Remember Me (12 page)

Mary could see them both now. Dolly was about sixteen, and had the Sunday afternoon off from her job in service, so they’d gone for a walk to the beach at Menabilly. Both girls were wearing new pink dresses. Their uncle Peter Broad, who was a mariner and rumoured in the family to be making a lot of money, had brought back the silky material from one of his voyages overseas, and Mother had spent weeks making them.

Dolly was absolutely thrilled with her new dress. She adored the colour pink and the style was a very fashionable one, with a nipped-in waist and a small bustle. Mary wasn’t struck on pink, nor did she want to be dressed identically to her sister. It was bad enough that Dolly always managed to look perfect, whatever she wore, for she was naturally neat, but when they were dressed the same, Mary thought her own defects showed up more. They were very alike in as much as they both had the same dark curly hair, but Dolly was much daintier, with a tiny waist, a graceful way of walking, and big blue eyes that enchanted everyone. Next to her Mary felt plain and awkward.

By the time they got to the beach they were very hot,
and Dolly was disappointed that there was no one there to see her in her new finery.

‘It was silly to come here,’ she said peevishly. ‘Now we’ve got to walk all the way back in the heat.’

‘Let’s cool down in the sea then,’ Mary suggested.

Dolly was worried about their dresses of course, but after some persuasion Mary convinced her that they could go beyond the beach and through the woods, then come out again at the water’s edge, take their dresses off and paddle.

One thing led to another. Once they were in a place where they couldn’t be seen, Dolly saw no point in getting her petticoat or shift wet either, for she was sure Mary would splash her. Maybe for that one time she wanted to be as daring as her younger sister, and when Mary took off every stitch of clothing and went in for a dip, Dolly followed her willingly.

It was the most fun they’d ever had together. Mary held Dolly under her stomach and tried to teach her to swim. She couldn’t get the hang of it, so Mary pulled her along in the water by her hands. They were so engrossed in playing that they forgot to keep an eye out for anyone watching.

Later, dressed again, they giggled all the way home, and Dolly told Mary funny stories about some of the other maids where she worked.

Their mother was standing outside the house when they got home, and even from a distance they knew she was very angry. Her mouth was set in a straight line and she had her arms folded across her chest.

‘You little hussies,’ she shrieked at them as she came closer. ‘Get inside at once and explain yourselves.’

It seemed a fisherman in his boat had seen them bathing, and passed on the information to someone else, who hastily reported back to their mother.

‘The shame of it,’ she kept saying over and over again as she clouted them up the stairs and ordered them to remove their clothes.

She beat them with a stick across their bottoms and backs, drawing blood on Dolly. Then she banished Mary to bed without any supper, and Dolly back to her employers.

Mary had thought then that her mother was a cruel kill-joy. She couldn’t see what harm there had been in swimming naked. And she continued to blame her mother when Dolly never seemed to want to go anywhere with her again.

Mary sighed as she remembered that day. She had been so innocent then, barely aware of her own budding breasts, let alone of how desirable Dolly was. She certainly didn’t have any idea that her mother was afraid of what might have happened if her daughters had been spotted by a couple of sailors.

But she knew now, and understood what animals men could be. It seemed to her that almost everything her mother had tried to warn her about had happened. Even the absence of the menses.

Mother had always been vague about what happened between men and women, but she had warned them about what she called ‘funny business’, and said when the
menses didn’t arrive it meant a girl was having a baby.

Mary tried to convince herself this couldn’t be so, that perhaps it was only the result of the anxiety of waiting for the ship to sail. But by March she was forced to face the possibility that she was expecting Graham’s child, and she consulted Sarah.

‘I reckon you are,’ she said, looking at Mary thoughtfully. ‘You poor cow, I’d throw myself overboard in the chains if I thought I was. I’ve heard tell you can get a reprieve from hanging because of your belly, but I never heard of anyone getting off transportation because of it.’

Mary’s heart sank even further then, for she had expected Sarah to pooh-pooh her fears. ‘Well, if I am to have it, I’d rather have it here than on the
Dunkirk
,’ she said defiantly. She had witnessed Lucy Perkins giving birth there and the horror of it hadn’t left her. Lucy was not released from her chains, and after some twenty hours of labour her baby was stillborn. Lucy died a few days later. No doctor was called, the only help she’d had was from the other women. Sarah had been one of them. ‘Besides, you’ll help me, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will,’ Sarah said quickly, perhaps remembering that birth too. ‘You’re strong and healthy, you’ll be all right.’

Mary lay awake all that night worrying. Not so much about the birth, but what Tench would think of her when he found out. She would never stand a chance with him now.

*

It was the start of May, just after Mary’s twenty-first birthday, when they finally heard they were to sail on Sunday the 13th to join the rest of the fleet. There would be eleven ships in all, four of them carrying nearly 600 convicts and a full company of Marines, some with their wives and children, and the rest carrying stores and provisions for the first two years.

During the long wait, most of the other prisoners had written home, or if they couldn’t write, had others write letters for them. One day back in April while Mary and the other women were allowed up on deck for exercise, Tench had suggested writing one for Mary, but she refused his offer.

‘It’s better they don’t know where I’m bound,’ she said, looking sadly towards Cornwall across the choppy sea. A green haze of spring had suddenly appeared on the land in the last few days, and she thought nostalgically of primroses on grassy banks, birds nesting, and newborn lambs out on the moors. It seemed unbelievable that she was to be torn away from the land she loved so well. ‘Better for them to think I don’t care about them any more than to imagine me in chains.’

Tench glanced down at her chains and sighed. ‘Maybe you’re right. But I think my mother would sooner know I was alive and thinking of her, even if I was on a prison ship.’

Mary felt even sadder at his words. Before long her belly would be swollen and he’d see she was having a baby. She doubted he would want to continue to be her friend then. She could just about cope with never seeing
her family again, but she didn’t think she could stand to be rejected by Tench too.

As the
Charlotte
finally weighed anchor and slipped out of Plymouth Sound, many of the women were crying and saying their goodbyes to England forever.

‘I shall come back,’ Mary said firmly. ‘I swear it.’

While many of the women grumbled even more about sea sickness, the sound of the wind in the sails, and the cuts and bruises they got from falls in bad weather, Mary found herself exhilarated once the ship got underway. The sound of wind in canvas was like music to her and she delighted in watching the bows cleave through the clear water.

The captain of the ship, a Royal Naval officer called Gilbert, was a humane man and he ordered the prisoners’ chains to be removed, and only put back on as punishment for bad behaviour, or when they reached port. And as the ship sailed down the coast of France and the weather improved, the hatches were opened up again and the stink in the holds gradually dispersed.

Mary had always loved sailing, but she had never been in anything bigger than a fishing boat, and then only for a few hours at a time. It was very different on a big ship, for you could move about and even find quiet hideaways between coiled copes and lockers to get away from everyone else.

All at once she understood why her father had always eagerly anticipated his next voyage. It was exciting to feel the deck roll beneath her feet, and there was a kind of
awe in seeing the wind harnessed to drive the ship along and the way everyone from the lowest sailor to the captain worked as one to maintain her speed and direction. The
Charlotte
was one of the slowest ships in the fleet, and the men had to work hard to keep up. Yet striving to hold their position was a challenge, and Mary could see the pride in their faces each time they managed to outrun the
Scarborough
or the
Lady Penryn
.

But it was the freedom to be up on deck for long periods which Mary appreciated above all else. She could cope with the hold at night, lying wrapped in a blanket between Bessie and Sarah; it wasn’t so terrible if she’d been outside nearly all day.

Up on deck she was free from the carping and squabbling of the other women. She could feel the wind in her hair, the sun on her face, and she forgot the filth and smells below. Her fears for the future vanished like a feather tossed up into the wind. She felt as free as the seabirds who followed in the ship’s wake.

The sounds on deck were almost as clamorous as those below: the roar of the sea, shouts from sailors, the rasps of pulled ropes and the creaking of sails. But they were good sounds, and the wind and sea spray were so clean and pure that she felt intoxicated.

She was glad most of the women found the sea frightening and the wind too cold to stay up there for long. Alone, gripping the deck rail, she could pretend to herself that she was an heiress taking a trip to Spain or even America. She could tell herself truthfully that she was doing what she’d always wanted to do, travelling the world.

Once they were underway, Mary found the sailors very much like the men back in Fowey, strong, wiry, friendly souls who grinned at her cheerfully. Without other women around she sometimes got opportunities to talk to them and ask them questions about the route to Botany Bay. Some of them were only too happy to tell her about the ports along the way they had visited before, and explained that they had to go right across the Atlantic Ocean to Rio, instead of down the African coast, to take advantage of the Trade Winds. Mary wondered how many of them had originally been press-ganged into the Navy, for they seemed to have some sympathy for the prisoners, and resentment towards most of the Marines who had precious little to do on the voyage.

Many of the Marines had brought their wives and children along too. The women looked fearful whenever they took a walk along the decks, and Mary felt sorry for them even if they were too snooty to smile. They were as much prisoners as she was, but while she knew just how harmless most of the real prisoners were, these women probably imagined they were all desperadoes, waiting for an opportunity to take over the ship and kill every soul on board.

Mary was glad that she seldom saw Tench on deck, for she could feel her body changing, even if it wasn’t apparent to anyone else. Her breasts were fuller, her belly had a curve to it. She was dismayed that her liaison with Graham had led to this predicament, something she’d never really considered could happen to her, but she was becoming resigned to it. Part of this acceptance was
because she’d been brought up to believe that all babies were a gift from God and therefore must be welcomed wholeheartedly. Whilst she had some fears about the delivery, and her own ability to be a good mother, she felt strangely warmed by the prospect of having someone all her own to love and nurture. In good weather she would find a sheltered place to sit up on deck, and lapse into day-dreams about her child. She hoped for a boy, and imagined him a little like Luke, a son of one of the Marines.

Luke was seven, a sturdy boy with dark hair and blue eyes, who smiled at her when his mother wasn’t looking. Mary liked to watch him trying to help the sailors – he was clearly as keen on sailing as she had been as a girl. As the ship sailed down the coast of France to Spain and the weather became warmer, Luke’s mother often sat with him on deck, helping him to read and write. Mary wished then that she had such skills to pass on to her child.

It was fear for her baby’s safety that finally made her approach Surgeon White. Her father had always said that ships’ surgeons were either butchers or drunks, but she had never seen White drunk. His jovial face, and his gentle manner when he checked her health just before sailing, didn’t appear to belong to a butcher, either.

She hadn’t told anyone but Sarah of her predicament, and she was certain no one, especially not Tench, had guessed. But however embarrassing it was to admit it to the doctor, she realized she must face up to it.

‘I think I’m with child,’ she blurted out, after first asking
him if he could give her something for a cut on her foot which wouldn’t heal.

He raised one bushy grey eyebrow, then asked her a few questions and got her to lie down so he could feel her belly.

‘Will I be all right?’ she asked when he made no comment.

‘Of course you will, a birth at sea is no different to one anywhere else,’ he said a little sharply. ‘I’d say it is due in early September, so we’ll be somewhere warmer and more congenial by then. You are strong and healthy, Mary, you’ll be fine.’

Mary realized then that she had probably conceived at Christmas, the night Spencer Graham had been his most loving.

‘Who is the father?’ the surgeon asked, his sharp dark eyes boring into her as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘You must say, Mary, for the father must be made responsible. If it is another convict you can be married, and a Marine can be made to give the child his name.’

It was surprising to Mary that anyone should care who’d got her pregnant, and even more so that they would take any man to task for it. But she wasn’t prepared to name Graham. Without him she wouldn’t have survived the
Dunkirk
, and then there were his wife and children who didn’t deserve the hurt of knowing he’d been unfaithful.