Remember Me (30 page)

Mary had fallen asleep for a couple of hours at a time, once the children were sleeping, but she kept waking with a start, afraid that whoever was at the tiller had dropped off too, and that they were drifting on to rocks.

Yet despite the discomfort, she certainly hadn’t found herself wishing she was back in Sydney Cove. The weather was good, with steady north to north-east winds driving them along, and all the men were still in high spirits, discussing endlessly how different people back in the settlement would have reacted to their escape.

‘Cap’n Phillip will be wild with fury, to be sure,’ James Martin said gleefully.

‘I hope Sarah wasn’t too sore at me when she found my note,’ Jamie Cox said with a touch of sadness.

‘You did well not to give in to temptation and tell her before we left,’ Mary said soothingly. She knew Jamie was very fond of Sarah Young, and it must have been hard for him to leave her behind.

Although Mary thought she had known all the men quite well before they left the settlement, she had soon discovered they all had aspects to their personalities she hadn’t been aware of before. James Martin, the ugly Irishman, had always been amusing, a funny man who could tell a great story, but something of a rake, chasing women and drink, and always ready for a fight. Yet she had found him to be unexpectedly fatherly, often taking Charlotte or Emmanuel into his arms to give her a break.

Red-haired, freckle-faced Samuel Bird had seemed to her a very morose man, and she had never really understood why Will thought so much of him. Yet now they were free he was laughing as much as anyone else and though he didn’t say much, he listened to the others and responded.

Bill Allen and Nat Lilly were the ones she knew least, and they were complete opposites. Bill was stocky and bald-headed, with a pug nose that looked as if it had been pummelled with fists. In fact he looked every inch the ‘Iron Man’ of his nickname. Nat, with his cherubic face, big eyes and long blond hair, wasn’t tough at all, in fact Mary had considered him a bit of a nancy boy. But he fitted in with any group of men he was set to work with, and everyone liked him. He was also very loyal to Will.

Both Nat and Bill had been in better health than any of the other men who arrived with the Second Fleet, and Mary had never discovered why. In Nat’s case it was probably better not to ask.

It was this ability to survive which had made Mary pick both men for the escape. Yet now she saw they were both surprisingly sensitive. On the very first morning they had fixed up an awning to protect the children from the sun, and took charge of doling out the food fairly.

William Moreton was undoubtedly one of the more intelligent prisoners. He was also unattractive, with a large domed forehead, bulging eyes and a tight, narrow mouth. Sadly, he wasn’t improving with knowing; he was very argumentative, and Mary was a little afraid he was going to put someone’s back up before long.

Even Jamie Cox and Sam Broome, both quiet, thoughtful men who had appeared to be content to be led by the nose by the others, had asserted themselves a little. At one point Jamie had been brave enough to tell Will to stop bragging, and Sam Broome had told James Martin to mind his language because of Mary and Charlotte. Mary had no doubt that in the next few weeks she would find out even more surprising things about everyone.

Now and then the men would talk dreamily about what they would do when they got back to England. They all knew that it would be foolhardy to attempt going to their home towns, for fear of being re-arrested. London was the favourite destination, there they would be inconspicuous, and with a new name they could start all over again.

Mary couldn’t bring herself to think that far ahead, it
seemed like tempting Fate to her. The reality of it was that they had no money, their clothes were in rags, and they’d need a tremendous amount of luck to avoid turning back to crime.

Yet despite her qualms sometimes she couldn’t help but lapse into a little day-dream in which she found herself walking up the cobbled street from Fowey harbour holding her children by their hands. She imagined standing at the open door and seeing her mother inside the house, bent over the cooking pot on the fire. She would turn her head, see them and almost faint with surprise and delight. It was of course an unrealistic and fanciful day-dream, but it helped Mary’s aching back and warmed her very bones.

The weather turned on the third day, with rain and a stronger blustery wind, and Will became concerned at the boat being rather overloaded. ‘We must find somewhere to land until it passes,’ he said.

A little later William Moreton, who was up in the bows, suddenly bellowed out that he could see what looked like a good spot.

Everyone looked to where he was pointing and saw a small cove with a pebble beach. Will went in closer to check for rocks under the water, and as there were none, agreed it was ideal.

‘Let’s hope there’s a tavern,’ James exclaimed.

That made everyone laugh, even William Moreton who hadn’t appeared to have been amused by James’s sense of humour up till now.

Will brought the boat in as close to the beach as he could, then James swam ashore with a rope to pull her into the shallows.

‘Natives have been here,’ James said, once they were all safely on the beach. He pointed to the charred remains of a fire and a great many fish bones.

‘Well, they aren’t here now,’ Will said, scanning the cove carefully. ‘Besides, I know enough of their words to tell them we mean no harm.’

The rain stopped, the sun came out again, and Mary chased Charlotte along the beach, laughing at the sheer joy of a night on dry land. There was a stream of fresh water from which they refilled their water cask and washed their salt-encrusted faces, and Mary found a plant that looked like cabbage. While Will, Bill and James took the seine net to fish, William lit a fire, Samuel Bird and Nat collected wood, and Sam Broome and Jamie Cox made a crude shelter under the trees.

The fishing was good, the men came back with a quantity of grey mullet, and along with some of the rice they’d brought with them, and the cabbage leaves, it was quite a feast.

‘But for the dire lack of beer and some buxom wenches, I could be happy here,’ James said, as he lay back on the beach after the meal.

Mary giggled. She hadn’t always approved of James in the past, but she was growing to like him more with every hour that passed. His sense of the ridiculous warmed her and he could make time pass so quickly with his stories. She had always thought him a strange-looking man
before, with his very bony, lopsided face, large ears and nose, and thick dark eyebrows that met in the middle. Her mother had always said that was a sign that a man was ‘born to be hung’, and perhaps he was, for he had only escaped it by a hair’s-breadth. But his lack of good looks was compensated by his personality. She didn’t find it so odd now that many women back at the settlement were after him.

That night they all slept well, huddled together in their shelter, the fire just outside. As Mary lay there, waiting for sleep to overtake her, Will curled against her back and the children tucked in between her and Sam, she felt warm, well fed and really happy. It wasn’t just that she was freed from the penal colony, more that something inside her had been set free.

As a child she’d always wished she’d been born a boy, purely so she could go fishing, climb rocks and have adventures. Girls just didn’t get opportunities to do anything more than ape their mothers, waiting on the menfolk. She supposed that when she went off to Plymouth that would change, but of course it didn’t. All these years since she was first imprisoned, she’d had to yield to men’s superiority, just to survive. But here she was with eight men, and she knew in her heart that in the weeks to come they were going to become dependent on her. She already sensed their admiration for her. She saw in their eyes and their manner that they knew she had dreamed up the plan, however loudly Will boasted otherwise. When she’d taken her turn at the tiller, they realized she knew boats almost as well as Will.

But her trump card was her passionate determination to get to Kupang. The men might believe they shared it, but Mary knew they weren’t driven by anywhere near such a powerful force as she was. That force was her children, and she would put up with any hardships, brave every peril to keep them alive to find permanent safety. She slid her arm right over both Emmanuel and Charlotte, the warmth from their small bodies comforting her and adding to her determination.

‘How long have we been sailing now, Will?’ Nat Lilly asked one afternoon, his voice weary and jaded. He no longer looked so cherubic, his once golden hair was matted and dull with salt, and his fair skin was a mass of blisters from the sun and wind. ‘It seems like a year.’

Will kept a log, which he assiduously wrote up every couple of days, and but for him none of them would have known what day or even month it was.

‘It’s well over a month,’ Will replied, pulling hard on the oars as there was little wind that day. ‘It’s the 2nd of April today.’

‘So how much more of this coastline can there be?’ Nat asked, his full lips curling petulantly as he looked towards the shore. Not an hour since, he had pointed out that it rarely looked any different however far they’d gone in a day.

‘Don’t ask damn fool questions like that,’ Will replied irritably. ‘How would I know, it’s not charted is it?’

‘Well, whoever sailed it before must have known if it was one thousand miles, or five,’ Nat said sullenly.

‘Daresay they did, but they didn’t bother to mention it,’ Will said tersely. ‘Now, shut up and row faster.’

Mary was at the tiller, Emmanuel on her knee, and Charlotte at her feet, playing with a doll James had made her from a piece of rope. She heard what passed between Nat and Will, just as she’d heard each of the men at other times questioning exactly how far Kupang was. They all needed a rest and she hoped against hope they would find somewhere soon where they could stay for a couple of days.

Since they made their first stop in what they’d called Fortunate Cove, they had stuck to a pattern: a few days’ sailing, then a rest for two days when they found somewhere with fresh water. Tension grew all the time while they were on the boat; they got stiff, cold and sharp with one another. But as soon as they got ashore all the bad feeling seemed to vanish.

Will was getting more and more worried about the boat, though, for it was taking on water badly now. William Moreton kept mentioning the monsoons too, he said he thought they were sailing towards one. The boat might have been fine sailing around Sydney Bay, but it wasn’t intended for a long voyage packed with so many people.

Late that same afternoon they came to a big bay as fine as Sydney, and everyone immediately became more cheerful.

‘We’ll have to get the boat out of the water and caulk her seams,’ Will said, then looking at Mary he added, ‘You can wash everyone’s clothes, my girl.’

Mary smarted, but said nothing in reply. She would have washed everyone’s clothes anyway, but ordering her to do it was Will’s way of admonishing her.

She knew exactly what was wrong with him; he was losing his spirit. The men had stopped praising him for getting them away. Perhaps too he was dwelling on how if he hadn’t escaped, his sentence would have been up now. And of course he was worried about the boat’s ability to hold together long enough to get them to Kupang.

Mary thought he’d probably be relieved if someone was to suggest they stayed for the rest of the winter months in a bay like this one. But he wouldn’t suggest it himself for fear of looking cowardly. Also, he didn’t like the way the men acted towards his wife.

It had begun with James getting a splinter from an oar in his hand about a week into the voyage. Mary had dug it out and he kept calling her ‘Mother Mary’. Since then, every time someone had something wrong with them, they asked her opinion on it. To Mary, this was what anyone would expect – she was the only woman after all, and she’d picked up quite a lot of basic medical knowledge from Surgeon White, both on the
Charlotte
and in the settlement. But Will seemed to think it was because they had designs on her.

He had also made a fuss about how all of them, save William Moreton and himself, vied to be next to her in the boat, and took charge of Charlotte when she was feeding Emmanuel. Mary knew perfectly well that none of them did this as a prospective lover. It was just
brotherly, and maybe sitting next to her as she nursed Emmanuel reminded them of how it had been with their own mothers. Perhaps, too, they were weary of acting tough the way Will did all the time. Talking to her, they could drop their guard for a while. She couldn’t understand why Will saw anything more sinister in it.

Bill had confided in her that he’d been a brute to women in the past, but perhaps that was because his father had always hit his mother. Nat had admitted that he had allowed some of the sailors to use him like a woman on his transport ship, for it was the only way of obtaining extra food and getting out of the holds. Sam Bird had told Mary he stole rations from other people’s huts when things were really bad, and now he felt terribly ashamed.

She didn’t think any the less of the men for telling her these things, even if they were ugly. She felt shared confidences bound them closer together.

Once they were ashore, a shelter erected and a fire lit, Mary put Emmanuel into his sling, tied it around her, and leaving Charlotte playing on the beach where the men were hauling in the boat, she went off to look for things to eat.

She found some more sweet tea leaves, and some of the acid berries Surgeon White had set so much store by, but having failed to find any of the leaves that were like cabbage, she turned back.

All at once she saw a group of natives watching her from beneath a tree. She was momentarily alarmed as she
was some distance from the men, but she waved her hand, which the natives back in Sydney had seemed to understand as a friendly gesture, and smiled at them. She sensed they were just baffled by her, not hostile, so she walked back to the men on the beach.