Hope - Lesley Pearse [188]
But as the temperatures rose in July, so the death rate rose too, and the sickness was now in the British camp and among the Turks. A party of men heralded as the Hospital Conveyance Corps arrived in Varna. They were intended to be stretcher-bearers and orderlies, but they turned out to be too old, too feeble and mostly too drunk to be of any use. They soon caught cholera and died.
The men were becoming dispirited even before sickness stole into the camp. The heat, dust storms, endless drills, poor food and the interminable waiting for action were sapping their morale. But now every twinge of stomach pain, a slight fever or a headache could be the onset of cholera and the anxiety showed in every face.
Hope worked tirelessly alongside Bennett and the other doctors. The hospital at Varna was still overrun with fleas, so they used a marquee for the sick instead. But the overpowering heat, the shortage of laudanum and other medicine made it hard even to make the patients comfortable, let alone help them to recover. Nearly 400 men died during July and in August the figure doubled. The 2nd Battalion Rifle Brigade alone had lost thirty men in all. Hope had got to know most of them well on the boat coming over, and losing them had been almost as bad as losing Betsy and Gussie.
‘You must rest today,’ Bennett said early one morning right at the end of August. He knelt beside her camp bed, putting one hand on her forehead. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you got sick too. When Queenie comes, go and find somewhere shady to spend the day.’
‘But I’m needed,’ Hope protested, attempting to get up and prepare his breakfast.
‘You know as well as I do that they die with or without our care,’ he said more sharply, pushing her back down. ‘But I cannot live without you, and you look so peaky I’m going to insist you rest.’
Hope knew when he had that stern look that he was giving her an order, and it was best not to disobey. Besides, the prospect of a day doing nothing was pleasing. She thought maybe she and Queenie could take a picnic into the woods.
*
‘So tell me how you met the doctor?’ Queenie asked later that morning.
They had left the camp soon after eight, before the sun got too hot, and with a small picnic in a basket, a blanket to sit on and a large flask of water, they’d made for the woods a few miles above the camp.
They could still hear some of the noise from the camp – with all the thousands of men there they would have had to go a great deal further for complete silence – but it was none the less muted and distant, and cooler under the trees.
Lying there beside Queenie on the blanket, Hope could almost pretend she had Betsy back with her, for although Queenie’s voice was very different, and she was smaller and far spikier than her old friend, she had a similar easiness about her, wits sharpened by hardship, and very colourful speech. Hope got Queenie to tell her about her family.
‘Me mam’s a whore,’ she said without any embarrassment. ‘Dunno who me dad is, some sailor I reckon. She’s had so many I don’t fink she remembers any more. She done all right fer us anyways, we was fed and that. I’m second to youngest, and me mam lives wif me big brother Michael, cos she’s got too old fer all that now. He’s a blacksmith, does all right fer himself an’ all. The others they all got took on in service. I was working in an ale house when I met Robbie.’
Robbie, it seemed, was from Portsmouth too, like Queenie. They’d known each other by sight from childhood, but it was only when he came home from Canada on leave that he ran into her again, they fell in love and and got married.
‘I tried to go with him when he went to the Kaffir war,’ Queenie said. ‘But I didn’t get picked. I weren’t going to stay home this time, though, whatever it took. I got him to train me wif the small arms and all for days. You shoulda seen me at muster; I fooled the lot