Hope (34 page)

He went to the sick woman first, kneeling down on the floor to examine her. Her pulse was almost indiscernible, she seemed unaware of him or her surroundings, and worse still, she had a bluish-purple tinge to her face.

Bennett stifled a gasp of horror for her colour told him exactly what she was suffering from. He had never treated anyone with the disease before, but he remembered the effects of an epidemic that had occurred before he began to study medicine. He had, however, studied the disease in theory and knew how serious it was, and his stomach churned with alarm as he recalled how fast it could spread.

The young man’s symptoms were identical to the woman’s, but his pulse was even slower. Bennett looked up at Hope, saw her exhaustion and the fear in her eyes, and he was afraid to tell her the truth.

‘How long is it since they were taken ill?’ he asked.

‘Only yesterday,’ she said. ‘Betsy said she felt poorly the night before, and Gussie wasn’t quite himself either, but we all thought it was just the heat. Is it typhus, doctor?’

‘No, it’s not typhus,’ he said, wishing it were as the recovery rate from that disease was much higher.

‘Then what, doctor?’ she exclaimed. ‘Tell me, for pity’s sake.’

He knew he had to tell her the truth. He must give her the opportunity to decide whether she would flee to save her own life now, or stay and catch it too. She might even have it already, for he knew it was a fickle disease. In some it took days to manifest, in others, like these two, it struck fast and without mercy, death following in less than a day.

‘It is cholera, I’m afraid,’ he said softly, a lump coming up in his throat at having to name the disease which frightened him above all others.

She gasped and covered her mouth in horror. ‘Hundreds died of that the year I was born,’ she said, tears springing into her eyes. ‘I remember my mother talking about it to my sister. Can you make them better? Can we get them to the hospital?’

‘Your friends are too sick to move now,’ he said gently. His mind was whirling, weighing up how quickly the disease would spread to the others in this house. He recalled hearing some wailing as he came down the alley, which might have been another victim. Only this morning Uncle Abel had mentioned that there had been reports of several deaths among the destitute Irish immigrants, and now in the light of what he’d seen here, he thought it very likely that was cholera too.

He feared a mass panic when word got out that the dreaded disease was back in the city, and if people began swarming out into the countryside it could lead to a huge, countrywide epidemic.

But these two patients were his primary concern for now. It would be soon enough when he left here to inform the authorities and let them decide what was to be done.

‘I will give you some opium to put in their water which will help their cramps,’ he said. He knew he ought to tell the girl that her friends’ blue colouring meant they were already in the final stages, but he couldn’t. At least the opium would make their deaths gentler.

She might have been told about the cholera epidemic in ’32, but Bennett had seen it for himself, for he had been twelve years old then. He often felt it was that epidemic which had prompted him to become a doctor. His childhood home was two miles from Exeter, but in the city people died like flies that summer, often dropping in the streets. His mother had been terrified by the disease, refusing to let him go out for fear of catching it, but he had slipped out and seen the bodies being flung on to an open cart, heard the church bell tolling as the mass graves were filled. He could never forget the bonfires on which victims’ clothes and bedding were burned, or the fear in people’s eyes as they swarmed from the city trying to escape the disease.

That same fear was in Hope’s eyes now; she looked at him as if knowing he was holding something back, but afraid to question him further. ‘I’ve been giving them cinnamon tea,’ she burst out. ‘That is, until they stopped drinking. I put mustard poultices on their bellies too. Was that right? Should I go on doing it?’

‘All that is excellent,’ he said, astounded that a girl so young could be so unselfish and practical. ‘You’d make a fine nurse, Hope. But leave the poultices now, just give them water with the opium. You must get some rest too, or you will become ill.’

She looked at him long and hard for a moment. ‘Why haven’t I caught it?’ she asked eventually, her voice shaking. ‘I didn’t get typhus when my parents died of it, even though I nursed them. Was that just luck?’

‘I don’t know, I’m afraid,’ Bennett said, feeling helpless. ‘There are so many different ideas about what causes these diseases. Some doctors think they are carried in the air, others think they are passed by contact, but no one knows for sure. I don’t personally believe they are airborne, but then if it is passed on by physical contact, it’s strange that some members of a family don’t get it.’

He wished he could say that if she hadn’t already got it, she was safe, but he couldn’t lie to her like that. For all he knew she could collapse with it at any minute, just as he could wake up tomorrow with it too.

‘Mother believed in washing everything with vinegar when someone was ill,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Do you believe in that?’

‘I do,’ he agreed. ‘Wash your hands with soap each time you touch one of them and don’t drink from the same cup as them either.’

He got up and took a small bottle of opium from his bag. ‘Three or four drops, that’s all,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back to see them in the morning.’

Bennett felt strangely reluctant to leave her. He knew he must, he couldn’t do any more, and it would be folly to stay a minute longer than he had to. But it seemed wrong to leave someone so young with such a responsibility. He wanted to know why someone so beautiful came to be in this terrible place; in fact he wanted to know everything about her.

Mary Carpenter was right, she was intriguing.

‘Hope!’

She started at Gussie’s weak call, and was surprised to find it was now daybreak and she must have dropped off to sleep for a couple of hours.

Her heart leapt, for if he could call out her name he might be over the worst. ‘What is it?’ she whispered as she quickly moved over to him. ‘Another drink?’

He nodded weakly and she held the cup to his parched lips, but she saw only too clearly that he wasn’t getting better after all, for his blue colour was even worse by daylight than it had been by candlelight.

‘I’m dying,’ he croaked out. It wasn’t a question, just a statement of fact. But she denied it vigorously.

‘Don’t,’ he said, his sunken eyes making him look like a very old man. ‘I know the truth. You must get out of here now, it’s not safe for you to stay.’

That he should only be thinking of her safety when he was so desperately sick made tears spring to her eyes. She picked up a damp cloth and wiped his brow tenderly. ‘I love you, Gussie,’ she whispered. ‘You and Betsy have been such good friends to me and I can’t leave you. So don’t tell me to go.’

He just looked at her with those sunken eyes fixed on her for some little while. ‘I wanted you to be my girl,’ he blurted out. ‘So many times I wanted to tell you how I felt about you, but I didn’t dare.’

Hope blushed, surprised by his statement. But then she remembered all those times he’d taken her hand, the hugs that were just a fraction more than friendship, the way he’d looked at her sometimes. She might have been frightened by it had she realized what it meant, for she hadn’t felt the same way. She’d only loved him like a brother.

‘I wish you had told me,’ she whispered, unable to let him die thinking his feelings for her were not returned. ‘I’d be proud to be your girl.’

He smiled then. It was nothing like the wide, joyful smile she was used to, when his eyes would dance and twinkle, but just the ghost of it. Yet she felt uplifted that a small white lie could bring him some measure of happiness.

‘I used to dream that our luck would change, that we’d get married and live somewhere beautiful,’ he said, struggling to get the words out. ‘Get away from here, Hope, find that good life you deserve. I’ll go easier if you give me your promise.’

Her mind slipped back to good memories from the past. The many times they’d sat in front of the fire in winter with him massaging her icy feet to warm them. She thought of the surprised delight on his face when he ate a stew she’d cooked on the fire, or how he laughed up on Brandon Hill one day in early spring when they’d rolled down the grassy slopes together.

Gussie might not have been the man she would want to pledge herself to for life, but he’d taught her some valuable lessons that she would never forget. He was warm and funny, loyal, generous and kind, and she would hold those important assets in her heart and make sure the man she did eventually marry had them too.

‘I promise,’ she whispered, kissing his forehead. ‘I won’t ever forget you, Gussie, and I’ll miss you so much.’

‘How is Betsy?’ he asked, trying to raise himself enough to look at her.

It was tempting to tell him she was getting better, but on a moment’s reflection she thought that as Gussie and Betsy had been such close friends for so long, maybe they’d feel less frightened dying together.

‘I think she wants to go with you,’ she said.

He slumped back on to the mattress and closed his eyes. He kept them closed for some time, making Hope think he’d fallen asleep, but then his cramps began again, his legs and arms twitching furiously, and she rubbed them hard with both hands as she’d done before.

‘Go now,’ he rasped while still in the terrible spasm. ‘There’s nothing more you can do for us. Save yourself!’

That was the last coherent thing he said to her. He said other words, but nothing that made any sense, and she managed to make him drink a little more cinnamon tea laced with the opium until he was still again.

Betsy got the violent cramps soon after, and Hope rubbed her arms and legs until she had no strength left.

‘Let me die now,’ she shrieked. ‘I’m finished.’

She too became quiet again after more opium, and looked at Hope with pleading eyes. ‘Don’t you go bad without me,’ she croaked out. ‘You get yerself a nice gent with some brass.’

Betsy had always been one for dishing out advice and opinions, and Hope had no doubt that her friend felt frustrated by being unable to voice all that she felt. Yet what she had managed to say was in fact a condensed version of her philosophy, and even an acknowledgement that she was glad Hope hadn’t turned to thieving or prostitution.

Hope had so much she wanted to say to her friend; but there weren’t big enough words to cover her gratitude, her affection or her admiration. She could feel scalding tears running down her cheeks, her heart felt it had swollen up so much it might burst, and her head was full of a hundred vivid pictures. She could see Betsy in the second-hand dress shop, vivaciously chatting away to the shop owner while stuffing a petticoat or shawl under her dress; her cheeky grin as she ran away with a stolen pie or piece of fruit, and the way she could captivate a foreign sailor with those big dark eyes and get him to part with a shilling. She was fiery, funny, daring, and a ray of sunshine on the darkest of days. She might have been a thief, but she had her own moral code she lived by, which was in many ways far more honourable than those of the pious ladies who flocked to church on Sundays. She had taken food and clothing down to the poor Irish, and there was scarcely a family in Lamb Lane she hadn’t helped out at some time. Hope felt proud that Betsy had singled her out to be her friend, for the time spent with her had been an education, a joy and a gift of love.

‘You are beautiful,’ she murmured through her tears as she bathed her friend’s face. ‘A true sister, and one day when I’ve got children of my own I’ll tell them all about you.’

Gussie died first, just as the church bells were ringing for the morning service. Betsy followed him within minutes.

Hope couldn’t cry any more, she’d spent all her tears in the last hours, and now she felt only relief that her friends’ suffering was over. Their corpses were hardly recognizable as the people she loved, for the cholera had turned their faces to those of gaunt and terrible ghouls. Only their hair, the dark and the red, was a marker of who they once were. Hope needed to go somewhere where she had good memories of their vibrant characters, where she could hear their laughter, remember their stories, and see them again in her mind when they were beautiful. Then she could mourn them.

She hauled Betsy’s mattress closer to Gussie and covered them in a blanket, then, collecting up her few things, she tied them into a bundle and left, quietly closing the door behind her and fastening a note for the doctor on a nail.

Chapter Thirteen

Bennett found Lewins Mead by day now here near as frightening or noisy as at night, but then he supposed that at ten on a Sunday morning most of the residents were still sleeping off the drink from the night before.

Yet although it felt safer, daylight revealed the full wretchedness of the place. The wooden-framed houses were tottering with age and rotting away. Few had windows intact, weeds grew out of roofs, and walls bulged alarmingly. An open drain in the centre of the alley was blocked by a putrefied dead dog and the human waste thrown from windows was backing up towards doorways. Bennett gagged at the stench, and hearing a warning shout from above, hastily jumped aside as the contents of a full slop pail came cascading down, narrowly missing him.

Further into the rookery by the water pump, a group of women were gossiping. They turned to look at him with sharp, suspicious eyes, but the youngest of them, a pretty but very dirty girl with half her breasts exposed, whispered some comment which made them all laugh raucously. Bennett felt himself blush furiously, but he raised his hat and wished the women good morning. Their semi-naked children were playing listlessly in the dirt close by, and as he noted their distended bellies and stick-thin limbs, he felt guilty that he’d had two fine plump kippers for his breakfast that morning.

How many of them would survive cholera? He doubted any of them could as they were so malnourished.