Fourpenny Flyer (56 page)

‘You are not deterred then,' she said, when he stopped speaking.

He looked straight at her and smiled, and the smile was greeting, affection, memory and something else she couldn't define. ‘No,' he said. ‘I am not.' And the expression on his face was so strong and so demanding she
couldn't face it and she glanced down at his capable hands, resting among the cushions, to give herself something else to look at. And she was instantly taken back to that terrible afternoon on the field of Peterloo, and the dust and blood and suffering and companionship, and she heard the sabres swishing down again and the screams and the thunder of horses, and saw blood spurt and the wounded crumple and fall.

‘How did you get here, Mr Rawson?' James was asking.

‘By carter's van to Stowmarket,' he said, ‘then I took shanks's pony.'

‘In that case you must stay the night with us, before you go on your way,' James said. ‘Mrs Easter and Mr Brougham dine with us this evening, as we with them tomorrow in our neighbourly manner, you see, so we shall be a goodly company.'

So Caleb stayed to dinner and talked about reform to Frederick Brougham, and was told about the state of farming in Rattlesden, and news-selling in London, and the number of new Easter children who'd arrived since they'd last talked together. And Harriet watched him and listened to him and admired him, wondering at his strength of purpose, to have been in prison for three whole years and yet stayed so entirely himself. I could never have endured so long, she thought. Oh he is a very great man. A very great man indeed.

The next morning he went to church with Annie and the children and after the service they all walked with him as far as the path to Buxhall, James and Annie and Jimmy and Beau and little Meg, and Harriet and Rosie and Will. It was a fine day and Annie said the walk would do them all good, and that pleased Harriet because it meant she would be able to avoid any likelihood of being on her own with him.

On the homeward journey, Meg and Will grew tired and had to be given piggybacks because they said their legs were worn out. Their mothers were the willing horses, of course, and the slower pace at which the two of them were now obliged to walk gave Harriet the chance she'd been waiting for.

‘It gave me quite a shock to see Mr Rawson again,' she confessed. ‘I hoped he had forgotten all about me.'

‘Did you so?' Annie asked, instantly curious. ‘Why was that, my dear? Don't clutch my neck so Meg, there's a good girl. I thought you were one of his staunchest allies.'

‘Yes,' Harriet said. ‘I was. I still am. It's just …' And ducking her head for shame, she told her dear Annie all about that last visit in Fitzroy Square. ‘I may have read more into his words than he intended,' she said.

‘I think not,' Annie said, shrewdly. ‘If I am any judge of it, your instincts told you otherwise, and instincts are invariably right. James has asked him to visit again.' Then she burst out laughing. ‘Life grows more complicated by the minute, I do declare,' she said. ‘The dear man sees no harm in it, you see.'

‘No more do I, truly,' Harriet said, ashamed to have been criticizing her hero. ‘Mr Rawson is a good man, Annie.'

‘Aye, so you say,' Annie said. ‘But a man notwithstanding. So we must take care.'

They trudged on without speaking for several minutes, while two yellowhammers piped their one-line melody at them from the hedgerows.

‘Leave it to me, my dear,' Annie said. ‘I'll protect 'ee, depend on it.'

That summer turned out to be the most delightful that Harriet had ever known. John spent far more time in Rattlesden for a start. The trio learned how to add and subtract and were uncommon pleased with themselves, and little Edward was the most attentive pupil of them all. Caleb came to visit nearly every Saturday evening and stayed with James and Annie all through Sunday, attending church and then making himself useful in the house or the garden. And never saying a word out of place. Not that Annie gave him the opportunity, for somehow or other she always contrived to be close at hand whenever it looked as though he and Harriet were going to be left alone together, and the conversation was quickly taken over and steered with delicate determination to the safest of safe topics.

The children enjoyed his company without reservation. Soon he was Uncle Caleb to them all, and master of the revels, the man to ask when you needed a skipping rope turned, or a book read, or a broken toy put together again, or a bruise wrapped in vinegar and brown paper.

When September came and it was time for Jimmy and Beau to go back to school they had an end-of-holiday party and Uncle Caleb was the guest of honour, which he said was ‘a rare old feather in his cap'. Sitting about the trestle tables in the rectory garden, they ate end-of-holiday cake and drank end-of-holiday lemonade and toasted the new term. ‘Good luck to us all, whatever the future may bring!'

What it brought was more terrible than any of them could have foreseen, even in their most anguished nightmares.

*

The pony-cart brought Jimmy Hopkins home from school on that awful November afternoon just as it always did, but he was flushed and shivering and obviously ill. Beau was out of the cart and running into the house before their groom could climb down from the driver's seat.

‘Stay there, Dickon,' he called. ‘We shall need the cart again. Ma! Ma! Come quick! Jimmy's took a fever!'

Annie was hard at work in the laundry, scouring the copper while her two twice-monthly laundry maids mopped the floor, for it was washday and because nothing would dry out of doors it had taken them all day and much steam to complete the wash. The little stone-flagged room was hung with sheets and towels and small clothes, all dripping dismally from their racks in the ceiling, and the green walls were rivered with moisture.

‘What now?' Annie said, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, and she went off wearily to find out, moving slowly and feeling rather hard done by. She was bone tired and she needed a rest, not another demand on her flagging spirits.

But one glance at Jimmy's putty-pale face changed her at once, re-charging her with terrified energy.

‘Run for your father,' she said to Beau. ‘Make haste. He's in the vestry with Mr Jones. Hot bricks,' she said to Pollyanna. ‘More blankets. Jug of warm water. You'll need to finish the wash without me,' she said to the laundry maids. ‘I'll be down to 'ee when I can. Drive in to Bury and fetch a surgeon,' she said to Dickon. ‘Fast as the pony will go. Mr Chalmers if you can get him, otherwise Mr Brownjohn.' And all the time she was giving orders she was easing Jimmy out of the cart, with one arm to support his back and the other for him to lean on, ‘That's it, my lambkin, easy does it. You'll be all right now. Just another step. You're home with me, lambkin. Easy does it.'

He was so ill it took him several minutes to tremble out of the cart and by that time Beau had come back with his father. James took one look at the boy and lifted him in his arms, big as he was, and carried him into the house.

‘Keep everyone away,' he whispered to Annie as they climbed the east stairs together. ‘Don't let the girls near.
Nor Beau.'

‘No, no,' Annie whispered back. ‘I know. I can see that.' But she didn't ask him what he thought it was, because his answer might have been too terrible to face. It was sudden and it was serious and she was so afraid that she was finding it hard to breath.

She removed the child's boots and his jacket and trousers, and held the chamber pot for him while he was horribly sick, and then she sponged his forehead, letting him rest a little before she finished undressing him and got him into his nightshirt. He was burning with fever, and there was a round red patch of unnatural colour in the centre of each cheek.

‘I do feel bad, Ma,' he said.

‘Yes, my lambkin,' she soothed. ‘I know you do.'

‘My back hurts.'

‘Yes, my poor lamb. Never mind, we'll soon have you nice and comfy in your nice warm bed. Here's Pollyanna with a hot brick for your feet.'

But James wouldn't let Pollyanna walk into the room. ‘Stay there,' he said to her. ‘I'll come and get it.'

‘Is 'e very bad sir?' Pollyanna asked as she handed over brick and blankets.

‘Yes, I fear so,' James whispered. ‘Is the surgeon returned?'

‘No, not yet. I'll bring the hot water up presently.'

‘Thank you.'

It was nearly an hour before the pony-cart came clopping back, and by then Jimmy was delirious and groaning, and his parents were taut with fear.

Mr Brownjohn was short, stout, dapper and proficient. He felt the boy's forehead, took his pulse and examined his wrists, without saying a word. Then he led Annie and James out of the room.

‘Does he vomit, Mrs Hopkins?' he asked, when they were all standing on the landing.

‘Yes. But 'tis the fever, surely.' Oh say 'tis only a fever. Promise we shall soon have him well.

‘Yes, yes. Maybe,' he said, shrewd eyes narrowed. ‘Are there any other symptoms?'

‘Pain in his back,' Annie offered. ‘Perhaps he's taken a fall, Mr Brownjohn. What do 'ee think?' Yes, that's it. A fall. Tell me 'tis a fall. ‘Children run fevers when they fall, do they not?'

‘Aye, they do. Sometimes. But I must tell 'ee this don't look like a fall to me.'

James asked the question poor Annie was avoiding. ‘What does it look like, Mr Brownjohn?'

‘I'm sorry to have to say this to 'ee, Reverend Hopkins. It looks like the smallpox. There's rather a deal of smallpox in Bury at present.'

Annie put her face in her hands and groaned. ‘Oh no, no, no. Not that.'

‘You must keep all other children away,' Mr Brownjohn said. ‘They should not enter the room for any reason whatsoever. Nor should they go to school to mix with other children. But I need hardly tell 'ee that. Keep the boy warm, give him plenty to drink. He don't want food with such a fever. 'Twould only serve to make him vomit. I will return on the third day, when the papules will appear if it is as we fear. I trust for all your sakes that we may be mistaken.'

But they were not. On the third day the telltale red spots began to cluster on Jimmy's forehead and by the time Mr Brownjohn arrived in the afternoon, they had become the familiar, terrible, raised papules and were spreading fast along his arms and his chest, and had erupted in such profusion on his wrists that his skin flamed with them.

Annie's face was frozen with the need to cry and the even more pressing need to control her emotions so as not to frighten her poor, stricken child.

‘Is there anything we can do to help him?' she asked, when they had tiptoed out onto the landing. But she knew the answer even before he gave it.

‘No, Mrs Hopkins, nothing at all I fear. The illness must run its course. Keep him warm, keep him isolated, wash him gently, say your prayers. What of your other children? Are they well and out of the way?'

‘They sleep in the two west rooms,' Annie said, ‘on the other side of the house. I could send them to my
sister-in-law, if you thought it necessary, I suppose. She is in Bury for the hunt ball.'

‘No, not to Bury. We have an epidemic there, I fear,' Mr Brownjohn said. ‘I have seen twenty cases in the last twelve days, and many from the grammar school. On no account allow your other children to Bury until we are notified that the danger is past.'

‘What shall we do?' Annie said to James when the doctor had gone and he crept into Jimmy's bedroom to join her at the bedside. She rarely left her patient now, even when he was sleeping, as he was at the moment. ‘Should we ask Mama, think 'ee?'

‘Would she have the time? It is the quarterly meeting about now, surely.'

It was, Annie admitted. In her distress she had forgotten.

‘No, no,' he said. ‘Not your Mama, I think. Or at least, not yet. How if we were to ask Harriet?'

So while her poor boy was still asleep, Annie wrote to Harriet.

‘My dear sister,

I have such terrible news to tell you. My poor dear darling Jimmy has taken the smallpox, and Mr Brownjohn says we should send the other children away from the infection. I am at my wits' end. Could you possibly take them to London, my dear, and have them stay with you 'til 'tis safe for them to return?

‘Oh what a deal I ask of you. I know it. I shall think no less of you if you refuse.

‘I am so afraid for my babies. So very very afraid. Jimmy is so very ill. It would grieve you to see him. Pray for us, my dear.

‘You ever loving and most fearful,

‘Annie.'

The letter was delivered to Fitzroy Square the following morning, just after John had left for work. He had set off earlier than usual because it was the day of the quarterly managers' meeting and he had a deal of work to complete
before the afternoon. But even without him Harriet knew what her decision must be and she made it immediately.

‘I am going up to Bury,' she told Mrs Toxteth. ‘I shall take the first available seat on the first available coach, and I shall probably stay the night in Rattlesden and return tomorrow or the next day with Beau and Meg and little Dotty. Jimmy is ill and they cannot stay in the rectory. Could a room be made ready for them?'

It could.

‘Thank 'ee kindly, Mrs Toxteth. And now send Peg to me, pray. I need to pack in a hurry.'

By twelve o'clock she was packed and ready, and Peg was carrying her carpetbag down to the carriage. She kissed Will and told him to be sure and be a good boy while she was away and do everything Papa and Rosie told him to. Then she wrote a quick note of explanation to John, and gave it to Mrs Toxteth with instructions that it was to be handed over to the master ‘the minute he sets foot inside the door'. By mid-afternoon she was on the road. Whatever the risk, Annie's children had to be taken away from that awful, awful disease.