This time there was no mistaking the smile.
Work was going better as well. Brigid was pathetically grateful for her gift. She beat Lyddie to work in the mornings and had two of the machines oiled and gleaming before Lyddie even entered the room.
Mr. Marsden was very pleased. By Thursday, he smiled across the room continually. Lyddie resolved not to glance his way, but she could see without looking the little rosebud mouth fixed in its prissy bow.
How hot the room seemed. Of course it was always hot and steamy, but somehow … Perhaps if she hadn’t been burning up she could have kept her head, but she was so hot, so exhausted that Thursday in May, she wasn’t prepared, she had no defenses. He stopped her and made her wait until everyone had gone—just when she felt she must lie down or faint, he stopped her and put both his fat white hands heavily on either sleeve, dragging his weight on her arms. He was saying something as well, but her head was pounding and she couldn’t make it out. What did he want with her? She had to go. She had to see Rachel. Her whole body was on fire. She needed a cool cloth for her head. And yet he kept holding on to her. She tried to stare him down, but her eyes were burning in their sockets. Let me go! She wanted to cry. She tried to pull back from him, but he clutched tighter. He was bringing his strange little mouth closer and closer to her fiery face.
She murmured something about not feeling well, but it made his eyes grow soft and his arm go all around her shoulder.
What made her do it? Illness? Desperation? She’d never know. But she raised her booted foot and stomped her heel down with all her might. He gave a cry, and, dropping his arms, doubled over. It was all the time she needed. She stumbled down the stairs and across the yard, nearly falling at last into the door of Number Five. He had not tried to follow.
* * *
* * *
She did not go to work the next day or for many days thereafter. Her fever raged, and she was out of her mind with it. Once, she realized that someone was putting a cold cloth on her forehead, and she raised her arm to bring it down over her burning eyelids. A tiny cool hand rested on her hot one and stroked it timidly. Somewhere, at a great distance, she heard a small voice croon: “There, there.” And then her heavy arm was lifted and put back gently under the quilt.
Dr. Morris was summoned. She tried to protest. She couldn’t waste money on doctors, but if the words came out at all, they came out too thickly for anyone to understand.
The bell rang, but it was far away now. It no longer rang for her. People came in and out of the darkened room. Sometimes Mrs. Bedlow was spooning broth into her, sometimes another of the boarders. Diana was there, and Brigid, though who would have sent for them?
Brigid had brought some Irish concoction that Mrs. Bedlow seemed to be trying to refuse, but the girl would not leave until she had been allowed to spoon some of it into the patient’s mouth. And always, whenever Lyddie swam up the fiery pool out into consciousness, she knew that Rachel was there beside her.
She’ll get sick, Lyddie tried to protest. Make her go away. Or move me to the infirmary. She’s too frail. But either she never got the words out, or no one could or would understand, for whenever she was in her right mind, Rachel was there.
* * *
* * *
She woke one morning with a start. The bell was clanging, banging away at her dully aching head. She sat up abruptly. The room swooped and dipped about her. More slowly, she swung her legs over the side of the bed, but when she tried to stand, she fell over like a newborn calf. “Rachel,” she called. “Help me. I got to go to work.”
Rachel raised up from the other bed. “You’re awake!” she cried. “Lyddie, you didn’t die!”
She fell back onto her pillow. “No,” she said weakly. “Not yet. We can stil hop.”
17
Doffer
It had been two weeks since she fell ill, and Dr. Morris still refused to let her return to work. Her mind roared protest, but her legs could hardly carry her to the privy. Her body had never betrayed her before. She despised its weakness, and every day she heard the first bell and ordered herself up and dressed, but she would only be up a few minutes, not even through washing herself at the basin, before the sweat broke out on her forehead from the effort, and she was obliged to let Rachel help her back to bed.
There was too much time in bed. She slept and slept and still there were hours awake to worry when her mind skimple-skombled back on itself like threads in a snarled loom. Why hadn’t Charlie written? She should have heard from him long ago. Perhaps her letter had been lost. That was it. She sat straight up.
“Better rest, Lyddie.” Rachel was there as always. “The doctor said.”
“Get me some paper and my pen and ink from the box there—the little one on top of the bandbox. I must write Charlie again.”
Rachel obeyed, but even as she handed Lyddie the writing materials, she protested. “You ain’t s’posed to worry, Lyddie. Doctor said.”
Lyddie put her hand on Rachel’s head. Her hair was soft as goose down. “It’s all right, Rachie. I’m much better, ey? Nearly all well now.”
Rachel’s brow furrowed, but her eyes were clear, not the dead, blank eyes of her arrival. Lyddie stroked her hair. “I had me such a good nurse. I couldn’t have believed it.”
Rachel smiled and nodded at the writing box. “Tell Charlie,” she said.
“I’ll be sure to,” Lyddie said. “He’ll be monstrous proud.”
By the next week she was feeling truly ready to go back to work and remembering with every breath her last act at the factory. Merciful heavens. There was probably no work to go back to. Had she really? Had she truly stomped on Mr. Marsden’s foot with her boot heel? She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry. She sent a note to Brigid—most of the girls were wary of speaking to Diana under Mr. Marsden’s nose—asking her and Diana to stop over after supper.