Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [54]
‘Keep that brat well away from me,’ Poll said viciously, pointing to Charlotte. ‘I can’t be doing with a screamer.’
It was perhaps fortunate that the three Londoners were anxious to get out of the tent as quickly as possible. After laying their blankets down, they disappeared.
Mary sat down to feed Charlotte, but it was clear from the way Sarah and Bessie were fidgeting that they were anxious to get out too. Both her friends looked much better now than they had back in England. Sarah was plumper, with pink cheeks and shining hair, while Bessie, who had been fat when they arrived at the Dunkirk, was a couple of stones lighter, and her once grey complexion peachy with health.
‘We’ll just look around,’ Bessie said, primping up her hair. ‘We’ll be back when we’ve found out where we get our rations from.’
Mary had been looking forward to going ashore as much as anyone, but now she felt close to tears. It was so hot, sweat was already soaking her dress, she needed to find water, both for a drink for herself and to cool Charlotte down. All around her she could hear strident, coarse voices, but the language they spoke wasn’t English as she knew it. She guessed it was the Newgate prison cant she’d heard about in Exeter, for odd words had a familiar ring to them. She hadn’t expected that she would have to learn a new language on top of everything else.
On the ship she had known exactly what was expected of her, a daily routine that seldom varied. She was one of only twenty women, an individual with a name and a character. Now she was to be one of some 200 women, thrown in together without any clear-cut rules of behaviour. If Cheapside Poll was an example of what she could expect of the rest of the women, she knew she would need to find new strengths for survival.
Tears dripped down her cheeks as she held Charlotte to her breast, and the words she’d so often heard in church at Easter-time came to her: ‘Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me?’
Darkness came suddenly, taking Mary by surprise. There appeared to be no twilight period like back in England. The noise which had grown louder and louder throughout the afternoon reached fever pitch.
Mary had plucked up courage to explore the row of women’s tents to seek out her old companions and get food and water. She had spotted James Martin with Samuel Bird, but though they waved and shouted out greetings, Mary didn’t go and talk to them as they were with other more desperate-looking men. She did try to join in the revelry for a while, but the underlying menace in it drove her to join some of the older women who were as nervous as she was.
Again and again the Marines had tried to separate the men from the women, with little success, but as darkness fell all attempts to control the prisoners broke down, and couples were seen scurrying off into the bushes.
Mary was just laying Charlotte down in her crib in the tent, when a flash of lightning lit up the entire bay. Thunder followed it, so loud it was like a cannon, making Charlotte scream out. More thunder and lightning followed, and then came rain, heavier than Mary had ever seen in her life. Within minutes the hard ground was awash, water running through the tent like a river.
Mary expected that the storm would at least dampen the spirits of the revellers as it put out the many fires burning along the beach. Yet as she crouched in the shelter of the tent looking out, to her horror she saw that the storm was only inflaming people more. Each flash of lightning lit up acts of obscenity, women pulling off their clothes, men rushing to grab them and taking them there in the mud. But if such acts were horrifying, they were at least mutual; elsewhere she saw men rushing like ravaging beasts, pulling down women who were running for their lives, their screams reverberating around the camp. It wasn’t only the convicts