The doctor closed the bedroom door gently, and ushered Frances, Lizzy and me ahead of him down the stairs. Back in the kitchen, he regarded us with a serious expression, and it was Frances he turned to eventually. ‘Were you aware the young lady was in the family way, Mrs Adams?’
She nodded. ‘She was…treated most roughly while on active duty.’
‘I see.’ His face softened in sympathy.
‘There was blood,’ I said, and my voice wavered. ‘When I tried to pick her up to carry her back here.’ I kept my eyes on him, and he cleared his throat but didn’t reply immediately. ‘Doctor Nichols, the blood?’
‘Yes. The young lady is no longer expecting.’
I let out a shaking breath; of course I’d known, but it was hard to hear it.
Nichols pursed his lips. ‘I’ve done all I can for her, now it’s your turn.’
He looked at me now, and held out a hand to Belinda, who placed in it one of the bandages she’d gone out to the ambulance to find. ‘You do understand the concept of rest, Mrs Davies? As opposed to trying to lift young women off the floors of ambulances?’
‘I do,’ I said, feeling foolish again, and the pain in my shoulder was throbbing madly, as if in reproof. ‘It was instinct. Kitty’s…well, she’s like a sister to me.’
‘What caused it?’ Frances wanted to know.
‘It was very early days,’ Dr Nichols said. ‘Who knows why these things happen? Nature might have taken a hand, or the young lady might –’ He broke off, embarrassed to say it aloud, but we all knew what he’d been thinking.
‘No,’ Frances said with quiet conviction. ‘She wouldn’t. Not Kitty.’
‘What can we do for her?’ I said, to steer the conversation towards the positive.
‘She’ll need plenty of fluids, and she’s lost some blood so keep her still for a while. No travelling, no exertion. Other than that,’ Nichols finished tying off my bandage, ‘there’s very little you can do.’
He made me open my mouth before he left. ‘Still gargling with salt?’ I made a strangled sound of affirmation, and he nodded, satisfied. ‘Healing nicely, Mrs Davies. But stay off the toffees for a while, eh?’
When he’d gone, Frances went back upstairs to see Kitty, telling us to stay put; good intentions or not, the girl didn’t need to be crowded. Lizzy and I waited, and Lizzy cleaned up the spilled tea and made fresh, which we didn’t drink. We couldn’t think of a thing to say, and both looked up with relief when Frances eventually came back down.
‘Is she in pain?’ I asked.
She shook her head. ‘Not now. But she’s heartsick, the poor dear girl. Thinks it was all her fault.’
Lizzy looked as appalled as I felt. ‘Why ever would she think that?’
‘She says it’s because she wished it. She wanted it gone, and now it is.’
‘But that wasn’t because of anything she did,’ I said, feeling even more wretched. I could only hope she wouldn’t continue to believe it, or she’d punish herself forever.
‘She’s been ill for a few days,’ Lizzy said, and her musing tone made me look at her closely.
‘Do you think it’s connected?’
‘I don’t know. Do people usually become sick?’
‘I don’t know either,’ I admitted, ‘but it seems quite likely the other way around. If she has some kind of illness it might have affected her badly enough.’
‘We’ll see how she is in the morning,’ Frances said. ‘If she’s no better we’ll call Doctor Nichols back.’
I nodded. ‘She was saying she had a cold, but yesterday she was rubbing her neck as if it was aching, and she’s got quite a temperature. Maybe it’s ’flu.’
‘Stay here tonight,’ Frances said to me. ‘I’d like to keep an eye on you. And you, Lizzy, you’re looking done in, girl. You’re not back to full strength yourself.’ She looked from one of us to the other and back again, then raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Goodness sakes, girls, will one of you please learn to take care of yourselves, then teach the other two?’
Kitty was no better by the following morning. The doctor called around again after breakfast, and spent a long time with her while we waited in the kitchen. Eventually he came back down, and pronounced her suffering from influenza, on top of everything.
‘Keep her rested,’ he said, ‘and don’t let her go back out in the cold until she’s fully better.’
Belinda sighed. ‘Does that mean I’ll have to help with the lambing now?’
Nichols looked up sharply. ‘Eh? What’s that?’
‘The lambing,’ Belinda said, and licked some butter off the knife. ‘Kitty enjoyed it ever so much, and she took my turns. But if she’s not to go out in the cold I expect I shall have to do it.’
‘You mean that child has been…’ Nichols shook his head. ‘Well, that puts a different complexion on things.’ He turned to Frances. ‘Mrs Adams, it might very well not be the ’flu at all, more likely thatMiss Maitland has contracted a disease from the sheep. It’s very dangerous for expectant mothers to come into contact with livestock, I thought that was common knowledge.’ He picked up his bag, a little crossly. ‘With that in mind, I shall now go and examine her again.’
We all looked at one another in stunned, guilty shock. Frances and Lizzy clearly felt responsible for letting Kitty work with the lambs and not being aware of the risks, and Belinda had cheerfully given over her share of the tasks. As for me…
After Doctor Nichols had left a little while later, having confirmed his new diagnosis, we were still helpless to find the words to ease each other’s remorse, and eventually Frances reverted to her brisk, businesslike self. She despatched the three girls to their jobs, told Lizzy to take me back to the cottage, and prepared to nurse Kitty through the fever that had taken hold. Unable to contribute anything useful, Lizzy and I agreed, and before long we were pushing open the door to her mother’s cottage, feeling the peace and familiarity like a comforting cloak we could pull around us and shut everything else out.
Lizzy took a dark bottle from the cupboard under the window-seat. Uncle Jack’s favourite single malt whisky. She poured a generous measure into two glasses, and we drank in silence, each lost to our own thoughts. Hers, clearly, to Jack, and mine to Will. My own Lord William. I felt again the clenching loss of the paper rose that symbolised everything we had meant together these past six years, but made myself remember that the hands that had made it were still living, still strong, still able to create, even if they no longer wanted to; he was so much luckier than he might have been, so much luckier than countless others.
I sipped my whisky and let my head rest against the back of the armchair, and the low, insistent throb in my neck and shoulder gradually faded. My heartbeat slowed for what seemed like the first time in days, and with the warmth of the whisky loosening my limbs into blissful relaxation, the pictures of a dark, frightening future were gradually replaced by memories. They were safer; they couldn’t change. They could hurt, but they could not kill.