by Val Wood
But can I keep up, he had asked his tutors, and they had replied that the country needed young men such as him and his fellows to embrace the new technology; to accept with an open mind that new ideas were for the good of the people. Inevitably there were some from the old school who pooh-poohed radical thinking, who claimed that scientific ideas had no place in medicine and had laughed at the Hungarian surgeon Semmelweis’s insistence that cleanliness was the key to combating infection during surgery.
Now, though, there had been a development, which Jamie completely believed in and had written passionately about in his tutorial. A Scottish surgeon, James Simpson, was championing the use of chloroform during surgery, and although there had been some disasters resulting from uncertainty about the amount of the anaesthetic to be given, the general opinion was that the use of it would greatly reduce the pain the patient endured during surgery and thus aid their recovery.
He was thinking of these things as the train huffed and chuffed and racketed along, the whistle shrieking at every station they passed through and thick smoke obliterating any views he might have had through the windows. If I decide to specialize as a physician, he pondered, I could be studying for another four or five years, but if I take an apprenticeship as a surgeon I would be finished sooner. But do I want to work in an unhygienic hospital and treat poor unfortunates who are going to die anyway?
He discussed the subject with Hunter that night when he got back to their lodgings and discovered that his colleague had already decided that he would become a surgeon. ‘Thought it over during Christmas, old fellow,’ he declared. ‘I can be finished within a year. I’m not cut out for great things like you. I’ve discussed it with Pa and he’s agreed to pay for an apprenticeship. I shall be able to get work in a hospital whilst I’m training or set up as an apothecary as soon as I’m qualified. I’m getting bored with the whole business, if I’m perfectly honest.’
‘But – I thought we’d agreed to set up in practice together,’ Jamie remonstrated. ‘That’s what we said.’
Hunter stretched out in his chair and wiggled his bare toes. ‘I know we did, old chap, but I’m not as brainy as you and I might not qualify and I’m not willing to spend another three or four years of study while contemplating failure. Besides, I quite fancy setting broken bones or dispensing bitter pills and becoming rich because of it. I’ll leave it to you to come up with a cure for disease.’
Jamie was disappointed; one of the best things about studying had been being able to discuss various aspects of medicine with his friend, though now he came to think of it Hunter’s enthusiasm had seemed to be waning, and there had been times when he had often skipped lectures.
‘I’ll speak to my tutors, I think,’ he told Hunter. ‘Maybe I can continue my studies whilst working with a physician. I think my father is getting fed up with paying my fees, and certainly my brother is voicing his objections.’
His fees had been a contentious issue over Christmas; his father was also paying for the girls’ schooling and Felix had claimed, although not in front of his father, that everyone except him was having money spent on them from the estate whilst he was the only one working for it.
‘But you’ll get the biggest share eventually,’ Jamie had argued. ‘You’ll inherit, not me, so whatever effort you put in now will come back to you. I’ll have to earn my own living.’
But Felix couldn’t see this and only scoffed at Jamie’s reasoning.
‘I’d give it another year if I were you.’ Hunter yawned and stretched. ‘Sit the next exam and then ask the tutors; they’ll probably grovel at your feet begging you to stay with them.’
‘Idiot!’ Jamie laughed and threw a cushion at him.
But it was a serious issue and he was a serious and caring young man. He recalled his first year at the Hull Grammar School, when there had been another outbreak of cholera in the town. It had been an isolated incident and not as severe as the 1832 epidemic; the authorities had acted swiftly and placed tar barrels in the streets of the poor where the disease had occurred and the students were banned from those areas.
From time to time since then there had been other outbreaks and of typhoid too, but the disease that was now worrying health officials most of all was influenza, which on being caught by one person ran through his whole family with seemingly nothing to stop it.
When Jamie had first come to London he had wanted to acquaint himself with the city and often walked by the Thames. He watched the mass of shipping plying the river, the steamers, the sailboats and the coal carriers, and sometimes at dusk as he leaned on the broken walls overlooking the bubbling mud flats where the mudlarks fished for anything they could retrieve to sell or eat, he noticed the row-boats, coggy boats as they were called in Yorkshire, nosing between the moored ships, as silent as the slippery eels which lurked beneath the dark lapping waters; some of them held wooden crates or casks and the rowers headed towards the wharves and warehouses which bordered the river, where the glow of a single lamp showed that they were expected.
The first time he had gone there the stink of the Thames made him hold his breath. ‘It can’t be healthy,’ he had declared to anyone who would listen. ‘And it’s the poor who live close to the river and it’s the poor who become sick.’
Many of his tutors nodded and agreed with him but there were others who smiled benignly at a young man’s foolishness. But now he wondered which direction to take. If he became a surgeon as Hunter was planning to do, he could qualify with the Royal College of Surgeons and begin work in a hospital mending broken bones and dispensing remedies; if he became a physician he could study further medicine, diagnose and give advice on medical problems, but not treat them.
I don’t know what to do, he thought. I want to help the sick, but I also want to know how to help them and I can only do that through further study. I’m in a quandary.
CHAPTER THIRTY
BELLA WAS SITTING with her mother at the kitchen table, waiting as Sarah read a letter just arrived from Nell. Sarah bit on her lips and wrinkled her nose as she read, and occasionally took a deep breath.
‘So what does she say?’ Bella could wait no longer. ‘Where is she?’
‘Hm? Doesn’t say where she is, onny that she’s on her way to Manchester.’
Bella picked up the envelope. The postmark was Leeds, the town where they had been told the company from the Royal Theatre had gone for their next show.
‘And? What else does she say?’
‘Here, you’d better read it. I’ve got ’dinner to prepare afore we open up.’ Sarah got up from the table and went to the sink. ‘That lass’ll go to ’devil in her own way and nowt we say will alter that.’
Bella silently agreed, even before she’d read the letter, which judging by the scrawl and bad spelling had been written in a hurry. But Nell conveyed in a few words that she was very happy, was going to be an actress as well as a singer and expected to get a contract very soon.
‘Most of ’women’s parts are played by young men,’ she wrote, ‘cos there aren’t enough women who are willing or able to go on ’stage, so I’ll have plenty of work. Don’t worry about me, Ma. I’m doing what I always wanted to do. Your loving daughter Nell.’
‘Bella!’ Joe popped his head round the door. ‘You’re wanted!’
Bella frowned. She was assimilating the contents of Nell’s letter and the undertones of it. Was she really acting or not, and what kind of situation was she in if there were few other women?
‘Who wants me?’ She looked up at Joe, who was grinning all over his face.
His eyebrows shot up. ‘Somebody special! Pinch your cheeks, straighten your hair.’
Bella concealed a small gasp. It couldn’t possibly be the person whom, although she would never have admitted it even to herself, she thought of wistfully from time to time. ‘Who?’ she asked again.
‘None other than Mr Justin Allen,’ he said in a mock stage whisper. ‘And he asked specially for Miss Thorp!’
; ‘Better go then, Bella,’ her mother broke in, ‘if it’s you he wants to talk to. Mebbe he’s got summat up his sleeve he wants to discuss.’
Joe laughed. ‘I reckon he has.’
Bella slipped off her apron and pushed past him. ‘Silly beggar,’ she muttered, hiding her disappointment that it wasn’t who she had hoped and knowing that she should stop even thinking about him.
Joe had shown Justin Allen into the saloon and he was looking about him as Bella entered and dipped her knee.
‘Miss Thorp.’ He gave a polite bow. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you.’
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘We’ll be opening soon. How can I assist you?’
He hesitated. ‘Well, it’s not really a matter of requiring assistance. I wanted to come by and ask how things are progressing and if you are happy with trade and so on?’
‘We are,’ she said. ‘It’s proving better than we’d hoped for, although a bit early to say whether ’customers who are coming are just curious or will become our regulars.’
‘Quite so,’ he said, fiddling with his gloves. ‘I also wanted to ask if you would do me the honour of accompanying me to an hotel I’d like to show you to discuss some other options.’
Bella blushed. This wasn’t at all what she’d expected. Did brewers normally drop in on their tenants or ask them out? She couldn’t recall anyone calling on her father. Or did he have some other motive? There was something she wanted to talk to her mother and Joe about which would in time involve the brewery, but not yet. The business had not yet settled down.
‘Wh-when were you thinking of, Mr Allen? At the moment we are rather busy getting ’Maritime up and running.’
‘Oh, yes, I realize that of course, but I wondered about next Sunday? Perhaps for afternoon tea?’
‘I see – well, I see no reason why not.’ She hesitated. ‘So, erm, is there a particular place that you were thinking of?’
‘Indeed yes. The Station Hotel. You are aware of it, of course? Have you perhaps been already? They have a small orchestra playing on Sundays which I thought would be rather pleasant.’
Heavens, she thought. Whatever will I wear?
‘I haven’t been,’ she admitted. ‘We’ve been rather busy since we moved here.’ She gave a nervous laugh. ‘Not much time for social events.’
‘Well then – would you care to, that is if you haven’t anything else too pressing? I realize it is your day off. Shall we say at about three thirty? We can walk, it isn’t very far – unless, of course … I could bring a cab if you prefer?’
She laughed. He seemed anxious to be correct, she thought. ‘It’s only round ’corner, Mr Allen. I’m sure we can manage a walk there.’
He picked up his bowler, which he’d placed on a table. ‘Very well. Thank you. I’ll look forward to that. Sunday then, at about three thirty.’ He gave another short bow, Bella dipped her knee and he left by the front door as she stood staring after him.
‘Ha!’ Joe came in immediately. ‘What was all that about?’
‘Don’t know. He wants me to go with him to ’Station Hotel. On Sunday. Something to discuss, but he didn’t say what.’
‘He’s tekken a shine to you, Bella, that’s what it is.’ Joe nodded solemnly. ‘Mebbe he’s going to propose. But he’ll have to realize that he’s to ask my permission first, seeing as I’m your older brother.’
She saw the gleam in his eyes. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous!’ she countered. ‘Come on. Let’s go down in ’cellar. We need to tap another barrel of bitter.’
Joe had asked her not to let him go into the cellar on his own. He said he didn’t trust himself not to help himself to a tot of spirit. Even though it was sometimes inconvenient for them both to be down there at the same time, Bella wanted to help him get over his addiction and so far it seemed to be working.
She told her mother what Mr Allen had suggested, and after thinking about the matter for a while Sarah suddenly announced that Bella should buy a new outfit for the occasion.
‘Apart from your grey dress you’ve not had owt new for some time,’ she said. ‘And that was for work, not for best. So get yourself off to look in ’shops. There’s no time to find a dressmaker before Sunday but I’m sure we can afford to buy you something ready to wear.’
Reuben was due to call after they had closed that afternoon to show Bella how to set out the accounts and she had intended asking him if he thought they were progressing all right and making a profit. Perhaps I could see if he thinks there’s enough money for a suit of clothes for Joe as well as an outfit for me.
But when he showed her how to set out the incoming cash and the outgoings, he asked tentatively, ‘I trust you each take out a salary, Bella?’
She looked at him. ‘Do you mean Ma and me and Joe?’ and when he nodded she said, ‘Why, no. We never have. We’ve only ever taken out what we need from ’takings, for shopping and – things. We’ve never taken a wage, not any of us, and I don’t know if Father did either.’
When she asked her mother, she said she didn’t think so, but there was never much they needed out in Holderness.
‘But that is not the point, dear lady,’ Reuben said quietly. ‘If you are in business you must keep a proper set of books to show the tax inspector.’
Sarah looked blank and said she had never had anything to do with the money. Joseph had always handled it.
‘Well, I think you must start now,’ Reuben told her. ‘You can’t possibly compare one year with another if you don’t know how much you earned or how much your costs are.’
‘Show our Bella,’ she said. ‘She’s old enough to handle that side of things.’
‘Actually, I’m not sure if she is, but perhaps Joe is, and if I show them both what to do we can then put it in your name, Mrs Thorp, as you are the innkeeper.’
So Bella began her instruction into bookkeeping; Joe said he didn’t want to, but that he would gladly take a salary as it would be the first time ever. However, Reuben insisted that he should also take instruction, as it might one day come in useful. Bella quite enjoyed doing the figures, and she learned that they were in a very profitable business. The following day her mother produced some sheets of notepaper with figures on them and said she had been jotting down the money they had taken at the Woodman since Joseph had died.
Reuben Jacobs put his head in his hands in mock dismay and asked if they would like him to look after the accounts until such time as everything was in order; they agreed that they would but said that he must charge his usual fee, to which he replied that he would.
Bella went shopping for a new outfit on the strength of now earning a salary. She usually made her own clothes, but it was rather nice, she decided, to look in the shop windows at various fashion styles and try some of them on. She was torn between a cream wool dress and a deep red one with a high neckline and a boned bodice, and finally settled on the red as she thought it looked very cheery in the cold dreary weather. She also purchased a horsehair underskirt and several cotton petticoats at the insistence of the shop assistant, who said they were essential to show off the skirt’s deep flounces.
As snow was forecast she also bought a loose grey mantle, warm gloves and a matching bonnet and came out of the shop feeling dizzy and guilty, wondering what her mother and Joe would say.
What they said, when she tried on the outfit to show them, was that she looked very grand, and her mother suggested that she go out again the next day to buy a new pair of boots, for her old ones looked very shabby under her new outfit.
‘Well, I think I might go shopping for a new jacket and trousers,’ Joe said. ‘What do you think, Alice? Want to come wi’ me and help me choose?’
Alice blushed and looked at Bella and Mrs Thorp. ‘I can do,’ she said. ‘If you like.’
‘I do like,’ Joe said. ‘We’ll go ’day after tomorrow after Bella’s got fixed up wi’ her new boots, an’ then it’ll be your turn, Ma. Might as well spend it now that we know we’re solvent.’
> ‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ his mother protested. ‘Got to leave summat for a rainy day.’
Henry came into the kitchen; he walked home from school alone now. ‘It is a rainy day,’ he told his mother. ‘I’m wet through! You look nice, Bella. Is that new?’
Bella washed her hair and dried it in front of the fire. Her hair was very thick and long and took a long time to dry. It had a deep curl in it, but Alice had said she would tie it up in rags for her to make it look even curlier.
‘I wish mine was like yours,’ she said. ‘Mine is so fine and straight.’
‘But lovely,’ Bella said. ‘It shines like silk.’
And it did. Since Alice had come to live with them and was eating good food, she looked much better; she’d put on weight, and when her hair wasn’t tied back in a bun it hung down her back like a pale gold curtain. And Bella knew she wasn’t the only one to notice. She had seen Joe casting admiring glances too.
On the following Sunday morning Bella woke early. She reached out to twitch the curtains open. It was still very dark and yet there was a luminous glow to the sky which puzzled her until she thought Snow! and slid out of bed, draping a shawl round her shoulders. She looked out and her eyes lit up with pleasure. It was snowing, the sky full of swirling flakes which were glowing in the light from the gas lamps outside the Maritime.
She quickly dressed in warm clothing and wool stockings and crept downstairs, where she put on her rubber boots, unlocked the door to the alleyway and went down it to the street.
The snow was coming down thick and fast in great fat flakes so that she could barely see in front of her. She laughed with joy; the first snow of winter had always delighted her and she stepped out into the pristine whiteness and walked to the top of Anne Street. She breathed in icy breaths which set her nostrils tingling and with parted lips she looked down Paragon Street which was like a white river, untouched as yet by wheels or hooves or footprints, and gazed at the snow-encrusted buildings with their soft and deep white windowsills and patterned window etchings.
