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***chapter 6***
Dark clouds have begun to crowd the skies and a chill crept into the air, causing him to shiver, but a smile tugs at the corners of Thomas's mouth when he sees the shop already has its shutters pulled down. The Monster has begun adding Saturday night to his Friday afternoon drinking sessions and it seems he's made an early start. Could this day get any better? He whistles the tune of a song he heard blaring out from the rowdy music hall he passed by last week as he climbs in through the small side window that Kate, as promised, has left off the latch for him to sneak inside, offering up a vague thanks to some unknown deity that it's not sticking and obligingly slides open. His father will have noticed his absence when he locked up, but he'll worry about the consequences later. Stupid b*****d'll probably be too sozzled to aim his fist straight anyroad.
He drops the few feet to the floor and is startled when his sister comes thundering down the narrow staircase as though fleeing the hounds of hell, her face tear-streaked and her thick raven-coloured hair, inherited from their Irish grandmother, so Dada says, flying about her shoulders like a shawl, a small towel or wash-cloth or sponge, something white, crumpled in her fist; stupid, stupid way to come downstairs, barely touching the banister like that, he thinks; she'll break her bloody neck! And so she almost does, missing the next to bottom step, stumbling and tumbling and falling so heavily against Thomas's chest that it winds him for several painful moments.
"Tommy, it's Ben!" She cries urgently.
And then they both thunder up the narrow staircase at breakneck speed, to his little brother's room, Kate to immediately re-take her prior position, kneeling by Ben's bed, dabbing the white cloth on his forehead, Thomas arriving a split second later. Only to come to a sudden halt in the doorway. Now that he's here...What? How did he, or Kate, for that matter, imagine Thomas being here would help?
He knew Ben had been sick for the last couple of days - it had even fleetingly crossed his mind, until he learnt the real cause, the reason for the argument between Kate and their father earlier that day was because William Barrow thought Kate wasn't looking after her little brother well enough – but his mind and heart were full of Paul and the thought quickly passed on by. Until now, Ben being ill had been so concern of Thomas's. They didn't like each other. At least, Thomas hadn't liked Ben ever since he was bribed with a quarter of pear drops and a farthing to tell a gaggle of lads where Thomas and Paul were hiding out, knowing full well they were going to beat them up for being different; he couldn't remember exactly when Ben first began disliking him. But they had been friends before they were enemies...They had laughed fit to burst in this very room, its silence broken now only by Ben's rasping, heaving breaths, that late evening when they were four and eight and he showed his little brother how best to kill the dozens of bugs that would crawl out of the cracks in the walls when darkness fell. Like Kate and their father, there had been a time when Thomas, too, spoilt him rotten, treating him to extra sweets, giving him piggy back rides, playing kickabout in the back yard.
He takes two or three hesitant steps inside the room, shocked to realise, despite everything, despite all their fights, all the times Ben has betrayed him, goaded him, twisted the truth when it suited, he still cares.
And he's scared. So scared.
The little boy's gaze is far, far away and his face and neck have oddly ballooned, putting Thomas in mind of Mad Lizzie MacMillan, who is often to be seen waddling about the town, red-faced and puffing and stopping to catch her breath every few yards, shaking her fist ineffectually at the kids who follow calling her names.
There's a smell of freshly-laundered sheets, a colourful posy in a vase on the window-sill, and in spite of the rain the window's opened a crack to let in some air – all Kate's handiwork, no doubt – but Ben's just lying there, rasping and panting like an old, old man, the sunshine yellow eiderdown, that Thomas vaguely remembers Mam telling him once was a wedding present, far too big for the small bed and dangling on the floor, and he looks so very, very tiny and helpless, even in that small bed, propped up on a pristine white pillow.
"Dada's gone to fetch Dr Swales," Kate says softly, without turning around, and she might have been talking to either of her brothers. "He said I wouldn't be able to run fast enough and he...Hush. Hush now," she adds tearfully, smoothing his forehead, as Ben whimpers in some fitful half dream.
Thomas's mouth is dry as dust and his heart racing. Doctors cost a fortune, he's heard they sometimes charge as much as half-a-crown, and shopkeepers don't make a fortune, not even those who aren't constantly drinking away any profit. The cash flow has got so bad lately that William Barrow has been talking about moving the business to London, where it's rumoured there's a fashion for the old style custom-made clocks again, and Kate says there's less money than there used to be to buy in the groceries, which is why she's asked Miss Baxter to teach her more about dress-making. Ben might be their father's favourite, but only the very, very wealthy send for a doctor; the poor never do unless…
"Why is his face all swelled up like that?" He hears the catch in his voice. "Why is his neck like a…like a...?" He searches for a comparison. Like a bull's is the only simile that comes to mind. But it sounds like an insult and he doesn't want to insult Ben, it's not right, not here in a sick room, where his little brother is…
...Dying...
"I don't know," Kate murmurs, and his sister's voice is wavering too.
"But it's tonsillitis! He gets tonsillitis all the time and you said it was tonsillitis again!" He's clutching at straws, but he doesn't know how else to make everything all right. And Kate, she's scared and uncertain, which makes Thomas scared and uncertain too because Kate is always so calm and strong, and now, when he needs her most, she isn't.
"Don't you dare shout at me, Thomas Barrow! I thought it was tonsillitis and now I don't know because I'm NOT a doctor and I'm the one who has to look after Ben all the time while you just go off whenever it suits you, and I'm tired! I'm really, really tired!" She glares at him in fury, and as he sees her flushed cheeks and too-bright eyes before she buries her face in the sunshine yellow eiderdown, weeping softly, he remembers with a pang of guilt that Kate hasn't been well either. She'd told him off only two or three days ago for not using a hanky before she'd had to tell him off again today, and said then she thought she'd caught his summer cold, but normally Kate throws off coughs and colds and sore throats as easily as Thomas does; neither of them has ever been a weakling like Ben. Mrs Roberts from Mason Street, who'll deliver your child for as little as a quarter of tea (two ounces it it doesn't survive) proudly boasts to the other women as they stand gossiping on their donkey-stoned steps and smoke their pipes, he's the tiniest baby she ever delivered in twenty years. And Ben's still much smaller and skinnier than other boys his age, which makes everyone spoil him.
And he still doesn't know what to do when Kate is so lost. He's no use in a sick room, perhaps he's no use to anyone like The Monster often says, and even when he hears their voices and footsteps on the stairs, even when the door opens and his father and Dr Swales enter, bringing in the breeze and his father's palpable hatred, he stays where he is, unable to move, as though some sorcerer has happened by and thrown a spell to glue his feet to the floor.
"No children. Go, go!" Dr Arnold Swales dismisses Thomas with an arrogant wave of his hand, removing his rain-glistening hat and cloak to throw over the small wooden chair lately brought from the kitchen, and impatiently signals for Kate to move out of his way. The peremptory order, although it makes him bristle with anger, for at thirteen Thomas considers himself to be a man, propels him into action, at least; the sarcastic comment his patient is actually a child, has the doctor not noticed? remains locked on his tongue only in deference to Ben, and with no more than a scathing glance which he would come to perfect in later years, he leaves, barely restraining himself, again for Ben's sake, from childishly slamming the door, catching a last glimpse of the physician snapping open the bag he has deposited on the night-stand and pulling out a stethoscope.
The day has changed beyond all recognition. A darkness has fallen and heavy raindrops are drumming against the small landing window as if they would demand entrance. With shoulders hunched, he leans over the banister rails, staring down into the depths of silent shadows hidden in the twists and turns of the narrow stairwell. How long he stands there, listening to the rattle of the rain and the subdued conversation and movement from within the sick room, he cannot tell. A few minutes, an hour or more. Ironically, time is irrelevant here in this building filled with machines created to steadfastly count down every second of life
Thomas is breathing rapidly now. His throat is raw and his eyes sting, and he could blame his cold, but this feeling is different. He's had colds often enough before to know. And then he realises what the unfamiliar sensation is: he is going to cry!
But he hasn't cried for years! He'd never give his father the satisfaction, never wanted to worry Kate, never thought Ben's betrayals worthy of tears. He'd thought his heart was made of steel, but it snaps as easily as if made of twigs.
The door behind him clicks gently open and shut and Kate slips quietly to his side.
"Dr Swales says it's diphtheria, Tom," his sister says with sad resignation. She isn't crying now. She's all done. Because she has to be. For Death comes regularly to knock on the homes of the poor and Death has no compunction. Not six months before it came for Molly Hammond's husband and three children; only weeks ago Joe Wilcox was taken. And older folk shake their heads when they talk of the terrible outbreak of diphtheria that killed and maimed so many in the town years before he or Kate were even born.
There is still no cure.
"He might get better yet." She squeezes her brother's shoulder, again the strong, sensible Kate he can lean on.
"He might,"Thomas whispers in return. They both know it's unlikely.
"The doctor asked for more water," Kate adds, looking down at the empty bowl she carries.
He watches as she joins the shadows on the stairs and it's hard to tell whether he or the rain is shedding the most tears.
A/N: I was intrigued to learn that in the early part of the twentieth century it was fairly common for women to smoke pipes so thought I would include it. Apparently, it was also common then for women to scrub their doorsteps with a specially made stone called a donkey stone. Research is...interesting!
