Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [75]
When they set sail from England they had enough food for two years, and now that time was up. Even though the farm at Rose Hill had produced a good harvest of wheat, there was only enough food to last a few more months, with rations cut yet again. Everyone from Captain Phillip to the lowest criminal was waiting expectantly for a ship to arrive with more food. Daily, people trudged down to Dawes Point, where they could just about see the flag mast on the South Head at the end of the bay. If the flag was struck it would mean a ship was coming, but day after day they were disappointed.
The fear of dying of starvation was very real now. It showed in every convict’s face, from the bleakness of their eyes to the hollows in their cheeks, and in the slowness of their movements. With so many of their original number taken away by troops to Norfolk Island, and the countless deaths during the two years, Sydney Cove looked like a ghost town, and empty huts were being allocated to people who had previously shared. With a further cut in rations, no one had the physical strength to work a full day. An order was issued that they need only work until midday; the afternoons could be spent working their own gardens. At last Will was told he could fish without a guard, because there just wasn’t the manpower to spare for fishing duties.
Mary had her first labour pains during the early evening of 30 March. She didn’t recognize them as labour at first, assuming they were merely hunger cramps. Will was out fishing and it was raining so hard that the ground was a sea of slippery red mud. She put Charlotte to bed and got in herself, but the pains continued, just strong enough to prevent sleep.
All through the night she lay there, staring up into the darkness, listening to the steady dripping of water coming in through the roof. By then she realized the baby was coming, but in her weakened state she felt unable to get up and trudge through the mud and rain to seek help.
For the first time ever, she hoped for death. She was exhausted by the daily struggle to survive, and she felt unable to meet the further demands a new baby would place on her. Even the little cries Charlotte made in her sleep didn’t stir her conscience. She hoped that by lying there, ignoring the child struggling to find its way out into the world, it would just fade away and so would she.
But as she closed her eyes and tried to will herself into death’s dark valley, her mother’s face came into her mind. Mary had tried her best to forget her parents and sister. She had long since given up trying to recall their faces and the sound of their voices or wondering if they ever spoke of her. She had even steeled herself not to think about Cornwall and compare it with here.
Yet there was her mother’s face, as clear as if she was standing in the daylight before her. Her grey eyes were full of concern, her mouth slightly pursed as if in disapproval, wisps of grey hair escaping from her linen cap. Her expression was one Mary remembered very well, the one she’d always worn when berating Mary for unfeminine behaviour. Mary remembered then that her mother had always been strong, she’d never shown her anxiety to Mary and Dolly when their father’s ship didn’t return when expected. Somehow she always managed to put food on the table and keep the fire burning.
It seemed to Mary that her mother was trying to send her a message that she must fight for life, for her children’s sake.
With great difficulty she got out of her bed, fumbled in the dark for a piece of sacking to put around her shoulders, and went out into the rain.
The nearest hut was only twenty yards away, but the pains were too fierce to stand up. On her hands and knees, Mary crawled through the mud in agony to get help.
The first dawn light was just coming through the open door of the hut as Mary’s baby finally fought his way out, in the none too certain hands of Anne Tomkin.
‘It’s a boy!’ Anne exclaimed with more weariness than jubilation, as she held the baby closer to the door to examine him. ‘And he looks