Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [140]
Tench knew in his heart that it wasn’t any of these things, terrible as they were, which had broken her. He had no doubt that if her children had survived she would have plotted yet another daring escape, and carried it out. But those children were her Achilles’ heel. Once Emmanuel became sick she had to nurse him. Likewise with Charlotte. Now they were both gone, freedom was worthless. Mary would go to the gallows without fear. Death was the only escape she wanted now.
‘You can’t give up on her,’ he muttered to himself. ‘You’ve got to find a way to put some fight back in her.’
Several days later Tench came upon James Martin and Sam Broome on deck. They were sitting leaning back against a locker, to all intents and purposes just enjoying the sun and fresh air. They were both painfully thin, the horrors they’d endured still showing in their eyes, and they looked much older than they had back in New South Wales. But though they seemed relaxed, Tench picked up some animosity between them. Guessing it had something to do with Mary, he stopped to talk to them.
After some general conversation about there being little room on the deck because of the boxes of plants and shrubs from New South Wales, and whether or not the two kangaroos would survive in a colder climate, Tench mentioned Mary.
‘Have you seen her on deck today?’ he asked.
‘She was up here for a while,’ Sam said. ‘She don’t seem to want to be with us now.’
There was a note of real despondency rather than complaint in his voice, and Tench guessed he was in love with her. He knew it had been Mary who nursed Sam back to health when he came in on the Second Fleet, and probably any man would love a woman for that. Tench liked Sam, he was calm, good-hearted and a talented carpenter, and Tench couldn’t help thinking that perhaps he would have made a better husband for Mary than Will, if he’d been on the First Fleet.
‘She doesn’t want to be with anyone,’ Tench said soothingly. ‘That’s the way grief takes some people.’
‘Or they only want to be with people who’ll be useful to them,’ James said with a slight smirk, looking pointedly at Tench.
‘She isn’t like that,’ Sam said, his face flushing with anger.
All at once Tench saw the problem between James and Sam. James was assuming Mary was as calculating as himself.
Tench hadn’t ever really liked the wily Irishman that much. He was amusing and intelligent, but as cunning as a fox. ‘Sam’s right, Mary isn’t like that,’ he said firmly. ‘You should know better, James.’
‘I’m not blaming her for it,’ James shrugged, his ugly face taking on a slightly remorseful expression. ‘If there was anyone around who I thought could save me from the long drop, I’d lick their arse if that’s what it took.’
Later, alone in his cabin, Tench found himself thinking about what James had said. The man was wrong about Mary of course, she wasn’t talking to anyone, not for sympathy or any other reason. She was a prisoner inside herself right now.
But James had made a good point too. Mary could do with someone influential on her side. Tench was prepared to go to any lengths himself for her, but he was just a Marine, recently promoted to Captain, and he hadn’t got an ounce of influence back in England.
He went through a mental list of everyone he knew, but none of them were in any better position to help her than himself.
Turning to his journal as he always did when he was troubled, he flicked back over the pages, reading parts of it at random. The penal colony in New South Wales was history in the making, and he had wanted to produce a work which in years to come would be a valuable source of information about the colony’s first years. It wasn’t ever intended to be a personal account of his own part in it, but a broader view.
Overall he considered he had done that rather well. Maybe when he retired from the Marines he’d take to writing articles for newspapers