Andrea Barrett - Ship Fever - Stories

In his pocket he had Nora’s advertisement, and although he had other duties he went directly to the office of the Mercury. The street outside was crowded with emigrants, most of them pale and in tattered clothes, and for a moment as he pushed his way through it was as if he were back on the island. Inside, he had to fight his way to the counter. A boy whirled to speak to someone behind him, banging his bony wrist against Lauchlin’s bruised elbow. “Excuse me,” Lauchlin said, with growing exasperation. “ Excuse me.” A woman in the corner was wailing, collapsed on the floor with another woman bending over her. A clerk leaned over the counter and beckoned to Lauchlin, ignoring the men who were shouting at him from both sides.

“May I help you, sir?” the clerk said. He had a large mole near the corner of his eye, which moved as he spoke.

The men grumbled but stepped back. “I have an advertisement I’d like to place,” Lauchlin said. He handed over the page on which he’d written Nora’s message. “I’d also like to arrange for a copy to run in the Montreal paper. Can you take care of that for me?”

The clerk read the message, his face expressionless. “Certainly,” he said. “Certainly, if that’s what you wish. You’ll be picking up any responses here?”

“Yes,” Lauchlin said. “Or I’ll arrange to have them forwarded to me.”

The clerk calculated the charges and Lauchlin paid his bill. “You know the responses to these have been small?” the clerk said, handing him his change.

“These?”

The clerk gestured at the room. “All these people,” he said. “All placing the same sort of advertisement, looking for family they’ve misplaced. I wish you good luck in your search.”

As Lauchlin turned to leave, an elderly man bumbled into him and then pulled himself upright, clutching a fistful of Lauchlin’s coat. “Your pardon,” the man said. “Would a fine gentleman like yourself have a minute to help?”

Lauchlin gently detached himself. The man’s fingers had left marks on his coat. “What’s the problem?”

“I’m searching for my daughter,” the man said. “If you could just spare a minute, to help me write out an advertisement…”

Lauchlin penned the man’s message, and then he fled. Throughout the cities along the great waterway he imagined this scene repeated: those left behind here searching for those shipped to Montreal; those left in Montreal searching for those shipped farther inland. Nora’s brothers were gone.

One fruitless call after another ate up the afternoon; the members of the Board of Health were more angry than sympathetic, and more concerned with the outbreak of fever in the city than with conditions on Grosse Isle. Sewell was furious and blamed Dr. Douglas; Henderson and Phillips could spare only minutes for him. At Phillips’s office he learned that the clothing and provisions gathered by the Quebec Ladies’ Protestant Relief Society, and meant for the sick on Grosse Isle, had been diverted to the sick here in the city. But here, in the heart of the city’s best neighborhood, the sick were not evident. The clerks bustling around with their papers were remarkably sleek and plump. The physicians’ coats were clean and brushed, the servants were well turned-out, the horses stood calmly before their carriages, occasionally twitching away the flies, and the stone steps he trudged up and down were freshly scrubbed.

In and out of offices, through and back out pairs of weighty doors. Grave faces, cups of tea, hurried half-hearted promises, or outright refusals; yes on a little extra bedding, yes on some extra funds, but not now; no on an emergency shipment of flour and milk, there were already shortages in the city. The fever here was already serious, he heard again and again. A tall official said, “The only good news is that so far most of the victims are emigrants — there are upwards of 800 of them at the Marine and Emigrant Hospital and the newly erected fever sheds nearby. We have no medicine to spare at present.” Lauchlin stared at this man’s shoes as he spoke; they were expensive, and very well shined. Two doors down and a cup of tea later, Jackson told him that the residents of St. Roch, near the emigrant hospital, had torn down the first set of fever sheds in a fury of opposition. “We have had to post guards over the second set at night.”

He called at Dr. Perrault’s office, but Dr. Perrault, whom he had particularly wanted to see, could not be found. Later a young physician told him that a hundred beds had been equipped for the sick in the cavalry barracks on the Plains of Abraham, and that Dr. Perrault was thought to be out there. Someone promised some corn and barley; another official promised a donation of blankets from the army. No more physicians could be spared, he was told. And nurses were not to be found for any wage.

Defeated, and obscurely ashamed, Lauchlin went to Susannah’s house when he finished his rounds, rather than to his own. It was almost dusk and he could not bear to face what he knew awaited him at home. Mail and repairs and the complaints of his servants; what could he do about any of that? In the back of his mind he was hoping, too, that Arthur Adam and Susannah might invite him to dinner. He’d forgotten what real food tasted like, away from the smell of death.

He stood outside the Rowleys’ door, thin and exhausted and out of breath. It was Annie Taggert who greeted him, as he’d expected. But he did not expected her news.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Mr. Rowley is still abroad.”

“I didn’t know,” he said. Even Annie looked plump to him. Her apron and cap were starched, so clean. “Is he all right?”

“Of course. He’s in London now. We expect him back next month.”

Susannah had been alone, then. All this time. He had written her only twice from Grosse Isle: the most perfunctory of notes, not wanting to worry her in the happiness of her reunion. He had written simply to say that he continued well. He said, “Might I see Mrs. Rowley, then?”

Still Annie did not open the door. “Mrs. Rowley is out,” she said, her voice harsh with disapproval. “Mrs. Rowley is where she always is these days, trotting between the hospital and the fever sheds in St. Roch. It’s a horror, it is. What she’s doing, the places she goes with no more escort than her friend Mrs. Martin — does she think the sickness will just keep passing her by?”

“I don’t know, Annie,” Lauchlin said wearily. Who was Mrs. Martin? “But may I come in? It’s late, she’ll surely be back soon from wherever she is.”

Annie looked him up and down. “You look terrible,” she said. “If you don’t mind my saying so. Have you been home yet?”

It didn’t occur to him to lie to her. “No. I came straight from the island.”

“Straight from working with the sick, I’ll bet.”

He thought she would praise him for his good works among her countrymen. “Yes,” he said.

“And why would you be thinking I’d let you into this house, still carrying the sickness on you? Not me, not through this door.” She stepped forward and closed the door behind her, carefully avoiding any contact with him. “You follow me,” she said. “You want to wait for the mistress, you’ll do what I make her do every night, when she comes home from those filthy places.”

Lauchlin was too weary to argue. Around the house she led him, past the hedges and flower beds and the kitchen garden. “Don’t you touch a thing,” she said, as she led him through the kitchen door. A dirty scullery maid looked up as he passed; Annie said to her, “Dr. Grant’s come from tending the sick. Don’t you go near him.” In an unused storeroom off the kitchen she stopped.

“You go in there,” she said. “That’s where I make Mrs. Rowley clean herself every night. You take off every stitch of those clothes and push them out through the back window. I’ll bring some hot water and a sponge.”