The Night Flower

by Sarah Stovell

  ‘But that is ridiculous! How can word be getting out? None of us has told anyone. And almost everyone we invited is coming to the Christmas supper party on Saturday.’

  ‘But people are eagle-eyed around here. They look out for signs so that they can put them all together and be led to conclusions, which they then share with everyone else. And whether we think there is anything wrong in what he does or not, the fact remains that your father’s trade –’ here she paused and shot furtive glances towards the door and the windows, then lowered her voice to a whisper – ‘the fact remains that your father’s trade is a crime.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘You know your aunts and uncles on your father’s side deserted him when they found out how he made his living. And your mother, though she adored him, found it hard not to despise what he did.’ She stopped and appeared to think for a moment, and then she added, as if speaking to herself, ‘I’ve sometimes wondered whether that was why she died so young – she saw no other escape from him and the taint of association.’

  ‘Aunt Emily!’

  ‘Ssh, ssh, dear. I know. But listen, the reason I am telling you these things is this: You must never, ever tell Will about your father’s trade. His family would disapprove and see an end to the match immediately.’

  ‘Of course, Aunt Emily. Though I don’t know that I will be able to hide it for ever.’

  ‘Do your best, child. Just do your best. If word ever reached the authorities, we would all of us be ruined. They have more ships out there than ever now, trying to seize the trading vessels. I have tried so many times to convince your father to give this work up, but he refuses.’ She sighed, then looked at me over her glasses. ‘Now, how are things coming along in the kitchen?’

  Our conversation was over, but I found it difficult to put her words out of my head all afternoon. I could not help being afraid for Papa. Will was among the many people who believed him to carry out important and closely guarded work for the government. It was not that I’d ever told him this outright, just that I’d simply never corrected his assumption.

  I was right to be afraid. We had five days of happiness together, before the blow came. The Christmas supper party, which I had been planning and looking forward to for months, became an engagement party for the two of us, and what began as the most perfect evening of my life soon ended as the most awful.

  All day, the house was filled with fine, sweet smells of cinnamon and nutmeg and brandy. When I went down to check how things were going in the kitchen, there was such a feeling of festivity among the servants that I decided not to notice the scullery maid picking sugar away from the tops of the mince pies with her bare fingers, though I shuddered to think what was on them, as it was she whose job it was to empty the servants’ chamber pots in the mornings. Silently, I decided not to serve those particular pies at the party and to give them instead to the servants as an early Christmas treat.

  I then went upstairs to my quarters, where I spent some time washing and dressing and arranging my hair. Once finished, I took my candle and returned downstairs to find the dining room exquisitely laid out. The oil lamps were burning with light, and the buffet a true feast for the eye. At the top of the table sat the boar’s head, keeping watch over roasted fowls, tongues, hams, glass bowls brimming with lobster salad and the most beautiful game pie I have ever beheld. There were jellies, custards, creams, tipsy cake, blancmanges and wonderful arrangements of fruit. On the dresser, tureens of both hare and pheasant soup filled the room with a good, hearty smell, and I must say I was entirely happy with the overall effect, as all the colours and tastes in the arrangement contrasted or blended together perfectly.

  ‘Cook,’ I said, striding into the kitchen with a smile. ‘I am very pleased with all that you have done today. I know this evening is to be hard work for you, but please take breakfast tomorrow off. Just ask Jane to leave some cold meats out on the side for us.’

  ‘Certainly, miss. And thank you for the time off.’

  She did not manage a smile, but I was glad of the thanks. I helped myself to some food from the kitchen, as I didn’t wish to be hungry at the party and eat in front of the guests.

  Will and his mother and father were the first to arrive. His mother kissed me cordially on the cheek and gave me her congratulations.

  So the evening wore on, and more guests were shown to the dining room. There was a great deal of merriment and laughter, with hearty congratulations given freely to Will and me.

  It was about ten o’clock when the knock at the door came. Amidst the bustle of the dining room, I heard it and was curious. All our guests had arrived and we were expecting no more, so I slipped away from the party and out into the hall. Gusts of wind had blown in when Grace answered the door, billowing ash out from the fireplace. I heard an unfamiliar male voice say, ‘I must speak urgently with Mrs Hodges.’

  ‘There is no Mrs Hodges, sir. Only the master’s daughter and sister.’

  ‘Then I must speak to them.’

  ‘Sir, I regret that they are otherwise occupied at the moment …’

  I stepped out from the shadows. The man was a Navy official, stern and important-looking. ‘Thank you, Grace,’ I said. ‘I shall take over here.’

  Grace’s face expressed all the worry I felt. ‘Should I call for your aunt?’

  ‘Yes, please, Grace,’ I said. ‘But do try not to alert our guests to any disruption to the evening.’

  I turned to the officer. ‘May I help you?’

  His face maintained its stern expression without falter. ‘Mr Hodges’ ship has been seized off the west coast of Africa. He was carrying eight hundred Negroes on board to be sold in the Americas as slaves. As I’m sure you must know, slave trading has been illegal through the British Empire for about thirty years, and penalties imposed by this country are now very severe.’ Here he looked at me as though I were guilty of murder.

  I stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind me. It took me some time to find my voice. ‘What does this mean, sir?’

  ‘We have brought Mr Hodges back to London, where he is being held with his crew in custody. There will be a legal trial, but I must warn you that the minimum penalties likely to be imposed are significant fines and imprisonment for at least ten years.’

  I felt very hollow and sick inside, afraid to ask what the worst penalty might be. All I could see was the future spread out before us like a desert. Where once there had been luxury, there was about to be poverty; where once there had been pride, there was about to be shame. I cleared my throat. ‘What can I do now?’ I asked.

  ‘I can ask your father to write to you if you wish. But there is nothing that can be done to alter this unpardonable course of events.’

  I stepped away from him and back into the hall, where Aunt Emily stood anxiously waiting. She gripped my hand. ‘Is it your father?’ she whispered.

  From the dining room came the sounds of continuing merriment – the chinking of crystal, the noisy hum of voices in festive spirit. I could hardly form a coherent thought.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, it is Papa. His ship has been seized and he has been arrested.’

  ‘Oh, Rose!’ she cried. ‘What are we to do?’ The colour in her face had entirely drained away and I feared she might faint.

  ‘For now,’ I said, ‘there is nothing to do but return to the dining room and continue the evening with our guests. We must be calm and act entirely as if nothing has happened. In the morning, when they are gone and we have slept the first night of this news away, we will be able to think more clearly.’

  I didn’t wait for her response. I walked back to the laughter and merriment of our guests.

  Will sought me out and looked at me with concern. ‘Is everything all right?’ he asked. ‘Who was it calling?’

  I flicked the loose hair away from my shoulders and smiled. ‘Everything is fine,’ I said. ‘It was nothing important, and barely worth mentioning.’

  Then I linked my arm through
his, as I was badly in need of the comfort, knowing that the loss of my dowry and the shame of my father’s arrest would be too much for him and his family to bear, and that our engagement would be called off in the morning. There was no way to hide it.

  10

  So that was that. England’d disappeared and life on that ship went on and on the same for more days and weeks than I could count. We stopped off at an island called Tenerife, so the crew men could get us more food and fresh water for drinking. As soon as the ship got anchored, all the criminal folk what’d been on the top deck – getting a bit of air and some religion – suddenly got shoved aside so them shouting sailors could roll their great empty casks along the floor and drop em down the ship’s sides into the longboats at the bottom.

  The crew men took their brand-new convict wives and went off to the shores to get us food – and to enjoy emselves a bit with beer and making merry – and the boats full of empty casks got rowed off, and those of us what was left on board went back to religious-learning and deck-scrubbing. A couple of days later, the boats come back again, full up of fresh water for all us thirsty convicts. There was a lot of whooping and happy going on, even though most folk’d of preferred them casks to of been full up of something more exciting on the nerves than just water.

  Anyway, we was all proper thirsty by now, because the water what we’d been drinking since leaving London’d got brown and old and disgusting on the tongue, so we drunk the new stuff eager, but then something bad happened in a lot of stomachs and more than a hundred of em come down with the flux.

  So that left us with a lot of washing, what wasn’t no easy thing to do when you was at sea. We had to strip our clothes off to pretty well all what was needed to give a body a bit of decency, and then the sailors brung us matches and wood, and we was set to boiling up cauldrons of salty water what we sunk our clothes and sheets into, before beating the leftover dirt and all the shit outta em. That top deck was pretty well trembling, as rows and rows of us ladies kneeled there thwacking the timbers with sheets, hammocks, shifts, smocks, trousers and a whole pile of sanitary napkins thrown in, too. The water what went trickling over the sides of that ship and staining its walls was about as filthy as everything else on board, and didn’t do much to make us feel like we was a special sorta cargo, that’s for sure.

  *

  After a few more days of all this being sick and washing, the crew men and their brand-new convict wives what’d escaped the ship all come back on board, and we set sail away from Tenerife and carried on our way to Parts Beyond the Sea.

  No one was much feeling comfy now, wearing all them clothes what’d been washed in salty water. Everything was stiff, and it give us itching bad rashes under the collars and round the armpits, and in even more unfortunate places than that for them poor officers in their breeches. But I didn’t have enough good feelings left in my heart to go taking pity on em and sometimes I had a small laugh to myself, when I caught sight of all them trying-to-be-dignified men, scratching and scratching at their necessary parts. I reckoned it served em right, for taking emselves them wives without so much as even a please or a thank you.

  So anyway, once Tenerife was over and done with, we wasn’t gonna be stopping nowhere again till we come to Cape Town, and that was hundreds and hundreds of miles and a whole lot of weeks off yet. But for all that, on them rare days when the weather was fine and the sea was calm, there come to be a lot of work to do on the top deck, getting The Marquis of Hastings ready for what she was gonna go through in the seas after Cape Town, because they was a blustery lot, them Southern Oceans, or so the sailors said.

  Us girls and women what’d got sewing skills was rounded up and took off the pot-washing and boat-scrubbing duties to join the sailors and officers on the top deck, and all of us set about cutting out and sewing a whole new set of sails, ready for when the gales come and tore apart the old ones. And while we was getting on with that, as the sun shone itself down on us and our fingers worked away, the sailors was busying emselves with climbing up the rigging and checking the poles for all kinds of safety stuff I didn’t know about or understand, but was anyway glad for the getting-done of it.

  All in all, they was the best of my days on that ship, because although the sewing itself wasn’t that interesting, it was a kushti, quiet sorta task – easier on the hands than scrubbing the decks, and also quite soothing on the feelings of a girl what couldn’t stop missing her mother, for all what she tried her hardest.

  Me and Katie-May was mostly sat next to Ma Dwyer and as we worked and sewed together, she give us stories about her life. She’d got herself six children altogether, except three of em’d come to a sorry end – two girls dead from typhus, and one boy hanged for a brawl. But the other three of em was doing well, and they was off now living with their aunt in the countryside. Ma Dwyer was hoping they’d get kushti lives for emselves, learning how to keep chickens and pigs and make a decent sorta living off the land, because back home in England the land could pretty well always be relied on to send up some food when you was needing it.

  Katie-May said, ‘Why’re you here, going off to Van Diemen’s Land?’

  Ma Dwyer said, ‘I ain’t a prisoner like you girls, I’m just travelling the cheapest way I can. My husband’s a prisoner, though, so I’ve got my own links to the prison class. He’s been over there four years now. They’ve just given him his yellow ticket, and he’s asked me to come and join him, so I said I would. We’ve got a business to run, and he reckons it’ll bring us more money than anything we could do in England. So I’m bringing the money, and he’s bringing the ideas.’

  And when she spoke, she sounded proper excited, and I wondered if maybe life in Parts Beyond the Sea wouldn’t be so bad, after all.

  *

  After the unlucky happening of the flux, there was a few folk on board what’s bodies got so worn out from the being-sick of it, they couldn’t take it no more and went and died clean away. It was a sorry sight, watching the crew men carry off the bodies and throw em all out to sea. The vicar muttered some sorta prayer to help their souls with getting where they needed to be.

  One of them ladies what’d gone and died was the wife of one of the sailors, and in fairness to that old sailor man, he did get himself the decency to look a bit sad round his face when they tossed her overboard for the fish to eat.

  It didn’t last long, though. A few days or maybe a week or more later, he come and started hanging round me and Katie-May and Ma Dwyer, when we was doing our sewing on the top deck. He wasn’t much interested in Ma Dwyer – I s’pose because she was near thirty years old – but it seemed to me like he’d of took whatever one of me and Katie-May was willing to go with him. And it wasn’t me, but he come to work that fact out for himself quick enough.

  He pulled up a wooden stool beside us, and sat down with his legs wide apart in a way no one could think of as gentlemanly. ‘How are you ladies finding it here?’ he said.

  I didn’t say nothing. I didn’t want to give him no ideas. But I didn’t have nothing kushti to say about life on that ship anyway.

  Katie-May looked square at him and said in a sorry sorta way, ‘It ain’t where I’d want to live, sir, if I had the choice.’ Her lip started quivering and shaking and I thought she was gonna cry. I knew how much men liked women what cry.

  He made his voice go all low and kind. ‘Aren’t you even enjoying your classes, Katie-May?’

  Well, at that, I looked right up from my sewing in shock. No prisoner on this ship got called by their proper name. We was all just numbers. And I knew it meant no good for a man to go speaking a girl’s real name in that way. I didn’t know why he was asking about our classes, neither, because they was all just about God and Christ and the holy stuff what the gadje believed in, and I could see, clear as clear, from the way he was watching her, he didn’t have no religion on his mind.

  Katie-May shook her head and shook away a few tears with it. She didn’t say nothing, though, and it looked to me lik
e that crew man was gonna fall fast in love with her, right there and then. He reached out and took her hand in his and held it to his lips, and said, ‘There, now,’ or words what seemed to be meaning that – I couldn’t hear exactly. I looked at Ma Dwyer to see what she was thinking about all this carry-on, but she was just getting on polite with her sewing.

  Well, they went on like they was for quite a while, till in the end the bell rung and it was time for us to go for praying and lunch. We was meant to pray about getting the Lord and the whole world to forgive us for what we’d done to get took to Parts Beyond the Sea, but I just prayed to find a way off this ship.

  After the bad-meaning sailor man left, I turned to Katie-May and said, with the cold in my voice, ‘You’ve gotta be more careful than what you’re being. You’ll start giving him ideas and then you’ll get in all sorts of trouble.’

  But she just shrugged and scowled at me. She wasn’t the sorta girl a body could go giving warnings to, not without getting a load of sauce back in return.

  Of course, the trouble come. That night, the crew man come down to the decks and carried Katie-May off with him and the next day, when she come up to the deck for sewing, she was buzzing round like the queen bee, in a way I thought was proper obvious of her, and not ladylike.

  I said, ‘You happier now you’re out the bottom decks?’

  She grinned big. ‘Yep,’ she said, and that was the end of that.

  I wasn’t feeling jealous of Katie-May, just for giving a sailor what he wanted, but I’d got a funny sorta feeling inside me what was a bit like being jealous. I reckon it must of been because that sailor’d took away my companion for getting through the nights with, and there was a couple of times after she’d gone when I woke myself up with crying from the bad of it.

  11

  After we’d been a week or more at sea, I finally brought myself to leave the comfort of my cabin and wander about the decks. Upstairs, where I lived with the officers, was spacious and comfortable, though there were always several brown-smocked convict women around, which prevented the feeling of luxury that might otherwise have been afforded. Many of the sailors had helped themselves from the cargo below deck. ‘Wives’ was how they referred to them, though there was no more likely to be a marriage taking place than there was for my fortunes to be reversed. The wives looked happy enough with the arrangement.