Chapter 28 Clara
CHAPTER 28? CLARA
Lake District, England
“We’re here,” Charlie said.
I didn’t so much wake in the back seat of the car as emerge from something so deeply annihilating that no memory of dreams or even of falling asleep remained. The first blow of feeling was the heat behind my eyes, the rage of burning fever.
I sat up with the satisfying weight of Wynnie’s head in my lap. Charlie parked on a gravel drive. The house towered above us, glowing in gray and white, as solid as the mountain behind it. Smoke rose from a chimney. A granite roofline sloped over the glow of lights inside the middle windows and the moon’s wan glow offered only hints of the landscape.
“What time is it?” I croaked, my voice broken.
“One a.m,” Charlie answered.
We’d traveled another four hours while I’d slept. My exhaustion weighed on me like a sack of rocks.
Wynnie stirred and then sat up to stare out the window. “This looks like a storybook.” She opened the passenger door and climbed out. I followed and placed my feet on the pebbled drive, my legs shaking and nearly giving way; I grabbed for the open car door. I didn’t care what this house looked like or where we’d landed—I needed to lay my head on a pillow.
We stood covered in black soot, damp and shivering, hidden by the night, with only the glow of a gas lantern over the single front door covered by an arched entryway. I wore Charlie’s sweater beneath his coat and my skin itched. We took in deep breaths of fresh night air, and Wynnie leaned against me. “It doesn’t burn anymore,” she said.
The front door opened, and a woman appeared silhouetted by the light from inside. She stood regal, a tall woman with her hair loose around her shoulders. “Charlie!” she called out, and took two steps toward us on the landing. “I have been worried to death. The news on the wireless is awful. Get in the house. There is food waiting for you—come, come.”
Charlie carried our belongings inside, and I imagined our other luggage sitting unattended in the flat in London, my purse being rummaged through by thieves, its belongings flung across the river, sinking to the bottom with Mother’s pages. I imagined my money trading hands and my passport sold, my tickets for home tossed as trash.
I shivered.
I took Wynnie’s hand, and we walked up the stone stairs to the entryway, which had an inner and an outer door. The floor below was parquet, and a flowered globe light hung above me. Once we were inside, the entry foyer gave an overall impression of dark wood, with a stairwell to the left that climbed along the wall, flowers in vases, and stern faces in gold frames. Doorways to the right were closed tight; an arched hallway was dark before us.
Mrs. Jameson clasped her hands in front of her. “I am Philippa Jameson, and you must be Clara and Wynnie.” I nodded at her, with little use for language. “Would you like something to eat? A cup of tea? What can I do for you?”
“Mum,” Charlie said, dropping our bags on the bottom step, “they need a doctor.”
“Follow me,” Mrs. Jameson said.
Wynnie pointed up the staircase at a stained glass window with floral patterns looming over the foyer. “Is this a magical house?”
He laughed. “It’s been in our family for nearly a hundred years now. A little shabbier in the morning light, but at night like this, I agree. Magic. Now let’s get you warm and fed and let Doc Finlay give a good look at both of you. We’ll deal with your passports and everything else tomorrow.”
“You keep a doctor here?” I asked, unable to decide if I was freezing or burning, the feeling abysmal either way.
“I called before we left.” Charlie put his hand to my back and guided us to the first door on the right. “You’re burning up.”
“I am, yes.”
He opened the thick door to a room with tall windows overlooking an unknown landscape hidden in the cloak of night. “Clara,” Charlie said in a voice so warm and kind I wanted to fall against him, to feel his solid body, to fall asleep for as long and as deep as I pleased, but Wynnie was next to me, and she was all that mattered. “I’m so sorry I let that woman into the car.”
“Don’t be sorry. You didn’t know—”
“Miss?” I turned to Moira’s voice. She held out a pile of papers, wet, mostly destroyed, and far thinner than they’d been hours ago. “I will place these in your room. This is the little we saved.”
A rush of sorrow and dread arrived with a realization that everything I came for was mostly gone. Whatever I sacrificed to be here wasn’t worth the wet pages she held, the dregs of my hope.
Charlie placed his hand under my elbow and led me farther into the drawing room with dark paneled walls where logs blazed in the fireplace; the furniture was covered with leather cracked with age, all with a patina of brown glaze the color of rich chocolate. He set me in a chair and looked to his mother. “Mum, how about some warm blankets and tea for Clara?”
A bald man sat in the largest chair, slouched over his paunchy stomach. His mouth was open, soft snores emanating in time with the rise and fall of his tweed-covered chest.
“Finlay,” Charlie said, and the man opened his eyes.
I held Wynnie close, and although she was alert and fine, the whistle only I could hear rattled in her chest. Through the blur of fever and thirst thick in my mouth, I took in some details. A leather kit sat at the man’s feet, and a large silver cylinder stood by his side. I recognized the oxygen tank and wanted to weep with gratitude. Charlie Jameson brought us out of the fog to this house of slate, stone, and grand rooms, where an oxygen tank sat waiting. Lamplight glowed in the room from every dark-wood tabletop.
Dr. Finlay took only a breath or two before he jumped up and came to Wynnie, bent down to look closely at her. “Child, come here.” He motioned to a chair under a large standing lamp. “Let’s have a look at you.”
Wynnie checked with me, and I nodded to her. She sat in the leather chair and looked up at the doctor. He snapped a stethoscope to his ears and set the drum of it on her chest. “Wheezing.” It was unclear who he talked to as he examined my girl. “Lips slightly hypoxic. Alert.
“Can you take a deep breath?” he asked. His tobacco-stained teeth and yellowing nails told me of a cigarette habit that ran contrary to a man helping someone’s lungs open.
Wynnie nodded and took a deep breath that sent her into a spasm of coughing. The doctor reached for a contraption I’d never seen—a pewter teapot without a spout, but instead a black tube poking out from the middle of it. Dr. Finlay held the tube out to Wynnie and told her to inhale. She nodded and took a deep breath.
She sighed deeply. He rolled the oxygen cylinder over and placed a mask on her face. “You’re going to be fine.”
“What was that?” I pointed to the contraption.
“A Mudge inhaler,” he said, and now directed his attention to me. He was an older man with purple pouches under his eyes, a gobble of loose skin on his neck, lines etched across his forehead and around his mouth. But beneath all of that were blue eyes so clear they looked like mountain lakes.
“What’s a Mudge inhaler?” Every word I spoke scraped my throat like sandpaper.
“It has a very small amount of opium to relax her lungs and allow the oxygen to enter. I suggest you both get cleaned up, get some food into her, and take her to bed.” Then his thick brows lowered, and he moved closer to me. “What about you?”
I gave a slight shake of my head, indicating that I was fine.
He narrowed his eyes—did he believe my motions or my words?
Charlie was there now, his hand on my shoulder. “She actually is not all right. She went into the river—long story—and now she’s burning with fever.”
“Oh, dear God,” he said. “You need a warm bath and bed, or between the cold and the fog, it will all end up in your lungs.” He looked up to Charlie. “You didn’t tell me.”
“It just happened on the way here.”
“I’ll leave you with some cough expectorant and aspirin. But you must tell me if she’s not better in two days.” He looked to Wynnie. “I believe you’ll be fine by morning. Both of you off to warm clothes and bed. Now.”
Wynnie looked up at me, and her eyes behind her smudged glasses took on a hazy glow.
Everything was moving in slow motion, and what he’d said about the Mudge inhaler filtered into my fuzzy brain. “Opium? You gave my daughter opium?”
“Just a titch. Enough to allow her lungs to relax and for her to sleep.”
Moira returned to the room with a bowl of water in her hands. She knelt before Wynnie and took a steaming cloth from the water. Carefully she wiped Wynnie’s face and hands. “You’re going to be all right, little one.”
Mrs. Jameson paced the room, asking if we needed food, bringing me a cup of tea that I didn’t touch. Wynnie looked at me from under her oxygen mask, her language garbled, but I understood it well enough to know that she said, “I’m tired.” And with that she closed her eyes.
I looked to the doctor. “How long does she need the oxygen? I’d like to get her in a bed.”
“Just a few more minutes and then off to bed. She will be fine by morning. I am much more worried about you.”
“Thank you,” I said. “But Wynnie is the one I am worried about. My heart has been bouncing out of my chest and I—” I stopped. “Do you think this fog damaged her lungs even more?”
“It’s hard to know,” he said. “You got her out of London, out of that sulfuric air, and that’s all that matters for now.”
Charlie held out his hand. “Please, let’s get you both upstairs. Moira,” he said. “Please draw a hot bath for Clara and…”
From there I remembered little: Moira’s hands on me as she undressed and helped me bathe, Wynnie asleep, Mother’s language whispered over a field of frost and river.