Hope

by Lesley Pearse

  Bennett felt faint himself. He’d heard the gunfire, but there was nothing unusual about it, so he’d hardly looked up from what he was doing. Then someone had yelled out to him that there were two down and one was a woman. For some unaccountable reason he’d known it was Hope.

  Rifleman Tomlinson was already carrying her towards the hospital as Bennett ran to get her.

  She lay so lifeless in the man’s arms, her dark curls cascading down and her face like chalk, that for one terrible moment he’d thought she was dead.

  ‘I think she’s only fainted, sir,’ Tomlinson said. ‘She’s been shot in the arm. She dragged Robbie away from the firing. Bravest thing I ever saw.’

  In the second or two before he pulled himself together to take Hope from Tomlinson’s arms and saw that her wound was a fairly minor one, Bennett felt a stab of white-hot agony run through his entire body.

  As a doctor he knew that anyone, even his beloved wife, could fall prey to disease, but he’d never for one moment imagined she’d be shot at. He had had many close shaves himself, but then, he and his assistant often ran to collect the wounded under fire.

  ‘Come on, dearest, open your eyes,’ he said tenderly, smoothing back her hair from her face.

  Her lovely dark eyes opened and she half-smiled at him, then turned her head to look at Robbie lying beside her. ‘Will he be all right?’ she whispered.

  ‘I think so, thanks to you,’ he said. ‘You got that tourniquet on quickly and covered the wound. I’m going to take the bullet out now. You haven’t got one in you, it skimmed past.’

  Bennett dressed Hope’s wound and gave her a few sips of brandy, then took over from the orderly who was cleaning Robbie up in readiness for the bullet to be removed. Compared with most gunshot wounds it was a relatively simple job for the bullet hadn’t gone in very far. Robbie was also in better health than most of the men because Queenie took good care of him. With good nursing he would survive.

  But even as Bennett was carefully removing the bullet, his mind was on Hope. One of the men had brought along the bag she’d dropped, and just a quick glance into it told him that she’d come up here to stay. He knew she wouldn’t have come unless there had been some kind of trouble down at the hospital.

  She had fallen asleep and her colour had reverted to its normal peachy tone; in fact, she looked more beautiful than usual, her dark lashes like tiny fans on her cheeks.

  It was several hours before Bennett had a chance to talk to Hope properly, for there had already been five wounded men and two sick with fever in the hospital before she and Robbie had been brought in.

  Bennett had his own hut now, and once Queenie had been persuaded that Robbie could be left for a while, he asked her to take Hope over to the hut and make her something to eat.

  By the time he got over there himself, Hope had made herself at home. Despite her injured arm, she had rearranged most of his things, and was sitting on the camp bed sewing a button on his shirt. The domesticity of the scene brought a lump to his throat.

  ‘You should be resting,’ he said, sitting down beside her and taking the shirt from her hands.

  ‘I am resting,’ she insisted. ‘My arm’s fine. It hardly hurts at all now.’

  Bennett didn’t believe that. He knew it would hurt for some time. ‘Well, just tell me what made you come up here then.’

  She explained, and it was only then that she began to cry.

  Bennett was livid. In fact, it was all he could do not to storm out, borrowa horse, ride down to the hospital and attack Truscott. But he forced himself to wait until he’d had time to think it through. Hope needed a husband and a doctor now, not a hothead.

  It was her sadness that no one had come to see her after Truscott dismissed her that affected Bennett the most. He guessed that the two days she’d spent alone in their room, imagining that no one liked or cared about her, must have been akin to the distress she’d felt when Albert threw her out of the gatehouse at Briargate.

  ‘You are very wrong to think no one liked you,’ he said, holding her tightly. ‘It’s true some of the older surgeons are prejudiced against women in hospitals, but almost all of them have remarked what an excellent nurse you are. Truscott is a dodo. He ought to be stuffed and put in a glass case as an example of an extinct species.’

  ‘Why didn’t anyone come to see me then?’ she sobbed.

  ‘I’ll wager they didn’t know about it,’ Bennett said. ‘That ward is quite separate from the rest of the hospital. Remember, you don’t even go through the other wards to get in and out of it. Unless one of the orderlies told someone what had happened, how would they know? And they weren’t likely to talk about it if one or both of them were bribed with extra rations by Truscott.’

  Hope dried her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter any more anyway,’ she said. ‘Not now I’m with you.’

  Bennett smiled at her resilience. ‘You won’t be saying that when we get some more rain. It’s the most cheerless place in God’s creation then.’

  ‘Not to me,’ she smiled. ‘It can’t be when you’re here.’

  It was two weeks before Bennett really noticed that Hope had changed slightly since they’d been apart. He was delighted that her arm was healing very well, and that she had a good appetite, and although he had observed that she seemed to tire easily, he put that down to the arduous nature of the work she’d been doing for so long. As she looked a picture of health, with pink cheeks, bright eyes and shining hair, the fact that she was quieter, maybe sometimes even a little withdrawn, wasn’t in the least worrying. She had been through a great deal in the last year and he couldn’t expect her to remain impish and over-excited, the way she’d been on their honeymoon.

  Bennett had accompanied Robbie to the base hospital, and after making his recommendations for Robbie’s future care, he discovered he was correct in thinking that the majority of the doctors, including the Chief of Staff, had not known that Hope had been dismissed.

  Everyone he spoke to was appalled; many said they’d never understood why she’d been moved away from the reception ward where she was so valuable. Dr Anderson said he would look into the matter and showed deep concern for Hope. To his great disappointment Bennett couldn’t find Truscott; it seemed he’d ridden over to the French base camp the day before, and it was not known when he would return.

  But by then Robbie had spread the story of how Hope had dragged him to safety under fire, and been wounded herself. As Bennett left the hospital that day, he had the supreme satisfaction of seeing Mr Russell, the war correspondent for The Times, at Robbie’s bedside. He was listening intently to Robbie’s story, which Bennett had no doubt would include Hope’s merits as a nurse, and how she came to be up at the trenches that day.

  It was a very hot night in early May when Bennett’s suspicions were finally aroused that Hope was holding something back from him. There had been heavy fire from the French trenches all night, and Bennett woke to find her sitting at the open door gazing out into the darkness.

  He joined her at the door, and in silence they watched the sky lighting up with cannonfire for some time.

  ‘You would think that with so much firing Sebastopol would be razed to the ground by now. Will we ever be able to go home?’ Hope said suddenly, and her words sounded so bleak.

  ‘We ought to have made the assault on the town as was planned,’ Bennett said, putting his arm around her. ‘But Lord Raglan seems to have bowed to the wishes of the French, and I suppose as they have so many more men than us, maybe that’s wise.’

  ‘I don’t care what it’s all about,’ she said brokenly. ‘Too many have died, and for what? Will the outcome of this war do anything for anyone?’

  Bennett couldn’t answer that. At the back of his mind was the spectre of the streets of Portsmouth, Plymouth and other ports all full of limbless men begging. It would be the same in Moscow, Paris and Constantinople. Hope was right, what good was it doing anyone?

  He looked at her and saw she was crying, and i
t struck him to the heart because she was so beautiful, even in tears. Her dark hair was tumbling on to bare shoulders, for she wore only a flimsy white petticoat, but as one hand wiped the tears away, the other rested on her stomach, almost protectively, and he sawfor the first time that it was no longer flat.

  He had been glad when he’d noticed she’d gained some weight while they were apart, for that meant she had been getting enough to eat. It had never occurred to him there might be another reason.

  Bennett knew all the theory about pregnancy, but in practice his personal experience merely encompassed the end result, when the baby came into the world. And usually a doctor was only called when there were complications.

  Immediately he wanted to round on Hope and ask why she hadn’t told him, but somehowher dejected stance gave him that answer. She didn’t want to be sent home without him, but neither did she want to stay here in this cruel madness.

  He did what his heart told him to do. He stood up, then reached down, picked her up bodily and carried her to the narrowcamp-bed. Then he made love to her.

  Bennett hadn’t attempted this since she’d come up to the camp, however much he’d wanted her, for her arm was sore and she’d seemed so tired. Nowhe put all thoughts of his own desire to one side and thought only of giving her pleasure, and their baby inside her.

  Kneeling beside her, he kissed her again and again, delicately pulling her petticoat down to expose her breasts, which he saw and felt were much fuller and heavier. As he kissed and suckled at them she began to respond and slowly he drew the petticoat from her until she was naked.

  Stroking and kissing every inch of her, from her feet right up to her neck, delighting in the scent and silkiness of her skin, he lingered on her belly, licking it until she squirmed and writhed under him. Then he parted her legs and used both tongue and fingers on her.

  He could feel her fingers gripping at his hair, her nails raking his neck and shoulders, but she suppressed any cries for fear of being heard. He half-smiled to himself for at Christmas she’d had no such delicacy, but then she’d had a great deal to drink that night. It pleased him to give her so much pleasure, to hear her gasps and low moans, and he loved the dark, hot and wet depths of her.

  The cries she’d tried so hard to suppress erupted as she came, and she grabbed at him, pulling him on to her, kissing him with fiery passion. As he slid into her, her legs went round his back, her body arching under his, urging him deep inside her. Two thoughts flitted across his mind, first, that he didn’t want to hurt the baby, and second, that he wouldn’t have to withdraw at the last moment. But thought vanished, to be replaced only by ecstasy and need. Nothing mattered any more, not the war or his duty to the army. All that counted was here, just the two of them, and love.

  The camp bed collapsed just as he came, and they lay panting, sticky and sated on the floor, wrapped in each other’s arms.

  Outside there was more gunfire from the French camp, and they heard someone stumble against a bucket somewhere close by. They heard the man cursing and had a mental picture of him hopping on one leg holding his grazed toe. Then Hope began to laugh, and the sound somehow wiped out the darkness, the ugliness all around them, and the hopelessness.

  Bennett laughed too as he knelt back and looked at her lying there. The first light of dawn was just coming into the sky, enough for him to see her clearly, dark hair all tousled and wild, her face rosy with lovemaking and her body full and womanly.

  Bennett put his two hands on her naked belly, caressing it. ‘We made him in a night of passion, but perhaps after another one, you’ll tell me officially?’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Hope clung tightly to Bennett’s hand as they walked up the gangplank on to the steamship Marianne on 1 July. It was blazing hot, her dress was sticking to her swollen body in the most undignified way, and she was glad of the broad-brimmed strawhat Mary Seacole had given her as a leaving gift.

  The old Jamaican woman was there on the quay with dozens of other people who had shared such a big part of Hope’s time here. But now she was leaving she felt a pang that there had never been time to get to know some of them better. She counted them as true friends, but what did she really know about any of them? Would Sergeant Major Jury, who had always been so gentle with his wounded men and so cheery with her, eventually marry the sweetheart he’d spoken of so often? Did Cobbs the orderly, who had worked beside her right from her first day in the hospital, have any children? Had Assistant Surgeon Francis, the man who had so often made her laugh during some of the most desperate times, really spent some time as a clown in a music hall as he claimed?

  She could see Lieutenant Gordon of the Engineers waving at her, and she was reminded that he’d generously given her a tartan rug back in the winter to keep her warm at night, despite desperately needing it himself.

  There were dozens of dear and familiar faces, every one of them special in some way, and she’d miss them all. As people waved and smiled, she felt their sympathy that she had to go home alone, but also their joy that she was leaving here in good health and that she and Bennett had created newlife in a place of so much death.

  In her hands Hope held a bag containing many little presents given to her by everyone from tradespeople to soldiers and doctors. There were books, fruit, cake, soap, and a few sketches from some of the more artistic friends. A few riflemen had come down from the camp to see her off, their boots polished, beards shaved off and uniforms brushed in an attempt to honour her with parade-ground smartness. Tomlinson, known to everyone as Tommy, Robbie’s closest friend and the man who had carried her to Bennett after she was shot, had carved her a rattle shaped like a cat from a piece of wood. She hoped fervently that he would stay safe, for he’d done so much for her in the past weeks, bringing her fresh water, lighting her fire and making her drinks. But then, there wasn’t one person waving her goodbye she didn’t hope would stay safe.

  Hope knew that she should have left a month ago, but first there had been the British victory at the Quarries, and when the French took the Mamelon, one of the Russians’ main defences, she had felt compelled to stay and help with the casualties.

  A week later the fourth bombardment of Sebastopol began, and the English were defeated at the storming of the Redan and the French defeated at Malakoff, so once again she felt she had to stay on for there were so many hundreds of wounded.

  Lord Raglan died on 28 June, and although the official cause of death was cholera, everyone believed he died of a broken heart because the allies had failed to seize the two most important defences. Even after so many bitter words had been said about him, there was real grief that the General who had lost his arm beside Lord Wellington in the Peninsular War had not survived to see victory here. He might not have been a bold leader, but he had been honourable, kind and loved his men, and Hope didn’t feel it was right to leave until after his funeral.

  Even a king could not have had a more magnificent send-off. Troops lined the entire five-mile route to the barge that would carry his remains to the Caradoc, the ship waiting to take his body home. The cavalry escorted his coffin, borne on a gun-carriage, and the vivid colours of their uniforms in the bright sunshine, and the music from all the many military bands, belied the sadness of the occasion.

  ‘Just ten minutes till you sail,’ Bennett said, but his bright smile did not reach his eyes. ‘Make sure you rest on the voyage. Uncle Abel will be waiting for you at Portsmouth to take you to Nell.’

  ‘Do stop worrying about me, dearest,’ she said, squeezing his hand. ‘I will be fine, just you make sure you come back to me soon.’

  Bennett was denying that he was worried about her, when at last Hope spotted Angus riding along the quay. She pointed him out with delight for he had been a constant visitor up on the Heights, and he had been the first person in whom she and Bennett had confided about the baby. She knew he would be very relieved to see she was actually leaving today, for she had seen him briefly on the day of Raglan’s funeral an
d he had given her a stern warning that she mustn’t delay any longer.

  He leapt off his horse, handed the reins to a soldier, and was up the gangplank in a few quick strides.

  ‘I was afraid I was going to miss saying goodbye,’ he said breathlessly, bending to kiss Hope’s cheek.

  ‘It’s only au revoir as I’ll be there in your home when you get back.’

  ‘So, two women to order me about,’ he said, his dark eyes twinkling. ‘Maybe that will be too much for me, especially with a screaming baby too?’

  Hope knew he didn’t mean this, for as soon as he’d heard about the baby he’d insisted she could stay at his house for as long as she wished. He didn’t fool her any longer with his sarcasm and buffoonery; she knew that he was soft-hearted, generous and noble.

  ‘Look out for Bennett for me,’ she said, her eyes filling up with tears. ‘And mind you both come home in one piece.’

  ‘You patched me up too well for me to fall apart now,’ he grinned. ‘And I shall be whisking Bennett off to some races once you’re out of sight. That’s the trouble with wives, they spoil all the fun.’

  Hope laughed. Most of the time Angus acted as if life was just one riotous fun-packed adventure. He would be good for Bennett; there were times when her husband was a little too serious.

  ‘We have to go now,’ Bennett said, looking anxious as he heard the ship’s bell. ‘Write to me every day, I want to know every detail. And I promise I’m going to try to talk Lawrence into letting me go by the end of the month.’

  Angus kissed Hope, said goodbye and diplomatically went off down the gangplank. Hope took Bennett’s face in both hands and kissed him. ‘Don’t fret about me; I’ve got Nell and Uncle Abel to take care of me. But it would be wonderful if you were back for the birth, or soon after.’

  ‘I love you, Hope,’ he said, his eyes brimming with tears, and as he turned to leave her he was almost stumbling with sorrow.