Andrea Barrett - Ship Fever - Stories

“It’s true,” Susannah said simply. “I see it every day at the hospital. Some of the doctors here are very bitter about what’s going on at the quarantine station.”

“You think we’re not?” Lauchlin said, indignant. “You think any of us would choose to practice this way? If we had even the slightest support from the government, if we had anything like adequate space and provisions and an adequate staff — you ought to see what it’s like, you’d never blame me.”

“ I don’t blame you,” Susannah said. “It’s only the ignorant who do, and even those who blame anyone blame Dr. Douglas. The worst is this fellow called Dr. Racey — he’s set up a private hospital at Beauport, for treating the wealthy unfortunate enough to come down with this pauper’s fever. I went there the other day, with my aunt and uncle. It made me so angry. Dr. Racey has two beautiful clean buildings with excellent ventilation and an armload of good nurses, all for less than a hundred patients. Each of them waited on hand and foot, given tepid baths daily, helped to special drinks and food — he trumpets all over town that he’s only had two deaths. What he doesn’t say is how much he charges.”

“No doubt,” Lauchlin said. Somehow, despite all Susannah’s good will and interest, he was growing very melancholy. His spirits picked up when supper arrived; nothing could counteract the aroma of oysters swimming in hot milk and butter, or of lobsters swelling above their bisected shells.

“You’re very kind,” he said to Susannah. “I haven’t had a good meal in weeks.” During the time he was eating, he forgave her for the fact that she didn’t love him and never had. It wasn’t her fault, he told himself. He had not had the sense to find her before he went to Paris; he had not understood how deeply he was bound to her until she’d reappeared married to someone else.

He finished the oysters, he finished the lobster, he ate three rolls and then Annie reappeared with a beautiful tart. His mood improved and he tried to get Susannah to tell him about her work at the Marine and Emigrant Hospital. She was becomingly, infuriatingly modest. “I just help out where I can,” she said. “Whatever the doctors find useful for me to do.” When he pressed her, she said, “You know what I see, and what I do. Just think of what your own nurses do.” He did, and blushed.

“You know,” he said, “As a physician I’m very grateful for all the ways you are helping out. But as your friend, and particularly as Arthur Adam’s friend, I have to wonder if he would approve. You put yourself at real risk.”

Susannah pushed away her plate of raspberry tart. “Oh, risk, ” she said. “If Arthur Adam had his way, I’d never leave this house. Too much risk, he says, when I begged to join him in Ireland, or when I beg now to join him in London. Everything I want to do is too much risk. Meanwhile he leaves me here alone for eight months — what does he expect me to do? Shall I tell you something?”

“If you wish,” Lauchlin said uneasily.

“I hope he doesn’t come home for a few more months. If he were to arrive tomorrow, he’d lock me in here and keep me from going to the hospital — anywhere — and I tell you, I couldn’t bear it.” She held her hands in front of her, staring into her palms. “He’s not like you — you’d let me come to Grosse Isle and help out if I wanted to, wouldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t,” Lauchlin said quietly. “I never would.”

Susannah rose and stood by the window. “You wouldn’t,” she said. “So you’re like him, that way. Even though you’ll put yourself in the thick of things, you’d still keep me out.”

“Arthur Adam loves you. He only wants to keep you safe.”

Annie came in, cleared the plates, and vanished, gazing at Susannah as she closed the door. And now Lauchlin was as miserable as he’d ever been. All evening he and Susannah had been at cross-purposes; every opportunity for a real conversation lost, every real feeling subverted. He could think of nothing to do but to rise and stand beside her and then hesitantly, hesitantly, touch her shoulder.

She did not pull away from him. Rather she leaned into him slightly, so that their hips touched, and their shoulders and their upper arms. They stood there for a long time, gazing out at the garden as a current of warmth flowed between those few connections. How starved he’d been for the slightest human touch! “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “I spoke badly. But if you knew how much you mean to me…”

“I know,” she said.

Did she? But whether she did or not, his heart lightened. After a few more minutes, already far longer than any touch could be justified, they separated by common consent and moved back to the armchairs. They talked lightly then, of other things; Susannah poured glass after glass of brandy for him and then left him — briefly, she said — to take care of a few details with the servants. Eventually, as he had earlier in the evening, he fell asleep. Who covered him with a crocheted throw he never knew; nor who blew out the lamps or closed the windows. Annie, probably, although just possibly it was Susannah herself. But when he woke at dawn, with the sky pinkening through the windows, it was with an extraordinary sense of well-being despite the slight stiffness in his neck and the fact that he’d made no proper farewell to Susannah.

He crept out of the house as carefully, and as full of elation, as if he’d spent the night doing something illicit. Behind the kitchen he found his old clothes, lying where they’d fallen from the storeroom window but now covered with dew: proof that Annie was not entirely efficient after all. He gathered them in a loose bundle and set off through the empty streets for his own house.

To his surprise he found his housekeeper waiting for him, slumped on a davenport in the front hall. “Mrs. Carlson?” he said, shaking her gently by the shoulder. “Mrs. Carlson? What are you doing out here?”

She rose with a start. “Don’t touch me,” she shrieked. “Don’t come near me with those clothes.”

He’d forgotten about the bundle under his arm. She’d been dreaming, he thought. “It’s me, Mrs. Carlson. Back from the island. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She backed away from him. “I know it’s you,” she said. “I know all about you. Annie Taggert from the Rowleys’ was here yesterday, and she said you were back and that your clothes were full of sickness and you needed clean, which of course I sent although there’s hardly a scrap in the house that isn’t packed away — those very clothes you’re wearing. She said you had brought fever with you, in your clothes — and then you bring that bundle to me, without the slightest consideration…”

He stepped backward, opened his own front door, and threw his clothes in the bushes. Had all the servants in this city gone mad? “Fine,” he said. “No more clothes, and you have my apologies. Must you believe everything that Annie Taggert says?”

“I believe this,” Mrs. Carlson said. “That you have no consideration for this household. You don’t even let us know when you’re expecting to be back — how can I arrange things here? We’d no food in the house for you last night, and then I rushed out to shop and cooked a meal and then you never came at all — how can you expect me to work in such an ill-regulated house? If your father was here he would never permit it.”

Was it reasonable that he should have to explain his actions to his housekeeper? But there was no one else available, and he had to return to the island; he sighed and set himself to the task of mollifying Mrs. Carlson.

Later that morning he boiled his old clothes in the kitchen himself, as he could get no one else to do it, and after he hung them out to dry and gathered a few more things he settled down with pen and paper. First a quick note to his father: Please return at your earliest convenience, he wrote. Or make arrangements by post for someone to take care of the house in your absence. I must return to Grosse Isle today, and I can no longer be responsible for matters here. By now you are most likely aware of conditions at the quarantine station; they require my full attention.