Jilly Cooper - Harriet

‘Elizabeth asked me if I used a dry brush or a wet brush to do my teeth. I wasn’t thinking. I said dry. It was horrid. Everyone’s gone away, Daddy, Mummy, Jonah, you. I do miss you, Harriet.’

As the night nurses came in Jonah grew increasingly worse; his temperature shot up to 106 again. He couldn’t keep any of the antibiotics down. He kept asking for water, but every time he drank he was violently sick. Soon he became delirious, crying for Noel, for Cory, shouting out about the black coachman who was coming to get him. Harriet kept hoping he’d gone to sleep, then his eyes would open and he’d groan. On other occasions he’d drop off, then wake up, be all right for a few seconds, and the pain would take over.

Harriet clung on to his hot dry hand and wondered how she’d get through the night.

The noise of the floor-polisher was like sandpaper on her brain; the bleep of a doctor’s walkie-talkie made her jump out of her skin. After twenty-four hours in hospital with no sleep, she seemed to have Jonah’s head — even the slightest sound, running water, the air conditioner, seemed to be magnified a thousand-fold.

Jonah was no better. He had kept nothing down. In between bouts of delirium he complained of a stiff neck.

‘No-one’s trying to make me better,’ he groaned. ‘You’re all trying to kill me.’

Harriet was very near to breaking. She had been unable to locate Cory or Noel. She had not slept at all, and she had taken against the new day nurse, Sister Maddox, who was a snooty, good-looking redhead with a school prefect manner. I’ve got twenty-five other children to see to in this ward, so don’t waste my time, she seemed to say.

‘We’ve seen much worse than Jonah, I can tell you,’ she said briskly as she checked his pulse.

‘Dying, dying, dying,’ intoned Jonah like a Dalek.

‘Now pull yourself together, young man,’ she said. ‘We’re trying to make you better.’

She looked out through the glass partition at a group that was coming down the passage. Hastily she patted her hair and straightened her belt. Harriet understood why when the Houseman Dr Williams entered. He was by any standards good-looking: tall, dark, with classical features, and cold grey eyes behind thick horn-rimmed spectacles. Sister Maddox became the picture of fluttering deference as he examined Jonah and looked at the temperature charts.

He glanced at Harriet without interest, making her acutely aware of her shiny unmade-up face, sweat-stained shirt and dirty hair.

‘Hasn’t kept anything down,’ he said. ‘Probably have to put up a drip soon.’

‘Can’t he have anything to stop the pain?’ protested Harriet.

‘Not till we can locate what’s causing it,’ said Dr Williams in a bored voice. ‘He’ll have to sweat it out.’

Harriet followed him into the passage. ‘He’s not going to die, is he?’ she said in a trembling voice. ‘I mean, how ill is he?’

‘Well, he’s seriously ill,’ said Dr Williams, ‘but he’s not on the danger list yet.’

Harriet went off and cried in the lavatory. Sister Maddox was talking to Dr Williams as she came out.

‘I’ll see you at eight o’clock then, Ruth,’ he was saying.

‘Handsome, isn’t he?’ said a junior nurse.

Yes, thought Harriet, and he knows it.

When she got back, Jonah was awake and screaming with pain.

‘Everyone’s gone away. You left me, you left me. Where’s Daddy? I want to see him.’

Suddenly she had a brain wave. She would ring Kit. The next time Jonah fell asleep, she went and called him. He took so long to answer she nearly rang off.

‘Were you in bed?’ she said.

‘Naturally,’ said Kit. ‘It’s lunchtime!’

She told him about Jonah’s meningitis and that she still couldn’t raise Noel or Cory. She tried to be calm, but hysteria kept breaking through her voice.

‘I wouldn’t bother about Noel, darling; she’s not likely to be of help to anyone, but I’ll get hold of Cory for you, don’t worry. If I can’t find him by tomorrow, I’ll drive up myself. Jonah’ll pull through. The Erskines are a pretty tough bunch.’

Another day and night limped by. Jonah woke at 1.30 in the morning screaming for Noel. Harriet felt her self-control snapping as the nurse trotted out the same platitudes about having to get worse before he got better.

He woke again at five and at seven. Another day to get through, thought Harriet, as the sun filtered in through the blind. It seemed like midnight. She must know every inch of that village scene now. She was weak with exhaustion; her eyes were red and felt as though they were full of gravel. Neuralgia travelled round her head, one moment headache, then toothache, then earache.

It was impossible to keep Jonah quiet. Reading aloud was too loud, sponging his head was too painful.

‘Where’s the doctor, where’s the doctor?’ he screamed.

‘He’ll be here soon,’ said Harriet soothingly, but the very word ‘soon’ had become meaningless. Mrs Bottomley popped in to see him, and went away looking shattered.

‘Poor little lamb, lying between death and life,’ she said telephoning Sammy when she got home. ‘Still where there’s life. .’

She brought Harriet a change of clothes — a tweed skirt, which Harriet hated, a brown jersey that sagged round the waist, and a cream shirt that had no buttons.

Might as well stay in jeans, thought Harriet.

Eventually at mid-day Dr Williams rolled up, yawning and rubbing his eyes. Too much Sister Maddox, thought Harriet.

‘You’ve got to do something,’ she pleaded in desperation. ‘I don’t think he can take much more.’

Jonah started to scream out about the pain killing him.

‘Hush, darling,’ said Harriet. ‘The doctor’s here.’

‘And you can shut up,’ said Jonah, turning round and bashing her in the face with his hand, ‘Shut up! Shut up! You’re all trying to kill me.’

‘He’s losing faith in all of you,’ said Harriet with a sob.

Dr Williams drew her outside.

‘The child is getting too demanding,’ he said. ‘He’s playing you up and you’re overreacting. He senses your panic and it panics him too. I suppose his parents will turn up eventually. How long is it since you ate?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Harriet.

‘Well, go downstairs and have something.’

Down in the canteen, Harriet spread marmalade on toast the consistency of a flannel. All round her nurses were gossiping and chattering about their lives. They all ought to be upstairs making Jonah better. Sister Maddox and Dr Williams obviously felt she was hopeless and hysterical and were trying to keep her away from Jonah. She mustn’t get paranoiac. She mustn’t build up a hatred.

Upstairs she found Jonah having his temperature taken, the thermometer sticking out of his mouth like a cigar. With his slitty eyes and his hair brushed off his forehead, he suddenly looked very like Cory. Oh, I love him, I love him, she thought.

As the afternoon wore on he grew more and more incoherent, and difficult to quiet, now semi-conscious, now screaming with pain.

‘Daddy, Daddy, I want Daddy. I don’t want you, I want Mummy,’ he shouted. ‘Why can’t I have a Mummy? Everyone else at school does.’ He struggled free from the blankets. ‘I want Daddy.’

‘You shall have him very soon. Kit’s finding him.’

‘I want him now.’

Oh so do I, thought Harriet.

She hoped Jonah was falling asleep, but just as she tried to move away, she found him gazing at her in horror, trying to bring her face into focus.

‘Harriet! Oh it’s you. Don’t leave me!’

‘Of course I won’t.’

‘I’m so thirsty.’ The hands clutching her were hot, dry and emaciated.

‘This isn’t my room. Why am I here? I want to go home.’

Dr Williams came back in around six. He looked even more bored.

‘We’re going to put up a drip now. He can’t take anything orally and obviously isn’t responding to treatment.’

A junior nurse popped her head round the door.

‘There’s a Kit Erskine on the telephone for you in Sister’s office,’ she said to Harriet.

‘Darling Harriet, are you all right?’ said Kit. ‘I gather from the nurse Jonah’s not too bright. Don’t worry, I got a message through to Cory. He’s on location, but he’s flying back tonight. He should be with you tomorrow afternoon. I’ve left a message for Superbitch too. All that rubbish about a weekend in Paris was absolute crap. She’s been frantically losing weight at a health farm, so she may descend on you too, I’m afraid.’

Harriet didn’t care about Noel. That Cory was coming back was all she could think about.

The drip was up when she got back, a great bag of liquid seeping into Jonah’s arm. He was delirious most of the time now, his cheeks hectically flushed, his pulse racing. In the end they had to strap his arm down, as the needle kept slipping and blood came racing back down the tube.

Sammy arrived next with Chattie. ‘It’s long past her bedtime but she wanted to come.’ Sammy brought Jonah a book about Tarzan, Chattie a balloon she’d bought out of her own pocket money.

‘William’s fine,’ said Sammy. ‘Chattie and I’ve been looking after him, haven’t we?’ Harriet felt guilty yet relieved they hadn’t brought him; her well-springs of affection seemed to have dried up. ‘Elizabeth’s been the last straw,’ Sammy went on, ‘telling all her friends how she’d taken the baby and Chattie in to help Cory out.’

Chattie seemed quite cheerful, but she hugged Harriet very tightly. ‘Can I see Jonah?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Harriet, ‘but whisper and don’t worry if he’s not quite himself.’