The Fever Hospital

I am five years old, waking to see the morning light creeping in around the curtains. I know it’s Springtime because yesterday at school we painted pictures of daffodils. But when I sit up in the bedroom I share with my parents my hands and face feel cold. 

From my little bed I can see my mother in the big bed. She’s still asleep. My father is up and about. He’s scraping the ash out of the grate in the kitchen before lighting the fire. Snuggling down into the warmth of my feather mattress I hear him calling my brother.

‘Get up, lad, and get dressed. You’ll have to go for the doctor. Your mother’s not well.’

I open my eyes and sit up.

I can’t believe Mam is ill. She’s never ill. Sometimes Dad is, because he’s still suffering from the war. That’s what Mam tells me. She says they’re all ill, those who didn’t die. She says four years in the trenches is enough to make anybody ill.

Dad is calling again, louder now—urgent.

‘Come on, Billy. Get a move on. Your mother needs a doctor. NOW…’

I wriggle out of the blankets and stand on the cold lino. 

Last week my throat was sore. Not bad enough to call the doctor and I’m better now and back at school, but my throat still hurts when I swallow.  

Mam must be really bad if she needs a doctor…

In the kitchen I sit on the cracket close to the fire. I pull my nightie down to cover my bare feet. I hear the kettle singing.

‘Go and get your clothes on,’ Dad says.

‘I haven’t been washed yet.’ 

‘Never mind that. Just get dressed. You can get washed later.’

‘What’s the matter with Mam?’ 

‘She has a sore throat like you had last week.’

My brother appears in his pyjamas. He’s a big boy, ten years old, but this morning he totters like a baby. I’m scared because Dad’s shouting at him, telling him he’s dilatory. 

I don’t know what that means and Billy isn’t listening—he’s drooping as if the bones in his body can’t hold him up.  

Dad looks angry. He bounds across the room towards Billy.  

I shout, ‘No, Daddy—don’t— ’.  

I try to stop him but he pushes me out of the way—and catches Billy before he falls. 

I sit down on the floor with a bump and gasp for breath. I don’t understand what’s happening.

Dad shouts again—this time for my mother.

‘Nora, you’ll have to get up. The lad’s ill. He’s collapsed.’

My mother, in her nightdress, is there in an instant. She kneels beside Billy.

‘Put him in our bed, Tom. And go for the doctor yourself.’

When I open the door to let the doctor in, the church clock is striking nine.

Mam is dressed now and Dad has gone to work. I’m dressed too, but still not washed. I suppose that’s why I’m not at school.

Mam is looking out of the bedroom window into the yard. She speaks to the doctor without turning round. Her voice is croaky.

‘You’d better see to the boy first. He’s much worse than I am.’

The doctor looks at me.

‘The little girl shouldn’t be in this room,’ he says.

I go back to the kitchen and sit by the fire.

When the Doctor has gone, Mrs Pendleton knocks on our front door. 

‘I saw him come,’ she says, ‘so I knew there must be trouble.’

 Mam whispers. ‘He’s taken a swab but we won’t know anything until this afternoon.’

‘I’ll take the bairn upstairs to my place,’ Mrs Pendleton says. 

I am ‘the bairn.’ 

The Pendletons live in the flat above ours. They’re our neighbours and landlords but to me they’re Uncle Charlie and Aunty Jean. They’re old, more like grandparents. Mam told me that having no children of their own, they took to me the day I was born. I know their home as well as I do my own.

I’ve been waiting at the window for the ambulance since morning. It arrives as the children are being let out of school and stops on the road beside our gate. Betty Martin, Bobby Smith and a few other school friends have gathered on the pavement opposite. I hide behind the curtains and watch them talking and pointing. A tram rattles past and the passengers turn their heads to look at the ambulance.

When the tram has gone the children are still there. They know that when an ambulance is outside a house, something bad is happening inside. Last month Jimmy Patterson died from diphtheria. He was only seven…

 The ambulance man comes out with Billy in his arms. My brother is wrapped in a red blanket. His head lolls and his hair flops over his eyes. 

I don’t want them to take him.

Aunty Jean holds me in her arms to stop me running downstairs to get to Billy before the ambulance leaves.

‘Hush, pet,’ she says, ‘They’ll look after your brother in the Fever Hospital.’

After tea Dad comes to get me. 

‘Come on, sweetheart, we have to leave the house tonight. The bedroom has to be fumigated.’

‘What’s fumigated ?’ I ask. 

He doesn’t seem to hear me.

It’s a long way to Grandma’s house, and even though my mother is ill, we set off to walk. Dad half-carries her with one arm—the bag holding our nightclothes in his other hand. I hold on to his coat.  

When we reach the top of the hill the sky is dark blue. The lights on the other side of the river are coming on but I don’t like the blue and orange flame that comes out of a tall chimney on the far bank. I put my head back to see if the stars are out.

‘You’ll have to be brave,’ Dad says. ‘Your Mam’s poorly and upset about Billy.’

It’s easier when we go down the hill. My shoes clatter on the cobblestones that pave the steep lanes between the rows of houses. When I see the corner shop I know we haven’t much further to go.

At Grandma’s house everyone whispers. Nobody mentions Billy or ‘diphtheria’. Mam sits hunched on a low cracket by the fire and I can’t see her face. I share the big armchair with Dad.

At bedtime I sleep with Grandma. She lies down beside me, cuddles me and sings quietly. It’s a song from The Merry Widow but she changes the names to put mine in their place.

‘Oh my darl-ing, little Kath-leen I-love-you…’

When she sleeps, I’m still awake. The street lamp glimmers through the thin curtains and shines on the wall, where the pictures seem to dance on their cords in time to Grandma’s song. In the night I cry for Billy. I think he’ll be crying too, restless in his hard hospital bed. If I could see him smile I’d know he was getting better. 

In the morning we get ready to go home. Grandma wants us to go on the tram.

‘Nora isn’t fit to walk,’ she says to my Dad. ‘Have you got the fare?’

He gets some change out of his pocket. 

‘Aye,’ he says. ‘Just.’

 At home there’s a strange smell, which Dad says is the fumigation. He tells me that chemicals have been burning all night, making fumes to kill the germs.

The bedroom door is sealed with black tape to stop the germs escaping. 

All Billy’s things are in that bedroom: his model aeroplanes, one only half finished; books borrowed from the library. Dad says the library won‘t want them back. Someone will pick them up and destroy them. Billy won’t like that. It’s bad enough having to go to hospital without having things taken away to be destroyed.

A bright fire burns in the kitchen grate and I guess Aunty Jean has been down to light it. Dad settles Mam in his big armchair near the fire and covers her with a blanket. He makes some tea and butters some bread for us.

‘Don’t try to open the bedroom door, Nora ’ he warns. ‘It has to be left for twenty four hours. I’ll do it when I get in.’ 

He hurries out, late for work. 

Aunty Jean comes back to wash up.

‘Would you like me to paint your throat?’ she asks Mam.

She pours brown stuff into a bowl and stirs it with a fine paint brush. She says it is iodine. Mam once told me she’d had her tonsils out when she was fourteen. My throat still feels a bit sore. The thought of having my tonsils out scares me. 

When Dad comes in from work he fries bacon and eggs for our tea. Mam can’t eat anything. He makes her some cocoa with milk. He says we can’t sleep in the bedroom because of the smell. He’s opened the window, and closed the door to stop any draughts.

All three of us sleep in the front room, Mam on the sofa, Dad in the armchair and me, lying on cushions, on the floor. I’m wrapped in the antimacassar from the back of the kitchen chair, and covered with my mother’s coat.  

Billy’s makeshift bed is folded away. His bedclothes and ours are now in the boiler, soaking in disinfectant.

When I get up in the morning it’s Saturday. Dad will be home from work at half-past twelve and Mam is still asleep on the sofa.

In the afternoon Dad goes to the Fever Hospital at Windy Nook, to find out what’s happened to Billy. When he returns he looks worried. 

‘Everybody has to wait at the gate,’ he says. ‘Nobody gets inside, not even in the grounds. There’s a bulletin on the gate with a list of patients’ names and how they’re going on.’ 

Pressing close to him I feel his fear.

‘Is Billy’s name on the list?’ The words scrape on Mam’s throat.

‘Yes…it said he was critical.’

I don’t know what that means but Mam is crying so I don’t ask.

After a few days my mother is on her feet again and wants to visit the hospital. It’s Wednesday morning now, and I’m still off school in case I pass any germs on to the children in my class.

Mam says there’s no reason to stay indoors, so we walk up to the Fever Hospital and get there a few minutes before ten o’clock. Some people are there already, waiting for the bulletin to be brought out.  

A nurse in a blue cape brings a board and fixes it to the gate. Everyone pushes forward to read it. 

I stand back, waiting for Mam to come and tell me what it says.

‘Billy is no longer critical—he is now seriously ill.’ She laughs as if it’s a joke, but she looks angry. Then her face crumples and a lady tells her not to worry.

Most of the other people stand around as if they don’t want to leave. But Mam and I follow the wall that surrounds the hospital to a place where we can see the windows. I can’t see anyone looking out but I imagine my brother is in bed and hope he is sitting up reading the comics we’ve posted to him.

Mam dries her eyes with a hanky. 

‘Come on, pet,’ she says. ‘We can’t do any good here.

’It’s the middle of May now and the weather is warm. I’m back at school so I can’t visit the hospital in the mornings. Mam meets me after school and we take the bus to the hospital gate. 

 I can read Billy’s name on the bulletin and figure out the words, no… change.

 I wonder if he’s sitting in a chair, reading or playing Snakes and Ladders, like me when I was getting better from measles.

Weeks later, I ’m told Billy has taken the Scholarship Exam while still in hospital. 

I know what the ‘Scholarship’ is. Everybody has to take an exam to see if they’re clever enough to go to St Bede’s Secondary School at Jarrow.

I know Mam and Dad want Billy to go to St Bede’s because before Billy was ill the Headmaster of his school asked Mam to call and see him. That evening, while I played with my toys in the corner, I overheard her telling Dad what the Headmaster said. Dad was reading his newspaper, and she was ironing. Billy was in the front room doing his homework.

‘There’ll be thirty-seven children sitting for the scholarship, ’she said. ‘but Mr Bell said my son was sure to get a place.’

Dad lowered his paper.

‘He asked if we could afford a uniform and books, and to support the lad until he was sixteen…’ she paused. ‘He said if we can’t do that he may as well remove Billy‘s name from the list.’   

She banged the iron down on the table and I could smell the heat from it.

‘I offered to show him our bank book, ’she said

‘The bugger,’ Dad said. 

They stopped talking when they noticed I was listening.

But I don’t think Mr Bell is all that bad. After all, he did send the Scholarship Papers to the Fever Hospital. 

It’s June, and Billy has been in hospital for eight weeks. Today, while Mam and I wait at the gates, a nurse comes running down the path from the front door.

‘Are you Billy’s mother?’ 

Mam nods, white-faced.

The nurse smiles. 

‘If you turn left and go round where the windows are… you might see Billy watching out for you.’  

I run to a place where I can scramble on to the wall to get a good view through the railings. There’s a pale face at one of the windows but I’m not sure whose it is until he waves. My mother isn’t far behind me and together we stand there for a long time, waving and crying.

Within a week we have him home. 

He seems twice as tall and much thinner than I remember. He’s wearing a new suit with long trousers. Mam says they’ll keep him warm and help his heart to get better. When he was discharged the doctor told her that they thought his heart had been affected by the diphtheria.

Billy won’t be going back to school until after the summer. He’s failed the Scholarship, but Mam says some other worthy boy or girl will be taking the place that might have been his. She’s pleased that the money put away for a uniform came in handy for the new suit. 

Dad says the only thing that matters is that Billy is home again, safe and sound.

 ‘Cracket’ is dialect for a small wooden stool.