Hope

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘There’s a path beside the river which is always pleasant even on a cold day,’ Bennett said. ‘Would you like me to show you?’

  ‘That’s right, you two take a walk and work up an appetite,’ Violet said. ‘I’ve got an oxtail stew simmering on the stove, but it won’t be ready for a couple of hours.’

  It felt very cold outside after the warm cottage and Hope pulled her cloak tighter. She had left the hospital full of confidence that morning, as she had a new red plaid wool dress that she’d bought in one of the second-hand dress shops in the Pithay, and a jaunty red hat trimmed with feathers. But her grey cloak was the same old one she’d left Briargate with, worn so thin now that the wind went straight through it. As they walked down through the tiny village with its straggle of small stone cottages, the cloak which had been made by Nell was a timely reminder that although Hope’s circumstances had improved dramatically since she first met Bennett in Lamb Lane, some things would never change.

  No one but Bennett thought much of nurses. Like soldiers and constables, they were considered the dregs of society, only valued in times of trouble.

  Bennett talked animatedly as they walked. He had heard the Corporation were calling an emergency meeting to discuss health and sanitation in the city, and he hoped this might mean they would pull down places like Lewins Mead and build new houses with piped water and sewers.

  ‘And I suppose that will mean that they’ll throw all my old neighbours out on to the street,’ Hope retorted. ‘Will they ask anyone along to this meeting who actually knows and cares anything for those who will become homeless? I think not. It will be a meeting of only those who will profit from the new houses.’

  Bennett looked surprised by the venom in her voice. ‘I’m sure that won’t be so,’ he replied. ‘What’s got into you, Hope? I thought you’d be glad to hear that a place that harbours so much disease will be swept away.’

  ‘Not if it means people will have to be swept away too,’ she snapped. ‘They should build new houses first, at rents those people can afford. If they don’t, the problem will just shift to Bedminster, St Philips, Montpelier, or, heaven help your uncle, to Clifton! I bet he won’t be overjoyed if tens of thousands of guttersnipes like me end up as his neighbours!’

  ‘Why do you mention my uncle?’ Bennett asked, facing her and taking hold of both her arms. He had that stern look he always wore when he was concerned. ‘And why do you call yourself a guttersnipe?’

  ‘That’s how he sees me, doesn’t he?’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t like it if he knew you had brought me here, would he?’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ Bennett admitted. ‘But he is not my keeper. I am my own person, I don’t allow him to control me.’

  ‘But you live in his house, and therefore you must be beholden to him.’

  ‘To a certain extent, yes. But only as far as deferring to his greater experience in the practice he built up, and treating his home with respect. I do not allow him to choose my friends.’

  ‘But you have to hide ones like me away. You couldn’t invite me to Harley Place if he were there, could you?’

  Bennett neither denied nor acknowledged that was true. He continued walking, saying nothing. Hope trotted after him, aware she’d already said too much, and not in a manner that would endear her to him.

  When they got to the banks of the river, Bennett stopped, staring out at the water which was just a sluggish strip between vast swathes of greasy-looking mud. With the leaden sky above and the few trees growing along the riverside bare of leaves, looking skeletal and grim, the scene had none of the beauty it would have at high tide in sunshine.

  ‘I haven’t hidden you away,’ he suddenly burst out. ‘The epidemic was so bad there were no opportunities to do anything more than try to fight it. My first thought as the last cases either died or went home was about you, in particular your future and my feelings for you. That’s exactly why I asked you to come here with me.’

  Hope didn’t know how to reply to that, so she said nothing.

  ‘Well?’ he said sharply. ‘No sarcastic comment?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I spoke out of turn.’

  His chin was jutting out as if he was angry, and his eyes seemed to be boring right into her.

  ‘I am in a dilemma, Hope,’ he said. ‘It is the circumstances of how we met which make it so very difficult. If I’d met you at a party or a dinner, I’d know exactly how to behave with you. I’d come calling, I might give you a book of poetry, I could even ask my uncle to arrange some function so we could talk and be seen enjoying each other’s company. I would then invite you to the theatre or a concert, and provided you had a suitable chaperone, and you and your family didn’t take an immediate dislike to me, we could then embark on a courtship.

  ‘But I can’t do any of that with you, Hope. You don’t live with your family, you have no suitable person as a chaperone.’

  ‘I don’t have the right clothes or manners either,’ Hope said glumly.

  He made a kind of exasperated growl in his throat. ‘That isn’t it, Hope! Not your manners, background or anything like that. Don’t you see it? I love you.’

  Hope blinked in astonishment.

  ‘I fell for you almost the first minute I sawyour beautiful face,’ he went on. ‘Every moment with you since then has confirmed that you are the only girl in the whole world for me. All those social niceties mean absolutely nothing to me. But I am trapped in a situation where they are important to everyone else, and if I flout them, you would be the one who would suffer.’

  Hope had been sure when he was talking about chaperones, concerts and families that he was just trying to show her why she could never fit into his world. But then he’d said he loved her, and that cancelled out everything else.

  ‘You love me?’ she whispered, bubbles of delight running down her spine. ‘Truly?’

  He looked at her with the mournful eyes of a spaniel. ‘Yes, Hope. Truly! Madly and deeply. I spend all day thinking of you, I invent excuses to see you, I can’t sleep at night for imagining kissing you.’

  ‘Oh, Bennett.’ She flung herself into his arms impulsively. ‘I love you too, it’s just that way for me too.’

  She stood on tiptoe to kiss him, and as her lips touched his, his arms went round her so tightly he almost took her breath away.

  Hope had never kissed a man on the lips before. Over the last year or two she had often idly wondered what sort of feeling people got out of pressing their mouths together, for it seemed an unlikely source of pleasure.

  But as his warm, soft lips met hers, all those strange yet delightful sensations she had when she lay in bed thinking about him came spurting up in her, twice, three times as strong and sweet.

  She didn’t care that they were on a river bank, that they could be seen by anyone who chanced along. It didn’t matter that he was a doctor and a gentleman, while she was just a kitchenmaid turned nurse. All she could think of was that he loved her, and she loved him. Nothing else was important.

  ‘Hope, my dear, sweet, beautiful girl,’ he murmured as they broke for air. ‘I have wanted to kiss you for so long.’

  There were many more kisses. They would walk a few yards holding hands, then all at once they were kissing again and again, not noticing the cold wind or the mud beneath their feet. His arms went beneath her cloak, drawing her closer still, caressing her in a way that made her feel she was melting. It was only when they realized they had been out for over two hours, and their feet and hands were frozen, that they turned back to Violet’s cottage.

  ‘I don’t know how I’m going to hide this from Alice and Violet,’ Bennett laughed as they got nearer to the cottage. ‘I’m sure it must be written on my face.’

  ‘And I don’t know how I’m going to be able to sit making polite conversation for the rest of the day when all I want to do is kiss you more,’ Hope replied.

  In the months that followed the visit to Mrs Charlsworth’s cottage Hope was to think on that
last remark to Bennett over and over again. Everything had seemed so simple then; they knew they shared the same feelings for each other, and therefore it followed that before long they would find a way to make them public. But it wasn’t that simple.

  As Bennett had pointed out that day, the standard route of courtship was closed to them. Hope had no family home for him to call at; Bennett couldn’t invite her to Harley Place. Without mutual friends to offer chaperoned opportunities for them to be together, they were left with little more than walks, sitting in coffee shops, and hurried chats at the hospital when Bennett came in to see patients.

  Over Christmas Hope didn’t see him at all, for his uncle had invited guests and expected him to be there to help entertain them. As church bells rang out for the New Year of 1850, she was helping Sister Martha deliver twins, and it was two days before Bennett came into the hospital to wish her a Happy New Year.

  He didn’t have to point out to her that it was inadvisable at this stage for anyone to know how they felt about each other. She knew that. Dr Cunningham would almost certainly make sure she was dismissed from the hospital and he might also end his partnership with his nephew. But if they bided their time and let Dr Cunningham find out for himself that Hope had become a very good nurse, with a blameless character, he was likely to become far more receptive to her.

  Hope was now nursing in the lying-in ward which she had come to love. Aside from the occasions when there was a very difficult birth, or a mother or her baby died, it was mostly a satisfying, joyous ward to be on. Like all the wards in St Peter’s it was overcrowded, and the other nurses were either lazy sluts with a fondness for drink or stern nuns who had little compassion. Yet whatever the faults of these two groups of nurses, Hope soon realized they had a wealth of experience she lacked. As the youngest in her own family she had never witnessed a birth before; her only knowledge of babies had been gleaned from Matt and Amy’s brood. The only attribute she brought to the ward on her first day was the knowledge that dirt bred disease, and a conviction that if she made sure the ward was clean, more new babies would survive.

  Each time she washed a newborn baby she was humbled by the miracle of birth, and it was pure instinct which guided her. Yet she was also frightened that she had been given responsibility for their well-being, when she knew little or nothing about babies, childbirth, or even anatomy and biology. She borrowed books from Bennett, and although she often worked a fourteen-hour day, she would then spend another two or three hours studying these books, desperate to solve the mysteries of how the human body worked.

  Perhaps if she had been on any other ward she’d have found it easier to put Bennett out of her mind, for at least part of the day. But the very nature of the lying-in ward was a constant reminder of physical union. Most of the mothers were bawdy characters who spoke openly and graphically about their sexual experiences. Sometimes she was deeply shocked, at other times she found their stories amusing, but hardly a day passed without her learning something new.

  It was at times like this that she felt a wave of grief for Betsy, for she heard so many things that she would have given anything to talk over with a friend. There were women at the hospital she liked – strangely, mostly the nuns – but she couldn’t tell them she couldn’t sleep for imagining Bennett caressing her intimately, or ask questions about how big a man’s penis was, and if it hurt a woman when it entered her. She couldn’t even ask if she was normal to think about such things.

  In quiet moments during the day her mind always turned to Bennett, reliving their kisses and the good feeling when he held her tightly and told her that one day they’d be married and have babies of their own. She would spin a little daydream of Bennett being the doctor in a village much like Compton Dando. They would have a pony and trap for him to visit his patients, and their cottage would be a pretty one with roses growing around the porch. She hoped to have at least four children, and that they’d growup as gentry, never having to go into service.

  Her brothers and sisters wafted into this daydream too, bringing their children to visit. She didn’t ever try to think how she and Bennett were going to overcome the problem of Albert, for it was a miracle that Bennett loved her, and therefore anything else was possible too.

  But she did worry about Dr Cunningham’s opinion of her. He very occasionally came to St Peter’s, and she was fairly certain he asked about her, for someone always told her when he’d called. But as he never came and sought her out, it was clear that his interest in her was only because he’d been instrumental in sending her here.

  On Hope’s eighteenth birthday in April Bennett took her on the train to Bath for the day.

  She had thought it wonderful at Christmas when he’d bought her a new dark blue wool cloak with a warm hood. She would have been thrilled if he’d only given her something small, like a handkerchief, a book or scented soap, but for him to have gone out and chosen something so personal and beautiful brought tears to her eyes. Every evening she would sit in her room hugging it round her and thinking of him. He would never know just how touched and delighted she was.

  Yet in a different way the trip to Bath meant even more because he’d noted that she was dying to find out what it was like to ride on a train. While they waited to get on it at Temple Meads station she had been so excited she thought she might burst.

  The station building was almost enough of an astounding sight with its huge glass-domed roof, but she was so impressed by her fellow travellers that she barely looked at it. Everyone looked so elegant: ladies in fur-trimmed cloaks and fancy hats, gentlemen in top hats and tail coats. There were little children, equally well dressed, in the charge of their nursemaids. Even the people who weren’t gentry and who Bennett said would be travelling third class, looked as if they’d polished up their appearance for the trip.

  But there was so much going on elsewhere in the station too. Hope had never seen a train up close before, and the engine was so huge and so noisy that when Bennett took her closer to it to show her the furnace, she backed away in fright.

  Heavily stuffed Royal Mail sacks, crates of live chickens, trunks and parcels were all on carts waiting to be put on the London train. Hope had looked into the first-class waiting room and seen there was a roaring fire lit in there; there was a tea shop too, and porters in smart uniforms waiting to carry people’s luggage.

  Yet the sights at the station were nothing compared with the thrill of getting on to the train, settling down in a comfortable seat and then hearing the guard blow his whistle and wave his flag for it to start.

  If she lived to be ninety-eight, Hope didn’t think she would ever forget the sound of those pistons going round, the chug, chug, chug as the train gradually picked up speed, and suddenly they were racing along at a terrifying speed, the countryside flashing past the windows.

  She knew it would take two or more hours to get to Bath with a carriage and four horses, and almost all day by cart. But the journey by train was completed in half an hour.

  When they came out of the station, Hope wanted to stand still and just watch, as Bath was astoundingly different to Bristol. While the streets were every bit as crowded with people and horses and carriages, and there were just as many beggars, crossing sweepers and ragged urchins, it had a far more sedate and genteel pace. Exquisitely dressed gentry sauntered arm-in-arm in the spring sunshine, and even the more soberly dressed matrons looked far more well-to-do than their Bristol counterparts. But it was the city itself which impressed Hope most. The main streets were wider and the yellowy stone buildings very elegant, now here near as old and ramshackle as those at home. Even the river Avon looked cleaner here, and Hope loved the bridge which had little shops all along it.

  ‘That’s because most of it was only built in the last hundred and fifty years,’ Bennett said by way of an explanation. ‘Can you see how similar some of the houses are to those in Clifton? Many were designed by the same architects. But Bath doesn’t have the industry of Bristol to make it so grimy; the
Roman Baths are the main attraction. The rich flock here for their health, foolishly imagining a few gulps of the evil-tasting water will cure anything from gout to syphilis.’

  Hope smiled to herself. Clearly Bennett didn’t believe there were any magic properties in it at all, and disapproved of those who traded on the gullible.

  He seemed to know exactly where he was going, for he pointed out the Pump Rooms where he said the idle rich congregated, then led her into a series of narrowlanes, finally stopping at the door of a small bow-windowed shop.

  ‘This is where I buy your present,’ he said, kissing her cheek.

  ‘But coming to Bath was my present,’ she said, glancing at the bow-windowed shop and suddenly realizing it was a jeweller’s. ‘You can’t afford to buy anything in there!’

  ‘I can,’ he said with a grin. ‘But first I have to ask you something.’

  Hope looked up at him expectantly. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Will you marry me?’

  She had expected that he was going to ask if she’d like a brooch to go on her cloak, or maybe even a locket. Not in even her most fanciful of daydreams had she imagined him asking her to marry him, at least not until they had resolved how to tell his uncle how they felt about one another.

  ‘But we can’t! Your uncle!’

  ‘I didn’t mean immediately.’ He laughed at her shocked expression. ‘I just wanted you to know my intention, and to buy you a ring as my pledge.’

  It took a second or two for her to take in what he’d said. Then she threwher arms around him, giggling with delight. ‘I’d love to marry you, this year, next year, anytime. Your word would have been enough for me. I don’t need a ring.’

  ‘But I need to show you all you mean to me,’ he said, hugging her back. ‘Even if that means you can’t display it to the world right now.’

  ‘Then I’ll wear it on a chain around my neck for the time being. I love you so much, Bennett.’