The Quality Street Wedding Page 26

  ‘Yes, but no one can ever be certain, can they?’ Kathleen was ready to find a legal loophole if there was one. ‘How could anyone prove that the foal was sired by our Ruffian?’

  ‘Because I’ve seen it,’ Diana said, ‘and it is peculiarly ugly.’

  Mary laughed so hard and so suddenly that she nearly choked on her elderberry wine and had to be slapped on the back by her attentive new husband. Mary’s laughter was infectious and before long even Diana was showing a ghost of an exasperated smile.

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ Diana tried to keep a straight face, ‘it’s not funny. I have had to write the words on an official report in the office; I have had to write down that I believe I know the sire of the foal because it’s so ugly.’

  Peter, emboldened by his beaker of elderberry wine, drew back his shoulders and said, ‘It wasn’t Reenie’s fault, it was mine. I let Ruffian out of his stable and if anyone’s going to be dismissed it should be me.’

  Albert Baum cottoned on to what Peter was trying to do and joined in. ‘No, it was not Peter, or Irene; it was I! I released the horse!’

  Mary rolled her eyes at Albert. ‘You weren’t even in England then! It was last spring that he must have gone wandering.’ Then Mary caught a look at her sister and said, ‘Don’t you start confessing to things, you’re enough trouble!’

  Mrs Calder was glad that Diana didn’t seem too serious, but she was still concerned at this revelation that Reenie was in trouble at work again. ‘But joking aside, is there going to be trouble when she goes back?’

  ‘I have been tasked with holding a disciplinary hearing and, as it happens, I have already decided on the outcome.’ Diana looked as hard-faced as she did at any other time and Reenie couldn’t tell if she should be worried.

  ‘What’s going to happen to me, Diana?’

  ‘I’m sentencing you to another year of hard labour at Mackintosh’s toffee factory. If you leave in the next year I’ll flay you alive.’

  ‘I’m not sacked?’ Reenie asked with a mixture of excitement and relief.

  ‘No, because if you leave that would create more work for me, and I’m no fool. Just go and make your apologies to the stable manager and tell him you’ll not let it happen again.’ Diana appeared to think of something else. ‘And for heaven’s sake get Bess to stop bothering him about giving them a wedding; horse weddings are ridiculous.’

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  Gracie was out of danger, but still convalescing after her illness. She reclined, where Diana could see her from the terrace of her adoptive parents’ home, in a wicker chair on the lawn, shaded by a blossoming cherry tree. Lara sat up in a matching chair beside her, throwing a switch up into the branches to make pale pink petals rain down on them and their matching cats besides. The cats, who were not yet a year old, were still playful and fascinated by falling flora, but Gracie’s cat was already showing signs of the devoted shadow it would grow to be.

  Diana sensed that she was not alone on the terrace and she turned to see Edward Hunter, Lara’s father and the adoptive father of Gracie, coming out to see where the children wanted to have their tea; indoors or out. They could have anything they wanted as far as he was concerned.

  ‘Diana,’ he said, an uncharacteristic awkwardness coming into his voice, his manner shades of stoical and shades of reluctance, ‘I didn’t realise you were here. More charity work for my wife?’

  Diana hesitated. It was her policy to avoid all lies except the one essential one; the lie that Gracie was her sister. She had to confess that this time there was no excuse related to charitable endeavours, or meeting minutes to be signed. ‘I wanted to see Gracie. I’ve been worried.’

  Mr Hunter nodded. ‘So have we. She gave us quite a fright. It was a close-run thing.’ He paused, debating whether to ask something or not. ‘The night the doctor came and he brought you out here with him – the night Grace’s fever broke – what did he say to you?’

  There was something in his manner which made Diana suspect that he knew, but she couldn’t quite tell. Edward Hunter had always seemed like a good and generous man, but if he discovered the truth about her real connection to Gracie, how would he respond? Would he think she had deceived them all through malice? Would he understand that it was the only way she could do what was best for her daughter? Would he condemn her for bringing that daughter into the world in the circumstances she had? Would he condemn her for maintaining their connection with dishonesty? Diana thought for a moment before answering honestly, ‘He told me to prepare for the worst.’ And in that moment Diana did prepare for the worst, because she felt certain that her secret was out, that the doctor had spoken privately to Edward Hunter and that he was even now preparing to tell her that she was being cut off from her Gracie.

  Edward nodded slowly, giving nothing away. ‘Yes, I think we all did that night.’ He took in a deep breath and looked out across the garden to where the girls waved ribbons above the heads of their cats, and frowned. ‘They’ve settled in well together, those two. We couldn’t have predicted how well it would work out after such a sudden adoption, but one can’t always foresee everything.’ A silence stretched out across the lawn and back again. ‘Lydia and I wanted to tell you that we’ve decided to send them away.’

  Diana’s heart lurched into her stomach and she felt a cold, cold sensation running up the back of her neck. She remained impassive on the outside, but only because she realised that she could not speak.

  ‘If there is war – and it seems only a matter of time now – there are likely to be shortages of food in towns like this. The countryside would be better for them, healthier. I have family in the Lakes, over near Coniston; we’ll send them there. They’ll be well away from the noise of any bombing raids and all the things which might frighten them. We’ll bring them back here when we think it’s safe, but it’s better for them to send them away.’

  He knew. Of course he knew. How could he not? This wasn’t the angry confrontation she had expected, but then they did not seem like angry people. It was typical of his class that they would allude to it, but not make any scene; wait until she was alone somewhere quiet and tell her that they were making a clean break of it. She swallowed, but her mouth was so dry she thought it would choke her.

  ‘Will – will I be able to write to her sometimes?’ Her voice came out weak and hoarse.

  ‘Write to whom?’

  Tears welled up in Diana’s eyes and threatened to obscure what might be her last sight of her Gracie. ‘My daughter, will I still be able to write to my daughter?’

  Edward Hunter’s expression moved through a moment of mild confusion to total shock. He started visibly and then hurried breathlessly to correct Diana. ‘The cats. We’re sending away the cats. You gave them to us, didn’t you? We thought you’d want to …’ His voice failed him as he looked from Diana’s horror-stricken face to the face of the little girl in the wicker chair in the middle of his lawn; they were the same, they had always been the same. ‘Are you telling me that …?’

  ‘I thought you knew!’ Diana gasped out through barely suppressed sobs. ‘I thought the doctor had told you and you were sending her away because he’d told you. I would never have told anyone if … if …’

  ‘Dear girl,’ the words had the ring of an admonition when Edward Hunter said them, ‘dear girl. What were you thinking?’

  ‘I needed,’ Diana gasped, ‘I needed to give her a better life. I thought … I thought it was the only way.’

  Edward Hunter looked desperately at Diana. ‘What did you intend to do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’

  Chapter Seventy

  ‘You know I have to go away, Reenie.’ Peter had leant his dark blue Raleigh Racer up against the side of the factory stables. For a fleeting moment it felt like the old days when he would take his bike apart and she would brush down the horse, except this time there were pannier bags on the Raleigh and a rucksack on Peter’s shoulder.

  ‘I d
on’t want you to go away on my account.’ Reenie was at a loss for what to do with her hands now that she and Peter could no longer talk by touch. ‘You know that, for me, it was just too soon, that was all. We could go along as we did before …’

  ‘I can’t, Reenie.’ Peter swallowed back the pain of his broken heart. ‘There’s a life I thought I was going to have with you and it’s gone – and I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like I’m mourning for that life we were going to have because it’s died, or at least it never got to live.’

  ‘But what if it’s just postponed?’ Reenie pleaded in spite of herself, because part of her had realised now that she wanted to be free and yet another part of her did not want to feel the pain of losing her closest friend. ‘We’ve got our whole lives ahead of us – we don’t need to hurry anything.’

  ‘That’s just the problem, Reenie. We’re marching to the beat of different drums, you and I. I see that now. I see how much you want to keep your job at Mack’s, and how much I want a family and a home. Those things will never work themselves out. There’s a war coming in all probability, and if I can’t go and fight the fascists in Spain, then I’ll get my training in here and get ready to fight them somewhere else. Perhaps when I come back we’ll both have changed, or perhaps we won’t. I hope you don’t change, Reenie. I hope you always love it here, because it’s part of what made me love you.’

  Reenie shed a tear and sniffed. ‘I’m so sorry, Peter. I really am so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be.’ He hugged her tight. ‘It’s all going to be all right.’

  Doreen and Siobhan sat side by side on kitchen chairs in Doreen’s back garden watching their children play at mud-pie making. It was their first taste of normality together in what felt like such a long time.

  ‘We were all talking on the line at work about throwing you a party, seeing as you didn’t die of the scarlet fever.’ Siobhan said.

  ‘I don’t want a party, I’m exhausted. I want a packet of biscuits.’ Doreen gave her friend a wan smile.

  Siobhan thought she did look too weak for a party, but also thought she could probably do better than a mere packet of biscuits. ‘We brought you Mint Cracknel and Quality Street, but Pearl insisted that you were slimming so you’d only want to sniff the wrappers.’

  ‘Give over! I’ve had scarlet fever and I want a chocolate and a pint of tea.’

  Siobhan laughed; Doreen sounded better in herself, at least, even if she still had a long way to go before she was strong again. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like I’ve been wrung out and hit on the head with a frying pan, but otherwise I’m all in one piece. What’s the gossip from Mack’s? Did they have to fumigate my peg in the cloakroom after I fainted?’

  ‘You did more than faint, you were delirious with fever. They shut down the whole line and got the District Medical Officer to give us all throat tests. Some of the minnows refused to have tests or quarantine and the Employment Department threatened to sack the lot of them. It was handbags at dawn on the Caramel Cup line, so you missed a treat.’

  Doreen looked worried. ‘Seriously, though, was everyone else all right? I didn’t give it to anyone else, did I?’

  ‘Three of the minnows caught it, but it turns out they had all three of them been passionately kissing the same lad from Stebbins’ farm who also had it, so the jury’s out on who they got it from.’

  ‘Did they really trace it all back to Stebbins’ farm? Wasn’t that just a rumour?’

  Siobhan shook her head and tried to swallow a gulp of tea at the same time. ‘No they published a report all about it in the Halifax Courier and everything; one of the milker’s kids had an ear infection. The milker dressed the kid’s ear each day, then went down to the sheds to milk the cows. A couple of the cows got infected teats from the milker, and the infection carried through the milk to the schools and the town, and through the Stebbins’ kids. It just goes to show how quickly these things happen.’

  Doreen held her herself upright for a moment to see what the children were up to, then sank back down into her chair, her head supported with a cushion as she leant it back against the wall. ‘Do you think they’ll get a fine or something, the Stebbins’ lot?’

  ‘No, they’re getting a subsidy.’

  ‘They’re not!’

  Siobhan gave her an arch look. ‘I’m not kidding. They’re getting a government subsidy to set up pasteurising machines and things in the dairy. I can’t believe it. Three dead and they get a subsidy.’

  Doreen shook her head in wonder. ‘Well, I suppose if it prevents it happening again?’

  ‘But does it, though? There’s still posters up everywhere telling us to boil our milk. There’s even advertisements in the national newspapers telling everyone they have to boil their milk, not just people in Halifax.’

  ‘That seems like it’s a waste of a lot of people’s time if it’s only in Halifax,’ Doreen said.

  ‘Well, it could be anywhere, couldn’t it? Or there might be some other bug waiting to get us some other way. I mean, how do we know the danger’s passed? How do we really know?’ Siobhan thought about the uniforms her husband wore to his job as a hospital porter and worried about the myriad germs which clung to them and posed a danger to all around her.

  ‘The District Medical Officer announced that there had been no new infections for a fortnight running and that meant it was all over. It’s over when he says it’s over,’ Doreen said reassuringly, ‘that’s how we know.’

  Siobhan looked down at her hands, the skin had cracked around the knuckles and was red raw from frequent washing. ‘But how can we ever go back to normal? How can we ever live our lives the way we used to? Shouldn’t we be keeping the kids at home in case there’s more illnesses out there, not just scarlet fever, but other things that might be hanging in the air, or growing in the water? I heard from one of the mums at the school that there are two new kinds of measles. They’ve been found in Manchester and they can kill a child in under twenty-four hours. Shouldn’t we be trying to prevent them before they even happen? Shouldn’t we be more cautious than ever?’

  Doreen summoned the strength to sit forward and reach out to pat her friend’s arm. ‘Not unless the District Medical Officer says it’s time to do that. We can’t live our lives listening to rumours about things in other towns which might kill us. If the District Medical Officer tells me to batten down the hatches, then that’s what I’ll do, but not before.’

  ‘I don’t know how everyone can go back to normal so easily. It’s been months. I keep dreaming that the kids are at a party and one of the other kids has “it” – whatever “it” is – and I have to try to protect them, but I can’t because no one cares about it except me.’

  Doreen reclined against her cushion again. ‘You know, my mother used to have that same dream. She told me about it. She had it during the Spanish flu and for months after and she used to wake up crying something awful.’

  ‘Does she still get it; does she still have the dream?’

  ‘No. It went away in the end. It took a long time though, but it went away. Eventually, if you give it enough time, it leaves you be.’

  Author’s Historical Note

  On 15th April 1935 my great-grandmother Connie died from septicemia; she was just twenty years old. Coincidentally, my father and I also both contracted the life-threatening complication when we were twenty. My father contracted his through a scratch on his hand while he was working as a chef in the Café Royal, and I caught a bare ankle on the corner of a sharp box while clearing out the ancient, dirty cellars of my city library. It was thanks to the case history of his grandmother Connie that my father was able to recognise the telltale signs of blood poisoning in both cases and get early treatment to prevent the kind of complications which were once commonplace.

  Septicemia is now a much more treatable illness than it was in the 1930s; antibiotics have saved not only countless lives, but also countless limbs. Where a bad case of tonsillitis was a cau
se for panic and quarantine, it is now more usually remedied with rest, fluids, and banana-flavoured antibiotic medicine. What has not changed is the need to prevent the spread of infections in the first place.

  At the time of writing the second draft of this book I found myself – along with the rest of humanity – in the grip of a pandemic. It felt very strange to sit down to write about characters who could shake hands, share a box of sweets, or embrace, when all around me lives had been turned upside down by our absolute need to isolate ourselves. I tried to encourage my characters to continue the normal life which I could not have, but they resolutely refused and so I went back to my research notes for 1937 as a distraction.

  It was with a jolt of recognition and a strange feeling of solace that I stumbled on the records of the West Yorkshire outbreak of scarlet fever and septic throat which almost shut down Doncaster. The British Medical Journal reviewed the case once it was over and the more I read about it, the more I wondered what would have happened if their efforts to test, trace, and isolate cases had failed. What would have happened if the infection had flared up again months later in a nearby town? What if there had been a second wave in Halifax?

  The Doncaster epidemic had started with a dairy which didn’t pasteurise their milk. From there it spread to the customers of the dairy, and those patients spread it through coughs, sneezes and touch to the wider population of the town. The local isolation hospital was filled rapidly and some of the TB patients were ‘sent home for a Christmas break’ to make room for more victims of the milk-borne infection. Staff at the hospital ran out of masks – which were essential when treating this infectious condition – and the local government advised people to avoid crowded places, like cinemas and pubs. Children were sent home from school, government agencies took charge, and the Ministry of Health’s own laboratory began testing throat swabs from patients in an attempt to track and trace the outbreak and decide who to quarantine. The parallels with our own position were so numerous that I couldn’t help but find a kind of reassurance in knowing our ancestors had weathered the same storm, or at least something with many similarities.