Remember Me - Lesley Pearse [82]
The male convicts were far too weak with hunger to be excited by a huge number of new women descending on them. Their reaction was only fear that their rations would be cut even more drastically. But to most of the women it was a calamity. Bad though it was to be forced to share rations with strangers, the prospect of new women stealing their men away was even worse.
A relationship with someone, whether you were legally married or not, eased the misery of life in the colony. In most cases the partnerships were a compromise, especially for the women. Back home few of them would have chosen the mate they had here. But choice was limited, plain girls were grateful for being wanted, the prettier girls felt safer with a protector, and where a baby was a result of the arrangement, it gave some purpose to their life.
Mary was more nervous than most when she heard the news of the Juliana and its cargo of women. She knew it wasn’t her beauty or her cleverness that had kept Will with her for two years. He had stayed with her purely because there was a shortage of women, and by the time he’d got to know the prettier ones better, he found most had serious flaws in their characters.
Death, and men being moved to Norfolk Island, had decimated their numbers. There weren’t more than seventy men left here now, and a great many of those were physical wrecks. Among 200 new women who had been cooped up on a ship for months, there were almost certainly going to be dozens who would set their sights on Will.
Chapter nine
Every single woman in the settlement turned out to see the women from the Juliana being rowed ashore. Apart from the weather, it was almost like a re-enactment of their first day here, for they could hear the same kind of excited laughter and the ribald remarks they’d made themselves. But whereas they had arrived in early February, which in this upside-down country meant summer with blazing sunshine, so hot that many of them ran into the sea to cool down, the new arrivals were experiencing winter. The sky was grey, a keen wind was blowing, making the sea choppy, and it was very cold.
There should have been sisterly concern for the new women. After all, they had been through a long, gruelling voyage, and now they were about to enter hell. Yet just the way they looked, even from a distance, was enough to make the old-timers forget any kindly thoughts and band together in antipathy and resentment. The new arrivals’ clothes were vivid colours, many wore hats trimmed with flowers and feathers, they were plump and healthy, and they looked for all the world like a troupe of actresses, not convicts.
Mary clutched Emmanuel closer to her breast in fear. Her first exposure to the convicts from the other transport ships in the fleet was printed indelibly on her mind. They had all seemed so much tougher than her, conniving and ruthless too. Time and the hardships here had made all the survivors equal now, but she was afraid these new women would alter everything.
‘Lots of ladies,’ Charlotte said, looking up at her mother with undisguised glee. ‘Pretty ladies.’
At her child’s innocent words Mary felt a pang of shame. They were, after all, just women like herself. All of them had known chains and the horrors of prison and had been wrenched from their families and friends. She didn’t want Charlotte to grow up in a climate of bitterness and hate. She decided she must put aside her fear and jealousy and welcome the newcomers.
‘I thought we might have had a few fights on our hands,’ Surgeon White said to Tench over dinner at White’s house the following evening. ‘But thanks to the actions of Mary Bryant the new women appear to be settling in well.’
The two men had