Remember Me (24 page)

‘I don’t mean now,’ she said, sitting up beside him and leaning over to kiss him. ‘We can’t do it without instruments, charts or a store of food. But what you can do is win the Governor’s confidence. Take the boat out further and further each time, but always come back. He’s trusting you now, think how much more trust he’ll have in you if you seem to be playing the game his way!’

‘I can’t see the point,’ Will said irritably. ‘Even if I did get him to trust me well enough so I wasn’t watched, I wouldn’t even know which was the best direction to go in to find a port.’

‘Tench was telling me about the Dutch East Indies the other day. There’s a busy port called Kupang,’ Mary said. ‘He said it was over the sea at the top end of this place.’

Will made a sort of guffaw. ‘Over the sea at the top end of this place!’ he scoffed. ‘What kind of directions are those? Does he know how many leagues it is? Has anyone sailed to it afore? Don’t talk daft, girl!’

Mary slumped back down, angry that he was mocking her. ‘I don’t know yet, but I’ll find out,’ she said with grim determination. ‘We have to escape, Will. If we don’t, Emmanuel and Charlotte will die.’

‘No, Mary,’ he said, turning his back on her dismissively. ‘They won’t, food will come, you’ll see.’

‘Maybe it will,’ she said, but she ran one finger down the deep scars from the flogging on his back. ‘Perhaps
the children will even be lucky enough to survive all the outbreaks of fever, to avoid being bitten by a snake, and they won’t be corrupted by the other convicts. But let’s hope neither of us lives long enough to see Emmanuel tied to the triangle to be flogged.’

She felt Will stiffen under her fingers. She knew he still had nightmares about the flogging.

‘I’d kill anyone who tried to do that to him,’ he said.

‘You’ll be too weak by then,’ she said gently. ‘Old before your time with the struggle to survive. So will I be. That’s why we have to go soon, while we’re still capable of protecting the children.’

He sighed deeply. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said.

‘And while you’re thinking about it, do what I said and win the Governor’s trust,’ Mary said. ‘Once we have that, we’re half-way there.’

Mary lay awake long after Will had fallen asleep. She watched and listened constantly, whereas Will went around with his eyes and ears closed. He might think there were adequate provisions for many months yet in the stores, but she knew better. When the officers dined with the Governor now, they had to take their own bread, and the fare at Government House was little better than her own. One evening they’d dined on dog!

Just a few days ago an elderly convict had died while getting his rations in the store, and when Surgeon White examined his body he found his stomach to be completely empty. The only reason Mary still had some fight left in her, and milk in her breasts for Emmanuel, was because
of fish Will brought home from the day’s catch, and the grubs and berries the natives had introduced her to.

Bennelong had finally made his escape from the settlement, once the food and rum he had become used to grew short. Gardens, even the Governor’s own, had been constantly plundered for vegetables, despite the severe flogging that resulted if the culprit was caught. It wasn’t only convicts that did it, a seaman from the
Supply
was caught, and one of the Marines. Will had been compelled to dig a hole under their hut to keep their own meagre rations safe. He’d made it like the ones smugglers used back in Cornwall, lined with wood, and a false floor laid down on it.

Yet Mary thrived and still managed to feed her family because she refused to give way to utter despair as some were doing. As she told Will, it was just a case of hanging on, being helpful and pleasant to the officers so that when ships did arrive, as they surely must, she and Will would be in positions of trust. That way they could make opportunities to get the things they needed.

The days crept on, the misery of hunger growing more acute with each one. The weather turned very cold too, the wind eerily rustling the paper-dry leaves of the gums, and all public work ground to a halt because there was no one fit enough to do it any longer.

The convicts merely shuffled around now, every gaunt face illustrating the nature of real starvation. At night Mary often heard small children wailing pitifully from hunger. It was the worst sound she’d ever heard.

Will had appeared to heed Mary’s advice, for he made himself increasingly popular with the officers and troops by his diligence in fishing. For this he was rewarded with a share of the catch, and being allowed to pick his own helpers. James Martin, Jamie Cox and Sam Bird, his most trusted friends, often went with him, and although there were usually a couple of Marines along too, this wasn’t always the case. Will fished the waters beyond the Heads frequently, sometimes going several miles out to sea. He also struck up friendships with some of the natives as they fished from their canoes. Often it was they who directed him to large shoals.

Will sometimes saw Bennelong as he sailed down the harbour. He would paddle out in his canoe and occasionally climb aboard the cutter for a chat. Mary was sure that if she and Will managed to get their hands on some spirits, he could easily be bribed into helping them escape.

Just when it looked as if all hope of rescue was gone, in the afternoon of 3 June the flag was struck on South Head. As the cry went up that a ship was coming, pandemonium broke out. Men downed tools and cheered, women came hobbling out of their huts and hugged one another.

Watkin Tench, along with Surgeon White and Captain Phillip, took his boat and went off down the harbour. All three of them were as excited and emotional as the rest of the settlement, despite the discomfort of heavy rain and a stiff wind. As they drew closer to the Heads and saw the big ship coming in flying English colours,
Phillip transferred on to a fishing boat to go back, leaving Tench and White to go and collect welcome news from home.

‘Look at that magical word on her stern,’ White said, pointing to the painted sign that read ‘London’. ‘I had begun to doubt I would ever see such a thing again.’

The ship was the
Lady Juliana
, and because of the strong winds she was forced to anchor in Spring Cove just inside North Head, but Tench and White went alongside and called out a welcome to the ship’s officers.

‘You can’t know how welcome you are,’ Tench called out. ‘We feared we’d never get the provisions we need so desperately. Can you tell us what you are carrying so we can take the good news back to the settlement?’

‘Two hundred and twenty-five women felons, whores every one of them,’ came the shouted reply from one of the officers.

Tench laughed, he thought it was a joke. But his laughter stopped abruptly when a group of tow-haired women suddenly appeared on deck, shouting obscenities.

‘You have provisions too?’ White yelled, aware that Tench was too stunned to resume any further questions. ‘And the medicine we need?’

‘Seventy-five barrels of flour,’ the ship’s officer called back. ‘That’s all. We set sail with the
Guardian
, she carried the stores, but she got holed by an iceberg.’

By nightfall all the convicts were in despair.

Captain Phillip had returned to the harbour with a beam on his face, confirming to them that it was exactly
as the fishermen had reported, a big English ship, anchored at Spring Cove.

The convicts waited, expecting Lieutenant Tench and Surgeon White to arrive back an hour or two later looking happier still. Many of their number hastily ate the last of their rations, in the belief that by the following day they would be given more than they usually ate in a week.

But Tench and White came back grim-faced and silent, going straight up to Government House without a word to anyone. When one of the men who had been on the cutter reported that there were over 200 women on the new ship and no provisions, they were not believed. Some laughed, assuming it had to be a joke. Yet as they watched other officers speeding up to Government House, and no sounds of revelry wafting out, they slowly realized that it had to be true.

The male convicts were far too weak with hunger to be excited by a huge number of new women descending on them. Their reaction was only fear that their rations would be cut even more drastically. But to most of the women it was a calamity. Bad though it was to be forced to share rations with strangers, the prospect of new women stealing their men away was even worse.

A relationship with someone, whether you were legally married or not, eased the misery of life in the colony. In most cases the partnerships were a compromise, especially for the women. Back home few of them would have chosen the mate they had here. But choice was limited, plain girls were grateful for being wanted, the prettier girls felt safer with a protector, and where a baby
was a result of the arrangement, it gave some purpose to their life.

Mary was more nervous than most when she heard the news of the
Juliana
and its cargo of women. She knew it wasn’t her beauty or her cleverness that had kept Will with her for two years. He had stayed with her purely because there was a shortage of women, and by the time he’d got to know the prettier ones better, he found most had serious flaws in their characters.

Death, and men being moved to Norfolk Island, had decimated their numbers. There weren’t more than seventy men left here now, and a great many of those were physical wrecks. Among 200 new women who had been cooped up on a ship for months, there were almost certainly going to be dozens who would set their sights on Will.

Chapter nine

Every single woman in the settlement turned out to see the women from the
Juliana
being rowed ashore. Apart from the weather, it was almost like a re-enactment of their first day here, for they could hear the same kind of excited laughter and the ribald remarks they’d made themselves. But whereas they had arrived in early February, which in this upside-down country meant summer with blazing sunshine, so hot that many of them ran into the sea to cool down, the new arrivals were experiencing winter. The sky was grey, a keen wind was blowing, making the sea choppy, and it was very cold.

There should have been sisterly concern for the new women. After all, they had been through a long, gruelling voyage, and now they were about to enter hell. Yet just the way they looked, even from a distance, was enough to make the old-timers forget any kindly thoughts and band together in antipathy and resentment. The new arrivals’ clothes were vivid colours, many wore hats trimmed with flowers and feathers, they were plump and healthy, and they looked for all the world like a troupe of actresses, not convicts.

Mary clutched Emmanuel closer to her breast in fear.
Her first exposure to the convicts from the other transport ships in the fleet was printed indelibly on her mind. They had all seemed so much tougher than her, conniving and ruthless too. Time and the hardships here had made all the survivors equal now, but she was afraid these new women would alter everything.

‘Lots of ladies,’ Charlotte said, looking up at her mother with undisguised glee. ‘Pretty ladies.’

At her child’s innocent words Mary felt a pang of shame. They were, after all, just women like herself. All of them had known chains and the horrors of prison and had been wrenched from their families and friends. She didn’t want Charlotte to grow up in a climate of bitterness and hate. She decided she must put aside her fear and jealousy and welcome the newcomers.

‘I thought we might have had a few fights on our hands,’ Surgeon White said to Tench over dinner at White’s house the following evening. ‘But thanks to the actions of Mary Bryant the new women appear to be settling in well.’

The two men had become friends on the
Charlotte
, despite a twenty-year age gap. Their interests and family backgrounds were similar, and though the surgeon was more concerned with the general health of the colony, and Tench with the challenge of making it a success, they were both intensely fascinated by this new, as yet unexplored land. They had gone on several exploratory trips into the bush together, and shared the same curiosity about its natives. Both of them also had compassion
for the convicts, something few of the other officers felt.

By candlelight, White’s dining room would pass for being much like any country doctor’s back home in England, with its whitewashed walls, snowy table-cloth, plain, serviceable china, laden bookshelves and a couple of treasured landscapes on the walls. By daylight, however, the crudeness of the building showed. The walls were wattle and daub, and in heavy rain holes often appeared. The floor beneath a rug was uneven boards. But whatever its shortcomings, it was a haven of civilization for White and his dinner guests.

While Charles White often regretted his decision to come out here with the fleet, it was mainly because of the lack of medical equipment and medicine rather than the absence of comforts. A widower for over ten years, he had grown used to the bachelor life, and he had two convict women, Anne and Maria, who cooked and kept house for him. He also had little Nunburry, the native boy he’d adopted, to take care of, and some very good friends. Tonight his mood was mellow. He had managed to acquire a bottle of brandy, and he and Tench had dined on a first-class sea bass, with some carrots and potatoes from White’s own garden. It was truly miraculous that the vegetables hadn’t been stolen, but perhaps by showing Anne and Maria a little kindness, and giving them some extra food, he had gained their loyalty.

‘Mary’s a good woman,’ Tench agreed. ‘I daresay she remembered how hard it was for her to adjust when she first arrived here. If only all the women had her practical nature and generosity of spirit!’

He had been surprised and touched to see Mary helping with the allocation of huts for the new arrivals. She seemed to be making a real effort to make the new women feel welcome. He wished her attitude was a general one; already there had been reports of clothing and other personal possessions being stolen.

‘There’s a fair few trouble-makers among the new ones,’ White sighed, remembering the two women he’d separated for fighting and the profanities they’d screamed at him. ‘According to the reports, they carried on their whoring with the sailors all the way here. A great number of them are with child. But they are healthy at least, save for the pox of course.’