Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [17]
‘Our punishment is supposed to be transportation,’ she said heatedly. ‘Surely it’s wrong to try and kill us before we ever get put on a ship?’
Tench had been surprised enough to hear his name being called out, and even more so by this woman’s obvious intelligence. But most of all he was touched that she had the courage to speak up for her weaker fellow prisoners.
He had been a prisoner of war himself in America and had feared he would die from the terrible conditions there. When he arrived at this posting on the Dunkirk, he was horrified to find his fellow countrymen were capable of even worse barbarities. To his distress he found there was nothing a Marine officer could do to prevent it. The hulks were run by private companies, and the Marines were merely there to keep order, without any control over the management.
When he had voiced his strong feelings on the matter he’d been severely reprimanded, and as he was only a junior officer without anyone higher up in agreement with him, there was nothing more he could do, and in truth he had become apathetic. When he took men to work outside, he was kindly to them; he tried to make certain the guards were giving the full quota of rations to the prisoners, and when someone was brought to him for punishment he was always fair. But he knew that wasn’t enough.
Mary’s Cornish dialect sliced through his apathy. He had spent his childhood in Penzance and had a store of happy memories of its natives. He felt compelled to find out a little more about this woman before dismissing her. Realizing she must have foregone her own supper during this skirmish, he put his head outside the door and ordered one of the men to bring something from the galley.
‘Am I to be flogged?’ Mary asked, once he’d shut the door again. She didn’t hear what he had said to the men, and assumed he’d sent one of them to fetch someone of a higher rank than himself.
‘No,’ he said. ‘And in future I shall order the guards to make sure the rations are shared out equally.’
‘While you are about it, could we have more?’ she asked cheekily.
Tench had an overwhelming desire to laugh. The woman reminded him poignantly of many Cornish miners he’d known, dogged, tough and fearless. He remembered from the records that she had assaulted the woman she’d robbed, yet her calm grey eyes and gentle manner belied a vicious nature. Likewise, the innocence in her face sat uneasily with her impudent demands. A woman to be watched, he thought. But a rather admirable one for all that.
The guard brought in a plate of bread, cheese and pilchards. Tench pulled up another stool at the table and told Mary to eat.
It was so long since she had tasted either cheese or pilchards that it was all she could do not to cry. She wolfed down the food, holding on to the plate with one hand, afraid Tench might snatch it before she’d finished.
He poured her a little rum too, and topped it up with water, taking a glass neat himself. As he watched her bent over the plate, he noted that although her hair was alive with lice, her neck was very clean, an extremely unusual sight in a prisoner.
‘I’ll get someone to take you back now,’ he said when she’d finished.
Mary had always found it easy to talk to men, but she had no idea how to flirt with them, nor would she know if a man found her attractive. As she looked into his soft brown eyes she thought she read curiosity in them, and she wished wholeheartedly she was in a clean dress with her hair newly washed, at least to give herself some sort of chance.
‘Can’t I stay a while longer?’ she blurted out impulsively.
He smiled, and his eyes twinkled. ‘No, you can’t, Mary,’ he said. ‘I have work to do. But why do you want to stay? I’ve given you food, you aren’t to be flogged.’
‘Because…’ she began, but to her horror she felt tears welling up in her eyes. She couldn’t find the words to explain what it meant to be out of that stinking hold, or how it felt to have a full belly. And she certainly couldn’t say it had been her intention to offer him her virginity in