Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [109]
‘My thoughts about Mary are pure,’ Sam protested. ‘But for her I wouldn’t have been alive to come on this escape. I was close to death when they dumped me like a sack of rice on the wharf. I saw other women stealing the clothes of those too weak to protest, they passed me by, not even giving me water because I was in rags. But she came to me, God bless her.’
Sam’s passionate statement pricked James’s conscience. He hadn’t cared enough to help with the sick on the Second Fleet and he remembered he’d hidden himself away with a bottle of rum he’d stolen while helping to load goods in the stores. During the next week or so there was a great deal of talk about how hard Mary had worked with the sick, while he’d even been callous enough to tell her it would be better for all of them if they died.
Looking back further, he could recall his reunion with Will when the men came ashore that first day in Port Jackson. Will had not known that Samuel Bird and James had been sent out on another ship of the fleet, and he was thrilled to meet up with them again. James remembered talking excitedly about sharing a tent with him and other men from the Dunkirk, but Will confounded him by saying he intended to marry Mary and built a hut of his own.
James thought the man had taken leave of his senses. He couldn’t believe Will would choose to live with one woman and her child when he could be with his old mates and have a different woman every night of the week.
Yet James had come to envy Will before long. The women prisoners were in the main a disappointment, either conniving bitches or pathetic wretches, and there wasn’t much fun to be had when a man was constantly hungry.
Mary had proved to be an inspired choice as a wife. She was bright and cheerful, she kept herself and Charlotte clean and decent. And just to look at big Will, who remained fitter and stronger than anyone else, was enough to know she took care of him in every way.
But then, just as he’d been wrong in his initial judgement of Mary, he’d been wrong about Will too.
‘’Tis not a good thing to idolize anyone,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘Oh, I’m not meaning Mary,’ he said quickly as he saw Sam’s surprised and rather indignant expression. ‘I’m talking of Will.’ He didn’t think he would ever forget how the big man had sat cowering with fear that last night at sea. Or how Mary’d screamed like a banshee to make them all exert themselves. ‘You see, right since I first met him on the Dunkirk, I surely believed he was indestructible.’
‘A man who has to boast about his strength or cleverness isn’t sure of it,’ Sam said with a self-satisfied smirk. ‘And a man who will lay another out just on suspicion he wants his woman is a fool.’
James shrugged. He might be disappointed in his old friend, but he wasn’t about to let some Johnny-comelately slander him. ‘Watch what you say,’ he warned. ‘Will and I go back a long way.’
‘I know,’ Sam said carefully. ‘But you are no fool, James. You know as well as I do we need a strong leader if there is to be any chance of making it to Kupang. I’m not so sure Will is up to that any longer.’
‘Surely you aren’t thinking a woman with two babbies can be that leader?’ James retorted. He admired Mary himself, but it was not in his nature to believe a woman could be tougher and more resilient than himself or any other man.
Sam chuckled. ‘Of course not. We’d have mutiny on our hands.’
James had often called Sam ‘the Parson’ back in Port Jackson, because of his appearance, mild manners and disapproval of drink. But in the past weeks he’d come to see that the man was strong-willed and resourceful. He had an idea that Sam had some sort of plan of his own, and he thought it best to winkle it out now, so he’d know where he stood.
‘What if Will suggests we stay here till the bad weather’s over?’ he asked tentatively. Will had only hinted at this, and if James were to be totally honest, the idea had some real attractions.
Sam half smiled. To him, this bay they’d christened White Bay was paradise. The soft sand, the lush vegetation