Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [20]
‘What happened to you?’ Bessie asked, wringing her hands with anxiety. ‘We were afraid you’d be punished, or…’ She broke off, not wanting to add the word ‘raped’.
‘I told him we need more food, fresh air, and this hovel cleaned out,’ Mary said. She didn’t feel inclined to discuss it any further as her wet clothes were making her cold and she wanted to talk in private to Sarah.
Her chance didn’t come till much later that evening. She took off her wet clothes, hung them from a nail on the beam to dry and huddled in her blanket, but each time she looked across the hold, Sarah was talking to Hannah.
It was almost pitch dark when Mary saw Sarah move towards the bucket. By then most of the women were lying down ready to sleep. Mary got up and shuffled over to her, holding her blanket round her.
‘When you’ve finished, can we talk?’ she whispered.
In the gloom she saw Sarah nod her head.
The bucket was the best place to stay, furthest away from any of the women, but without room to stand up. When Sarah had finished, they perched on a beam. ‘What is it?’ Sarah asked.
‘Who is your lover?’ Mary asked. She saw no point in being more subtle.
Sarah hesitated. It was too dark for Mary to see if she was angry at being asked.
‘Is it Tench or Graham?’ Mary persisted.
‘No, neither of those,’ Sarah whispered. ‘But you shouldn’t ask such things, Mary.’
‘Why not? I have to, if only so I know who not to make up to,’ Mary whispered back.
‘Tench can’t be drawn into such things,’ Sarah said with a sigh. ‘Most of us have tried. And I wish you luck if you’re going to try Graham, he’s a hard man.’
‘How do I go about it?’ Mary asked.
She felt rather than saw Sarah’s shrug. ‘Give him the glad eye whenever you see him, that’s usually enough for them to call you out on a pretext. But don’t hope for much. You’ll only be disappointed.’
‘Does your man remove your chains?’
‘Sometimes, not often,’ she said wearily. ‘Now, go to bed, Mary, I don’t want to tell you these things, it’s not good.’
Mary heard the sadness in Sarah’s voice, and knew instinctively it was only desperation that had driven her to such an arrangement and she wanted no part in seeing another girl follow her lead.
‘We have to do what we can to survive,’ Mary said, taking Sarah’s hand and squeezing it. ‘That’s all it is, Sarah, nothing more. I don’t see any shame in that.’
‘You will when the others turn their backs on you,’ Sarah said, her voice breaking.
‘Better a turned back than dying of hunger,’ Mary insisted.
For over a week Mary waited, each day hoping she would be called out again for work. The weather had turned really warm and the hold was stifling. A woman called Elizabeth Soames died one night and was only discovered dead at daybreak, but what shocked Mary most was that no one had anything to say about her. She’d been locked in here for months, yet she hadn’t made one real friend and no one seemed to know anything about her.
‘She was already here when I came,’ Sarah said when Mary pointed this out. ‘She was sick then, she barely spoke. She was old anyway, don’t fret about it.’
Mary did fret about it. She wondered where the guards took Elizabeth’s body for burial, whether the woman had any relatives and if they’d be told. It also made her own desire to escape even stronger.
The only comfort she could find was reliving memories of home. She found that if she sank into them far enough she could forget the heat, hunger, smells and the other women. Sometimes she would imagine herself walking down the path to Bodinnick with Dolly and their mother to catch the boat up to Lostwithiel. Mary could only recall going there twice, the last time when she was about twelve and Dolly fourteen, but both occasions were hot, sunny days, and she remembered sitting in the boat trailing her hand in the cool, clear water.
For much of the boat journey the river ran through steep, thickly wooded banks where the trees grew right down to the water’s edge, their roots reaching out into the water like gnarled fishermen’s fingers. It was a journey of enchantment, dragonflies