by Valerie Wood
He spoke of when he and their mother went to the workhouse after their father died. ‘All she could think of was that you were safe, Em. She allus said that Granny Edwards would look after thee. She said she had a way wi’ bairns.’
And he confessed to her about the time when their mother had died, which was the start of his thieving. ‘She was tekken to a paupers’ graveyard and they let me go wi’ ’coffin. I marked where it was and when I eventually left ’workhouse – I was about eleven, I think – I stole some flowers from a garden to put on her grave. Onny I got caught and was put in gaol for a month. After that it was a downward spiral and I had to steal to eat and I decided to go to Hull, ’cos I’d heard that ’vagrant office sometimes gave out money. Onny they wouldn’t give it to me ’cos I wasn’t from ’district. I was starving, Emily,’ he said. ‘I sometimes didn’t eat for days unless I could pinch summat from bakers’ bins.’
Emily thought of the masses of food which had been thrown away at the Purnell house and grieved for her brother. ‘If only you’d come to find me at Granny Edwards’s,’ she said. ‘She would have taken you in. She wouldn’t have turned you away.’
‘I decided to travel and look for work,’ he shouted to her above the crashing of the storm and the shriek of the wind through the rigging. ‘I’m strong, though I might not look it, but I got with a gang and was led into thieving. I was caught several times and went to gaol. I’d changed my name by then ’cos I had a bad record and I allus thought how Ma and Da would have been ashamed of me. They were allus so honest.’ He paused. ‘And, as well, I didn’t want you to hear of what I’d done, of the life I was leading.’
She heard his voice lift as if with a smile. ‘I allus imagined you being in service somewhere, a lady’s maid or summat and I wouldn’t have wanted you to hear of your brother being in gaol! We had good memories, Em, I wouldn’t have wanted them spoiling.’
‘We had,’ she answered. ‘Do you remember when we went to catch tiddlers in Lambwath Beck and you got a hiding from Da when we got home because I was covered in mud?’ She felt tears gathering as she remembered. ‘I often thought about you, Joe. I passed Skirlaw workhouse once and wondered what had happened to you and Ma.’
She heard a voice calling that the wind was dropping. ‘And now here we both are, sailing to ’other side of ’world. But I’m glad, Joe, that I’ve found you. I won’t feel so far from home if I know that you are near.’
‘We shan’t be able to stop together,’ he said. ‘I’ll be put in a road gang I expect, and you,’ he hesitated, ‘well, I hear all sorts of things that happen to women. Worst ones get sent to Parramatta and others, well, they say that some of ’em are sent as housekeepers to settlers or soldiers. Onny – onny, they’re not really housekeepers, they’re sort of – wives!’
‘You don’t have to conceal what happens, Joe,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard so many stories. I’m not an innocent girl any more. I know that women are used as whores and I know that they don’t go home again, not like the men can.’
‘I don’t want to,’ he said sharply. ‘I’ll never go back. England doesn’t want me and I don’t want England. When my time is up – and I’ve onny three years to go, I’ve spent four already doing hard labour, I’ll hire myself out. I’ve heard that new settlers want hard-working men and I’ll save up to buy a bit o’ land. I’ll graze a few sheep and grow some corn and I’ll become my own man, Emily. I’ll not be behodden to anybody ever again. And you can come and live wi’ me when your time is finished. We need never be parted again.’
The doors were unbolted and they fell out onto the deck. They faced each other and Emily looked into the eyes of her brother. When she looked at his face through the beard and matted hair, she saw that he was the same Joe that she remembered. They each put out a hand and smiled and touched fingers before being parted by the guards and Joe was led away below decks. Emily sat on the wet deck with her head bowed and wept, her shoulders heaving with sobs until a shadow fell across her. She wiped her eyes and looked up. It was Philip Linton standing there and he bent down to help her up.
‘You’d better come to the sick bay,’ he said softly. ‘Don’t cry, there’s no need to be frightened. It’s all over now. It was just a sudden squall.’
She dared not tell Philip Linton that she was crying because of her meeting with her brother. Joe had been convicted under another name and she felt she must respect his decision about changing it. She gratefully accepted the water which Mr Linton gave her and he urged her to drink it a sip at a time.
A woman was in labour in the sick berth. She was pacing up and down and it brought back more memories for Emily of her own lonely labour. ‘Will someone stay with her?’ she urged. ‘Don’t let her stay alone.’
‘A woman is coming up to be with her, and Clavell will be here. He’ll look after her.’ He bent towards her to whisper, ‘Come to my cabin, you can rest there.’
She shook her head. ‘I must go below to see Meg. She’s been shut up too and fettered.’
‘Then come later,’ he persuaded. ‘It’s cooler on the main deck.’
She said that she would and made her way below into the putrid heat of the ’tween decks. The other women were coming back up on deck, but Meg was lying on a bottom bunk, fettered by the ankle to a ring on the bulkhead. She lay quite still and perspiration ran down her face. Her clothes were sodden with sweat. She turned to Emily as she bent over her. ‘You all right, Em? Was it very bad in ’box?’
Emily nodded. ‘Bad enough. I was desperate for water, but they wouldn’t give me any. Only a bucket of sea water, and then my feet got wet from the storm.’ She passed Meg a drink of lukewarm water from an uncovered jug.
‘It’s putrid.’ Meg spat it out. ‘I’d rather die of thirst! Isn’t there any clean?’
‘No, but I know where I can get some. I’ll go back to Mr Linton’s cabin, he asked me to.’
Meg turned her head away. ‘Huh,’ she griped.
‘It’s a bad business when women have to sell their bodies for a sip o’ water.’
‘Sell their bodies! What do you mean?’
‘What I say!’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘I offered myself to him to save you, and he still got what he wanted in ’end, in spite of his fine words and promises!’
‘I don’t understand.’ Emily was bewildered. ‘Offered yourself who to? You mean Mr Linton?’
‘Aye, ’first time he sent for you,’ Meg said wearily. ‘You were asleep and I went up in your place. I told him that you were still an innocent and would I do instead. He promised me, promised me that that wasn’t what he wanted. But I should have known! Should have known that all men are ’same. They’re all snakes, you can’t trust anyone of ’em.’
Emily sat down beside Meg and took her hand. ‘Meg, you are my dearest and best friend and I wouldn’t lie to you. Mr Linton has never laid a finger on me and neither has he told me of your suggestion. I’m –’. Emotion choked her. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to me to know that you’d do such a thing for me.’
Meg raised her head. ‘Never touched you? What? Never?’
Emily shook her head. ‘Never! He gives me money so that it looks as if I’m his mistress and so the other officers will stay away. I sleep in his hammock whilst he works at his desk.’ The recollection of seeing him working in his shirt-sleeves, with one hand ruffling through his hair, came to mind and she smiled. ‘And sometimes if he’s on duty I look at his books. He says that I can.’
Meg leaned on her elbow and stared at Emily. ‘There’s nowt wrong wi’ him, I suppose? And he doesn’t seem ’type to be of other persuasion.’
Emily was shocked. ‘No! Of course not! He is simply a gentleman.’
‘Well!’ Meg lay back on the bunk and pondered. ‘I’ll have to think about this,’ she muttered. ‘It isn’t summat I’ve come across afore.’
‘I’ve something else to tell you, Meg, and this must be a secret too.’
‘I don’t feel so good, Em. Will it kee
p?’
‘No, I have to tell somebody or I shall burst. Listen.’ She lowered her voice, though they were the only ones left in the women’s quarters. ‘My brother is on board! You know that convict John Johnson that you said sounded like a northern man? It’s Joe – my brother Joe! I can hardly believe it! We’ve not seen each other since we were bairns and we were locked up next to each other in ’cramping boxes! He says that he won’t ever go back to England and that he’ll work to buy some land in Australia and that I can live with him.’
Meg squeezed her hand. ‘That’s incredible! I’m so glad for you, Em.’ She turned her head away. ‘I wish I had somebody to belong to. I’ve got nobody.’
‘You’ve got me, Meg,’ Emily comforted her. ‘We’ll try to always stay together.’
That night as she swung gently in Philip Linton’s hammock, she put the question to him. ‘Will the women be separated when we arrive, Mr Linton? I’ve heard rumours that some will go to Parramatta, the women’s factory, and others will go to – er, houses as maids.’ She baulked at mentioning the real object.
She thought he turned pale about the mouth, but he said that he didn’t know, but would find out. He got up from his desk and put on his coat. ‘If you will excuse me, Emily, I must go to the sick berth.’
He hurried across to find Clavell. He would know, he had done this trip many times.
‘We’ve got a fine boy, Mr Linton.’ The surgeon pointed to the bunk where the mother lay with her newborn son. ‘And the mother is calling him Ralph after me! And God help him and her, for nobody else will,’ he muttered as he washed his hands in a bowl, then calling for a boy to take the bloody water away, he drew Philip to one side. ‘She’ll go to Parramatta unless somebody takes her on.’
‘I wanted to ask you about that, sir. Where do the women go after we dock?’
‘Worried about your little friend are you, Mr Linton?’ The surgeon smiled wryly at Philip’s embarrassment. ‘I doubt if she’ll go to Parramatta, she seems a better type than the ones who go there. She’ll probably get picked for a housekeeper by one of the settlers.’
‘Picked?’ Philip said. ‘Do you mean like at the Martinmas fairs?’
Clavell laughed. ‘Come with me, young man, and I will tell you about it. I need a drink anyway after that ordeal.’ He turned to the woman lying on the bunk. ‘Try to rest. Tomorrow you have to go back to your quarters.’
‘I didn’t know that you knew, sir,’ Philip said as they entered Clavell’s cabin, ‘that Emily Hawkins came to visit me.’
‘I might seem like an old soak,’ Clavell poured himself a drink and one for Philip, ‘but there’s not much gets past me. How do you know her?’ he asked abruptly.
Philip, taken by surprise at his directness, said, ‘I met her when she was a servant girl in Hull. She has been ill used by someone I know. There was no need for her to come to this,’ he added bitterly. ‘She is a very gentle person.’
‘Fond of her are you, Philip?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I’d gone to Hull especially to seek her out when I found that she had been in trouble and was already in gaol. She was quite innocent,’ he said fiercely.
‘Yes, yes. Of course she was,’ Clavell interrupted. ‘In your eyes at least, so what do you propose to do about her? You can’t take her back with you on your next ship!’
Philip looked down at his feet. ‘I want to protect her. That’s why I came out. I also want to obtain a free pardon for her, but I don’t see how I can do that when I’m over here.’
‘You can’t,’ Clavell said bluntly. ‘You have to be in England to pull strings. Listen to me. I’ve been doing this trip for years and years and years, and I can tell you that conditions for the felons have improved immeasurably. I could also tell you some horrific tales of the old days; of convicts dying in their hundreds on their journey out, of the wholesale rape of the women when they arrived; of the whippings and scourgings, of the humiliation and degradation which men and women have endured.’ He took another drink and muttered, ‘We have much to be ashamed of. Many forgot that these people were human beings too.’
He shook a finger at Philip. ‘Things have improved, but they are still bad. Parramatta, if your friend goes there, will destroy her. There are some women in that place who are the worst possible kind, dissolute and abandoned. Believe me I know, and they influence others who, if they were in a better situation would improve on their former selves.
‘That is where I am going,’ he sighed. ‘I’m going to Parramatta.’
‘I thought this was to be your last voyage, sir? That’s what I’d heard.’
‘So it is.’ He gave a thin sad smile. ‘I’m not going back. I’ve said goodbye to England once and for all.’
Philip was silent, there was obviously much, much more that Clavell could tell him, but he would only do it in his own good time.
Clavell took a pipe from his desk drawer, opened a tin of tobacco and put his nose to it to smell the aroma. ‘Ever wondered why I’m a drunk, Philip?’ he asked. ‘Yes, of course you have!’ He tamped down the tobacco into the bowl. ‘I’ve been sailing on convict ships for more years than I care to think of and it can strain a man’s conscience. It’s condoning the system, you see, even though indirectly. I took my wife out one year. A good country, I thought; we could make a life out there.’
He stared into space. ‘She loved the country, hated the penal system and became involved in trying to have it abolished, like so many others did. I was the medic at Parramatta then and saw some terrible things, but I never told my wife. Then one day,’ he drew on the pipe and a cloud of smoke enveloped him, ‘she decided to come and see the place where I worked. She came on the day there was a riot; the women had complained about their conditions and rampaged all over the building. Caroline arrived as they were being rounded up. The soldiers had been brought in and they and the warders were beating the prisoners with rifles, sticks, bricks, lashes, anything they could lay their hands on. Some of the women were half naked and there was blood everywhere.
‘I was the only doctor and she helped me to clean them up and bandage their wounds.’ His pipe went out and he laid it on his desk. ‘From then on she started campaigning for the abolition of the convict system and the rights of those who were already convicted. She formed committees, petitioned the governor, Members of Parliament, wrote to the English newspapers and she gained the support of the wives of officials who were out there.’
‘Well, she has almost succeeded, sir. I read in the newspapers that the settlers won’t accept the convict ships any more, that they are blocking the harbours.’
Clavell nodded. ‘But it has come too late for her.’ He looked up and there was something in his eyes, some sorrow lingering that made Philip pause. ‘She continued to come to Parramatta, she used to visit the women and talk to them or sometimes just listen, and – and when she died, they said how they missed her, that just being with her made them feel like human beings again.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know,’ Philip began.
Clavell brushed away his apologies. ‘She caught typhoid fever from one of the women, but before she died she made me promise that I would do something to improve their conditions. But, coward that I am,’ he sighed, ‘I’ve been sailing the high seas in a drunken stupor all these years, never daring to set foot in the place. Until now,’ he added, ‘now I shall stay. I have burnt my bridges in England, settled my affairs. I won’t go back. She’s still here, you see. Waiting for me. Waiting for me to go back to Parramatta.’
They both had another drink and Philip didn’t like to intrude on Clavell’s thoughts to ask what he should do about Emily. But Clavell hadn’t forgotten. He suddenly looked up and said, ‘So this is what I think you should do, Mr Linton.’ He had become formal again. ‘You must stay awhile in Sydney. If you can afford it, buy a small farm. If you can’t, then rent one, but better to buy, land is cheap. Then set her up as your housekeeper or wife or whatever name you choose to giv
e her. That way, in effect, she gains her freedom, even though she can’t go back to England. Then find someone you can trust to keep an eye on her and then you head off home to petition for her pardon. If she goes to Parramatta she will always have the stigma of convict on her.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
They were all on deck a few days later, men and women, when the order came that they were to go below, that another squall was brewing. A light wind was blowing and the sky was clear.
‘What’s happening?’ Meg asked one of the seamen as she went below. ‘Why can’t we stop on deck? A drop o’ rain won’t hurt us.’
‘Because you’d be in the way and you might well get washed overboard.’ He roughly pushed her down the companion ladder. ‘We’re in the doldrums. It’ll be more than a drop o’ rain, believe me. It’s for your own good,’ he shouted through the grating before closing it completely. The doors were firmly fastened and the hatches closed so that the atmosphere was stifling.
‘In ’doldrums!’ Meg grumbled. ‘I’ve often thought that’s where I was and now he’s telling me I am!’
Emily wiped her face with a rag. It was so hot and already some of the women were starting to retch as the ship rolled and pitched.
‘Next time you go to Mr Linton’s cabin,’ Meg said, ‘do you think you could borrow some scissors?’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Tell him you’re mekking a new frock,’ she said ironically. Some of the women had been stitching up the tears and rents in their clothes. They had been given needle and thread when on deck but always had to give them back before returning below decks. ‘I want to cut my hair,’ she said. ‘Lice are driving me mad. I thought ’tar would have killed ’em off, but it hasn’t.’
