Never Look Back

  But first Tabitha had gone off to the Glovers, soon she’d be moving to Boston, and Amelia was coming back to San Francisco to live with her and Sidney. She had a feeling that once Cissie was married, this house would become very much Arnold’s home, and she and the other children would not be so welcome any more. She had smarted when Cissie had said he thought it was time she took Amelia away, he had no right to air his opinions on an agreement made between two close friends. But then it appeared he had strong opinions about everything, and it seemed Cissie went along with most of them.

  Matilda hadn’t ever taken to him. He was a man with a very narrow view of life, bound by the confines of his work and religion. His mother was German, his father English, from Lancashire, and they’d met and married as young immigrants and adopted the Puritan way of life when they moved to Pennsylvania. Arnold had held forth one evening last year on how scrupulously clean his mother kept their house, despite having four children, and how hard his father had to work, almost as if he believed Cissie and Matilda had been born into a life of luxury.

  While Matilda didn’t believe Cissie should tell Arnold everything about her early life, she thought her friend was laying up problems for herself by allowing him to believe she shared all his narrow views. She was after all a fiery and fun-loving woman, and to spend the rest of her days denying her true self would be a living death.

  One bright sunny morning, two weeks into the holiday, Matilda and Peter waved goodbye to Cissie, Arnold and the two little girls as they set off in Arnold’s gig to visit some friends of his. These friends had come out from Pennsylvania like Arnold, but they’d been given land some twenty-five miles away, and he’d only seen them once since they first arrived in Oregon. He’d got word they had had a new daughter recently, and he hoped to persuade them to come to his wedding. As it was a fifty-mile round trip, he and Cissie intended to stay overnight with them.

  As this family had only young daughters, Peter wasn’t very enthusiastic to go with them, so Matilda had suggested he stayed with her, and they would take a trip on the ferry to Portland to look at the ships.

  ‘Have a lovely time,’ Matilda called out as they set off. Cissie looked very pretty sitting up beside Arnold in a green and white print dress and a matching sun-bonnet. The two little girls were in the back with a picnic basket, Amelia in blue, Susanna in pink, both with starched white pinafores over their dresses. ‘You two behave yourselves,’ Matilda added as the girls blew kisses at her. ‘I’ll miss you.’

  Her anxiety about the impending marriage had faded now. Arnold was staid and opinionated, but in the last two weeks she’d come to see there was another side to him too. The breakthrough had come on her first Sunday afternoon here when she’d seen the stout little man with his stiff collar and Sunday suit romping with Amelia and Susanna out in the garden. There was no pretence in his delight at playing with them, he clearly was a man who liked children, and these ones especially. Later that same day she’d caught a glimpse of him and Cissie kissing passionately in the parlour, and she’d decided that maybe she’d misjudged him.

  Since then the man had surprised her many times, he helped with washing up when he came for a meal, he read books to the children, and he had a very close relationship with Peter, and Tabitha too. Maybe he was a little stuffy in that he disapproved of liquor, and women in business, but he was kindly, he clearly adored Cissie, and he would take good care of her and her children.

  Matilda glanced sideways at Peter, he was watching the gig’s departure very intently. ‘Are you really sure you don’t want to go too?’ she asked, ruffling his sandy hair with her hand. ‘You could run after them if you’ve changed your mind.’

  Peter grinned. ‘It will be more fun with you, Aunt Matty,’ he said, his brown eyes twinkling with mischief. ‘I bet you’ll let me go swimming!’

  Matilda smiled affectionately. Arnold didn’t approve of boys swimming in the river, she suspected this was purely because he couldn’t swim himself. Somehow she doubted he’d ever climbed a tree, torn his pants in rough play, or had a fight. She personally thought boys had to do these things if they weren’t to grow up to become cissies.

  Peter certainly wasn’t a cissy; since Sidney left for San Francisco, he had taken it upon himself to be the man of the house – he chopped all the wood, lit the fires, and shot rabbits and ducks for the table. He also helped out the owners of the grocery shops after school, delivering orders, filling up shelves, and the money he earned was always handed over to Cissie.

  ‘We’ll see about swimming,’ she said. ‘Maybe we could take a towel just in case. If nobody’s watching I might even have a paddle.’

  Peter was excellent company, old enough for her not to flap every time he disappeared out of view, young enough to view the ships and the port with tremendous excitement. In many ways he was like Sidney in nature, the same exuberance, the interest in everything and anything, but then Sidney had been a formative influence since his birth. Yet Peter was a great deal smarter, he read extensively, and had a good head for figures. Matilda thought she ought to speak to Cissie when she got back about sending him to a better school too, for she thought he’d outgrown the little one here in Oregon City.

  During the day Peter confided in her that he wanted to be a soldier. Knowing Cissie would never want him in the enlisted ranks with all those rough men, Matilda said he must work hard at school then, and maybe he could go to West Point and become an officer. She made a note mentally to ask James about this when she saw him again.

  It was almost dark when they got home that evening, and it was strange to have the house all to themselves. They decided that the next day they would collect Tabitha from the Glovers and go for a long walk right up along the river, and if they found anywhere secluded enough, she might even have a dip in the water too.

  Arnold and Cissie arrived home late the following evening, both the girls fast asleep in the back of the gig, and they didn’t even wake when Arnold lifted them out and carried them up to their beds. Arnold left after a light supper, and Cissie launched into an account of the trip and Arnold’s friends, Martha and Egon.

  ‘Their cabin was horrid,’ she said, pulling a disgusted face. ‘Just a dirt floor, and no windows, they haven’t even got a stove. I surely didn’t want to spend even one night there, but it was too late to set off for home.’

  This amused Matilda. Cissie had become remarkably ladylike in the past few years. She had made a concerted effort to speak better, and she was forever studying a book on manners. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve got above yourself!’ she teased her.

  Cissie grinned. ‘It wasn’t so much the cabin really, it was the way they were, kind of lazy and not caring enough to try and make it nice,’ she explained. ‘Egon’s not a real farmer, back home he ran a dry goods store. As for Martha, well, I felt real sorry for her with a new baby and four others all under six, she looked so weary and sickly, I don’t reckon she had enough milk for the baby, it kept crying all the time. Thank goodness we took a lot of food with us, they had hardly a thing to eat but beans and rice. The children were so dirty too!’

  The scene Cissie was describing reminded Matilda of ones from her own childhood, and she guessed by the anxiety in her friend’s eyes that she too had been reminded how lucky she had been to have married a resourceful man like John.

  ‘I did what I could,’ she went on. ‘But Matty, there was so much needed doing, the little ones’ dirty napkins were just left in a pail, the pots and pans all needed a good scouring, the chickens kept coming in the cabin, and that poor wailing baby! I could see Arnold wished we’d never gone, and Susanna just kept looking at me as if to say “When are we going?’ ”

  ‘I bet your home looks pretty good now, doesn’t it?’ Matilda said.

  ‘Oh Matty, it does,’ Cissie said, running her fingers through her hair distractedly. ‘I can’t wait to get in my own bed. We slept on the floor last night, but I couldn’t sleep for thinking what might be running about in there. I haven
’t thought about that cellar in years, but it all came back to me in the dark.’

  Matilda saw that Cissie had been deeply affected by visiting Martha and Egon. For the next two days she kept washing clothes, scrubbing the floor and polishing windows, as if her life depended on it. Even Arnold seemed subdued when he called round the following evening, he said Egon had always seemed so strong and energetic when he was back in Pennsylvania, and he couldn’t understand why he’d changed so much.

  On the third night after returning home, Amelia called out in the early hours of the morning saying she had bad tummy ache. Matilda went in to her and sat her on the chamber-pot, and was perturbed to see her stools were very loose. As she went straight back to sleep afterwards, Matilda thought it was only a mild upset, and went back to bed herself.

  Early next morning Susanna went rushing out to the privy, holding her stomach, only to scream out for her mother a few seconds later. She hadn’t been able to get there in time and she was distressed at messing herself. This was followed a while later by Amelia crying out from upstairs that she too had had an accident.

  As both children kept complaining of pains in their stomachs, they were put to bed, but it was only later in the day when Cissie complained of a kind of rumbling in her stomach, and aches in her legs, that Matilda went for the doctor. He was out on calls, but his wife promised he would come as soon as he got back. As she returned to the house Cissie informed her Amelia had been sick.

  In the four hours before the doctor finally came, it became clear to Matilda that both the girls and Cissie had something far more than an ordinary stomach upset. Cissie had a bout of diarrhoea just like the children. All three of them were very thirsty and all had pains in both stomach and legs. But Amelia was by far the worst, she had brought up all the food in her stomach, now there was just thin, colourless fluid coming up, and the same from her bottom. She cried pitifully and lay scrunched up in the bed, unable to straighten her legs.

  Cissie had tried to stay up and help with the children, but as each time a cramp came she was doubled up, Matilda made her go to bed. As a precautionary measure she told Peter to stay downstairs.

  Dr Shrieber apologized profusely in his thick German accent for calling so late, listened to Matilda’s description of the symptoms carefully, then followed her upstairs to see the patients.

  Matilda had never met this man before, but she had heard from both Cissie and Tabitha that the big blond man with steely blue eyes was considered to be one of the finest doctors in the whole territory.

  He examined Amelia first, taking her pulse and gently feeling her stomach and legs. As he tucked the bedding up round her again, and moved on to examine Susanna, Matilda thought he had gone very pale, but as the light from the lantern was a little dim, she hoped she was imagining this.

  The jovial way he greeted Cissie, and said they’d all been eating too much and would be better in a day or two allayed her fears. It wasn’t until he was downstairs again that Matilda saw his expression was very grim.

  ‘It isn’t eating too much, is it?’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘No, I vish it vere just that, Mrs Jennings. I fear it is cholera,’ he said in a strong accent.

  She gasped, and clutched at the kitchen table for support. She knew only too well that this terrible disease rarely left any survivors. No one knew what caused it, and there was no treatment for it other than a few drops of laudanum and keeping the patient warm.

  ‘I am so sorry, Mrs Jennings,’ he said, his eyes soft with sympathy. ‘Have you any symptoms?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, nor Peter, as yet. We stayed behind when Mr Bigglesworth and Mrs Duncan went to visit some friends. Maybe they caught this there? Have you heard if Mr Bigglesworth is ill too?’

  ‘No, but I vill investigate that. You must keep Peter veil away from the sick room,’ he said, dabbing at his perspiring face with a handkerchief.

  ‘What about Tabitha?’ she asked, fear clutching at her insides. ‘She’s been here too.’

  Tabitha had been in and out on most days during her holiday, but mostly only for short periods because of her studies.

  ‘I vill call on the Glovers too, and ask that they keep her at home for the time being,’ he said. ‘I advise you move Mrs Duncan into the room with the children, please soak a sheet in vinegar and hang it over the door. You must take care yourself, Mrs Jennings. Vash your hands after touching the patients, all soiled bedding must be boiled and chamber-pots and other vessels scoured. Until this disease has run its course you and Peter must not go out, and I vill place a sign on the front door to keep visitors away,’

  Matilda suddenly felt very faint as the enormity of what he was saying slowly sank in. If he was right and this was cholera, then within a few days Amelia, Susanna and Cissie could all be dead.

  She looked up at this big German for whom the whole city had the greatest respect, saw the deep concern in his eyes and knew he was unlikely to be wrong. She wanted to scream at him, tell him it was unfair, but she controlled herself and asked what she could do to try to save them.

  ‘Keep them warm, much to drink, brandy too is helpful, I will return with a bottle for you later and some laudanum. Give the children two or three drops, Mrs Duncan can have up to ten. I vill call again to see you.’

  ‘Come up here, Matty,’ Cissie called out after the doctor had gone. Matilda went up hesitantly, afraid her friend was going to read what was wrong in her eyes. Cissie looked so small in the big bed John had made so lovingly. Her hands were tweaking at the quilt, her face very white. ‘I know what it is,’ she said, her green eyes wide with fear. ‘I saw it on the wagon train. I could kill Arnold for taking us to that place. But I guess he couldn’t know we’d catch something like this.’

  ‘Of course he couldn’t, and you are all going to be all right,’ Matilda said, moving closer to her friend and taking her hand. ‘I’ll look after you,’

  ‘If you’ve got any sense you’ll clear off now,’ Cissie said sharply. ‘I’ve never known anyone survive cholera. The only good thing about it is that it’s usually a quick death.’

  ‘We’ll have no defeatist talk of dying,’ Matilda said fiercely. ‘I won’t have it. And neither am I going away, we can fight this, Cissie, but you have to work at it. First I’m going down to Peter to explain what’s wrong, then I’m coming back up here to move you in with the girls.’

  She dragged Tabitha’s narrow bed into the girls’ room and made it up for Cissie, between the two children’s. An hour or two later Susanna was vomiting, just like Amelia, and both girls were crying out with pain.

  Matilda barely noticed the sun come up again in the morning, for by then Cissie was vomiting, and between cries of pain the three demanded water. But as fast as Matilda could get it down them, laced with brandy and laudanum, it was being ejected. She tore up sheets, pillow-cases and towels to use as napkins, but almost as quickly as she tucked a clean one round their bottoms, they were soaked again in that curiously white fluid like rice water.

  At daybreak she ran downstairs to empty and scour the vomit bowls, and to put the napkins to boil on the stove, ordering Peter not to touch anything, but to keep the stove going with fuel. She didn’t know which was worse, to see the terror in his still healthy eyes, or the resignation in the ones upstairs.

  Dr Shrieber called later that morning to say Arnold was ill too, and he’d moved him into isolation into an outhouse at the boarding-house where he lived. Matilda didn’t ask if anyone was nursing him, she knew only too well no one other than the doctor would dare go near him. It was terrible to think that a man who had been eagerly anticipating his marriage just a couple of days ago would die alone.

  ‘Did he send any message for Cissie?’ she asked.

  The doctor nodded. ‘That he loves her, and is praying for her recovery. He said please do not tell her he is ill too.’

  ‘What about Tabitha?’ she asked.

  ‘She is very veil. She wanted to come and help you nurse Mrs
Duncan and the children,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘Of course I said she couldn’t. She asked me to tell you she is praying for you all.’

  All that day and again through the night Matilda slogged away, soothing, giving drinks, holding vomit bowls, washing and changing her patients, and running up and down stairs during the brief lulls to rinse the boiled napkins and set a newly filled pail to boil. Peter called out to her to ask what he could do, but hanging the washing on the line, chopping new wood for the stove and bringing in fresh water from the pump were the only things she could allow him to do.

  But despite all her efforts and prayers, by the morning Amelia had sunk into the final stage of the illness that the doctor had described to her. She just lay there, almost lifeless, her face blue in colour, her eyes sunken, her breathing short and laborious, her skin cold and clammy and with almost no discernible pulse. Matilda knew then that the end would come very soon.

  It was so hard to control her feelings. She felt utter rage that her only child was to be taken from her. Guilt that she’d gone away to make money. Such deep remorse that they’d had so little time together. But she had to control them, she couldn’t let her child sense anything more than her love for her in her last hours on earth.

  Sitting by the child and whispering endearments, she saw Cissie watching her silently. Her face was drawn with the pain of her cramps, but she didn’t utter a sound, and Matilda knew her friend was grieving with her, for she’d been Amelia’s mother too.

  Susanna was equally silent, it looked as if she too was fast approaching the last stage, for her eyes were beginning to sink like Amelia’s. In some strange way, the scene reminded Matilda of her first meeting with Cissie. There were no rats here, it was a warm, pleasant room, but perhaps it was that Cissie appeared to be guarding the two children, just as she had all those little ones in the cellar.

  ‘John and I will look after her,’ Cissie said, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘I’ll tell Lily and Giles too what a fine job you did with Tabby. We’ll all be looking down on you and watching over you.’