Without moving her head from her knees, she slowly inched her arm forward for Nellie to inspect. She pulled the young girl's sleeve up and looked at it curiously for a moment, her eyes roaming the length of Sophia's arm as she tried to work out what had caused the rash.
“What is it?” Gwyn asked.
“Is it something to do with what’s happening to Howell?” I added.
She flapped an arm to silence us and continued her inspection. With a small amount of effort, she pried free Sophia’s other arm and raised the sleeve. It was red but it didn’t appear to be as flaky or dry as her other arm and there were no sores. When she was satisfied with her assessment, she pulled up her sister's skirts and Gwyn and I averted our eyes into the kitchen while Sophia’s legs were inspected.
“Nothing there,” she said, covering her back up. “When did your arm get like this, Sophia?”
“Today. At school,” she said, raising her head to look at Nellie. Her eyes were red from crying and her blonde hair was matted to her face.
“And did you tell your mistress?” Nellie asked.
Sophia shook her head and her eyes began to well up with tears again.
“Did you see anyone else with the same rash?”
Sophia stayed still for a moment then nodded her head and pouted her lips as tears began to stream down her cheeks once more. “Emma Jones and Derek Evans have it too. Miss got cross and sent them out so I was too scared to tell her.”
Nellie brushed her sister’s hair behind her ears and smiled at her before rising to her feet and rushing to the table where Howell was lying. “Get his slacks up,” she said to Betty as she began to inspect his arms. Betty came around the table and rolled the legs of his trousers up to his knees and Nellie moved her attention to his lower extremities.
“I can’t see anything,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and biting her bottom lip. “Perhaps scarlet fever?” But she didn’t seem entirely convinced. She returned to her books, flicking through pages faster than she could read them.
“We’re here,” Gethin announced, barging through the back door and nearly sending me flying from my seat. He stopped short at the sight of Howell laid out upon the table but was immediately ushered into the sitting room and out of the way. A moment later the doctor stepped in, closing the door of the kitchen with a loud bang.
He was an elderly gentleman, at least in his late sixties, and dressed more like he was going to attend a dance than to perform medical duties. His dark hollow eyes were framed by a grey beard on the lower half of his face, coloured by yellow tobacco stains around his mouth, and a large top hat on his head. His red waistcoat was highlighted by a gold pocket watch that hung from a chain and his suit, with tails, was the kind I’d seen on the men who were drinking in the hotel lobby in Aberystwyth. I wasn’t entirely certain, but there seemed to be a faint aroma of alcohol about him, too.
Nellie, who had once again proven herself invaluable in an emergency, stepped forward to greet the doctor and provide the information that she had gathered, but he sidestepped her and moved toward the table.
“Now, what do we have here, then?” he said in an accent I was unfamiliar with. It didn’t sound either Welsh or English. He placed his large leather bag down on the counter next to the back door and unclasped it, causing both sides to fall open and reveal at least a dozen miniature bottles. Nellie once again attempted to speak but he raised his finger to his lips, looked at her and made a shushing noise. Uninterested in what she had to say, he turned his attention to Gwyn.
“You, boy, what do we know so far?”
Gwyn, unwilling to be drawn into the doctor's misogyny, deferred back to Nellie, who this time spoke whether the doctor liked it or not.
“It struck Mr Jacob first,” she said, pointing towards me. “He went down in the garden during the afternoon with a fever. I gave him fluids and recommended bed rest.”
“He doesn’t appear to be resting now, Miss Hopkin,” the doctor snarked, but she ignored it and continued.
“Then this evening my brother struggled to breathe. It appeared as if he was choking. I boiled ginger root to help the air pass easier to his lungs but his breathing is still shallow. We’ve also found a rash on Sophia. I checked Howell over and he doesn’t have it, but hers is sore and weeping. I thought perhaps it was scarlet fever.”
He stroked his beard and considered her findings.
“Come here, little girl,” he said, beckoning Sophia with a single finger towards him. His bedside manner left much to be desired. She was hesitant at first but Gwyn held her hand and walked her over to him. The doctor raised back her sleeves roughly, causing her to wince in pain. He let out some mumbling noises and then returned to his bag and extracted a small metal tongue depressor. Gripping Howell’s face, he pulled his jaw down and inserted it into his mouth. Howell, delirious with fever and still struggling to breathe, barely acknowledged the doctor’s attention and remained still on the table.
He wiped the depressor against his sleeve, and then, turning to Sophia, he kneeled down and popped it into her mouth. I had to stop myself from telling him that even I knew he should be changing or sterilising it first, but he continued on with little concern for potentially spreading any disease that we might have.
“Did it occur to you, Miss Hopkin,” he said, rising to a standing position, “to check inside their throats?”
His accusatory tone annoyed me, as though he were expecting Nellie to somehow know every step of a diagnosis when without her Howell would likely already be dead.
He stepped towards me, depressor at the ready, and I swatted it away as he raised it to my face. I stuck my tongue out and said ‘ahhhh’ so that he could get a look at my throat without me having to be at least the third recipient of his instruments’ probing.
“If you had cared to look, Miss Hopkin,” he said after a long pause, “you would have seen the white spots and membranes forming in the throats of the patients. You have an outbreak of diphtheria on your hands.”
I had little knowledge of the disease and even less idea of its severity, but I was pretty sure that it was something I’d been inoculated against as a child. That fact led me to worry less about its long-term effects on myself, but I was pretty sure it didn’t bode well for everyone else in the room who would have received no such vaccine. I wasn’t even sure if there was a treatment for it in these times.
Nellie, now racked with guilt for missing something that none of us knew to look for, raised her hand to her mouth and clutched her nose in an attempt to stop herself from crying. When the doctor gave her another disapproving glare she rushed out of the kitchen and bounded up the stairs to her room.