Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [11]
Knowing she was only about forty miles from home brought on an unbearable pang of homesickness. She could imagine her mother sitting on a stool in front of the fire, some mending in her hands. Mary took after her in looks, the same thick curly hair, which she braided tightly round her head, and the same grey eyes. When Mary was small she could remember her mother undoing the braids at night, running her fingers through them till her hair fell in a dark shiny storm on her shoulders. It transformed her from being just an ordinary woman into a beauty, and Mary and Dolly often asked why she didn’t leave it loose for everyone to admire.
‘Vanity is a deadly sin,’ she’d reply, yet she always smiled as if it pleased her to have a beautiful secret, unseen by anyone but her own family. She kept her feelings secret too, and the girls had learned from a very early age to gauge them purely by her actions. When she was angry she banged pots and poked the fire vigorously; when worried she was silent. Her way of showing affection was no more than a tender stroke of the face or a squeeze of the shoulder. Yet now that Mary knew she would never see her again, those little gestures seemed so precious and important.
She remembered how her mother had hugged her as she left home that last morning in Fowey. She hadn’t really hugged her back, for she was impatient to leave. The last memory her mother would have of her was that. A daughter who went off giggling carelessly. Never to be seen again.
Chapter two
Thankfully the rain had stopped when the prisoners were ordered out of the warehouse the following morning. But the sky was still grey, with a keen wind blowing off the river which made them all huddle together for warmth.
Breakfast had been nothing more than water and a lump of stale bread, and as Mary looked across at the prison ship Dunkirk, and saw it really was as decrepit as it had appeared at dusk yesterday, she guessed the provisions there would be no better.
Yet her spirits were a little higher than on the previous day. Despite her wet clothes, she had slept quite well, and at least there was no further travelling today. She thought escape was out of the question for the time being. Apart from her shackles, which she now doubted would be removed, the quay was busy with watchful Marines, all carrying muskets.
Dozens of boats of all sizes were bobbing around on the water, ferrying passengers across the river and carrying goods to the bigger ships anchored at deep water. Mary couldn’t smell the prison ship today, but whether that was because the wind had changed, or she had imagined the smell last night, she couldn’t guess. It was good to breathe in the salty air, and if she ignored her fellow prisoners and her hunger, and just drank in the sights, sounds and smells, it was almost like being back in Fowey.
At midday Mary was still waiting on the quay, still chained to her four companions. So far several small groups of male prisoners had been rowed out to the Dunkirk, and they had watched them climb up the ladder to the deck, then disappear from view. But the women’s interest in this procedure had long since waned. Most were trying to improve their appearance, combing or plaiting their hair, attending to wounds on their ankles from the chains, and any who were carrying belongings were sifting through them, sorting out another dress or petticoat.
Mary had no belongings beyond a comb, and that had been given to her by another prisoner at Exeter, so her grooming could go no further than trying to remove as many lice as possible from her hair. They had been provided with a bucket of water to wash their faces and hands that morning, but she longed to be able to strip off her dirty clothes and wash herself completely. She hadn’t done that since before her arrest, and she felt she must stink.
None of the other women seemed that concerned about their filthy state, but then Mary had discovered almost as soon as she left home that the high standard of cleanliness her