Come Home Soon (7 page)

Twelve

Ellie woke, feeling toasty under her blanket, and stretched carefully, trying to avoid any part of her meeting the cold air outside the bed before it absolutely had to. Perhaps as a result of all the fresh air, she had slept better that night than she had done for weeks, too exhausted from the festivities to let the usual worries rattle through her brain and keep her awake.

Releasing one arm out into the chill of the room to tweak the curtain, she was surprised to see that it was already getting light outside – normally Charlie would have had her awake long before she needed to think about getting up for school. Maybe he'd slept extra deeply too.

Tucking her arm back in, she called to him, “Morning, Charlie boy. Did you have nice dreams about the big fire?”

Silence. None of his usual happy gurgles and coos. Maybe her mother had been in and got him out of his cot already. Ellie wondered why she hadn't woken her too.

Ellie frowned and swung her feet out of bed and into her slippers, inhaling sharply as the cold air hit her skin. She grabbed a cardigan from the back of the chair and shrugged her arms into it.

“Charlie,” she called again as she walked over to his cot, but she fell silent as she saw him.

Her brother stared up at her with wide blue eyes, still making no sound. His skin was pale but damp-looking and as she watched she could see him shivering.

“Oh, baby boy, are you not well?” She put a hand to his clammy forehead, sweeping away strands of wet blond hair – it was burning hot. Panic jolted through her. “Don't worry, little lamb, I'll get Mummy.” She pulled the blanket from his bed and tucked it around him, before rushing down the hall to their mother's room.

Mother was sitting at her dressing table in her nightgown and dressing gown, washing her face with water from an enamel basin. Her silvery hair was tied back in a tight braid. Catching sight of Ellie's reflection in the mirror, she said, “There you are. You'd better hurry up or you'll be late for school.”

“Mother, there's something wrong with Charlie.”

Ellie couldn't remember ever seeing her mother move so quickly; she was on her feet before the sound of her daughter's last word had died away, sloshing water from the basin in her haste.

They hurried back to Charlie, who was lying completely still in his cot. Mother felt his temperature with her hand and gasped. “Oh, he's really not well.” She lifted him carefully out of the cot and cradled him against her, wrapping the blanket tight about him. Ellie hovered anxiously. “He must have caught a chill. You did dress him properly last night, didn't you?”

“Yes, Mother.”

“You didn't forget to put his woollen underclothes on?”

Ellie frowned. “Of course not.”

Charlie gave a soft moan and Mother kissed him gently on the top of his head, before turning back to her daughter. “You're always letting him run around without his hat on – was he wearing it last night? It was so cold.”

The sight of her little brother shuddering in her mother's arms, set Ellie's stomach churning. “Of course he was, Mother. You know, if you don't trust me to look after him properly, maybe you should do it yourself.” The words were out of her mouth before she had time to check them. She braced herself for her mother's reaction, but she seemed scarcely to have heard her.

“Now, Charlie, don't worry,” she crooned into his damp hair. “Mummy's here.”

“I'll go and get Thomas,” Ellie blurted out, desperate to be moving, to be doing something.

Again there was no response from her mother.

“Mother?”

“Yes, go, go,” she snapped. “Hurry!”

Ellie seized a skirt and blouse from her wardrobe, before yanking her nightgown over her head and flinging it to the floor. Normally she would have been shy getting changed in front of her mother, but it was the last thing on her mind now. Her mother seemed to be unaware that she was still in the room.

She dressed as quickly as she could and ran from the room, down the stairs and out of the house. She flung herself on to her bicycle and started down the lane, pushing it to its absolute limits, standing on the pedals the whole way to the surgery.

Thomas looked pleased to see her but quickly grasped that it was not a social call. Seizing Ellie's father's bicycle that he was using in his absence, he followed her swiftly back to the house.

Arriving out of breath they threw down their bicycles at the front of the house and ran up the stairs. Ellie could hear her mother's voice coming from her bedroom now.

“What took you so long?” Mother was perched on her bed, holding a damp flannel to Charlie's forehead.

Ellie couldn't have been longer than twenty minutes in total, but she didn't argue. She was embarrassed to see that her mother still wasn't dressed. A glance at Thomas's red face showed that it had not gone unnoticed.

The young doctor moved towards the bed, where Charlie was lying listlessly, face wan and eyelids flickering.

“Oh, if only Wesley were here!” Josephine moaned. “He would know what to do!”

Thomas flinched. Ellie could almost see his nervousness and uncertainty come flooding back.

“I – I will do everything I can,” he stammered.

Mother waved this away with an impatient hand. “You could never replace him! Now,
do
something!”

“Y-y-yes, of course, I – if you could just. . .”

“Mother, he needs you to give him some room so that he can get to Charlie,” Ellie burst out in exasperation.

Mother swung round, her hair escaping from its braid in wild tendrils that framed her face. Ellie thought of all the times her mother had told her that she looked wild and felt a startling and entirely inappropriate gurgle of laughter rising in her throat. She swallowed it down and they looked at each other for a long moment before Josephine gave a curt nod and stepped away from the bed.

“Thank you,” Thomas breathed. “Ellie, might I trouble you to cool this flannel in some fresh water?”

“Of course.” Ellie hurried down the stairs to wet the flannel in the kitchen sink. As she returned to the bedroom a few moments later she could hear her mother. Her voice was ragged with emotion

“. . .tried and tried for years after Eleanor. Three. We lost three.”

Ellie stopped still in the doorway, scarcely breathing. Her eyes fell to the faded carpet and seemed to become fixed there.

There was a sobbing breath. “Wesley told me that it wasn't going to work, that I was making myself unwell. That Ellie was enough for us and we had to give up. . .” Josephine broke off again.

Ellie stood frozen. She had known about the lost babies – some of them, at least. She had been old enough to know when her mother was expecting a baby – and then suddenly wasn't any more. She had known that Mother had been terribly ill. But she had never heard her speak so openly about it. Even her father didn't speak so openly about it. For her mother to be sharing something so personal with Thomas – someone who until so recently had been a complete stranger. . . Ellie felt her throat go dry.

“I can't lose him, Thomas, I can't,” Mother burst out again. “I can't, I can't, I can't. . .”

Thomas looked around at Ellie, his eyes wide in appeal. She rushed forwards, thrust the flannel at him and took hold of her mother's elbow.

“Come on, Mother, let's have a cup of tea downstairs.”

“I can't leave him!”

“You must,” Ellie replied firmly. “We're in Doctor Pritchard's way here, we're stopping him from doing his job properly.”

That seemed to get through. Thomas gave Ellie a grateful look as Mother allowed herself to be led away.

Downstairs, they sat across the kitchen table from each other in silence, their tea untouched. The ticking of the kitchen clock sounded unnaturally loud. Ellie pictured Charlie's flushed cheeks the evening before. He'd seemed so excited, so happy. Should she have been worried? Maybe she ought to have put an extra cardigan on him – it had been very cold. And he had kept pulling off his mittens. Surely that alone couldn't have made him so ill?

After what felt like hours, they heard Thomas's footsteps on the stairs and lurched to their feet, their chair legs screeching in unison against the kitchen floor.

“He seems stable,” the doctor began, without ceremony, “but he's weak and has a fever.”

“We didn't need you to tell us that,” Mother muttered.

“I can't say for certain what ails him, but I'll keep a close eye on him over the next few days. In the meantime, keep him warm and quiet, and get as much water into him as you can.”

“That's it?” Josephine demanded, her voice shrill.

“For now,” Thomas replied. “Please trust me. You must be patient. I will be back later today to check on him, but come and get me at once if anything changes.”

Thirteen

By the next day, there was no change in Charlie's condition. It was all Ellie could do to force occasional sips of water or tea into her mother – she wouldn't eat anything more, or even leave the bedroom except to visit the outhouse.

Thomas visited twice a day, as promised, and urged Ellie to make thin broths and get her mother and brother to drink as much of them as she could.

“Your mother's nerves are at breaking point, Ellie,” Thomas told her gently. “I don't want to alarm you, but you must try to keep her as calm, rested and nourished as possible or she will become unwell.”

Ellie had scarcely any appetite either but forced herself to keep eating regular meals; as her mother got weaker, she knew she couldn't afford to fall ill too.

It wasn't long before Mother stopped leaving her bed, and, sure enough, when Ellie checked on them both on the evening of the second day, her mother's forehead felt like a kettle fresh from the stove. She tucked them in together and sat with them as they tossed and turned feverishly.

She waited for a letter from her father with renewed desperation. Surely he would sense that they needed him? Surely he would know that she couldn't cope on her own?

Of course, she couldn't go to school. She was kept busy all day, looking after her mother and Charlie and trying to prevent the house from falling into total squalor. Then the evenings were a slow, quiet torment of loneliness and anxiety. Once all the chores were done, Ellie tried to take her mind off things by reading. But she couldn't focus on her book for long; her feet kept taking her to her parents' room where she would stand in the doorway, watching her mother and Charlie as they slept, observing the laboured rise and fall of their chests.

She couldn't even write to Aunt Frances, who hadn't yet let them know the address of her nursing training facility. Ellie thought of her cheerful, practical aunt with a longing that was almost physical.

By the third day, even Thomas wasn't able to stay long. It had turned colder and more people were ill in Endstone. The war meant many were working harder than ever and without enough to eat. They were even more vulnerable to the infection that seemed to be spreading. The only good thing about this was that it reassured Ellie that she had not been responsible for Charlie's illness, a notion that Thomas too was keen to dispel.

“Ellie, it's a virus. People are getting ill all over the region – all over the country, according to the papers. Even if Charlie did get a bit of a chill that night, it's extremely unlikely that he would have been able to fight off this bug. Small children and the elderly are always the first to succumb to any sort of epidemic.”

Ellie couldn't stop herself from dwelling on how different things might have been were her father home. Not only would he have been able to help the patients on a practical level, but he also care for the large numbers of patients, but he would also have provided a valuable link with the rest of the village. Ellie's mother had always been standoffish, but Father was loved by almost everyone. With him gone, they had been receiving fewer and fewer visitors. Now that she was housebound, Ellie realized she had never felt so alone.

Of course, Jack stopped by as often as he could between work and his own family commitments. On the evening of the fifth day after Charlie got sick, he came round, whistling cheerfully as ever and bearing a loaf of bread. The combined effect of his familiar, smiling face and this kind gesture was almost too much for Ellie. She stared fixedly at the table, trying to prevent a tell-tale tear from slipping down her cheek and betraying her.

“Steady on, El. It's only a bit of bread!” Jack clapped a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

“I know, but it's so kind of your mother.” Ellie was all too aware of how little the Scotts had to spare, and the fact that her own mother had never done anything to help them, though she was in a far better position to do so. She remembered Anna's comment about the maid and cringed.

“
Pfft
. You know my mam's got a soft spot for you and your Charlie. Besides, she's ever so grateful to you for helping us out with Dad that time.” Jack looked at a point over Ellie's shoulder as he said this last part. “Anyway, did I tell you, we've had a new letter from our Will?”

Ellie winced. Jack didn't seem to notice.
And why would he?
she thought. She hadn't told anyone about how long it was since they'd heard from Father. Voicing her worries would only make them more unbearably real.

“He sounds a changed man,” Jack continued, oblivious. “He's thriving. He's been promoted to lance-corporal and everything. It's like I always said, there are opportunities for boys like us out there that we just don't get at home. . .”

As he reported anecdotes and jokes from Will's letter, Ellie felt her stomach twist and curl. She was pleased for Jack and his family, she really was, but why hadn't they heard from Father? There was clearly no issue with letters getting through. . . There must be a good reason. There had to be. She wished she could believe it.

It wasn't long before, feeling disgusted with herself, she interrupted Jack's account, pleading the need to check on the patients, and bustled him from the house.

The next day she was pleased and surprised when the family's old maid Alice came to visit. It was months since they had had to let her go, but she'd heard in the village about Josephine and Charlie being unwell, and had thought Ellie might need some help. She had brought apples and helped Ellie chop vegetables for a broth, but more than anything, it was her company and her good nature for which Ellie was glad. They had always got on and the maid had sometimes covered for Ellie when she returned late from one of her adventures with Jack.

After about twenty minutes, however, her mother's shrill voice sounded upstairs.

“Is that Alice I hear?”

“Yes, Mother,” Ellie called, hastening to her feet, anxious about what might follow.

“What is she doing here?”

“She's—”

“Doesn't she understand that we don't require her services any more?”

Ellie hurried up the dark staircase as fast as she could go, her face burning.

“Show her the door,” snapped her mother.

“Mother—”

“It's all right, Ellie.” Alice's soft voice interrupted her. “She's not well. Let's not upset her. I'll go.”

Ellie turned slowly at the top of the stairs. But it wasn't anger she saw in her old friend's eyes. It was shock. And sympathy. Josephine had always been cool and curt with Alice, but the look on the other girl's face made Ellie realize just how much stranger her mother's behaviour had become. She walked slowly back down towards her.

“Alice—”

“I'm all right, Ellie,” she repeated. “But are you?”

No. No, no, no, no.

She forced her mouth into the semblance of a smile. “I'm fine,” she insisted brightly, then lowered her voice. “Just a bit tired. And Mother's fever is making her feel a bit peculiar, I think.”

Her mother's voice drifted back down. “Is she still here?” Both girls flinched.

“I'd better go,” Alice said. “But I'm never far if you need me, remember that, Ellie.”

Ellie did not allow her smile to waver until Alice was out of sight. Then she was alone again.