Hope - Lesley Pearse [139]
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