Fourpenny Flyer (57 page)

Decisions were being made quickly in the Easter boardroom, too, that afternoon.

‘I've spent a deal of time a-courting the manufacturers for advertisements,' Nan announced to her managers, ‘but I must tell 'ee the results are patchy to say the least. In London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Liverpool 'tis an established custom now, and mutually profitable, as I predicted. Howsomever, elsewhere 'tis largely a waste of effort. The manufacturers en't keen and the shopkeepers en't willing. That being so, I don't propose to waste any more time upon it. We shall take advertisements in the cities and discontinue ‘em elsewhere. Will you all be so good as to tell your shopkeepers according?'

I've won, John thought. After all this time and all this effort, she's accepted Billy's compromise. If she hadn't been so headstrong she could have accepted it long since. I always knew I was right. But he was surprised by how little relief he felt. It was such a small triumph. A small triumph
in an unnecessary struggle.

Nevertheless at the end of the meeting he went back to Fitzroy Square at the gallop, for now, at last, he could spend more of his time at home with Harriet and Will instead of travelling the country so much.

It was a great disappointment to him that Harriet wasn't there.

‘To Rattlesden?' he said to Mrs Toxteth when that lady had explained her absence. ‘Do you know why, Mrs Toxteth?'

‘She left a note, sir. 'Twas all done in a great rush.'

He read the note quickly, squinting with anxiety. Smallpox! Dear God! Of all the illnesses that was quite the most dreadful. Poor little Jimmy! Poor Annie! Poor Will! He must be kept right away from the infection. I will move him onto the third floor first thing tomorrow morning and he shall stay there with Rosie until all danger is past. ‘We must rearrange the house,' he said, ‘and then I must go and tell my brother and my mother. Wait dinner for me, Mrs Toxteth. This could take some time.'

Nan said she would go down to Rattlesden the very next day, as soon as she'd left instructions with Mr Teshmaker.

But Billy already knew the bad news. ‘I had a letter from Tilda this afternoon,' he said, his blue eyes bolting with anxiety. ‘I shall travel overnight, so I shall, and bring 'em all straight back here on the first coach out. They shan't stay there a minute longer than they need. Not with the smallpox raging. Harriet comes home tomorrow, too, you say? Well then, we will all travel together. How glad Annie will be to see her.'

‘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 something 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.