The Black Mountains (11 page)

“Now, try to tell me again what's happened.”

“Amy went to the Clements' house to help bath the baby,” Jack said tearfully. “I don't know what happened. They were playing around, I suppose, and she must have fallen. The first I knew was when she started screaming. I ran out and I met Mrs Clements, and she was screaming, too. But it was our Amy.… Oh, Mam, oh, Mam!”

“All right,” Charlotte said.

They were on the hill now, and hurrying, with no breath left for talking.

Never had the climb seemed so long. Charlotte's trembling legs felt as soft as marshmallow—and as useless. But at last they turned the corner of the rank. And there, stopped outside number eleven, was a horse and trap.

“Doctor's here then,” Charlotte said unevenly.

Jack did not reply. He trotted along beside her, filled with dread at the thought of going home again, but Charlotte did not notice, any more than she noticed the neighbours standing silently in their open doorways. A moment ago, they had been all agog with curiosity, now, sick with horror and oddly embarrassed, they shrank into their sculleries, holding their own children close into their skirts.

Outside her own door, Charlotte paused to touch Jack's arm.

“You stay here.”

Gratefully he hung back and she went through the scullery and into the kitchen, her heart in her mouth.

The first person she saw was Dr Oliver Scott. He was standing in front of the fireplace, rolling down his sleeves, pain and pity clearly written in his pleasant face. Beside him stood Ada Clements. Her thin, veined hands covered her mouth, and above them her eyes were red from weeping. But of Amy there was no sign.

Fear seemed to explode in Charlotte, driving like white-hot fire through her bones. She sucked her breath in on a sob.

“Amy!”

A head bobbed up from behind the sofa, which was turned three quarters away from the door. It was Peggy, hidden by the back of the sofa.

“Lotty, she's here.”

“Oh, my life!” Charlotte ran towards the sofa, but Dr Scott intercepted her.

“No, Mrs Hall!” he said sharply. “Don't touch her!”

“No? But …”

“Don't try to touch her,” he repeated more gently.

Amy lay face down on the sofa, her honey-coloured hair tumbling down over the white bandages that swathed her back. A cushion muffled her whimpers so that she sounded like a small, pitiful kitten.

For a moment Charlotte gazed at her in helpless horror, then she fell to her knees beside her. “Amy, love, it's all right now. Mammy's here. Mammy's here.”

“Oh, Mammy!” The child tried to turn her head and the movement made her scream again. Shocked, Charlotte pushed a shaking fist into her mouth, her agonized eyes pleading mutely with Dr Scott.

“She's as comfortable as I can make her,” he said grimly. “But her back is as raw as a skinned rabbit. Any movement is very painful indeed.”

Charlotte laid a trembling hand on Amy's head, stroking the twisted curb gently.

“Now lie still, there's a good girl,” she said evenly. “ I'll be back in a minute, and Mrs Yelling's here with you. I'm just going to have a talk to the doctor about what we have to do to make you better.”

“Mammy, don't go!” Amy pleaded.

“I won't be a minute, Amy. I'm right here in the house.” She got up, nodding to Dr Scott, and led the way to another door in the corner of the kitchen. This one gave on to a narrow, linoleum-covered hall, and beyond it was the front room.

In contrast to the rest of the house, the front room was the epitome of Victorian tidiness. Around a central carpet square, the floor was of tiled Italian mosaic, laid on the tightly staffed armchairs were cream, lace-edged antimacassars. The fire-irons and fender were polished, and gleaming family likenesses stood in their frames on the top of the piano that had once belonged to Charlotte's mother, and a magnificent aspidistra on a wooden stand took pride of place beside the window.

It was a room used only for special occasions—family gatherings, christenings, funerals and weddings, and for entertaining special visitors. Now Charlotte led the doctor in, and closing the door behind him, faced him squarely.

“Well?”

“She's in a bad way, Mrs Hall,” he said bluntly.

“You mean she's scalded bad?”

“Not so much scalded—more parboiled, I'd say.” Then, seeing her expression, he said, “ Her buttocks took the worst of it. She must have more or less sat down in the tub. But luckily the kidney area's not too bad. If it was …”

“But, as it is,” Charlotte interrupted, “she will be all right, won't she, Doctor?”

For a moment he did not answer, and nausea rose in her throat, making her go hot and cold.

“There are two main dangers, Mrs Hall,” he said at last. “One is the possibility of infection. A large part of Amy's body is without its protective covering of skin. You understand?”

She nodded. “And the other thing?”

“Shock. It's bound to be severe. I wouldn't really like to commit myself as to the outcome of this, but a week should give us some indication as to whether or not …”

His voice tailed away and Charlotte put all her weight on to the back of the chair.

“You mean she might not get over this, Doctor?” she asked.

His eyes dropped from hers, and he thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

“I'm afraid that is what I mean,” he said.

“Oh, my God,” Charlotte said quietly, but inside she felt as if she were screaming.

Not Amy! Oh, no, not Amy! Not my little girl! Dear God, what has she ever done …

Dr Scott seemed a long way off now, separated from her by swirling mists of unreality. Death of her babies she had accepted—many people lost their babies, and, although that did not lessen her grief, at least it eased the shock. Danger to her men she lived with—the danger of them meeting a violent end was built into her like a defence system. But Amy … Amy was past the age when she was in most danger from the illnesses that killed little ones—she had had whooping cough and measles, and even scarlet fever. It was years now since her health had given Charlotte more than a moment's worry.

And besides … Amy was sunshine and showers, precocity and innocence, laughter and tears. Although not as pretty as the round and rosy Dolly, there was something about her sharp little features that could stir feelings of tenderness and love, and her personality could fill a room.

If Amy died, nothing would ever be the same again. I couldn't bear it, thought Charlotte.

She lifted her head, and Oliver Scott's face came into focus, full of pity, concern and strength. Since he had come to Hillsbridge to join Dr Froster's practice two years ago, she had been one of the many people who had treated him with suspicion. He hardly seemed older than Jim or Fred, too young to be a doctor and entrusted with the family's health, and certainly too young to advise on personal matters.

Now, however, she found herself looking at him through new eyes: he was someone she could lean on, and on whose wisdom and courage she could draw. She swallowed the nervous lump rising in her throat, and lifted her chin.

“Just tell me what to do, Doctor,” she said.

He nodded, relieved. “You'll need dressings—plenty of white dressings. Torn up sheets would probably be the best as long as they've been washed at least once. No new cloth. We'll treat the scalded area with carron oil. There must be as little movement as possible, so she'd better have a bed made up downstairs, It would be nice and quiet on the sofa in here …”

“No,” Charlotte said sharply, and then, seeing his look, added, “Out there, Doctor, if she must, but not in here. This is where … I lost two other children, you know, and they were laid out in here. I suppose it's stupid, but it wouldn't seem right”.

He nodded. “ That's understandable. Well, I'll leave it to you, Mrs Hall. I'm sure you can arrange something. But you do realize she'll need attention night and day.”

“She'll get it, Doctor,” Charlotte said “And if you're thinking I might leave her, I assure you, you need have no worries on that score. I shouldn't have left her this, morning, but Jack was here, and I was only down at the Rectory. But I'll never forgive myself as long as I live. It's my fault she's lying there.”

“You mustn't blame yourself, Mrs Hall,” Dr Scott said gravely. “I suppose it's no good telling you that, but you can't be watching children all the time. If you did, you'd make them bundles of nerves. From what I gather, she'd gone in to help Mrs Clements bath the baby, and the foolish woman put the boiling water into the tub first and left the children in the room while she went to fetch the cold. They were playing around, and somehow Amy fell into the water. It was an accident, pure and simple, and if anyone is to blame, it's Mrs Clements. But she's probably suffering as much as you are. Guilt is a very hard cross to bear.”

“She should be bloody suffering,” Charlotte spat harshly. “I'd like to push
her
into a tub of boiling water, and if there was one handy now, I swear I'd do it!”

The doctor did not answer. It was easy to feel that way. He had been visiting the Presleys at number fifteen when Ada had come screaming out into the rank, and when he had run into her kitchen and seen what had happened, his reaction had been much the same. It was criminally stupid to leave children alone in a room with a bathful of boiling water.

But Ada was an object of pity herself—a lank-haired, consumptive-looking woman whose frail body had been worn out by repeated child-bearing and grinding hard work, and whose head was full of worries as to how to make ends meet and how to avoid becoming pregnant yet again. Given the circumstances, it was only surprising that something of the kind had not happened before.

“About paying you, Doctor,” Charlotte said abruptly.

He looked away, embarrassed. “ Don't worry about it, Mrs Hall.”

“It's all right. Since I had Harry, we've joined the Doctor's Institute, thank God. And we don't let the payments lapse through the summer as some do. So you can send your bills in and know they'll be met.”

He nodded. “We'd have looked after her in any case,” he said gently. “ You need have no fears about that. Now, I dare say Amy will be wanting you.”

“Yes.” She opened the door for him to pass into the hall. “And you'll look in again, Doctor?”

“As often as I can.”

Jack had got up the courage to come into the kitchen now. He stood beside the sofa where Peggy was comforting Amy, biting his lip and looking the picture of misery. But of Ada Clements, there was no sign.

“She said she had to go,” Peggy told Charlotte as the doctor's pony and trap made its way down the rank.

“Just as well,” Charlotte retorted. “If she'd stayed here I'd have murdered her, and that's the truth, Peggy.”

Peggy nodded. “ I can't say I blame you, Lotty. But what's done's done, and it won't help Amy to have you like this.”

“No, Peg, but I can tell you, it'll help me!” Charlotte returned, and as she knelt beside the small figure on the sofa, her helpless anger swelled into a great bubble of hatred for Ada Clements and the irresponsible stupidity that might cost Amy her life.

THROUGH the long days and nights that followed, it was the anger that kept Charlotte going.

Dolly came home as often as possible to help nurse her sister and Peggy looked in too, but it was on Charlotte that the brunt of the load fell. She made up a bed for herself on the settle so that Amy would not be left alone at night, but the sleep she was able to snatch was often broken by Amy's crying. After she had sung her back to sleep she would he fuming with helpless agony, quite unable to sleep again. The days were even worse. The usual tasks of cooking, cleaning and washing seemed interminable, for she could only leave Amy for a few minutes at a time. And twice each day Dr Scott or his senior partner Dr Froster, came to change the dressings.

This was the time Charlotte dreaded most of all, holding Amy down while she screamed and Dr Scott eased the saturated cloth away from the raw scarlet of her back. But with every day that passed, Amy's chances of surviving became a little better. In the dead of night Charlotte worried about the effect the accident would have on Amy—scarred, perhaps with some permanent disability—but she tried not to think beyond the next day and the next, and thanked God the child was still alive.

So preoccupied was Charlotte, she did not even realize that she had not seen Ada Clements since the day of the accident. She had no way of knowing the torment the other woman was enduring.

On her side of the dividing wall, Ada also found sleep elusive. Over and over again she kept reliving the awful moment when the splash and the scream had reached her in the scullery and she had rushed into the kitchen to find Amy, half-sitting, half-lying, in the bath of boiling water.

Every time she thought of it she turned so cold and weak she thought she was going to faint, and she was so ashamed she could not bring herself to face Lotty. As the schools were on holiday, she was able to send Rosa for what groceries she needed, but in the blazing summer weather, the Hall's scullery door was left open most of the day, and Ada was afraid even to go across the yard to the privy in case she bumped into Charlotte. This added to her wretchedness, for she had to resort to relieving herself on the white china chamber-pot that was usually reserved for the night time use of Walter and the children. With the rim biting into her scrawny buttocks she sat and wept, thin, helpless sobs taking the place of tears. Why Lotty's child? she asked herself. If it had to happen at why had it happened to Amy, when Lotty was one of the few people who found it in her to be kind to her.

Lurking wretchedly one morning behind her curtain net, Ada noticed Peggy Yelling come down the rank carrying a folded sheet. The sight made her go cold, for besides being the local midwife, Peggy was also the one sent for by bereaved families to lay out their dead, and Ada assumed the worst.