by Anne Douglas
‘And tomorrow we’ll see the doctor, eh?’
‘I’ve agreed, Rosa; what more can I do?’
Alone, Rosa felt no easier in her mind over Lorne’s health, even though there was the prospect of her seeing the doctor. In fact, looking back on what Rosa now saw as her neglect of her sister, she again felt guilty and vowed to do better. It was true, perhaps, that Lorne, because of her past behaviour, didn’t qualify for such attention, but in Rosa’s view, her sister was her sister and, whatever she’d done, now that she needed attention, she should have it. As for Daniel, Rosa had only just begun to think of him when the door opened and he appeared, a coat over his nightshirt, his face pale, his eyes on Rosa red as though he needed sleep but could not get any.
‘Aren’t you coming to bed?’ he asked. I thought I heard Lorne go some time ago.’
‘I’m just coming, Daniel, but I thought you’d be long asleep.’
‘I can’t sleep, wish to God I could. But Lorne’s gone to bed, has she?’
‘Yes, you heard her, you said. But she’s not well, Daniel. I’m taking her to the doctor’s tomorrow.’
‘Not well?’ Daniel’s eyes sharpened. ‘She always says she’s just thin. And she’s right, isn’t she? Being thin doesn’t mean she’s ill.’
‘She reminds me of my mother,’ Rosa said, after a pause. ‘The way she looks now.’
‘Your mother? No, Rosa, don’t say that! Your mother – that was consumption, wasn’t it? Lorne hasn’t got that. It’s like she says, it’s just that she’s thin.’
For some moments, the husband and wife exchanged looks, both hard to read, then Rosa said quietly, ‘We’d better get to bed, Daniel. You’ll have to try to get some sleep, with work tomorrow.’
‘If you’re with me, it’ll be all right, Rosa. Things are always all right when you’re there.’
Her dark eyes now sorrowful, she shook her head. ‘Wish that could be true.’
Slowly, finally, they put out the gaslight and made their way to their bed, where Daniel at last fell asleep and Rosa lay awake for she didn’t know how long, her eyes staring into the darkness but seeing only faces – Daniel’s and Lorne’s.
Forty-Seven
When Daniel returned from work the following day, Rosa and Lorne were already back from Dr Napier’s surgery. Everything appeared normal, with Rosa preparing the evening meal and Lorne glancing through the evening paper, but Daniel, expert in sensing undercurrents, knew at once that the news from the doctor had not been good.
Both Rosa and Lorne were keeping their faces blank but, when Daniel asked how things had gone, Lorne only shook her head irritably, while Rosa’s face, bent over a pan of potatoes, almost crumpled and she had to fumble for a handkerchief to wipe her eyes.
‘Oh, don’t take on, Rosa!’ Lorne cried while Daniel sprang to Rosa’s side. ‘We don’t have to believe that doctor! He might be nice, but does he know what he’s talking about? I don’t think so! I mean, he says I’ve got what my mother had and I haven’t even got a cough!’
‘He did say he’d send you to the infirmary,’ Rosa said, sniffing. ‘To make sure, he said.’
‘Well, maybe we should wait till I’ve been there before you start getting upset. Even if I do have what Ma had, it doesn’t mean I’ll …’ she faltered a little before finishing, ‘… go like her. I feel well. I really am all right.’
‘You don’t look it!’ Rosa cried. ‘As thin as a rail. Is it any wonder I’m worried?’
Daniel, whose face was now as expressionless as a mask, turned aside to pick up Lorne’s discarded evening paper. ‘Perhaps Lorne’s right,’ he said carefully, opening out the paper. ‘We should wait to see what the infirmary says before we do anything else. Did you get an appointment?’
‘They’ll be sending one,’ Lorne answered stiffly, moving nearer to Rosa, who had taken up a fork and was prodding the vegetables cooking on the stove. ‘I’ll set the table, shall I?’
‘Thanks, that would be a help,’ said Rosa. Adding, though she didn’t believe it, ‘I’m sure we could all do with something to eat.’
It was only after the meal was over, the washing up done and Lorne was using Rosa’s sewing machine in her bedroom that Rosa was able to go into Daniel’s arms for comfort.
‘It’s no use not facing facts,’ she murmured. ‘Cough or nor cough, Doctor Napier is pretty sure Lorne has consumption and so am I. I remember Ma too well.’
‘Let’s wait to see what the hospital says,’ Daniel said, releasing Rosa and moving to his chair. ‘There has to be hope.’
Wiping her eyes, she looked across at him and at the desolate expression he could not hide, and felt not just her old fear that his old love for Lorne would return but a certainty that it had. In a way, she felt almost sorry for him – he had done his best not to give in to the return of his love for Lorne and did not want to hurt her, Rosa, so would never speak, never spell anything out. There was, after all, nothing to be done to change things for him. He was a married man. He could never marry Lorne, for divorce wasn’t an option for people like them – and maybe she wouldn’t want to marry him anyway. She hadn’t wanted to before.
Poor, poor Daniel. Not only was he suffering from a love he couldn’t reveal, there was now the new anxiety that Lorne herself was mortally ill.
Mortally? The word that had come into Rosa’s mind struck like an arrow, and for a moment she wavered under it. For if she was sorry for Daniel, she must be even more sorry for her sister, staring into the abyss.
I must be strong, thought Rosa. I must try to find the hope Daniel talked about. After all, some folk lived quite long lives with consumption. Why not Lorne? Yes, why not? No way would Rosa admit that, for Lorne, the diagnosis of her illness might have already come too late.
Forty-Eight
When the doctors at the Royal Infirmary confirmed Lorne’s consumption – respiratory tuberculosis as they called it, which meant TB of the lungs – she took it very badly. Not surprising, of course, yet she’d been so stoical about all other bad news recently that when she reacted with anger over what she saw as the unfairness of it all, Rosa was deeply affected. Until the infirmary’s diagnosis, Lorne had seemed confident that she wouldn’t go the same way as her mother, but when the doctors told her she would have to give up her job and accept a place in a local sanatorium, she wept angry tears and said at first she wouldn’t go.
‘No fear!’ she cried to Rosa and Daniel the evening after she’d been told what she must do. ‘I’m not going to lie in bed and be ordered about by some bossy nurses. Never! I’m going to stay right here and take the medicine they give me and pull through on my own. It’s my life, my illness, I’ll do what I want to do and that’s that!’
‘Oh, Lorne, you know it’s no good talking like that.’ Rosa sighed. ‘Your best hope is the sanatorium. Folk do get better there, the doctors told us, so just go along with it.’
‘Rosa’s right,’ Daniel said, looking away as usual, after which Lorne stared at him, though she must by then have realized that he would not look at her. ‘You have to do what the doctors say to have any hope of cracking this thing, Lorne.’
‘That’s what my mother thought, and look where it got her! And I don’t care what anyone says, I’m not as bad as Ma. Think of the cough she had! Well, you wouldn’t know, Daniel, but Rosa does. You remember it, eh? I haven’t even got a cough, have I?’
‘You’ll still do better with the special care at the sanatorium,’ Rosa said wearily. ‘You can’t stay here – it’s a risk for other people. I don’t mean Daniel and me, we’re not worried, but, well, there are others to think about, aren’t there?’
After a long, mutinous stare, Lorne bent her head and gave a hopeless sigh. ‘I think I’ll have an early night,’ she said, rising. ‘Get out of your way.’
‘Oh, don’t talk like that, Lorne!’ Rosa cried and ran to put her arm round her sister. ‘All we want is for you to get better – we don’t care about anything else. I wish I could look after y
ou here but if I can’t, Daniel and me will visit you as often as they’ll let us. We’ll be with you all the way, I promise, Lorne!’
‘I know, I know,’ Lorne said quietly. ‘I know I’m lucky to have you – both of you. Don’t think I’m not grateful—’
‘Don’t be talking about being grateful – we’re family, Lorne. Families stick together when there’s any trouble, eh?’ Rosa hesitated for a moment. ‘Which reminds me – shouldn’t we get in touch with Da? He could come down to see you.’
‘Leave it till I go to this sanatorium place. But tell him, if he does come, not to bring Mrs MacRitchie. I’m not having her fussing around me like some old hen, and that’s for definite!’
‘Never mind her now. Come on, I’ll give you a hand to bed—’
‘As though I need it!’ Lorne cried, before politely saying goodnight to Daniel. When, for once, he fixed his fine gaze on her face and pressed her hand.
‘Goodnight, Lorne. It’ll be all right, I’m sure of it. They’ve caught it in time. You’re not going to go like your ma.’
Silently, she again stared at him, her lip trembling, then she smiled and said, ‘Thank you, Daniel. It cheers me up, what you say, because I know it’s true.’
He nodded and stepped back as she turned away and followed Rosa to her room for the early night she wished she needn’t have.
‘You’ve talked of hope,’ Rosa murmured to Daniel when she’d left Lorne. ‘Do you think there is any?’
He didn’t answer for some time, only sat in his chair, his face turned away, finally saying he thought there might be. It was true what he’d said – Lorne need not go like her mother. The doctors could have caught the disease in time.
‘She certainly hasn’t got a cough like Ma’s,’ Rosa said, sitting down to take up some mending. ‘Hasn’t got one at all, has she?’
It was only later, when Rosa and Daniel were preparing to go to bed themselves, that they discovered Rosa’s words were no longer true. For the first time and as clear as though it was with them in the same room, they heard Lorne begin to cough. Over and over, over and over, as Rosa stood transfixed, knowing she must run to her, take her something …
‘Like Ma’s,’ she whispered. ‘Oh, Daniel, it’s just like Ma’s.’
‘No, no, Lorne isn’t like your mother. Hang on to that, Rosa, hang on.’
For how long? wondered Rosa, hurrying with cough mixture, finding strength to be with her sister, knowing she would always find it. Somehow.
Forty-Nine
So absorbed was Rosa in her sister’s problems, she would never have believed there could be anything else occupying her mind – until, quite by chance, she saw Jack Durno again. He was just ahead of her, walking down George Street, and at first, because she hadn’t seen him for a while, she wasn’t even sure that the casually dressed man looking in a bookshop window was Jack himself. But then he turned his head, his eyes met hers and a great smile lit his tanned face as he swept off his hat and took her hands in his.
‘Rosa! I never thought to see you since I got back, though you can guess it’s wonderful – I mean, for me – to meet you like this, with no planning, no expectation! Just what I’d have asked for – if there’d been anyone to ask – that we might just bump into each other and be quite blameless, and that nobody need be upset – but, oh, God, I’m rambling, eh? So taken aback to see you, you see, and to know you’re not immediately running away—’
‘Back from where?’ Rosa asked faintly, pulling her hands from his and searching his face, which seemed to her thinner, yet with its bronzed look, particularly attractive.
‘I’ve moved there – the south of France, I mean. I’m only back to see an agent about letting the house while I’m away. Up to now, I haven’t bothered about it, but my mother’s right, it will deteriorate, not being lived in. Never mind me, though – what’s the news with you? Tell me, are you still doing your artwork, as you did when you were with me?’
‘Not just now. Maybe some time in the future.’
‘I hope you mean that, Rosa. You have real talent, remember. Don’t just let it go.’
When she only smiled and shrugged, he bent his head, looking long and seriously into her face. ‘You’re as lovely as ever,’ he told her in a low voice. ‘I haven’t forgotten. But there’s something wrong, isn’t there? Are things not good for you, Rosa? Can you tell me about it?’
Looking up the wide street and seizing Rosa’s hand again, he said they must have a cup of coffee at the George Hotel – it was just up the street, wouldn’t take a minute.
‘Mr Durno – Jack – you know I can’t have coffee with you. I’m glad to have seen you but I can’t spend time with you. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’
He was silent as the wind blew around them, finally saying he understood very well that she couldn’t spend time with him and the last thing he wanted was to make any trouble for her. He just wished she could tell him what was worrying her, but if it was something private, he would not try to intrude.
‘It’s not private; it’s my sister, Jack. You remember, the one who was in America? Things didn’t go right for her over there and she came back to be with us, but now’ – Rosa’s voice shook a little – ‘now she’s been told she has consumption. TB, the doctors call it – and we don’t know … we can’t know … how long she’s got.’
‘Oh, God, Rosa, that’s terrible!’ Jack shook his head. ‘For her, and you – for all of you. What can I say? I wish I could say something … do something …’
‘No one can do anything. We’re in the hands of the doctors.’
‘Well, they’re good, Rosa. Very good. And there’s always hope—’
‘So Daniel says. All cases are different. Lorne might live quite a long time yet.’
‘That’s true.’ Jack looked down the long street, then again at Rosa. ‘If you have to go now, may I walk a bit of the way with you?’
‘Better not. I think I must hurry.’ She quickly touched his hand and gave him a last smile. ‘I was glad to see you, Jack, to know you were all right and doing well – painting away in the south of France, it sounds ideal.’
‘Not altogether,’ he said quietly. ‘But I’m grateful for having seen you again. I’ll be thinking of you – and your sister. I suppose you couldn’t keep in touch, could you?’
‘No, it’s not possible. But it’s good to see you – I mean that, Jack, and I’ll wish you all the best for the future.’
‘Of course, I’ll wish you the same.’ Jack touched his hat and tried to smile, but the smile did not reach his eyes. ‘I suppose we have to say goodbye now?’
‘Nice to have met, though.’ She slipped off her glove and put out her hand. ‘Goodbye, Jack.’
He took and held her hand until she removed it, his eyes on her face, taking his time before he too said goodbye.
She left him then, walking quickly away down George Street, battling the wind as he remained where he was, watching her slender figure in a navy blue jacket and ankle-length skirt until he could see her no more.
Would she tell her husband about their encounter? He was pretty sure she would. And she did.
‘Daniel, I met Jack Durno in George Street today,’ she announced almost as soon as Daniel had set foot in their door after work. ‘Quite by chance, but I had to speak to him, you know, to be polite.’
‘Had you?’ Daniel, looking pale, had sunk into his chair and was lighting a cigarette. He seemed not to be too interested in her news. ‘I was hoping he’d moved on somewhere.’
‘He has, really. He works in the south of France now, was only home to see about letting his house.’
‘That’s a relief.’ Daniel gave Rosa a long, weary stare. ‘So, what did you talk about – when you were being polite?’
Rosa hesitated. ‘Lorne, as a matter of fact. He said I seemed to have something on my mind and I told him about Lorne’s illness. He was … very sympathetic.’
‘As though he could understand! He has no id
ea, no idea at all, of other people’s troubles. When’s he ever had to suffer?’
Rosa, at the stove, moving the kettle to bring it to the boil, was shaking her head.
‘Let’s not talk about him any more, Daniel. He belongs to the past and we have other things to think about now.’
He stared at her, his eyes showing the pain he could no longer hide. ‘We have,’ he answered. ‘Oh, Rosa, we have.’
He stubbed out his cigarette and rose to take her in his arms, holding her close against his chest, but if he thought he was comforting her, she knew he was in fact searching for comfort for himself. And that the time he might find it was so far away, it couldn’t yet be thought of.
Fifty
Within a short time of Lorne’s diagnosis, she was given a bed in a sanatorium some miles out of Edinburgh, where she claimed that all she’d dreaded about being in hospital with a boring regime and strict nurses had come true, and all she wanted to do was to go home again.
‘You know you can’t do that, Lorne,’ Rosa told her earnestly on one of her afternoon visits without Daniel. ‘You have to stay here; this is where you will get better.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know how,’ Lorne snapped. ‘All I do is lie in this bed while the doctors talk about collapsing my lung and I don’t know what, and the nurses bang about, making as much noise as possible. Some people stay in these places for years, you know, but how they stick it, I don’t know.’
‘Lorne, you’re being very unfair. All the nurses are very patient and kind – and doing a very difficult job, you have to admit. Just try to accept things – it’s the only way.’
Lorne, still unsmiling, lay back against a pillow, trying to conceal a cough while Rosa, studying her, felt her spirits plummeting as they always did when visiting her sister. Even in the short time she’d been in the sanatorium, Lorne seemed to have changed, to have wasted away a little more, her face, now so very narrow, seeming to be just prominent cheekbones and huge eyes still sharp when she gazed around the ward at the patients lying still, the nurses hurrying, always hurrying, and one of the cleaners sweeping up something spilled on the floor. Finally, she brought her eyes back to Rosa and managed something of a smile.
