‘No,’ he said. ‘And in future I shall order the guards to make sure the rations are shared out equally.’
‘While you are about it, could we have more?’ she asked cheekily.
Tench had an overwhelming desire to laugh. The woman reminded him poignantly of many Cornish miners he’d known, dogged, tough and fearless. He remembered from the records that she had assaulted the woman she’d robbed, yet her calm grey eyes and gentle manner belied a vicious nature. Likewise, the innocence in her face sat uneasily with her impudent demands. A woman to be watched, he thought. But a rather admirable one for all that.
The guard brought in a plate of bread, cheese and pilchards. Tench pulled up another stool at the table and told Mary to eat.
It was so long since she had tasted either cheese or pilchards that it was all she could do not to cry. She wolfed down the food, holding on to the plate with one hand, afraid Tench might snatch it before she’d finished.
He poured her a little rum too, and topped it up with water, taking a glass neat himself. As he watched her bent over the plate, he noted that although her hair was alive with lice, her neck was very clean, an extremely unusual sight in a prisoner.
‘I’ll get someone to take you back now,’ he said when she’d finished.
Mary had always found it easy to talk to men, but she had no idea how to flirt with them, nor would she know if a man found her attractive. As she looked into his soft brown eyes she thought she read curiosity in them, and she wished wholeheartedly she was in a clean dress with her hair newly washed, at least to give herself some sort of chance.
‘Can’t I stay a while longer?’ she blurted out impulsively.
He smiled, and his eyes twinkled. ‘No, you can’t, Mary,’ he said. ‘I have work to do. But why do you want to stay? I’ve given you food, you aren’t to be flogged.’
‘Because…’ she began, but to her horror she felt tears welling up in her eyes. She couldn’t find the words to explain what it meant to be out of that stinking hold, or how it felt to have a full belly. And she certainly couldn’t say it had been her intention to offer him her virginity in the hope she would get some privileges.
Perhaps he understood at least some of it, for he put his hand on her shoulder. ‘You have to go back,’ he said gently. ‘But we’ll talk again.’
Watkin Tench’s kindness comforted Mary that night. As she lay between Bessie and Nancy, she wasn’t so aware of the moans and groans, the coughing and the sobbing from the other women. Nor was she so aware of the stench or the rats scuttling around. Instead she was able to immerse herself in the thought of the amusement in his eyes, the shininess of his hair, and his gentle manner. For just a few brief minutes she’d felt clean, forgotten she was a felon. It was a form of escape, and a very welcome one.
Mary didn’t know whether it was as the result of Tench’s influence or not, but a couple of days later she, Bessie and two other women, Sarah Giles and Hannah Brown, were called out of the hold for work. There had already been a marked improvement in the food sharing, as the guards stayed in the hold to check everyone got fair shares, whether sick or not. To Mary that was enough. And to be called out for work was an unexpected bonus.
The job they were given was washing clothes, mainly shirts. It wasn’t an easy task as they had to carry the four heavy wooden tubs out on to the deck from a store-room, which was difficult wearing chains, then lower buckets on a rope to the river to fill them with water. But it was good to be out in the sunshine, to be able to look over to the shore and see the lush green of fields and woods, and even if the guards did watch their every move, at times leering at them in a frightening manner, it was a million times better than being cooped up in the hold.
‘Do you think we could wash ourselves when we’ve finished all these?’ Mary whispered to Sarah as they scrubbed at the dirty shirts with blocks of hard soap.
Sarah was one of the women the others called whores. Small and pretty, with red-gold hair, she was twenty-five, a widow with two small children. Her fisherman husband had been lost at sea when his ship went down in a storm, and Sarah had left the children with her mother in St Ives and gone to Plymouth. Her story was very like Mary’s – she’d turned to stealing because she couldn’t get work – and she’d already been on the Dunkirk for eight months.
‘You can if you want,’ Sarah said, and laughed as if it was funny. ‘But I hope you ain’t intending to do it with nothing on.’
‘Of course not.’ Mary coloured up. ‘I’ll just get in the tub with my dress on and wash that too while I’m about it.’
‘Chains and all?’ Sarah raised one eyebrow.
‘Well, I can’t get those off,’ Mary said offhandedly, and looked round at Bessie. ‘What about you? Fancy a bath?’
Bessie began to giggle, and it infected them all. Sarah rubbed soap into her hands and blew bubbles, Hannah splashed Mary with water, and Mary retaliated by slapping her with a wet shirt. If the guards noticed they didn’t intervene or stop them, and all at once it was as if they were just girls at a Sunday school picnic. They giggled, chatted and sang. Bessie even did a little dance, rattling her chains in time with her feet.
Once the washed shirts were hanging up on lines to dry, the women were completely hidden from the guards’ view. ‘Go on then if you’re going to,’ Sarah urged Mary. ‘Before we empty the tubs.’
While Bessie and Hannah looked on, tempted to join her, but afraid of being caught at it, Mary stepped into the tub, gasping at the cold. Elated by the almost sensual touch of water on her skin, she began to laugh. ‘It feels wonderful,’ she gasped out, crouching down so that the water came up to her middle and looking to the others to join her in their tubs. ‘Do it quickly if you’re going to, before we get caught.’
Bessie and Hannah got into theirs without any hesitation; only Sarah held back, claiming she was keeping watch. The three women scrubbed themselves and their clothes eagerly, aware they hadn’t long to finish the task, yet smiling with delight as they saw the dirt floating away from them.
After soaping her hair, Mary dunked herself right under the water several times. As she came up for the last time, to her horror she saw the two guards and an officer staring down at her. A quick glance revealed that Bessie and Hannah were already out of their tubs, trying vainly to wring the water from their dresses. Sarah was white-faced and agitated.
‘We weren’t doing no harm, sir,’ Mary said, addressing the officer. He was a portly man with a big nose and he looked astonished. ‘Just using up the water before we threw it overboard. We’ve done all the washing.’
Mary could see no good reason why bathing should be considered something punishable. But one glance at her two wet friends alarmed her. Their dresses were clinging to their bodies, showing clearly the curve of their breasts and hips, and the guards were looking at them with naked lust. Aware that her own body must be similarly displayed, she was stricken with embarrassment.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said as she struggled to get out of the tub. ‘But you can’t blame us, we’re never given enough water to wash properly.’
‘Why is it that you women always take advantage of any situation?’ the officer asked.
Mary glanced at her companions and guessed they were tongue-tied with fear. The officer was older than Tench, perhaps thirty or more, his voice high-pitched and clipped. Yet she could see no cruelty in his eyes, only puzzlement.
‘Wouldn’t you?’ she retorted. ‘What else are we to do? That hold you keep us in wouldn’t stink so much if we were allowed to bathe and come up here for exercise, and if it was scrubbed out now and then. If you kept animals in such a place there’d be a riot.’
One of the guards sniggered, and the officer silenced him with a stern look. ‘Take those three back,’ he said, pointing to Bessie, Sarah and Hannah. ‘I’ll deal with this one.’
The other women were pushed away through the lines of washing by the guards, leaving Mary alone with the officer. She vainly tried to wring out
her skirt as she waited for him to speak.
‘Your name?’ he asked.
‘Mary Broad, sir,’ she said. ‘Am I allowed to know yours?’
She thought she saw a glimmer of a smile, and she ran her fingers through her hair and smiled back defiantly. Her mother and sister had often remarked how pretty her hair was wet, as it sprang into ringlets, and she hoped that was true because the wind felt chill now she was wet, and she wouldn’t look anything more than pathetic if she began shivering.
‘Lieutenant Graham,’ he said. ‘It seems to me, Mary, that you haven’t quite grasped the gravity of your situation.’
Graham was a name she’d also heard from the men prisoners. He was reputed to be dangerous when crossed, but decent enough most of the time.
‘Oh, I have, sir,’ she said boldly. ‘I can see that I won’t be alive to be transported, not unless I get a lucky break and a chance to have a bath and some extra food from time to time.’
He gave her a long, appraising stare which seemed to go right through her clothes, and she knew in that moment that he wanted her.
She had set her heart on Tench as a prospective saviour, and Lieutenant Graham would be an extremely poor substitute. His face was fat and flabby and she suspected he had little hair under his very well-cared-for wig. But there was no harm in having someone in reserve in case Tench couldn’t be tempted. And Graham wasn’t entirely repulsive as his teeth and skin were good. Besides, she wasn’t looking for true love, only to survive long enough to escape.
‘Are you trying to suggest something?’ he said, his eyes narrowing. They were a muddy brown, not the kind which could keep her awake as Tench’s did.
‘It’s not for me to suggest anything, sir,’ she said, making a bob of a curtsy and grinning impudently. ‘I was just saying how it is for me.’
He ordered her back to the hold at that, but as the guard roughly pushed her down through the companion-way, she felt Graham was watching her with interest.
Down in the hold, the afternoon’s bath was being discussed by all those women still strong enough to be interested in the others. As Mary was pushed inside, they broke off their chatter to look up at her.
‘What happened to you?’ Bessie asked, wringing her hands with anxiety. ‘We were afraid you’d be punished, or…’ She broke off, not wanting to add the word ‘raped’.
‘I told him we need more food, fresh air, and this hovel cleaned out,’ Mary said. She didn’t feel inclined to discuss it any further as her wet clothes were making her cold and she wanted to talk in private to Sarah.
Her chance didn’t come till much later that evening. She took off her wet clothes, hung them from a nail on the beam to dry and huddled in her blanket, but each time she looked across the hold, Sarah was talking to Hannah.
It was almost pitch dark when Mary saw Sarah move towards the bucket. By then most of the women were lying down ready to sleep. Mary got up and shuffled over to her, holding her blanket round her.
‘When you’ve finished, can we talk?’ she whispered.
In the gloom she saw Sarah nod her head.
The bucket was the best place to stay, furthest away from any of the women, but without room to stand up. When Sarah had finished, they perched on a beam. ‘What is it?’ Sarah asked.
‘Who is your lover?’ Mary asked. She saw no point in being more subtle.
Sarah hesitated. It was too dark for Mary to see if she was angry at being asked.
‘Is it Tench or Graham?’ Mary persisted.
‘No, neither of those,’ Sarah whispered. ‘But you shouldn’t ask such things, Mary.’
‘Why not? I have to, if only so I know who not to make up to,’ Mary whispered back.
‘Tench can’t be drawn into such things,’ Sarah said with a sigh. ‘Most of us have tried. And I wish you luck if you’re going to try Graham, he’s a hard man.’
‘How do I go about it?’ Mary asked.
She felt rather than saw Sarah’s shrug. ‘Give him the glad eye whenever you see him, that’s usually enough for them to call you out on a pretext. But don’t hope for much. You’ll only be disappointed.’
‘Does your man remove your chains?’
‘Sometimes, not often,’ she said wearily. ‘Now, go to bed, Mary, I don’t want to tell you these things, it’s not good.’
Mary heard the sadness in Sarah’s voice, and knew instinctively it was only desperation that had driven her to such an arrangement and she wanted no part in seeing another girl follow her lead.
‘We have to do what we can to survive,’ Mary said, taking Sarah’s hand and squeezing it. ‘That’s all it is, Sarah, nothing more. I don’t see any shame in that.’
‘You will when the others turn their backs on you,’ Sarah said, her voice breaking.
‘Better a turned back than dying of hunger,’ Mary insisted.
For over a week Mary waited, each day hoping she would be called out again for work. The weather had turned really warm and the hold was stifling. A woman called Elizabeth Soames died one night and was only discovered dead at daybreak, but what shocked Mary most was that no one had anything to say about her. She’d been locked in here for months, yet she hadn’t made one real friend and no one seemed to know anything about her.
‘She was already here when I came,’ Sarah said when Mary pointed this out. ‘She was sick then, she barely spoke. She was old anyway, don’t fret about it.’
Mary did fret about it. She wondered where the guards took Elizabeth’s body for burial, whether the woman had any relatives and if they’d be told. It also made her own desire to escape even stronger.
The only comfort she could find was reliving memories of home. She found that if she sank into them far enough she could forget the heat, hunger, smells and the other women. Sometimes she would imagine herself walking down the path to Bodinnick with Dolly and their mother to catch the boat up to Lostwithiel. Mary could only recall going there twice, the last time when she was about twelve and Dolly fourteen, but both occasions were hot, sunny days, and she remembered sitting in the boat trailing her hand in the cool, clear water.
For much of the boat journey the river ran through steep, thickly wooded banks where the trees grew right down to the water’s edge, their roots reaching out into the water like gnarled fishermen’s fingers. It was a journey of enchantment, dragonflies hovering over the water, herons standing patiently in the shallows, and often timid deer peeping out from the trees. Kingfishers perched on the tree roots, waiting for an unwary fish to swim by, and then they would swoop, a glorious flash of turquoise, and come back up with their silver prize in their beaks.
Lostwithiel was the farthest Mary had ever been from home until she went to Plymouth. It might have been no bigger than Fowey, but to her it was thrilling because coaches thundered in from as far away as Bristol and London. She watched bug-eyed as the passengers alighted, marvelling at the women’s beautiful clothes and pretty hats, and wondering why, if they were rich and important enough to travel so far, they didn’t look happier.
Last time they’d gone there, Father had given her and Dolly tuppence each to spend. While Mother was buying material for new clothes, they looked in every single shop and examined each and every market stall before they decided what they would spend their money on. Dolly bought some artificial daisies to put on her Sunday bonnet, and Mary bought a kite. Dolly said she was stupid wasting tuppence on something she could make at home for nothing, and anyway girls didn’t fly kites.
Mary didn’t care about being the only girl to fly a kite, and she thought Dolly was foolish wanting daisies on her bonnet. Besides, kites made at home were too heavy to fly well; hers was made of red paper, with yellow streamers, and the string was waxed so it slid through her hands smoothly.
The very next day after church, Mary took the kite up on the hill above the town to fly it. Dolly came with her, but only because she wanted to show off her newly trimmed bonnet. As always on a fine day with a strong breeze there were man
y boys flying kites, and they all looked enviously at Mary’s when it took off effortlessly, soaring up into the sky way beyond all their homemade ones.
Dolly overcame her prejudice about it being a boy’s game, mostly because there were several boys she liked up there, among them Albert Mowles whom she was sweet on. Mary might have known she shouldn’t have allowed Dolly to persuade her to let her hold the kite. She only wanted to do it so she could attract Albert’s attention.
A gust of stronger wind came, and to Mary’s horror, Dolly didn’t hold the string tighter, but let it run right through her fingers. The kite was off, swept along on the wind in the direction of the beach at Menabilly.
Everyone gave chase, some abandoning their own kites to rescue the superior one. Mary remembered how she ran like the wind, determined to beat all the boys, and they were all whooping and shouting at the unexpected excitement.
The kite came down suddenly and dramatically as the wind dropped, landing on some rocks to the side of the little beach. The tide was out and Mary didn’t stop to think about her Sunday clothes and shoes, but ran full tilt across the seaweed, sand and mud, her mind only on rescuing her kite.
She tripped on a half-submerged rock and fell face down. It was Albert who reached the kite, then turned back to help her up.
‘You can run faster than most boys,’ he said in admiration.
Now, as Mary lay sweating in the stinking hold, she thought she ought to remember the wallop she got from Mother when she returned home soaking wet and smeared with mud. Perhaps too she should remember Dolly’s baleful look when Mary was the recipient of Albert’s praise. Maybe she would have been wiser to have taken note of her father’s lecture that girls who acted like boys came to a sticky end.
Yet none of those things were important to her then, or now. Nothing could detract from the thrill of seeing the red kite soar up into the sky, feeling the warm sun on her face and the soft grass beneath her feet, experiencing the joy of running wild and free, the beauty of that little beach where she so often caught crabs and mussels. It was even more important now to hold on to those memories, to think of herself as that kite, straining to be free. For hadn’t she been told at Sunday school that if you prayed hard enough for something, it would come to you?
Remember Me Page 5
