Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [177]
‘Then I’ll wait,’ she said.
He smiled and squeezed her arm. ‘Good, there’s so much more of London still to show you. And don’t worry about money. You still have more than enough.’
The remainder of June, July and the first two weeks of August were an exceptionally happy time for Mary. People’s curiosity in her had waned, and she found herself far more comfortable in her new life. She helped Mrs Wilkes as much as she could, going shopping with her and often doing the washing and preparing the supper.
Yet every now and then a strange kind of melancholy came over her. She would think of Will, Tench and Jamie Cox, and all those she’d liked but left behind in Port Jackson. She would dwell on little moments she’d shared with them, and often found herself crying. It irritated her that people in England neither knew nor cared how grim or badly run the colony was. Yet conversely she often wanted to tell people that New South Wales was beautiful and intriguing. And she wondered why she could still think so after all that had happened.
She would be caught short, too, by the extreme contrasts in her new life to the old one. One day Mrs Wilkes asked her to throw away some meat which was going bad. Mary had to fight with herself not to eat it, for the thought of wasting food after experiencing starvation was terrible. It seemed ridiculous to her, too, that as a lady she was expected to be weak, helpless and squeamish, when she had collected and eaten grubs, hacked up turtle meat and been the driving force behind a 3,000-mile voyage in an open boat. A lady shouldn’t mention bodily functions either, and certainly not in mixed company. But she had coped quite well with having to perform hers in the company of eight men, and after living with them in such close proximity for so long, there were no mysteries about men left for her to discover.
But as time passed Mary found herself looking back far less. While her children were always in her mind, she found other memories were fading, and she was living in the present again. The weather was good, and Boswell continued to call on her frequently, taking her out to the parks, on river trips, and to the countryside surrounding London.
One day in August, he took her out in a cab to the village of Chelsea. He appeared to be very much amused by poems about them which were being widely circulated around the town. It seemed the writers believed they were lovers, and in one of the poems they met their deaths on the gallows together.
‘Perhaps I should marry you, my dear,’ Boswell said jokingly. ‘It would confound all those poetic simpletons.’
‘I think your daughters might find that a little distressing,’ Mary said with a smile. ‘I am not the stepmother of any girl’s dreams.’
‘Your heart is still with Captain Tench?’ Boswell said, raising one eyebrow quizzically.
Mary had often mentioned Watkin Tench, but had never given Boswell any indication of how she had felt about the man. Even her four friends in Newgate knew nothing of that. So she was amazed to hear him say this. ‘I don’t have a heart,’ she said flippantly.
‘Untrue,’ he retorted, but he laughed all the same. ‘I found out he paid for your cell, Mary. You see, he stopped paying when you were pardoned, and the men had to make new arrangements.’
Mary had met her equal in quick wits with Boswell. Like her, very little passed him by. ‘So! We were friends, he helped me, that doesn’t mean I was in love with him.’
‘I think it means he was in love with you,’ Boswell said sagely. ‘Marines aren’t known for their largesse as a rule. But he strikes me as a gutless wonder for not coming to London to claim you if he knows you are free. He’s on HMS Alexander now, part of the Channel Fleet.’
Mary’s heart quickened at this news. She’d always imagined Tench had sailed off to some faraway place again.
‘Aha,’ Boswell chortled. ‘I see a faint blush. Now, would that be because he’s still close to England?’
Mary decided there was no point in trying to pretend