Clover Moon Read online

  I rambled on while Megs breathed in and out so shallowly that her little sunken chest barely moved. I could feel her heart beating fast. I stroked her very gently, trying to soothe her. After a very long time I fell asleep but was woken by Megs wriggling, kicking her legs.

  ‘What is it, darling?’ I asked in alarm.

  ‘We’ve got so much room!’ said Megs. Her throat was raspy but she sounded almost normal.

  ‘Oh, Megs, I think you’re getting better!’ I said. ‘We’ve got the bed to ourselves because you’ve had the fever.’ I felt her forehead. She was still very hot, and when I stroked her cheeks I could still feel the bumpy rash, but at least she was properly awake now.

  ‘I like it, just you and me,’ she said.

  ‘I like it too, Megs,’ I agreed.

  We cuddled close and I sang the lullaby song again, over and over. Megs’s head lolled against my arm, making it ache, but I didn’t move. I lay still and clung on to her.

  But in the morning . . . Oh, I can hardly bear to say it. I woke up and Megs was still in my arms, but she wasn’t burning hot any more. She was cold and still. I shook her gently. I shook her harder. Then I clutched her close.

  ‘Megs, Megs, oh, my Megs,’ I cried, and I started sobbing.

  The door opened and Pa and Mildred peered round it fearfully.

  ‘No!’ Pa groaned and covered his eyes.

  ‘Oh my Lord.’ Mildred started crying, though she’d ignored poor Megs all her short life.

  The other children clamoured behind them, but Mildred pushed them away. ‘Downstairs, now, this instant,’ she commanded.

  ‘But we want to see poorly Megs!’ said Jenny.

  ‘She’s not here any more,’ said Mildred. ‘She’s gone to join the angels in Heaven.’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ said Richie. ‘She’s lying there in our bed – I can see her!’

  ‘I want to see her,’ said Pete, trying to thrust his head through Pa’s legs.

  ‘Get away, all of you. Do you want to get the fever too?’ said Mildred.

  ‘Yes, go away!’ I cried, desperate to be left alone with Megs so I could whisper to her and stroke her and beg her to come back to me.

  ‘You must leave her be, Clover,’ said Pa. ‘You’ll catch it off her.’

  ‘You’ve already shut me up in that terrible cupboard for fear I’ll catch it. I haven’t got the fever and I don’t care if I do have it anyway,’ I sobbed. ‘I’d sooner be dead now that Megs is gone.’

  ‘Stop that dreadful talk. I’ve already lost your dear mother and now your poor little sister. You can’t put me through any more heartache,’ said Pa. ‘Can’t you talk sense into her, Mildred?’

  ‘You know she never listens to a word I say,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve tried my best with her but she’s too wayward, even for me. There now, Arthur. Don’t take on so.’ She put her big arms round him and let him cry on her shoulder like a baby. The sight of their embrace turned my stomach. How could Pa love that great hard lump of a woman? I knew my mother had been little and soft and gentle.

  ‘You’ll be meeting our real mother soon,’ I whispered in Megs’s ear when the rest of the family had at last retreated, Mildred sending Jenny off to fetch Mrs Wilkes at the end of the alley to do the laying out. ‘You’ll fly up to Heaven and the angels will reach their arms down through the clouds and haul you up. You’ll be in this magical shining land, and Mother will coming running towards you and clasp you in her arms, so happy to see you.’

  I tried to believe this myself, but that vision of a happy, carefree Megs was so different from the poor scrap of a girl lying on the bed, as still and stiff as one of Mr Dolly’s wooden figures. I waited in dread for Mrs Wilkes to come, knowing she’d send me away. But I heard Jenny return home wailing.

  ‘She says she can’t come, Ma! She won’t go near our Megs because of the fever. She says she’s got five children of her own and daren’t put them at risk,’ she cried.

  ‘Oh dear Lord, what are we going to do now?’ Pa said, in despair.

  Mildred went out herself to fetch a midwife who also did laying out, but she wouldn’t come either.

  ‘I’ll have to do it myself then,’ she said grimly. ‘Though Lord knows how we’ll bury her. I went into the undertaker’s in Harrison Road and they won’t come – they say they haven’t got the right facilities.’

  ‘So what are we supposed to do? Bury the poor little girl ourselves?’ Pa cried.

  ‘The Harrison Road lot said we’d have to go to Ernest Payne’s in the High Street,’ said Mildred. ‘But they’re just for the gentry – everyone in full black, with fine horses and coffins covered in flowers. They’ll cost a fortune. We can’t have them.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to pawn something,’ said Pa. ‘My Megs isn’t going to have a pauper’s funeral.’

  ‘We haven’t got anything worth pawning. I don’t know – what was all that fancy talk when we first met? You were certain to be foreman, you said, making out we were going to live like gentry. And now look at us, stuck in this hovel – seven kids and another on the way!’

  ‘Six kids,’ said Pa, and started weeping.

  I listened to them squabbling, hating them. I put my hands over Megs’s ears, though I knew she couldn’t hear them.

  ‘I wish I could pay for your funeral, Megs,’ I whispered. I had my five shillings in Mr Dolly’s purse, but I knew it wasn’t enough for a proper funeral. ‘You deserve the grandest funeral ever, with folk weeping on the pavement as your carriage trundles by, all shiny black and gleaming brass, drawn by horses with purple plumes.’

  I lay talking to her, but all the while she grew colder and colder. I tried wrapping another blanket round her but it had no effect. I pulled the blanket up over my own head too, wanting to shut out the rest of the world, but I still heard the front door slamming and Mildred shouting and the children crying.

  It was suffocating but I stayed there, as still as Megs, until, a long time later, I felt someone pulling at me, tearing off the blanket.

  ‘Get up, Clover! Get up at once!’ It was Mildred, hiding under her apron again. ‘The funeral people are here to take Megs away. You must get out of bed this instant.’

  I saw a man and a woman at the door. They were dressed from head to toe in crow black, with strange veils over their faces.

  ‘Say goodbye to your sister, dear,’ the veiled woman said firmly.

  I kissed Megs on her chilly forehead. She didn’t feel like my soft little sister any more. She didn’t even look like her now, with her eyes glazed and her mouth open. I had to leave her with them, and then watch as they carried her down the stairs, wrapped in white cloth. It covered her completely, but one small grubby foot lolled out underneath.

  The other children were watching fearfully too, held back by Mildred. The girls clung to her, and little Bert sat astride her stomach, with Richie clutching her skirts – but Pete was bolder.

  ‘I need to give Megs back her marble!’ he said, starting to cry. ‘She found it – a great green glass marble with gold swirls – but I wanted it so badly I took it from her and wouldn’t let her have it back. I want her to have it now. Please wait while I find it.’

  ‘She won’t be needing any marble now, laddie,’ said the man, and they made their way out of the door. He paused on the threshold. ‘We’ll be informing the public disinfectors, missus.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ Mildred begged. ‘There’s no need. The two girls were kept separate. And I’ll scrub the whole house from top to bottom, I swear I will. For pity’s sake, don’t tell them.’

  ‘It’s the law, missus. It’s more than my job’s worth to keep quiet. It’s the Sanitary Act, see. You’ll get fined or sent to prison if you don’t let the disinfectors do their work,’ he said.

  ‘But we can’t afford it! The funeral’s going to cost a fortune as it is,’ Mildred wailed. ‘We’re clean folk. I keep this house spotless. The fever didn’t start here. The big girl brought it into the house and gave it to her sist