Yes, Mama

‘Bless your lovin’ heart.’ Polly bent and gave her a quick kiss on the top of her flaxen head. Then she hastily rewound the plaits of her own hair more tightly and settled a clean cap on top of them, while she considered how to answer the girl.

‘It’s not proper for you to eat with the servants, luv. And your Papa gets cross very quickly, as you well know. So your Mam probably wants him to have his dinner quiet, like.’

‘I don’t think it’s because of that, because I can be as quiet as a mouse. I think they don’t like me, not even Mama. There must be something wrong with me.’

‘Och, no! Parents always like their kids,’ Polly lied.

‘Well, I don’t understand why I can’t be with them.’

No you don’t, thanks be, thought Polly. I’d hate you to find out. She was anxious to get back to her work, but Alicia was following her own line of thought, so she lingered for a moment, as the child asked her, ‘Do you think Mama would be grumpy, if I asked Mrs Tibbs to teach me to cook? Some of the girls at school are learning from their Mamas. You see, I could then help Mrs Tibbs.’ She looked earnestly up from her dinner.

‘Well, you could ask your Mam. But don’t say nothin’ about helpin’ – she might not like that.’

‘Surely I can help a friend?’

Polly did not respond. She merely said she must get back to the kitchen and fled before she had to explain the limit of friends allowed to little girls.

Alicia licked both sides of her trifle spoon and sadly scraped the empty dish. She put the dish back on to the tray. As she slowly folded up her napkin and pushed it into the ivory ring which Edward had sent her from India, she thought there was no explaining the idiosyncrasies of parents. She leaned back in her chair and her lips began to tremble – she wanted to cry. It was so strange that the other girls at school had parties at Christmas and birthdays and went on holidays with their mothers and fathers, and no such things ever happened to her – she was not even taken shopping by her mother – Polly took her to Miss Bloom, the dressmaker, to have her dresses and coats fitted, or to Granby Street to buy the few Christmas gifts she did not make herself. Polly even took her to All Saints Church most Sunday mornings.

She got out her spelling book to do her homework for the following day. But the letters seemed to jump erratically, as she realized suddenly that not only had she never given a party; she had never been invited to any other girls’ parties, either.

Chapter Eight (#ulink_462639d3-259d-5eb3-8926-e019822d8103)

I

James Tyson did not take much notice of his wife, Bridie’s, complaints of fatigue and of pain in her legs; women always complained of their feet and that they were tired. He himself suffered chronic pain in his back, a relic of his work as a docker; it made it impossible, now, for him to find work, except occasionally as a nightwatchman. It was Bridie selling her rags and old buttons in the market who kept them from starvation. When one morning she failed to get up in time for the opening of the market, it was suddenly brought home to him that her complaints were not the usual ones.

‘Me head,’ she nearly screamed to him. ‘It’s me head!’

She was hot with fever, so a worried James suggested that she should go to the public Dispensary to ask for medicine.

‘I couldn’t walk it,’ she gasped. ‘I’ll be better later on.’

James woke Billy and sent him off to work; he had a job cleaning up after the horses in a stable belonging to a warehouse. On the way, James said, he was to call in on his sister, Mary, and ask her to come to her mother. Mary arrived at Bridie’s bedside half an hour later, her newest baby tucked inside her shawl. She was followed by her daughter, Theresa, a fourteen-year-old who plied the streets at night. They both stared down at Bridie tossing on her truckle bed; neither knew what to do.

Finally, Mary sent James upstairs to the tap in the court, to get some water to bathe Bridie’s face with. ‘Looks as if she’s got the flu,’ she suggested, as she handed her baby to Theresa to hold.

Nobody else attempted to put a name to the fever; there were all kinds of fevers, and people either got better from them or they died. And pain such as Bridie’s was something you put up with.

The news went round the court that Billy Tyson’s Mam had the flu. Nobody wanted to catch it, so they stayed away. James went to peddle Bridie’s fents in the market.

Word that Bridie had the flu very badly reached her Great-aunt Kitty, who lived in the next court. She hobbled down the stairs from the attic in which she lived and, slowly and painfully, dragged her arthritic limbs into the Tysons’ cellar room. She was panting with the effort as James, returned from the market, made her welcome; few people knew as much about sickness as Great-aunt Kitty did. She pushed her black shawl back from her bald head and bent over to talk to the patient.

‘’Ow you feelin’, Bridie?’ she croaked.

Her eyes wide and unblinking, Bridie tossed and muttered unceasingly.

‘Lemme closer,’ the old lady commanded Mary. ‘And give me the candle so I can see proper.’

As was the custom, Bridie still had her clothes on; clothes kept you warm at night as well as in the daytime. Only her boots had been removed, to show black woollen stockings with holes in the heels and toes.

As she shuffled closer to the bed, the old lady muttered, ‘Well, it int cholera, praise be, or she’d be dead by now. Is ’er stummick running?’

‘No. She ain’t even pissed.’

Aunt Kitty paused and looked up at Mary. ‘She truly ’asn’t?’

‘No. Not a drop. I bin ’ere all day.’

‘That’s bad.’ Aunt Kitty bent still lower, the candle dripping wax on Bridie’s blouse, while she lifted the sufferer’s chin and held it firmly in order to take a good look at her face. ‘Lord presairve us!’ she exclaimed. She touched a dark encrustation at the corners of Bridie’s mouth, and then drew back thoughtfully.

She turned to Billy and James and ordered, ‘You turn your backs. I’m goin’ to take a real look at ’er all over.’

Filled with apprehension, Billy followed his father’s example.

Great-aunt Kitty gestured towards Mary with the candle. ‘Lift up her skirts. I want to see her stummick.’

Mary hesitated, her brown eyes wide with fear of what her great-aunt might deduce.

‘Come on, girl.’

Kitty was said to be a witch, so rather than be cursed, Mary did as she was bidden, though she felt it wicked to expose her mother so.

Underneath the black woollen skirt were the ragged remains of a black and white striped petticoat. Mary lifted this and her mother’s stomach was exposed; she wore nothing else, other than her stockings.

Holding the candle so that it did not drip on Bridie’s bare flesh, Kitty ran her fingers over the sick woman’s stomach. She bent down to peer very carefully at it. Beneath the grime, she was able to see dark red blotches. Her lips tightened over her toothless mouth.

She felt down the rigid legs and her sly old face, for once, showed only a terrible sadness. Very gently she took the petticoat and skirt hems from Mary’s fingers and laid them back over Bridie. ‘You can look now,’ she told the male members of the family.

While she made her examination, James had retreated to the back of the tiny room. Now she turned to him.

‘’Ad any rats ’ere lately?’

‘There’s always rats, you know that,’ growled James.

‘Hm.’

Billy interjected, ‘Mam found a near-dead one in the court a while back. Proper huge it were – like a cat. She threw it in the midden with the rubbish.’

‘I knew it,’ muttered Great-aunt Kitty. ‘I seen it before. She’s got gaol fever, God help us all.’

A hissing sigh of fear went through the other members of the family.

‘Typhus?’ James whispered.

‘Aye. Haven’t seen it for a while. But I seen lots of it in me time.’

‘What’ll we do?’