Behind the Sun (20 page)

Poor Janie Braine and the other expectant women were suffering the most. Janie’s hands and feet had swollen alarmingly and so had her belly. So this morning she’d been to see Mr Downey, who had told her he thought she might be closer to giving birth than she thought she was. He’d suggested she was perhaps seven and a half to eight months along, which apparently made the father someone else, which had put Janie in quite a bad mood. But she’d cheered up when she realised she only had four to six more weeks left of weeing every hour, on the hour, if the baby was coming sooner than expected.

Liz Parker wasn’t doing too well either, Rachel noticed. Not that she cared. Liz’s round face was even redder than usual and she was lying on her back on the deck, a piece of wet muslin draped over her forehead, looking like a beached whale. Rachel had never seen a beached whale but she’d overheard Third Mate Meek telling another sailor that’s what she reminded him of, and she liked the sound of the phrase.

She’d seen a whale in the sea, though — they all had, the previous day. It had been about half a mile away and it had ‘breached’, blown a lot of water out of its spout, disappeared for a few minutes then made an enormous splash with its huge tail. The crew had called it a ‘right’ whale and it had been a beautiful thing to behold. And they’d seen the most spectacular purple and pink and orange sunsets, and two days earlier a turtle, which Mr Meek said was lost and would no doubt die, swimming faster than the ship was moving, and schools of fish leaping out of the sea, and birds called boobies swooping down on them and snatching them up in their beaks. Rachel had asked were the birds lost, too, and Mr Meek, who was young and not really a mister and whom Rachel quite liked, told her they weren’t and that they’d flown all the way from
the Canary Islands and would probably fly back when they’d eaten their fill. But when Rachel had said why were they called boobies, then, and not canaries, he’d only laughed, until Mr Warren had given him a dirty look and he’d hurried off.

She liked the look of the two gentlemen, Mr Cutler and Mr Keegan, too, though neither was anything compared to Lucas. They were both very polite, lifting their hats, which they both still wore despite the heat and the fact they were in shirtsleeves now. They always stayed on the foredeck, though, only stepping off it to go down into their cabins. The minister and his wife spent a lot of time up there, too, especially now that it was so hot, though Mrs Seaton did come down to run the letters school in the afternoons. Rachel didn’t attend because she could already read and write, so what was the point, but some of the girls who did go said she was a bossy old trout. She couldn’t be that old because her daughters weren’t very grown up — she just looked old. Rachel would have liked to talk to the daughters, but they never came down to the waistdeck, spending all their time on the foredeck twirling little silk parasols like Bella Jackson’s, giggling with Mr Keegan, clothed in pretty, envy-making dresses with matching bonnets.

To look at, Mr Seaton was quite a frightening man with his bristling whiskers, boiled-ham skin and beady eyes, and at five o’clock every day he preached sermons listing the sins that littered the path of those who refused to find the Lord — stealing, cheating, fornicating and so forth. Everything in fact that the
Isla
’s convicts had been tried and transported for. But Rachel suspected she knew what sort of man Reverend Seaton really was. There had been, in her village, a preacher who had spouted the same sulphur-tinged messages of redemption. Despite this, not only had he been embezzling church funds, but he’d also managed to impregnate three of his flock. Rachel could see the same hot flicker of desire in the Reverend Seaton’s eye as he cast it over his captive audience and wondered whether the rumour that he had made his wife and
daughters share one tiny cabin so he could have the other to himself was true.

‘That Keegan cove’s having a good stare again,’ Sarah said.

Friday turned to see. ‘You don’t like him, do you?’

‘Well, do you?’

Rachel looked, too. ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Sarah was always complaining about Mr Keegan standing on the foredeck looking around. What else was he supposed to do up there? ‘I think he’s quite nice. He’s got lovely manners.’

‘He’s on the prowl.’

‘Oh, he is not!’ Rachel protested.

‘How do you know he isn’t? You don’t even know him.’

‘You’re such a misery guts, Sarah, always looking for the worst in people.’

‘And you’re so naive,’ Sarah replied. ‘For God’s sake, you’re only fifteen years old. How can you be a good judge of character?’

‘Well, you’re only seventeen!’ Rachel shot back.

‘Yes, but I’ve lived on the streets a lot longer than you have. You haven’t even
been
on the streets.’

‘So? That doesn’t mean I’m stupid.’

‘I didn’t say you were stupid; I said you’re naive.’

‘Oh, stop it, you two!’ Harrie snapped. She’d been refereeing squabbles for the past three long, hot, sticky days and she was sick of it. ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.’

‘Look,’ Sarah said accusingly, ‘now you’ve upset Ma.’

Rachel tried not to smile but couldn’t help herself. She turned away, because she really didn’t like arguing with Sarah. It was just that Sarah was so prickly: everything she, Rachel, did seemed to annoy her. And she honestly wasn’t annoying on purpose, she really wasn’t. But if Mr Keegan chose to look at her, she couldn’t help that, could she? In fact, it was excellent, really, because it worked in perfectly with an idea she’d been mulling over for a while. She stood up.

‘Where are you going?’ Sarah asked quickly.

‘To use the bucket,’ Rachel replied, pointing to the canvas bathing cubicle.

‘Oh.’ When she was out of earshot, Sarah said, ‘I’m worried about that Keegan. I don’t like the way he’s been ogling her. What do you think?’

Friday squinted up at the foredeck, but Keegan had gone. ‘I don’t like it either. I think he’d be on her like a stoat on a baby rabbit if he got the chance.’

Harrie, nowhere near as experienced in these things, asked, ‘But how can you tell? He seems perfectly normal to me. What’s he done?’

‘Nothing, yet,’ Friday replied. ‘He’s just got that look about him. I suppose when you’ve had as many cullies as I have, you get to pick it.’

Sarah nodded. ‘Does he go with the women?’

Friday said yes. ‘Not me, though. He slinks about with the others, trying to keep it quiet, but we all talk. And that worries me, him not approaching me. It’s as if he doesn’t want Rachel to know he uses whores.’

‘Really?’ Harrie said doubtfully. ‘Are you sure? Surely no one would be that, what’s the word? Calculating?’

Friday, hot, sweaty and short-tempered, turned on her. ‘D’you know, Harrie, sometimes you’re so busy looking for the good in people you can’t see what shits they really are. It annoys me, it really does. You can’t believe Keegan isn’t a perfect gentleman and you think Bella Jackson’s just a harmless madam. Well, she isn’t. She’s a cunning, devious bitch and she’s dangerous.’

Shocked at the vitriol in Friday’s voice, Harrie blinked at her.

‘She is,’ Friday went on, ‘and now Rachel owes her a debt because of the card game and that stupid bloody caul. You’ve got
no
idea how these things work.’

Colour rose in Harrie’s cheeks. ‘Well,
you’re
as bad as Sarah, always seeing the worst in people! You don’t even know her! If
she’s that awful, what was she doing giving away the caul? I heard Maudie Robb paid nearly four pounds for hers! What’s that if it isn’t generosity? And why did she bother to point out that Liz Parker was cheating when she and Rachel were playing cards? What could she hope to gain out of that?’

Friday rolled her eyes so violently that for a second only the whites showed. ‘Harrie, she’s operating a shipboard brothel every night; and back home she ran a massive crew involved in thievery and counterfeiting and broads and all sorts!’

‘All that last bit is hearsay. It’s gossip. You shouldn’t judge people on gossip. And you haven’t answered my question about the cards.’

‘For fuck’s sake, Harrie, what’s she doing here if it’s
just gossip
?’

‘Well, I’m here and I’m not a bad person.’

‘No, but you’re a bloody stubborn person! And dim! And she didn’t accuse Liz Parker of cheating to help Rachel, she did it to undermine Liz — and me. She doesn’t want competition; she wants to be top dog.’

‘I’m
not
dim! All I’m saying is I haven’t seen her do anything bad, but I have seen her do something kind.’ Harrie raised her hand as Friday started to say something. ‘No, I’m just trying not to be judgmental. If she does something I feel is wrong, then I’ll change my mind.’

‘And running a whorehouse isn’t wrong?’ Friday demanded.

Harrie’s mouth set in a straight line. ‘I’m not going to cast judgment on women as ordinary as me when they’re only trying to make a living. And if I did that, I’d be judging you, too, wouldn’t I? And I’d never judge you, Friday.’

Friday shook her head. ‘God, you are
such
a saint, Harrie. It must really wear you out. And don’t change the subject. Bella is the madam, not a whore, and
Bella’s
taking half the money.’

‘Not half, surely?’

‘Oh, grow up, Harrie.’ Friday rolled her eyes again.

Sarah said, ‘I hope you do change your mind, Harrie. Bella
will
call in her debt and when she does, Rachel’s going to need us. Friday’s right, she’s bloody trouble. And so’s Keegan. Real trouble, judging by the way he’s been leering at Rachel every chance he gets. I think we should keep a particularly close eye on her.’

Friday nodded. ‘Me, too. I could be wrong about him, but I don’t think so.’

‘I don’t think so, either,’ Sarah said. After a moment she added, ‘And if he lays a hand on her, I’ll kill him.’

On the fourth windless day, just as many of the
Isla
’s passengers concluded they could no longer tolerate the dreadful heat or the unbearable tedium of barely moving across the flat, dull sea, several currents began to boil around the ship at once, causing her stern to sweep wide without warning, and much alarm on deck.

Immediately, the lookout, who had had the ill luck to be perched for hours on the top platform of the main mast, bellowed down, ‘
All hands on deck!
’

First Mate Silas Warren shouted back, ‘
Where away?
’

‘
Black squall, from north-west!
’ The lookout was already scrambling down.

Pandemonium, caused mainly by the women fighting to get below, briefly overwhelmed the deck, then the whistle commands came and the crew leapt to work readying the
Isla
for the wind and rain bearing down on her.

The squall came with terrible speed, a battalion of roiling charcoal and black clouds surrounded by a luminous halo racing across the water. The sea around the
Isla
bucked and heaved and she seemed at first sucked towards the squall, her masts tilted, everything loose on deck sliding to the starboard rail. Then the winds hit and blew out her sails with an ear-splitting crack and she was off, swooping around to the south-east with a great, hull-wrenching groan, skimming over the waves, the wind screaming
through her rigging, canvas taut and proud. Sudden rain pounded the decks, sluicing away the salt-rimmed sweat stains of the previous four days, flattening discarded bonnets, drenching bedding, tearing laundry from the drying lines and flinging it overboard. At the wheel, Captain Holland forgot himself for a moment and let out a howl of pure joy.

Below, the women and children cowered in their bunks as the
Isla
’s hull squeaked and grated and boomed around them, held on and prayed they would not be drowned. The heat had been like slow death but this? This was pure, blind terror.

The squall blew itself out in an hour, but the
Isla
rode it all the way out of the doldrums, picking up a mild but steady wind from the west that took her across the equator and into the southern latitudes.

On the day she crossed the line, the fifth of June, the sailors held a ceremony to initiate young Walter Cobley and a new crewman named Babcock. The previous evening, two emissaries had appeared on deck during the exercise period with a summons for Walter and Babcock to appear before King Neptune the following day. The emissaries had been dressed as bears, wearing moth-eaten but genuine bearskins over their shoulders with the ferocious, yellow-fanged bear heads balanced atop their own, and had set most of the children, and not a few of the women, to screaming their heads off. There was a complaint, Captain Holland had had to be summoned, and explanations provided.

By the following morning, the women were all looking forward to it — the ceremony sounded like a right entertainment. After dinner, all were on deck waiting expectantly when a lurid spectacle appeared from beneath the afterdeck and lurched frighteningly into their midst, setting them all off again. But this time the shrieks were interspersed with giggles and only the children really cried. King Neptune was Mr Warren, wearing trousers rolled to the knee and nothing above the waist, showing off the anchor and dagger
tattoos on his arms, fake hair made from unravelled rope dyed blue adorned with dried seaweed and a false blue beard that fell halfway down his muscular chest, and a golden papier-mâché crown accessorised with a trident. He was followed by his wife Queen Amphitrite — Mr Meek in a crown, lip and cheek rouge, someone’s prison blouse open to the waist and a skirt raised to reveal his very shapely legs — and Davy Jones, played by Amos Furniss, who really did look horrid in a ragged black coat and trousers with his face and hands painted green and stuck all over with papier-mâché barnacles. The bears were there, too, and two characters introduced to the audience as ‘the Barber’ and ‘the Doctor’.

The latter wasn’t James Downey, however, who was standing on the afterdeck, watching with some misgiving. He had raised the matter of the ceremony with the captain the previous day, wondering whether it was a sensible idea to allow such an entertainment on a convict ship. His task after all was to keep his charges calm, not excite them by allowing them access to idiotic displays of barbarity. He’d never warmed to the more brutal customs exhibited by his naval fraternity. And there were quite a lot of those. It was the sea he enjoyed, not sailors.