Hope - Lesley Pearse [235]
She was completely bored with all that now, but it had been good to bask in a little limelight for a while. Bennett would have been very amused to see her hold court with the kind of people she had always been intimidated by in the past.
All she wanted now was to go home. To sit with Nell and talk through all the things that had happened to them in the last seven years. She couldn’t wait to see Matt’s and Ruth’s children. To walk in fields and woods, to sit by streams and smell flowers. And wait for her baby to arrive.
If the strength of his kicks was anything to go by, he would be a real Renton, tough and strong. But she hoped he’d also inherit his father’s sensitivity and intelligence.
As the ship came in closer to berth, Hope scanned the waiting crowd for Uncle Abel. Excited as she was, she was also nervous because she realized that he was, to all intents and purposes, a stranger. In his letters to Bennett he always asked after her with warmth and interest, but she couldn’t quite forget that for a very long time he’d disapproved of her.
All at once she spotted him, looking the picture of a tubby English gentleman in a grey top hat, tail coat and a high wing-collar. But as she waved, she saw him incline his head to a woman beside him and point towards the ship.
Hope’s heart leapt, for it was not Alice beside him but Nell, wearing a white bonnet trimmed with blue flowers.
She forgot the ladylike demeanour she’d taken such pains to preserve on the voyage and jumped up and down, waving with both hands.
A band on the quay struck up a lively welcoming tune, and now she could only see the waiting crowd through a mist of emotional tears.
Hope was one of the first to go down the gangplank. She had pushed and elbowed her way to the front of the queue in a way that would have appalled Bennett. But it thrilled her to see Nell was every bit as eager, dodging through the crowd like a street urchin.
Hope was almost blinded by her tears now, and Nell’s round, sweet face was just a blur, but she saw the outstretched arms and ran full tilt to them. She was home at last!
‘Are you two going to stop that caterwauling and come and get in the carriage?’ Abel said gruffly.
Hope and Nell released each other from their tight embrace and dabbed at their eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, Dr Cunningham,’ Hope said. ‘It’s just been so long.’
‘I understand that,’ he said with a smile. ‘But I’d like to embrace you too, you know! And I think it’s high time you addressed me as Uncle Abel.’
As the carriage bowled along through the countryside towards Bristol, Hope tried to remember to keep to topics which would not exclude Uncle Abel, but her excitement at being with Nell again made it almost impossible. She was very aware that they sounded like a pair of chattering monkeys, leaping from one subject to another, gasping, giggling, and often crying too.
Nell had changed a great deal from how she’d been when Hope last sawher. Even though Angus had reported she was far more confident, in both her dress and her manner, Hope had still expected to find her greying, slower and stouter. She did have a peppering of grey hair, but she moved as fast as she ever did, she was shapely, not fat, and her face was as unlined as when she was a bride. But it wasn’t the physical changes that were so notable.
Nell had been so biddable before, a sweet and pliant person who never stepped out of what she considered to be ‘her place’. Hope couldn’t imagine her allowing anyone to order her around now. She had an air of authority, and she seemed far sharper and more worldly. Some of her remarks about people had been quite caustic. Her clothes, too, illustrated her knowledge of self-worth. She wore an elegant blue and white striped dress which enhanced her curvy body rather than concealing it. Her white bonnet with its blue trimming was youthful, not matronly. In all, Hope thought her sister had steered exactly the right path. She wasn’t aping gentry, but nor was she defining herself as a servant.
When they stopped to water the horses, Hope felt she must apologize