Hope - Lesley Pearse [245]
‘Maybe it did with rank and file, but not officers,’ he insisted. ‘Nell has written back asking Angus to find out more. But meanwhile you must remember you are a mother and have a duty to take care of Betsy.’
‘I can’t,’ she said wearily.
‘You named her after your friend who died. You didn’t neglect her in her hour of need. You stitched up the Captain when he was wounded, and nursed countless other men too. Are you telling me they were more important than your own little baby?’
‘You don’t understand,’ she said, turning her head away from him.
Rufus put his hand on her cheek and drew her head round to face him again. ‘Just because I’m a man without a child of my own doesn’t mean I can’t understand the torment you are in. I have taken care of my mother since Briargate was burned down; I’ve dealt with her endless self-recriminations, the tears and the explosions of rage. There were days she couldn’t wash or dress herself, when she wouldn’t eat, and paced the floor at night instead of sleeping. I was afraid that I might have to put her in an asylum. Nell is afraid that is where you are heading.’
‘They can put me anywhere; it’s all the same to me.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Rufus exclaimed, his voice rising in agitation. ‘You might feel like that now, but you can beat it because you are strong. You have to get out of that bed, pick Betsy up and think only of her. In a little while you’ll find she will be a comfort to you.’
‘What do you know?’ she snarled at him. ‘You grew up in luxury. While you were still sleeping in your featherbed I was clearing the grates, scrubbing floors, carrying your damned mother’s slops, even cleaning up your father’s vomit. If it wasn’t for Bennett I’d have been forced to live my whole life in a rookery. I might have had to sell myself just to eat. I can’t live without him.’
‘You can if you have to,’ Rufus said, holding her two arms and shaking her a little. ‘Remember, you are the girl who ran away from Albert, who had the courage to stay away because you didn’t want him to hurt Nell. You bravely worked in St Peter’s, nursing those whom no one else would. Angus wrote home and told us that the men over in the Crimea worshipped you for what you did for them. A woman who can do all those things can nurse her own baby, even if her heart is breaking.’
She stared at him with blank eyes. ‘Loving Bennett was what made me strong then,’ she said. ‘He filled up all the empty places inside me. You don’t know what that’s like.’
Rufus looked at her, and tenderly stroked her face. ‘Don’t I? You think you are the only one with empty places inside you? I might have slept in a featherbed, Hope, but I never had the kind of love you had from your family. My father was either out somewhere or drunk, and Mother only spent an hour a day with me at most. It was Ruth and Nell who took care of me and I always envied you because you had their love. Have you any idea what hell I went through at school? Beaten by the masters and the older boys, half-starved, always cold during the winter. I felt I was sent away as a punishment, but I didn’t understand what I’d done to deserve it.
‘As for the years after you disappeared, I had nothing and no one at Briargate, not you, not Nell, no one. Baines was too old to do anything; Mother and Father skulked in the study while Albert strutted around like he was lord and master. It was hell at school, but misery at home.’
He sawa slight softening in her expression and knew he must continue.
‘I only went to Oxford to get away,’ he said. ‘But I never fitted in there either. They called me “Farm Boy”, and other crude terms I can’t repeat. It was only at Matt’s farm that I felt I was worth something.’
Betsy began to cry and Rufus got off the bed and went over to the crib.
‘Hello, little one,’ he said, bending to pick her up. ‘Now, stop screwing your face up like that, it doesn’t become you.’
Holding her against his shoulder, he stood by the window with her. ‘Your mother saved my life years