Hope - Lesley Pearse [240]
‘Yes,’ Hope said. ‘Only a couple more weeks now, but I’m hoping it will wait until Bennett arrives home.’
She’d had a letter soon after she got home saying he thought he would be allowed to go on the next ship. That letter had arrived with nearly a dozen he’d written prior to it, and it was dated 1 August. As no more had come since, she was sure that meant he had got on the ship almost immediately, and that he would be home any day now.
‘I do hope you won’t have to have the child alone,’ Lady Harvey said, and to Hope’s astonishment she began to cry.
‘I won’t be alone, I’ll have Nell with me,’ Hope said, touched by this extraordinary display of concern. She moved forward and took the older woman’s hand. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Just make sure she doesn’t whisk the baby away,’ Lady Harvey said.
Her words were strange enough, but her expression was even stranger, for it was as though she was baring her teeth, except there were only a couple of brown stumps left.
Hope looked round at Rufus for an explanation, but he only shook his head and indicated the door.
It seemed incredibly rude to leave so quickly, but she really couldn’t bear to stay. Not just because Lady Harvey was so strange, but the cottage itself was making her feel tense and anxious. ‘I’m sorry this was such a brief visit, but I have to go now,’ she said. ‘I’ll come and see you again soon.’
‘You haven’t even had any tea with me.’ The older woman’s voice was shrill and pleading. ‘I was just going to ring for some.’
Rufus ushered Hope out.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said once they were outside, wearing a hangdog expression. ‘She says some very odd things sometimes. As for ringing for tea! Perhaps she thinks Baines will pop out of the churchyard and bring her some.’
Hope giggled nervously. ‘I shouldn’t laugh at that. Poor old Baines. He was such a nice man.’
‘One of the best,’ Rufus said. ‘I sawhim before he died, and he told me he wanted to go. He said it had been a privilege working for my folks, but he was tired now. He died the next day, and I was glad, really. I mean, if he had lived on where would he have gone?’
Hope knew as Rufus did that it would have been the workhouse. She was glad to see her childhood friend hadn’t lost his social conscience.
‘How do you manage with your mother?’ she asked as they walked along the old drive.
‘You mean when she’s mad?’ he said with disarming frankness. ‘She isn’t a danger to herself or anyone else. She only says strange things. She told me one day I had a sister!’
‘Really?’ Hope giggled. ‘And what happened to this sister? Did Nell whisk her away?’
They both laughed, and then moved on to talk about more cheerful things.
They walked down to the lake for old times’ sake, and were pleased to see that the old boat was still there. They sat on a log in a patch of sunshine and talked about anything and everything. Hope even told Rufus about Gussie and Betsy and the time she stole the pie when they were starving.
It was what she had needed, without knowing it: to be able to talk truthfully about the past, for she’d only glossed over her time in Lewins Mead to Nell for fear of putting ugly pictures into her sister’s mind.
She didn’t linger on that part of her life, though; it was enough to give him a brief glimpse of it and move on. Rufus wanted to know about the battles in the Crimea, particularly the Charge of the Light Brigade which had been reported on in great depth in every English newspaper.
Hope gave him her own scathing views on the so-called hero, Cardigan, and told him she felt it was appalling that back here everyone had cast Lord Lucan as the villain of the piece.
‘My very favourite battle was the one they dubbed “The Thin Red Line”,’ Rufus said.
‘Bennett watched that one,’ Hope responded eagerly. ‘He thought the Highlanders were the bravest men in history.’
‘Russell of The Times wrote about it so passionately, I almost felt I was there,’ Rufus said. ‘He described them as “The Thin Red Line tipped with steel”. Isn’t that a marvellous description?’
‘I just hope when they come home they are