Hope - Lesley Pearse [232]
He could feel her fingers gripping at his hair, her nails raking his neck and shoulders, but she suppressed any cries for fear of being heard. He half-smiled to himself for at Christmas she’d had no such delicacy, but then she’d had a great deal to drink that night. It pleased him to give her so much pleasure, to hear her gasps and low moans, and he loved the dark, hot and wet depths of her.
The cries she’d tried so hard to suppress erupted as she came, and she grabbed at him, pulling him on to her, kissing him with fiery passion. As he slid into her, her legs went round his back, her body arching under his, urging him deep inside her. Two thoughts flitted across his mind, first, that he didn’t want to hurt the baby, and second, that he wouldn’t have to withdraw at the last moment. But thought vanished, to be replaced only by ecstasy and need. Nothing mattered any more, not the war or his duty to the army. All that counted was here, just the two of them, and love.
The camp bed collapsed just as he came, and they lay panting, sticky and sated on the floor, wrapped in each other’s arms.
Outside there was more gunfire from the French camp, and they heard someone stumble against a bucket somewhere close by. They heard the man cursing and had a mental picture of him hopping on one leg holding his grazed toe. Then Hope began to laugh, and the sound somehow wiped out the darkness, the ugliness all around them, and the hopelessness.
Bennett laughed too as he knelt back and looked at her lying there. The first light of dawn was just coming into the sky, enough for him to see her clearly, dark hair all tousled and wild, her face rosy with lovemaking and her body full and womanly.
Bennett put his two hands on her naked belly, caressing it. ‘We made him in a night of passion, but perhaps after another one, you’ll tell me officially?’
Chapter Twenty-four
Hope clung tightly to Bennett’s hand as they walked up the gangplank on to the steamship Marianne on 1 July. It was blazing hot, her dress was sticking to her swollen body in the most undignified way, and she was glad of the broad-brimmed strawhat Mary Seacole had given her as a leaving gift.
The old Jamaican woman was there on the quay with dozens of other people who had shared such a big part of Hope’s time here. But now she was leaving she felt a pang that there had never been time to get to know some of them better. She counted them as true friends, but what did she really know about any of them? Would Sergeant Major Jury, who had always been so gentle with his wounded men and so cheery with her, eventually marry the sweetheart he’d spoken of so often? Did Cobbs the orderly, who had worked beside her right from her first day in the hospital, have any children? Had Assistant Surgeon Francis, the man who had so often made her laugh during some of the most desperate times, really spent some time as a clown in a music hall as he claimed?
She could see Lieutenant Gordon of the Engineers waving at her, and she was reminded that he’d generously given her a tartan rug back in the winter to keep her warm at night, despite desperately needing it himself.
There were dozens of dear and familiar faces, every one of them special in some way, and she’d miss them all. As people waved and smiled, she felt their sympathy that she had to go home alone, but also their joy that she was leaving here in good health and that she and Bennett had created newlife in a place of so much death.
In her hands Hope held a bag containing many little presents given to her by everyone from tradespeople to soldiers and doctors. There were books, fruit, cake, soap, and a few sketches from some of the more artistic friends. A few riflemen had come down from the camp to see her off, their boots polished, beards shaved off and uniforms brushed in an attempt to honour her with parade-ground smartness. Tomlinson, known to everyone as Tommy, Robbie’s closest friend and the man who had carried her