A Carriage for the Midwife Read Online Free PDF Page B

over. Susan had grown used to hearing Dolly’s nightly groans and mutterings when sleep brought dreams of her lost boys.
    Bartle, Will and Georgie. It did not seem possible to Susan that she would never see them again, and her uncomprehending grief made her constantly alert for Polly; her greatest terror was of losing the little sister on whom she now lavished all the love that Doll seemed not to want. Neither did their mother seem able to show her daughters any affection since the fearful toll taken by the white throat.
    After the parson’s visit, hope had returned to the Ash-Pits; the victuals that Susan carried from the Bennett kitchen two or three times a week had literally saved them from starvation, and the good Nathaniel Smart had rejoiced at his part in their rescue. He had meekly bowed his head before his wife’s accusations, heartily thanking his Maker for using him to save the Lucket children.
    He was not allowed this comfort for long. By the third week in January a thaw set in, and the milder air blew the dreaded infection into one damp dwelling after another. Children weakened by a winter diet were struck down by the swift and deadly malady that had begun in the House of Industry; they became feverish, with painfully sore throats, and within hours a greyish membrane spread across the back of the throat. Susan could still hear the sounds of her brothers gasping for air on the night when death had claimed all three between sunset and dawn. She and Polly had survived, and so had baby Jack, kept strictly apart from the sick children in the roost; in fact Doll’s fanatical protection of her squint-eyed youngest son was part of the remembered horror. Even Bartlemy had prayed aloud for God to take pity on them, swearing to reform and never drink strong ale again if his children’s lives were spared, but when the winter sun rose on the first day of February, the three small brothers lay still and silent. Their burial was charged on the parish, which was all that Parson Smart could do for them. He had been forced to promise his wife that he would not visit any dwelling while the white throat raged, for fear of bringing it home to their own family – and he never forgave himself for deserting those whom it seemed that God Himself had forsaken.
    It could never be proved that the infection was carried up from the Ash-Pits to the farmhouse when the Bennett children caught it. Tom, Sally and Marianne recovered, but little Annie died two days after the losses at the Ash-Pits. The farmer’s wrath was terrible, adding to his wife’s grief, and all traffic between the two families ceased.
    At Bever House Edward and Caroline fell sick with colds on their chests, and were visited daily by Mr Turnbull, the apothecary. He made them open their mouths while he peered down their throats with the aid of a mirror reflecting the light of a candle held by Mrs Ferris, the tall, black-haired woman who had replaced Miss Glover as nurse. Within a week they had recovered, none the worse for the scare.
    But Susan’s world had become full of shifting shadows in which Death lurked; she lived with uncertainty, for nothing could be relied upon. Bartlemy’s leg healed slowly, though stayed shorter than the other, and he began to find casual labouring jobs, avoiding the alehouse on his way home; but Dolly scarcely looked at him, and seldom spoke to any of them. She withdrew herself behind an invisible barrier with Jack and the child almost ready to leave her womb.
    Little Polly turned instinctively to Susan for comfort and reassurance, and gradually the elder daughter became the linchpin of the family. Bartlemy patted her shoulder, and said she was ‘her dad’s good gal, his kind little Sukey’, words which Doll appeared not to hear, for her face remained blank.
    There it was again: a sharp moan and a painful gasp as if Dolly was lifting a heavy pail, then silence for a few minutes, followed by another groan.
    Bartlemy rose from his corner