Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [41]
‘Will I be all right?’ she asked when he made no comment.
‘Of course you will, a birth at sea is no different to one anywhere else,’ he said a little sharply. ‘I’d say it is due in early September, so we’ll be somewhere warmer and more congenial by then. You are strong and healthy, Mary, you’ll be fine.’
Mary realized then that she had probably conceived at Christmas, the night Spencer Graham had been his most loving.
‘Who is the father?’ the surgeon asked, his sharp dark eyes boring into her as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘You must say, Mary, for the father must be made responsible. If it is another convict you can be married, and a Marine can be made to give the child his name.’
It was surprising to Mary that anyone should care who’d got her pregnant, and even more so that they would take any man to task for it. But she wasn’t prepared to name Graham. Without him she wouldn’t have survived the Dunkirk, and then there were his wife and children who didn’t deserve the hurt of knowing he’d been unfaithful.
‘His name, Mary?’ White said more firmly.
‘I don’t know who the father is,’ she said, folding her arms in a gesture of defiance.
‘I don’t believe that of you,’ he said reprovingly. ‘Some of the other women I might, but not you. Now tell me and leave me to deal with it.’
‘I won’t,’ she said stubbornly.
White tutted. ‘Your loyalty is admirable but misplaced, Mary. Do you want your child to have “bastard” on his record of birth?’
‘It’s no worse than having a convict for a mother,’ she retorted.
White shook his head, then dismissed her, with only the parting shot that she must think on it and come back to him if she changed her mind.
The day following her visit to the surgeon, a storm broke out, and once more the hatches were battened down and Mary was forced to stay in the hold. After the freedom of the deck it was hideous to be trapped again in darkness with the women, most of whom were in the throes of sea sickness. The ship rolled and pitched, the slop buckets overturned, and icy sea water rushed in, soaking them all. All Mary could do was clutch her blanket more tightly round her, cover her nose against the smells, and pray for the storm to pass quickly.
It took three weeks to reach Santa Cruz in Tenerife, the ship’s first port of call, by which time Mary had got to know a couple of the Devonshire sailors quite well. It was from them she learned that on one of the other transport ships the male convicts had broken through the bulkheads to get at the females, even before they sailed. They said too that the women who had been brought down from the London prisons were vicious, hardened criminals, always fighting among themselves, ready to sell themselves to anyone for a tot of rum.
This was frightening to Mary, for she had imagined the prisoners on the other ships to be no different to those on the Charlotte. Some of those were bad enough, she knew they’d happily steal pennies from a dead person’s eyes. But at least she knew which ones to watch, and she felt secure in the knowledge that Captain Gilbert would never allow the male prisoners on his ship to threaten the women.
Although a humane man, he was very strict. On the few occasions when male prisoners were on deck at the same time as women, they were watched carefully by the Marines for any misbehaviour. And the threat of being put back in chains or receiving a flogging was enough to deter both male and female from taking any risks.
Yet like on the Dunkirk, there were illicit relationships, formed not with the officers, but the Marines and sailors. Mary Haydon and Catherine Fryer were two of the worst offenders, going with any man who would have them. Neither Mary nor Sarah chose to go down this route; they laughed together about it, and said if they couldn’t have an officer then they didn’t want anyone. The truth of the matter was that they didn’t have to fight for survival any more. They had enough to eat now, water to wash with, and after a day