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 man, so we can be optimistic. But wait there, Hope, I’ll get you some medicine for him.’
‘She’s the younger sister of the two girls who died of scarlet fever, isn’t she?’ Dr Langford’s wife asked as he came back into the house. ‘Do you know what ails her father?’
‘I hope I’m wrong, but it sounds like typhus,’ the doctor replied with a grimace, going to his cabinet which held various kinds of medicines, ointments and salves. ‘There was an outbreak of it at the workhouse recently, and of course Bristol gaol is never without it.’
Mrs Langford was very fastidious and she shuddered. ‘But the Rentons aren’t low people,’ she said. ‘I’m told their cottage is a model of cleanliness!’
The doctor sighed. ‘He’ll have caught it in the foul lodging house he had the misfortune to seek shelter in. Someone there had probably brought it in from a ship or a gaol. And by now his wife may be infected as well, perhaps even the children too.’
‘Oh dear me,’ Mrs Langford gasped. ‘You didn’t touch her, did you?’
The doctor gave her a withering glance, somewhat shocked that her first thought would be for herself. But he didn’t feel able to reprimand her for lack of compassion, not when he had no intention of putting himself at risk by calling at the Rentons’ cottage.
‘Of course not. But I’d appreciate it if you’d put a few things in a basket for the child to take home. Brandy, perhaps, a few nourishing things that might stimulate their appetites. I shall send along some belladonna to slow Silas’s pulse and help the headache, but sadly that’s all I can do.’
‘I won’t go away,’ Hope said firmly, pushing her way into the cottage. ‘You’re sick too, Mother, and I’m going to take care of you.’
It was ten days now since her father had come back from Bristol, and up till now she’d done exactly as her mother asked. She’d looked after the animals, chopped wood, drawn water, and slept in the outhouse alone every night.
Joe had been to Briargate and to the Merchants’ farm to tell the rest of the family that their father was ill and they must all stay away. Mother had even insisted that Joe and Henry sleep in the barn down at the farm in Woolard rather than come home.
Hope couldn’t understand why Nell hadn’t come regardless of their mother’s instructions. She knew Lady Harvey must have insisted Nell obeyed because she was afraid of her taking the disease back to Briargate and Rufus, but it was unlike Nell not at least to come to the gate with a parcel of food and check if there was anything further she could do.
Matt had come to give them the news that Amy had given birth to a little girl and to bring some milk and cheese. He’d shouted out from the lane to ask them to open the window. Mother acted cross with him and ordered him away, making him promise he wouldn’t come back until she sent word that Silas was well again. But really she was glad he’d come, and Hope guessed that she hoped Nell would do likewise and secretly held Albert responsible for her failure to.
Hope hated sleeping alone in the outhouse. It was cold and the straw she’d stuffed into a sack for a bed felt damp. She was afraid, too, for she’d heard her father’s incoherent ramblings and her mother crying.
But yesterday evening, when she went to the door to collect some supper, she’d seen her mother was ill too. She was swaying on her feet, beads of sweat on her forehead, and there was a hollow look to her eyes. Hope had done what she asked and fetched one more pail of water and another basket of wood before returning to the outhouse, but she’d spent most of the night awake with anxiety. This morning she’d decided she was going to disobey her mother.
‘You are only eleven, much too young to take care of us, and I’m afraid you’ll catch it too,’ Meg said, trying to shut the door and stop her daughter coming in.
‘I’m not too young to know you need to be in bed,’ Hope argued, slipping in through the door before Meg managed to get it closed. ‘I’ll keep my distance from you if you like. But I’m not going to leave you two alone in here without anyone to help you.’
Meg was too weak to argue. Hope went up to the loft and dragged down one of the straw-filled sacks to make a bed for her mother by the fire, and the way she flopped down on it without another word proved to Hope she had caught whatever sickness it was that her father had.
Hope approached her father’s bed purposefully, but recoiled in horror at his appearance. The rash her mother had spoken of six days ago had given his face and body a mottled look, with small eruptions that looked like measles. His teeth and gums were covered in a brown substance, he was breathing too fast, almost like a dog panting, and he was picking at the bedcover like a madman.
There was an evil smell coming from him and Hope guessed he’d lost control of his bowels. For a moment she almost ran back out through the door, but she glanced at her mother on the mattress by the fire and realized that if she did run away, her mother would force herself to get up and deal with it. She couldn’t let her do that.
Washing her father and getting him back on to a clean sheet was the hardest thing she’d ever done. The smell made her retch, and he was so heavy to move. Yet somehow she managed it, and once he was covered up again she propped him up and made him drink some water.
She turned her attentions to her mother then, stripping off her clothes and washing her carefully. She was burning up, yet shivering the way Father had been in the early stages. Hope made her drink some water, then tucked the blankets around her tightly.
‘I’m taking care of Father now, you just go to sleep,’ she whispered.
There wasn’t just the one dirty sheet to wash but several piled in the corner, along with a couple of night shirts and undergarments. Remembering what the doctor had said about soiled linen, she went to the outhouse to light a fire under the copper.
Some of her earliest recollections were of her mother kneeling on the ground, blowing the flames and poking sticks in until she got a good blaze going. Hope had always helped her on washing day, rinsing the clothes in clean cold water, and then hanging the washing on the line. The one thing she’d always wanted to do, but was never allowed to, was stir the boiling washing. Mother always did that with the big copper stick, and once she was sure the clothes were clean, she fished the steaming garments out one by one into a big bowl.
It took eight buckets of water to fill the copper before she could start the fire, but that didn’t prove as easy as it had looked when Mother did it. Hope twisted up some paper and lit that, then added small dry sticks one by one, but the flame flickered and then died. She tried again and again, for over an hour, each time with a little more paper, but still it went out, however much she blew on it.
Hope felt like crying. The sheets had to be boiled up, and if she couldn’t do it there would be no clean ones if her father made another mess. The doctor had made a point about boiling them, so it stood to reason that dirty sheets were dangerous, perhaps carrying the sickness.
In her frustration she banged the copper with the poker, and it was only then that she noticed a little lever at the side of the fireplace. She pushed it, and to her surprise she saw it opened a small trap at the back, clearly to let in air, for she could feel a slight draught.
She tried to light it again, and to her delight at last the sticks began to burn. She added more and more, and only when she was absolutely certain she’d got it roaring did she turn her attention to grating up the soap.
That wasn’t so easy either. She sliced her fingers twice before she got the hang of it. But finally the soap was in the water, and she could put the washing in.
By late afternoon Hope was exhausted. Between running in and out of the cottage giving her parents water, washing their faces, feeding the chickens, collecting the eggs and milking the cow, she’d had constantly to feed the copper fire with more wood. It took some two hours before the water began to boil, and it was an awful lot harder to stir it with the copper stick than she’d expected.
Hooking the washing out of the copper was harder still, and she splashed herself with the hot water several times. More water for rinsing had to be drawn, and by the time she was through her hands were red and raw.
At least it was a fine day, with a stiff enough wind to dry everything. Once it was all hanging up, she got instructions from her mother to make some beef tea with a small piece of beef a neighbour had left by the gate. She was folding up the clean dry sheets when she smelled the foul smell again from her father, and once again she had to clean him up and change his bed before trying to spoon some of the beef tea into him.
‘You’re such a good girl,’ her mother said weakly as Hope helped her to sit up and drink some of the beef tea too. ‘Is your father any better?’
Young as she was, without any first-hand experience of sickness, Hope sensed he was dying. He hadn’t had one lucid moment today, and she’d only managed to make him swallow a few spoons of beef tea. It was as if the strong, hearty man she loved had already gone from the cottage.
‘He’s a bit better,’ she lied, knowing that if she said otherwise her mother would try to get up to see him. ‘He took some beef tea. He asked how you were.’
It was almost dark when Hope heard someone banging on the gate with a stick. She thought perhaps it was a neighbour, for there had been the piece of beef and other little offerings of pies, vegetables and jars of soup left on the doorstep in the last few days.
She ran out and to her relief it was Nell standing in the lane with a basket in her hand.
‘I daren’t come in,’ she called out. ‘Lady Harvey would never let me back into Briargate, and Albert will play merry hell. But I had to see you. How is Father?’
Hope wanted to run to her sister’s arms, but she knew she couldn’t. ‘He’s bad, and Mother’s got it now,’ she called out. ‘I’m scared, Nell, I don’t know what to do.’
Even in the dim light she could see her sister’s anguished expression and knew she wanted to come in and take over. Yet as much as she needed Nell, she couldn’t let that happen.
‘Just tell me what else I can do,’ Hope called out, quickly explaining how their parents were.
‘You are doing all there is to do,’ Nell said, her voice shaking. ‘But you shouldn’t have to be doing it, you are only a child. I should have disobeyed Albert right from the start and come here days ago.’
In that moment, Hope saw that Nell was afraid of Albert, and though it was too gloomy to see clearly she thought her sister’s cheek looked bruised.
‘We wouldn’t have let you in,’ Hope insisted. ‘But Mother will be glad you came tonight. Just leave the basket there. I can manage.’
Hope watched Nell walk away, constantly turning her head back as if torn between love for her parents and duty to her mistress and husband.
Tears ran down Hope’s face as Nell disappeared from sight for she understood her sister’s dilemma. Only yesterday her mother had said that if five years ago she’d known there was scarlet fever in the village she would have kept Violet and Prudence at home. She also said that if she’d known her husband had brought this sickness back from Bristol, she would immediately have sent Hope away too.