He smiled then, a warmth coming into his plump face, and for a brief second he looked almost handsome. ‘Whatever you have to do?’ he asked, raising one eyebrow.
Mary couldn’t look at him. She sensed he wanted her to spell out to him that she was available. Knowing that he could, if he wished, take her by force made her feel a little tender towards him.
‘I’ve never been with a man,’ she said softly, keeping her eyes down. ‘I always intended to wait till I was wed. But that’s not going to happen now. I could easily die of starvation before I see the country they plan to send me to. So if a man was to offer me food and a new dress, I think I would do what he wanted in return, as long as he was kind.’
‘You don’t mind if it’s not love?’
That seemed a strangely sensitive question to Mary. Not what she would have expected of a man of his class.
‘Love doesn’t come to women like me,’ she said. ‘I’ll settle for kindness.’
He ordered her back to the hold then, but as she got up he gave her a strip of cotton to bandage her foot. ‘Keep it clean,’ was his only comment, but his eyes said a great deal more.
That night Mary was in a quandary. It was Watkin Tench she wanted: for him she could feel very much more than mere gratitude. But she felt Sarah was right in saying he wouldn’t ever take a woman he wasn’t married to. Yet if she allowed Graham to have his way with her, and Tench found out, he’d be bound to despise her for it.
All the following week she could think of nothing else, agonizing over whether it was nobler to allow herself to starve to death than lose her self-respect, or fight with the only weapons she had for survival.
The long hot spell broke with a fearsome storm. The old hulk bucked and shuddered, the timbers groaned as if it was about to break up. The hatches had to be closed, and remained that way day after day as heavy rain continued to bucket down. As the women lay on their benches in complete darkness, listening to the cries of those who had become sick, the already fetid air was so thick and heavy it was difficult even to breathe.
Baby Rose, who had been sickly from birth, died first, followed a day later by her mother and the woman who shared the same bed. Within twenty-four hours a further eight women were running a fever, and a dozen more, including Mary, were vomiting and had diarrhoea. Most were so weak they couldn’t even make it to the buckets and just lay in their own mess.
Mary saw for herself then that the only women who weren’t suffering so badly were the so-called whores. They were the ones still healthy enough to be able to wipe another woman’s fevered brow, to offer a few words of comfort. Even Mary, who had considered herself so strong, barely had the strength to crawl to the bucket.
She made up her mind then that survival was far more important than morality.
Eventually the rain abated, and the hatches were opened again, to reveal a foot of bilge water beneath the sleeping shelves, vomit and excrement floating on it. The sickness among the prisoners persisted, claiming yet another two souls. The men called through the grille to the women, but they were suffering just as badly. Mary heard that Able, her cellmate in Exeter, had died, as well as a young boy, barely fifteen years of age, and two of the older men.
Mary spoke to Will Bryant one morning. Even he didn’t sound as brash and full of confidence as previously.
‘If it’s gaol fever that’s come amongst us, we’ll all die,’ he said gloomily. ‘We’ve got to find a way to make them swill out these holds. There’s more rats than ever and I fear for us all.’
‘I’ll try and do something,’ she said.
‘What can a little thing like you do?’ he retorted arrogantly.
‘I can try pleading for us,’ she said, more determined because he doubted her.
‘You can try, but it won’t get you anywhere,’ he said. ‘They want us all to die, then they’ll fill the hulk with new ’uns who’ll die too. Save ’em a fortune it will.’
‘You bring shame to Cornishmen,’ she shouted at him. ‘Talk like that won’t help anyone.’
‘I’ll marry you if you get the holds swilled out,’ he called back, and gave a raucous laugh.
‘Be careful I don’t hold you to that,’ Mary yelled at him.
Sarah smiled weakly as Mary told her what she intended to do.
‘The guards won’t get Tench or Graham down here,’ she said. ‘They’ll just ignore you.’
‘I’ve got to try,’ Mary insisted.
There was no point in banging on the door, no one ever answered. So Mary waited until the guard came down to order two of the women to bring out the slop buckets, and as soon as he unlocked the door she pounced on him.
‘I’ve got to see Lieutenant Captain Tench or Lieutenant Graham,’ she insisted.
‘Bugger off,’ he said, pushing her away with his stick. ‘You’ll see no one.’
‘I will,’ she said, grabbing him by the arm. ‘If you don’t take a message to one of them from me, I’ll see you punished.’
‘You get me punished?’ His narrow eyes became even narrower. ‘D’you think anyone up there would take the word of a bloody felon?’
‘Ignore me at your peril,’ Mary replied menacingly. ‘I’m telling you, give them the message, or take what will come to you.’
‘Bugger off,’ he repeated, but this time with less conviction. He ordered two women to take the buckets, holding Mary back with his stick.
‘Tell them,’ she yelled out as he slammed the door and locked it. ‘Tell them or be damned – it’s important.’
Mary tried again when the women came back with the buckets, but with the same response. As the hours crept by and still no one came, she stared out through the hatch at the dark grey sky above and cried. More women were going down with the fever, and she feared that if they were left like this they would all be dead within a week.
‘You did your best,’ Sarah said in an attempt to comfort her. ‘It’s just like Will said, they don’t care if we die.’
‘That may be true of most of them but I can’t believe it of Tench or Graham,’ Mary said. ‘I won’t believe it.’
She had no idea what time of day it was, as there was no sun to tell her, but it felt like late afternoon when a guard came in and called her name.
‘Up there with you,’ he said.
It wasn’t the same man she’d threatened earlier, but she felt he knew of it because for once he didn’t whack her with his stick. As Mary reached the top of the companionway she took a deep breath of clean air, and it made her giddy.
Lieutenant Graham was standing on deck. ‘You wanted to see me?’ he asked.
Mary poured out what was wrong. ‘The holds must be scrubbed out,’ she pleaded. ‘We’ll all go down with fever if they aren’t.’
He remained impassive, and it infuriated her. ‘If we all get fever it will spread to all of you too,’ she said heatedly. ‘In God’s name do something, you don’t want the death of a whole ship’s company on your conscience.’
He gave her one of his long, penetrating stares. ‘And what will you do for me, if I do what you say?’
Mary gulped. She hadn’t expected him to bargain with her.
‘Whatever you want, sir,’ she replied.
‘I don’t want you unwillingly,’ he said, and for the first time ever Mary saw a trace of nervousness in his face.
‘I don’t want you to help those down in the hold unwillingly either,’ she said.
He looked away from her, over towards the sea, and Mary could see he was struggling with his conscience. Not so much whether it was right to let prisoners die for want of clean air, but whether it was right to bow to Mary’s demands because he wanted her.
After what seemed an interminable silence he turned back to her. ‘I’ll pass the order that the holds are to be cleaned,’ he said sternly. ‘You will come to me as the other women are sent back.’
It was dark by the time the scrubbing of the women’s hold was completed. The women had been brought up on deck, and the evening soup and bread
were dished out there while the guards went down to do their task. For some of the women who had never been out of the hold since they were originally put there, it was almost too much. They crouched on the deck fearfully, shivering in the brisk breeze, their eyes dull as if they were partially blinded by the daylight.
Mary was shocked by the condition of some of them. In the gloom of the hold she hadn’t been able to see the full horror of it. Some were nothing but skin and bone, and all were pale, gaunt and listless, dirt so deeply embedded in their skin and hair that it would take more than one bath to clean them. She saw ulcerating sores where their leg irons rubbed, the lice crawling on them, the bites on skinny arms and legs which could only have come from rats. Sadly, she sensed that the cleaning of the hold wouldn’t help them unless they were given better food. She doubted that all of their number would survive to be transported.
As the guards returned on deck, sweating profusely from their efforts, the smell of vinegar sharp in the evening air, Mary began to tremble with fright at the thought of what was coming to her.
She knew what love-making entailed. In the tiny cottage at Fowey there was no privacy, and she had heard her parents at it in the darkness. During her time in Plymouth she had seen it going on all around her too, so the act itself wasn’t frightening. Thomas used to kiss her passionately, and she would have gladly let him go further if he had pressed her. But there was a great deal of difference between being seduced and being compelled to submit to it.
Apart from her fear of being taken by a man she scarcely knew, there was the information Sarah had passed on. She said that although the officers turned a blind eye to one of their number taking a convict woman, that didn’t always stop them from banding together to flog a woman afterwards if they had some grievance against her. Mary guessed she would be a marked woman now for daring to complain about the holds.
Lieutenant Graham appeared just as the guards were ordering the women back below. He gestured for her to follow him to the stern of the ship, and disappeared into one of the shed-like structures up there.
He closed the door and locked it as soon as Mary was inside. It was very like the room Tench had taken her into before, tiny, with a bunk, a desk and a couple of stools. Graham lit a candle on the desk, and it was then that Mary saw the small bath of water on the floor.
‘For me?’ she asked.
‘Yes. You stink,’ he said, looking faintly embarrassed. ‘Wash yourself all over, including your hair. I’ll come back later.’
‘Will you take these off?’ Mary indicated her chains.
He hesitated for a moment, which suggested to her he hadn’t done this before, then taking a key from his pocket released both her ankles and drew the chain from around her waist. He left her without another word.
For a moment Mary could think of nothing but the sheer joy of being released from her chains. To be able to move easily and not to hear the hated clank she’d lived with for so long was bliss. But she regained her wits within minutes and sprang to the door to try it. It was locked of course, just as she’d expected, and the two porthole windows were far too small for her to get through, so she peeled off her clothes and got into the bath.
To her delight it was warm, and the soap he’d left wasn’t the rough stuff they used for washing clothes. The bath was too small to do anything more than squat in it, but it felt so good, especially without the hated chains weighing her down.
She was drying herself with the towel he’d left when she spotted a looking-glass on the wall and took a look at herself, almost falling back with shock at what she saw. Hollows had taken the place of her plump red cheeks and her eyes seemed to be bulging out of her head. When she looked down at her body she saw that was emaciated too, her ribs sticking out below her breasts. Stranger still were her brown face and forearms when the rest of her was ghostly white.
But her newly washed hair did look pretty, hanging in dark shiny ringlets to her shoulders. She rubbed at it hard with the towel, and combed it through with Graham’s comb to remove the lice, then washed that too in the bath water and put it back where she’d found it.
As she heard the sound of Graham’s feet coming back she dived into the bunk, quickly covering herself with the blanket.
Graham came in slowly. He was carrying a small tray which he put down while he locked the door again. Mary felt too shy to speak, but at the smell of the food, she couldn’t resist sitting up.
‘Is that for me?’ she exclaimed, hardly able to believe her luck, for it was some kind of pie, the pastry all golden the way her mother used to make it, with a rich gravy poured over it.
‘I guessed you were still hungry,’ he said gruffly, without looking at her, as if embarrassed.
‘That was kind of you, sir,’ she said.
‘You don’t have to call me sir in here,’ he said, passing her the tray and sitting down on the edge of the bunk. ‘My name is Spencer, now eat it up before it gets cold.’
Mary didn’t need to be told twice, and fell upon it with glee. It was rabbit and vegetable pie, the best she had eaten since she left Fowey, and even though the food meant more than the man who brought it to her, she couldn’t help but notice he seemed to be enjoying her obvious delight.
The Lieutenant was surprised by his own emotions as he watched Mary eat. He had expected either to feel guilt that he was betraying his wife’s trust in him, or so lustful once he got back to his cabin that he wouldn’t be able to give Mary time to eat the dinner. But instead he felt able to put aside both his guilt and his lust, because the way she ate the food made him feel good. She hadn’t noticed as she was eating that her breasts had become exposed, two small perfect little mounds with pale pink nipples. A little gravy had run on to one of them, and it was all he could do not to lean forward and lick it off.
He had married Alicia, his second cousin, at twenty, ten years ago now. They had played together as children, learned to dance and ride together back home in a village near Portsmouth, and there had always been an understanding that they would eventually marry. Alicia had come to live in his parents’ home, and she was very much the daughter of the house. She painted, sewed and played the piano, was gracious to all their guests, never complained when he was away for long periods. She even produced first a son, then a daughter, without losing her shapely figure.
Graham considered it a very successful marriage. They were in harmony with each other, and he knew that other men envied him such a pretty and vivacious wife. He didn’t understand why he sometimes felt disappointed.
Yet as he watched Mary eating, he realized why. Alicia was like biting into fruit, delicious and good for him, but not satisfying in the same way as a meat pie could be. Alicia never argued with him, everything he said was right. She always looked lovely when she welcomed him home on leave, but there was never any passion, no real emotion.
Mary was not even close to being as pretty as Alicia. Even if she were dressed in the most expensive silk gown, her hair arranged in an elegant coiffure, she would still look what she was, a simple country girl with no social graces.
Yet she was so very desirable, especially now, scrubbed clean and her dark hair flowing on her shoulders. She had a defiance he’d never seen in Alicia; she was proud, daring, wilful and outspoken. It would be a challenge to make this convict woman love him, and he felt that if he succeeded he’d discover something marvellous and sustaining. It even thrilled him that he was risking his career in the Marines by bringing her to his cabin. He’d never done anything so daring in his life before.
‘That was wonderful,’ Mary said, surprising him that she could be so grateful. ‘And the bath, that was wonderful too.’
She felt she was up to sharing his bed now. Warm and clean after the bath, with a belly full of food, she was ready for almost anything. Somehow she didn’t think he’d be very rough with her, not if he thought to bring her such good food.
‘Would you like some rum?’ Graham asked.
‘Just a little,’ s
he said. She didn’t really like the taste, but she enjoyed the warming effect it had on her. Besides, Sarah had warned her to drink whatever she was offered, saying it would help to numb her.
Graham handed her some rum in a glass and began to strip himself of his clothes. Mary gulped down her drink as she saw his white, hairy legs, suddenly afraid she couldn’t go through with this. The fear grew greater still as he threw aside his shirt: he had a pigeon chest and a fat white belly which quivered as he moved.
All her life she had been used to seeing semi-clothed male bodies. Fishermen and sailors were often stripped to the waist in the hot weather and they had hard, lean bodies rippling with muscle. That was how she thought all men were, and Graham’s unexpected white, flabby flesh made her feel suddenly queasy. But there was no backing down now, so she wriggled down under the blanket, leaving room for him beside her, and averted her gaze.
He was on to her within a second of getting into the bunk, pressing her into the mattress under his weight, his hands moving wildly all over her body and his lips clamped to hers like a limpet. Mary had no idea how to respond; her only experience had been with Thomas, and he’d given her gentle, sensual kisses that left her aching for more.
Graham’s mouth moved from her lips to her breasts, sucking at them so hard it hurt, and his breath came hard and heavy like a horse’s after a long gallop. She could feel his penis against her belly, hard and hot, but mercifully it appeared to be small. Within seconds, with his face buried in her neck, he was prising her thighs apart and forcing his way into her.
It didn’t hurt, but it wasn’t pleasant either, just the sensation of a pole being shoved into a dry tube which was barely large enough to accommodate it. She didn’t like the way he gripped her buttocks, grunting like a pig.
But thankfully it didn’t last long. The grunting grew gradually louder, his body grew hotter and more sweaty, then all at once he sighed deeply and was still, his face buried in her neck.
It was only then that she felt a slight tenderness towards him. After all she had been through in the past six or seven months, it was good to be held, and to lie in a warm and comfortable bed. She lifted one hand and caressed his neck and shoulders, wondering if she should say something.
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