Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [174]
The whole idea of sitting at a table to eat was alien to her now. When she looked at the silver cutlery she blanched because a spoon and a knife were all she was used to, and she’d often had to eat with her hands.
‘I expect everything feels a little strange to you,’ Boswell said solicitously as he filled her glass with wine, ‘but you’ll soon get used to it. Now, drink up and enjoy your first night of freedom.’
Mary couldn’t enjoy it, however. She was more on edge than she had been on her first night in the hospital in Batavia. There it was rats she was watching out for, now it was for people watching her.
The supper arrived, and it looked and smelled wonderful, but it seemed that every time she managed to get a mouthful of food on to her fork, the way Boswell ate, someone would come up to the table to slap him on the back and compliment him on his outstanding success in getting Mary pardoned.
They meant to be kind, their smiles were warm, and they wished her a long and happy life. But she was tongue-tied, and all she could do was force a smile and murmur her thanks.
‘You can’t blame them for wanting to meet “the girl from Botany Bay”,’ Boswell said, after it had happened several times. ‘Everyone in London is talking about you.’
Mary couldn’t bring herself to complain. She thought he had a right to take pride in what he’d achieved, and to bask in his friends’ admiration. So she pretended she was every bit as happy as he was, and kept it to herself that she wanted to go home.
When they finally left, Mary was a little unsteady on her feet. She had drunk far more than she’d eaten, but she felt she’d managed to get through the evening without letting Boswell down.
‘Goodnight, my dear,’ he said, as Mrs Wilkes opened the door to them. ‘Sleep well and savour your newfound freedom. I’ll call on you tomorrow.’
Mary could hardly wait for Mrs Wilkes to light her a candle to see her way up the stairs to her room. Yet as soon as she’d shut the door, she felt afraid. For nearly a year she’d shared a cell with four men, often cursing them for their snoring or coughing at night. But now this sweet-smelling room with the comfortable bed seemed so eerie by candlelight and too big for her to sleep in all alone.
‘Don’t be foolish,’ she told herself. ‘Surely you wouldn’t rather be back in Newgate than here?’
Chapter twenty-one
A month after Mary’s release from Newgate, she was strolling with Boswell one afternoon in the sunshine of St James’s Park.
Visiting London’s parks had become one of Mary’s greatest pleasures. It was so good to get away from the noise and dirt of the city’s streets and see grass, trees and flowers. Many had enclosures with deer in them and there were sheep and cows too. She found it amusing that the cows in St James’s were led back to Whitehall in the afternoons to be milked, and you could buy a glass of milk for a penny.
During the week the gentry used the parks to meet friends and be seen in their most fashionable clothes. They didn’t appear on Sundays, however, as that was the day the common people came in their hordes. Staymakers, milliners and shop girls had a chance to enjoy their day off and perhaps meet a handsome young clerk, or even a dashing soldier.
St James’s Park was Mary’s firm favourite, as the only riders or carriages allowed to use it were from the Royal Households. There were ducks, swans and geese on the lake and the flowerbeds were a riot of colour.
‘I think I should find some employment now,’ Mary said thoughtfully as she and Boswell stopped to watch some children feeding the ducks with stale bread. ‘That money won’t last forever.’
He patted her hand tucked into his arm. ‘No, it won’t, my dear, but it will last for a good bit longer yet, and you have to decide what you want to do, and where you want to go first.’
Mary was tempted to argue with Boswell, maybe even to tell him she wasn’t entirely happy about her increasing dependence on him. But in the light of everything he’d done for her, that seemed ungracious.
It seemed absurd to Mary now that she had been