Remember Me (35 page)

‘So?’ she exclaimed.

James rubbed his hands over his face distractedly.

‘Don’t you see? As soon as they are taken to Wanjon,
he’s going to assume they are the rest of the crew from our supposed wreck. Bloody Will, he could never tell a story without adding some embroidery.’

Mary winced. She had been cross with Will when she heard he hadn’t stuck to the exact story they’d planned while out at sea. He should have said that the whaler sank and they were the only survivors. That way it would all have been cut and dried. But once Will had Wanjon’s sympathy he couldn’t stop embellishing the story and added there were other survivors in another boat. Why he said this Mary didn’t know, but as a result Wanjon would be duty-bound at least to make inquiries about the missing men.

Mary’s heart skipped a beat. James was right, this was likely to be their undoing.

‘Have they come from Port Jackson?’ she asked.

‘No. From Tahiti in a ship called the
Pandora
. Captain Edwards, the master of the ship, had been out searching for the mutineers from the
Bounty
. He’s still got ten he captured. The rest went down with the
Pandora
.’

Mary gasped. They had all heard about the mutiny on the
Bounty
from Detmer Smith back in Sydney, and they were even more intrigued when they arrived here in Kupang to discover that coincidentally this was where Captain Bligh and eighteen of his men landed two years earlier, having been cast adrift in an open boat by the mutineers.

While Mary had no way of knowing whether Captain Bligh deserved his plight or not, one thing she did know was that if the English Navy had sent out another ship
to bring the mutineers in, the captain wasn’t going to be a soft touch like Wanjon.

‘We’ll be called in for questioning,’ she said, her stomach turning over. ‘Oh God, James! What are we going to do? It’s easy enough to fool someone who doesn’t speak much English, but it won’t be so easy with an English sea captain.’

James half smiled. One of the things he liked most about Mary was how quick she was to grasp things. ‘If we just stick to our story, we might be all right. Four months is far too short a time for the news of our escape to have reached England, and I doubt this Captain Edwards could have heard it anywhere else.’

Mary thought for a moment. If James did the talking, she was pretty certain he could convince anyone they were the crew of a whaler. But an English captain would want to know where the ship came from, the name of its owner and a great deal more information than they could plausibly invent. Then there was Will!

‘What if Will gets drunk and starts bragging?’ she asked.

‘That’s what I really came to talk about,’ James said, putting his hand on her arm. ‘Mary, you’ve got to take him in hand, make him stay away from the bars, and the port too, until these men sail off.’

‘And how am I going to do that?’ she asked.

‘You’re a clever woman,’ he smiled. ‘You’ll find a way.’

After James had gone to round up the other men and warn them of the danger they were in, Mary called
Charlotte, who had been playing with some other children, and put her to bed with Emmanuel.

It was growing dark now, and she sat with the children until Charlotte fell asleep. As she looked down at their peaceful little faces, tears trickled down her cheeks. She had put them through so much, taken them almost to the jaws of death, and now there was a further threat to their safety.

Was she jinxed? Had some evil spell been cast over her at birth that meant her whole life would be an endless round of suffering and anguish? She had reconciled herself to the fact that Will might leave her. She didn’t want him to, for despite his faults she cared deeply for him, but she knew she could cope with that. She had also realized that she was unlikely ever to get back to England, with or without Will. But that didn’t seem to matter either. The only really important thing to her was to keep her children safe, happy, healthy and well fed. Until now she had believed she could do that here, with or without Will, for she knew that the other men, particularly Sam Broome and James Martin, held her in high regard.

It was strange, considering she wasn’t a real beauty, that she had some kind of inexplicable power over men: Lieutenant Graham, Tench, Detmer Smith, and Will too, though he fought against it. Was it likely to work on this Captain Edwards, or even Wanjon?

She went outside later and sat down on a low stool by the door. It was dark now and very quiet, just a few people sitting by their fires, talking in low voices. A crescent moon hung above the palm trees, and Mary
could hear waves breaking on the shore in the distance. It was paradise here, and until James had told her this disturbing news, she would have been only too happy to stay for ever.

Should she go now and try to find Will? She glanced back at the hut and decided against that. It was too late to ask someone to keep an ear out for her children, and if Will was drunk he would only be abusive.

She wondered if he had a woman in the port, as he often didn’t come home at all. Now she came to think of it, he hadn’t made love to her once since they arrived here. Was that because she had been sick? Because he was afraid she might get pregnant again, or just because he felt he wasn’t the big man now she was the one who was admired and respected?

Mary had never been above using sex as a lure to get Will to fall in with her plans before, but she wished she had some other option now. Why should she have to appease him just to get him to listen to her? Surely any decent man faced with a potentially dangerous situation for his wife, children and friends would happily stay sober, lie low and keep quiet until it had gone away?

It was some hours later that Mary heard him stumbling down the path into the village. She knew by the unsteadiness of his feet that he was very drunk, and it would be wiser to wait until morning to tackle him. He fell into the hut, crashing down on to the floor, not even making it to the sleeping mat, and was out cold within seconds.

Birds singing and squawking woke Mary up. It was barely dawn, but just light enough to see that Will was
stretched out on his back, a few feet from her. He stank of sweat and rum, and his shirt and breeches were filthy, perhaps, as he so often claimed, from unloading a ship.

Swallowing her revulsion, she moved nearer to him and snuggled into his chest, unbuttoning his shirt and running her fingers over his chest.

‘Get off,’ he growled. ‘Can’t a man sleep in peace?’

‘Take your clothes off and come on to the mat with me,’ she whispered, kissing his chest and moving her hand down to the buttons on his breeches.

‘Leave me alone, woman,’ he snapped, pushing her away harshly. ‘If I wanted that I could get it in the port.’

‘So this is just a place to sleep, is it?’ Mary retorted angrily. ‘If you don’t come back here to see me and the children, bugger off for good.’

Even as she said it she knew it was a mistake. He leaped up and kicked out at her, sending her flying back to where Charlotte and Emmanuel lay asleep.

‘You’re a she-devil,’ he yelled. ‘My luck ran out when I got stuck with you. What you want is a lap-dog. But I’ll never be one. I’m off on the next ship to be free of you.’

His boot had caught her in the ribs and it hurt badly, but it was the venom in his voice which hurt more.

‘Shut up and listen to me,’ she insisted. ‘There’s some English naval men arrived in open boats. Didn’t James find you last night to warn you?’

She saw a flicker of something flash across his face, and knew James had found him, but Will had probably been too drunk to take in what he’d said.

‘We’re all in danger,’ she went on, her voice cracking
with fear. ‘This is no time for being spiteful. We’ve got to plan what we’re going to say. You’ve got to stop drinking and keep your head clear.’

For a moment she thought he was going to calm down, but instead an angry red flush swept across his face. He had put on weight in the two months they’d been here, and he looked like a giant as he glowered down at her.

‘I’m sick of you telling me what to do,’ he snarled. ‘You can lead the others round by the nose like prize geldings, but not me. I’m not afraid of some arse of an English officer. No one’s going to put me in chains again, especially you.’

He wheeled round and left the hut, taking a swipe at the door post as he left, which trembled from the force. She could hear him muttering as he went off up the path to the port, and her heart sank.

For the next few days Mary lived in acute fear, expecting at any moment to be summoned to Wanjon’s house. He had been very kind to her at their only meeting after she had recovered from her sickness. He had praised her for her fortitude, made a fuss of the children, and asked her to come to him if she needed further help at any time. She felt he was the kind of honourable man who, if she had been able to admit the truth about herself in the first place, might very well have protected her now. But men like that weren’t likely to feel much sympathy when they felt they had been duped in the first place.

To make matters worse for her, Will continued to stay away. The other men told her he was drinking even more,
swaggering around the town as if he was a ship’s captain. James Martin, William Moreton and Samuel Bird had all tried to make him see sense and retreat back to the village and keep out of sight as they were doing. But Will would have none of it; he even said that he’d completed his sentence so no one could touch him.

‘The bastard doesn’t care that he’ll bring us all down,’ William Moreton admitted to Mary one evening. ‘I wish to God we’d left him stranded in White Bay.’

Mary looked at each of the men grouped around her and her heart ached at their fearful expressions. They had become like brothers to her in the weeks at sea, each sharing some personal story with her, whether about their mother, the crime for which they were sentenced, or a girl they loved back home in England. They had behaved like gentlemen to her, and Emmanuel and Charlotte would go to any one of them for comfort as easily as they went to Will. They weren’t bad men, just boys who went astray for a while and had surely paid the full price for their crimes. They had been semi-starved, savagely flogged and sent to the other side of the world in terrible hardship.

Mary knew she couldn’t just watch and wait while her husband, their so-called friend, acted like a fool and put them all in jeopardy. She had to stop him.

‘I’ll try to talk to him again,’ she said. ‘Stay here with the children. I’ll go up to the port.’

Mary found Will in the third bar she looked in. He was sprawled on a bench, a half-empty bottle of rum on the
table in front of him, and several days’ growth of beard on his chin. There were five or six other men near him, yet from Mary’s viewpoint, looking through a dusty window, they didn’t look like real friends, just drinking companions.

It was the first time she’d been to the port after dark, and her heart was pounding with fright, for she’d already been accosted twice by foreign sailors. She knew that most if not all of the women out on the crowded streets were whores. She was frightened to go into the bar, for she couldn’t count on Will protecting her.

Taking a deep breath and tightening her shawl over her shoulders, she walked in and went straight up to Will.

‘Please come home, Will,’ she begged him. ‘Emmanuel’s ill.’

She knew he would be angry when he discovered this wasn’t so, but it was the only thing she could think of which might make him come with her without an ugly scene.

He looked at her suspiciously, his eyes barely focusing. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘He’s got a fever,’ she said quickly. ‘Please come, Will, I’m worried about him.’

There was a titter of laughter from the men he was drinking with. Mary realized they probably didn’t speak English and therefore they might think she was a whore offering herself to him. ‘Please, Will,’ she pleaded. ‘Come now.’

His lip curled back disdainfully as he glanced at his
companions and the bottle of rum. Thankfully it seemed his son had a greater value, for he got up unsteadily.

‘I’ll be back,’ he said self-importantly to the other men, and they grinned, showing rotten teeth. One made a crude gesture with his fist.

Out in the noisy, crowded street, Mary sped on ahead so Will couldn’t question her, leaving him lumbering along behind. But when they reached the narrow path to the village, Mary had to slow down in the pitch darkness, and it was only then that she became afraid of how he’d react when he found she’d dragged him away from his drink on false pretences.

‘He’s coming,’ she said as she got into the clearing where the men were sitting by the fire waiting for her. Nat’s big eyes were even bigger with fear, Jamie was white-faced, and even Bill, the tough one, was chewing on his knuckles. Mary made a kind of hopeless gesture with her hands, hoping that would warn them she hadn’t yet had an opportunity to talk to Will, and she didn’t expect him to be receptive.

‘Will!’ James exclaimed as he came staggering out into the clearing. ‘Where’ve you been hiding? We need to talk to you.’

‘Not now, Emmanuel’s sick,’ Will retorted, his face tightening to see them all there.

‘He’s not sick,’ Mary said quietly. ‘I said that to get you back here.’

‘You did what?’ Will said, glowering at her.

‘I had to, it was the only way,’ she replied, taking a step back from him in case he took a swing at her. ‘We’re all
worried. It isn’t just your freedom you’re risking, it’s all of ours.’

‘That’s right, Will,’ James agreed. ‘We’re all in this together. Or so we thought.’

Will looked slowly round the group of men, then shrugged. ‘I promised to get you away from the camp. I did that, brought you here. Do you expect me to wetnurse you forever too?’

‘None of us need wet-nursing,’ Bill growled at him, getting to his feet and clenching his fists. By the light of the fire he looked menacing, but Will didn’t appear to notice. ‘There’s questions being asked about us all around town,’ Bill went on. ‘You’re drawing even more attention to us all by getting drunk and shooting your mouth off. You should be staying here with Mary and your children.’