Hope - Lesley Pearse [58]
‘That’s another good reason for going away to school then,’ Hope said. ‘You’ll have so many people to talk to there, and when you come home you can tell me all the funny things about them.’
As the weeks passed, their conversations gradually became more personal. Hope told him about her two sisters dying of scarlet fever, and then how her parents died of typhus. She had never talked about that to anyone since the funeral, not even Nell, but she told Rufus everything: how horrible it all was, how scared she’d been, and that she’d been angry with her mother for giving up and dying once she knew her husband had slipped away.
Rufus was horrified that he’d never been told of how her parents died. ‘How could Ruth look after me and not tell me?’ he said indignantly. ‘Or Nell, or even Mama? Why didn’t they tell me? I could at least have said I was sorry and picked some flowers from the garden for their grave.’
‘You were only little. People don’t tell children things like that,’ Hope said, but she was touched that he wished he could have made some sort of gesture.
‘Did Mama or Papa do anything?’
‘Well, they let me come and help out in the kitchens,’ she said.
Rufus’s eyes darkened. ‘Nothing else? But Ruth’s been my nursemaid since I was born. Nell’s been with us for some seventeen years – surely Mama could have done something more?’
‘What could she do, Rufus?’ Hope shrugged. ‘They’re gentry, we’re just working folk. It wasn’t as if I was homeless; I went to live with Nell and Albert.’
‘But Mama always used to remark on how pretty and clever you were,’ he said in bewilderment.
Hope realized then that however knowledgeable Rufus was about the rest of the world, he didn’t have any real idea of how poor people lived. She began to explain some of it: the tiny houses with bare floors and very little furniture, how she’d never had a real bed, just a sack filled with hay. She told him how most children were pressed into some kind of work almost as soon as they could walk, even if that was only scaring birds from the crops.
‘I was lucky that I went to Reverend Gosling for four years to learn to read and write,’ she went on. ‘None of my brothers and sisters had that long, and most people in the village can’t read and write at all.’
‘But it isn’t fair,’ he burst out. ‘Everyone should have the same chances.’
‘That’s just the way it is,’ Hope said, repeating what Nell always told her when she complained about unfairness.
It was time to go home then, and as she left Rufus at the edge of the wood he walked across the paddock looking very sad and thoughtful.
In the middle of August, Lady Harvey received a letter from her younger sister to say their mother was very sick and asking her to come immediately. Lady Harvey wanted Nell to go with her, but thought Rufus should stay at Briargate because he was due to start at school in Wells in September.
They would be going on the Great Western railway from Bristol, and Hope was very envious because she’d seen pictures of the train and it looked like a very fast and exciting way to travel. She was also nervous at the prospect of being alone in the cottage with Albert, but Nell said she would speak to Baines and ask if she could sleep at Briargate as long as she went down to the gatehouse every day to tidy up for Albert.
It had been very hot for several weeks and at five the following morning when Nell and Hope left the cottage, the sun was already very warm.
‘Please be a good girl while I’m away,’ Nell said anxiously as they hurried up the drive carrying her bag between them. ‘I really don’t think we’ll be back for some time. Even if the old lady dies almost straight away, it will be a few days before the funeral. And we can’t leave straight after, that wouldn’t be right.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Hope insisted, knowing very well Nell was worried about her. ‘Ruth and James are here and Matt’s just down the road. There won’t be so much work anyway with the master away too.’
He had been in London for some little while,