Great Meadow

by Dirk Bogarde

  We could hear them telephoning in the hall. I put my arms round my sister and told her to shut up (but nicely) because she was making too much noise and I couldn’t hear what they were saying on the telephone. So she did shut up a bit, just sniffing and moaning, quietly, while I listened at the door, but all I could hear was the doctor telling our address and saying ‘the patient’, which I knew must mean poor Lally. So suddenly she was something else. Not Miss Jane or Lally. A ‘patient’. My mother said she’d have to send a telegram to Mrs Jane, and she hurried back into the morning room and told us to have a glass of milk and cake, or something, because she really hadn’t time to do it herself.

  There was a lot of telephoning that day, I can tell you, and in the end we were sent away to stay with my sister’s very best friend at the convent, Giovanna Govoni, who lived in a house with a huge chestnut tree quite near. Her mother, Aunt Isali (not kith and kin, of course, but very nice indeed), said that we had to keep ‘out of the way’ at our house because there were lots of things happening. She didn’t say what lots of things. But it didn’t matter because her house was simply lovely. It was so full of terrific things and smells of cooking. And, another good mark, they had a huge glass bowl of big goldfish just swimming around, and one was white and you could see all its insides quite clearly. I found that very interesting.

  When we were all sitting at the table in their kitchen having supper, Aunt Isali showed me how to sprinkle some rather salty cheese, which she had just grated, over my spaghetti. Then she told us all that Lally had been taken to Dollis Hill Isolation Hospital, and that sounded pretty frightening because she had gone off in an ambulance! I thought it was a bit rotten not to have actually seen an ambulance, I mean not close to, but what was really awful was that she said that our whole house had to be ‘fumigated’, which meant disinfected. Like with Jeyes and the pink carbolic in the privy. But worse. So scarlet fever must be pretty terrible, so poor Lally. And all because she went to the pictures on Sundays! Aunt Isali said you could catch it anywhere, so not to speak in such a silly manner. So I shut up.

  But it really was pretty decent being with the Govonis, with Giovanna and her baby brothers, Italo and Mario, and, best of all, her grandmother, who was called Madame Chiese and couldn’t speak any English but smiled at us all the same and fed ant’s eggs to the goldfish and made something with a crochet hook when she couldn’t talk to us. It was really lovely being with them, and the smells and the voices were all funny, just like being abroad. Really nice if you had them, and not fumigation and everything. It was a bit annoying that I did not see the ambulance or the fumigation van, which was a pretty bad mark, but Aunt Isali said we were better out of the way, and that our mother was getting everything packed up to go down to the cottage tomorrow. That was pretty amazing because although it was a weekend, in the middle of term, we usually had to stay in Hampstead for the exams. Worse luck.

  Then she said we both had to be very kind to our mother because she had had a tremendous amount to do and had had a dreadful shock when she went to the isolation hospital in a taxi and they said that there was no such person as a Miss E. Jane listed. Our mother had made a terrific fuss and said she had seen it all happen with her own eyes, and they were all very huffy and rude, but then they found that they had made a terrible mistake, because there was a Mister E. Jane in the men’s ward, so they apologized. It was on account of our father’s pyjamas and the awful boy’s hair cut, and of course our mother was furious, and she had had a most dreadful fright, but so had the isolation hospital. When that was sorted out she came back to telephone Aunt Isali and say we were all going away, into the fresh air.

  So the next morning we got into the O.M., and I wore my new blue suit from Daniel Neal’s, my very first long trousers and only to be worn for absolute Best, not at school or anything silly. But they were all in such a muddle, I mean the grown-ups, that they didn’t even notice, and the house smelled simply terrible and dead, and it took me ages to get struggling Minnehaha into his travelling cage, and then we had to put in the cases and food and his cage, so no one even looked at my new suit from Daniel Neal’s, or even asked about it. Which was very good. But I heard our father say thank god this is a normal Saturday because tomorrow he could be back in peace and quiet at Printing House Square with his paper, and our mother said that paper meant more to him than his own family, and he said yes, sometimes it does. Especially with Monday coming up. Which I didn’t understand but I could see they were pretty cross with each other. But they hadn’t seen my suit. So that was all right.

  Then our father buttoned us under the black tonneau-cover, and fixed the big windscreen across the top, between the driving-seats and us, so we’d not be blown away (he drove terribly fast), and then all we could see of our parents were their helmets and the scarves flying and our mother’s angry face in her driving-mirror. They were having a bit of a row, but my sister said if we can’t hear it we don’t really know that they are, they just look furious. So that was sensible. I thought.

  It was very exciting driving so fast, with the wind roaring past us, and we couldn’t even hear Minnehaha howling away in his cage beside our feet under the tonneau. We couldn’t hear, but we knew that he did that, because he hated the cage-basket and hated being in the dark. So. But we got to the halfway stop at the Felbridge Arms for a packet of crisps and some American ice cream soda, and our parents went into the bar. They seemed a bit more cheerful, because our father actually put his arm round her waist, which was pretty soppy, but perhaps they’d be in a better mood later. I let Minnehaha out for a breath of fresh air while we drank our soda.

  This was what we always did driving to the cottage. He was on a little collar and lead, and he would sit, quite happily, on the top of the rolled-up cover of the O.M., just sniffing and looking around, and I was telling him that I’d take him to do a pee when there was a terrible roaring noise and a motorbike and sidecar came tearing along, rushing past honking its horn, and sending dust and dead leaves high into the air. Then it roared away and so did Minnehaha, pulling the lead out of my hand and skipping and hopping off into the dead bracken by the car park. My sister screamed (a fat lot of good that did) and I shouted (and that didn’t do much more). Our parents came out of the pub and our mother said, ‘And now what do we do?’ Our father said, ‘It’s that bloody cat!’ (which was really ghastly), but he asked the people in the bar to have a look for a large tabby with a little collar, and we were allowed half an hour to go and find him. Although we called and hollered, and even asked people in the lane, we never saw a sight of him. But the quite nice man behind the bar said he’d keep a look-out, and took my father’s address. But we never saw Minnehaha again. Not ever.

  So that was a pretty awful way to get to the cottage, and what was almost as bad was that Mrs Daukes was in her garden burning rubbish, and she said she didn’t know we’d be down this weekend, nothing had been done, there had been no message, and she was sorry she was sure. Our father just bit his lip and made us carry the baggage up the track. There was no fire laid, no water in the buckets, and it smelled of damp and dark, and it was very miserable. Just like us. But then our mother lit one of the lamps, and I had to go and get some water from the pump, and my sister looked for the hot water bottles. Our father arrived with Minnehaha’s empty cage and just said, ‘Do you think this is perhaps the end of the world?’ And our mother said perhaps it was, but not before tomorrow. So that made me cheer up a bit. And no one had said a thing about my suit. So that was all right. Almost.

  Our father made a huge fire in their sitting-room, which was rather nice, because he liked making fires. He even made them on our picnics in the summer when we had Thermos flasks, so we didn’t even need them. But our mother said if he enjoyed it let him do it. And it was very welcome in the cottage and most especially in their room.

  I had to go and pump up hundreds of buckets of water, well, quite a lot anyway, and carry them up to the lean-to, so of course I had to change my jacket fro
m Daniel Neals and put on a holey old cardigan, but no one seemed to notice my trousers. Good luck.

  Our mother worked the old Primus stoves and we all began to settle down, except it was awful with no Minnehaha anywhere, but I didn’t say anything because it would make us all too miserable.

  In the evening, when it was getting dark, our parents had to drive down to the village to telephone The Times, as usual, just to check in, and our mother asked us to do the vegetables for her, onions and potatoes, because we were to have liver and bacon and mashed for supper. So that was pretty good. And she said to behave ourselves and not ‘go rushing about’ and they’d only be an hour. So we did the vegetables, and then we laid the table in their room, which was very pretty with the hanging lamp burning, and the big fire in the open hearth, and the lamps everywhere, and the table looking jolly nice with the blue Spode china and a jam-jar of daffodils my sister had picked in the long grass by the lean-to. It was all really quite good. I had put on our father’s painting-smock, the one old Mr Dick had given him, so that I didn’t muck up my new trousers, and I tied it round the waist, because it was too big for me, with a piece of binder-twine I found. I was just shoving a big apple-log on to the fire when there was a sort of loud ‘Poff!’ and my sister screamed that I was on fire. The back of the smock had caught in the iron basket which was blazing away, and so was I. It was all behind me, and I couldn’t get the binder-twine off. I kept tugging, but no luck, and my sister kept screaming standing in the doorway. There was a rug on the brick floor, but I couldn’t grab it because it would have knocked over a little table and an oil lamp. The flames were really roaring away, so I just pushed my sister, so she fell over, and then rushed through the hall into the lean-to where the buckets of water which I had pumped that afternoon were. It was a bit lucky really, because with all the draught the smock was blazing.

  It was pretty awful. There was water all over the floor, and I had upset two buckets. There was a dreadful smell of burning, but the fire was out and I got a knife and cut the wretched twine. When I started to try and take off the smock all the right sleeve had burned away, and the cardie sleeve was all melted and black, so I hid the smock in the empty range in the kitchen and pulled off the cardigan. My arm was starting to get all red and funny-looking, but I put on an old school blazer, so no one would see, and then we mopped up the water and everything, and my sister was just sobbing quietly because she had had such a fright (and so had I). I told her she must say nothing about what happened when the parents got back, and if they asked about the water we would just say I had upset a bucket. So that was easy. But we had to open the doors to get the smell of burning out, and I hid the burned cardie up in the elder bush by the privy.

  So we were quite all right when our parents came in looking quite happy and laughing. Except when our mother sniffed hard and said, ‘I only asked you to do the vegetables! You haven’t been doing anything quite silly?’ And we said no, but my arm was beginning to hurt rather a lot, and then our mother said, ‘Now what has happened? You’ve singed off all your eyelashes. You had wonderful eyelashes! Just like mine . . . What have you been doing?’

  And my sister suddenly said I’d caught fire and it was terrible. So everything got found out. Our father told me to take off my blazer, but I couldn’t because my arm had sort of swelled up and filled the sleeve. Then he said, rather loudly, ‘Margaret, get me some scissors, quickly.’ He cut all the sleeve of the old blazer and peeled the cloth away and my arm looked like a huge grey sausage. It was just one terrific blister – my shirt sleeve had burned right off – and it was beginning to throb like anything all the way from my elbow to my fingertips and the palm of my hand looked dreadful and fat and full of water.

  ‘Oh god!’ said our mother. ‘What has he done, Ulric?’

  Of course, she only said that because she was so shocked (she could see perfectly clearly), and so was I, but our father just got a towel and said, ‘It’s pretty bad. I’ll get him down to the village to Wilmott.’ He wrapped my arm, very gently indeed, in the towel and carried me – well, I was really half leaning on him – down the track to the O.M. He was very decent in the car. He never asked me what had happened, or about my long trousers, or anything.

  We parked in Waterloo Square, by the Market Cross, and walked up to Dr Wilmott’s house and rang and rang. After ages a grumpy woman came and said Dr Wilmott was playing bridge over at Alciston and it was his ‘night off anyway. There was another doctor who had just moved in, but She was a Woman.

  So we went to her house. It was all dark, and I was half lying, half standing against our father, and he was knocking and knocking, and it was very dark and terribly cold. Suddenly there was a light in an upstairs window, and a woman’s face peered out, and our father shouted it was very serious, so she opened the window but said she couldn’t treat anyone because she was ill herself. With scarlet fever. Our father said I had very bad burns and please would she help. So she shut the window, the room went dark, and my father said, ‘Don’t worry, she’s coming down. There’s a light on now in the hall.’

  Then we were inside, and it was a little hall-place, with a big wooden chest against a wall. The lady doctor had straggly hair and a fawn dressing-gown, and I heard her make a sort of breathy noise when she saw my arm. She told our father that all she had in the house was a pair of nail-scissors, and that she was probably infectious. Would he take the risk? He said, ‘Yes. Please go ahead.’ So I sat with him on the wooden chest, and she got the nail scissors and a bottle of something blue. It smelled awful as she poured it in a saucer and put the scissors in. Then she cut all the huge, shiny blisters up my arm and my hand, and said that I had to be got to a hospital and properly dressed. (Except for my burned shirt, I was dressed. And with long trousers on.) But she just said that I could possibly have second-degree burns, whatever that was, and to get me into ‘proper hands’ as soon as possible. She bandaged me up, and made a kind of sling, and I didn’t blub. So that anyone could see, anyway.

  There were pills to take when I got back to the cottage, to make me sleep. It was all pretty awful, and I hurt like anything. But I didn’t say so. She was very nice, and said she’d just come to the village and hoped to be able to practise, but Dr Wilmott was against her, and so were many of his older patients. Our father said he’d never be able to thank her enough, and he’d settle her bill as soon as he could, and before she shut the door she called, ‘Good luck! Jolly brave, you were!’ Which made me feel quite good. But it didn’t stop the hurting.

  In my Hampstead bedroom, with the bluetits on the wallpaper, Dr Henderson was jolly bossy indeed with our mother. I just lay in my bed with my eyes closed to pretend not to listen. But, of course, I did. Even though I was hurting like anything.

  ‘Margaret, you can’t possibly nurse him here. The hospital has all the things he’ll need, equipment.’

  ‘No. Absolutely no. He’s mine and he stays here. I can cope.’

  ‘That arm has to be bathed three, or four, times a day, in water as hot as he can possibly bear.’

  ‘I know that. You have told me already. We have been doing that.’

  ‘How can you manage? Possibly? What will you bathe it in, elbow to fingertips?’

  ‘My fish kettle. If it’ll take a salmon-grilse, it’ll take my son’s forearm. He’s not leaving this house. He stays. His sister has a raging temperature, and you aren’t “sure” as you say. Well, if she has to go to the isolation place, if it is that, he stays here. I have had enough disaster, no more.’

  I quite liked that our mother had said ‘mine’, but then Dr Henderson said, quietly, ‘Disaster? Margaret, thank your god on your knees this moment that you are not Mrs Lindbergh!’

  And our mother’s voice was very cross indeed, and she said, ‘No, but I am Mrs van den Bogaerde, and that is all I care about at the moment.’

  There was a bit of a silence, so I opened my eyes a squint and saw Dr Henderson packing things into her bag, and then she said, ‘I’ll go and se
e your daughter. If she has contracted the thing, he’s almost certain to get it too, with that raw wound. Face up to it, Margaret.’

  Then she went away and it was a bit quiet. I saw, through slitty eyes, my mother going to the little window over the garden, and she said aloud that she would face it. If, and when, it all happened. Which was jolly brave of her, because, the night before, when we got back from the cottage, my sister said she was hot and had a sore throat, and that was very worrying. But if she did have scarlet fever and had to go in an ambulance, bad mark: I wouldn’t be able to see one again. Up close, I mean. And the fish-kettle part was a bit worrying, because our mother had been bathing my arm with scalding hot bandages and pads, and that was quite bad enough, thank you. But in a fish-kettle! Three times a day.

  Sometimes . . . well, often, with the bandages, I had to bite a pencil to stop shouting out, and after I had chewed up two our mother just cut off the spoon part of a wooden spoon and told me to bite the handle bit. That was better because it was harder wood. Once I noticed that her eyes were a bit swimmy, but she said it was the steam from the pudding bowl of hot water. So.

  Then Dr Henderson came back and I heard her say, ‘Sorry. She’s got it. Scarlet fever . . . and he’s sure to catch it now. But I’ll call the ambulance and the people at Isolation. I’m sorry. I’ll get on to the fumigation people as well.’

  So, now I heard the worst, I opened my eyes and asked if my sister would die. And Dr Henderson looked shocked, and said, over my dead body, boy, she’ll be well taken care of. And then she said to look after my mother and do everything I was told to do, because my mother was being headstrong and absolutely mad. So I had to help her. I said I would, and then she put her arm round our mother and they went down the corridor to the telephone and to see my sister.