It was Dr Dorsey who met his colleague off the train from London and brought him to see Joseph. It hadn’t been the best of weeks. Andre had been absent for most of the time with his sick friend and Nessie was worried about him as, when she did see him, he looked ill himself. Now she welcomed the two doctors, thanked Dr Mellor profusely for coming and then stood back. She was surprised at how young the consultant was. Only about the same age as Oliver Dorsey, who told her that they had studied at medical college together.
She watched from the corner of her eye as the two doctors leaned over the child and gave him a very thorough examination, which involved taking measurements of his head and gently poking and probing. Dr Mellor also listened to his heart through his stethoscope, took his blood pressure and his temperature. Joseph sat motionless throughout, apart from once when he whimpered as the doctor pressed the back of his neck. She could hear the two men murmuring to each other although she couldn’t quite catch what they said as she waited in an agony of suspense for the verdict.
At last they rose and sat on either side of Joseph and she hurried across to them.
Dr Mellor was quite a short chap with a bushy beard and a mass of mousy brown hair. He wore thick glasses but his eyes were kindly as he smiled at her and glanced at Oliver.
‘I’m afraid it isn’t good news, Miss Carson,’ he said eventually. ‘I have to agree with Dr Dorsey’s diagnosis. I believe that Joseph does have an inoperable brain tumour.’
‘I see.’ Nessie’s lip wobbled dangerously but she managed to maintain her composure. ‘So … is there nothing that can be done?’
He shook his head gravely. ‘The medicine that Dr Dorsey has prescribed will keep him pain-free and I would just advise you to make every day as pleasant as you can for the little chap. I’m so sorry. I assure you that if there was anything at all I could do, I would do it.’
‘I’m sure you would and I’m very grateful to you for coming all this way,’ she answered graciously. She kept her hands clasped tightly at her waist so that they wouldn’t see them trembling.
‘I shall be here to help you through whatever lies ahead,’ Oliver Dorsey told her sincerely. His kind words were almost her undoing and she was so choked that she could only nod, and shortly after, Dr Dorsey escorted the other doctor back to the train station.
‘It’s tragic,’ Dr Mellor said sadly as they strode along Abbey Street. ‘I just wish there were something I could do. That sister of his is quite special though, isn’t she? Most people would have gone to pieces but she managed to stay dignified.’ He smiled when Oliver flushed slightly and asked, ‘Ah, got a soft spot for her, have you, old chap?’
‘I don’t know her all that well,’ Oliver answered. ‘But she does seem like a remarkable young woman. She’s got that business up and running since she’s been there. It looks like a different place. And after all she’s been through over the last couple of years as well. First her father left them and they had to move house. Then her mother gives birth to Joseph and gets murdered. And now here she is bringing the child up as her own. Most women would have cracked under all the strain.’
The man nodded in agreement. He wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see a romance develop in that direction if the way Oliver had looked at Nessie was anything to go by. But then their talk turned to medical matters as they neared the station, although his friend’s words stayed at the back of Oliver’s mind.
Once the doctors had left, Nessie began to sob but then after a time she thrust her chin in the air, wiped her eyes and tried to get on with things. Weeping and wailing wasn’t going to alter anything. She would make whatever time Joseph had left as comfortable as possible.
As soon as she had managed to pull herself together, she went up to Reuben’s room to collect his washing and tidy his bed. But as she was straightening the blankets, she noticed something sticking out from under the mattress. Seconds later her mouth gaped open as she stared at a small pile of pound notes, which Reuben had obviously intended to hide. There was more money there than they could earn between them in a whole year, so where had it come from? Her first reaction was to take it downstairs to the workshop and wave it under his nose, demanding to know whose it was, but then common sense took over and she knew that this would only make things worse. Reuben was a grown man and he’d taken to going out quite a lot lately. She had assumed that he had met a young lady but what if he had started gambling? But he obviously hadn’t wanted her to know about it so eventually she tucked it back where she had found it and left the room. She would bide her time and see if he mentioned it.
Shortly after, Reuben came in to find out what the doctor had had to say about Joseph and when she told him he shook his head and nodded. Like Nessie, he wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t really expected good news after seeing the way the child had deteriorated.
‘Is Andre back yet?’ he asked as she made him some tea and she shook her head.
‘No but he promised he would be by this evening. We have Mr Jenkins’s funeral in the morning. Is the coffin ready?’
‘Almost.’ He bit into one of the biscuits she had made the day before. ‘Then I’ve got to get crackin’ on the two little ones for them babies.’ He glanced at Joseph and a little shiver ran up his spine as he realised that in the not-too-distant future he might be making one for him. ‘Actually, I could have done with measurin’ them before I started but the door to the preparation room is locked as usual.’
The preparation room, or the cold room, was the term used for the place where Andre prepared the bodies for burial on cold marble slabs. ‘Why do you think he keeps it locked all the time an’ won’t let either of us in there?’ He mused then. ‘He seems happy enough for you to clean the rest of the place. The only time I’m admitted is if he needs a hand liftin’ a body into a coffin.’
Nessie shrugged. ‘I dare say he has his reasons. It’s probably because he knows you don’t like going in there, and I certainly don’t want to,’ she commented, her thoughts still very much focused on the doctor’s visit. He nodded and soon went back to work, leaving her with her thoughts.
Andre returned late that afternoon. Already a thick hoar frost had formed on the grass and on the cobblestones and his hands were blue with cold. His nose was glowing red too, standing out in stark contrast to his ashen skin.
‘I’ll get you a nice hot drink,’ Nessie told him as she helped him off with his coat but he waved her away. ‘No, I’m fine but I should tell you that I have decided to bring my friend here to stay. We can use the empty bedroom next to mine. Would you mind preparing it?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t mind. I’ll make a start on it this evening,’ she agreed. ‘But we had two more clients in this afternoon. Both bodies will need to be collected as soon as possible. Are you well enough?’
He nodded. ‘Tell Reuben to prepare the cart.’ She thought he seemed preoccupied and then he said suddenly, ‘I should warn you that my friend is very ill. Dying in fact.’
‘Oh!’ Nessie bit her lip, not sure how she should reply. She could only imagine that Andre must think a great deal of his friend to want them to spend their final days with him here.
‘Do you mind me asking how she is going to get here? If she’s so ill, I mean.’ She had assumed that it was a woman that Andre went to see each weekend, and now that she knew how ill she was it explained why he hadn’t liked her teasing him about getting married.
‘My friend is a man,’ Andre informed her shortly. ‘And I shall be personally fetching him back here tomorrow after I have attended to the funeral we have booked.’
‘Very well.’ Nessie was mildly surprised but she made no comment as she hurried away to ask Reuben to prepare the cart.
‘Sounds a bit strange to me,’ Reuben said, frowning, when she told him about Andre’s sick friend coming to stay that evening.
‘Why does it? Men are allowed to have male friends you know.’ Nessie paused in the act of stirring the large pan of stew she had cooking on the range.
‘And why have you cooked that huge pan full of stew? There’s enough there to last us all for a week at least.’
‘It’s not all for us,’ she admitted. ‘I’ve cooked some extra to take round to the family whose little boy we buried yesterday. They live in the courts and they’re having a really hard time of it at the minute. Her husband is on short time and when I called round there they didn’t even have a fire in the grate. The children looked hungry so I thought I’d cook for them.’
Reuben frowned again but she hurried on, ‘Don’t worry. I bought enough for the extra out of my wages.’
‘You’re too soft by half,’ he grunted as he turned his attention back to the newspaper and she thought again of the money hidden beneath his mattress. Hopefully he would tell her where it had come from soon.
It was pitch black when Nessie set off for the courtyards that evening and within minutes she was shivering despite the pot of hot stew she was clutching and the warm cloak that Andre had bought for her. She had left Reuben washing and shaving as he got ready to go out for the evening yet again, and Andre was in the preparation room with the two deceased they had fetched from their homes late that afternoon. She would need to be quick, for she didn’t want Joseph to be left on his own for too long.
As she turned into the court the sound of a pig grunting echoed on the chill air and the smell that emanated from the sty and the privy made her feel nauseous. Each courtyard consisted of four tiny two-up two-down cottages, two on either side. At the end of the courtyard was a sty. The pig that was housed there was fed on scraps by the four families that lived there throughout the year before it was slaughtered on Christmas Eve to provide them all with a Christmas dinner. In the New Year they would then buy a new piglet and the fattening-up process would begin all over again. Nessie couldn’t help but feel sorry for the creature as it snuffled about in the dirty straw, although she knew that without it the poor families would have had very meagre Christmas fare.
Next to the sty was the outdoor privy. It was nothing more than a wooden hut which contained an ash toilet, nowhere near adequate enough for the four families that shared it. In the summer the smell was unbearable and the children, with nowhere else to go, often played in the raw sewage that escaped from it. It was no wonder that so many of them died, Nessie thought as she tapped on the door of the cottage of the recently bereaved young mother.
It was answered almost immediately and when the woman saw who it was she looked dismayed. ‘Me husband don’t get paid till Friday,’ she told Nessie, thinking that she had come to collect money.
‘Oh, goodness, I’m not here for that,’ Nessie assured her with a friendly smile.
‘Er … you’d best come in then,’ the woman said, holding the door a little wider. ‘Though I can’t promise that it’s much warmer in ’ere.’
Nessie thought she had never seen such poverty as she entered the tiny kitchen. Three very thin children with huge eyes were huddled together under a thin blanket in one corner of the room, which was illuminated by a single tallow candle that cast dancing shadows on the walls. A rickety table surrounded by mismatched chairs stood in the centre but other than that there was no furniture that Nessie could see apart from a few wooden crates that were clearly being used for seating. The rest of the furniture had no doubt been taken to the pawnshop, along with anything else of value they might once have owned.
‘Me ’usband ’as gone to the slag ’eap to see if he can pick us a bit o’ coal,’ the woman explained.
Nodding, Nessie placed the heavy pot on the table.
‘I hope you don’t mind but I got rather carried away when I was cooking the stew earlier on in the day.’ As she lifted the lid, a delicious aroma wafted around the room and she saw the children’s eyes widen with anticipation. ‘So, I was wondering if you could use it up? It’ll only get thrown away if you don’t.’
She had been very careful how she worded it, for she knew that although many of the people thereabouts were desperately poor they could also be desperately proud.
The woman licked her lips and eyed the pot warily, but soon her hunger overcame her pride and she said airily, ‘I dare say we could ’elp yer out if yer want rid of it. Ta, very much, miss.’ The children had already emerged from the blanket and were warily approaching the table as Nessie hurriedly made for the door. The poor little things looked as if they were starving.
‘You can drop the pot back into the parlour when you’re done with it,’ she said over her shoulder and as she quietly closed the door behind her she saw the children dive on the pot with spoons at the ready like a little pack of hungry wolves. Suddenly, Nessie felt privileged. Her own family had struggled from time to time but they had never had to live in the dire poverty that these families did. She just wished there was something she could do to help them.
As she was emerging from the courtyards into Abbey Street, she glimpsed two men talking on the other side of the road. Realising that one of them was Reuben, she paused and drew back into the shadows. Her heart sank as she saw that the other man was Snowy White, a well-known local villain. Why would her brother be talking to him? How did he even know him? The police had been trying to put the finger on Snowy for years, everyone knew that. They also knew that he was responsible for almost every robbery or burglary that took place within a twenty-mile radius. But Snowy was clever, he always made sure that he had an alibi and let his gang do the dirty work so that he could milk the profits. He owned a number of businesses in town, which ensured that he could always account for being so well off. But people knew some of these businesses were only fronts for all sorts of illegal doings.
It was common knowledge that he owned a whorehouse and it was whispered that his tobacconist shop was just a cover for an opium den. Now Nessie stood quietly trying her best to hear what the two men were saying but their heads were bent close together and they were too far away. Eventually she saw Snowy pass something to Reuben and then the two men parted and went their separate ways.
Nessie stood for a few moments chewing on her lip as her mind whirled. She knew that Reuben missed the outdoor work he had done on the railways but had hoped that in time he would settle to their new lifestyle. But if anything, he seemed to become ever more restless. And now to see him talking to Snowy … He was a bad man to mix with and what was it that she had seen him pass to Reuben? Her thoughts flew to the money tucked beneath his mattress and a feeling of foreboding came over her. Surely Reuben hadn’t resorted to stealing? Not now when they finally had a safe house to live in and they were secure? She felt sick at the thought of it. From now on she determined she would watch Reuben very closely indeed.