other children; they were older, twelve or thirteen years of age, and had said that they didn’t need any adult to mind them, that they could fend for themselves. But already they were becoming hardened, and what they couldn’t obtain by working for or begging, they would steal.

‘There’s glass all over ’Market Place,’ the boy continued, ‘he used a brick to smash ’windows.’ He sneered derisively. ‘’Butcher’s got a queue outside his shop, he’s selling meat off cheap ’cos of glass in it.’ He opened up his tattered coat and showed a loaf inside the deep pocket. ‘And ’baker’s giving bread away for ’same reason.’

Billy stumbled back into the cellars and called to Doctor Sheppard. ‘I’ll have to go across to the gaol. Young Tim has been taken in. He’s been smashing windows in the Market Place. Someone will have to speak for him.’

Stephen Sheppard looked up from where he was bent over a young girl. ‘You can’t.’ His words were dragged out as if he hadn’t the energy to speak. ‘You’ll have to fetch more help, Rayner. I can’t cope on my own any more. Go to my uncle. Tell him he’ll have to badger the Board of Health and the
Guardians. They must find more places for these people, it’s getting out of hand. Take a look at this child.’

Billy bent over and peered at the young girl on the floor. She was tossing feverishly and her face, which had a purple rash across it, was wreathed in sweat.

‘What is it?’ Billy asked in a low voice. ‘It’s not the same as before?’

Stephen Sheppard pressed his fingers to his brow and heaved a deep breath. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It isn’t. This is typhus.’

Betsy wavered over a box of chocolates. Should she have the coffee flavour or the marshmallow? She decided on the marshmallow and popped it into her mouth, chewing appreciatively on the sweet and sticky concoction. Then she idly rose from the sofa and wandered to the window. She was alone and bored. She had had fun here in Craddock’s house. New gowns were hers for the asking, a new bonnet and shoes. She had been horse racing and to the theatre, and she had been gambling. Craddock had given her a wad of money and she had gambled it all away.

She thought that he might be angry with her, but he had merely laughed and said that he would make her pay for the loss one way or another. She smiled, she knew well now how to please him and what made him happy, and she had, she thought, got him eating out of her hand.

But then he surprised her by saying that he must go away for a few days and that she must stay in the house and not go out. She protested, but he was adamant. ‘I don’t want Gilbert Rayner seeing you, not unless I’m with you.’ He clasped her face in his hands and kissed her roughly. ‘He might send you home, and that would spoil our fun, wouldn’t it?’

Then he pushed her onto the bed and was neither caring or tender, but wanton, without regard for her desires, and she was left with the thought that
perhaps she didn’t know him quite as well as she had imagined. She watched him as she lay exhausted on the bed while he carefully tied his cravat and slipped on a dark jacket. He was dressed more soberly than usual, and she asked in a small voice where he was going and when would he be back.

He turned towards her and looked her over. ‘To see my mother,’ he replied lazily, fastening a gold pin to his cravat. Then he bent over and sought her mouth. ‘I shall be back,’ he breathed. ‘Don’t worry, little dumpling, I’m not abandoning you. Now be a good girl and don’t go out. There’s cholera in the town, anyway, and I don’t want you catching that and bringing it back here.’

So she had stayed in, but now the day was irksome. There was nothing to do but gaze out of the window onto the street below, or read, and his choice of books and magazines were few.

The maid who lived below stairs had an insolent manner, bringing her meals at the appropriate time and leaving without a word, and when Betsy had attempted to make conversation with her, she answered only indifferently.

It must be me
, she thought.
I don’t have a way with servants. Now if it had been Sammi, she wouldn’t have answered her like that. But then
, she reflected,
Sammi wouldn’t be here in this situation, would she
? She reached for writing paper and pen and ink, and resolved to write to Sammi, but she had no sooner started the letter, than she realized that if she wasn’t very careful how she phrased her words, Sammi would guess who she was with and would probably tell Tom, who would fetch her back home and give Charles Craddock a bloody nose into the bargain.

I’m not ready to go back yet
, she decided.
If at all. If Charles becomes really besotted by me, he may want me to stay for good; though
, she mused,
I don’t think that he is the marrying kind
.

She reached for the paper again and wrote a brief
note to her father, telling him that her friends insisted on her staying a little longer.

‘
Please don’t worry about me, Da. I am having a splendid time. My friends are most hospitable and can’t do enough for me. I have told them that I must return soon in order to look after you, but they seem to think that my prospects will be very good if I stay a little longer. I’m sure that you know what I mean
.’

She sealed the envelope and, searching in Craddock’s desk, which he had carelessly left unlocked, she took out a postage stamp and stuck it to the envelope, put on her new cloak which he had so generously bought her, went down the stairs and out into the street. The house was in Percy Street, a quiet, discreet area and not one that she knew, but she determined her direction and set off towards where she thought the shops might be, for she still had coins in her purse which she had brought from home and a little money which Craddock had given her.

She slightly misjudged her direction, for she found herself in a narrow street. Children were playing on the ground near pools of stagnant water, and several men were lounging in grimy doorways and listlessly watching two dogs worrying a dead rat. Women were bent over water tubs, presumably doing their household washing, though the wet articles that they were hoisting out of the tubs looked as grey as the ones lying on the floor beside them.

One of them looked up at her and stared. She was smoking a pipe and had a man’s hat on her head. She called to a man nearby who got up from his seat on a window ledge and walked towards Betsy. He looked so dirty and evil that she turned around and fled back from where she had come, to the sound of raucous laughter behind her and then the rattle of a stone which hit the ground near her feet.

She hurried on, taking note of where she was so
that she could avoid the street on the way back, and eventually came to an area that she knew slightly better. These were the streets of Whitefriargate and Lowgate, the shopping and business areas, where she had been with Sammi, and near where they had stayed when they came to Gilbert’s wedding.

I must watch out
, she thought,
in case Gilbert is about, though he would probably only think I was here for shopping if he should see me. I doubt that he would know I haven’t been at home
. But as she turned a corner she walked slap into Billy, who was hurrying in the opposite direction.

‘Oh, so sorry, ma-am,’ Billy gasped. ‘My fault entirely – Betsy! I didn’t realize it was you. You will excuse me if I don’t stop?’ He looked gaunt and pale and was obviously in a great hurry. ‘It’s good to see you, you look
very
well. Betsy, do me a favour, will you?’

She nodded.
Anything
, she thought, smiling at him.
He obviously hasn’t heard about me either
.

‘When you next see Mama or Sammi – she’s not come into Hull with you, has she? No? Well, would you tell them that I will come home to see them when I can. It’s just that, well, I’ll explain when I see them. There’s such a lot happening just now. And Betsy – ’ he called back as he set off at a run, ‘take care, disease is rife in the town. You’d be advised to stay at home.’

She watched him as he hurried away, his long legs loping along the pavement and his fair hair flopping on his coat collar.

Idly she window-shopped, made a purchase of stockings and gloves, posted the letter and then decided that as the day was turning a little chilly she would return to Percy Street and ask the reluctant maid to make her tea. She heard raised voices and loud banging as she retraced her steps, and she looked towards a building on the corner of the street, where a large group of men and a few women were standing. Some of the men were standing on the steps
of the building and with their walking sticks and fists were banging on the doors which were firmly locked.

‘They won’t open the door!’ she heard someone shout. ‘Put your boot on it.’

She looked with interest as more people arrived and spilled over onto the road. It was then that she saw Gilbert. He was standing at the door of the building, but looking down at the crowd and not at the door. His lips were moving silently and his eyes moved amongst the crowd as if he was searching for someone. He looked in her direction and she moved back into the crowd, but though he gazed straight at her it was as if he didn’t see her. He looked as if he was wracked with despair, as if he had suffered a great shock.