Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [26]
‘Sit down,’ he said sharply as he came back with a needle and a small bottle of liquid.
Mary did as she was told, and Graham squatted down on a crate before her and lifted her foot on to his knee. It hurt as he prodded the needle in, but he eventually got the splinter, then rubbed a dab of the contents of the bottle on to it, making it sting. Mary squealed with pain.
‘That’s to kill any infection,’ he said. ‘Now, put something round it, and don’t walk around in any muck until it’s healed.’
‘Difficult down in the hold,’ she retorted.
‘Don’t you ever give up on complaining?’ he asked, but he was still holding her foot in his hand.
In that moment Mary knew for certain he did have a real interest in her. ‘If you think that’s complaining, just let me get into my stride,’ she said with a wide grin. ‘What would you like to hear about? The filth, the stink or the lack of decent food?’ She laughed then, to soften her words. ‘But I don’t want to put you off your supper tonight. It was very kind of you to see to my foot.’
He said nothing, but his hand strayed on to her leg, just above the shackle, smoothing the skin. ‘You keep yourself cleaner than the others,’ he said, his voice suddenly lower and more intimate. ‘I like that about you. I wouldn’t want to see you get a poisonous wound.’
‘Keeping clean is one way to survive this hulk,’ she retorted. ‘That’s my aim, to survive it, whatever I have to do.’
He smiled then, a warmth coming into his plump face, and for a brief second he looked almost handsome. ‘Whatever you have to do?’ he asked, raising one eyebrow.
Mary couldn’t look at him. She sensed he wanted her to spell out to him that she was available. Knowing that he could, if he wished, take her by force made her feel a little tender towards him.
‘I’ve never been with a man,’ she said softly, keeping her eyes down. ‘I always intended to wait till I was wed. But that’s not going to happen now. I could easily die of starvation before I see the country they plan to send me to. So if a man was to offer me food and a new dress, I think I would do what he wanted in return, as long as he was kind.’
‘You don’t mind if it’s not love?’
That seemed a strangely sensitive question to Mary. Not what she would have expected of a man of his class.
‘Love doesn’t come to women like me,’ she said. ‘I’ll settle for kindness.’
He ordered her back to the hold then, but as she got up he gave her a strip of cotton to bandage her foot. ‘Keep it clean,’ was his only comment, but his eyes said a great deal more.
That night Mary was in a quandary. It was Watkin Tench she wanted: for him she could feel very much more than mere gratitude. But she felt Sarah was right in saying he wouldn’t ever take a woman he wasn’t married to. Yet if she allowed Graham to have his way with her, and Tench found out, he’d be bound to despise her for it.
All the following week she could think of nothing else, agonizing over whether it was nobler to allow herself to starve to death than lose her self-respect, or fight with the only weapons she had for survival.
The long hot spell broke with a fearsome storm. The old hulk bucked and shuddered, the timbers groaned as if it was about to break up. The hatches had to be closed, and remained that way day after day as heavy rain continued to bucket down. As the women lay on their benches in complete darkness, listening to the cries of those who had become sick, the already fetid air was so thick and heavy it was difficult even to breathe.
Baby Rose, who had been sickly from birth, died first, followed a day later by her mother and the woman who shared the same bed. Within twenty-four hours a further eight women were running a fever, and a dozen more, including Mary, were vomiting and had diarrhoea. Most were so weak they couldn’t even make it to the buckets and just lay in their own mess.
Mary saw for herself then that the only women who weren’t suffering so badly were the so-called whores. They were the ones still