change his clothes and get a few hours of sleep before going back to his own hospital. There was little enough he could do at the best of times. There was no known medicine against typhoid, only constant nursing to ease the distress, keep the temperature down and some fluid in the body, and the will of the victim to live.
Callandra looked up with surprise. “I don't know,” she said. “I admit I hadn't thought about it. I suppose to-”she stopped. “No, that's ridiculous.
No undertaker's going to handle fever victims. Anyway, there are too many of them.”
“They've got to be buried,” Enid pointed out, sitting in the rickety chair where Monk had sat. Callandra was on the other, Hester on the floor. “If not undertakers, then who? You can't expect gravediggers to lay out bodies properly and observe the decencies. All they know is to bury coffins. Coffin makers will be the only people profiting out of this.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “At least it has got warmer. Or is it just that we have more fuel in the stove?”
“I'm frozen.” Callandra shivered and hugged her arms around herself.
“Hester, have you put more on the fires?”
“No.” Hester shook her head. “I daren't, or we'll run out. We've only got enough for two more days anyway. I meant to speak to Bert about that, and I forgot.”
“I'll ask him next time I see him.” Callandra dismissed it.
“I don't know where he's gone.” Enid was staring at her. She looked very pate except for spots of color in her cheeks. She must be exhausted. She had not been home for two days, just sleeping on the floor in this room when she had the chance. “He went out over two hours ago,” she added. “I asked him about going to the undertaker, but I don't think he heard me.”
Hester glanced at Callandra.
“There must be so many funerals,” Enid went on, speaking more to herself than to either of them. Her face was very pale and there was a gleam of sweat across her brow and upper lip. She looked up. “What graveyard are they putting them in, do you know?” She turned, first to Callandra, then to Hester.
“I don't know,” Callandra said quietly.
“I should find out.” Enid sighed and pushed her hand across her brow, brushing away her falling hair.
“It doesn't matter!” Callandra said, looking past her to Hester.
“Yes it does,” Enid insisted. “People may ask, relations may.”
“They are not burying them separately anymore.” Hester gave the answer Callandra had been avoiding.
“What?” Enid swiveled around. She looked bleached of all color but for a feverish stain on her cheeks, and her eyes were hollow, as though bruised.
“They are in common graves,” Hester explained quietly. “Don't grieve over it.” She reached over and touched Enid's arm very lightly. On the table the candle flickered, almost went out, then burned up again. “The dead won't mind.”
“What about the living?” Enid protested. “What about when all this is over and they need to grieve, need a place to remember those they lost?” “There isn't one,” Hester answered. “It happens in war. All you can say to the family of a soldier is that he died bravely, and if it was in hospital, that there was someone there to care for him. There isn't anything more.”
“Yes, there is,” Callandra said quickly. “You can tell them he died fighting for a cause, serving his country. Here all you can say is they died because the damnable council would not build sewers, and they were too poor to do it themselves. That's hardly a comfort to anyone.” She looked across at Enid and frowned. “They also died because they are half starved and cold all winter, half of them have rickets or tuberculosis, or are stunted by some other childhood disease. But you can hardly put on a tombstone, if you had one, that they died of having been born in the wrong time and place. Are you all right? You don't look well.”
“I have a headache,” Enid confessed. “I thought I was just tired, but I do feel rather worse now than I did before I sat down. I thought I was hot, but perhaps I'm cold. I'm sorry-I sound ridiculous…”
Hester stood up and crossed the short space between them, bending down in front of Enid, searching her face, her eyes. She reached up her hand and placed it on her brow. It was burning.
“Is it…?” Enid whispered, the question too dreadful to ask.
Hester nodded. “Come on. I'll take you home.”
“But…” Enid began, then realized it was pointless. She clambered to her feet, swayed, and buckled at the knees. Hester and Callandra only just caught her in time to ease her back down into the chair.
“You must go home,” Callandra said firmly. “We can manage here.”
“But I can't just leave!” Enid argued. “There's so much to do! I…”
“Yes you can.” Callandra forced a smile; there was tiredness, patience and a deep grief in it. She touched Enid very gently, but without the least indecision. “You will only distract us here, because we can't look after you as we would wish. Hester will take you.”
“But…” Enid swallowed hard and began to writhe deeply, gasping, and in obvious distress. “I'm sorry… I think I may be sick.”
Callandra looked across and met Hester's eyes.
“Fetch a pail,” she ordered. “Then go and tell Mary. You'd better find a hansom and bring it back here.”
“Of course.” There was nothing to discuss or with which to take issue. She went into the main room and returned within seconds with a pail, then went to find Mary, who was up at the far end of the room, sponging down a woman who was almost insensible with fever. The rush torches on the walls threw shifting shadows over the straw and the dim shapes of bodies under the blankets. There were no sounds but the rustling of feverish movement and the murmurs and cries of delirium, and close to the windows, the thrumming of the rain outside.
“I fink she's a little better,” Mary said hopefully when she realized Hester was beside her.
“Good.” Hester did not argue. “Lady Ravensbrook's got the fever now. I'm going to find a hansom to take her home. Lady Callandra will stay here, and Dr. Beck will be back later this evening. See what you can do about some more wood. Alf said there was some rotten timber on the dockside. It'll be wet, but if we stick it in here it may dry out a bit. It will spark badly, but in the stoves that won't matter.”
“Yes, miss. I…”
“What?”
“I'm sorry about Lady Ravensbrook.” Mary's face was pinched with concern.
Hester could see it even in this uncertain light. “That's a real shame.”
Mary shook her head. “Didn't think a strong lady like that'd catch it. You take care, miss. In't much ter you neither.” She looked up and down Hester's rather thin figure with kindly honesty. “Yer ain't got much ter fight agin it wif. You lose 'alf yer weight an' there won't be nuffink left.”
Hester did not agree with that piece of logic, but she did not argue. She pulled her shawl closer around herself and retraced her steps back between the straw beds and the entrance, and went down the stairs to the outside door and the street.
Outside was pitch-dark and gusting rain on the blustery wind. The solitary gas lamp just around the corner shed a haze of light through the rain, guiding her towards Park Place. She would probably have to round the narrow Limehouse Causeway up to the West India Dock Road before she could find a hansom. She pulled her shawl tighter around herself and bent her head against the rain. It was less than half a mile.
She passed several people. It was still early evening and men were returning from work in factories, dockyards and warehouses. One or two nodded to her as their paths crossed in the misty arc of a streetlight. She had become a familiar figure to far too many who knew or loved someone stricken with typhoid, but to most she was just another drab woman about her business.
The West India Dock Road was busier. There was plenty of general traffic, goods carts, drays, wagons laden with bales for the docks or warehouses, loads taken off barges or ready to go on in the morning, horse-drawn omnibuses, an ambulance, and all manner of coach and carriage of the more ordinary type. There were no hansoms, broughams or fashionable pairs.
It was ten minutes before she managed to stop a hansom looking for a fare.
“The corner of Park Street and Gill Street, please,” she requested. “It's less 'n five minutes away,” the cabby protested, seeing her wet shawl, worn boots and dull dress. “Lost the use o' yer legs, 'ave yer? Look, luv, Put worth your money. You can walk it, an' sure as 'ell's a waitin', yer i'nt goin' ter get any wetter than y'are!”
“I know, thank you.” She forced herself to smile at him. “I've got a friend there who needs to go up west, all
