Taking Liberties (13 page)

‘Ain't sayin' now.' Packer's lower lip protruded in a sulk that lasted until Makepeace, still wanting to punch him, was forced to move away.

She watched Beasley pour more of her money into Packer's cap and the old man's need to stay the centre of attention gradually reassert itself.

Beasley hopped over to her. ‘She's not in those boats. He says her friend is.'

‘What friend?'

‘A woman who talked to her the day she landed.'

‘He didn't tell us that. He said he hadn't seen her since.'

‘No more I haven't,' the old man called; Makepeace's wail had carried.

‘He's eking out what he knows, he don't get much of interest,' Beasley said. ‘He's lonely. His daughter doesn't let him back in her house until night.'

‘I wouldn't let him back in at all.'

‘Apologize to him, for Christ's sake, or we won't get anything either.'

Makepeace took a few steps forward and grated out: ‘I'm sorry.'

‘Should be an' all. I fought for my country.'

‘Very noble. Who's this friend?'

‘Whore.' The word gave him satisfaction.' Whaw-wer. That's what her's a-doin' out there along o' the others, whorin'. Spreadin' her legs for sailors.'

‘And where's my daughter?'

Packer shrugged his shoulders. ‘Dunno, do I?
She
knows . . .' A nod towards the ships, a huge and vicious grin. ‘Have to wait here for 'un to come back, won't ee?' A pause. ‘That's if I decides to tell ee which one she be.'

She couldn't stay near him; it was like being in the power of a beetle, a petty, insignificant thing that, ordinarily, she could have stamped on with all the force of her wealth. And I will, you old bastard, you wait and see. She strode up and down the quay, letting Beasley try to tease out of the man what information was left in him.

It was the time of evening for gathering in taverns before going on to entertainment elsewhere. The inn that faced the quay was full; young officers and midshipmen overflowed its doors, drinking and talking, occasionally commenting on the red-haired woman who passed and repassed them without coquetry. ‘A drink, madam?' one of them asked.

She didn't hear.

Beasley pantomimed a request for ale and two tankards were brought out to him and Packer.

Eventually, he hopped over to her. ‘There was just this woman. She saw Philippa crying, they talked and went off together. He ain't seen Philippa since but the woman's one of them that goes out to the ships every night. Comes back in the early hours, he says.'

‘How'll we know which one?'

‘He says we'll know her when we see her.' He added abruptly, because he didn't want to say it: ‘He calls her Pocky.'

‘The pox,' Makepeace said, dully. ‘She's got the pox.'

Beasley shrugged and went off to see if they could hire a room overlooking the quay in which to wait. There wasn't one; Dock was as crowded as Plymouth. ‘But he's got a settle on the landing upstairs,' he said, coming back. ‘We can wait there for a couple of shillings.'

She put out her hand. ‘What'd I do without you?'

He became surly. ‘It's my bloody knee I'm thinking about. Rubbed raw.'

A window on the inn's first floor faced south-west and threw light onto a breakneck stair down to the taproom and a corridor with doors leading to bedrooms. It had a wide sill and, below it, a settle that Beasley threw himself onto with a groan.

Makepeace climbed onto the sill, shading her eyes against the lowering sun. Below was the quay, the old man on his bollard, and a view across the Hamoaze to the green hill that was Mount Edgcumbe. The tide was turning and three of the warships were getting ready to make for the open sea; with no wind penetrating the protection afforded by the river's bend, they were having sweeps attached to pull them out.

Usually ships and their manoeuvres were beautiful to her; this evening she saw them as the lethal artefacts they were, off to blow into pieces other ships and men. French? Americans she'd grown up with?

England had been good to her; it had allowed her that magical man, Philip Dapifer, before taking him away again. At the last it had given her happiness with Andra and wealth and employment she loved. Yet it had done so with reluctance; if she hadn't had astounding luck and the ability to fight like a tiger she, too, could have been reduced to somewhere like Dock, struggling not to drown in its filth.

And who would have cared? God knew, this was an uncaring country. With Philip she'd sat at tables loaded with plate worth a king's ransom and listened to conversations in which the poor were derided for being poor, where landowners had boasted of the poachers they'd hung, where magistrates lobbied to have more capital offences added to statute books that already carried over one hundred.

It hadn't occurred to them that they were the culprits, that what they called criminals were ordinary people made desperate by enclosure of what had been common land, by their fences being thrown over, by costly turnpikes on roads they had once used for free.

She had supped with those who made their own grand theft into law and she had walked in the dust thrown up by their carriage wheels with those they used that law against.

Oh no, there'd be no cheers from her as England's ships sailed off to impose the same inequality on her native country. America deserved its freedom, had to have it, would eventually gain it.

She knew that, in the two years since the war began, she had puzzled Andra and Oliver, both of them supporters of the American cause, by her refusal to pin her flag to the mast of her native country.

Yet what freedom had America allowed her, an insignificant tavern-keeper, for rescuing Philip Dapifer from Bostonian patriots trying to kill him merely for being English? For that act of humanity, they'd tarred and feathered her brother and burned her home. Even now she could only hope that it did not cherry-pick which of its citizens were to be free. Would it include Indians, like her old friend, Tantaquidgeon? Negroes like Betty and her son? Are
you
fighting somewhere across that ocean, Josh, my dear, dear boy? For which side?

It wasn't only business that had stopped her from visiting Philippa in America or fetching her back. It was reluctance to return to a country that talked of liberty but had punished her for not falling into line. Oh God, to have patriotism again, certainty of country, right or wrong, like that old bugger on his bollard.

The sun lowered, lighting the underside of sea-going gulls and seeming for a moment to preserve the Hamoaze in amber. The noise in the taproom started on a crescendo to the slam of doors in the corridor as guests departed to their various night activities.

Riding lights began to make reflective twinkles in the water.

Further along the quay, out of her sight, there was a sudden commotion, scuffling, male shouts, female screams. A longboat emerged into view, heading for the fleet; it was difficult to make out in the twilight but it looked as if a sack in the thwarts was putting up a fight.

‘What's that?' Beasley asked.

‘Press gang, I think,' she told him. ‘Your disguise ain't in vain.'

He grunted. After a while he said: ‘See, Missus, they don't let most of the crews come ashore. Afraid they'll abscond.'

‘I know,' she said.

‘Giving 'em women stops 'em getting restive.'

‘I know.'

She heard him struggling with straps to ease his cramped knee. ‘Think anybody'd notice if I swopped peg-legs?'

Beasley, she knew, was telling her to be sorry for whores, perhaps preparing her for Philippa being one of them. To him they were victims of a vicious society. She had never seen them like that; her Boston Puritanism had left her with a loathing for the trade; she could pity all those forced into criminality by poverty, except those who sold their bodies. Over there, below those sweating decks, women were allowing themselves to be used as sewers, disposing of effluent so that His Majesty's Navy could function more efficiently. If Philippa . . .

Her thoughts veered away and fractured into illogical fury at the husbands who'd deserted her, the one by dying, the other by travelling.

I was always in second place for you, Andra Hedley, wasn't I? The lives of miners were your priority, not me. Finding out about fire-damp, why it blows miners up. I don't
care
why it blows the buggers up, I want you
here
, I want Philippa . . .

Heavy boots on the stairs jerked her to attention. Revellers were coming back from wherever they'd been, talking, breathing alcohol, one or two uttering a tipsy good-night to her as they went to their rooms. It seemed only a moment since they'd been leaving them . . .

She looked out at the view and saw that Packer's bollard was empty, the old man had gone; she'd been asleep.

She trampled Beasley as she scrambled from the window-seat, screaming: ‘I fell asleep, we've missed 'em!'

He joined her out on the quay where she was running up and down, hopelessly trying to distinguish the shape of rowing boats against the loom of ships' sides which were casting a shadow from the low, westerly moon.

To keep her sanity there was nothing to do but assume that the prostitutes were still prostituting. She refused to leave the quay in case she fell asleep again and paced up and down, the click of her heels the only sound apart from ripping snores coming from an open window at the inn and the occasional soft cloop of water against the quay wall.

The sky, which at no point had turned totally black, began to take on a velvety blueness.

‘I think they're coming,' Beasley said.

A light like a glow-worm had sprung up and was heading for the quay, showing itself, as it came, to be a lantern on a pole in a rowing boat which led a small flotilla of others. It swayed, sometimes reflecting on water, sometimes on the mushrooms that were the hatted heads of women clustered above the thwarts.

‘Missus, you're not to pounce on this female,' Beasley said. ‘We got to keep her sweet.'

‘I don't pounce.'

‘Yeah, you do. You're too much for people sometimes, especial other women. You bully 'em. You're an overwhelmer.'

What was he
talking
about? Granted, she had to be forceful or she'd have remained the poverty-pinched wreck left by Dapifer's death. You try coping politely with Newcastle coalers. And other women managed their lives so badly . . .

‘You do the talking then,' she snapped.

The leading boat held back, allowing its link-boy to light the quay steps for the others. The sailors who'd done the rowing leaned on their oars, letting their passengers transfer themselves from the rocking boats to the steps.

Beasley positioned himself at the top, holding out his hand to help the women up to the quay. Some took it, some didn't. As they came the link lit their faces from below, distorting their features into those of weary gargoyles.

Makepeace moved back under the eaves of the inn—and not just to allow Beasley free rein but because the harlots repelled her. How can he touch them? Yet why wasn't he questioning them? Which one was he waiting for? The old man had said they'd know which she was, but how?

She teetered in the shadows, wanting to interfere, not wanting to interfere, watching one or two of the women limp off into the alleys. Others waited for their sisters, dully, not speaking, presumably needing light to guide them to the deeper rat-holes.

The last boat was debouching its passengers and still Beasley was merely hauling them up. She could see the tip of the link-pole as it lit the last few up the steps.

That's her
. Oh God, that's her.

The link-boy had joined the women on the quay and was guiding them away into the alleys but, as he left, his lantern had illumined one of the faces before it turned away as if light was anathema to it, or it was anathema to light.

Makepeace had seen the damage done by smallpox before but never with the ferocity it had wreaked here. The woman's features might have been formed from cement spattered by fierce rain while still soft. In that brief glimpse, it appeared to be not so much a face as a sponge.

Pocky.

Having helped her onto the quay, Beasley was holding on to the woman's hand. Makepeace heard her say, tiredly: ‘Not tonight, my manny. I ain't got a fuck left,' then pause as he shook his head and put his question, politely for him, giving his explanation in a mumble.

The woman's reply carried. ‘I never knew she had a mother.' Her voice was surprisingly tuneful, with a lilt to it Makepeace couldn't place.

Mumble, mumble?

‘I might do. Or I might not.'

It's going to be money, Makepeace thought. Let her have it, let her have anything, only get me my child back.

It wasn't so simple; Beasley was obviously making offers, the woman temporizing.

The link-boy emerged from wherever he had taken the others, disturbed that he'd left this one behind. He coughed and called: ‘Are you coming, Dell?'

At that instant Makepeace's legs urged her to kneel on the stones in gratitude for the moment when God opens his Hand and allows His grace to shower on poor petitioners. Instead they carried her forward, stumbling, so that she could snatch the link-boy to her and rock him back and forth.

After a moment, Philippa's arms went round her mother's neck and she wept. ‘I knew you'd come,' she said. ‘Oh Ma, I knew you'd find me.'

 
Beasley looked round the door of Makepeace's bedroom. ‘Is she all right?'

‘She's asleep.' She had Philippa's grubby little hand in her own. Not once had she let go of it as they'd all hurried away from Dock to the privacy and shelter of the Prince George.