Read Forgive and Forget Online
Authors: Margaret Dickinson
Tags: #Fiction, #Sagas, #Romance, #Historical, #20th Century, #General
Forgive and Forget
Forgive and Forget
PAN BOOKS
For my beautiful granddaughter
Zara Elizabeth Robena Jean
LINCOLN, FEBRUARY 1905
‘Poll, get the doctor.’
Polly turned to stare at her father, her green eyes widening.
‘The – the doctor?’ she stammered.
Calling the doctor was unheard of in the Longdens’ terraced house. Doctors had to be paid for and money was short for the family of seven.
‘It’s yar mam. She’s badly.’
‘I know that,’ Polly countered. ‘She’s been badly ever since the babby was born. Can’t Mrs Halliday see to her?’
William Longden ran his hand through his springy auburn hair. ‘This hasn’t owt to do wi’ having the babby. She’s got steadily worse these last two weeks. You know that.’
‘But . . .’ Polly began to argue, but her father’s next words cut her short and brought dread to her heart.
‘I reckon she’s got the fever.’
The young girl gasped. ‘Typhoid? You mean the typhoid?’
Rumour – like the disease itself – had been spreading through Lincoln since the beginning of December and now, in early February, word was that an epidemic was rife in the city.
‘But how?’ the girl asked, anxious yet puzzled. ‘Like they told us to in the
Chronicle
, we boil all our water. An’ I scrub the privy every day.’ She wrinkled her nose in disgust. The standpipe and the lavatory in the backyard were shared by three families and each household was supposed to take its share in the cleaning, but Sarah Longden, Polly’s mother, didn’t trust the slovenly standards of her neighbours and cleaned the wooden seat of the privy every day. Since she’d given birth to the latest addition to the family just before Christmas – a baby girl they’d named Miriam – the unenviable task had fallen upon Polly’s thirteen-year-old shoulders.
‘I know you do, love.’ Her father’s tone softened a little, yet the dreadful fear never left his eyes. ‘And,’ he was pleading now, ‘you’ll have to stay off work a bit longer.’
‘Stay off?’ Polly’s eyes blazed. ‘
Again?
’
‘I’m sorry, Poll, but—’
‘I’ll get the sack,’ she reminded him grimly. ‘Mr Spicer’s warned me once already when Mam had Miriam and I stayed off to look after her.’
‘I know, I know,’ William said distractedly. ‘But what else can I do, love? Yar mam’s sick and getting worse by the day. And now—’. He broke off and glanced away from Polly’s glare.
‘What?’
‘She’s got the rash.’
Cold fear ran through the girl’s slim body. ‘Rash?’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘Is it – is it pink?’
The symptoms of typhoid were now the main topic of conversation in every street throughout the beleaguered city. They all recognized the first signs: headaches, stomach pains and a dry cough. As the days progressed, a pinkish rash appeared, then vomiting and severe diarrhoea confirmed their worst fears.
‘Aye.’ William nodded hopelessly. ‘So that’s why I say, lass, you’ll have to fetch the doctor. Best go to Mrs Halliday’s. She’ll know what we’ve to do.’
Polly couldn’t remember them ever seeking the services of a doctor and so neither she nor her father knew where the nearest one lived. But Mrs Halliday would know.
‘Yes, Dad,’ Polly said meekly now and reached for her coat from the peg behind the door. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’
As she ran down the street, her heart was thumping with fear for her mother – for all the family. Yet part of her railed against the unfairness of it all. She’d left school the previous summer to work in the glue factory. She’d wanted to stay on and become a teacher one day, like Miss Broughton, but her father had insisted she leave and find work. They needed the money, he’d said, and though her mother’s troubled eyes had sent her a silent apology, Sarah had made no attempt to side with her daughter. Only Polly, green eyes flashing with indignation, her wild auburn hair flying free, had faced her father.
‘I want to stay on. You said I could. I want to be a teacher, I want—’
‘Enough,’ her father had boomed. ‘It’s not about what you want. It’s about what this family needs.’
William Longden, tall, thin and slightly stooping and with the red-hair colouring that Polly had inherited, was normally a reasonable man, but he was quick-tempered and when roused to anger he was fearsome. He raised his arm and for a brief moment Polly thought he was going to strike her. He’d never hit any of his children, not like the other fathers in the street, who took their belts to their kids at the slightest excuse. He’d never even leathered their Eddie, who, at eleven, was fast becoming a tearaway. At least, not yet. But as Polly had faced him, her determined little chin jutting out obstinately, her tangle of red hair framing a mutinous face, her small feet planted firmly on the floor and her arms folded across her chest, she’d trembled inwardly. For the first time in her young life she knew she’d driven her father too far with her answering back. To her surprise, William had let his arm fall, his hot anger dying as swiftly as it had come. But he was still not about to give way.
‘You’ve got your certificate from the school so you can leave. You’ll start at the factory on Monday,’ William had said heavily. ‘I’ve seen Spicer and it’s all arranged.’
Now, as she sped along the street, Polly was wishing fervently that she’d not worked so hard at her lessons and become Miss Broughton’s star pupil. Maybe if she’d been lazy and messy in her work instead of being attentive and neat, she’d not have been given the certificate that said she’d reached the required standard in her education as set out by the local by-laws. She kicked herself mentally – that way she could have stayed on at school. She wouldn’t be working in the glue factory or be kept at home to nurse her mother and look after a tiny baby. She’d still be in class, sitting in the front row, drinking in every word that the teacher said, revelling in the knowledge and the skills being imparted.
And she wouldn’t have been kept off school because the one thing her father had feared was the arrival of the school attendance officer at his door.
It had all been her own stupid fault, she reproached herself, for trying to be so clever, and now she was paying the price of sinful pride.
The Longdens lived in a two-up, two-down terraced house in one of the streets set at right angles to the long High Street. The River Witham meandered past the bottom end of their street, but Sarah forbade her children to play near it, even though some folk swam there in warm weather or boated on it.
It was a friendly street, though the youngsters would rough and tumble with one another, which usually resulted in scraped knees, bleeding noses and torn clothes. A shouting match between the mothers as to who had started the fight often followed, but a week or two of frostiness between the women involved would eventually thaw – until the next altercation. With the men, it was simple. They went off together to the football matches on a Saturday afternoon at Sincil Bank, ending up in the local pub after the game either to celebrate or to drown their sorrows. Either way, most of them came home drunk. Sometimes there were fisticuffs in the streets, but by next morning the cause was forgotten. The bruises and bloody noses took longer to heal than did the friendships. But visits to the racecourse, where the highlight of the year was the Lincoln Handicap, were what their wives feared the most. Strong-willed Sarah Longden dreaded that time, for even she could not stop William joining the other men in spending their week’s wages on the ‘gee-gees’.
Polly banged on the door of the house at the end of the street near the river and shouted at the same time. ‘Mrs Halliday, Mrs Halliday. Come quick.’
The house was just the same as her own home; the front door opening straight into the best front room, leading through a small area at the foot of the stairs into the kitchen, which was the main family living room where the range dominated one wall. Beyond that was the scullery with a shallow sink, where the washing of crockery and of clothes was done. All the family’s meals were prepared here and the copper bricked into the corner provided hot water on bath nights.
‘Now, now,’ came a voice from beyond the door in answer to Polly’s frantic knocking. ‘If ’tis a babby comin’, it’ll tek its time an’ if someone’s died, there’s no rush.’
The door flew open and Polly looked up into the motherly round face of the local midwife and layer-out, the woman to whom everyone came in times of trouble for help and advice.
‘We need the doctor, Mrs Halliday,’ Polly panted. ‘Me mam’s real bad.’
Mrs Halliday’s ready smile faded. ‘What’s ’er symptoms, lass?’ she asked and then, beneath her breath added, ‘As if I didn’t know.’
‘She’s bein’ sick.’
‘And the lax? Has she got the lax?’
The girl shuddered as she thought of the foul-smelling diarrhoea in the chamber pot that she was obliged to empty several times a day. She nodded. ‘Ever so bad and now – ’ she pulled in a shuddering breath – ‘there’s a rash.’
‘Oh dear. Then you do need the doctor to see her. It’ll ’ave to be notified, love, won’t it?’ A ghost of a smile lit Bertha Halliday’s eyes briefly as she added, ‘We must abide by the law, specially now our Leo’s a policeman.’
Bertha Halliday’s son, Leo, had joined the city police force a few months earlier at the age of eighteen. Fair-haired and blue-eyed with a cheeky grin that belied his chosen profession, Leo was the apple of his mother’s eye. And all the unattached young girls in the neighbourhood would make sure they were wearing a clean pinafore or their best coat when stepping out of their front doors just in case he should be striding up the street. Even at thirteen, Polly was unusually tongue-tied when she ran into him unexpectedly. But this morning the handsome young man was not occupying her thoughts.