Hope - Lesley Pearse [265]
Unable to breathe because the room suddenly seemed so hot and stuffy, she knew she had to get out of the house immediately.
Hope’s second slipper disappeared into the mud unnoticed as she ran full tilt down the road in the direction of Bath, and she kept running blindly until she was down on the flat, past the last of the cottages.
Way over to her right and up on the hill was a big house, lamplight in the windows twinkling in the darkness. To her left were the meadows which the train from Bristol to London passed through, and beyond that the river Avon. By day, in the sunshine, it was beautiful, but seen in darkness it felt threatening.
She was almost at the crossroads by the Globe Inn when a stitch in her side forced her to slowdown, and at once total desolation washed over her.
Bennett was never coming home, she had just been fooling herself that he might. The only future ahead of her was that of a lonely widow, dependent on the charity of others. She began to sob, all the images of the life she and Bennett had planned together streaming through her head as if to mock her for ever believing they would come true.
They would never live in a cosy cottage with poorer patients paying Bennett with a chicken or a few eggs; they would never sit outside in the moonlight on warm summer nights, or pull their children on a sledge through the snow. Never again would she know the bliss of lovemaking, or wake to find Bennett holding her in his arms. It was all a foolish fantasy; in real life people didn’t get what they wanted.
Lady Harvey loved Angus but she had to live out her life with a man who wanted other men. She’d even died without knowing her daughter didn’t hate her for what she’d done. Rufus might marry Lily, but he’d have years when his crops would fail, chickens wouldn’t lay and they’d go hungry. Nell would never have a baby of her own. Matt would never be rich. Even dashing, handsome Angus had not got what he wanted. He might come home to find he had a daughter, but that wasn’t going to make up for Lady Harvey being dead.
She felt she was back to the night Albert had thrown her out of the gatehouse, the same feeling of despair overwhelming her, the same icy rain mingling with her tears. She’d forced herself to survive then, ever the optimist that things would get better. But she knew better now: life was just one long series of calamities until you died.
She couldn’t bear any more. She hadn’t the will, the strength or even the curiosity about what might lie ahead to go on. If she just climbed over the wall and went down through the meadow, she’d reach the river. The water would wash over her head, and all this pain would be gone.
But she felt confused when she looked down, for it seemed she was already in the river. It was black and shiny in the darkness, washing over her feet. The wind was pulling at her coat and her hair as if trying to drawher in deeper.
Above the noise of the wind she could hear something else, but she couldn’t identify what it was, only that it was coming towards her. She was frightened now, for the sound was filling her head and she didn’t know how to get away from it.
‘Shit my britches,’ the coachman exclaimed as he sawa flash of white up ahead and realized it was someone standing in the road. ‘Whoa!’ he yelled, pulling on the reins for all he was worth. ‘Whoa, boys, whoa.’
‘What is it, coachman?’ his passenger called from the carriage. ‘Is the road flooded?’
The coachman didn’t answer for he was intent on stopping his horses. Through the heavy rain he could see now it was a woman by the narrowness of her shoulders and the fullness of the clothes, and she was looking right at him, her eyes glinting in the reflection of his coach lights.
‘Move,’ he yelled, but she stayed right where she was. He grabbed the brake, and heard the grinding sound of wood against the metal-rimmed wheels, pulled tighter on the reins, and finally, only a few feet from her, his horses came to a halt.
The coachman leapt down from the carriage.