Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [18]
Perhaps he understood at least some of it, for he put his hand on her shoulder. ‘You have to go back,’ he said gently. ‘But we’ll talk again.’
Watkin Tench’s kindness comforted Mary that night. As she lay between Bessie and Nancy, she wasn’t so aware of the moans and groans, the coughing and the sobbing from the other women. Nor was she so aware of the stench or the rats scuttling around. Instead she was able to immerse herself in the thought of the amusement in his eyes, the shininess of his hair, and his gentle manner. For just a few brief minutes she’d felt clean, forgotten she was a felon. It was a form of escape, and a very welcome one.
Mary didn’t know whether it was as the result of Tench’s influence or not, but a couple of days later she, Bessie and two other women, Sarah Giles and Hannah Brown, were called out of the hold for work. There had already been a marked improvement in the food sharing, as the guards stayed in the hold to check everyone got fair shares, whether sick or not. To Mary that was enough. And to be called out for work was an unexpected bonus.
The job they were given was washing clothes, mainly shirts. It wasn’t an easy task as they had to carry the four heavy wooden tubs out on to the deck from a store-room, which was difficult wearing chains, then lower buckets on a rope to the river to fill them with water. But it was good to be out in the sunshine, to be able to look over to the shore and see the lush green of fields and woods, and even if the guards did watch their every move, at times leering at them in a frightening manner, it was a million times better than being cooped up in the hold.
‘Do you think we could wash ourselves when we’ve finished all these?’ Mary whispered to Sarah as they scrubbed at the dirty shirts with blocks of hard soap.
Sarah was one of the women the others called whores. Small and pretty, with red-gold hair, she was twenty-five, a widow with two small children. Her fisherman husband had been lost at sea when his ship went down in a storm, and Sarah had left the children with her mother in St Ives and gone to Plymouth. Her story was very like Mary’s – she’d turned to stealing because she couldn’t get work – and she’d already been on the Dunkirk for eight months.
‘You can if you want,’ Sarah said, and laughed as if it was funny. ‘But I hope you ain’t intending to do it with nothing on.’
‘Of course not.’ Mary coloured up. ‘I’ll just get in the tub with my dress on and wash that too while I’m about it.’
‘Chains and all?’ Sarah raised one eyebrow.
‘Well, I can’t get those off,’ Mary said offhandedly, and looked round at Bessie. ‘What about you? Fancy a bath?’
Bessie began to giggle, and it infected them all. Sarah rubbed soap into her hands and blew bubbles, Hannah splashed Mary with water, and Mary retaliated by slapping her with a wet shirt. If the guards noticed they didn’t intervene or stop them, and all at once it was as if they were just girls at a Sunday school picnic. They giggled, chatted and sang. Bessie even did a little dance, rattling her chains in time with her feet.
Once the washed shirts were hanging up on lines to dry, the women were completely hidden from the guards’ view. ‘Go on then if you’re going to,’ Sarah urged Mary. ‘Before we empty the tubs.’
While Bessie and Hannah looked on, tempted to join her, but afraid of being caught at it, Mary stepped into the tub, gasping at the cold. Elated by the almost sensual touch of water on her skin, she began to laugh. ‘It feels wonderful,’ she gasped out, crouching down so that the water came up to her middle and looking to the others to join her in their tubs. ‘Do it quickly if you’re going to, before we get caught.’
Bessie and Hannah got into theirs without any hesitation; only Sarah held back, claiming she was keeping watch. The three women scrubbed themselves and their clothes eagerly, aware they hadn’t long to finish the task, yet smiling with delight as they saw the dirt floating away from them.
After soaping her hair, Mary dunked herself right under