Hope - Lesley Pearse [34]
‘No, of course not,’ her mother snapped. ‘It ain’t right to ask anyone’s help when there’s sickness in the house.’
‘But Nell should know how ill Father is,’ Hope argued.
‘What she don’t know can’t hurt her. She’d only come rushing round here and make more trouble for herself with Albert.’
Only a few weeks back Ruth had claimed she thought Albert hit Nell, and Father had said if this proved to be right he’d go round and wring the man’s neck.
‘Well, shall I go and get the doctor then?’ Hope asked. She was frightened because Father didn’t seem to know her or her mother.
‘We’ve got no money for the doctor,’ Meg replied, her eyes bleak with anxiety. ‘You go into the bakery and see if they’ve got some work for you there, meanwhile I’ll build up the fire and try to get him to sweat out the fever.’
Hope knew that her mother must be desperate for money to send her in to beg for work at the bakery, for she disliked Mrs Scragg, the baker’s wife, as much as Hope did.
Mrs Scragg questioned Hope closely about Silas’s sickness, clearly afraid it was something infectious, then set her to work outside, scouring out bread tins. By late afternoon Hope was more exhausted than if she’d been working all day in the fields. After the scouring of the bread tins she was made to clean out two storerooms, scrubbing the walls and floors. She’d drawn bucket after bucket of water from the well, mucked out the stable and washed a huge pile of aprons. For all this she was given a shilling and a loaf of bread.
Her mother stopped Hope at the door when she went home. ‘Don’t come in,’ she said. ‘Your father has a rash now; you and the boys must sleep in the outhouse until he improves.’
‘Is it scarlet fever like with Violet and Prudence?’ Hope asked, tears springing to her eyes because she sensed her mother was afraid he was going to die.
‘I wish that’s all it was, grown men get over that,’ Meg said wearily. ‘Go to the doctor, Hope. Tell him how your father was when he came back from Bristol, but that he’s delirious now and the rash is a “mulberry” one. He’ll know what that means. I don’t expect he will call to see your father, but he might be able to give you some medicine for him if you give him that shilling.’
Dr Langford lived in Chewton, a hamlet on the way to Keynsham, a distance of two miles. Hope was too young when Violet and Prudence died to remember the doctor calling then, but she often saw the short, rotund man in a stove-pipe hat driving through the village in his gig, and at church. Her mother had said that years ago he set her father’s arm when he broke it, and as they had no money to pay him they gave him a chicken instead. That gave Hope the idea he must be a kindly man, and as she hurried down through the village and up Fairy Hill, she wondered if he’d be kindly enough to give her a drink and maybe a bite to eat, and bring her home in his gig.
That hope was dashed when the lady who answered the door asked her to wait outside when she said her father was sick.
The doctor came out to see her immediately. He was wearing a fancy red waistcoat, and looked much smaller without his usual tall hat. Almost as soon as she began to launch into a description of her father’s illness, she was aware he was backing away from her into the porch of his house.
‘So he was sick when he came back from Bristol? And this was four days ago?’
Hope nodded. ‘He’d had an awful time because he had to sleep in a dirty room at the docks with several other men. He was shivering really badly even after Mother made him get into bed. Now he doesn’t even seem to know us!’
The doctor looked alarmed. ‘Tell your mother she must keep the room well aired and the windows open,’ he said. ‘She must try and make him drink water and broth, and to boil any fouled linen. I will make up some medicine for him, but you children must keep well away from him.’
‘Mother already told me we’ll have to stay in the outhouse,’ Hope said. ‘Is it something very serious then?’
The doctor looked as if he didn’t know how to reply. ‘Your father’s a strong