Gill Paul - No Place For A Lady

The men erected the tent in minutes then had to return to other duties, so Lucy and Adelaide began arranging their possessions, agreeing where the food store should be kept, where the washbowl should sit. There was nowhere to hang clothes so they had to stay folded in the trunk. Lucy’s tin bath could be used for bathing and also for washing clothes.

‘Isn’t it strange to think the Russians are so close, perhaps just a mile away?’ Lucy mused. ‘I haven’t heard any sound of their presence. Have you? I thought maybe there would be gunfire …’

They both stopped to listen but the only sound was the chirruping of insects in the long grass and the idle chatter of soldiers as they set up camp. The sun was a huge white orb and there was no shade from its unrelenting fire except inside the tent, where the air was stuffy and close. The ladies drank some tea, then loosened their corsets and lay down on their bedding rolls to snooze through the hottest hours of the day.

Two weeks after their arrival at camp, Charlie and Bill returned from the front with news that the Russians had abandoned Silistria and pulled back across the Danube. ‘We could be on the move again soon,’ Charlie warned, but they waited and no orders came. Meanwhile, the women had slipped into the rhythm of camp life. Every morning, before the heat grew too fierce, Lucy and Adelaide walked out to nearby farms to try and purchase fresh food to augment the chewy salt pork and tasteless dried biscuits distributed by the army. They didn’t speak the language, of course, but the local men seemed receptive to Lucy’s pretty face and Adelaide’s friendly smile and they were usually able to buy a loaf of sour black bread, gritty with sand from the floor on which the dough was kneaded, and perhaps some butter. Occasionally they were offered a few eggs or a scrawny chicken, but the only vegetables available seemed to be onions.

After a nap during the hottest hours, Lucy would venture out to call on some of the other women and chat to them as they washed clothes in the river or sat in the shade of a stand of trees. She began to know several: Mrs Williams, who had now resigned as lady’s maid to Fanny Duberly – ‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ Lucy told her with a conspiratorial twinkle – and Mrs Blaydes, who had taken her place; Mrs Jenkins, a forthright Welshwoman, and Mrs Higgins, who was said to have too much of a taste for alcohol but whom Lucy found shy and very companionable. She noticed that the women had shed their corsets and petticoats in an attempt to keep cool; in fact, she caught a glimpse of Mrs Williams’ bare leg one day and realised she wasn’t even wearing drawers. Lucy still wore all her layers in order to maintain a fashionably full skirt; she was determined not to let her standards slip, even though the intense heat meant her undergarments were often drenched in perspiration. In her head, she frequently argued with Dorothea: ‘You see? I am sleeping in a tent, making tea on a campfire and, contrary to your expectations, I am perfectly capable of looking after myself.’

At night, they dined with the men on greasy communal stews doled out with slices of gritty bread, unless they had procured a chicken that day, in which case Adelaide roasted it over the fire with great competence. Lucy had never learned to cook and she watched carefully, eager to learn. After dinner, Charlie usually instigated the entertainment: sometimes it was a card game or a musical evening, but he also developed the raucous new sport of beetle racing. The men prowled the undergrowth collecting beetles then raced them along a length of sheet. They placed bets on the likely winners then cheered on their own creatures, to whom they gave names: Horatio the Horrible, Nimrod, Lucan and Raglan (the last two named after the cavalry commander and the army’s elderly general).

Bill didn’t care for gambling so he kept the ladies company on these evenings, conversing about books and music, or telling them what he had learned about the progress of the war: there were other fronts being fought in the Baltic, in the Eastern parts of Turkey and in Crimea, and it seemed possible they might be redeployed to one of them now the Russians had left Silistria.

‘I wish they would make their decision soon so we can fight our battles and go home,’ he told Lucy. ‘I can’t tell you how much I miss our little ones bouncing on my knee, or climbing all over me while pretending I am a big bear.’ He chuckled. ‘I love to hear them chattering in their serious little voices. Martha has an opinion on everything and is not shy of expressing it.’

‘He can never deny her,’ Adelaide smiled. ‘If I have refused her anything, she will go to her father and extract his consent in an instant. He can’t resist her.’

‘It’s true,’ Bill grinned. ‘You remind me of her, Mrs Harvington. I think you have steely determination beneath that pretty exterior.’

Lucy laughed. ‘Thank you for the compliment, sir. I certainly hope I am more than merely decorative.’

At bedtime, Charlie returned to their tent and they made love quietly but Lucy blushed scarlet the next morning when Adelaide and Bill greeted her; she could hear when they had marital relations, just from a change in breathing pattern, a slight shifting of bodies, so she knew they must hear Charlie and her as well.

Weeks passed, June turned to July, and the men had little to do but tend their horses and race beetles. It felt like an anti-climax after all the excitement of the journey and Lucy wondered about the cause of the delay in getting new orders. Meantime, she was concerned that the horses drank from the river they used for their own drinking water, and she had been disgusted to see some soldiers urinating into it. She began to venture further afield to a spring where she collected buckets of water for drinking, enjoying the walk in the cooler hours of early morning. However, one day after she returned from such a trip she felt movement on her legs and lifted her petticoat to find a slimy black slug about two inches long stuck to her calf. She lifted the hem of her drawers to find another. She shrieked hysterically and couldn’t stop shrieking.

‘Get them off me! Get them off me!’

Adelaide came running at the sound of Lucy’s terror: ‘Those are leeches,’ she quickly identified. ‘Don’t worry, they won’t harm you.’ She pulled a stick from their woodpile and used it to flick the creatures from Lucy’s leg to the ground. A thin trickle of blood ran down from each of the bites. ‘Perhaps you should check the other leg,’ she suggested, and when Lucy rolled up her drawers she screeched anew to find four leeches attached there as well. Adelaide removed them then picked them up one by one on her stick and tossed them onto the fire, where they squirmed and crackled.

When she had done, Lucy burst into hysterical tears, still patting her legs in case she had missed one. ‘I’m sorry …’ she sobbed. ‘I didn’t mean to make a fuss. I wanted to be brave.’

‘You are extremely brave, my dear. For all you knew they could have been poisonous. In fact, they have long been used in medicine for bloodletting and their bites do not have any harmful effects but it’s understandable you got a fright. Go lie in the tent and I’ll bring you some tea.’

‘Please don’t tell Charlie. I don’t want him to think I can’t cope.’

Adelaide put an arm round her shoulder. ‘Of course I won’t tell him. And I think you are coping extraordinarily well, given your tender years and sheltered upbringing. Every morning you manage to look so spruce and well turned-out you put me to shame! And every day I find you chatting to someone new; you are one of the most popular women in the British camp and an inspiration to all. I’m proud to call myself your friend.’