Hope - Lesley Pearse [118]
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