If Only He Were Adeline

If Only He Were Adeline Chapter 2

Chapter 2  

With having to provide for nine people including himself and only being able to get petty jobs and having to do odd work here and there to keep money coming into our household we lived in very poor conditions. We had a small house along the River Thames. The amount of people that washed as well as threw their waste and animal guts into the river meant that there was always a putrid stench wafting into our home. In the summer the smell seemed to be leaking off the walls themselves, but living so close to the river meant we could get the house for cheap because nobody wanted to live where the reek from the river was so strong.

There were three rooms, the first was a kitchen. At least that was what we mainly used it for. But the kitchen was also a make shift dining room, washroom and an area for my father to do any jobs he got that required work space. The second and third rooms were bedrooms; five of my brothers and sisters slept in one whilst the youngest of the children, Anna and I, slept with our parents. It was no wonder the disease spread across my family so quickly, when our living conditions were dark, crowded and filthy, it's a shock that the plague itself didn't fall upon our household.

The first to catch it was my father. He had been wrongly accused of stealing finely embroidered doublets from a stall in the market and had been held in prison until trial, practically a death sentence in itself thinking about how infested with diseases the prisons of London were. The whole ordeal caused my mother a large amount of grief resulting in her being bed ridden for weeks. When my father's case was finally heard in court he had been found innocent. Unfortunately he had already caught the deadly sickness, typhus.

My mother tried hard to take care of him, to rid him of his painful ailment. Throughout the day we had to alternate between bringing father cold and hot towels to try and calm down his fever and sudden chills. Watching him shiver and shake and then break out into sweat was overwhelming for me at the time. All I could think about was how he used to be so cheerful, how he would smile at every occasion and was such a kind man. I wondered if maybe he was being punished by God for some kind of bad deed that I did not know about, maybe he had indeed stolen those doublets. He had severe pains in his muscles and joints, even trying to turn him over would make him wince and cry out in pain but we could not afford anything to soothe his ache. The most we could do for him was buying a paste from a stall in the market to relieve him of the burning rash that had started on his chest and had spread across his whole body. It was not a regular rash that you could get from an allergy or some kind of friction but black smudges littered across his body that gave him the image of a faded Dalmatian. Not long after my father became so sensitive to light that we could not open the blinds or light a candle in his room when night came, the whole family had caught the disease, leaving me to take care of eight ill people.  

Father died in the early hours of the morning. The room was dank with the heat of summer; the windows were thrust wide open trying to catch the slightest breeze but only availing in allowing the stench of London to float more freely through the house. Everyone was asleep as I should have been as it was the only time that I did not have to run everywhere trying to keep everyone in good conditions, but I felt like having a moment with my father. I was holding his hand whilst he slept uneasily taking quick shallow breaths and flinching ever so often as if he were having a nightmare, when he suddenly startled awake. He looked me straight in the eyes whilst tightening his grip on my hand and just kept staring. As I sat there in suspense waiting for him to have some kind of reaction to me my mind raced ahead at what he could be staring at.  

'My beautiful wife, please take good care of those kids. Especially our Adeline, I know there's something better out there for her than all this'. He said softly, the strain of speaking clear on his face.  

He smiled at me, that warm smile that I remembered seeing so many times when he was healthy. That smile that had made me believe that everything would be alright and that even though things were in a bad place, we would pull out. As he smiled at me with that heart warming smile, tears spilled out of my eyes and rolled thick and fast down my cheeks as I smiled back.  

'I'll definitely take good care of them all' I said.  

Knowing that at that moment he was not smiling at me, but at my mother. Then he gave my hand a little squeeze, lied back onto his pillows and then suddenly went slack with a small smile still on his face. I cried uncontrollably that night. The tears kept pouring out of my eyes and I tried hard to stifle the sound of my sobs from getting around the house as I did not want to wake anyone up to this tragedy. When my body was unable to conjure up anymore tears I got ready for the chaos that came with everyone waking up in the morning.

Again and again I watched a member of my family be taken away by the typhus. When it was just me Anne and my mother left I went in search of our relatives to try and help us. Because there was no money coming into the house anymore trying to find a doctor was useless, most doctors were no help anyway. Every relative I had found would quickly turn me away not wishing to come into close contact with someone that had been exposed to so much disease. Some had even said that my immunity to the disease must have been some form of witchcraft. The only person I found that would follow me was my mother's sister. When I told her what had happened she quickly grabbed her cap and cloak and ushered me to quickly lead the way to the house.

As we got close I suddenly had an appalling feeling and started accelerating my stride eventually leading myself into a run. When I got into the house and strode quickly in their room I met a ghastly sight. They were both dead. The sister closest to my age and my forever fighting mother were both gone from this world, just when I had found someone that may have been able to help us. After my aunt had taken in the situation in the room she swiftly rushed out of the house and I stayed right on her tail. When I realised she was not going to stop I called out to her.  

'Wait! Where are you going?'  

She looked at me in a daze as if she had not realised I had been following her and suddenly ran back taking my hands in hers.  

'I can't help you Adeline, death has literally plagued your family and the fact that you are still alive, well and healthy means that either you are a curse on your family or are greatly blessed. But I do not plan to stick around to find out, here.'  

She gave me a pouch that had been hidden in her petticoat.  

'Take this and do with it what you will, I will pray for you dear child, may God allow you to live a fulfilling life regardless of your great loss'.  

She turned and had taken a few steps before coming back and staring me hard in the face.  

'You have the most incredible eyes... just like my sister's.'  

She wiped a tear from her face gave me a quick, hard hug and then gave me a firm nod, as if confirming what she had said and then strode away leaving me outside my corpse filled house to fend for myself, at 12 years old.