by Jean Stubbs
‘Quite so,’ said Ambrose quickly.
She was formidable, this lady, with her strong features and her sombre eyes. He found himself trying to take care of her interests, though heaven knew he could not even take care of his own.
‘Miss Bloom, it would require a considerable outlay on your part with no guarantee that you would ever get the capital back, let alone make a profit!’
‘Mr Longe,’ she replied, a little impatiently, ‘that is my problem. Yours is to convince me that I am making a sound investment.’
He sat for a full minute, thinking. Then he shrugged, got down from the stool, stuck both hands in his pockets and walked as far round the room as the Koenig press would let him.
‘I fear I cannot do any such thing, Miss Bloom,’ said Ambrose finally. ‘I have no idea how to market myself. I never had. All I can tell you is that if I was given the same opportunities as Sam Pickering, I’d do at least as well as he does! How is he doing, by the by?’
‘Very well. I looked into the finances of The Herald also.’
‘I thought perhaps you might have done,’ said Ambrose, grinning. ‘Did you think The Clarion could compete with The Herald in the open field? For that’s what it would amount to!’
She nodded.
‘Bless my soul,’ said Ambrose, and leaned on the old Koenig. He felt extraordinarily moved. ‘A knightly combat! ’ he remarked quietly.
‘That is what you and The Clarion need, Mr Longe. A fair contest and a worthy opponent. With The Post you may amuse yourself. With The Herald you will not play games!’
He looked at her absently.
He said, ‘If I had a newspaper with the weight and authority of The Herald, Sam Pickering and I would finish The Post off!’
Naomi shrugged. It was a wonderful shrug. If Arnold Thwaites had seen it, he would have shut up shop the same day. Yet another idea was now disturbing Ambrose.
‘You haven’t any secret ambitions to be a lady journalist or anything of that sort, have you?’ he asked in trepidation. ‘You’re not thinking of taking the paper over and changing its policy? Or advising me, pressurising me, altering and confounding me generally? Or of employing relatives and friends who are unable to find work elsewhere? No? Because if I can’t run my own newspaper, the whole idea is strictly out of the question.’
She shook her head emphatically.
‘Mr Longe, I have no wish to curtail your freedom or the freedom of The Clarion in any way. It remains your newspaper. But I shall offer practical help in order to increase its circulation and to broaden its scope. I have access to foreign and financial news sources. I believe I could bring in more advertising. I can help you in many ways. My business connections are quite as good as those of your uncle, the ironmaster. You do not object, I take it, to that sort of assistance?’
‘I see no reason why I should,’ he answered cautiously.
‘But there is some work I should like to do for The Clarion.’
‘And what is that, Miss Bloom?’ he asked, once more afraid that this magic carpet was about to be whisked from under his feet.
She said, almost shyly, ‘I should like to keep the books.’
He burst out laughing with relief and delight.
‘I am quite serious, Mr Longe,’ said Naomi sternly. ‘Providing you have no objection, of course. If you have, then we must employ a bookkeeper.’
‘Not the least objection in life, I do assure you. The books couldn’t be in better hands.’
‘And of course we must put this matter on a proper business footing and discuss all the details, so that we both know exactly where we stand.’ She produced a small notebook and pencil from her reticule. ‘What is the name of your solicitor, please?’
Ambrose was floored at once.
‘I suppose … no, old Nick Hurst is dead now, poor devil. He used to deal with my mother’s affairs. Well, someone else in the firm would do, wouldn’t they? Ah, but his partners took over when he died! What would the name of the firm be now? At any rate, I know they’re still down at the bottom of the High Street.’
She gave him another minute to reflect and sighed impatiently, saying, ‘Never mind, Mr Longe. I shall find you a good solicitor.’ Then she cried, ‘This is ridiculous! I buy, I sell. I ask questions, I answer them. I demand evidence, I provide it. What kind of business is this, I ask you?’
‘Oh, I leave that to you to decide,’ said Ambrose, grinning.
She glanced quickly at him, and smiled too.
‘I think you are not aware that you give me a great deal of power by allowing me to handle the financial side,’ she remarked. ‘Do you know that? To keep a company’s books is to know the company — and sometimes to know it better than it knows itself.’
‘Not this company,’ said Ambrose, grinning. ‘You’ll learn a great deal more about a newspaper by coming in on press day. And if you don’t leave now, Miss Bloom, The Clarion will be a day late!’
She gave a triumphant little laugh, and closed the notebook.
‘Sometime you must invite me to press day. Meanwhile, Mr Longe, perhaps you will call on me soon? Shall we say Friday evening at six o’clock? My solicitor will be there in an informal way, to make everything plain to you. Then, when you are quite satisfied, we can enter a legal business partnership.’
‘Oh, anything you do will be all right by me,’ said Ambrose.
She said, warning him against himself, ‘That is not a business-like remark, Mr Longe. It is well that I am honest.’
He bowed and kissed her hand. He hardly noticed that she had left. The scent of violets remained.
He felt incredibly free. The shop seemed larger and lighter and cooler than before. Anything was now possible. He was young again, and the world gaped like an oyster. As he bent forward to swallow it whole he saw a great pearl lying at its heart, and the name of the pearl swam into his mind, so that he ran out of the shop like a boy, banging the door behind him, and calling after her.
‘Miss Bloom! Miss Bloom!’
She was sauntering gracefully down the length of the hot, bright market square. Now and then, the brim of her Leghorn straw bonnet inclined to a passing acquaintance.
‘Miss Blo-o-o-m!’
She turned, astonished. The fringe of her parasol was all a-tremble. She began to walk gracefully back, puzzled, but he could not wait for her to reach him. He started to run towards her, oblivious to public stares and comments.
Ah, how he wished that his mother was alive to share the moment. How many years ago had he promised that one day he would revive the name of her own news-sheet? Thirty? He was only a boy then, but he remembered his vow and Charlotte’s answering look most vividly.
Naomi was near enough for him to see the amusement on her face, but he did not care. He halted before her, breathless and exalted.
‘Miss Bloom … forgive me … but why not have … a new name … for the new paper?’
‘Mr Longe. It is your paper!’ Guessing that he had thought of something momentous. ‘What name would you suggest?’
‘Mr Longe! Mr Longe!’ bawled the journeyman from the doorstep of The Clarion. ‘T’door-latch is snecked. Have you got t’key?’
‘Oh, Lord!’ cried Ambrose and turned to run back.
Naomi caught him delicately and tightly by one sleeve. She was smiling openly.
‘The name, Mr Longe. The wonderful name, if you please.’
‘I’ll be with you in a minute, Mick!’ Ambrose shouted back. Then, ‘Oh, Miss Bloom, better than The Clarion, better than The Lancashire Herald, best of all. All that I’ve ever wanted!’
‘Oh, la!’ she cried, laughing at him outright.
He watched her expression to see how she registered the title.
‘The Northern Correspondent.’
‘The Northern Correspondent,’ she repeated, trying the syllables on her tongue. ‘I like that. I like that very much. Yes, yes. That is a good name. A name of great importance.’
Then he laughed too, out of s
heer joy, and saluted her triumphantly, and began to run back to the shop — slapping his pockets, trying to find the key he had left hung up inside the office.
SEVEN: GRIM HARVEST
On Tuesday morning, The Clarion duly reported an outbreak of severe summer diarrhoea among the navvies in Garth and lambasted the Wyndendale Railway Company for failing to provide proper living and working conditions.
This was not the first time that Ambrose Longe had taken gossip for truth and made a political issue out of it, and Sam Pickering never let him get away with anything. So The Herald sent their reporter down to Garth to check the story. The man came back with a rumour which Sam dared not print until it became official fact, but he set up a hasty ‘Postscript’ as the paper went to press on Tuesday night, to the effect that Mr Bailey, chief surgeon of Millbridge Hospital and an authority on Asiatic diseases, had been called to Garth for consultation. That same evening, the Board of Health was summoned to hear a full report from Mr Bailey. At first light on Wednesday morning the cholera unit was opened, to be cleaned and made ready for the first victims.
Life relishes little ironies. It was given to Arnold Thwaites, rightly described as the best chair-polisher in local journalism, to scoop this historic news. On Thursday morning, The Post headline screamed — CHOLERA STRIKES WYNDENDALE.
By Friday, reports of other cases were coming in from all over the valley. On Saturday the weekend edition of The Herald, and a special edition of The Clarion, pushed national and international news to the back page and gave inside coverage to a full report of the epidemic, reprinting the substance of the cholera circulars so that people should know what to do if they fell sick.
The ironmaster marshalled his voluntary police force with the minimum of fuss to mount guard over the enclosure. At Kingswood Hall, Ruth’s grand wedding was postponed, and her five married sisters and their families warned to stay away. Zelah, the ironmaster’s Quaker wife, and Anna his Quaker daughter, expert in nursing the sick, prepared and set aside two rooms in the great house as convalescent wards. For, as Zelah Howarth pointed out, the official unit might well be glad of outside help as the contagion spread.
Harold Bailey had snatched a few hours’ sleep at the cholera hospital, and now stood opposite his director in the small bare room which served him as an office and general living quarters. They were careful to keep a certain distance from each other and had not shaken hands. Dr Standish did not touch any article of furniture or take refreshment of any sort during this short visit. His identity had been carefully established by guards at the gate before he was allowed to enter, and he held a handkerchief to his nose and mouth as he crossed the drab compound. This he stuffed into his pocket, and on reaching the office, he set down that morning’s Herald without comment. He had marked the paragraph which gave the national cholera figures for July, and the little surgeon whistled as he read them.
‘Will it get worse than this, do you think, Mr Bailey?’
‘I should think it more than likely, sir.’
Harold Bailey was concerned with a matter which seemed of greater moment. An old campaigner, he had drawn a rough diagram of the valley and circled the outbreaks with a red crayon. He was studying the tactics of the enemy.
‘Take a look at this map, Dr Standish,’ he said, with a little grin of triumph. ‘I think you will be interested!’
He spoke rapidly, with enthusiasm, despite the fact that his eyelids were reddened and he had obviously slept in his clothes.
‘I have always thought I might catch sight of King Cholera’s footprints if I got up early enough,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but India is such a vast continent that you cannot hope to track him there. No, it is this small valley of ours that has made the glimpse possible. Mark you, this survey only represents our first batch of patients. Already out of date by several hundred, I fear, but still relevant.
‘Starting with Millbridge, we had cases scattered casually across this poor district near Market Place. No apparent pattern to them at all — except that they were working men. But the landlord of a local tavern, the Red Lion in Shooter’s Lane, was one of the first to die. I think that some or all of them could have been his customers!
‘Now look at the poor quarter of Flawnes Green. Sporadic cases again. And again, mostly working men. But we have another clue here. A prostitute from Lower Flawnes was found dead of cholera in her cellar. It seems reasonable to assume that she was infected early. Could not these other cases have been infected clients?
‘Further down the valley, we have millworkers from Thornley, coalminers from Swarth Moor, and a handful of cases from Childwell. Again, poor people from poor districts. I hear well-fed councillors crying, “A poor man’s disease!” Not a bit of it! King Cholera don’t mind expensive provender!
‘He crosses the river into Medlar and tries more respectable folk. Three little girls from the same family. And — mark how and where he moves! — he is travelling either along or within sight of the railway line. The only stop he seems to miss is Coldcote. At Garth he comes to an end — and to the beginning of our epidemic.
‘Now far be it from me to judge my fellow men, but navvies are crude and filthy folk. Their habits and conditions encourage our royal foe. Once among them he can expect choice pickings, so an outbreak at the tunnel is understandable. But why not begin in the town of Garth where he can butter his bread even thicker? Why wander up into the hills, and put a cold finger on a child at an outlying farm?
‘I believe I can show you the answer!
‘In the early hours of Monday the seventeenth of July, at Garth, a navvy called Reilly was taken ill. Not unexpectedly, if you consider the circumstances. The navvies had been paid on Saturday night and spent the whole of Sunday — and most of nine weeks’ wages — drinking. Upset stomachs and bowels would be common enough after such an orgy. So Reilly’s friends nursed him until he was obviously at his last gasp and then fetched in a local apothecary, who diagnosed food-poisoning. The fellow was buried, and no one thought any more about it.
‘When I went down there eight days later, at their surgeon’s request, two of the cases were convulsed. As you know, Dr Standish, cholera convulsions are an awesome spectacle. Once observed, there is no mistaking them. I was about to inform the surgeon of my conclusions when one hulking fellow, lounging in the doorway, remarked that his mates were “going the same way as Reilly”. Intrigued by this comment, I asked a number of pertinent questions.
‘Apparently, Reilly had arrived there only the day before his death, making his way by foot and coach from Glasgow — where the epidemic is exceedingly bad. Everything they could tell me pointed to his symptoms being those of virulent cholera.
‘I have set down my evidence for you to see. Now look at the map, Dr Standish! Reilly reaches Millbridge and drinks at the Red Lion. He has to get to the far end of the valley, which is unknown to him. What would be the most sensible thing to do in such a situation? To follow the railway line to Garth! All these victims are contacts on the way. He takes a prostitute. He drinks with working men. He begs from those who are better off.
‘It is as though King Cholera himself jumped down from that coach in Millbridge and strode Wyndendale from end to end.’
The two men were silent for a few moments. Then the dry little surgeon spoke again, meditatively.
‘Every day this picture changes. The original trail is almost obliterated, but I have been keeping a short account of each case. One line, no more. Name, address, age and sex of patient. Admission date. Length and severity of illness. Outcome.
‘Dr Standish, I have a favour to ask of you. If I had a number of lined sheets with these headings printed upon them, they could be used by any reasonably intelligent member of my staff. For I shall not always be able to keep the entire inventory and might indeed become a line of information myself!’
He spoke with deliberate lightness, but Jamie answered earnestly.
‘Nay, God forbid, Mr Bailey! We have more need of you than of any
one. Aye, you shall have your printed headings within the day, if you will give me details. The Clarion would be glad of a little custom. How many shall you need?’
‘With thirty lines or so to the page? Let us say a hundred. And if we order a gross, then that covers all eventualities.’
‘You envisage three thousand cases or more?’ cried Jamie, aghast.
‘It is a rough estimate, based on the national averages so far. It could be better or worse than that, but many of these will recover, particularly towards the end. His grip slackens at the last — though in the beginning he is murderous and greedy and does not like to let go. Then afterwards, if I am spared, I can add the notes I made in India to the information I have gathered here, and together we shall see what we can make of the disease.’
‘We should perhaps allow a few young physicians and surgeons to share this knowledge, Mr Bailey? In the event of both our deaths.’
‘May God preserve us both, sir! Yes, I agree.’
Jamie was too young and untried to be termed a great man, and yet there was greatness in him, and great humility also. For he could have allowed either fear or pride to rule him, but was striving instead to fetch order out of chaos, and to listen to and learn from a man inferior in medical and social status.
‘Well, Mr Bailey, we are in the same case as those unfortunate navvies at the moment. We stand, as it were, at the entrance of a long tunnel which as yet has no light at the end of it. But with God’s help, we shall come through. And when that blessed day dawns, I trust we shall be allowed to keep this present hospital as a fever hospital. Cholera is not our only, not yet our worst, enemy!’
Jamie hooked his hands behind his back and strode over to the window. Even the August sun could not brighten that grey compound, in the centre of which an iron basket of fire was burning. One of the expurgators, a creature either too simple to know what dangers he ran, or too poor to care about them, was wheeling a barrow from the grey main building, piled high with ragged clothes.
