“No, of course not. Children don’t die of measles.”
“I know a girl what did. She ’ad a white coffin.”
After a day and a half of similar sentiments, Eileen reassigned Binnie to kitchen duty. Mrs. Bascombe tied one of her aprons on her and set her to work washing the dishes, hanging up the laundry in the now-deserted ballroom, and scrubbing the floor.
“It’s not fair,” Binnie told Eileen indignantly. “I wish I could have caught the measles.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Mrs. Bascombe, coming in from the larder, said. “And be careful with those teacups. She’s already broken four,” she told Eileen. “And the Spode teapot. I don’t know what Lady Caroline will say.”
Eileen wasn’t particularly worried. Lady Caroline had only written once since that first time, to tell them that she’d be staying with friends till the quarantine was lifted and to send her “my white georgette, my silver fox stole, and my blue bathing dress.”
The next few days were a blur-children in the vomiting stage, the spiking-fever stage, and the emerging-rash stage. Peggy and Reg got eye infections, and Jill developed a chesty cough that Dr. Stuart warned Eileen to keep a sharp eye on. “We don’t want it to go into her chest,” he said, and added twice-a-day steam infusions under an improvised tent of blankets to Eileen’s list of chores.
Which was endless, in spite of everyone, including the little ones, helping out. Peggy and Barbara swept the nursery, Theodore made up his own cot, and Binnie toiled in the kitchen and endured Mrs. Bascombe’s lectures. Every time Eileen came down to the kitchen, Mrs. Bascombe was shaking her finger at Binnie, saying, “You call that peeling? You’ve taken off half the potato!” or “Why haven’t you finished putting away those dishes?” or the all-purpose “Mark my words, you’ll come to a bad end!” Eileen actually began to feel a bit sorry for her.
On Thursday, when she went downstairs for mentholated spirits to put in Jill’s steam kettle, Binnie was at the kitchen table with her head lying on her arms in an attitude of despair, a massive pile of to-be-cleaned vegetables next to her. “Mrs. Bascombe,” Eileen said, going out to the larder, “you really mustn’t be so hard on Binnie. She’s doing her best.”
“So hard?” Mrs. Bascombe said. “Who’s let her sit there at that table all morning while I did the washing up and the ironing because she complained of a headache? Who let her-?”
“Headache?” Eileen hurried back out to the kitchen and squatted next to Binnie’s chair. “Binnie?”
The girl raised her head, and there was no mistaking the too-bright eyes, the dark circles under them.
Eileen put her hand to Binnie’s forehead. It was burning up. “Do you feel like you’re going to be ill?”
“’Uh-unh. It’s only my ’ead aches.”
Eileen led her upstairs to the ballroom. “You’ll feel better once you’ve had a lie-down,” she said, unbuttoning Binnie’s dress.
“I’ve got the measles, ain’t I?” she said plaintively.
“I’m afraid so,” Eileen said, lifting her singlet over her head. There was no sign of the rash yet. “You’ll feel better once they come out.”
But they didn’t come out, and Binnie didn’t manifest any of the other symptoms, except for the fever-which steadily climbed-and the persistent headache. She lay with her eyes squeezed shut and her fists jammed against her forehead as if to keep it from exploding. “Are you certain it’s the measles?” Eileen asked Dr. Stuart, thinking of spinal meningitis.
“The rash takes longer in some children,” he reassured her. “You’ll see, Binnie will be all right by morning.”
But she wasn’t, and her fever kept going up. When the doctor came in the afternoon, it was thirty-nine. “Give her a teaspoon of this powder in a tumblerful of water every four hours,” the doctor said, handing Eileen a paper packet.
“For her fever?”
“No, it’s to help bring the measles out. The fever will come down on its own once the rash appears.”
The powder was useless. It was three more days before Binnie broke out, and the measles gave her no relief. Her rash was bright red instead of pink, and covered every inch of her, even the palms of her hands. “It ’urts,” Binnie cried, moving her head restlessly on the pillow.
“She’s got them hard,” the doctor said, which scarcely seemed a technical diagnosis. He took her temp, which was thirty-nine and a half, and then listened to her chest. “I’m afraid the measles have affected her lungs.”
“Her lungs?” Eileen said. “You mean pneumonia?”
He nodded. “Yes. I want you to make a poultice of molasses, dried mustard, and brown paper for her chest.”
“But shouldn’t she be taken to hospital?”
“Hospital?”
Eileen bit her lip. Obviously people in this time didn’t go into hospital for pneumonia, and why would they? There was nothing they could do for them there-no antivirals, no nanotherapies, not even any antibiotics except sulfa and penicillin. No, they didn’t even have that. Penicillin hadn’t come into common use till after the war.
“I shouldn’t worry,” the doctor said, patting Eileen on the arm. “Binnie’s young and strong.”
“But isn’t there something you can give her for her fever?”
“You might give her some licorice-root tea,” he said. “And bathe her with alcohol three times a day.”
Teas, poultices, glass thermometers! It’s a wonder anyone survived the twentieth century, Eileen thought disgustedly. She bathed Binnie’s hot arms and legs after the doctor left, but neither that nor the tea had any effect on her, and as the evening wore on, she became more and more short of breath. She dozed fitfully, moaning and tossing from side to side. It was midnight before she finally fell asleep. Eileen tucked the covers around her and went to check on the other children.
“Don’t leave me!” Binnie cried out.
“Shh,” Eileen said, hurrying back and sitting down beside her again. “I’m here. Shh, I’m not leaving. I was only going to check on the other children.” She reached out her hand to feel Binnie’s forehead.
Binnie twisted angrily away from her. “No, you wasn’t. You was goin’ away. To London. I seen you.”
She must be reliving that day at the station with Theodore. “I’m not going to London,” Eileen said soothingly. “I’m staying right here with you.”
Binnie shook her head violently. “I seen you. Mrs. Bascombe says nice girls don’t meet soldiers in the woods.”
She’s delirious, Eileen thought. “I’m going to fetch the thermometer, Binnie. I’ll be back in just a moment.”
“I did so see her, Alf,” Binnie said.
Eileen got the thermometer, dipped it in alcohol, and came back. “Put this under your tongue.”
“You can’t leave,” Binnie said. She looked straight at Eileen. “You’re the only one wot’s nice to us.”
“Binnie, dear, I need to take your temperature,” Eileen repeated, and this time Binnie seemed to hear her. She opened her mouth obediently, lay still for the endless minutes before Eileen could remove the thermometer, then turned over and closed her eyes.
Eileen couldn’t read her temp in the near-darkness. She tiptoed over to the lamp on the table: forty. If her temperature stayed that high for long, it would kill her.
Even though it was two in the morning, Eileen rang up Dr. Stuart, but he wasn’t there. His housekeeper told her he’d just left for Moodys’ farm to deliver a baby, and, no, they weren’t on the telephone. Which meant she was on her own-and there was absolutely nothing she could do. If her presence had affected events, the net would never have let her come through to Backbury.
But the alterations the net prevented were those which affected the course of history, not whether an evacuee lived through the measles. Binnie couldn’t affect what happened at D-Day or who won the war. And even if she could, Eileen couldn’t just stand here and let her die. She had to at least try to get her temperature down. But how? Rubbing her with alcohol had had no effect at all. Putting her in a tub of cold water? In her weakened state, the shock might kill her. She needed a medicine to bring down the fever, but they hadn’t any drugs like that in 1940-