Hope - Lesley Pearse [131]
‘I will nurse at St Peter’s,’ Hope said, lifting her chin defiantly as she looked straight at Dr Cunningham. ‘And I’ll become the best nurse there, just you see. But don’t think I’m going there because you ordered me to. I’m going because I want to!’
‘You’re a cheeky little baggage,’ he replied, but his tone was softer now, almost amused. ‘Now, clear off downstairs, my nephewneeds some rest before he goes back tonight, and you look as if you could do with a hot meal inside you.’
That evening Hope viewed St Peter’s Hospital with some trepidation from the safety of Dr Cunningham’s carriage, while Dr Meadows went inside to speak to the head nurse.
In the darkness she could see little more than the front door which was lit by two lamps, but she had seen the place by daylight many times before and knew that its attractive appearance belied the wretched plight of its inhabitants.
It was a fine old building, one of the most ornate in the whole of Bristol, and Hope had been curious enough about it in the past to discover some of its history.
The Norton family had the timber-framed mansion built to replace their old one in 1600 and had it elaborately decorated with carved brackets, bargeboards and plaster-work. At that time its position facing St Peter’s church and backing on to the floating harbour close to Bristol Bridge would have been a very pleasant one, but Hope suspected the Nortons had moved on once the river became nothing but an open sewer.
At the end of the seventeenth century it had been the Mint for a while, but later it was purchased by the Bristol Incorporation of the Poor as a workhouse.
Betsy had always been very wary of going near the place because of the lunatics shut away inside it. She also claimed it was haunted. Hope felt she could well be right about that, for in the cholera epidemic of ’32 it had been vastly overcrowded and hundreds died there. From what Bennett had said today she couldn’t expect the conditions to be any better now.
One thing just about everyone in Bristol agreed on about St Peter’s was that it was the very end of the road for anyone unfortunate enough to be taken there.
It was tempting to run off now, while she still could, but her stubborn streak would not allow her to give Dr Cunningham the satisfaction of hearing she’d slipped off like a thief in the night.
Yet some half an hour later, alone with Sister Martha, the head nurse, Hope involuntarily gasped with horror as the door was opened to the cholera ward where she would begin work at six the following morning. Her first thought was that this was hell come to earth.
Some thirty or so men, women and children were in a dark, dank, stinking room hardly big enough for half that number. There were no beds; they lay on straw fouled by vomit and excrement or sat huddled against the walls. In the dim light of two lanterns, seeing the pain-filled eyes which turned to her was like glimpsing the lost souls Reverend Gosling used to speak of in his fire and damnation sermons. The sound of their sobbing, moaning and plaintive calls for help wrenched Hope’s heart.
‘There’s little we can do to help the poor souls,’ Sister Martha said, clutching the large wooden crucifix which hung around the waist of her habit as if it might protect her. ‘Since this plague started no one brought here has recovered. Many of these will be dead by the morning.’
She whisked Hope out quickly, shutting and locking the ward door behind her. She explained this was necessary as some of the sick became so demented they tried to escape. She also pointed out that the new general hospital in Guinea Street had refused to take any cholera cases.
Hope had seen two elderly crones shuffling among the patients offering water. But she had the feeling that the moment the door was closed again they would withdraw to the small adjoining room Sister Martha had said housed the stove and sink, and get out their bottle of gin.
Sister Martha was a stout, middle-aged Irish woman with a vivid red birthmark on one