A Secret
This story is based on something which happened over a hundred years ago in the village where I was born.
It must have been the coughing that woke him. One of the twins was coughing badly, struggling for breath. He had been warned by old Dr. Staines when he took over the practice of the hated phone calls in the night. There was no emergency call service then. But this was one of his own children in trouble. The cold hit him as he slipped out of the heavy blankets, and he almost cried out as his feet touched the icy floor, feeling for his slippers in the darkness.
But the two girls were sleeping peacefully, their nightlights glowing on the dresser. He gently touched each forehead, no sweating, no sign of fever. He must have been dreaming.
Softly he pulled the covers close around them. Not a sound, not a movement. Now he realised how cold he was. He was shivering violently and his pyjamas felt clammy cold with sweat. He crawled gratefully back under the heavy covers of his own bed without disturbing Celia sleeping beside him. But he slept only fitfully for the rest of the night.
That was the first time, the beginning of what began to feel like a relentless persecution. Night after night waking to those suffocating noises, and he could swear to a sickly oppressive smell. Dreams of his own death began to disturb him. Always unknown hands gripping his throat choking him. Celia tried to persuade him to consult a colleague, but he was stubborn. There was nothing wrong with him. He was a doctor after all. Stress, money worries, getting himself established in his practice. What were a few bad dreams? His pale haggard looks began to cause comment. Young doctor John was maybe not up to the job.
Doctor John was not a religious man. There had been some disapproval he knew. The doctor was expected in one of the front pews in Church on a Sunday morning. But he had yielded to pressure from the twins to allow them to Sunday School. ‘Everyone goes Daddy and its fun’. He didn’t like them being fed superstition, and on the Sunday when they came home in tears over ‘all the children who had died’ He thought it was time to have a sharp word with the Vicar.
“Let me show you something”. The vicar took his arm and led him into the church. This was the old vicar, Rev. Donnington, not the present tee shirt and trainers ‘call me Dave’ vicar. At the West end of the Church was a window John had never noticed. Plain leaded glass panes but set in beautiful stone tracery. And beneath it the words ‘Suffer the Little Children to come unto me’. It had been created to commemorate an epidemic of diphtheria in the eighteen sixties. Most of the dead had been children. Thirty nine children in that tiny community.
In the corner of the churchyard an area of grass left plain, no crosses or memorials, no time for that. Some very old scraggy rose bushes straggled against the fence. That was all.
The vicar invited John back to the vicarage and left him alone in his study to look through the old registers. Page after page, and then he saw the first child – Joshua Blackstock, aged three, Son of Jeremiah Blackstock, doctor of medicine, Margaret Blackstock, aged nine, Twins Margaret and James Blackstock aged five. Elizabeth Blackstock eighteen months, and finally Jeremiah Blackstock, aged 41, Doctor of Medicine. As John read the entries he felt the full force of the tragedy that his predecessor had suffered. Watching not only the village children but his own, helpless against that awful disease. John felt the same cold sweat that he had so often woken with in the night. The suffering in that house, his house, and the guilt of the silent prayer that must have gone up from every house in the village. ‘Dear God, let it not be my child, let it be my neighbour’s child, spare mine.’
In the spring when the frost had left the ground, new beds were dug in the neglected patch, new rose bushes were planted, and rosemary, rosemary for remembrance, and for the bees and the butterflies. They would like that. In one corner a shining white tablet appeared with the names of all the children, and of one adult, their doctor.
There was no ceremony, no word of who was responsible, John had seen to that. The money came via a solicitor in his old home town. Nobody was to know, even Celia, especially Celia, when the money he had used had come from their precious central heating fund. He made what economies he could, no more pipe smoking, no occasional glass of whiskey, walk instead of drive. Nothing hurt, nothing mattered. And doctor John slept peacefully.
Come the autumn, with the addition of a small secret loan from the bank, the renovation of the old house was completed after all. And now he was hearing his wife’s warm voice again as she talked to some village newcomer across the other side of the room. The little home consulting room was long gone, and his retirement party was being held in the medical centre that he shared with three other doctors. He was enjoying his “do” he had to admit. So many good wishes, so many gifts. A letter from Princess Anne with her best wishes and thanks for all his work for the Save the Children Fund. Yes, he had been pleased with that,.
He could hear his wife telling the stranger about the terrible conditions that they had lived in when they had first come to the village. The neglected icy cold house. “Poor John suffered dreadfully from the cold. He would wake up night after night shivering and restless. The Central Heating soon cured that though didn’t it dear? No sleepless nights after that, made such a difference to our lives.”
He smiled across at her over the head of his youngest grandchild snug on his lap. “Yes my dear, it did indeed”.