Remember Me (39 page)

‘Is it Christmas yet?’ Will croaked out one evening just as the light was fading.

‘Three more days,’ Mary said.

‘Ma always used to make a plum pudding,’ he said.

Mary smiled, for she could visualize her own mother stirring ingredients in a big basin at the kitchen table.

‘And mine,’ she said.

‘Ma used to tell us all to make a wish as we stirred it,’ Will said in little more than a whisper. ‘If I had one now I’d wish that I told you I married you because I loved you.’

Tears prickled at Mary’s eyes and she wished she could believe him.

‘I’m telling you the truth,’ he said. His eyes were red-rimmed and sunken with the fever and he looked old and haggard, nothing like that big, handsome man she’d married. ‘I fell for you on the
Dunkirk
. Even if all the beauties in England were lined up for me to choose from, I’d still have picked you.’

Mary’s tears began to fall faster. If this was true, why couldn’t he have told her before?

‘I’m such a fool,’ he sighed, as if knowing what she was
thinking. ‘I thought if I told you, you wouldn’t value me. That’s why I used to say I was getting a ship home too. I wanted you to say you couldn’t live without me.’

‘Oh, Will,’ she sighed, and took his hand and kissed it. She knew it was true now, Will wouldn’t dare go to his death with a lie on his conscience.

He drifted off into unconsciousness again then, clearly the effort of talking was too much. Mary lay down beside him and held his hand for some time, thinking over what he’d said.

When she was a young girl, she’d always imagined this thing people called love hit you like a ripe apple falling on your head. Her wild desire for Tench confirmed this idea. Yet was that really love? Wasn’t it more likely that she only felt that way about Tench because he was kind and interested in her at a time when she desperately needed something lovely to take her mind off reality? Would she have continued to feel such passion for him if they’d been able to live together forever?

The circumstances that led up to her marrying Will were hardly romantic. Yet despite her belief it was purely a marriage of convenience, there was passionate love-making, a warm and comfortable relationship, they could talk about anything together, they laughed a great deal. They were friends.

She thought most intelligent people would define that as love.

The first rays of daylight were slanting through the window when Mary felt Will tossing and turning. She
touched his forehead and found he was burning hot again, yet shivering at the same time.

‘I’m here,’ she whispered, sitting up and reaching for the cloth and the bucket of water to cool him down.

‘I’m so sorry about what I did,’ he gasped out.

‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ she whispered back, laying the cooling cloth on his brow and stroking back his hair. ‘I’ve forgiven you.’

All at once she realized she had. Like love, it had crept up on her unnoticed.

‘Keep Charlotte safe,’ he managed to get out with great difficulty.

She knew then that this was the end.

‘I married you because I loved you,’ she said, and kissed his hot, cracked lips. ‘I still love you, and I don’t want to live without you.’

She didn’t know if he heard the words he’d always wanted to hear, for he slipped into unconsciousness again. She stayed beside him holding him, her head so close to his heart that she felt it when it stopped beating an hour or two later.

Chapter sixteen

It was nearly four months after Emmanuel and Will died in Batavia that the
Horssen
, a Dutch ship, sailed into Cape Town with Mary and Charlotte aboard.

‘I think that’s the ship that’s going to take us home, Mary,’ Jim Cartwright said over his shoulder while pointing towards the harbour. ‘Come and look! The sight of one of His Majesty’s ships will cheer you.’

Mary smiled weakly. Jim was one of the crew from the wrecked
Pandora
. In the last few weeks of the voyage from Batavia, when both she and Charlotte came down with the fever, he had taken it upon himself to try to cheer her. Sometimes it was with different fruits or nuts, but more often it was with jokes or chat. Mary was very grateful for his kindness, but because of her fears for her daughter, she often found it difficult to respond.

Leaving Charlotte lying on a mat on the deck, Mary went over to the rail to look. It was cheering to see Cape Town again, for she had good memories of Charlotte’s christening here. Of course she had hope then, to be a pioneer in New South Wales had seemed more of a huge adventure than a punishment.

But the thirst for adventure was long gone. All
she hoped for now was that Charlotte would recover, and to be treated kindly on the last leg of the voyage home.

Yet despite her jaundiced views, she couldn’t help but feel some emotion at seeing an English ship. The
Gorgon
was graceful, its deck scrubbed almost white, rope neatly coiled and brass gleaming in the sunshine. She reminded Mary of similar ships she had admired in Plymouth – foreign vessels never seemed to be so spruce and polished. With Table Mountain as its backdrop, she couldn’t imagine a prettier sight. Yet however lovely the
Gorgon
looked, the chances were she would have to endure hardships aboard just as great as those she’d experienced on the way here.

She did see Will buried, and heard a prayer said over him, even if it was a communal grave and the prayer in Dutch, so she couldn’t understand it. But just as she was putting her few remaining possessions together and thinking of escape again, the guards appeared. They chained her, right there in the hospital, and took her and Charlotte to the guard ship where the other men were being held.

Mary’s grief at Emmanuel’s death, which she supposed she’d contained while she nursed Will, erupted as soon as she was locked up again. James and the other men were distraught at the death of Emmanuel, but they had no such sympathy for Will. To be imprisoned with them again, in stifling conditions, for almost a month, with water rationed to only a couple of pints a day and hearing them constantly blaming Will for their predicament, was
too much to bear. She got so low that she even wished for death.

She rallied a little when she heard that she and Charlotte were to go on the
Horssen
to Cape Town, along with the crew of the
Pandora
. James and the other men, along with Captain Edwards and the mutineers from the
Bounty
, were to go on the
Hoornwey
. Despite the strong bonds she had with her friends, she was relieved that she and Charlotte would at least be alone together, away from the men’s bitterness.

But fever had slunk aboard the ships, along with the provisions for the journey, and it showed no distinction between prisoners, officers, their wives and children, or crew. Almost daily Mary heard that yet another man, woman or child had gone down with it. It wasn’t long before both she and Charlotte became ill too.

Fortunately for Mary, the captain of the
Horssen
was humane, and brave enough to defy Captain Edwards’s orders that all prisoners were to be shackled and kept below for the entire voyage. When he was told that Mary and Charlotte were sick, he had Mary released from her chains so she could take care of her child.

It was only then, touched by this act of kindness, that Mary began to worry about how her friends were faring on their ship. All of them had looked appalling back in the guard ship and it was some wonder, after being kept below for weeks in fetid conditions, that they hadn’t already succumbed to the fever. She knew Captain Edwards wouldn’t show any of them mercy, and she was
desperately afraid that not all of their number would survive to see Cape Town.

‘You’ll be going home with your mates,’ Jim said cheerfully. ‘So buck up now, and let’s see that pretty smile.’

Mary wondered what this pint-sized sailor with red hair had between his ears, for however kindly he was, he appeared not to see the gravity of her situation. Charlotte was very sick with fever, and they were going home to England for Mary to be hanged and Charlotte orphaned. Could he really believe she ought to see the last leg of the journey as some kind of party?

‘Are you always so jolly?’ she asked, hoping he wouldn’t note the sarcasm in her tone.

‘Jolly Jim, that’s what me mam used to call me,’ he laughed, clearly taking it as a compliment. ‘Now, you’d better get your things together ’cos I reckon we’ll be going aboard the
Gorgon
very soon.’

It could have taken less than a second for Mary to gather together her few belongings. But she spun it out, examining each and every item, even though they had no value. A blue cotton dress, given to her in Kupang. The length of brightly coloured cotton from which she had intended to make another dress for Charlotte, but instead used to wrap Emmanuel in when he was in hospital. She held it to her face, hoping it still smelled of him, but that was gone now, just as he was, and the colours were faded from the many times she’d washed it. A string of blue wooden beads given to her by James Martin in Kupang. A lock of Emmanuel’s blond hair, tucked into a folded
piece of brown paper. The blanket Watkin Tench had given her here in Cape Town, for Charlotte.

It had been white and fluffy then, now it was brown with age, so threadbare it resembled a cobweb, but just holding it brought back many memories of both her babies. There were a couple of pretty shells, picked up on the beach in Kupang, and finally the bag holding sweet tea leaves.

She didn’t really know why she’d held on to them all this time. They were the last of those she’d picked back in the colony. They were brown and crackly now, and she doubted they had any flavour left. But she couldn’t throw them away, they too held good memories. She could see herself sitting by the fire with Will outside their hut, sipping at the hot tea as they planned their future. That tea had kept hunger at bay, it had warmed them when they were cold, comforted them when everything looked black.

She would put on the blue dress, for even if it was ragged, it was clean. She’d worn it all the time at the hospital in Batavia. She wished she still had the pink dress and the smart boots, or even her shawl and sun bonnet, as they would have made her feel a whole lot better going aboard the new ship. But if she hadn’t sold them, they might not be alive now.

Charlotte had even fewer possessions, just a little shift and her colourful dress, now faded to just a blur of pastels, the stitching coming apart on the seams. She had stopped complaining about wearing the plain grey one back in the hospital. Now Mary came to think of it, she
hadn’t complained about anything since then – not the lack of food and water, or even when she was taken sick.

Mary glanced down at her. She was lying on the bench where they slept, curled up like a small dog, using her two hands as a pillow. Her face was pale and drawn, she was pitifully thin, and her eyes looked haunted.

‘It will be better on the new ship,’ Mary said, smoothing back her dark curls from her face. ‘You’ll get well again.’

Charlotte merely sighed. It was the sound of disbelief, and it hurt Mary more than a sharp retort.

Jim Cartwright was right about which ship they were going home on, but wrong that they would go to it immediately. They sat at anchor for over two weeks. The crew went ashore, but Mary was kept aboard. She wasn’t put in chains again, but she was locked back in the hold with Charlotte, and even refused a couple of hours a day on deck for fresh air and exercise.

Daily, Charlotte became weaker, burning up with fever, and all Mary could do was bathe her, try to get her to drink, and curse a system which would allow an innocent child to suffer such cruelty.

Carrying Charlotte, who was barely conscious, Mary staggered up the gang-plank of the
Gorgon
, too weak even to respond to the sound of English voices.

Jim had told her the
Gorgon
had come from Port Jackson, and that the whole ship was filled with plants, shrubs, animal skins and even a couple of captured kangaroos.
He’d been impatient to see these wonders for himself. But Mary was more intent on being reunited with her fellow deserters, as they were now labelled, than concerning herself with whether there would be anyone else on board that she knew.

She was dizzy with fever and the heat. Shouting, thumping, squeaking and banging bombarded her ears, and her limbs ached intolerably. The glare of the sunshine on the water hurt her eyes, and the smells of spice, fish and human sweat made her feel nauseous.

The dizziness suddenly grew far worse as she stepped off the gang-plank on to the deck, which was crowded with people and boxes. Her legs felt as if they were made of rubber and, afraid she would drop Charlotte, she stopped, leaned against a packing case and closed her eyes for a moment to gain her equilibrium. Then she heard someone calling her name.

The voice was so familiar, but in her befuddled state she couldn’t place it. She opened her eyes, but everything was a blur.

‘Are you sick, Mary?’ she heard the voice say as if from a great way off. ‘Let me take Charlotte.’

She could only suppose she fainted, for the next thing she knew she was lying down on the deck and someone was dabbing at her forehead with a wet cloth.

‘Charlotte!’ she called out in alarm, trying to sit up.

‘She’s being taken care of,’ a man said. ‘Drink this.’

The drink was rum, and the man offering it to her had to be a sailor, judging by his white ducks and shirt. He had curly fair hair and a sun-blistered face. Mary was in a
patch of shade now, and her vision seemed to have returned to normal.

‘Who was that who spoke to me and took Charlotte?’ she asked.

‘That ’ud be Cap’n Tench,’ the man said.

‘Tench!’ she exclaimed. ‘Watkin Tench?’

‘That’s right, me lovely,’ he said with a broad grin. ‘And I take it you’re the one he’s been fretting about since we got told you was to sail ’ome with us?’

Mary lay on a bunk, Charlotte asleep beside her. She was bewildered, unable to make up her mind if she was really in a cabin, complete with open porthole, or if she was dreaming.