Hope - Lesley Pearse [38]
Instinctively she turned to her mother for comfort, tears running down her cheeks, but saw immediately that she would get no comfort there. She had the mulberry rash now too, and although she appeared to be awake, her eyes open, there was the identical blankness her father had had.
Hope wanted to scream and stamp her feet, but instead all she did was stand there crying. For her entire eleven years she had been surrounded by older people who’d instructed her, admonished her, cared for her, but now she was alone, and it struck her that her childhood had come to an abrupt end.
She had to behave like an adult now. There was no one she could run screaming to as she’d so often done in the past over the most trivial of things. To call anyone in to help was to ask them to risk catching the disease and spreading it further. But she couldn’t leave her mother to seek help anyway.
Forcing herself to go through the usual early-morning chores seemed to be the only thing to do. She raked out the fire and took the ash outside, then relaid the fire and lit it. The kettle went on, and she got a basin of water to wash her mother’s face.
‘Is it morning?’ Meg murmured. ‘I must get the boys up!’
‘The boys aren’t here, Mother,’ Hope said, tears flowing again as she saw her mother was delirious just as her father had been. ‘They’re at work on the farm. It’s just me here.’
She managed to feed her mother some milk with an egg beaten into it, and then she tore a sheet of paper from a notebook.
‘Please help me,’ she wrote in large letters. ‘My father has died and my mother is very sick. I don’t want anyone to come in and risk catching it too. But can you get the doctor? Call out and I’ll speak to you from the door.’
She signed the note ‘Hope Renton’. Then, taking it outside, she nailed it to the gatepost so it could be seen by anyone passing by.
The Reverend Gosling called out to Hope later in the morning as she was once again sponging her mother down with cool water.
She put the basin down and raced outside. She had always been a little intimidated by the tall, stern parson who had taught her to read and write, but she was glad it was he who called for he knew everything.
‘My dear Hope,’ he said, taking off his broad-brimmed black hat and holding it to his chest. The top of his head was bald, but the white hair left lower down was long, lank and rather greasy-looking. ‘I am so sorry to hear your father has passed away. Are you alone with your mother?’ His pale blue eyes looked far more kindly than usual, and even his thin lips, which always seemed to sneer instead of smile, had a softer look.
‘Yes, Reverend.’ She explained the circumstances as best she could. ‘Mother insisted the others were to stay away until Father was better. She said it was Ship Fever. She made me stay in the outhouse too, but I saw she was sick yesterday so I came in. Father was dead this morning and Mother is very bad now too. I’ve been washing her and giving her drinks and broth, but I don’t know what to do about Father or how to make Mother well again.’
Hope was determined not to cry, but when she saw the Reverend Gosling move towards her, arms outstretched to embrace her, she couldn’t help herself. ‘You mustn’t touch me,’ she said weakly. But all at once his arms were round her anyway, and she leaned against his bony chest and sobbed.
‘You poor child,’ he said, his voice soft with sympathy. ‘If you are brave enough to nurse your mother, then I can be brave enough to hold you. Are you well?’ He took her two arms in his hands and holding her a little back from himself, studied her.
‘Yes, Reverend,’ she sobbed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me. And I washed my hands after touching Father as Mother said I must do. But the disease is in the air, isn’t it? We breathe it in.’
‘I cannot believe that, for if it were the case it would spread all across the country and no one would be spared. This disease flourishes only in