What is the main conflict in Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge?

Master Georgie is the story of George Hardy, an English surgeon and amateur photographer, who leaves his affluent lifestyle in Victorian England to face the perils of war and the battleground at Inkerman in the Crimea. Three people who are close to him tell his story. They are Myrtle, a love struck foundling, Dr. Potter, a geologist and intellectual, and Pompey Jones, a savvy and cynical one-time street performer. This is an historical novel. However, the war-torn Crimea is merely a backdrop for these four main characters, whose lives are forever linked by a single, fateful event that takes place in Liverpool, in 1846. Due to this one, shared experience, their lives are inextricably and permanently woven together.