We Return To Each Other

1914 ✤ Chapter 5

February

It's still snowing when Kit wakes up. He is greeted with a headache and a deep cough wracking his body. Kit reaches across for the jug of water Nan left for him. He pours himself a cup and with shaky hands he takes long, deep gulps. Kit sighs and lies back down, pulling the duvet covers over his head. He's been ill for the last three days, shivering and sweating from a high fever.

It was his seventeenth birthday yesterday, on the penultimate day of January, and he spent it fighting off this cold. At least he was too ill to be awake for most of it. The fever has gone down somewhat and he doesn't feel like he's going to vomit from the dizziness every time he opens his eyes. Silver linings.

Kit's grandmother has been a germaphobe as long as he can remember, even far back to his younger years when he would visit her with his father, she always insisted all dirt should be left outside. It came as no surprise to him that the moment he said he felt ill, Nan quarantined him in his bedroom with strict orders not to leave until his temperature was down. She comes into his room every three hours like clockwork to check on him or bring him his food. She turned away any and all visitors asking for Kit, notifying them of his illness the second they try to knock on the door to inquire.

Kit is close to sleeping again when Nan knocks on the door. He coughs and glances up at the door, "come in."

The door opens and Nan walks in holding a tray and wearing gloves and the mask she made herself the second she heard Kit cough. Honestly, you would think Kit was infected with the Black Death the way she's carrying on.

"Good afternoon, pumpkin," Nan says, "how are you feeling?"

"I've been better," he grumbles back.

She tuts as she trudges over to Kit, "come on, up you get, time for lunch."

His head aches at any slight movement but he pushes himself up and sits back against the bed's wooden headboard. When he first moved in and saw his room featured an ornate king-sized bed Kit wanted to swap it for the single one in the guest room downstairs because he didn't think he would need such a large bed. It felt gratuitous. The years he spent at Eton in the small shared room, on the narrow, single bed taught him utilitarian ways. After spending the last three days — including his birthday — bed bound, he sees the advantages of having such a big bed.

Nan sets the tray on Kit's lap and says, "now, eat up."

She has made him another large bowl of spinach and chicken soup with a fresh roll of bread and she expects him to finish every last bit of it. Apparently, nobody wastes food in Rainford.

"Thanks, Gran," Kit says, picking up the big spoon in the bowl and starting to slurp up the warm, rich soup.

"You're welcome, pumpkin," Nan says, although it come out a little muffled through her mask. "Now, rest, I'll be back up soon with some fruit."

Kit nods as she turns and leaves the room, shutting the door behind her. He cranes his neck and looks out of the window at the falling snow burying the back garden in white. When he's sure she has gone, he takes his worn-out copy of Songs of Innocence and Experience and opens it to the page he had earmarked earlier. He has had it for years and he must have read it over a thousand times now but intricate poetry always reads fresh.

Somehow, Nan got into her head doing anything other than sleeping would make Kit worse. It was his mother's before her death. Kit never met her as she died giving birth to him but Father always said it was her favourite book and the dearest thing she owned. He found it in Father's study when he was eleven, about two months before Father shipped him off to Eton, and he spent all day reading it, soaking in the exquisite prose. The governess found Kit huddled beneath the bookshelves in the evening, red-faced and annoyed that he had forgotten about his tutoring.