Hope - Lesley Pearse [223]
Hope finally resolved not to tell him yet. News had come in that in early April there was at last to be a massive bombardment of Sebastopol, both from the army and the navy. She had seen more big guns being brought in, and vast quantities of ammunition. With luck, that might end the siege and they could all go home.
Hope daydreamed all the time of home. Not just of seeing her family, or even England in the spring. She wanted natural order again, of knowing what to expect with each day, for everything here was disorganized and baffling.
At the end of March, just as the weather was growing warm again, all the winter clothing for the troops which had been lying in warehouses for weeks was finally distributed to the men, and wooden huts at last replaced the field hospital marquees. Bennett reported that the men had been delighted finally to get new boots, shirts, socks and flannel drawers, but were somewhat bemused by the heavy warm coats they no longer really needed. New bedsteads had arrived for the hospital too, and mattresses and even some sheets for the beds.
Hope would have taken great pleasure in these improvements if she hadn’t suddenly been ordered to move to one of the new huts at the back of the hospital. Almost all the patients there were foreigners, Turks, Poles, Armenians, Croatians and a few Russians, and she felt she had been sent there for a similar reason to the one which had seen Bennett sent back to his regiment.
Almost as soon as he’d gone, she’d noticed that some of the doctors became rather disagreeable with her in little ways – not answering when she asked a question, turning away when she came into the ward, calling an orderly to help them when once they would have called for her. It was, of course, possible that they had always resented her; after all, she wasn’t a lady like Miss Nightingale, or an ordinary soldier’s wife who could be ordered to do the roughest work. But if that had been the case, they had hidden it well all the while Bennett was here.
It seemed to her that by sending her into a ward where she couldn’t communicate with anyone, and where she might be frightened, they were hoping she might leave the hospital.
Daunting was the only word for the new ward, for the patients were the very roughest of men, in the main muleteers or labourers. Most had either suffered some kind of accident in their work or were sick, and because they were civilians they couldn’t be sent on to Scutari. As they didn’t speak any English the duty doctor had to have an interpreter with him when he did his rounds.
But if petty jealousy or prejudice against women was behind it, Hope had no intention of letting them win their pathetic crusade. While she was offended by some of the men’s filthy habits, and practically all of them were swarming with parasites, they were no worse than some of the patients at St Peter’s. She could manage very well with sign language, and often she was glad that she didn’t have to make conversation as she had so much else on her mind. She was a nurse, and she’d carry on until such time as she decided to leave. The patients were more important than a few bigots.
Bennett wasn’t too pleased when he saw where she had been moved to, but as he only came down once a week with patients for shipping to Scutari, and had to return to the Heights the same day, he didn’t have time to investigate anything.
He was happier now he had his patients in a hut, and optimistic he could deal with the outbreaks of scurvy because he’d managed to get supplies of lime juice. Cholera had raised its ugly head again, but he believed that now the weather and the rations had improved, so too would general health in the camp.
One evening, as he was leaving early on a borrowed horse, Hope asked Bennett if she could go with him. They had seen scaling ladders and grappling hooks being unloaded from a ship that afternoon, so it was clear that along with the planned bombardment there would also be an assault on the fortifications of Sebastopol.
She didn’t