Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [14]
Mary had always believed that any woman who sold her body was beyond redemption. In Plymouth she had seen whores grappling with seamen in alleys, and heard about the terrible diseases they passed on, and she felt almost faint with disgust.
Yet as the days slowly passed on the Dunkirk, and the horrors seemed to grow greater rather than diminish, she found herself looking at the whole question a little differently. While she still thought that offering her body in return for food and a clean dress would be the surest way to hell and damnation, surely she was in hell already? She intended to survive at all costs, and if sacrificing her chastity would prevent a slow death from starvation, she was prepared to do it.
It wasn’t just the desire for more food and the chance to get out of this stinking hold into fresh air once in a while. Escape was most prevalent in Mary’s mind, and for that she needed her chains to be removed. While there was no certainty that a lover would do this for her, she hoped she could persuade him to. Maybe if he grew to like her enough he’d even help her escape.
Sadly, she had no idea how to go about getting a ‘friend’ on the upper decks. The ugly brutes who came to collect the slop bucket or bring the rations had to be the lowliest of the crew, and they were the only ones she had any contact with, and that only briefly.
At the end of her third week she was growing desperate. Her twentieth birthday had passed at the end of April, and May Day, with all its happy memories of village celebrations, had made her spirits plummet even further. She would stand all day at the open hatch, looking out seawards, watching the sunshine glint on the water, aching so badly to be out in it that she thought she would lose her reason.
She knew all forty women’s names, where they came from, their crimes and about their families. She had even seen a change in Catherine Fryer and Mary Haydon’s attitude towards her, perhaps because they saw she was stronger and quicker-witted than anyone else, and it was better to be on a winning side than a losing one.
Mary had spoken to some of the men prisoners too, at least shouted to them through the barred grille. Because they were often taken out to work ashore, she’d learned from them the names of the few humane officers on board.
Lieutenant Captain Watkin Tench was the one who had captured Mary’s interest. The men said he was young, and that they found him fair and reasonable, an intelligent man, who had been held prisoner himself during the American war. He sounded perfect for Mary’s plan, but as yet she had no idea how to get his attention.
She had gone out of her way to befriend all the women who were labelled as whores. It wasn’t difficult as they were only too glad of someone taking an interest in them, and Mary discovered that in the main they were very like her, a bit daring, more amusing than the other women, and warm-hearted.
But although they often gave her titbits of food or a new ribbon for her hair, and passed on rags when she was menstruating, they were all tight-mouthed about their men and how they got themselves picked in the first place. Mary could understand why. They weren’t going to take the risk of losing their lovers and the comforts that came with them to another prisoner.
She had thought of picking a fight with another woman, to create such a big disturbance that she would be hauled out of the hold. But it was likely she’d be flogged for that, and even if she got to meet Tench, under those circumstances it was hardly likely to endear her to him.
One evening, the pot of soup and bread were brought in as usual, and as always, the strongest pushed their way forward to grab the lion’s share. It was only the fear of dying of starvation that made the women fight to get to the soup. It was invariably cold and watery, mainly barley with a few bits of vegetable and strands of rank meat. It had taken Mary several days to overcome her nausea before she