Hope

by Lesley Pearse

  The siege train did look impressive. The big engine at the top which would haul the train over the steepest part of the route was in place now. She just hoped that those who said this would hasten the end of the siege were right, just as she hoped that the news that Czar Nicholas had died the previous day might bring peace.

  The sight of a clump of flowers growing by the roadside made her stop to look closer. They were similar to a crocus, and as they were the first tangible sign of spring, and in fact the first flowers she had seen here, she bent to pick one.

  ‘That’s almost as pretty as you, Hope!’

  Startled at hearing her name, Hope stood up and turned to see Angus astride his horse, grinning down at her. The last time she’d seen him had been back in January, when he’d been beside himself with anxiety about the cavalry horses which were dying of starvation. She’d seen him limping back up the road to the cavalry camp carrying a heavy sack of oats on his shoulders.

  But he was looking fit and devilishly handsome now, even if his red breeches were decidedly faded, worn and mud-splattered. His chestnut horse was very thin and now here near as sleek as she remembered in Varna, but it was a relief to see it hadn’t died during that terrible period.

  ‘How good to see you,’ she said, and stroked the horse’s nose. ‘And good to see Brandy is getting some food again. How are your wounds?’

  ‘What wounds?’ he said, dismounting.

  Hope laughed. ‘Well, it wouldn’t do to make you drop your breeches to check on the scar,’ she said. ‘But it’s clearly not troubling you.’

  ‘Thanks to you, angel fingers,’ he said, taking her hand and kissing it. ‘Why aren’t you down there now stitching up some young soldier who will remember your face till the end of time?’

  ‘No wonder Lady Harvey got led astray,’ Hope giggled. ‘But you must behave. Bennett’s been sent back to his regiment up on the Heights, so it wouldn’t do for me to attract gossip.’

  Leading his horse, Angus walked back to the harbour beside her, and they talked about Bennett’s move, the Czar’s death, and the tremendous increase in the number of men reporting sick during January and February.

  ‘Morale is at an all-time low,’ he sighed. ‘We should have gone on the attack as soon as we got here last year. Lord Raglan is an old woman, can’t make his mind up about anything. Delaying only gave the Ruskies time to build better fortifications and get in more supplies. Now we’ve hardly got a fit man in the whole army. Even the new bunch that arrived in January look as bad as the oldtimers now. But you, Hope, you’ve got a bloom about you! Why’s that?’

  ‘Have I?’ she said in surprise.

  ‘You certainly have,’ he said, looking at her intently. ‘You’ve filled out. Have you found some source of good food that you are keeping to yourself? Or could it be a happy event is expected?’

  Goose-pimples erupted all over her and she looked at the Captain in horror.

  ‘Not a happy event then,’ he said, but when she didn’t speak his grin faded. ‘Oh dear, I’ve been too presumptuous. I’m so sorry, Hope, but I’ve come to think of you almost as family. Forgive me?’

  He meant, of course, that it wasn’t done for men to remark on such things as pregnancy. But her shock wasn’t at his comment, but the jolt of realization that she could well be carrying a child.

  Bennett had been very careful every time they made love, for clearly it would be a calamity to become pregnant in a place like this. He always withdrew before his seed was spent, often to her disappointment. But on Christmas Eve he hadn’t.

  It had been such a lovely evening, almost balmy, with a big, bright full moon. Some of the bandsmen from various different regiments had joined together to play their instruments on the quay. The pipers from the Highlanders came down from their camp too. For that evening the siege was forgotten. Music and singing were heard from the Russians inside Sebastopol, the French too were playing instruments up on the Heights, and not a shot was fired on either side.

  Some of the Turks had slaughtered and roasted an ox. There were bottles of wine, port, brandy and rum in profusion and Hope had danced with scores of different men as there were so few women. She had bathed and put on the pink dress she’d worn on her honeymoon, and Bennett had looked so handsome in his full-dress uniform. She remembered thinking that the Rifles’ tight green jacket gave him a rakish charm and enhanced the colour of his eyes.

  They had been very tipsy when they had finally gone to bed, and caution had been forgotten. Bennett had transported her to places she’d never dreamed of that night. Even recalling it now sent a shiver of pleasure down her spine.

  But however magical that night had been, they had shot straight back to reality soon afterwards. January had been the very worst month at the hospital, a bleak and desperate time with the sick coming in by the score each day. It was hardly surprising she couldn’t remember whether she’d had her courses that month or not.

  ‘Hope? Tell me I’m forgiven?’

  Angus’s plea brought her back to the present. ‘Of course you are,’ she said hurriedly. ‘A country girl like me doesn’t get the vapours at a man mentioning such things.’

  ‘But you have turned a little pale,’ he said anxiously.

  ‘Oh, do talk of something else,’ she said irritably. ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing, it’s been so long since I last saw you. Has Nell sent you any more food parcels?’

  He’d had a big fruit cake at Christmas, of which he’d brought her and Bennett half. Nothing had tasted quite as good as that, at least not until another arrived for Hope in mid-January along with jars of mincemeat, several different kinds of preserves and warm mittens and scarves.

  ‘I should think I’m about due for one any day,’ he said in his more usual jocular manner. ‘But of course now she has you to lavish her treats on, I’m not doing so well.’

  They continued their walk, Angus remarking on all the improvements in the town. Conditions had become absolutely disgusting, for apart from all the usual mess hundreds of Turks had made a hideous shanty town behind the main street. All their waste and dead animals had been left lying around, and there was tremendous sickness in their camp. They hadn’t buried their dead properly either, and this had posed the most serious health problem.

  But now the main thoroughfare had been cleaned up and macadamized. New warehouses had been built and prefabricated wooden huts sent out from England had sprung up everywhere in the last few weeks. The hospital had been extended with new huts too, and further ones were being erected up by the old Genoese fort on the clifftop for convalescence.

  Angus went on to tell her about his hunting exploits up on the plain with some of the other officers. In the absence of foxes they’d chased the many wild dogs that roamed around the camps. He said too that they’d come across a small band of Cossacks one day and fought them off. The way he spoke gave the impression he was one of the band of officers Bennett despised most; dull-witted, over-privileged, rich and arrogant men who carried on here as if they were still in England. But Hope knew he was none of those things. She’d met some of his troopers in the hospital and knew they’d lay down their lives for him, for he cared more for their welfare than his own. He even shared his parcels from home with his men. It saddened her to think he felt it was expedient to hide his true character behind that of a buffoon.

  They parted company and Hope went into the house to change into her old dress for the hospital. But once inside her room she sat down on the bed and tried hard to remember when her last courses had come. She remembered them at the start of December because that was when they had first moved into this room. But she couldn’t recall anything about January or February.

  More worryingly, now that she was looking for evidence, she was aware that Angus was right in saying she’d filled out, for her clothes weren’t as loose as they’d been back at the end of last year. Until now she had put that down to eating more in the cold weather. The baker often gave her a whole loaf, which she’d wolf do
wn with some of Nell’s jam. In fact, she was always hungry lately.

  Then there was her reaction to certain smells! The officer next door smoked cigars, a smell she’d once liked but now couldn’t bear. Horse droppings too – something she’d lived with all her life – had suddenly grown offensive.

  Her stomach began to churn with anxiety. If she had fallen pregnant at Christmas that made her well over two months gone now! Once she showed she would be sent home, and Bennett wouldn’t be allowed to go with her.

  What if he was killed or he became sick and died? What would happen to her then?

  She brushed that aside. Nell would help her, and so would Uncle Abel and Alice. But she didn’t want to be parted from Bennett. It was bad enough at the moment, but he was after all only a few miles away. Who would take care of him if she was sent home?

  Picking up the small looking-glass Gussie had given her all those years ago, she held it down to her side to see how she looked. Her stomach was as flat as it always had been, so maybe she was mistaken. She just wouldn’t think about it any more.

  As March slowly crept by, Hope found that it wasn’t possible to ignore her problem. Each passing day made it clearer that she was indeed pregnant, and she was undecided whether to view this with terror or joy. She had loved the newborn babies while she was in the lying-in ward at St Peter’s. Just thinking of holding her own in her arms made her melt inside. But the fact remained that this was the wrong time and the wrong place for a baby.

  Other men might not showany interest in their children until they could walk and talk, but Bennett was different. He’d want to deliver his baby, to be with her throughout it all. He would hate to have to send her home alone, but he’d be terrified of it being born here because of all the disease. If she was to tell him about the pregnancy, he’d be so worried it would affect his work.

  Hope finally resolved not to tell him yet. News had come in that in early April there was at last to be a massive bombardment of Sebastopol, both from the army and the navy. She had seen more big guns being brought in, and vast quantities of ammunition. With luck, that might end the siege and they could all go home.

  Hope daydreamed all the time of home. Not just of seeing her family, or even England in the spring. She wanted natural order again, of knowing what to expect with each day, for everything here was disorganized and baffling.

  At the end of March, just as the weather was growing warm again, all the winter clothing for the troops which had been lying in warehouses for weeks was finally distributed to the men, and wooden huts at last replaced the field hospital marquees. Bennett reported that the men had been delighted finally to get new boots, shirts, socks and flannel drawers, but were somewhat bemused by the heavy warm coats they no longer really needed. New bedsteads had arrived for the hospital too, and mattresses and even some sheets for the beds.

  Hope would have taken great pleasure in these improvements if she hadn’t suddenly been ordered to move to one of the new huts at the back of the hospital. Almost all the patients there were foreigners, Turks, Poles, Armenians, Croatians and a few Russians, and she felt she had been sent there for a similar reason to the one which had seen Bennett sent back to his regiment.

  Almost as soon as he’d gone, she’d noticed that some of the doctors became rather disagreeable with her in little ways – not answering when she asked a question, turning away when she came into the ward, calling an orderly to help them when once they would have called for her. It was, of course, possible that they had always resented her; after all, she wasn’t a lady like Miss Nightingale, or an ordinary soldier’s wife who could be ordered to do the roughest work. But if that had been the case, they had hidden it well all the while Bennett was here.

  It seemed to her that by sending her into a ward where she couldn’t communicate with anyone, and where she might be frightened, they were hoping she might leave the hospital.

  Daunting was the only word for the new ward, for the patients were the very roughest of men, in the main muleteers or labourers. Most had either suffered some kind of accident in their work or were sick, and because they were civilians they couldn’t be sent on to Scutari. As they didn’t speak any English the duty doctor had to have an interpreter with him when he did his rounds.

  But if petty jealousy or prejudice against women was behind it, Hope had no intention of letting them win their pathetic crusade. While she was offended by some of the men’s filthy habits, and practically all of them were swarming with parasites, they were no worse than some of the patients at St Peter’s. She could manage very well with sign language, and often she was glad that she didn’t have to make conversation as she had so much else on her mind. She was a nurse, and she’d carry on until such time as she decided to leave. The patients were more important than a few bigots.

  Bennett wasn’t too pleased when he saw where she had been moved to, but as he only came down once a week with patients for shipping to Scutari, and had to return to the Heights the same day, he didn’t have time to investigate anything.

  He was happier now he had his patients in a hut, and optimistic he could deal with the outbreaks of scurvy because he’d managed to get supplies of lime juice. Cholera had raised its ugly head again, but he believed that now the weather and the rations had improved, so too would general health in the camp.

  One evening, as he was leaving early on a borrowed horse, Hope asked Bennett if she could go with him. They had seen scaling ladders and grappling hooks being unloaded from a ship that afternoon, so it was clear that along with the planned bombardment there would also be an assault on the fortifications of Sebastopol.

  She didn’t plead with him, she only pointed out that she could be far more useful to him at the field hospital than she was here.

  ‘I can’t agree,’ he said, reaching out for one of her curls and twisting it around his finger. ‘It will be too dangerous once it starts.’

  The gentleness of his tone and the way he looked longingly at her was evidence he was wavering. Maybe he wasn’t so sure that she was entirely safe here either, not in a ward full of rough foreigners.

  For a moment or two she wanted to beg him, tempted to blurt out how isolated she felt, how the two orderlies on her ward were surly, that she couldn’t talk to the patients and that she felt she was being victimized just like him.

  But she stopped herself in time. If she began to tell him some of it, the rest would surely follow, and once he knew about the baby, he’d never have any peace of mind. The bombardment would mean many wounded, and he needed to be single-minded in dealing with that. It wasn’t fair to add to his burdens.

  ‘You are right, of course,’ she said, more bravely than she felt. ‘I must stay here; it’s just that I miss you so much.’

  He enfolded her in his arms, holding her so tightly she could scarcely breathe. ‘I miss you too, my darling, but it won’t be for much longer. With all the firepower we have this time, Sebastopol doesn’t stand a chance.’

  On 8 April, Hope was cleaning a Croatian labourer’s wound. He had injured his hand while unloading a ship and hadn’t sought any treatment until it was so severely infected it had to be amputated. She felt her patient stiffen and his eyes go to the door, and when she turned to see who was there, she realized it was Angus.

  ‘Give me a moment,’ she called out.

  He ignored the request and came over to her. ‘Are you all alone in here?’ he said, a look of extreme concern in his dark eyes.

  ‘Yes, for the time being,’ she said. ‘The orderlies are collecting the rations.’

  He watched her cleaning the wound in silence; then, as she began to dress it, he moved closer and said something to the patient, presumably in the man’s own language, making him look afraid.

  ‘What on earth have you said?’ she asked. ‘And why would you know any Croatian?’

  ‘I know a few useful phrases in many different languages,’ he smirked. ‘That one was a warning that if anyone in here upsets you he’ll have me to
answer to.’

  ‘That isn’t necessary,’ she said indignantly.

  ‘It’s always necessary to warn men off when a pretty woman appears to be quite alone. Whose idea was it to send you to this ward, Hope? And why?’

  Hope shrugged.

  His face darkened. ‘No wonder the newspapers back home are full of reports of chaos and mismanagement out here! Any orderly could take care of these men. You should be where it counts.’

  ‘These men count too,’ Hope said indignantly.

  ‘In my opinion they should be at the back of the queue for treatment, behind our men,’ he said gruffly. ‘But you weren’t sent here for their good, anyway. Whatever fool made that decision, made it out of spite.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ she said tartly. She was very aware of twenty-five pairs of eyes watching them intently and sincerely hoped they didn’t have any idea what they were talking about. ‘But I’m here now and I’ll make the best of it until Bennett lets me go up with him on the Heights.’

  ‘You must never go there,’ he said, looking alarmed. ‘The ball will open tomorrow.’

  Hope chuckled at his pretty way of describing the bombardment. ‘I wasn’t planning on going to the ball. I thought more of helping with the clearing up afterwards.’

  ‘You stay here in Balaclava,’ he said fiercely, punctuating his order with a pointed finger. ‘Nell would have me hung, drawn and quartered if you got hurt.’

  *

  The bombardment did start as planned early the following morning. It was a wet, miserable day, made even more depressing by the knowledge that before long the wounded would begin to arrive. Hope, stuck out at the back of the hospital, could only listen to the booms, cracks and whistling sounds with dread, wishing she had someone with whom to share her anxiety for Bennett.

  Day and night, day after day, the bombardment went on ceaselessly. Every few days there was a truce for a couple of hours so that the dead could be collected for burial, but according to the stream of casualties coming down to the hospital, Sebastopol was still undamaged.