It Happened at Christmas Read online

  ‘Yes, that’s right. If you’d like to come this way, Doctor. He’s in his room.’

  The bag was heavy, and she could see the contempt the doctor gave the dusty hallway. She vowed to herself that on his next visit she would have it gleaming with polish.

  ‘You’re new here,’ he said curtly as Marianne led the way up the stairs.

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. Taking a deep breath, she added untruthfully, ‘Mr Denshaw sent word to an employment agency in Manchester that he was in need of a new housekeeper. I only arrived last night.’ She hoped that the sudden scald of guilty colour heating her face would not betray her.

  She paused as they reached the landing to tell him, ‘The master’s bedroom is this way, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I know where it is. You will attend me whilst I examine him, if you please.’

  Marianne inclined her head obediently.

  The sheet was red with blood now, and the man lying on the bed was unconscious and breathing shallowly.

  ‘How long has he been bleeding like this?’ the doctor demanded sharply.

  ‘Since he was brought here, sir,’ Marianne told him, as she placed the doctor’s bag on a mahogany tallboy.

  ‘I shall need hot water and carbolic soap with which to wash my hands,’ he told her disdainfully, as he went to open it. ‘And tell my man that I shall need him up here. Quickly, now—there is no time to waste. Unless you wish to se your master bleed to death.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Marianne almost flew back down the stairs, thankful that her ankle, whilst swollen, was no longer bothering her. Opening the front door, she passed on the doctor’s instructions to his servant.

  ‘Probably wants me to hold him down,’ he informed her. ‘You wouldn’t credit the yellin’ and cursin’ some of them do. Shouldn’t be surprised if he has to have his leg off. That’s what happens to a lot of them.’

  Marianne shuddered.

  By the time she got back upstairs, with a large jug of hot water, some clean basins and the carbolic, the doctor was instructing his servant to remove the scissors from his bag and cut through the fabric of his patient’s trousers so that he could inspect the wound.

  One look at the servant’s grimy hands and nails had Marianne’s eyes rounding with shock. What kind of doctor insisted on cleanliness for his own hands but seemed not to care about applying the same safeguard to others? Marianne’s aunt had been a friend of Florence Nightingale’s family, and she had been meticulous about adopting the rules of cleanliness laid down by Miss Nightingale when doctoring her own household and estate workers. She had also been most insistent that Marianne learn these procedures, telling her many times, ‘According to Florence Nightingale it is the infection that so often kills the patient and not the wound, and thus it is our duty to ensure that everything about and around a sick person is kept clean.’

  Impulsively Marianne reached for the scissors, remembering those words now. ‘Maybe I could do it more easily, sir. My hands being smaller,’ she said quickly.

  Before the doctor could stop her she placed the scissors in one of the bowls she had brought up with her and poured some of the hot water over them, before using them to cut through the blood-soaked fabric.

  The air in the room smelled of blood, taking Marianne back to scenes and memories she didn’t want to have. The poor house, with its victims of that poverty. A young woman left to give birth on her own, her life bleeding from her body whilst Marianne’s cries for help for her were ignored.

  Her hands, washed with carbolic soap whilst she had been downstairs, shook, the scissors slippery now with blood. How shocked her aunt would have been at the thought of Marianne being exposed to the sight of a man’s naked flesh. But of course she was not the young innocent and protected girl she had been in her aunt’s household any more.

  Soon she had slit the fabric far enough up the Master of Bellfield’s leg to reveal the wound from which his blood was flowing. Not as fast as it had been; welling rather than pumping now.

  ‘Come along, girl—can’t you see that there’s blood on my shoes? Clean it up, will you?’ the doctor was ordering her.

  Marianne stared at him. He wanted her to clean his shoes? What about his patient’s wound? But she could sense the warning look his servant was giving her, and removing from her pocket the small piece of rag she had picked up earlier, intending to use it to clean the top of the range, she kneeled down and rubbed it over the doctor’s shoes.

  ‘Good. Now, wipe some of that blood off his leg, will you, so that I can take a closer look?’

  Marianne could hardly believe her ears. Surely he wasn’t expecting her to wipe the blood from her employer’s leg with the rag she had just used to clean his shoes? Indignation sparkled in the normally quiet depths of her dark brown eyes. She turned to the pitcher of water she had brought upstairs and poured some into a clean bowl.

  ‘Of course, sir,’ she told him. ‘I’ll just wash my hands first, shall I?’ she suggested quietly, not waiting for his permission but instead rubbing her hands fiercely with the carbolic soap. She poured some water over them, before putting some fresh water in a clean bowl and then dipping a new piece of sheeting into it.

  The only wounds she had cleaned before had been small domestic injuries to her aunt’s servants, and none of them had involved her touching a strongly muscled naked male thigh. But Marianne forced herself to ignore that and to work quickly to clean the blood away from the wound, as gently as she could. She could see that the pin had punctured the master’s flesh to some depth, and a width of a good half an inch, leaving ragged edges of skin and an ominously dark welling of blood. Even though he was still semi-conscious he flinched beneath her touch and tried to roll away.

  ‘Looks like we’ll have to tie him down, Jenks,’ the doctor told his servant. ‘Brought up the ropes with you, have you?’

  ‘I’ll go down and get them, sir,’ the servant answered him.

  Marianne winced once again, moved to unwilling pity for her ‘new employer.’

  ‘Perhaps a glass of spirits might dull the pain and quieten him whilst you examine him, sir?’ she suggested quietly.

  ‘I dare say it would,’ the doctor agreed, much to her relief. ‘But I doubt you’ll find any spirits in this household.’

  ‘Surely as a doctor you carry a little medicinal brandy?’ Marianne ventured to ask.

  The doctor was frowning now.

  ‘Brandy’s expensive. Folk round here don’t believe in wasting their brass on doctor’s bills for brandy. Hmm, looks like the bleeding’s stopped, and it’s a clean enough wound. Knowing Denshaw as I do, I’m surprised that it was his own machinery that did this. Cares more about his factory and everything in it than he does himself. Your master is a foolish man at times. He’s certainly not made himself popular amongst the other mill owners—paying his workers top rate, giving them milk to drink and special clothes to wear in the factory. That sort of thing is bound to lead to trouble one way or other. No need for those now, Jenks,’ he announced to his servant, who had come into the room panting from carrying the heavily soiled and bloodstained coils of rope he held in his arms.

  ‘Best thing you can do is bandage him up and let nature take its course. Like as not he’ll take a fever, so I’ll send a nurse up to sit with him. She’ll bring a draught with her that will keep him quiet until the fever runs its course.’

  ‘Bandage him up? But surely, Doctor—’ Marianne began to protest, thinking that she must have misheard him. Surely the doctor couldn’t mean that she was to bandage the Master of Bellfield’s leg?

  ‘Those are my instructions. And make sure that you pull the bandage tightly enough to stem the bleeding, but not too tightly. I’ll bid you good day now. My bill will be five guineas. You can tell your master when he returns to himself. You may feed him on a little weak tea—but nothing more, mind, in case it gives rise to a fever.’

  Five guineas! That was a fortune for someone like her. But it was the information the doctor
had given her about the Master of Bellfield’s astonishing treatment of his workers that occupied Marianne’s thoughts as she escorted the doctor back down the stairs, and not the extortionate cost of his visit. Her heart started to beat faster. Did this news mean that the task she had set herself before she arrived at Bellfield could be nearer to completion? If only that might be so. Sometimes the weight of the responsibility she had been given felt so very heavy, and she longed to have another to share it with. But for now she must keep her own counsel, and with it her secret.

  As soon as she had closed the heavy front door behind the doctor she headed for the kitchen, where to her relief the cat was curled up in front of the fire whilst the baby was lying gurgling happily in his basket.

  He really was the sweetest-looking baby, Marianne acknowledged, smiling tenderly at him. He was going to have his father’s cowlick of hair, even though as yet that cowlick was just a small curl. His colour was definitely much better, and he was actually watching her with interest instead of lying in that apathetic stillness that had so worried her. She was tempted to lift him out of the basket and cuddle him, but her first duty had to be to the man lying upstairs, she reminded herself sternly. After all, without him there would be no warm kitchen to shelter them, and no good rich milk to fill the baby’s empty stomach.

  Bandage him up, the doctor had said. He hadn’t even offered to leave her any bandaging either, Marianne reflected, her sense of what was ethically right in a doctor outraged by his lack of proper care for his patient.

  She would just have to do the best she could. And she would do her best—just as her aunt would have expected her to do. Now, what was it that boy on the bicycle had said his name was? Postlethwaite—that was it.

  Marianne had seen the telephone in the hallway, and now she went to it and picked up the receiver, unable to stop herself from looking over her shoulder up the stairs. Not that it was likely that the Master of Bellfield was likely to come down to chastise her for the liberty she was taking.

  A brisk female voice on the other end of the line was asking her what number she required.

  ‘I should like to be put through to Postlethwaite’s Provisions,’ she answered, her stomach cramping with a mixture of guilt and anxiety as she waited for the exchange operator to do as she had requested. She had no real right to be doing this, and certainly no real authority. She wasn’t really the housekeeper of Bellfield House after all.

  ‘How do, lass, how’s t’master going on?’

  ‘Mr Postlethwaite?’ Marianne asked uncertainly.

  ‘Aye, that’s me. My lad said as how he’d heard about t’master’s accident. You’ll be wanting me to send up some provisions for him, I reckon. I’ve got a nice tin of turtle soup here that he might fancy, or how about…?’

  Tinned turtle soup? For a sick man? Marianne rather fancied that some good, nurturing homemade chicken soup would suit him far better, but of course she didn’t want to offend the shopkeeper.

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mr. Postlethwaite,’ she answered him politely. ‘I shall be needing some provisions, but first and most important I wondered if you could give me the direction of a reliable chemist. One who can supply me with bandages and ointments, and quickly. The doctor is to send up a nurse, but in the meantime I am to bandage the wound.’

  ‘Aye, you’ll be wanting Harper’s. If you want to tell me what you’re wanting, I’ll send young Charlie round there now and he can bring it up.’

  His kindness brought a lump to Marianne’s throat and filled her with relief. Quickly she told him what she thought she would need, before adding, ‘Oh, and I was wondering—would you know of anyone local who might have bee hives, Mr Postlethwaite. Only I could do with some honey.’

  ‘Well, I dunno about that,’ he answered doubtfully, ‘it not being the season to take the combs out of the hives. But I’ll ask around for you.’

  ‘It must be pure honey, Mr Postlethwaite, and not any other kind.’ Marianne stressed.

  Her aunt had sworn by the old-fashioned remedy of applying fresh honey to open wounds in order to heal and cleanse them.

  ‘A word to the wise, if you don’t mind me offering it, Mrs Brown,’ Mr Postlethwaite was saying, his voice dropping to a confidential whisper. ‘If the doctor sends up Betty Chadwick to do the nursing you’d best make sure that she isn’t on the drink.’

  ‘Oh, yes…thank you.’

  At least now she would have the wherewithal to follow the doctor’s instructions, and the larder would have some food in it, Marianne acknowledged as she carefully replaced the telephone receiver, even if the shopkeeper’s warning about the nurse had been worrying.

  Mentally she started to list everything she would need to do. As soon as she had bandaged the master’s wound she would have to fill the copper and boil-wash a good supply of clothes with which to cleanse his wound when it needed redressing. She would also have to try to find some decent clean sheets, and get them aired—although she wouldn’t be able to change his bed until the nurse arrived to lift him.

  Armed with a fresh supply of hot water, and a piece of clean wet sheeting she had washed in boiling water and carbolic soap, Marianne made her way back upstairs to the master bedroom.

  Her patient was lying motionless, with his face turned towards the window and his eyes closed, and for a second Marianne thought that he might actually have died he was so still. Her heart in her mouth, she stared at his chest, willing it to rise and fall, and realised when it did that she was shaking with relief. Relief? For this man? A man who…But, no, she must not think of that now.

  Quietly and carefully Marianne made her way to the side of the bed opposite the window, closest to his injured leg.

  Congealed blood lay thickly on top of the wound, which would have to be cleaned before she could bandage it. Marianne raised her hand to place it against the exposed flesh, to test it for heat that would indicate whether the wound was already turning putrid, and then hesitated with her hand hovering above the master’s naked thigh. Eventually she let her hand rest over the flesh of the wound. A foolish woman, very foolish indeed, might almost be tempted to explore that maleness, so very different in construction and intent from her own slender and delicate limbs.

  Marianne stiffened as though stung. There was no reason for the way she was feeling at the moment, with her heart beating like a trapped bird and her face starting to burn. In the workhouse she had become accustomed to any number of sights and sounds not normally deemed suitable for the eyes and ears of a delicately reared female. Naked male limbs were not, after all, something she had never seen before. But she had not seen any that were quite as strongly and sensually male as this one, with its powerful muscles and sprinkling of thick dark hair. And, shockingly, the flesh was not pale like her own, but instead had been darkened as though by the sun.

  An image flashed through her head—a hot summer’s evening when, as a girl, she had chanced to walk past a local millpond where the young men of the village had stripped off to swim in its cooling waters. Over it her senses imposed the image of another man—older, adult, and fully formed in his manhood. This man. A fierce shockwave of abhorrence for her own reckless thoughts seized her. What manner of foolishness was this?

  Deliberately Marianne cleared her head of such dangerous thoughts and forced herself to concentrate on the feel of the flesh beneath her hand as though she were her aunt. Was there heat coming up from the torn flesh, or was the heat only there in her own guilty thoughts? There was no flushing of the skin, but her aunt had always said that a wound should be properly cleaned before it be allowed to seal.

  Marianne wished that the nurse might arrive and take from her the responsibility of judging what should be done. She had seen what could happen if a wound turned putrid when a young gypsy had been brought to her aunt’s back door, having been found on neighbouring land caught in a man trap. His leg had swelled terribly with the poison that even her aunt had not been able to stem, and he had died terribly, in agony, his face bl
ackened and swollen.

  Gripped by the horror of her memories, Marianne’s hand tightened on the Master’s thigh.

  When he let out a roar and sat up in the bed, Marianne didn’t know which of them looked the more shocked as she snatched her hand away from his flesh and he stared in disbelief.

  ‘You! What the devil? What are you about, woman? Is this how you repay my charity? By trying to kill me?’

  ‘Dr Hollingshead said that I was to bandage your leg.’

  ‘Hollingshead? That fraudulent leech. If he has let that filthy man of his anywhere near me then I am as good as dead.’

  Instantly Marianne tried to reassure him. ‘I took the liberty of suggesting that I should be the one…That is…since he had—wrongly, of course—assumed I was your new housekeeper…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It was a natural enough mistake.’

  ‘Was it, by God, or did you help him on his way to making it?’

  For a man who had lost as much blood as he had, and who must be in considerable pain, the swiftness of his comprehension was daunting, Marianne acknowledged.

  ‘I…I have a little nursing experience through my aunt, and if you will allow me, sir, I will bathe your wound and place a bandage around it until the nurse arrives. She is to bring a draught with her that will assist you to sleep.’

  ‘Assist me to sleep—finish me, off you mean, with an unhealthy dose of laudanum.’ He moved on the bed and then blenched, and Marianne guessed that his wound was causing him more pain than he was ready to admit.

  ‘The bed will need to be changed when the nurse arrives, and that will, I’m afraid, cause you some discomfort,’ she told him tactfully. ‘I suggested to the doctor that maybe a medicinal tot of brandy would help. However, he said that it was unlikely that I would find any, so I have taken the liberty of ordering some from Mr Postlethwaite, to be brought up with some other necessary provisions.’