‘How old is Cory?’ said the doctor at the hospital.
‘Thirty-four,’ said Harriet.
The doctor raised his eyebrows.
‘Oh I’m sorry. Cory’s only his first name. We call him Jonah. He’s eight.’
The doctor underlined the word Jonah with a fountain pen and went on to ask her a lot of questions — when did Jonah first sit up and walk? Had he had all his injections? — none of which she could answer.
Then they were taken down endless passages into a room with one bed. Everything was covered in cellophane; the nurses came in in masks.
‘Just a precaution until we find out what it is,’ said one of the nurses.
It was a nice little room. On the blind was painted a village street with dogs and cats and people buying from a market stall. The church clock stood at three o’clock; a chimney sweep was cleaning an immaculate chimney; children looked out of the window. Harriet gazed mindlessly at it as she waited for the results of Jonah’s lumbar puncture.
Thoughts of typhoid, smallpox, polio chased themselves relentlessly round her head. Oh God, don’t let him die.
Jonah’s blond hair was dark with sweat but he seemed calmer. Harriet bent over him, sponging his forehead.
‘Your tits are too low in that blouse,’ he said with a weak grin.
‘I didn’t have time to put on a bra,’ said Harriet.
Half an hour later, the nurses took off their gowns and masks. Much later a specialist arrived. He was a tall man with untidy grey hair, scurf all over his collar, who stank of body odour.
‘We think it’s early meningitis,’ he said. ‘We’ve found far too many white corpuscles in the fluid, but that’s not too much to worry about unless there’s a growth. But I think you should notify the boy’s parents.’
Then followed the hassle of trying to find where Cory was in America.
Harriet tried very hard not to show Jonah how panicky she felt. The only thing that sustained her was the thought of talking to Cory on the telephone. Never had she needed him so badly.
She was frustrated, however, at every turn. Cory’s agent in London had closed his office for the weekend and couldn’t be found at home. She hadn’t enough money to dial the number Cory left her in New York. Noel’s agent said she’d gone to Paris for the weekend, was due back on Tuesday but had left no forwarding address. A queue of large swollen ladies in quilted dressing gowns from the Maternity Ward were waiting to use the telephone and starting to mutter. In desperation she rung Elizabeth Pemberton, who promised rather unwillingly to see what she could do. Afterwards Harriet had a word with Chattie. Her heart was wrung listening to the choked little voice:
‘Elizabeth asked me if I used a dry brush or a wet brush to do my teeth. I wasn’t thinking. I said dry. It was horrid. Everyone’s gone away, Daddy, Mummy, Jonah, you. I do miss you, Harriet.’
As the night nurses came in Jonah grew increasingly worse; his temperature shot up to 106 again. He couldn’t keep any of the antibiotics down. He kept asking for water, but every time he drank he was violently sick. Soon he became delirious, crying for Noel, for Cory, shouting out about the black coachman who was coming to get him. Harriet kept hoping he’d gone to sleep, then his eyes would open and he’d groan. On other occasions he’d drop off, then wake up, be all right for a few seconds, and the pain would take over.
Harriet clung on to his hot dry hand and wondered how she’d get through the night.
Chapter Twenty-one
The noise of the floor-polisher was like sandpaper on her brain; the bleep of a doctor’s walkie-talkie made her jump out of her skin. After twenty-four hours in hospital with no sleep, she seemed to have Jonah’s head — even the slightest sound, running water, the air conditioner, seemed to be magnified a thousand-fold.
Jonah was no better. He had kept nothing down. In between bouts of delirium he complained of a stiff neck.
‘No-one’s trying to make me better,’ he groaned. ‘You’re all trying to kill me.’
Harriet was very near to breaking. She had been unable to locate Cory or Noel. She had not slept at all, and she had taken against the new day nurse, Sister Maddox, who was a snooty, good-looking redhead with a school prefect manner. I’ve got twenty-five other children to see to in this ward, so don’t waste my time, she seemed to say.
‘We’ve seen much worse than Jonah, I can tell you,’ she said briskly as she checked his pulse.
‘Dying, dying, dying,’ intoned Jonah like a Dalek.
‘Now pull yourself together, young man,’ she said. ‘We’re trying to make you better.’
She looked out through the glass partition at a group that was coming down the passage. Hastily she patted her hair and straightened her belt. Harriet understood why when the Houseman Dr Williams entered. He was by any standards good-looking: tall, dark, with classical features, and cold grey eyes behind thick horn-rimmed spectacles. Sister Maddox became the picture of fluttering deference as he examined Jonah and looked at the temperature charts.
He glanced at Harriet without interest, making her acutely aware of her shiny unmade-up face, sweat- stained shirt and dirty hair.
‘Hasn’t kept anything down,’ he said. ‘Probably have to put up a drip soon.’
‘Can’t he have anything to stop the pain?’ protested Harriet.
‘Not till we can locate what’s causing it,’ said Dr Williams in a bored voice. ‘He’ll have to sweat it out.’
Harriet followed him into the passage. ‘He’s not going to die, is he?’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘I mean, how ill is he?’
‘Well, he’s seriously ill,’ said Dr Williams, ‘but he’s not on the danger list yet.’
Harriet went off and cried in the lavatory. Sister Maddox was talking to Dr Williams as she came out.
‘I’ll see you at eight o’clock then, Ruth,’ he was saying.
‘Handsome, isn’t he?’ said a junior nurse.
Yes, thought Harriet, and he knows it.
When she got back, Jonah was awake and screaming with pain.
‘Everyone’s gone away. You left me, you left me. Where’s Daddy? I want to
Suddenly she had a brain wave. She would ring Kit. The next time Jonah fell asleep, she went and called him. He took so long to answer she nearly rang off.
‘Were you in bed?’ she said.
‘Naturally,’ said Kit. ‘It’s lunchtime!’
She told him about Jonah’s meningitis and that she still couldn’t raise Noel or Cory. She tried to be calm, but hysteria kept breaking through her voice.
‘I wouldn’t bother about Noel, darling; she’s not likely to be of help to anyone, but I’ll get hold of Cory for you, don’t worry. If I can’t find him by tomorrow, I’ll drive up myself. Jonah’ll pull through. The Erskines are a pretty tough bunch.’
Another day and night limped by. Jonah woke at 1.30 in the morning screaming for Noel. Harriet felt her self-control snapping as the nurse trotted out the same platitudes about having to get worse before he got better.
He woke again at five and at seven. Another day to get through, thought Harriet, as the sun filtered in through the blind. It seemed like midnight. She must know every inch of that village scene now. She was weak with exhaustion; her eyes were red and felt as though they were full of gravel. Neuralgia travelled round her head, one moment headache, then toothache, then earache.
It was impossible to keep Jonah quiet. Reading aloud was too loud, sponging his head was too painful.
‘Where’s the doctor, where’s the doctor?’ he screamed.
‘He’ll be here soon,’ said Harriet soothingly, but the very word ‘soon’ had become meaningless. Mrs
