Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [53]
As the boat got closer to the shore and Mary could clearly see the men waiting for them, she felt suddenly afraid, and hugged Charlotte closer to her breast. The expression on the men’s faces reminded her of when a ship came into Fowey harbour after weeks at sea. She had observed that same hungry look then, and although she hadn’t understood at the time why her mother always called her and Dolly indoors, she did now.
Sailors had a kind of rough charm, they were fit and strong, scrubbed up to look their best for shore leave. But these men waiting for the women prisoners were ragged and dirty, more like a vast pack of wild dogs than human beings.
Some of the women began to shout crude things to them, pulling their neck-lines lower and blowing kisses. In another boat coming from the Lady Penryn, one woman actually stood up and lifted her dress to show her private parts.
Marines pushed the men back as the boats were grounded on the beach and the women climbed out, but it seemed to Mary that the Marines were almost as bad as the convicts. They were laughing, winking, grabbing at the women’s hands, and there was certainly no sense of them being there to protect the fairer sex.
Mary elbowed her way through the crowd, Charlotte’s small crib under one arm, the other defensively round her child, almost deafened by the cat-calls, crude remarks and appeals for a kiss. It was exhilarating, like all the fairs and festivals she’d ever been to rolled into one, but frightening at the same time. It seemed odd to her that the officers were just standing by watching after all their stringent efforts to keep the men and women apart during the voyage.
Other boats came in, depositing more and more women on the beach, and the hubbub grew louder, the pushing and shoving more aggressive. But it was as much on the women’s part as the men’s – some of them were even running over to the men to kiss and embrace them.
Mary wanted so much to take off her boots, to run barefoot along the sand, to look at the strange birds watching them from the trees, to revel in her new-found freedom. But she could see this wasn’t an option right now, she had to stay in the safety of a group.
Seeing a small bunch of women with children, standing apart, Mary ran over to them.
‘Lawd have mercy on us,’ she gasped out. ‘It’s getting out of hand!’
A tall woman in a plain dark brown dress and bonnet, holding a small child in her arms, responded. ‘We asked to be taken to a place of safety some time ago,’ she said.
‘But our husbands seem distracted.’
Mary realized then that these women were Marines’ wives and families, and as she’d been treated with some kindness by those who travelled on the Charlotte, she assumed this group would be the same.
‘May I stay with you?’ she asked. ‘I’m afraid for my baby.’
The woman’s expression stiffened. ‘Join the other women from your ship,’ she said curtly. ‘That’s where you belong.’
Shamed, Mary turned and walked away, realizing that brief encounter had shown how things were going to be here.
A little more order came later when the Marines fired a warning volley over the prisoners’ heads, and the women were led to the tents allocated to them. But even as they were marched along, Mary overheard comments and giggles that suggested most of the women were too excited by the eager men to be kept under control for long.
Mary, Bessie and Sarah managed to stay together, but the other three women they were to share the tent with were strangers. The leader of the three, who announced herself as Cheapside Poll, was a tall, skinny woman with hard blue eyes, wearing a striped dress and a battered red hat. She deposited a carpet bag by the tent pole and glowered at Mary and her friends.
‘Any of you so much as think of digging in there and I’ll slit yer nostrils,’ she said. She looked round at her companions and urged them to tell what she was capable of.
‘She done it to a woman in Newgate,’ a fat one with a pock-marked face said gleefully. ‘Never ’eard screams like it afore.’
‘We aren’t thieves,’ Mary said, even though technically she