Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [133]
‘Three more days,’ Mary said.
‘Ma always used to make a plum pudding,’ he said.
Mary smiled, for she could visualize her own mother stirring ingredients in a big basin at the kitchen table.
‘And mine,’ she said.
‘Ma used to tell us all to make a wish as we stirred it,’ Will said in little more than a whisper. ‘If I had one now I’d wish that I told you I married you because I loved you.’
Tears prickled at Mary’s eyes and she wished she could believe him.
‘I’m telling you the truth,’ he said. His eyes were red-rimmed and sunken with the fever and he looked old and haggard, nothing like that big, handsome man she’d married. ‘I fell for you on the Dunkirk. Even if all the beauties in England were lined up for me to choose from, I’d still have picked you.’
Mary’s tears began to fall faster. If this was true, why couldn’t he have told her before?
‘I’m such a fool,’ he sighed, as if knowing what she was thinking. ‘I thought if I told you, you wouldn’t value me. That’s why I used to say I was getting a ship home too. I wanted you to say you couldn’t live without me.’
‘Oh, Will,’ she sighed, and took his hand and kissed it. She knew it was true now, Will wouldn’t dare go to his death with a lie on his conscience.
He drifted off into unconsciousness again then, clearly the effort of talking was too much. Mary lay down beside him and held his hand for some time, thinking over what he’d said.
When she was a young girl, she’d always imagined this thing people called love hit you like a ripe apple falling on your head. Her wild desire for Tench confirmed this idea. Yet was that really love? Wasn’t it more likely that she only felt that way about Tench because he was kind and interested in her at a time when she desperately needed something lovely to take her mind off reality? Would she have continued to feel such passion for him if they’d been able to live together forever?
The circumstances that led up to her marrying Will were hardly romantic. Yet despite her belief it was purely a marriage of convenience, there was passionate love-making, a warm and comfortable relationship, they could talk about anything together, they laughed a great deal. They were friends.
She thought most intelligent people would define that as love.
The first rays of daylight were slanting through the window when Mary felt Will tossing and turning. She touched his forehead and found he was burning hot again, yet shivering at the same time.
‘I’m here,’ she whispered, sitting up and reaching for the cloth and the bucket of water to cool him down.
‘I’m so sorry about what I did,’ he gasped out.
‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ she whispered back, laying the cooling cloth on his brow and stroking back his hair. ‘I’ve forgiven you.’
All at once she realized she had. Like love, it had crept up on her unnoticed.
‘Keep Charlotte safe,’ he managed to get out with great difficulty.
She knew then that this was the end.
‘I married you because I loved you,’ she said, and kissed his hot, cracked lips. ‘I still love you, and I don’t want to live without you.’
She didn’t know if he heard the words he’d always wanted to hear, for he slipped into unconsciousness again. She stayed beside him holding him, her head so close to his heart that she felt it when it stopped beating an hour or two later.
Chapter sixteen
It was nearly four months after Emmanuel and Will died in Batavia that the Horssen, a Dutch ship, sailed into Cape Town with Mary and Charlotte aboard.
‘I think that’s the ship that’s going to take us home, Mary,’ Jim Cartwright said over his shoulder while pointing towards the harbour. ‘Come and look! The sight of one of His Majesty’s ships will cheer you.’
Mary smiled weakly. Jim was one of the crew from the wrecked Pandora. In the last few weeks of the voyage from Batavia, when both she and Charlotte came down with the fever, he had taken it upon himself to try to cheer her. Sometimes it was with different fruits or nuts, but more often it was with jokes or chat. Mary was very grateful for his kindness, but