Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [72]
‘I reckons you’d at least be safer than with some of the pox-carrying hags here,’ Will said, and laughed heartily. ‘That’s why I picked Mary, I knew she were clean.’
Mary wasn’t sure whether to take that as a compliment or not. It had a kind of double edge to it.
‘She’s a good woman,’ James said almost reprovingly. ‘You’re a lucky man, Will, in more ways than one.’
‘I’ll be luckier still once I get out of this accursed place,’ Will retorted. ‘And I’ll be off on the first ship when my time’s up.’
‘Won’t you wait for Mary?’ James asked, his tone slightly arch, making Mary suspect they weren’t drinking together after all. Maybe Will had come visiting after getting some spirits elsewhere.
‘No, I bloody won’t,’ Will burst out. ‘Firstly no ship will take me on with a woman and a child, secondly I can do better than her.’
Mary felt as if someone had punched her in the belly. It was one thing for Will to tell others he didn’t consider himself legally married, quite another to say he could do better than her. She turned and fled, trying very hard not to cry.
Will didn’t come back to their hut before going fishing that evening, so Mary cooked up some rice on the fire, for once barely noticing the maggots that floated up to the surface as the water got hot. She had nothing more to add to it, as they had already eaten their tiny ration of salted pork earlier in the week. But Mary had no appetite, she was only cooking for Charlotte’s sake. She felt weak with misery that Will intended to abandon her.
Charlotte sat right by the fire, as she always did when food was cooking, her dark eyes never leaving the cooking pot. That distressed Mary still further, for a small portion of rice wasn’t anywhere near enough to keep a child growing and healthy. She could already see in her daughter the tell-tale signs of under-nourishment that she’d observed in children from desperately poor families back in Cornwall: the distended belly, sunken cheeks and lacklustre eyes and hair.
If Will left her and went home, escape would be well-nigh impossible. She might be able to plan it, get her hands on all the necessary equipment and handle a boat well, but it was Will who had the navigation skills. There wasn’t another man in the whole convoy likely to take his place.
The prospect of being left alone here terrified her. She’d lose the hut, the women would jeer at her, the men would pester her. She wouldn’t be able to protect Charlotte from the depravity that was all around. The best she could hope for was to become a ‘lag wife’, the mistress of one of the Marines or officers. But that would only last until he too went back to England.
Mary’s emotions ranged through despair, fear and then anger that evening, but by the time Charlotte had devoured the rice and turned sleepily to her mother’s breast, she had a plan. Just as she’d coolly planned finding an officer lover on the Dunkirk in order to survive, she was now going to use the few assets she had again.
As Will made his way back to his hut it was almost dawn. He was chilled to the bone and wet through for it had started raining and turned very cold around ten o’clock the previous evening. He was also exhausted and aching with hunger, for they’d fished all night and all they had to show for the hard work was around a dozen fish. He had experienced all that a thousand times before, both here and back in Cornwall, but what had really got him down tonight was the attitude of the two Marines sent out to watch him.
‘Bastards,’ he muttered, and spat noisily on the sand. But for the fear of another flogging he would have knocked them over the side. How dare they suggest the lack of fish was because he didn’t know as much about fishing as he claimed! And that he was drunk when he came aboard. He had had a few tots of rum, but that didn’t impair his judgement. There just weren’t any fish in the bay. If they’d been prepared to sail through the Heads like he wanted to do, they would