A Child's Voice Calling (26 page)

‘What shall I say to Mabel then, doctor?’ Annie looked worried.

‘For the time being you can say I’m arranging for you to see a specialist and ask her to come to my surgery when convenient. She can ask me any questions she might have then.’ Though God alone knows how I shall answer the poor girl, he silently added to himself, overwhelmed with pity for mother and daughter. He took a small blue phial from his bag. ‘Take five drops of this at night, Mrs Court, to help you to sleep and to settle you generally. It’s only a solution of laudanum, nothing very strong. I’ll call again tomorrow to let you know what I’ve arranged and also to take the blood sample.’

Having taken his leave of her, Knowles went downstairs and washed his hands thoroughly under the single cold tap at the kitchen sink. He wondered
if Jack Court was aware of his wife’s infection – and his own. It probably explained the man’s absence, he surmised.

But never mind about Court, the longer he stayed away the better. It was Mabel’s misfortune that now weighed upon Knowles’s heart, for he must go straight up to the Rescue to tell her – and the Matron – that she must be suspended from her duties until the results of a blood test certified her to be free of infection.

Cycling up Lavender Hill with his direful message, he suddenly found himself caught up in the immediate aftermath of an accident. An omnibus had been in collision with a pair of young men on bicycles, and there was a great deal of shouting and accusation between the bus driver and one of the cyclists who was calling upon the witnesses to confirm the driver’s disregard for safety. It was the condition of the other youth that concerned Knowles; he lay writhing in the middle of the road, unable to raise himself, and the doctor suspected a spinal injury. Two police constables arrived from the nearby station, and Knowles asked if one of them could go back and telephone for an ambulance. ‘Better get him to the Bolingbroke as soon as possible,’ he said, kneeling beside the man and asking him questions about where he felt pain, and quickly checking reflexes as well as he was able. Passengers on the bus were demanding treatment for the shock they had received, mothers were trying to calm squalling children, and an old lady said she had been hurled forward against the seat in front and ‘broken her nose’.

By the time an ambulance had arrived to convey the injured man to hospital with his friend, and
Knowles had offered reassurance and advice to the shaken passengers, he had been delayed for over an hour; and when he at last reached the Agnes Nuttall Institute it was to be told that Miss Court had already left, having been allowed to go early because of her anxiety over her mother.

‘But I have something that I must tell you, Mrs James.’ And in the privacy of Matron’s office the doctor explained to her that Mrs Court
might
have a serious contagious infection and that it just
might
have been passed on to her daughter, though he emphasised that this was very unlikely. However, in order to be absolutely certain, a test must be carried out on a blood sample and Miss Court would have to await the results of it before resuming her duties as nursery maid.

‘Can you tell me what kind of infection this is, Dr Knowles?’

He managed to give an explanation that sounded scientifically convincing without actually naming his suspicions.

Which increased Mrs James’s suspicions all the more. They’d had a couple of admissions to the Rescue who’d needed blood tests and one had been quickly transferred elsewhere . . .

Annie Court was left to ponder on what the family doctor had said and her thoughts at first made little sense, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle thrown on to a table, a jumble of unrelated shapes. Slowly they began to piece together into some sort of order; she closed her eyes and heard the doctor’s words again, and saw the gravity on his face.

The Lock Hospital – where had she heard it mentioned before?

Mercury and . . . some other strong substance. It sounded drastic and everybody knew that mercury was a deadly poison.

‘Contact such as kissing’ – and that intimate question about conjugal union and Jack’s state of health . . .

All at once the jigsaw pieces fell into place and Annie understood the truth with dreadful clarity. It was the streetwalker’s disease. She had syphilis – the
pox
!

She cried out loud, a howl of utter despair, and writhed in the bed, her hands over her face. The
pox
, the ‘hidden horror’ spoken of only in whispers, that attacked every part of the body, causing blindness, madness and paralysis at the end. The awful punishment of fornicators and lechers, visited on the innocent as well as the guilty, even upon the children.

Oh, Jack, Jack, what have you done to us both? You’ve gone away to die because of this.

And almost immediately she saw what had to follow:
and so must I
.

For of course she could not live with it. Life held nothing more for her, with this hideous thing in her flesh, the result of Jack’s infidelity – for she now squarely faced the truth that she had known for years, the women he had been with away from home, to which she’d turned a determinedly blind eye. She could not possibly face Mabel (imagine!) and her other dear children, knowing what was destroying her body. There was only one thing left for poor Annie Court to do now. And not much time to do it.

She got out of bed and dressed as quickly as she could. Downstairs she found a few sheets of writing
paper in a drawer of the sideboard, which also yielded a school pen and a bottle with just enough ink in it. Annie sat down at the table and put a newspaper on it to protect the dark-red chenille cloth. She rubbed her hands together to stop them trembling and with difficulty penned a letter to Mabel. Being out of practice with writing, she had to cross out words and replace them with others; she would have liked to begin again, but time was pressing, and when she put it in an envelope and sealed it, she felt that it contained what she most wanted to tell her eldest daughter.

Where should she leave it? It must not be found too soon, or she might be pursued. She slid it under the chenille tablecloth, changed every four or five weeks; meals were laid on a white cloth spread over it.

She pinned up her hair and pulled on her brown velour hat, laced up her shoes and put on her seldom worn three-quarter-length coat over her plain brown skirt. She took her purse from the kitchen drawer and placed it in her straw shopping bag, along with an old handleless cup used for breaking eggs in and the little blue phial that Dr Knowles had given her.

It was time to say goodbye to 12 Sorrel Street. She picked up her bag and let herself out of the front door, she who had become almost a recluse, and looked up at the house that had been her home for eighteen years of marriage and family life. There had been a few good times, and in spite of much worry and disillusionment she had managed to maintain the image of a respectable suburban housewife. Locking the door, she pushed the key back through the letter box. It was nearly half past three and there was no more time to lose. And no going back now.

She wondered if she should go to St Philip’s church on Queen’s Road and kneel in a pew there for the last time; but she might meet somebody she knew, or worse still, Alice might see her from the doorway of the post office. No, she must board an omnibus to take her away over Battersea Bridge into the city where nobody knew her.

On the bus she kept her face lowered to avoid any neighbours who might see and try to speak to her, but it seemed there had been a serious accident on Lavender Hill and everybody was talking about it, so no one noticed the drab little woman clutching her shopping bag.

Getting off at Westminster, she looked up at the great Abbey and felt drawn to enter it for a last prayer. Wandering up the echoing vastness of the nave, surrounded by its soaring columns, Annie found a shadowy corner and knelt down on the bare stone paving to ask forgiveness for all her sins and especially for the one she was about to commit. She believed that God would be good to her and trusted that He would judge her mercifully because of the impossible burden she carried. How could He not? She was doing this for the sake of her dear children whom she loved with all her heart; she was taking herself away like an unclean leper of old, away from decent people and into the merciful arms of Him who healed the lepers. There she would be clean again.

Nobody approached her as she knelt and after concluding with the Lord’s Prayer she rose and left the Abbey, feeling a sense of lightness, strengthened to carry out her resolve.

Then began a long, long walk towards Tower Bridge, keeping as close to the river as she was able.
Passing the Tower itself she continued on towards the docks, the wharves and warehouses of the Pool of London where a couple of great seagoing vessels stood at quaysides and a swarm of lighters and barges moved swiftly from one landing stage to another. Gangs of men hauled on ropes to shouted orders from above and below as they landed huge wooden crates of tea and hogsheads of sugar.

Annie Court continued walking, only half aware of her surroundings but intent on her purpose. When the sun began to sink her footsteps slowed; she had had nothing to eat all day and felt chilled and empty, though with no desire to rest, not until the time came for it. Weak as she was, she was impelled onwards by her intention, which now appeared to her as both duty and destiny.

As riverside activity lessened, dubious characters of both sexes began to appear on shore, lingering on the notorious Highway as they had done from time immemorial. A couple of drunken men lurched towards Annie with lewd compliments, asking if she was looking for company.

Little do they know, she thought: a poor, anaemic creature old before her time and
riddled with the pox
! Yet she boldly stepped towards one of the gin shops on the landward side and emerged with a bottle in her shopping bag.

The light was fading and it was time to get down to the water. A twisted iron railing separated her from a row of gloomy buildings going down to crumbling wharves and she noticed a narrow alleyway descending to the river, a dangerous place where heaven only knew what evil deeds had been done. Annie had no fear – why should she? – and ducked under the rusty rail to make her way down
between the damp-smelling walls. Halfway down, the path gave way to a flight of steep, worn stone steps once used for passengers boarding ferries in the days when there was only the one Old London Bridge and watermen provided the quickest means of transport.

Putting her hands out to steady herself on either side, Annie descended to a narrow ledge with a single iron mooring ring. It was very close to the water, being nearly high tide, and the stone was damp, but she sat down thankfully at one end of the small perch, pulling her coat around her. As long as she was not seen – or roused no curiosity if she was – this place would do. She got out the bottle and poured a generous measure into the old cup, as daintily as if she were serving tea into bone china. She added the contents of the phial and, taking a breath, raised it to her lips.

Aaah! The rough, fiery liquid burned her throat as it went down, and she gasped and coughed; Annie Court had never liked the taste of strong drink. She did not have to wait long before a glowing warmth began to spread over her, wrapping every part of her body in its rosy haze, infinitely comforting. Leaning her head against the cold stone, she took another mouthful and felt even better.

What was happening now at Sorrel Street? Were they out looking for her? But no, she would not think about that, it was all past, over and done with. She no longer belonged there.

The sun was now sinking low in the west and it was getting chillier; a stiff breeze was blowing upriver. There were few craft on the water now, though as she watched, a masted pleasure boat went by, its lights beaming out across the water. Nobody
saw her in her dark little corner. A few seagulls wheeled above in the evening air, calling to each other in that melancholy way they have and, far above her inland, she could just hear the distant strains of music and raucous laughter.

The bottle was nearly empty, and Annie’s eyes were drooping and unfocused. A sense of unreality wrapped round her like a cloak, she looked down at the flowing water.

‘Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.’ The words of the long-dead poet come back to Anna-Maria from the schoolroom at Belhampton and she smiles as she recognises them. Sweet Thames! Soon she will be done with the troubles of this world – and such a beautiful world, too – just look at that sky above Tower Bridge! Dusk is falling and deepens into darkness. Anna-Maria wakes up with a start, realising that she has been asleep.

But now she is awake and it is time.

She crawls towards the edge of the green-slimed stone where the muddied water has lapped it for centuries. Her hands slide, her knees follow and there she goes, slipping into the water with scarcely a splash. Cold greenness swirls round her as she sinks below the surface: the gin has done its work well. Above her in the pale sky a single star looks down.

Anna-Maria can no longer remember why she embarked on this journey, nor does she know how she has come to this place, this haven of love and light and peace. For look, there is her dear papa smiling at her and beside him her sweet mamma, Mabel, is holding out her arms.

Anna-Maria has come home.

MABEL COULD HARDLY
wait to get home to find out what Dr Knowles had said and when Mrs James allowed her to leave early she practically ran most of the way to Sorrel Street, where she found George and Daisy hanging around at Mrs Bull’s house, unable to get into their own.

‘We ain’t ’ad sight nor sound o’ yer muvver, Mabel,’ said Mary Clutton and several other women stood waiting to see whether Annie Court was at home, asleep perhaps, or . . .

Mabel swallowed. More trouble – and she had to keep her head for the children’s sake. She straightened her shoulders and marched into the house. Annie’s key was on the doormat. ‘Hallo, Mum, we’re home! Mum?’

The house was silent.