Remember Me

by Lesley Pearse

  Plots against unpopular prisoners were hatched in here as well, and as jealousy was usually the reason behind most of the vicious attacks in Newgate, Mary often feared for herself and her friends.

  ‘Mary, my little darlin’!’ James exclaimed as he saw her in the doorway. ‘Come and have a drink with us!’

  James had undergone a quite dramatic change since their arrival in Newgate. The notoriety, his ability to read and write, and his natural charm had set him apart from the other prisoners almost immediately. But his image had been further enhanced by the stream of ladies who came to visit him. In smart new clothes, clean-shaven and with his hair neatly trimmed, he now had the persona of a member of the Irish aristocracy. He could never be called a handsome man, with his big forehead and nose, but he wore the new clothes with style, and his humour and warmth were very attractive.

  Mary’s heart sank when she saw his face flushed by drink and the way he staggered as he moved towards her, but far worse than the drunkenness was the company he was keeping. Amos Keating and Jack Sneed were real scum, as ugly in their appearance as they were in their hearts. The pair of them had bludgeoned a wealthy old widow to death when she caught them robbing her house. Even now, awaiting their execution, they showed absolutely no remorse, they even bragged about it. Nat, Bill and Sam weren’t in the room, and Mary suspected they’d left because they didn’t wish to mix with the likes of Amos and Jack.

  ‘I just wanted to talk to you, James,’ she said, backing away. ‘But it will keep.’

  ‘Too high and mighty to drink with us?’ Amos, the smaller of the two men, leered at her, showing his rotting teeth.

  Mary hesitated. It wasn’t in her nature just to walk away silently from such a remark. But her hesitation was her undoing, for Jack, Amos’s accomplice, a six-foot brute with a face like raw liver, was across the room in two strides and caught hold of her round her waist.

  ‘I like ’em ’igh and mighty,’ he said. ‘They’ve always got the tightest cunts.’

  He lifted Mary up, holding her in a vice-like grip, and tried to kiss her. Mary slapped out at his face, but he only laughed.

  ‘That’s right, you fight me,’ he roared out in delight. ‘I don’t like me women too willin’.’

  Mary struggled, but he was holding her too tightly to let her get free and, spurred on by strongly voiced encouragement from the other drinkers, he wasn’t going to relinquish her.

  ‘Let me go,’ she shouted, pummelling him with her fists. ‘James, help me!’

  Mary saw him lurch forward, but Amos caught him around the neck to hold him back, and she knew in that instant that she was in real danger.

  The majority of men in Newgate, whether prisoners or gaolers, believed all the women were theirs for the taking. Mary had always considered herself reasonably safe because of her elevated status as an escapee and her four male friends who stayed close to her. But Jack and Amos clearly weren’t in awe of her, and believed she was easy game.

  ‘A woman who lets herself be shared by four men shouldn’t mind someone new having a turn,’ Jack hissed in her ear, before flinging her down to the floor. He unbuckled his belt and leaped on top of her, the sour smell of his filthy clothes making her gag.

  Mary screamed to James again, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of him as the other drinkers closed round to watch what Jack was going to do. James’s face looked stricken, but she guessed he was still being held back by Amos and could do nothing.

  Mary fought Jack, pulling his hair and scratching his face, but he caught her two hands with one of his, while the other groped frantically under her clothes. He was hampered a little by her heavy great-coat, and she was wriggling like an eel.

  ‘Get off me, you filthy bastard,’ Mary yelled, spitting into his face. She tried desperately to get a grip on the floor with the heels of her boots in an attempt to force his body off her, but the surface was too slimy. She continued to scream at the top of her lungs, but that only seemed to inflame Jack more, along with all the other men watching. Desperately, she remembered that screams in Newgate were too commonplace for anyone to come to her rescue.

  She could feel the sudden charge in the air as the onlookers grew excited, and if Jack got his way with her, she had no doubt other men would follow him. But she wasn’t going to succumb to rape after all she’d been through. She’d sooner die.

  She fought him with every vestige of strength, getting her hands free again to claw his eyes with her nails, and pulling at his greasy hair until a handful came away in her hand. As he tried to suppress her with a kiss, she bit his lip hard.

  ‘You little hell-cat,’ he exclaimed, almost in admiration, pausing for a second to wipe blood from his mouth.

  Mary took the opportunity to buck under him, and managed to get a few inches away to her left. But Jack was too quick; he grabbed her tightly again, pinning both her body and her right arm down, and pulled off his belt with his left hand.

  ‘No, you bastard!’ she heard James yell out, and perhaps he tried to get closer to help, though Mary couldn’t see. But if he did, he didn’t succeed, and Jack was clearly intending either to beat her into submission with the belt, or use it to tie her hands.

  In a way the sight of the onlookers was even worse than what Jack was planning to do to her. The light from the lantern was dim, but she could still see the malicious glee on their faces clearly enough. Her terror grew into fury at their depravity and made her all the more determined not to give them the kind of entertainment they wanted.

  Mary had always been observant, and over the last seven years this had become even more finely honed out of necessity. She had noticed empty bottles lying on the floor when she’d been here before. It was too dark to see if there were any there today, but she stretched out her free arm and swept it quickly across the floor until she felt one.

  Jack had now got his breeches unfastened, and his penis stood out like a purple-tipped barber’s pole. He lunged towards her again, his belt in his hand, and she guessed his intention was to choke her into submission and silence.

  She screamed again to divert him, squeezing her legs together so he would be forced to let go of one end of the belt to prise them apart. He faltered, not quite knowing which end of her to attack first. Mary seized the opportunity to tap the bottle sharply against the floor, leaving a broken jagged edge, then with one swift movement she thrust it into his neck, just below his ear, with as much force as she could muster.

  Jack let out a bellow of pain, jerking up on to his knees, his hands going to his neck. Mary leaped up off the floor and stood with her hands on her hips, panting from the exertion, looking contemptuously down at her attacker.

  The tap-room fell silent. Jack was still on his knees, blood spurting out between his fingers. His eyes were rolling fearfully, and he was making a horrible gurgling noise in his throat.

  ‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ Mary said between her teeth, and kicked out at him so he keeled over.

  She turned to the rest of the crowd, the broken bottle still in her hand. They moved back a step or two, assuming by her bared teeth that she was going to attack them too. For a moment she wanted to, but they reminded her of the rats in the hospital in Batavia. Like them, these people all had sharp features and a furtive manner. They preyed on the weak too. They were despicable and beneath her contempt.

  ‘If any one of you even thinks of touching me again, I’ll kill you,’ she snarled at them. ‘Now, get help for him. And James, you come with me.’

  The other three men were not back in the cell, even though it was nearly dark now. James, who had been apologizing profusely all the way up the stairs, slumped down on to the straw, drew his knees up to his chin and lowered his head on to them.

  ‘You look as if you think I’m going to hit you,’ Mary said sharply. ‘Perhaps I should, for keeping company like that.’

  ‘What if he dies, Mary?’ James bleated out, his face chalk-white in the gloom.

  ‘Do you think anyone will care
?’ she exclaimed as she lit a candle. ‘He’s a murderer and due to be hanged. But he won’t die from what I did, it was only a flesh wound. If it keeps you out of the tap-room for a week or two, I won’t have done it for nothing.’

  James was silent for some time. Mary sat down and leaned her back against the wall. She felt very cold and shaky now, aware it was rather more luck than strength or superior intelligence that had enabled her to overpower Jack.

  ‘Do you hate me?’ James asked after a little while, his voice quavery and weak. Mary thought the shock had sobered him up.

  ‘Now, why should I hate you?’ she retorted. ‘It wasn’t you that tried to rape me.’

  ‘I should have found a way to stop him. I let you down.’

  ‘All men let me down,’ Mary said, and suddenly she was crying. She hadn’t once resorted to tears since they’d arrived in Newgate. She had told herself that after losing her children, nothing could make her cry. But once again she had been forced to fight for herself, and it seemed to her that her entire life had been one long fight, which she was now too tired to continue.

  ‘Don’t, Mary,’ James said, and quickly moved across the floor to comfort her. ‘I can’t bear to see you cry.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked bitterly, tears running down her cheeks. ‘Are you afraid if I crumple there’ll be no hope for any of you?’

  She had replied without thinking, but all at once she saw it was true. She had had people leaning on her, sapping her strength, right from the days back in the Dunkirk. She remembered setting up camp in Port Jackson, with everyone asking her how to do this, how to do that. They wanted her to listen to their problems, enlisted her help in everything from nursing a sick child to pleading with the officers for a blanket or a cooking pot. It never let up, right through the escape and afterwards.

  But who did she have to lean on when things were bad? Mary was forced to keep a grip on herself because she knew she couldn’t count on anyone.

  ‘We would flounder without you, that’s for sure,’ James said ruefully, as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘But you do know how much me and the others love you?’

  ‘I don’t know that I believe men can love,’ she sobbed. ‘When men can use the very same act when they say they love a woman, as they do to show her how much they despise or hate her, I can’t believe they have hearts.’

  James put his arms tightly around her and rocked her against his chest. ‘That’s a very cynical thought, Mary. I’ve done a lot of things I’m ashamed of, but I’ve never taken a woman by force. And a man can love a woman with no thought of lying with her. Me, Nat, Bill and Sam, we all feel that way about you, you’re like a sister to us.’

  ‘But where are you every day if you care so much?’ she burst out. ‘I’m in here alone for hours on end. You leave me to see Mr Boswell, it’s me that bargains for the food from Spinks, gets our washing done. What do any of you do but drink?’

  ‘We leave you to see Boswell because we know it’s you he wants to see,’ James said indignantly. ‘You get better deals from Spinks too because he likes you. And if we leave you alone it’s because we thought that was what you wanted.’

  ‘Is that so?’ she retorted.

  ‘You certainly know it’s right about Boswell and Spinks,’ James replied defensively. ‘Was it something Boswell said that made you come to the tap-room for me?’

  Mary thought for a moment. She had all but forgotten what had passed between her and Boswell. ‘I think I was just upset because he had no news of our pardon,’ she said, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. ‘I’m beginning to think there will never be one.’

  ‘Then maybe it’s time I wrote to the newspapers,’ James said. ‘A little reminder we are all still here, it might prompt some action.’

  Mary was aware that the men weren’t as desperate as she was to be freed. They wanted it of course, but they had grown used to Newgate, and as long as money came to them for drink and food, they were content. But in Mary’s opinion James was living in a fool’s paradise. He’d had ambitions when they first got here, of writing a book and going home to Ireland to breed horses, but all he did now was drink the time away. He didn’t seem to realize that none of the women who found him so fascinating now would want to know him or help him once he was released. He had to start thinking about that day, now.

  She sat up and caught hold of his face between her two hands. ‘Listen to me, James,’ she insisted. ‘You’ve got to stop going into the tap-room. The people you meet in there aren’t doing you any good. Please spend your time writing your book, reading, anything other than drinking, or when we do get out you’ll get yourself in trouble again and you’ll end up back here.’

  ‘Don’t preach, Mary,’ he said, shrugging her away. ‘I know all that.’

  ‘Do you?’ she asked. ‘Then you are a great deal cleverer than me. You see, I’ve thought about it constantly, and I still don’t know how I’m going to live. I ask myself, what can a woman do to make an honest living when she can’t read or write? I wonder what right-minded person would want a convicted felon working in their fine house.’

  ‘There’s always someone,’ he said blithely.

  Mary raised one eyebrow questioningly. ‘Oh really? You believe that the stink of prison will disappear the moment I walk out the gate? That there’ll be a kindly person waiting for me, ready to take me to their house and run the risk I might run off with their family silver?’

  James winced. He never liked it when Mary reminded them all that they were convicted thieves. ‘Mr Boswell will help you. Besides, some fine fella will come along and marry you, maybe you’ll have children again too.’

  Mary gave a harsh little laugh. ‘I look like an old crow, James, what man would want to marry me?’

  ‘I would,’ he said, taking her hand and squeezing it. ‘Sam too. You are beautiful, Mary, you are strong, brave, good and honest. Any man with half an eye would be joyful to have you.’

  It was on the tip of Mary’s tongue to point out that if she chose to marry either of them, her problems would be doubled rather than solved. But she realized James had intended it as a compliment, and it would be churlish to demean it. ‘You could charm most of the women in London speaking like that,’ she said with a watery smile. ‘But not me, James, I know you too well.’

  ‘But you don’t know yourself very well,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. ‘Believe me, you are a prize, Mary. Worth far more than you know.’

  James Boswell stood warming his backside by the fire in his drawing room, a glass of brandy in his hand. It was past seven in the evening and he felt drained, both mentally and physically.

  It was a week since he’d seen Mary, and her despair had made him redouble his efforts for her. Since ten this morning he’d been calling on his most influential friends and acquaintances to secure their involvement. While most had heard him out and had even shown enough sympathy to give him a donation for her fund, not one had been sufficiently moved by her plight to offer their time or expertise to get her freed.

  He moved over to his armchair and sat down heavily. As he leaned back in the chair and sipped his brandy reflectively, he had yet another sharp mental picture of Mary. Her large grey eyes which reminded him of stormy seas. That mane of thick dark curly hair, the pert little nose and lips that so easily curved into a warm smile. She was too thin and sallow-skinned to be a beauty, hard times had left their mark and the elements had aged her prematurely, yet there was something indefinably arresting about her.

  They had had so many meetings, both alone and with the four men. Boswell knew the escape story inside out now, the individual character of each of those involved, including the ones who had lost their lives after the capture. He had learned to tune in to what lay behind Mary’s words, for she always simplified a tale, usually leaving out her own crucial part in it. She had said what day in December Emmanuel had died in the Batavia hospital, and also mentioned how Will arrived at the hospital before then. Only a chance r
emark later, about when she rejoined the other men in the guard ship, made him see that she had stayed on at the hospital with Will until he died.

  Boswell knew how the other men felt about Will, and why. Mary too felt he had betrayed them all. When he asked why she stayed with him until his death, she shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t leave anyone to die alone without some comfort,’ she said.

  To Boswell, that was the core of Mary’s character. She didn’t see such action as noble or generous, to her it was basic humanity. Most women who had just lost their baby would want the father to suffer even if he was only partially responsible. Mary could certainly have used that valuable time to escape with Charlotte, but she didn’t. She stayed and cared for Will.

  It hadn’t been easy to really understand Mary. She was adept at changing the subject, making light of incidents and giving others credit when it ought to have gone to her. But Boswell was tenacious and also had a very good memory, and by fitting things the men had told him about Mary with what she had said herself, the truth emerged.

  Her courage, endurance and intelligence were all remarkable. There was something decidedly masculine about the way she showed so little emotion under stress, yet she was very feminine in other ways. She was passionate in her anxiety about babies born in prisons, and the lack of care for the mothers. She would admire Boswell’s fancy waistcoats, tears had welled up in her eyes when he brought her a posy of snowdrops, and she showed real concern when he arrived out of breath. He had noted her tenderness towards her friends, and the way she kept herself and their cell clean and tidy. In Newgate, that was almost unheard of.

  It was well below freezing outside, but Boswell’s drawing room was warm from the blazing fire, and very comfortable. Shutters and heavy brocade curtains kept out the draughts, his armchair supported him perfectly. He had only to ring the bell and his housekeeper would bring him anything he wanted – a plate of ham or cheese, a bottle of port, or even a blanket to put round his knees. She would warm his bed with a hot brick before he got into it and his night-shirt would be hung by the fire to warm too. In the morning he was woken with a tray of tea, the fire would already be lit, and hot water ready for his morning wash.