Hope - Lesley Pearse [127]
All at once she found herself telling him about how she nursed them at the end.
‘That explains why you were such a good nurse then,’ he said. ‘If we could get nurses like you at both St Peter’s and the General Hospital we might not lose so many patients. There are a few Sisters of Mercy who are fine nurses, but the rest!’ He shrugged his shoulders and made a hopeless gesture with his hands.
Hope knew the kind of women he meant. Dirty old crones in the main, who could get no other work and saw it as an alternative to the workhouse. Most of them were drunks; they often stole from the sick. With nurses like that it was hardly surprising few people went to the hospital willingly.
‘I must go,’ she said, getting up. ‘I am going to try to get some work helping with the harvest.’
‘You are worth more than farm work,’ he said quickly.
‘Let me ask about and see if I can get something better for you?’
‘Why would you do that?’ she said in some surprise. ‘Surely you wouldn’t want to present someone like me to your fine friends?’
He got up and looking down at her, he took hold of her chin and tilted it up so he could see her face better. ‘If by that you mean rich or influential friends, I don’t have any,’ he said with a little smile. ‘But my uncle, who is also a doctor, has many well-to-do patients who could do with a nurse to take care of them. It was people such as these I was thinking of.’
‘Me be a nurse?’ She cocked her head to one side, looking at him askance. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do.’
‘You did very well with your friends,’ he said. ‘Most of nursing is keeping a patient clean and comfortable and seeing that they get the right nourishment and take their medicine. I know you could do that, and if there was anything which needed more medical skill, I could instruct you on that.’
‘But look at me!’ she exclaimed, glancing down at her ragged dress and wincing. ‘No one would want someone looking like this caring for them.’
‘I don’t think they’d notice much more than your pretty face and your soft voice,’ Bennett said with a smile. ‘But a new dress and a clean apron might make you feel more confident. I’m sure my uncle’s housekeeper could sort that out for you. Come with me now to his house and we’ll talk to him.’
‘Why would you do that for me, sir?’ she asked. She felt she could trust him, she liked him too, but Betsy had warned her that men only wanted to use young girls.
‘Because I know you’d make a fine nurse,’ he said. ‘And because I think you and I have more in common than you imagine.’
She looked up at him curiously, unable to believe a gentleman like him had anything in common with her.
He smiled. ‘My mother was widowed when I was still a child. There was no money and she had to work as a dressmaker to feed my younger brother and me. My uncle Abel was her brother-in-law, and it was he who paid for my schooling. Without that I wouldn’t be a doctor now. But it hasn’t been an easy ride for me. I might not have been hungry like you, or forced to live somewhere like Lamb Lane, but I’ve had to endure being the poor relation, to appear grateful at all times, and to follow my uncle’s wishes at the expense of my own desires or needs.’
‘Do you mean you didn’t want to be a doctor?’
‘No, that I love,’ he said. ‘But I am a fish out of water in society. I do not like or approve of many of the people my uncle expects me to mix with. There is so much hypocrisy, such meanness of spirit and ignorance. And precious little compassion for those less fortunate than themselves.’
Hope nodded, liking this rather odd doctor more by the minute. ‘You sound like a swanky version of Betsy,’ she said with a grin. ‘I think you would have liked her.’
‘Would she have wanted you to become a nurse?’ he asked.
‘Hell, no,’ Hope chuckled. ‘She was too much of a free spirit to approve of any work which might involve taking orders. But she would think that any doctor brave enough to come into Lewins Mead must have something special about him. I think that too.’
‘So you’ll come with me to my uncle’s then?’ he asked. He turned and pointed