Hope - Lesley Pearse [119]
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.
He had hardly slept a wink for thinking about the disease, and what he could do to prevent it from spreading far and wide. He remembered that during the last epidemic some parish councils had attempted a system of quarantine to contain it. This amounted to forcing the healthy in a disease-stricken area to be shut up with the sick. That to his mind was barbaric, for whole families died unnecessarily under the worst of conditions.
But he rather suspected that Uncle Abel was likely to approve such a plan, as long as it didn’t apply to him. This was why Bennett hadn’t yet told him what he’d found here last night. His uncle certainly wouldn’t have allowed him to come back here today, and that poor girl would be left alone with her sick friends believing he didn’t care about her plight.
After he’d seen her today he intended to notify the authorities that cholera had arrived in the town. If Hope was still healthy, he would recommend she left the area as soon as possible before she found herself trapped here.
He paused as he arrived at her lodging house, shocked by the appalling condition of it. Last night the cloak of darkness had hidden its true horror. He had of course known by the shakiness of the stairs that it was severely dilapidated; he’d also known it must be hideous, but even so he hadn’t imagined anything as bad as what he saw now.
There was no front door, and the wood panelling in the hall had been wrenched off, presumably for firewood; likewise, the banister spindles and many of the internal doors were gone. There were huge gaping holes in the plaster, showing the lathes beneath, and when he looked up the staircase to the top of the house he could see the sky through a hole in the roof.
It was not fit for human habitation, yet heaven knows how many unfortunate souls were compelled to live here, and the smell was so atrocious that he had to clap his hand over his nose and mouth or he might very well have vomited.
He saw the note pinned to the door even before he reached the last landing, and his first thought was that Hope had run off and was asking him