The Victory (79 page)

‘
You understand the risk you will run? And for what?
There is nothing you can do for them.'

‘
Never say it!' he cried in a frightened voice. 'They'll come
through! They've got Hobsbawn blood in their veins, and
Hobsbawns are fighters. We'll bring them through. You just
tell us what to do.'

‘
There is very little anyone can do,' the doctor said wearily.
'Keep them warm. Give them plenty to drink. Champagne is
best — iced if possible — as much as they want. Brandy for the stomach cramps. That's all.'

‘
And what are you going to be doing?' Hobsbawn
demanded.

‘
There is nothing I can do. We saw this kind of plague
before, back in '96, and we don't know any more about it now than we did then. The strong sometimes recover by their own
will, if they are carefully nursed. Otherwise ...' He shrugged.
‘I must go now. I have other calls to make.'

‘But you'll come back?'

‘
Don't you understand, this is an epidemic? By tomorrow
morning, the fever will be all over the town, and I shan't have
time to come back to anyone. Nurse them well — that's their
only chance.’

He thrust past them and went away down the stairs,
followed by the two pairs of frightened eyes. Then Hobsbawn
turned to his butler. 'Well, Bowles, are you going to desert us?’

Bowles had to swallow several times before he could find a
voice. 'Nay, master,' he said, without great conviction.
‘You've been a good master to me. I'll stay.'

‘
Right, then what are you waiting for? Go and get some
champagne, and send John out for ice. Sir Toby Rummage has
got an ice-house. He's a good man at a pinch; he'll let us have
some. John'd better take the carriage, for quickness. Cook
and the maids had better be sent away.'

‘Yes, sir. Cook's got a cousin in the country —'

‘Then they can go there. Go on, man, bustle about!’

*

There was a world of thirst, a torment of thirst. Mary Ann cried for drink, drink, and Dakers held her head while she
gulped water and champagne, and then held the bowl while
she vomited it up again. And the thirst was not slaked, only
grew, until it was no longer inside her, but she was inside it.
She was a speck of sand in a universe of desert; nothing
existed but the thirst, and her.

And the pain, and the diarrhoea. After the first time, she
was too weak to get out of bed, and she lay weeping with
shame in the mess she had made, except that there were no tears to her weeping: she had not moisture enough. Dakers
petted her and tended her, grim old Dakers, whose mouth
was set in a harder line than ever. But that was comforting: it
was her strength. Mary Ann clung to her, her granite-faced,
disapproving old nurse. Twice her father came in, and she
hated that. She didn't want him to see her like this, and she
she didn't want to see his loud, bounding strength conquered,
quivering with misery at the sight of her.

The candles burned down, and Dakers lit fresh ones, and
their burning was the only thing that told Mary Ann time was
passing, for to her it seemed that they were locked in a
timelessness of pain and misery. In delirium she drifted
through a confused and fever-parched consciousness,
populated with strange and menacing shapes and colours, and
voices that buckled and twisted so that she could not under
stand them.

From time to time she drifted back to the single point of
reality which was Dakers's hand holding hers. It was the pivot
of consciousness to which she must return; but as time passed
and she grew weaker, the moments of return grew shorter
and further apart.

*

John did not come back with the ice, and when Bowles went
outside to see if there were any sign of him, he discovered that
the carriage had not been taken out, and the coachman had
locked himself in his room over the coach-house and refused to come out. John had evidently simply run away. The butler
went back inside and closed and bolted the door, and
returned to the kitchen, where he and Simon had been sitting
at the table in silence, waiting.

Bowles did not blame John, or the maids. There was
nothing to be done here. If he and Simon were young men, and had somewhere to go, they would probably have gone,
too. But after a lifetime of service, this was their only home,
and Hobsbawn and his daughter their only family. So they sat
and waited, their sense of unreality increasing with every
hour that passed.

From time to time the people upstairs would ring for fresh candles or water or towels, and one of them would take them
up, and hover at the door of the sickroom, peering in uncom
prehendingly but hopefully, before returning, disappointed,
to their silent vigil below. They did not discuss the situation
because they could not believe that it was happening. All they
could do was to wait for something they understood to come
and reclaim them to service.

*

Henry died in the early hours of the morning, still holding
Granpa's hand. Mr Hobsbawn had been sitting so long,
watching the pinched, damp face, listening for the faint,
shallow breathing, that he did not at once understand that
the boy was gone, and even when he did, he remained
motionless, unable to believe it, hoping and hoping with the
dumb faith of love that the breathing would begin again,
that the eyes would open and his little boy would smile at him
in that way that had so lit up his life.

But at last the comprehension began to seep into his brain, and he felt a blind misery rising in him like water, filling him
to drowning, and he began to moan, rocking his great body
back and forth, clutching the small cold hand that would
never again reach up, warm and trusting and alive, for his.

‘
No,' he cried. 'No-o-o!' His eyes brimmed and flowed over,
and the tears ran over his cheeks, and he rocked and moaned
in his inarticulate, animal grief, for his stolen child, the
precious child of old age, the irreplaceable.

*

It began to grow light, and Dakers came to with a start, to
discover that she had drifted off, not quite to sleep, but to a state of half-consciousness close to it. Mary Ann was quiet,
the voiding and the spasms and cramps over, but not even the
eyes of love could believe that she was better. Her skin was
dark, cold and clammy, and her breathing was shallow. She
seemed to be in a state of collapse.

Dakers got up, feeling her old bones creak in painful protest at having remained so long in one position. She
opened the bedroom door, smelling from the contrast with the
air outside how the room must stink, and walked along the
passage to Henry's room. The first glance from the doorway
told her the story. The boy was dead, and Mr Hobsbawn was
slumped in the chair by the bedside, sleeping the uneasy sleep
of exhaustion. It was hard to wake him, and she disliked
doing it, seeing the agony of recollection gradually returningto him, but it must be done.

‘
Sir, I think someone ought to go for the priest. I don't
think it will be long.’

He got to his feet with difficulty and stumbled to the door,
like a wounded bear, and she followed him, turning as she
reached it to look back once at the silent figure in the bed.
There was so little of him, he barely made a shape under the bedclothes. Her mouth turned down bitterly. She had nursed
Mary Ann from babyhood, and this was the end of it.

She followed her master into Mary Ann's room, and found
him standing by the bed staring down, and seeing that he was
incapable of any further effort, she left him there and went
down to the kitchen. The two old men were sitting to either side of the table, motionless as a pair of fire dogs, and they
looked up without expression as she came in. She told Bowles
that he must go for the priest, and he went without demur. It
was no time for servants' hall etiquette; he was quicker on his
feet than old Simon.

It was half an hour before he returned alone, to climb the
stairs to the bedchamber and tell them that the priest was not
in his house.

‘
I asked the neighbours, but no-one seemed to know where
he was,' Bowles said. 'Some of them thought he had gone to the
Infirmary; so I left a message that he was to come at once
when he got back. I hope I did right, sir. I didn't know what
else to do.'

‘
You did right,' Dakers answered for her master, who
seemed as far beyond speech as action. Bowles hovered,
looking past her towards the bed.

‘
She's not ...? She will be all right, won't she? I mean —’

 
‘
You'd better go downstairs and wait,' Dakers said
brusquely. 'If the priest comes, bring him here at once.'
The light was growing stronger outside the windows, and Dakers drew the curtains and snuffed the candles, and went
back to the bed to look at her mistress. Mary Ann's uncon
sciousness seemed a little less profound. Dakers poured a little
brandy into a glass, and lifting the heavy head, tried to trickle
the liquid into her mouth. After a moment the tongue moved
to touch the cracked lips, and then she choked a little, and
opened her eyes.

She looked blankly at Dakers, seeming not to know where
she was, and then her eyes moved to her father's face, and
gradually awareness entered them. Dakers put her head back
on the pillow and smoothed the hair from her brow. Mary
Ann still looked at her father, and her lips moved, but no
sound came from them.

Hobsbawn leaned forward. 'What is it, love?' he asked, and
his voice sounded rusty with long disuse.

Mary Ann tried again. 'Henry?' she whispered at last.
Dakers spoke before her master could summon any words.
‘He's all right, madam, sleeping quietly.’

Hobsbawn stared at her in perplexity, but Mary Ann did
not see. Her eyes were fixed on her maid's face beseechingly.
‘Then — it wasn't —?'

‘
No, madam,' Dakers said firmly. 'It wasn't the plague.
Just something he ate.’