Tamar (6 page)

John had become accustomed to discussing his duties with Tamar; she was an interested and sympathetic listener and he valued her opinion. John would have talked to Tamar about anything, as long as he could sit and look at her. His growing infatuation had not gone unnoticed. One of the older cabin passengers had taken him aside and suggested his association with Tamar, a young single woman and a steerage passenger, was unseemly. John had thanked him for his advice, then ignored it. Following that, someone else stated loudly at dinner that in her opinion, any relationship between cabin and steerage passengers was to be strongly discouraged. Fortunately Myrna had been dining in the single women’s quarters and had not heard the comments at first hand but John, unable to decide whether he was amused or angry, had recounted the conversation to her.

Her response had been predictable. ‘Ignore the interfering auld bitch. It’s no business o’ hers what ye do.’

‘I know.
That
doesn’t bother me. It’s Tamar herself. The more time I spend with her, the more time I
want
to spend with her, and it worries me that she might be concerned about the difference in our class.’

‘Och no, laddie, she’s no’ that sort o’ person. She’s only seventeen and wi’out a family. She’s feeling fragile and doesnae want to rush into anything. And nor should she, so dinnae push her.’

‘She could do worse,’ replied John, slightly petulantly.

‘Aye, she kens that. Why d’ye no’ leave it until we get to New Zealand? There’s plenty o’ time,’ Myrna added, wondering whether Tamar could come to love the young doctor. But she doubted it, not with the high ideals Tamar had shared with her over the past weeks.

‘But someone else will surely come along. I’ll lose her!’

‘Aye, and if they do, then ye wouldnae have had her anyway, would ye?’ John said nothing and remained on deck in the cold wind for some time, staring moodily into the dark sea.

Thinking back to this conversation with Myrna, John reached across the table, picked up Tamar’s hand and looked searchingly into her wide, green eyes. The moment was somewhat spoiled by the ship lurching violently and sending his half-full mug of tea into his lap. ‘Bugger,’ he said.

Tamar laughed. John’s stomach flipped at her lovely smile and warm, bright eyes. ‘Tamar,’ he said, ignoring the hot tea soaking into his trousers. ‘I need to tell you something.’

Tamar’s smile remained but inside she flinched, resisting a childish urge to put her fingers in her ears. She was not prepared for, and did not want to hear, what John was about to say.

‘You
are
aware of how much I think of you, aren’t you?’ he asked in a whisper, leaning forward so his words could not be heard by curious ears.

Tamar swallowed, choosing her words carefully. ‘I know you like me, and you like to spend time with me,’ she whispered back.

‘Oh, it’s more than that, Tamar. Much more. No, look at me,’ he continued as she averted her eyes, blushing hotly in the dim light of the oil lamp. ‘I know you’re young and have plans, but I have hopes that one day you might think of me as more than a friend. I know you would like to marry, that you don’t want to be alone, and, well, I can wait. You do want a husband and children, don’t you?’

Tamar looked up miserably and blurted, ‘Yes, but I want a husband I’m in
love
with!’

‘And you can’t love me, is that it?’

Beginning to cry now, Tamar replied, ‘I don’t know, John. I don’t know
what
I can or can’t do. I need you as a friend, can we please leave it at that for now?’ She sniffed inelegantly, wiping her eyes on her sleeve.

John sighed and sat back, running his hand through his receding hair then rubbing his temples wearily.

‘Well,’ he said eventually, ‘if that’s all you want for the moment, then yes, of course, if you can’t accept anything else right now. I will
always
be your friend. But how I feel about you will never change, whatever happens.’

Embarrassed and feeling awkward, he stood and walked away, leaving Tamar to gaze sightlessly at the worn table top, a tear running slowly down her cheek.

‘Never mind, luv. You’ll work it out,’ said a woman’s disembodied voice from behind her, and a wrinkled but clean handkerchief was pressed gently into her hand.

The next day it became clear John Adams had spoken too soon about several things. He apologised to Tamar and said that although he had meant every word, he had not intended to upset her. Tamar accepted his apology and reiterated, as kindly as she could, that she hoped their friendship could continue.

She was flattered by his attentions and sincerely fond of him but, for her, the compelling attraction she so hoped for was missing. She had no doubt she could have a contented life if she became his wife, but she wanted more; she wanted passion and romance, she wanted to experience the love her mam and da had shared.

As it turned out, any thoughts of passion were swept away when the first case of food poisoning was reported. By the time John had examined the patient, a child from steerage lying doubled up on her bunk, clutching her stomach, half a dozen others had fallen ill.

By the end of the day, severe diarrhoea and vomiting had struck almost all the steerage passengers and John had traced the source to a cask of spoiled pork. Fortunately, cabin passengers had not been affected, as they only ate fresh meat butchered on board.

Tamar, who had been avoiding meat, was again prevailed upon to help. To make matters worse, the outbreak of food poisoning coincided with their passage into the Roaring Forties, the vicious, prevailing westerly winds ever present between the latitudes of forty and fifty degrees south, and the task of helping the sick was made more arduous by the ship lurching and pitching. Many of those afflicted were unable to reach the privies and vomited and evacuated their bowels where they lay. Five children died, four of them under the age of two. After four days of violent vomiting and diarrhoea, one of the pregnant women went into labour prematurely, resulting in the death of her infant.

John and Tamar also became ill. Tamar retired to her bunk where she was nursed by Myrna and John, before he was forced to admit he was too ill to work.

Tamar spent three ghastly days curled up in her bunk, her battered body working to purge itself. She thought she was going to die, and several times prayed she would. After the first twelve hours she gave up staggering to the privy and, as she grew progressively weaker and began to lose control over her bowels, became resigned to soiling herself, weeping with pain and embarrassment.

‘Och, lassie,’ Myrna said matter-of-factly after one particularly messy accident. ‘Dinnae worry about it. It’s only shite and it’ll wash out.’

John dragged himself from his own bed to monitor Tamar at regular intervals, insisting the privy and her bunk were doused repeatedly with chloride of lime and her bedclothes changed with fastidious frequency. Tamar thought it highly unlikely he would be quite so enamoured of her now he had seen her lying in a smelly puddle of her own watery diarrhoea, but she was wrong.

On the evening of the third day she fell into a deep sleep and did not wake until late the following afternoon, feeling parched and decrepit, but no longer sick. After a cup of tea, which she was
moderately confident would stay in her stomach, she rose carefully, stripped off her dirty clothes and washed herself in a bucket of sea water. Gingerly though, because her stomach muscles were aching and her nether regions raw from the diarrhoea. Myrna helped her change her bedding and she went back to sleep. When she awoke again, she felt almost human and was welcomed back to the land of the living by her roommates, most of whom had fully recovered.

The funeral for the children who had died had been held while Tamar was ill, and Polly described how tragic it had been when the little shrouded bodies were consigned to the sea. The atmosphere onboard the
Rebecca Jane
was subdued, with the increasingly foul weather and rough seas doing little to improve the situation.

May 1879

By the time the food poisoning subsided, the
Rebecca Jane
had sailed down into the subantarctic region of the Indian Ocean. About a month out from New Zealand, she still had four thousand miles to sail. The weather was bitterly cold, the winds shrieking through the ship’s ghostly rigging. Ice formed on the decks and on ropes and cables that had frozen solid. Sightings of huge, floating icebergs were not uncommon.

As conditions on deck were intolerable, life was again largely confined to the belly of the ship. The confinement was made worse by the gales forcing the
Rebecca Jane
over on a steep cant, making walking difficult and even dangerous; nothing stayed where it was put unless tightly secured. There were several nasty accidents with hot water and food in the galley, and three cases of broken bones. After ten or so weeks of shipboard life, some passengers were beginning to doubt the wisdom of their decision to emigrate, while
others regretted loudly they had not secured passage on a ship fitted with steam engines.

The provisions for the steerage passengers were definitely past their best, and some were beginning to suffer from a lack of fresh food. John Adams increased the allocation of lime juice as generously as he could, and ordered extra food for children and nursing mothers, but little could be done to improve their health save a concerted effort to prevent another outbreak of food poisoning. John insisted all edible provisions be inspected frequently and thoroughly for spoilage, with any found suspect tipped overboard.

He also demanded three of the remaining pigs be slaughtered, roasted thoroughly and shared amongst the steerage passengers over several days. This made John unpopular with his fellow cabin passengers, the pigs having been intended for them, so he ate below decks for a week, tired of listening to their complaints. What the steerage passengers really needed, however, were fresh fruit and vegetables, and neither would be forthcoming until the ship berthed. John was distressed by the poor standard of nutrition but doubted anyone would die from it. And if the ship continued to make good time, he hoped they would reach their destination before anyone’s health really began to deteriorate.

The final leg was tedious in the extreme. Entertainments were limited to impromptu concerts and games of cards and dice in the gloomy and fetid family quarters. Tempers continued to unravel, and the cramped conditions caused petty dislikes and irritations to develop into overt antagonisms and, at times, violence.

Tamar spent most of her time in the company of Polly, Myrna and her girls, and John Adams. John had not mentioned his desire for a more permanent relationship with Tamar again, but she often caught him watching her when he thought she wasn’t looking. She felt uncomfortable but he seemed cheerful enough when they spent
time together and did not seem to begrudge her discussing plans for the future which did not include him.

Tamar had formed a strong bond with her new friends. She was fascinated by Myrna’s girls, and although fully aware of what they did for a living, she was surprised to discover their friendship was unaffected. She had always assumed women who sold their bodies would lack the morals, emotions and character traits most ‘normal’ women displayed. But Myrna’s girls were cultured, elegantly groomed, well mannered and very well spoken.

All had been working as prostitutes for several years before they decided to emigrate, and had no illusions about their work. Talking to Tamar one day, Bronwyn described how they felt about themselves and their chosen profession.

‘We’ve all come from working-class backgrounds, all poor, and none of us likely to rise above it by marrying the lad down the street and having ten little ones and getting old before our time. For us, the one thing we have is our looks.’

Tamar concurred; the girls were certainly attractive. Bronwyn was tall and willowy with luxuriant black hair, exotic dark eyes and a sensuous mouth. Letitia’s hair was a rich brown with deep red highlights, and Vivienne’s a pale rose gold. Both had lovely faces and spectacular figures. Jessica, younger-looking than her colleagues, was petite and slender, her straight blonde hair framing delicate and child-like features.

‘So, we decided to use them,’ continued Bronwyn. ‘I started with Myrna first and the others came later. She taught us all to speak nicely and how to dress and what a customer needs and wants. There’s more to it than just opening your legs. There were nine of us working for her in London, but some of the others wanted to go their own way and Myrna thought two of them wouldn’t be suitable for New Zealand. Myrna runs a good house. She pays well and she banks what we earn so we’ve all got tidy sums put
away. More than we’d ever have if we’d stayed at home, cooking, cleaning and washing nappies. Oh, we won’t be doing this forever,’ she added. ‘We’ll be too old in another ten years to make the money we’re making now, but until then, we’ll be doing all right. And afterwards, well, I might start my own business. Or I might get married.’

‘You’re all quite different, aren’t you?’ Tamar asked. ‘Looking, I mean.’

‘Yes, we are, and that’s quite deliberate. I’m tall and dark for the men who want something a little foreign-looking, although I’m English born and bred, and Vivienne and Letitia both have the round hips and beautiful, big breasts. Jessie looks like she’s only fourteen, but she’s nearly twenty. She’s for customers with a liking for young ones.’

Tamar pulled a face.

Bronwyn responded bluntly. ‘Some men are like that. And Jessie’s as tough as they come, in spite of how she looks.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought Myrna would have that sort of thing in her house.’

‘As far as she’s concerned it’s better to provide the service than have some poor little girl having it forced on her. And Myrna’s running a business. She has to cater for demand and no doubt men in New Zealand will be the same as men everywhere else.’

The two women were silent for a minute. Then Tamar asked hesitantly, ‘But do you think you
will
get married?’