Gill Paul - No Place For A Lady

‘Charlie’s would be far too big for me. Perhaps I can borrow a spare uniform from Mrs Williams’ husband Stan, who is slighter,’ Lucy suggested, feeling a surge of excitement. ‘I’ll ask her. It doesn’t seem fair that soldiers’ wives are allowed to go along while we are not.’

‘They plan on putting the soldiers’ wives to work, cooking and laundering clothes,’ Adelaide explained, ‘but we can do that just as well.’

At daybreak on the 31st August, when the Hussars struck camp, Adelaide and Lucy were already dressed in their borrowed uniforms. It meant they couldn’t beg a lift on a gun carriage for the eight-mile march to Varna and even had to carry a bag apiece (although Charlie managed to arrange transport for Lucy’s trunk, the bath and her heaviest bags). Their feet blistered in army boots several sizes too large, stuffed with socks so they didn’t fall off, but both marched with determination and kept up with the others, chatting along the way.

‘By the by, there is something I wanted to ask you,’ Lucy said. ‘Did Charlie ever mention a girl called Susanna? He called that name in his sleep. I don’t want to embarrass him by asking about her, but wondered if she was perhaps a lady he used to be enamoured with before he met me? He is a man of seven and twenty years and must have courted other ladies before we met. Perhaps Bill knew her?’ Sensing Adelaide’s discomfort with the line of questioning she continued hurriedly, ‘Don’t worry; I am not a jealous type of woman.’

‘I … I think I have heard the name,’ Adelaide told her, hesitantly. ‘I believe there may have been ladies before you, but you must know you have nothing to worry about. Charlie dotes on you.’

‘I’m not worried. It’s just that he seemed to feel so passionately about her.’

‘I’m sure one day he will tell you about her.’

‘Won’t you tell me?’ Lucy pleaded.

‘It’s not my place …’ Adelaide began, then cried, ‘Look! I see the ships ahead. We are almost there.’ None of Lucy’s questions could induce her to say any more.

On the quayside at Varna, crowds were milling and amongst them Lucy recognised Lord Lucan standing by the gangplank watching those boarding. Shoulder to shoulder, she and Adelaide pushed forwards, trying to adopt a masculine style of walking, keeping their heads down, and the Major General barely glanced at them as they hurried on board. They asked directions to the officers’ quarters, and were momentarily surprised to find Fanny Duberly there, already having commandeered the best cabin. She glared at them in their uniforms.

‘Hardly dignified, ladies,’ she remarked, making them burst into fits of giggles.

‘How did you get past Lord Lucan?’ Lucy snorted, looking at Adelaide in her trousers and fur busby.

‘I simply walked past. He wouldn’t dare to stop me. My husband and I are terribly good friends of Lord Raglan’s.’ She looked them up and down. ‘I must say, you two look ridiculous.’

This made Lucy and Adelaide laugh anew, partly with the relief of having achieved their aim and avoiding separation from their husbands. Charlie and Bill arrived later and congratulated them on the success of the ruse.

The crossing to the Crimean peninsula was only supposed to take around thirty-six hours and they decided to keep a low profile and eat in their cabins rather than in the officers’ dining hall. However, the ship was almost instantly becalmed in the waters of the Black Sea. It was twelve days before Lucy saw the coast of the Crimean peninsula, an ominous, shadowy vision through torrential gusts of diagonal rain.

15th September 1854

The Pimlico Charitable Hospital was situated near Westminster Cathedral and every day Dorothea’s driver took them on a route that passed the Palace of Westminster, still in the process of being rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1834. Heaps of bricks were stacked in Whitehall, where builders always seemed to be standing around smoking and passing the time of day, reluctant to shift aside to let a carriage pass. From their accents it was clear many were Irish, refugees from the Great Famine that had recently swept that land and decimated the population. Dorothea often looked at them out of her carriage window, singled out one man in particular and wondered about his story: whether he had been able to bring his family over, or if he was here alone and attempting to send back money to his loved ones. The busy streets of London must feel very strange to these peasants who had earned their living from the soil until their potato crop failed catastrophically.

Dorothea was kept very busy at the hospital. Her role was to chat with patients, read to them and try to raise their spirits, but she was fascinated to learn the basics of wound dressing, and assisting doctors in blistering, cupping and blood-letting. Although it was not usual practice for ladies, the matron, Miss Alcock, realised that Dorothea was competent and allowed her to help with medical care, and she had rapidly become one of the most knowledgeable of the nursing staff. The patients were all destitute folk who required a letter from the charity commission guaranteeing their good character before they were admitted, so as to weed out the drunkards and criminal classes.

On her ward there was great interest in the progress of the war and Dorothea often read the newspaper to her patients, just as she had for Mr Peters. They cheered at the news that their brave boys had arrived in the Turkish lands then became frustrated at the delays in engaging in battle, wanting to crush the Russkies as soon as possible. In the final week of July, reports began to appear in The Times about a cholera outbreak amongst the troops at Varna. Dorothea followed the movements of the 8th Hussars with special interest and knew they were there. At first there was a short paragraph mentioning four deaths, then there were another six, most in the French camp, but by the second week of August it was reported that five hundred had died and Dorothea became seriously alarmed.

At breakfast the next day, she saw her father was reading reports from Varna and couldn’t help asking the news about the cholera. ‘I’m so terribly anxious about Lucy!’ she said. ‘We’ve had no word about how she is or whether she’s affected by the outbreak.’

Her father looked up, surprised. ‘But she is very well! I have received a letter from her.’

Dorothea was astonished. ‘What? A letter? Are you sure?’ She thought for a moment that he had imagined it. Since Lucy had left he was increasingly prone to believing his own flights of imagination and she had become convinced that the mental infirmity of old age had affected his reasoning.

‘Of course I’m sure. I read it myself. I have it in my study.’

‘Why on earth did you not tell me?’

Mr Gray returned to his reading. ‘It didn’t occur to me, I suppose. The letter was addressed to me.’

A wave of anger and hurt flushed Dorothea’s cheeks but she bit back a rebuke. Despite her certainty that he was senile, it was hard not to get cross with her father sometimes; she was still furious with him for giving his consent for Lucy and Charlie’s marriage. Dorothea had given him many strong reasons against the match and still he had agreed to it. He had always liked Lucy better; that was the honest truth. Perhaps it was because she reminded him of his late wife, or maybe because she was so pretty and blonde and far more adorable than plain, dutiful Dorothea with her dull brown locks and sharp features.

These days she found herself irritated by her father’s hypochondria. Every day he had some new symptom he wanted her to ask the hospital physicians about: a painful toenail, a slight rash on his chest, or difficulty with his bowel movements. She knew this was most likely a symptom of his senility, but found it hard to empathise. He was only in his mid-fifties. Surely, if he but tried, he could pull himself together?