Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [35]
Tench’s enthusiasm warmed Mary even more than the hot tea. As he went on to speak of the fleet of eleven ships being sent, of convicts building towns, of farming and being given free land when their sentences were up, she shared some of his excitement. She had always wanted to travel, a long voyage by sea didn’t daunt her, and if they were to be the first people to land at Botany Bay there could possibly be good opportunities for someone as quick-witted as herself.
‘Swear you won’t tell the other women,’ he warned her. ‘I’m only telling you because I hoped it might cheer you. I watched you earlier out there in the cold and my heart went out to you.’
He went on to tell her that Botany Bay had some native people with black skin, that the government believed there was flax and timber there, and the climate was good, far warmer than in England. He said Captain Cook had reported many strange animals and birds, including a large furry beast that bounded along on its back legs, and a huge flightless bird. But though Mary was interested to know more about this new country so far away, it was Tench’s words, ‘my heart went out to you’, that resonated in her mind.
‘When will we sail?’ was all she could ask.
Tench sighed. ‘We have orders to take you to the ships on the 7th of January, but I suspect it will be some time before we set sail. Captain Phillip, who is commanding this operation, is not yet satisfied with the supplies of goods and food to be taken with us.’
‘Will I be on the same ship as you?’ Mary asked.
‘Would you like to be?’ he asked, his dark eyes looking hard at her.
‘I would,’ she said bluntly, seeing no point in being bashful.
‘I think I could arrange that,’ he said, and smiled. ‘Now, not a word to anyone, especially Lieutenant Graham.’
‘Is he going too?’ she asked.
Tench shook his head. ‘Does that sadden you?’
Mary smiled. ‘No, not at all. I don’t think he’s a man for an adventure.’
Tench chuckled, and Mary wondered if that meant Graham had in fact refused to go. ‘No, he’s not one for adventure, Mary. But you and I are, and perhaps we’ll see things we never dreamed of.’
Chapter four
The prisoners were not informed of the date of their transportation until the morning of 7 January, the day they were to be moved to the Charlotte.
Ever since Tench had told Mary when it would be, she’d been in a state of agitation, made far worse because she was unable to share it with anyone else. One moment she was hugging herself with glee that her days on the Dunkirk were numbered, the next she was terrified that the sea voyage and the land at the end of it would be even worse.
As the days slowly passed and she’d still heard nothing official, she began to think Tench might be mistaken. She couldn’t even ask Graham to verify it, for he would undoubtedly take Tench to task for telling her.
Lieutenant Graham was behaving very strangely though. More and more, he fluctuated wildly between tenderness and malice. This in itself seemed to confirm Mary really was leaving.
‘You are just a whore,’ he said with venom one night. ‘You might think you are different from the rest of the women in the hold, but you aren’t, just a damned whore like all the rest.’
Yet on another occasion as she was getting dressed to go back down to the hold, he fell down on his knees before her and clung to her with his face buried in her breast. ‘Oh, Mary,’ he gasped out. ‘I should have done more for you, not used you the way I have.’
On Christmas night he was very drunk and he told her he loved her. That night his love-making was gentle and very tender; he kissed the marks on her ankles made by the shackles and with tears in his eyes, begged her to forgive him for his moments of cruelty to her.
‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ she said. His previous insults hadn’t really hurt her, at least not if she stacked them up against the good things he’d done for her.
‘Then tell me you love me,’ he begged her.