Remember Me (18 page)

‘Are you glad you married me?’ Will whispered later, after he’d covered them with the blanket to keep off the insects.

‘The happiest woman alive,’ she whispered back, her cheeks wet with tears of joy.

‘We’ll make something of our life here,’ he murmured. ‘We’ll plant ourselves a little garden and grow some vegetables. We’ll never go hungry while I can fish, and we’ll have other children for Charlotte to play with.’

‘Will we go back to England when our time is up?’ she asked.

‘Sure, if you want to,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Or we might stay as free men and take some land for ourselves. Anything’s possible.’

Chapter six

1789

Mary was standing waist-deep in the sea, holding tightly to the fishing net, looking as all the other helpers were towards Will in the small boat, waiting for his signal to pull the net tight.

She was very hungry, but hunger pains and the dizzy spells which went with them were just a fact of life now. After a whole year here at Port Jackson she couldn’t even remember what it was like to be without them.

She was much thinner than she’d been back on the
Dunkirk
, her skin leathery and brown from constant exposure to the sun and wind, her hands hardened like the women’s who gutted fish back in Fowey. But her looks weren’t something she ever thought about; just keeping herself and Charlotte alive was of far greater importance.

Will gave the signal and everyone holding the net began pulling and moving back to the shore. Mary’s heart leaped when she saw the abundance of fish squirming in the net. It wasn’t often they were that lucky.

The colony was close to dying of starvation. The rations
had been cut again and again because no further supplies had arrived from England yet. A great many of the provisions brought out with them were spoiled, and the original hope that within a year they would be producing home-grown food was shattered. Had draught animals and ploughs been sent out, along with men from a farming background, maybe the ground could have been tilled and cultivated quickly. But all this had been overlooked. The weather and the lack of fodder for the animals soon decimated their numbers, cereals withered in the ground and vegetables didn’t thrive.

Building work had been the priority at the start, houses for the officers, Marines, and then the convicts. But along with the lack of carpenters, an outbreak of scurvy, together with dozens of other diseases, kept the men from work, and so the building was painfully slow.

As the rations were cut, more people risked stealing food. Flogging was the punishment for this crime, but 100 lashes failed to be a deterrent, and Captain Phillip increased it to 500, and eventually to 1,000. When that didn’t work either, he finally resorted to hanging. Just the previous week Mary and Will had watched as Thomas Barrett, who was only seventeen, was hanged from the newly erected gallows for stealing some butter, dried peas and salt pork from the stores. Mary couldn’t even weep for the boy, for he’d been imprisoned for theft at the age of eleven, and she thought that death was preferable to the kind of life he’d had.

‘Come on, Mary, put your back into it,’ Will yelled at her from the little boat.

Mary laughed, for Will didn’t really mean she wasn’t pulling her weight – that shout was their secret code for ‘We’ll be eating well tonight.’

‘I don’t know what you’ve got to laugh at,’ the woman next to her said sharply as they hauled the net back on to the shore. ‘If I was in your shoes I’d be crying.’

‘Why’s that?’ Mary asked.

She didn’t trust Sadie Green an inch. She knew the only reason the woman had come down to the nets to help was in the hope of stealing a couple of fish for herself. She was one of the Londoners, foul-mouthed, cunning and lazy. And she bitterly resented that Mary appeared to have a better time of it than her.

‘Will’s gonna leave you soon,’ Sadie said, her mud-coloured eyes sparkling with malice. ‘He keeps telling the other men he isn’t legally wed to you.’

‘Is that so?’ Mary retorted with heavy sarcasm. Will had told her he didn’t believe their marriage was valid, not like a church wedding at home, but all the same she was hurt he’d bandied it about among the other men to reach the ears of people like Sadie. She wasn’t going to show that hurt though.

‘Just don’t wait around for him, Sadie, you might be waiting a long time,’ she said with a forced chuckle.

She saw the woman’s face tighten with anger. Sadie could only attract the most desperate of the male convicts. Although only about twenty-four, she had the grey look of gone-off meat, and smelled much the same. She never combed her wispy straw-coloured hair, much less washed it, and dirt was ingrained in her skin. There were no
beauties in this colony, the sun and starvation saw to that. But Sadie was probably born plain, and a life of prostitution had done the rest.

‘Why, you stuck-up cow!’ she snarled, showing the blackened stumps of her teeth. ‘What makes you think you’re better than the rest of us? You’ve got a bastard kid that ain’t Will’s.’

Mary hesitated. She was very tempted to hit Sadie, but that was just what the woman wanted, so she could say Mary started the fight and get her punished.

‘Leave me alone, if you know what’s good for you,’ Mary replied wearily. ‘This place is bad enough without picking fights.’

‘But it ain’t bad for you, is it?’ Sadie put her hands on her hips and glowered at Mary. ‘You’ve got a nice little hut, Will’s got the best job, and I bet he gets extra rations too. Lieutenant Tench is always sniffing round you too. I bet he’s the bastard’s father.’

Mary was saved from answering by an officer coming along the beach to check the catch. Sadie gave Mary a menacing look and smirked at him, then left her place on the net and flounced off.

An hour later Mary was back at her hut, having collected Charlotte from Anne Tomkin, her neighbour, who minded her while Mary was helping with the nets.

The hut was now much improved. Because of Will’s status they had been allowed planks from the saw-mill for both roof and walls. The furniture was of the most basic kind: a rough-hewn bed, with rope tied across it like a hammock, a small table made from a tree trunk with a
board nailed to its top, and two stools fashioned out of wooden crates. The floor was still hard-pressed dirt, though Will intended to put some planks down soon, and the only decoration some pretty sea shells on a shelf. Another held the few cooking pots, plates, mugs and a tin bowl to wash in. Yet however primitive, it was Mary’s haven, a place of comparative safety and peace for both herself and Charlotte.

At seventeen months Charlotte was a bonny child, with pink cheeks, black curly hair and well-rounded limbs. Her wide, joyous smile was worth a king’s ransom to Mary, and she gave shape and reason to her life. Yet at the same time, keeping Charlotte safe and well under such appalling conditions was slow torture.

While she was still a babe in arms, feeding from her mother’s breast, it was relatively easy, but once she began crawling and then walking, Mary saw danger everywhere. Aside from the most obvious things – insects, snakes, the sea and fires – there were the hidden hazards. Who knew what was buried in the sand Charlotte played on, which she could pick up and swallow. Other mothers here were very casual about their offspring, allowing them to wander and showing no anxiety if they got sunburnt, fell over, or ate something that made them sick. But Mary couldn’t be that way, she had to have Charlotte near her at all times. She tied a piece of rope around her waist to keep her close when she was mending nets, and gave Anne some fish or part of their rations to mind her when she was helping to haul them in. Even in the evening when Charlotte had fallen
asleep in the bed all three shared, Mary wouldn’t go beyond her own door, even though other mothers went out to visit friends.

While waiting for Will to come home with their rations and hopefully some fish, Mary filled the bowl with water, peeled off Charlotte’s dress and began washing her. She didn’t like to dwell on the fact that the dress was merely rags now, held together by a few threads. Or that it would have to be washed tonight and put on again tomorrow because it was the only one. Nor did she want any reminders that she hadn’t any friends to visit.

She couldn’t win in this place.

Marrying Will had been a wise choice. He had protected her from the other men, built them this hut, and had come to love Charlotte as if she were his own. But Mary hadn’t anticipated that his fishing skills would make him so important in the colony, and it was that which had brought her problems.

When they first landed, the convicts from London and other cities were suspicious of fish and refused to eat it. This was understandable, considering that where they came from it was probably at least a week old and stinking. But by the time the rations had been severely cut and starvation was a real possibility, they quickly overcame their objections. Will was elevated to hero status because he was the man who not only introduced them to something tasty and filling, but also supplied it.

Yet as Will basked in the warm glow of admiration and gratitude, Mary had lost the strong position she’d once held with the other women from the
Charlotte
. With Mary
Haydon and Catherine Fryer dripping poison in the ears of the trouble-making women from other ships, it wasn’t long before most of the women were suspicious of her. Even Bessie and Sarah, whom she thought she could count on forever, had turned against her. They called her a ‘dark one’, as if she was guilty of some treachery, when the plain fact was that they were jealous of her.

Mary understood why. They were mostly sleeping six to a hut, while she was tucked up in a strong, weatherproof one, well away from the noise and trouble in the main camp. She ate better in those early days because Will was allowed some of each catch for himself. Nor did she have to work as a servant for one of the officers as the other women did. Added to this, the women saw Mary as a ‘nark’, because officers talked to her.

Tench often came to see how she and Will were getting on, and he liked to help with the fishing at night. It was reported that even Captain Phillip had remarked that the Bryants were the model family, industrious, sober and clean.

In the early days in the colony, Mary had made a good friend of Jane Randall, who sailed on the
Lady Penryn
. She too had a baby en route, though it was born while they were berthed in Cape Town. Initially it was because Charlotte and Henrietta were so close in age that Mary and Jane became friends; they had the same anxieties for their babies, and they minded each other’s to help out. Jane was sweet-natured and fun to be with, and like-minded too about making the best of it here.

Then Captain Phillip decided to start a new settlement
on Norfolk Island, 1,000 miles away. It appeared to have a better climate, and the ground was more fertile, so some of the convicts, Jane among them, were sent there to alleviate the food shortages. Mary still missed her badly. Jane had never been jealous of her, she was always glad fortune seemed to shine on her friend.

Mary took the view that many of her former friends could be just as fortunate as her if they only used their brains. In the early days, Mary had tried to make them at least see the logic of appearing to be industrious. It was so easy to do, the officers only poked their noses in if there was any trouble, and to her mind the majority of the Marines were half-wits. Likewise, keeping yourself clean and tidy, and not running around hunting for men and drink, got you privileges and respect.

But sadly, one by one her old friends had fallen into apathy and allowed themselves to be influenced by a few forceful characters who thought they were proving their toughness by fighting and stealing. Nothing was safe from these women, and they recruited new members into their band by offering the drink they acquired through theft or prostitution.

Mary understood why Sarah had gone that way. She’d been raped on that first night, and found herself pregnant afterwards. Her baby was stillborn, and that brought back all the pain of the two children left behind in England. Drink was the only thing which made her life a little more bearable.

But most of the women hadn’t got such a good excuse. They had become filthy slatterns who neglected their
children, preyed on those weaker than themselves, and went with any man for a shot of rum.

Mary was like a pricking conscience. They sneered at her because she bathed in the sea every day, cleaned her hut and kept Charlotte constantly beside her. But Mary knew that most of their spite and scorn was purely because she had the man they all wanted.

Will was attractive in every way. His looks, height and muscular body were almost enough on their own, but added to this he was a kind man with a jovial, cheeky nature that endeared him to everyone. He was also strong and clever with his hands, so it wasn’t surprising that everyone, from Captain Phillip right down to the lowest of the prisoners, held him in high esteem.

But what they didn’t know, and Mary would never divulge, was that Will was in fact quite weak. He might be able to read and write, but he didn’t use his brain and was unimaginative. Left to his own devices, he would be much like all the other men, living in squalor, getting drunk as often as he could, and bemoaning his bad luck.

Mary was the strong-willed and wily one. It was she who realized the importance of fish for their survival, and she talked Will into seeing his skill as the trump card to improve their life here. Will’s bargaining for a hut in a good position, the use of the only small boat, and a portion of each catch for himself, was all her doing. In return, Mary made their hut more homely so that he would want to be there, and pandered to his vanity so that he felt important.

If only he had listened to her when a new rule ordering
that the entire catch should go into the stores was made. Mary had wanted him to go straight to Captain Phillip, not only to dig his heels in and insist on keeping his original rights, but also to discuss her plan with the captain. This was to build a bigger boat which would then be able to go further out into the sea and get catches big enough to feed everyone well. She also suggested they used surplus fish as a fertilizer for the soil, something she’d seen done back home in Cornwall.