Hope (66 page)

‘Are we out of range now?’ she asked breathlessly once they were through the first row of tents.

‘I thought we were out of range back there,’ he said weakly. ‘They must have moved closer, but we should be all right here.’

Hope laid him down. His thigh was a gory mess, but with his breeches on it was impossible to tell how bad the wound really was. She tore off the sash from around her dress to make a tourniquet and fastened it above the wound, then stood up to pull off her petticoat to use it to staunch the bleeding.

Still the firing continued, and as she held the cloth over Robbie’s injured thigh she looked around frantically for help. Seeing a soldier further down the line of tents, she jumped up and shouted at him, waving her arms.

Something hot and stinging hit her left arm. She sank down beside Robbie, supporting her arm with her right hand. ‘Bugger me, I’ve been shot too,’ she said.

The wound was between her elbow and wrist, a patch of crimson bloody flesh some two inches wide beneath a hole in the sleeve of her blue dress. She had seen hundreds of far worse wounds and barely turned a hair. It didn’t even hurt much, but the sight of it made her feel faint.

‘I hope that soldier gets someone,’ she said weakly. ‘I don’t think I’m going to be much more use to you, Robbie. Loosen that tourniquet in a minute, then tighten it again in a little while.’

‘Hope! Wake up!’

Bennett splashed cold water on her face, then tore what remained of her sleeve away from the wound on her arm.

‘Is that you, Bennett?’ she asked feebly, her eyes still closed.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ he said. ‘You are in the hospital now. You fainted.’

‘Is Robbie here too?’

‘Yes, he’s here too. Right beside you. Open your eyes and you’ll see him.’

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 it 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?