The bare few who had recovered gave it all meaning, but it was small in the sight of so much loss. And no matter how hard Kristian tried, what arguments he put up in the local government council, nothing was done. They were frightened of the disease, frightened of the cost of new sewers, frightened of innovation or change, of new inventions which might not work, of old ones which had already failed, and of blame no matter what they did. It was an exhausting struggle, and almost certainly doomed to failure. But neither he nor Callandra could give up.
Hester had watched them day after day marshaling new arguments and returning to battle. Each evening they had retired defeated. The only good to come of it was the tenderness they shared with each other, and even that was fraught with pain. After the fever they would part again, to see each other only occasionally, formally, perhaps in meetings of the board of governors of the hospital where Kristian worked and Callandra gave her help voluntarily. These meetings would be in front of all the other governors, or if they were fortunate, perhaps a chance encounter in a corridor with the constant expectation of interruption. They would speak of anything and everything but themselves. In all probability it would always be so. Hester was welcomed in by the parlormaid and told that a supper was prepared if she wished it, after she had seen Lady Ravensbrook and Mrs. Stonefield.
She thanked the girl and went upstairs.
Enid was propped up in bed, leaning against a pile of pillows. She looked gaunt, as if she had not eaten or slept in days. There were bruised hollows around her eyes and her skin looked discolored and paper-fragile. Her hair hung in lank strings around her shoulders and she was so thin the bones seemed in danger of hurting the flesh stretched across them. But she smiled as soon as she saw Hester.
“How are they?” she asked, her voice still weak, only lifted by the eagerness inside her. “Is it easing at all? How about Callandra? Is she all right? And Mary? And Kristian?”
Hester felt some of the tension slip away from her. The room was warm and comfortable. There was a fire in the hearth. It was a different world from the coldness and the dirt of the hospital, the guttering candles and the smell of too many people unwashed, close together in their pain.
Hester sat on the edge of the bed.
“Callandra and Mary are still well, though very tired,” she replied. “And Kristian is still fighting the council, but I don't think he has won a yard of ground. And yes, I think the fever is lessening a little. Certainly there are fewer deaths. We sent two people home today, both well enough to leave.”
“Who are they? Did I know them?”
“Yes,” Hester said with a broad smile. “One is the little boy you were so fond of, the one you thought could never survive…”
“He's all right?” Enid said in amazement, her eyes lighting. “He's recovered?”
“Yes. He went home today. I don't know what gave him the strength, but he survived.”
Enid leaned back against her pillows, a great sweetness in her face, almost a radiance. “And the other?” she asked.
“A woman with four children,” Hester answered. “She went home to them today as well. But how are you? That's what I came to know.”
It was a question only of friendship. She would make her own determination.
The improvement in Enid was great. Her eyes were clearer, her temperature down to normal, but the fever had wasted her and she looked at the very end of her strength.
Enid smiled. “Very impatient to feel better,” she confessed. “I hate feeling so weak. I can barely lift my hands to feed myself, much less comb my hair. It's absurd. I lie here uselessly. There is so much to do, and I am spending three quarters of my life asleep.”
“It is the best thing,” Hester assured her. “Don't fight against it. It is nature's way of healing you. You will be better the faster if you submit to it.”
Enid clenched her teeth. “I hate to surrender!”
“Military tactics.” Hester leaned forward conspiratorially. “Never fight when you know your enemy has the advantage. Pick a time, don't let him do it for you. Retreat now, and return when the advantage is yours.”
“Ever thought of being a soldier?” Enid asked with a giggle which turned into a cough.
“Frequently,” Hester replied. “I think I could make a better fist of it than many who do it now. Certainly I could barely do worse.”
“Don't let my husband hear you say that!” Enid warned happily.
Hester's reply was cut off by Genevieve's appearance. She looked less harassed than when Hester had seen her last, although she must have been tired, and Hester knew from Monk's remark that there had been no good news.
She greeted her, and after an exchange of necessary information regarding Enid, they both left to partake of the meal which had been set for them in the housekeeper's sitting room.
“The fever is definitely abating in Limehouse,” Hester said conversationally. “I only wish we could do something to prevent it coming back again.”
“What could anyone do?” Genevieve asked with a frown. “The way people live, it is bound to arise every so often.”
“Change the way they live,” Hester replied.
Genevieve smiled, bitterness and a kind of revulsion in it, not untouched by both anger and pity.
“You'd have more luck trying to stop the tide from turning.” She speared a piece of meat in her steak and kidney pudding and put it in her mouth, then spoke again the moment after she had swallowed it. “You can't change people. Oh, one or two, maybe, but never thousands. They've lived like that for generations, never enough to eat, the bread's full of alum, the milk's half water.” She gave a sharp laugh. “Even the tea is better for poisoning the rats than for humans drinking. Only working men get things like pigs' trotters or kippers, the rest of the family does without. Nobody has fruit or vegetables. Everybody in the street, in two streets, has to queue with pails for water from the wells, and half of them are contaminated by sewers, cesspits or middens. Even if they didn't use the one pail for everything!” Her voice was angry, bitter and racked with emotion. “They're born with disease, and they die with it. A few sewage pipes aren't going to change that!”
“Yes they can,” Hester said slowly, her mind dizzy with the force of Genevieve's passion, bewildered by its suddenness and ringing sincerity.
“It's the drains and the middens where the problem lies.”
Genevieve's lip curled. “It's the same thing!”
“No it isn't!” Hester argued, leaning forward across the table. “If there were proper water-carrying sewers built, then-”
“Water?” Genevieve looked amazed and horrified. “Then it would go everywhere!”
“No it wouldn't-”
“Yes it would! I've seen that, when the tide turns, or there's a heavy rain, it all backs up, the middens overflow, the gutters run sewage! Even when it goes down again what it leaves behind sits in piles on the pavements! You can shovel it off!”
“Where?” Hester said slowly, an incredible idea taking form in her mind, something so ludicrous it could even be true, wild and absurd as it seemed.
“What?” Genevieve's face colored painfully. She fumbled for words and found none. “Well-perhaps I haven't seen. I should have said I had heard…”
She bent as if to resume eating her food, but only toyed with it, pushing it around with her fork.
“Caleb lives in Limehouse, doesn't he?” Rester remembered.
“I believe so.” Genevieve's body tensed and her hands stopped moving her fork. “Why? I certainly haven't heard it from him. I only met him once or twice. I barely even knew him!” The fear and the horror were sharp in her face, and a loathing too great for words.
Hester felt ashamed for having brought up the name of the man who had taken so much from her. Instinctively she put out her hand and touched Genevieve's where it lay on the table.
“I'm sorry. I wish I had not spoken of him. There must be pleasant things for us to discuss. I met Mr. Niven in the hall yesterday as I was leaving.
He seems a very gentle man, and a good friend to you.”
Genevieve flushed. “Yes, he is,” she admitted. “He was very fond of Angus, in spite of the… the business misfortunes which befell him because of Angus's greater skill. He really is quite able, you know. He has learned from his incautious judgments.”
