‘To the north of the town,’ Dr Michael answered, turning from Millie’s stunned incomprehension. ‘I’ll ring for an ambulance.’
Dan stepped towards him. ‘Don’t you have a car?’
‘Yes,’ Dr Michael admitted, ‘it’s outside my house.’
‘Take us then, please!’ Dan urged. ‘It’ll be quicker.’
Millie put a hand to her mouth, trying to swallow her panic. She gulped and grasped the doctor’s arm. ‘Please save her,’ she whispered. ‘Please save me bairn!’
He did not answer, but nodded to Dan and followed him out. Millie grabbed a blanket from the chair to wrap around Edith and rushed after them, leaving the lights on and the door unlocked. They ran down the street and turned towards the station to where the doctor lived. Squeezing into the back of the car, both parents cuddled Edith, trying to comfort the frightened girl. No one spoke as they sped across town and out into the countryside. The old mansion now used as a hospital loomed out of the dark, lights glinting from high windows.
It all happened so quickly, Edith being transferred to a trolley and whisked away, while Millie and Dan were left feeling helpless in the echoing hallway.
‘Can’t we go with her?’ Millie pleaded. ‘She needs me!’
A matron insisted that this was out of the question and tried to shoo them out of the building. Dr Michael said, ‘Let me take you home. There’s nothing more you can do tonight.’
Millie could not bear the thought of leaving Edith alone. ‘I must stay!’ she cried. Dan took her hand and squeezed it hard. He faced the doctor. ‘Can’t we just see her settled before we go?’ he asked.
Dr Michael hesitated, then nodded and went away to see what he could do. Returning a little later, he said they could look in briefly on Edith. ‘She’s very sick, though – you mustn’t upset yourselves, or her.’
Millie almost ran down the corridor and up the stairs to the high-ceilinged room where their daughter had been taken. Her heart pounded in her ears and she felt sick as she clutched Dan’s hand. They were made to put on masks and overalls and told by the matron to be brief.
Millie’s eyes smarted to see her beloved Edith lying in the spartan room on the narrow iron-framed bed, her small head in the centre of a starched white pillow, her fair curls damp on her face. Millie could hear her ragged, rapid breathing; her eyelids were pale and closed, her neck looking swollen to her chin in the short hours since teatime. How could this have happened so quickly? Millie agonised. Why had she been so caught up in her own concerns as not to notice what was happening to her precious child? When Millie thought of the times that week she had scolded Edith for crying or wilfully refusing her food, her heart was seared with guilt. She wanted to gather the weak girl into her arms and hold her tight until she was better, kissing away her fear and pain. Edith was everything to her, and without her daughter life would not be worth living. Millie glanced at Dan’s harrowed look and knew he felt the same. Their lively, loving little girl had become their reason for being.
They crept forward and knelt down by the bed, Millie stroking Edith’s forehead while Dan held her limp hand. Edith’s eyes opened and looked scared for a moment, until Millie pulled the mask from her face and the girl recognised her parents. She tried to speak but could not, and Millie saw the puzzled look on her face. Her throat was so swollen that she could not even cry any more. There was just this strange silence and the large eyes pleading for them to help her.
‘The doctors are going to make you better,’ Millie whispered, forcing herself to smile. ‘You mustn’t worry.’
She glanced at Dan, seeing the muscles working in his cheeks as he tried to compose himself to speak. He croaked, ‘We’ll be in to see you tomorrow. I’ll bring the sailor doll for you.’
Edith looked at him, and for a moment her eyes seemed to brighten, lit by a small spark of interest. She tried to nod, but the movement caused her pain and tears welled in her eyes. Millie picked up Edith’s other hand and pressed it to her lips.
‘Mammy loves you very much,’ she whispered.
The matron came in and told them they must leave. Millie thought she would break down there and then, but she forced herself to be brave in front of Edith. She smiled and, leaning forward, kissed the girl tenderly on her swollen face. ‘Be brave, my little lamb,’ she added, gulping back tears. She saw Edith struggling to say something, her lips working to form the word ‘Mammy’, but she could not make a sound. Her breath was laden with the peculiar smell Millie had noticed before and her hand tried weakly to hang on to her mother’s. Millie was rooted to the spot; she did not see how she could ever leave. She watched numbly as Dan kissed Edith too, and then the matron was hurrying them out.
Millie stifled a sob as Dan reached for her and pulled her away.
‘We’ll come tomorrow,’ he assured her. She craned for a last glimpse of Edith at the door, but the matron marched them swiftly down the stairs. Neither of them could speak as they stumbled out after Dr Michael, who was waiting to drive them the five miles back home. The journey passed in silence. At their door he asked if there was anything they wanted, but they just stared at him mutely, too shocked to answer.
‘I’ll ring the hospital tomorrow and pass on any news,’ he promised, and left.
That night they did not go to bed, but sat up through the night, keeping the fire going, saying little. Their thoughts were focused on Edith lying in a strange hospital. Millie had never been forced to be without her before and the separation felt like an amputation. She sat clutching the sailor doll where it had been discarded by the fire, and looked around at the evidence of Edith’s existence: the box of toys under the table, the photographs on the mantelpiece, her favourite eggcup on the dresser next to a pile of her unironed dresses. The room was full of reassuring signs of Edith’s presence, so palpable that she had to stop herself from rushing up to the bedroom to check if she was really just lying asleep and that she had dreamt the whole awful nightmare. As day dawned, Dan made a pot of tea, splashed his haggard face with water and pulled on his coat.
‘Where are you going?’ Millie demanded.
‘To the club,’ he answered. ‘Tell them I’m not ganin’ to play this afternoon.’
‘Why don’t you wait?’ Millie pleaded, not wanting to be left alone with the thoughts that plagued her.
‘I’ll not be long,’ he promised, and was gone with a draught of icy air from the door.
For hours Millie sat numb and dispirited, listening to the clock ticking and the trains rumbling overhead, until she could no longer bear the emptiness, the lack of Edith’s chatter that normally filled the room. She forced herself to do jobs; menial tasks to occupy her shaking hands and paralysed mind. She cleared the table of the previous evening’s tea – the despised scrambled egg – and washed the dishes. She set to scrubbing the kitchen table, the hearth, and the doorstep until her hands were red raw. She swept the whole house and banged the mats on the yard wall, she ironed Edith’s dresses, finding a strange comfort in the task, and polished the brass fender. After hours of chores she sat down feeling faint and sick and realised she had eaten and drunk nothing since the previous afternoon.
She helped herself to some of Dan’s cold tea made that morning, but it tasted bitter. Millie’s stomach churned with anxiety as to why Dan had not returned and why no word had come from the hospital. How could he stay away at the club while she worried herself sick? she thought angrily. Finally, exhausted, but unable to bear another moment in the house alone, she brushed her hair in the mirror and pulled on a hat and coat. She would go down to Dr Michael’s surgery and wait until there was any news. Maybe he would drive her over to the hospital, she thought with optimism. If not she would take a taxi, for she could not stand another minute away from her daughter’s bedside.
Millie was just stepping into the yard as the daylight was fading when she saw the doctor’s car pull up outside. Her heart began to bang in fear. Did he have news or was he coming to fetch her? His face was pinche
d in the cold evening air as he came round the car towards her, but she could not read his expression clearly in the shadows.
‘Where is Mr Nixon?’ he asked.
‘At the club,’ Millie replied, her throat painfully dry. ‘Have you heard something?’
Dr Michael steered her back across the yard. She allowed herself to be taken inside, grasping at the silence optimistically, for as long as he said nothing then she could still hope. In the house he looked at her warily.
‘I rang the hospital an hour ago.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Mrs Nixon, but Edith died this afternoon. The membrane – she couldn’t breathe – it was too far gone,’ he tried to explain. ‘But it must’ve been quick, just like going to sleep.’
All strength drained out of Millie at the words. She had an awful image of Edith struggling for breath, alone in that stark hospital room. Had she tried to call for her? Did she die afraid, wetting the bed? She must have been in agony! She felt dizzy with disbelief. All the time she had been ironing her dresses, Edith had been dying. Turning on the young doctor she shouted, ‘No! Not that. She can’t be dead!’
‘I’m very sorry,’ he repeated nervously. ‘Please sit down. I’ll wait with you until your husband returns if you like.’
But she shook him off. ‘You should have let me stay with her!’ she accused. She glared at him even as the faintness flooded over her. ‘I should have been with her!’ she screamed. ‘Me bairn! Oh, Edith! I want to see me bairn!’
She was aware of the doctor reaching forward to catch her, and then, collapsing on the floor, blacked out into blessed oblivion.
Chapter Eighteen
Millie would not be comforted. She spent the next days in a twilight world between hysteria and numbness, neither eating nor sleeping. Sometimes in her exhaustion she would almost forget what it was that upset her so. Then the memory of leaving Edith alone in the hospital room would come back so vividly that she was consumed by acute pain and all she could do was scream with grief.
She was aware of Dan being there, though when he had come back on that terrible day she did not know. All she could remember was that he had not been there to hear the news when she did and suspected he had stayed away at the club rather than face the worst. Millie knew he must be grieving too, but to her surprise and hurt he was not showing it. He would not talk to her about Edith. He was withdrawn but calm, trying to make her eat and take the doctor’s sedatives as if she were ill.
Sometimes he lost patience and would disappear, leaving her alone in the bleak house, curled up in a chair with one of Edith’s dolls. He would come home after dark, reeking of drink, and fall up the stairs to bed.
The hospital wanted to know what funeral arrangements to make, but Millie could not talk about that. Once her baby was in the ground then she would have to admit she was gone forever. Dan did not know what to do with her. Eventually, in frustration, he sent a telegram to Teresa begging her to come down and reason with Millie.
Her mother appeared two days later, Dan meeting her at the station and guiding her to the house. Millie flew into her mother’s outstretched arms, crying uncontrollably.
‘I would have come as soon as I heard,’ Teresa said, cradling her daughter’s head, ‘but I didn’t know if you’d want me . . .’
‘Of course, I do,’ Millie sobbed. ‘You’re the one person who can understand – you loved Edith that much.’ She wept anew.
Dan watched in discomfort, then made for the door. ‘I’ll leave you two alone then. I’ll be at the club if you want me,’ he said stiffly, and left.
Teresa, alarmed by how haggard her daughter looked, sat Millie down and insisted on making her a drink. Searching the gloomy kitchen, she could find no tea but boiled up a pan of milk with cocoa and sugar. She made Millie sip it while she raised the blind a fraction to let in some daylight so that she could move around the room tidying away dirty cups, discarded clothes and half-sewn pieces of material. Her heart lurched to see Edith’s hat and coat lying over the back of a chair; it was the outfit she had been wearing when she had waved her away from Ashborough on the train. She wanted to pick it up and crush it to her, breathe in the girl’s smell, but she resisted. It would not do for her to go to pieces in front of the traumatised Millie.
The drink appeared to calm Millie, and her mother managed to coax her upstairs to bed. She tucked her in like a child with Edith’s doll, noticing the smell of damp in the poky attic and averting her eyes from her granddaughter’s cot. Millie had talked about getting the girl a bed in the spring. She sat on the end of the bed until Millie fell asleep; a deep, exhausted sleep that lasted until tea-time. Teresa felt tired and uncomfortable; she had been able to feel the baby moving for the past week. She was depressed by the house and bewildered by Edith’s death, still too shocked to take it in. She wanted to get this visit over with as quickly as possible and take Millie away from this terrible place.
When Dan returned, Teresa made him carry water from the scullery, boil it up on the fire and fill the tin bath they kept hanging on a nail in the yard. She sent him out to buy fish and chips while she bathed Millie in front of the fire and washed her lank hair. Millie sat mutely allowing her mother to take control, finding comfort in the mechanical actions of washing and drying and putting on clean clothes. Her mind seemed dislocated from the nightmare of the past few days, as if sleep had sealed it off, cocooning it from the raw pain of Edith’s sudden death. If only it could always be like this, she thought numbly, if only she could carry on forever in this strange, detached state, she might be able to exist. But when Dan came back with their tea, he could stand the silence no longer.
‘Have you decided about the funeral then?’ he asked, eating his fish and chips straight from the newspaper while Teresa fussed around with plates and cutlery. Millie began to shake.
‘No we haven’t,’ Teresa said shortly, giving him a warning look.
‘Well, it’s time you did,’ he answered angrily. ‘The bairn needs a proper burial. I don’t like to think of her lying in the hospital.’
‘Neither do I!’ Millie cried.
‘Then let me make the arrangements,’ Dan insisted.
‘I don’t want her buried here among strangers,’ Millie blurted out. The other two stared at her.
‘What do you want?’ her mother asked. ‘Dan’s right, you can’t put things off any longer.’
Millie looked back defiantly. ‘I want to take her home to Ashborough. I want her buried there, where she was happy.’ She glanced at Dan. ‘Where we were all happy,’ she added quietly.
Dan’s face looked gaunt and miserable. She knew he just wanted it all to be over, to go back to playing football where he could immerse himself in the game and wall up his grief. He wanted a quick, private ceremony with no fuss and no relations.
‘What’s the sense in that?’ he cried. ‘It’s too far away. If she’s buried here then at least you can go and visit the grave – put flowers on it and that.’
‘No, not here!’ Millie was adamant. ‘I can’t stay here, Dan, not without the bairn. I want to go home.’
He looked at her appalled, and then to Teresa for support. But his mother-in-law held his look. ‘I think it might be for the best if Millie comes back with me for a while, seeing the state she’s in.’
Dan’s anger erupted. ‘Best for who? Not for me. I can’t gan back to Ashborough – me work is here. Millie should stay with me.’
‘Don’t be so selfish,’ Teresa replied, her look disdainful. ‘She’s not well.’
‘I’m not the selfish one, you are!’ He glared. ‘You just want her back to help you around the hotel while you have Moody’s bastard!’
Teresa flushed puce and Millie gasped. ‘Don’t speak to Mam like that.’
‘I’ll speak to her how I want in me own house,’ Dan shouted, thumping the table.
Millie pushed away her untouched food. ‘I’m going home, Dan,’ she said in a flat voice, ‘and I’m taking Edith. I couldn’t bear to
stay here without her, can’t you see that? Not even for you.’
Dan winced at her words. He pushed back his chair and stood up. ‘Go then!’ he raged. ‘I can’t stand your twisty face around here any more. You think you’re the only one who minds about the bairn, but you’re not. And do you know what I keep thinking?’ His blue eyes blazed angrily. ‘I keep thinking that you should have noticed she was ill – you were with her every day.’
Teresa saw Millie’s mouth drop open as if she had been punched. ‘How dare you?’ she scolded. But Dan would not be stopped.
‘Why didn’t you notice, Millie?’ he demanded. ‘Were you too bothered about moving house? If you’d just tried to make a better job of this one, you might have had more time for the lass!’
Millie gave a cry of pain, covering her face with her hands. Teresa rounded on Dan. ‘And has it ever occurred to you that Edith died because you made her live in this hovel? She would never have caught diphtheria if you hadn’t insisted that Millie come back when she did. If she’d stayed on in Ashborough a bit longer, Edith would be alive today!’
Millie watched Dan reel backwards at the verbal assault, his face haunted. ‘You’ll not blame me for this,’ he cried.
‘Why not?’ Teresa flared back. ‘You’re blaming Millie!’
Dan’s look was full of hate as he rushed for the door. He grabbed his coat from its peg and stormed out of the room, banging the door behind him. For a moment the house seemed to reverberate with the noise before it died away, leaving only the poisonous argument ringing in Millie’s head. He had spoken the thoughts that plagued her own mind. She should have done something sooner; she had noticed that Edith was acting differently. How could she not have seen that the girl was ill? She tortured herself. Why had she not taken her to the doctor to be checked? She let out a howl of distress, her mind no longer numb to pain. Her grief was compounded by lacerating guilt. If only Dan knew that she blamed herself far more than he ever could.
THE TYNESIDE SAGAS: Box set of three dramatic and emotional stories: A Handful of Stars, Chasing the Dream and For Love & Glory Page 67
