Hope (40 page)

She watched his face, expecting a look of alarm which would quickly be followed by a little sermon on the evils of drink. But he only smiled.

‘I should go back to the ward now,’ she said. ‘And you have patients to see.’

‘Yes, I have,’ he nodded, ‘a great many of them. Look after yourself, Hope. Don’t despair, will you?’

Hope often thought of that request from Bennett in the following two weeks, for it was hard not to despair, surrounded as she was by suffering. Every day patients died, and as fast as they were carried away to be buried, new ones were brought in. Often these new victims’ names were unknown, and to Hope it seemed the cruellest stroke of all to die without an identity.

Sal and Moll took an almost fiendish delight in reporting the panic in the town, and how people were fleeing in droves, the rich in their carriages and the poor trekking out to sleep in fields rather than risk catching the disease. They said that at night the streets were deserted, and many ships were refusing to come into Bristol docks because of the epidemic.

They sagely said that when the weather turned cold and wet there would be hundreds of poor and desperate people turning to the workhouses for shelter and food. They would be too frightened to return to the infected rookeries they’d run from, and they’d have no money for anywhere else.

But the hot weather continued relentlessly and the stink from the river behind the hospital was overpowering. Hope found herself daydreaming more and more often of walking in the coolness of Lord’s Wood. She would remember the clean smell of damp earth, the way the sunlight filtered down through the canopy of leaves, and the utter peace; she wanted to be there so badly it hurt.

At night when she retreated to her little room she would bury her nose in a sprig of lavender or rosemary bought from a young girl who stood by the hospital entrance, and remember the garden of her childhood home. She wished she could see her brothers and sisters, be a child again and feel the warmth of their love for her. It wasn’t right that at only seventeen she was shut away in this death house.

Bennett was what stopped her running away. However hard and disgusting her work often was, he was counting on her and she couldn’t let him down. Thanks to him she had a few remedies at her disposal now. When new patients were still in the early stages of the disease she spooned syrup of rhubarb into them every few hours, put mustard poultices on their bellies, gave them ginger or cinnamon tea and put more blankets on them to keep them warm. Six of these patients didn’t sink into the second stage, which delighted her, but she had no way of knowing whether it was the result of her nursing or merely God’s will. But, determined they should recover and defy the legend that no one ever left the hospital, she fed them arrowroot mixed with boiled milk until they were able to manage soup.

But six recoveries out of seventy or more that had either already died or would die soon wasn’t good enough, and she had to battle against the apathy of everyone else involved with the cholera ward.

Sister Martha was so weak that everyone took advantage of her. Moll and Sal did as little as possible, only stirring themselves when someone died to rob them of their trinkets. Even the man in the stores often refused Hope more supplies of soap, soda and vinegar. Once he said it was a waste to lavish such things on a ward where no one got better.

But the single thing which distressed Hope most was that no one but her took any notice of Bennett’s instructions on hygiene. It made perfect sense to her that hands must be washed after touching a patient, that aprons and caps had to be washed daily, and that all water for drinking should be boiled. Sal and Moll were too lazy to wash either their hands, or caps and aprons, and they snorted with derision about boiling the drinking water and said the doctor was as mad as some of his patients.

Hope had never lost her conviction that the water in Bristol was full of poison. In the nearly two years she had been in the city she had never once drunk water straight from the pump; even when she was dying of thirst she boiled it and drank it as tea. Gussie and Betsy had drunk it, and they had died, while she remained healthy, so she took this as evidence that Bennett was right.

She tried to convince others of it too, pointing out that Doll and Sal only drank tea or any kind of alcohol and that was why they remained in rude health.

Bennett appreciated her spreading his gospel, but he pointed out that he couldn’t be certain that the disease came through water, as all the town’s water came from the same source. And as almost all those stricken came from the filthiest, most populous parts of the town, this did tend to support the commonly held medical opinion that the disease was airborne.

Yet no one was able to explain the entirely indiscriminate nature of the disease. Most priests, doctors, nurses and the cart drivers who had handled the sick had remained healthy. Sometimes just one person in a large family caught it, while the rest remained untouched. In some lodging houses all but a handful had died; sometimes it was just the children who were infected. There was no pattern at all.

There were plenty of extraordinary theories too. Some people placed the blame for the epidemics on the Jews in the town, which made no sense whatsoever. Others called doctors ‘Burkers’ after the infamous Burke and Hare who robbed graveyards for bodies for dissection. Some of the more strident evangelical preachers were insisting it was God’s judgement for the wholesale depravity in Bristol, and that it was spread by prostitutes around the busy ale houses.

Hope had many a discussion with Bennett about these strange ideas, and he stoutly insisted that the clergy and their pious, hypocritical followers should consider why women were forced to turn to prostitution in the first place, and do something about that.

Hope realized she was becoming increasingly captivated by Bennett. It wasn’t just that he was her only friend, or that he treated her as an equal, but because of his understanding of the real evils of poverty and his ideas on how it could be beaten.

There were plenty of gentry who made benevolent gestures, and Hope was sure that these people had good hearts. But sadly their lives were too different from those who huddled in stinking rookeries to understand that a new set of clothes, a daily hot meal or a few shillings could never solve the problem. All this did was offer temporary comfort.

Bennett likened poverty to a kind of swamp which people either stumbled into or were born in. He understood that once in it, it was hard, often impossible, to get out without help, and that for many, criminality, or selling themselves, was the only way to keep afloat.

Like his friend Mary Carpenter, he saweducation as the only real and sure ladder out of the swamp. He insisted with some passion that by giving every slum child the tools of reading and writing they could build a better life for themselves.

In a way, Hope was living proof of this. The education she had received had enabled her to understand concepts and ideas beyond the narrowconfines of the way she’d been brought up. She felt stimulated by Bennett’s somewhat radical views. He was caustic about the idle rich, and deeply suspicious of many who held prominent positions in the town, claiming they lined their own pockets at the expense of the poor.

The brightest part of any day was when Bennett came to the ward. Hope had only to see that thin, somewhat stern face break into a smile and she forgot how tired she was. When he praised her efforts she felt exulted, and when she watched him examining his patients and saw the tenderness in his hands, the grave concern in his eyes, she felt moved to tears.

Almost always he would stop long enough for a cup of tea with her. They would take their cups out into the backyard, and talk.

For the first two weeks their conversations were mainly about the patients, what was going on in the town and how the epidemic was reported in the newspaper. But as the days went by their chats became more personal, and one hot afternoon when for once the ward was very quiet, Bennett told her a little about his time at medical school in Edinburgh.

He painted a picture of a shy, rather awkward young man who felt intimidated by the students who were richer, smarter and far more sophisticated than he was. ‘They thought I was a swot because I didn’t go out drinking every night,’ he said a little sheepishly. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to tell them I didn’t have the money for drinking, or that I didn’t dare fail my exams because of my uncle.’

‘I don’t suppose they became very good doctors,’ Hope said stoutly.

Bennett gave a humourless laugh. ‘Most of them have gone a lot further than I,’ he said. ‘Two or three have practices in London’s Harley Street. Oswald Henston, a real bounder, is at St Thomas’ Hospital. Some of them have become army and naval doctors. I often think I would have done better in the army.’

Hope guessed he meant that he considered joining his uncle in Bristol a mistake.

‘But treating the poor must have given you much more varied experience than you’d ever get treating soldiers?’

‘Maybe,’ he sighed. ‘They do say that as an army doctor dysentery is the only medical condition you’ll become an expert in. But I should like to go to India or some such exotic place. My uncle is always pointing out that I’ll never find a wife until I have something interesting to talk about.’

‘Isn’t this place interesting enough?’ Hope asked. She hung on every word he uttered and she couldn’t imagine any woman finding him dull company.

Bennett raised one eyebrow. ‘A gentleman doesn’t engage in such coarse subjects with a lady!’ he said with mock horror.

Hope laughed. ‘I suppose it would make most ladies reach for their smelling salts.’

‘It is that feigned delicacy in society ladies I find most irksome,’ Bennett said thoughtfully. ‘Only a couple of months ago I was late for one of my uncle’s friends’ parties one evening because I’d been delivering a baby. I apologized to the hostess and her two daughters and explained why, but I received a frosty glare. Apparently it isn’t “done” to mention such things as childbirth in front of unmarried women!’

‘Why?’ Hope asked.

Bennett shrugged his shoulders. ‘Such things are supposed to remain a mystery until they are wed, I presume. But I find such conventions very small-minded.’

‘My sister Nell was far younger than me when she helped our mother deliver her last few babies,’ Hope replied. ‘She sawit as a kind of training for when she had a child of her own.’

‘And that’s the way it should be,’ Bennett said. ‘But tell me about your sister, Hope. Did she have children?’

Hope hesitated, for she was afraid that one question would lead to another she didn’t dare answer. Yet she had an overwhelming desire to talk about her family for they had been on her mind a great deal since Betsy and Gussie died.

‘Sadly, Nell wasn’t blessed with any children,’ she said. ‘In a way I was like her child really, her being so much older than me.’

Once started, she told him about all her brothers and sisters, about the cottage they lived in, and how first Nell got married, then Matt, about her parents’ death and how she went to live with Nell and Albert.

‘You almost spit out Albert’s name,’ Bennett said quietly. ‘You mentioned before, that day on the Downs, that you fell out with him and that was why you ended up in Lewins Mead.’

A piercing yell from the ward interrupted them. They rushed back in to find Sal being held against the wall with a knife at her throat.

It was a second or two before Hope realized that the burly man wearing nothing but a ragged shirt was in fact a patient who had been brought in early that morning.

Yet to her astonishment Bennett didn’t hesitate at all. He leapt over the rows of sick people until he reached the man, caught hold of his shoulders and pulled him away from Sal.

‘Whatever are you thinking of?’ he exclaimed. ‘This is a hospital!’

The man threw Bennett off him and turned to face him brandishing the knife, his face purple with anger. ‘A hospital! It’s a bloody store room for bodies. You fuckin’ Burker!’

Hope knew that this man had been brought in with three other people who were all in the same lodging house. It was clear now that he wasn’t a cholera victim at all, but had probably been so insensible with drink or opium when the Corporation cart came for his companions, it was thought he was sick too.

‘Calm down,’ Bennett commanded. ‘If you are well you are free to leave here.’

‘Calm fucking down!’ the man yelled, his eyes rolling alarmingly as he made stabbing gestures towards Bennett with his knife. ‘I wakes up to find that old crone robbing me of me breeches, and see I’m locked in a pest house.’

Hope couldn’t believe how calm Bennett was. The man was far heavier and taller than him, and his knife was dangerously close to Bennett’s chest, yet he stood there fearlessly.

‘Put that knife down,’ Bennett said in the kind of gentle tone he used with all the sickest patients. ‘It is no one’s fault but your own that you were collected by the carter. The nurse was only taking your breeches to make you more comfortable; she wasn’t to know you were only sleeping off too much drink.’

‘You brought me here to cut up my body,’ the man shouted back.

Bennett shook his head despairingly. ‘I don’t have the time or inclination to cut up bodies,’ he said. ‘If you look around you’ll see all these other people are desperately sick, and my task is to try to save them. Sal, give him his breeches back and let him out.’

Sal scuttled towards the small adjoining room. Hope guessed she
had
been stealing the breeches, perhaps because she thought there was money in the pockets. But just when it looked as if the big man was going to back off, he suddenly lunged forward at Bennett with the knife.

Hope screamed, but to her surprise Bennett side-stepped the lunge and caught hold of the man’s forearm, in one swift movement disarming him and knocking him off balance so he fell to the floor.

Bennett picked up the knife and looking down at the man on the ground, he half-smiled.

‘I could have you arrested right now,’ he said. ‘But I’ll let you off this time because I’ve no doubt you were frightened when you awoke to find yourself here. Just count yourself lucky you haven’t got cholera. And in future don’t get so drunk.’