Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [121]
To make matters worse for her, Will continued to stay away. The other men told her he was drinking even more, swaggering around the town as if he was a ship’s captain. James Martin, William Moreton and Samuel Bird had all tried to make him see sense and retreat back to the village and keep out of sight as they were doing. But Will would have none of it; he even said that he’d completed his sentence so no one could touch him.
‘The bastard doesn’t care that he’ll bring us all down,’ William Moreton admitted to Mary one evening. ‘I wish to God we’d left him stranded in White Bay.’
Mary looked at each of the men grouped around her and her heart ached at their fearful expressions. They had become like brothers to her in the weeks at sea, each sharing some personal story with her, whether about their mother, the crime for which they were sentenced, or a girl they loved back home in England. They had behaved like gentlemen to her, and Emmanuel and Charlotte would go to any one of them for comfort as easily as they went to Will. They weren’t bad men, just boys who went astray for a while and had surely paid the full price for their crimes. They had been semi-starved, savagely flogged and sent to the other side of the world in terrible hardship.
Mary knew she couldn’t just watch and wait while her husband, their so-called friend, acted like a fool and put them all in jeopardy. She had to stop him.
‘I’ll try to talk to him again,’ she said. ‘Stay here with the children. I’ll go up to the port.’
Mary found Will in the third bar she looked in. He was sprawled on a bench, a half-empty bottle of rum on the table in front of him, and several days’ growth of beard on his chin. There were five or six other men near him, yet from Mary’s viewpoint, looking through a dusty window, they didn’t look like real friends, just drinking companions.
It was the first time she’d been to the port after dark, and her heart was pounding with fright, for she’d already been accosted twice by foreign sailors. She knew that most if not all of the women out on the crowded streets were whores. She was frightened to go into the bar, for she couldn’t count on Will protecting her.
Taking a deep breath and tightening her shawl over her shoulders, she walked in and went straight up to Will.
‘Please come home, Will,’ she begged him. ‘Emmanuel’s ill.’
She knew he would be angry when he discovered this wasn’t so, but it was the only thing she could think of which might make him come with her without an ugly scene.
He looked at her suspiciously, his eyes barely focusing. ‘What’s wrong with him?’
‘He’s got a fever,’ she said quickly. ‘Please come, Will, I’m worried about him.’
There was a titter of laughter from the men he was drinking with. Mary realized they probably didn’t speak English and therefore they might think she was a whore offering herself to him. ‘Please, Will,’ she pleaded. ‘Come now.’
His lip curled back disdainfully as he glanced at his companions and the bottle of rum. Thankfully it seemed his son had a greater value, for he got up unsteadily.
‘I’ll be back,’ he said self-importantly to the other men, and they grinned, showing rotten teeth. One made a crude gesture with his fist.
Out in the noisy, crowded street, Mary sped on ahead so Will couldn’t question her, leaving him lumbering along behind. But when they reached the narrow path to the village, Mary had to slow down in the pitch darkness, and it was only then that she became afraid of how he’d react when he found she’d dragged him away from his drink on false pretences.