Behind the Sun
Page 26
Harrie, her face growing redder by the second as realisation dawned, exploded. ‘What an utter bloody bitch you’ve turned out to be! And to think I actually defended you!’
Bella struck a match and held it to her cigarillo. ‘That’ll teach you.’
Twelve
July 1829, Southern Ocean
Sarah ducked, but the next missile — Rachel’s boot — hit her square in the back, causing her to spill her tea all over the table.
‘Ow! Rachel, that hurt! Friday, do something!’
Friday swivelled around on the bench, stepped over it, reached into the bunk and dragged Rachel, screaming and thrashing, out by her bare ankles. By the time she was all the way out, Rachel’s skirt was up around her ears as she swore the air blue and hit out wildly at Friday. Friday picked her up and sat on the edge of the bunk, holding Rachel on her lap so firmly she could barely move while Harrie got out the bottle of laudanum.
‘No!’ Rachel shrieked. ‘No, I don’t want to go to sleep!’
Harrie blinked back tears as she poured a spoonful. ‘It’s for your own good, sweetie.’
‘I don’t want it!’ Rachel kicked out and sent the spoon flying.
Someone retrieved it from beneath the table and Harrie tried again. Everyone was watching now; this was the third time in three weeks that Rachel had erupted in a fit of temper.
Sarah left the table to stand behind Rachel and hold her head back, careful not to touch her scalp where the scar was still tender and some of her hair was only about an inch long. She gripped a longer strand and gently pinched Rachel’s nose closed. She hated doing this, but it had come to be her job; Friday was the only one of them strong enough to actually hold on to Rachel while she was having one of her fits and Harrie was so soft-hearted towards her she could barely poke the spoon into her mouth.
The laudanum went in, but was spat out again immediately.
Harrie sighed. ‘Oh, Rachel, please, do be a good girl and swallow it.’
‘No! No! No!’
Sarah sighed as well and exchanged a glance with Friday. They both thought it was pointless babying Rachel when she was like this because it didn’t get them anywhere, but Harrie always did it.
‘Try again, Harrie,’ Sarah said. ‘Come on, hurry up.’
‘I am hurrying.’
The next spoonful went in and Sarah clamped her hand over Rachel’s mouth so she couldn’t spit it out. There were a lot of angry ‘Mmmmm!’ noises then she finally swallowed and Sarah managed to get her hand away without getting bitten. It was a huge relief. Rachel would go to sleep in about fifteen minutes and hopefully stay that way for four or five hours, and an even bigger crisis would be avoided.
The first time she’d had a fit like this had been a fortnight after her injury. She had complained of a bad headache and the fit had come on an hour or so after that. They were accustomed to Rachel’s bad moods of course, she’d had them since they’d first met her in Newgate, but these tantrums were on a different scale altogether and involved screaming, breaking and throwing things, hitting, and swearing that impressed even Friday. When asked later Rachel said she couldn’t remember much at all except that her head had really hurt, as though it was caught in a vice and was being relentlessly squeezed.
During her first fit, Rachel had gone up on deck and caused such a fuss the captain had ordered her put in solitary, and when the tantrum had receded she’d been utterly terrified. After that Harrie had taken her to see Mr Downey, who had prescribed laudanum to sedate her should she have another episode of mania, as he termed it. He understood that putting her in solitary would only make her worse, and the laudanum was to make sure she didn’t end up there again. She’d had two more fits since then. But it was very odd because between the fits, Rachel was her ordinary self. Well, as ordinary as she could be given what had happened to her over the past five weeks.
Sarah stepped out of the way as Friday sat Rachel on the bench facing the bunk, keeping a good grip on her. She was reaching the maudlin stage now: her face was crumpling but there were no tears yet. She kicked viciously at a post, barking her bare toes against the hard wood, so Friday flicked out a leg and tucked her little feet behind her own, keeping them out of harm’s way.
‘Show’s over, ladies,’ Sarah announced to the fascinated audience and went back to her mug of tea, even though most of it was all over the table. She took the lid off the teapot and swirled the contents around inside, pretending she didn’t care that their business was being aired for the entire prison deck to observe and gossip about. There was some tea left so she poured it into her mug, relishing the strong, bitter smell. The daily tea allowance was the single redeeming feature of life aboard this stinking ship — it was more than she’d ever been able to afford in London. She sighed and said to Harrie, ‘I think we need to talk to your Mr Downey. I think she’s getting worse. She can’t keep doing this and neither can we.’
‘I know.’ Harrie straightened the things on the table that had been knocked around by Rachel’s flying boots. ‘I’m worried sick.’
‘You’re always worried sick,’ Sarah said, but she didn’t say it to be unkind. Harrie was the one who looked after them, and they let her — it felt as though it were her job. They were a family and she was the mother. Friday looked out for them, which was quite a different thing, and she, Sarah, did the ducking and diving, getting them whatever they needed to make their lives less unpleasant. Harrie’s embroidery cottons, for example — for weeks Sarah had been trading and buying different-coloured threads from the other women, mostly gleaned originally from the bags Mrs Fry had gifted them. And last week she had managed to approach Silas Warren and trade a good clay pipe, stolen from Louisa Coutts, one of Liz Parker’s crew, for a new set of prison slops for Rachel, as she had all but destroyed hers during her last fit. Sarah knew she didn’t have Friday’s outgoing and undeniably mesmerising character, and she certainly couldn’t calm and soothe the way Harrie could, but if there was a deal to be done, above board or not, she was the one to do it.
Rachel was nodding, the effects of the energy-sapping tantrum and the laudanum conspiring, as hoped, to send her to sleep. But she was fighting it. She stood up.
Friday pulled her back down. ‘Sit down, Rachel, there’s a good girl.’
‘Don’t talk to me like a child,’ Rachel grumped. She rubbed her eyes and yawned, then cupped the back of her head where the raw scar lay. ‘Fuck me, I’ve such a sore head.’ She turned sideways, rested her forearms on the table and let her head sink onto them.
Friday waited five minutes until she was sure she was asleep, scooped her up, lay her on the bunk and pulled a blanket over her.
‘God almighty,’ she said as she joined the others at the table. ‘We can’t keep shoving that shite into her, you know. We’ll be turning her into an inebriate.’
Harrie nodded. ‘Sarah thinks we should go and talk to Mr Downey.’
‘You already did,’ Friday said, frowning into the empty teapot. ‘And all he did was give her that bloody medicine.’
‘Only so she wouldn’t run amok and end up in the brig.’
Friday made a face that made her top teeth stick out and her chin recede. ‘“Run amok”. That sounds like one of your Mr Downey’s toffey sayings.’
‘Will you stop calling him “my Mr Downey”?’ Harrie snapped. ‘You’re just angry with him because he wouldn’t prescribe you medicinal rum for your “problem”.’
Sarah laughed, then so did Friday. ‘That’s true. I am. Doesn’t make him a good doctor.’
‘Well, I think he is,’ Harrie said. ‘And so does Sarah. Don’t you?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Sarah replied. ‘But I can’t say he’s a bad one either. And we have to do something.’
They all looked at each other.
‘Yes,’ Friday said eventually. ‘Yes, we do.’
Liz Parker had watched the shenanigans at the table with the Winter girl along with everyone else and thought, good job. That woul
d teach the little bint for thinking she could beat Liz Parker at broads and get away with it. Now all she had to do was get revenge on Bella Jackson for dobbing her in for cheating and the score would be settled. Except for the money of course, but she might have to wait until they got to that women’s gaol in Sydney before she stole that back again. Waiting was all right — the Woolfe bitch and her motley lot couldn’t spend it on the ship.
What annoyed her most about Bella Jackson was she’d admired her when she first came aboard. She was a cool customer and had a reputation to match. They were very similar in a lot of ways, her and Bella Jackson — both canny and sharp, both notorious. She’d even been thinking of inviting the woman to join her crew. Not as an equal of course, but maybe as her lieutenant. But then Jackson had ruined that idea by making a fool of her and now she was honour-bound to retaliate.
The trouble was, Bella Jackson so rarely came out of her compartment it was proving very difficult to get in there to steal anything or find something suitable for blackmail purposes. God knew Becky and Beth and Louisa had been trying for weeks. It was just so bloody tricky to do anything on the sly on this piddly little boat.
This afternoon, though, the prison deck was almost empty. Woolfe and her crew had apparently gone off to see that molly surgeon and nearly everyone else was up on deck making the most of the sun. Not that it was that warm any more. In fact, it was getting bloody cold. And Jackson had gone up, too: she’d been standing at the bottom of the ladder just after dinner, wearing a mantle with a fur collar. Bloody fashion plate. Well, she’d gone somewhere and there weren’t that many choices, were there? So here at last was the perfect chance to turn over her things.
Liz heaved herself off the bunk, noticing not for the first time she’d lost a bit of weight since the Isla had set sail. It was the atrocious food they were getting. No pies, no muffins or hot cross buns dripping with butter, no tasty saveloys or oysters, no fresh raspberries swimming in cream. Some days when she stood up she felt distinctly light-headed! She’d eaten better in bloody Newgate.
She made her way around the end of the table, not bothering to keep quiet as it was always noisier down here than a blacksmith’s foundry, and started up the other side towards Jackson’s compartment. Actually, there were a few women still below, sleeping, and a handful of kids. She’d better keep an eye on her things — light-fingered, the lot of them.
She stood before the curtain concealing Bella Jackson’s bunk and thought about what best to take. Her clothes? That would hurt: she loved her clothes. Money? Or should she look for something incriminating she could threaten to take to the captain? The possibilities were endless.
She glanced around to make sure no one was watching then twitched open the curtain. And just about died: Bella Jackson hadn’t gone up on deck.
A heavy crystal tumbler flew straight at Liz’s face. She reared back, dropping the curtain, but not quickly enough. The tumbler struck her temple and then the table, shattering into countless diamonds twinkling in the lamplight.
She hurried away, her heart pounding madly, wiping a trickle of blood from her eye, but she was smirking. She’d just seen exactly what she needed.
‘Got ya,’ she whispered.
James sat in his cubicle writing up his notes from the morning’s surgery. He had been busy, the women as always making the most of having access to free medical consultations, some with real complaints, others with maladies fabricated with an eye to getting them excused from chores for a day or two.
It had been the usual procession of complaints concerning mostly costiveness or flux, lumbago, worm fit, oedema, bules, colic, various forms of corruption, cephalalgia, foul tongue, nostalgia and anxiety of mind. The digestive problems stemmed from the low-fibre shipboard diet. He normally treated the problem with a purgative such as calomel, and recommended extra oatmeal and exercise. Constipation was, unfortunately, a fact of life for everyone on long sea voyages. On the other hand, conditions on the prison deck were generally unsanitary, despite strict measures concerning hygiene, and this, coupled with the prisoners’ own less than ideal sanitary habits, quite frequently resulted in stomach ailments such as diarrhoea. This he treated with an emetic followed by a purgative, which was usually successful. If not, he admitted the patient to the hospital for further treatment. Children and infants with diarrhoea he admitted immediately as they were more susceptible to complications than adults.
Cephalalgia, or headaches, lumbago and foul tongue tended to clear up along with bowel problems, and the other complaints were also often related to poor diet and hygiene, but nostalgia and anxiety were maladies for which he really had no effective remedy. They were disorders of the mind and, he sometimes suspected, of the character; and if his patients felt badly about the fact that they were being sent sixteen thousand miles across the seas from their homes and loved ones for years on end if not forever, he couldn’t blame them. To those he suspected of malingering he prescribed chalk and peppermint tablets, no matter what they claimed was wrong with them, allowed no time off, and told them to come back in a week if their symptoms had not abated.
He had also seen Janie Braine’s infant Rosie that morning, and was pleased to see she was doing very well, as was Janie herself. Very robust girl, Janie Braine, despite her wall eye, and quite bright. She would make someone a good domestic when she arrived in New South Wales, if she could manage to keep her mouth buttoned. He hoped she would be permitted to take the child with her, though he doubted that would be the case; either both would remain in the Female Factory for some time or Rosie would be sent to the Orphan School. Evie Challis had delivered late a week ago and her infant was also doing reasonably well, though Evie herself was not. She had developed some form of childbed fever: she had a very high fever and a foul-smelling discharge from her womb. Her baby, a boy and not yet named, was presently in the care of Janie, who had generously offered to wet-nurse him. Which reminded him, he would have to arrange with Reverend Seaton to get the child baptised, something Evie had spoken about before she had fallen ill.
He blotted the last line of his entry and stared at it, willing the ink to dry so he could close his journal.
‘Excuse me, Mr Downey?’
James recognised Harrie’s voice and his heart lifted, as it always did whenever he encountered her sweet face and pretty, untidy hair. He rose from his chair and pulled back the curtain that afforded his cubicle privacy. But his mood deflated again when he saw she was accompanied by big, noisy Friday Woolfe and the other girl, Sarah Morgan, whose intense, knowing gaze always put him on edge. He suspected they didn’t much care for him. Well, he knew Friday Woolfe didn’t. They were no doubt suspicious of him. He had discovered it paid to tread very carefully when it came to the close and convoluted relationships these women developed.
He thought Harrie looked nervous. ‘Harrie. Good morning. Isn’t this your day off?’
‘Yes, it is. We’d like to talk to you about Rachel, please.’
‘Ah, a professional visit.’ That explained the presence of her companions. ‘By all means, come in.’
He stepped aside and the girls filed in. There were only two chairs; Harrie took one and her friends perched on the examination table.
He sat on his chair beside the writing desk and crossed his legs. ‘How can I help you?’
Harrie moved her seat with a scrape so she wouldn’t have to crane her neck to see the others. No one said anything. The Isla creaked and groaned, noises so familiar now no one even heard them any more, and the curtains swayed gently against the ship’s steady roll. Beyond the cubicle in the hospital Evie Challis cried out and Lil Foster’s voice murmured in response. The corruption of the womb resulting from Evie’s childbed fever was so foul he had instructed Lil to roll back the cover on the ventilation hatch and burn some aromatic pastilles.
‘We don’t think you’re doing enough for Rachel,’ Sarah Morgan finally said with characteristic bluntness.
‘Sarah!’ Harrie exclaimed.
Her sleek, dark head was up and she was staring at him, daring him to reprimand her for being so forthright and for challenging him.
So he did. ‘Perhaps you have forgotten that you are a prisoner and I am an officer of the Crown. Please award me appropriate respect.’ He stared at Sarah until she looked away. ‘With regard to your questions, at this point in Rachel’s progress, no, I don’t know specifically what is wrong with her. Medical science concerning the brain is not precise. It is a matter of finding a treatment that best manages her symptoms.’
Harrie looked startled and, he had to admit, a little disappointed. ‘But you must know. You’re the surgeon.’
‘I’m a doctor, Harrie, yes, but I’m not a specialist when it comes to matters concerning brain injuries. Rachel struck her head very badly —’
‘Keegan shoved Rachel six bloody feet onto the deck,’ Friday interrupted, spitting out every word with individual emphasis.
‘Yes,’ James said, ignoring the bad language, ‘which caused a very severe concussion, from which she was lucky to recover at all. These episodes, I’m sure, are directly related to that.’ He hesitated. Was he sure? He recalled the permanently dilated pupil of Rachel’s right eye, which she said had been that way for as long as she could remember. Had she mentioned having headaches or fits of any kind in the past? He didn’t think so.
Sarah rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, but what’s actually wrong with her? And will it get worse?’
She didn’t ask the obvious question, though, and James was glad.
‘Without the benefit of a consultation with a specialist, I am presuming that a portion of her brain has been damaged, causing these fluctuating changes in behaviour. It could be that there is some swelling of the brain, applying internal pressure, which would certainly be cause for her headaches, or perhaps a sliver of skull has travelled into the brain itself.’