Emily (33 page)

Emily sat down beside Meg and took her hand. ‘Meg, you are my dearest and best friend and I wouldn’t lie to you. Mr Linton has never laid a finger on me and neither has he told me of your suggestion. I’m –’. Emotion choked her. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to me to know that you’d do such a thing for me.’

Meg raised her head. ‘Never touched you? What? Never?’

Emily shook her head. ‘Never! He gives me money so that it looks as if I’m his mistress and so the other officers will stay away. I sleep in his hammock whilst he works at his desk.’ The recollection of seeing him working in his shirt-sleeves, with one hand ruffling through his hair, came to mind and she smiled. ‘And sometimes if he’s on duty I look at his books. He says that I can.’

Meg leaned on her elbow and stared at Emily. ‘There’s nowt wrong wi’ him, I suppose? And he doesn’t seem ’type to be of other persuasion.’

Emily was shocked. ‘No! Of course not! He is simply a gentleman.’

‘Well!’ Meg lay back on the bunk and pondered. ‘I’ll have to think about this,’ she muttered. ‘It isn’t summat I’ve come across afore.’

‘I’ve something else to tell you, Meg, and this must be a secret too.’

‘I don’t feel so good, Em. Will it keep?’

‘No, I have to tell somebody or I shall burst. Listen.’ She lowered her voice, though they were the only ones left in the women’s quarters. ‘My brother is on board! You know that convict John
Johnson that you said sounded like a northern man? It’s Joe – my brother Joe! I can hardly believe it! We’ve not seen each other since we were bairns and we were locked up next to each other in ’cramping boxes! He says that he won’t ever go back to England and that he’ll work to buy some land in Australia and that I can live with him.’

Meg squeezed her hand. ‘That’s incredible! I’m so glad for you, Em.’ She turned her head away. ‘I wish I had somebody to belong to. I’ve got nobody.’

‘You’ve got me, Meg,’ Emily comforted her. ‘We’ll try to always stay together.’

That night as she swung gently in Philip Linton’s hammock, she put the question to him. ‘Will the women be separated when we arrive, Mr Linton? I’ve heard rumours that some will go to Parramatta, the women’s factory, and others will go to – er, houses as maids.’ She baulked at mentioning the real object.

She thought he turned pale about the mouth, but he said that he didn’t know, but would find out. He got up from his desk and put on his coat. ‘If you will excuse me, Emily, I must go to the sick berth.’

He hurried across to find Clavell. He would know, he had done this trip many times.

‘We’ve got a fine boy, Mr Linton.’ The surgeon pointed to the bunk where the mother lay with her newborn son. ‘And the mother is calling him Ralph after me! And God help him and her, for nobody else will,’ he muttered as he washed his hands in a bowl, then calling for a boy to take the bloody water away, he drew Philip to one side. ‘She’ll go to Parramatta unless somebody takes her on.’

‘I wanted to ask you about that, sir. Where do the women go after we dock?’

‘Worried about your little friend are you, Mr Linton?’ The surgeon smiled wryly at Philip’s embarrassment. ‘I doubt if she’ll go to Parramatta, she seems a better type than the ones who go there. She’ll probably get picked for a housekeeper by one of the settlers.’

‘Picked?’ Philip said. ‘Do you mean like at the Martinmas fairs?’

Clavell laughed. ‘Come with me, young man, and I will tell you about it. I need a drink anyway after that ordeal.’ He turned to the woman lying on the bunk. ‘Try to rest. Tomorrow you have to go back to your quarters.’

‘I didn’t know that you knew, sir,’ Philip said as they entered Clavell’s cabin, ‘that Emily Hawkins came to visit me.’

‘I might seem like an old soak,’ Clavell poured himself a drink and one for Philip, ‘but there’s not much gets past me. How do you know her?’ he asked abruptly.

Philip, taken by surprise at his directness, said, ‘I met her when she was a servant girl in Hull. She has been ill used by someone I know. There was no need for her to come to this,’ he added bitterly. ‘She is a very gentle person.’

‘Fond of her are you, Philip?’

‘Yes,’ he said simply. ‘I’d gone to Hull especially to seek her out when I found that she had been in trouble and was already in gaol. She was quite innocent,’ he said fiercely.

‘Yes, yes. Of course she was,’ Clavell interrupted.
‘In your eyes at least, so what do you propose to do about her? You can’t take her back with you on your next ship!’

Philip looked down at his feet. ‘I want to protect her. That’s why I came out. I also want to obtain a free pardon for her, but I don’t see how I can do that when I’m over here.’

‘You can’t,’ Clavell said bluntly. ‘You have to be in England to pull strings. Listen to me. I’ve been doing this trip for years and years and years, and I can tell you that conditions for the felons have improved immeasurably. I could also tell you some horrific tales of the old days; of convicts dying in their hundreds on their journey out, of the wholesale rape of the women when they arrived; of the whippings and scourgings, of the humiliation and degradation which men and women have endured.’ He took another drink and muttered, ‘We have much to be ashamed of. Many forgot that these people were human beings too.’

He shook a finger at Philip. ‘Things have improved, but they are still bad. Parramatta, if your friend goes there, will destroy her. There are some women in that place who are the worst possible kind, dissolute and abandoned. Believe me I know, and they influence others who, if they were in a better situation would improve on their former selves.

‘That is where I am going,’ he sighed. ‘I’m going to Parramatta.’

‘I thought this was to be your last voyage, sir? That’s what I’d heard.’

‘So it is.’ He gave a thin sad smile. ‘I’m not
going back. I’ve said goodbye to England once and for all.’

Philip was silent, there was obviously much, much more that Clavell could tell him, but he would only do it in his own good time.

Clavell took a pipe from his desk drawer, opened a tin of tobacco and put his nose to it to smell the aroma. ‘Ever wondered why I’m a drunk, Philip?’ he asked. ‘Yes, of course you have!’ He tamped down the tobacco into the bowl. ‘I’ve been sailing on convict ships for more years than I care to think of and it can strain a man’s conscience. It’s condoning the system, you see, even though indirectly. I took my wife out one year. A good country, I thought; we could make a life out there.’

He stared into space. ‘She loved the country, hated the penal system and became involved in trying to have it abolished, like so many others did. I was the medic at Parramatta then and saw some terrible things, but I never told my wife. Then one day,’ he drew on the pipe and a cloud of smoke enveloped him, ‘she decided to come and see the place where I worked. She came on the day there was a riot; the women had complained about their conditions and rampaged all over the building. Caroline arrived as they were being rounded up. The soldiers had been brought in and they and the warders were beating the prisoners with rifles, sticks, bricks, lashes, anything they could lay their hands on. Some of the women were half naked and there was blood everywhere.

‘I was the only doctor and she helped me to clean them up and bandage their wounds.’ His pipe went
out and he laid it on his desk. ‘From then on she started campaigning for the abolition of the convict system and the rights of those who were already convicted. She formed committees, petitioned the governor, Members of Parliament, wrote to the English newspapers and she gained the support of the wives of officials who were out there.’

‘Well, she has almost succeeded, sir. I read in the newspapers that the settlers won’t accept the convict ships any more, that they are blocking the harbours.’

Clavell nodded. ‘But it has come too late for her.’ He looked up and there was something in his eyes, some sorrow lingering that made Philip pause. ‘She continued to come to Parramatta, she used to visit the women and talk to them or sometimes just listen, and – and when she died, they said how they missed her, that just being with her made them feel like human beings again.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know,’ Philip began.

Clavell brushed away his apologies. ‘She caught typhoid fever from one of the women, but before she died she made me promise that I would do something to improve their conditions. But, coward that I am,’ he sighed, ‘I’ve been sailing the high seas in a drunken stupor all these years, never daring to set foot in the place. Until now,’ he added, ‘now I shall stay. I have burnt my bridges in England, settled my affairs. I won’t go back. She’s still here, you see. Waiting for me. Waiting for me to go back to Parramatta.’

They both had another drink and Philip didn’t like to intrude on Clavell’s thoughts to ask what he
should do about Emily. But Clavell hadn’t forgotten. He suddenly looked up and said, ‘So this is what I think you should do, Mr Linton.’ He had become formal again. ‘You must stay awhile in Sydney. If you can afford it, buy a small farm. If you can’t, then rent one, but better to buy, land is cheap. Then set her up as your housekeeper or wife or whatever name you choose to give her. That way, in effect, she gains her freedom, even though she can’t go back to England. Then find someone you can trust to keep an eye on her and then you head off home to petition for her pardon. If she goes to Parramatta she will always have the stigma of convict on her.’

They were all on deck a few days later, men and women, when the order came that they were to go below, that another squall was brewing. A light wind was blowing and the sky was clear.

‘What’s happening?’ Meg asked one of the seamen as she went below. ‘Why can’t we stop on deck? A drop o’ rain won’t hurt us.’

‘Because you’d be in the way and you might well get washed overboard.’ He roughly pushed her down the companion ladder. ‘We’re in the doldrums. It’ll be more than a drop o’ rain, believe me. It’s for your own good,’ he shouted through the grating before closing it completely. The doors were firmly fastened and the hatches closed so that the atmosphere was stifling.

‘In ’doldrums!’ Meg grumbled. ‘I’ve often thought that’s where I was and now he’s telling me I am!’

Emily wiped her face with a rag. It was so hot and already some of the women were starting to retch as the ship rolled and pitched.

‘Next time you go to Mr Linton’s cabin,’ Meg said, ‘do you think you could borrow some scissors?’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Tell him you’re mekking a new frock,’ she said ironically. Some of the women had been stitching up the tears and rents in their clothes. They had been given needle and thread when on deck but always had to give them back before returning below decks. ‘I want to cut my hair,’ she said. ‘Lice are driving me mad. I thought ’tar would have killed ’em off, but it hasn’t.’

Meg’s thick hair was still streaked with the sticky tar which Lieutenant Boyle had plastered over her and her hands were blackened with it where she had tried to pull it out.

The squall hit suddenly, a strong gale sprang up and heavy rain lashed down and even below decks they could hear the crash of thunder.

The woman and her new baby were now below and he had started to cry. She put him to her breast, but still he wailed. ‘I’ve got no milk,’ she said, rocking him in her arms. She looked up at some of the other women. ‘What can I do? How can I feed him?’

The ship pitched and plunged and many of the women and children fell to the floor screaming. The woman and her baby fell too and the baby cried even more. ‘For God’s sake, shut him up,’ a voice shouted. ‘Give him a bit o’ pap or something.’

Someone gave the woman a piece of bread and she put it in her mouth to moisten and then placed a morsel in the child’s mouth. He coughed and spluttered and started to scream; the ship heeled and they were flung over once again and first one and then another of the women started to
be sick and they heard the sound of the men retching from behind their barrier.

‘We’re going to die,’ a woman shrieked. ‘We’re trapped like rats in here.’ She pushed her way towards the locked door and started to hammer with her fists. ‘Let me out. Let me out!’

Meg strode forward and smacked the woman across the face. ‘Stop that,’ she roared. ‘We might be going to die, but shouting and screaming isn’t going to help. Now get back to your place!’

As she passed the woman with the baby, the mother held him up towards her. ‘Have you any milk?’ she asked pathetically. ‘He’s hungry.’

‘Me?’ Meg held onto the bunk as the ship rolled. ‘I’ve got no milk! I’ve never had any bairns.’

The woman continued to hold him up. ‘Please,’ she appealed. ‘Somebody! My milk’s gone.’

Meg took the child from her, nestling him on her shoulder. ‘Rest on your bunk,’ she said. ‘Mebbe it’ll come back. I’ll tek him for a bit.’

The child feeling another presence stopped his mewling, but sought with his mouth towards Meg’s cheek. ‘No use searching, young fella, I’ve got nowt that you’d want.’ She took him back to the bunk and sat with him next to Emily, who was lying flat on her back. Some of the other women were sitting or lying on the floor to reduce the effect of the ship’s pitching and rolling.

‘Give him a drop of water,’ Emily suggested. ‘There’s some clean in the jug and it might pacify him.’

‘How?’ Meg asked. ‘I can’t give him a cup!’

‘Dip your finger in the water,’ another woman
said, ‘and put it in his mouth. I used to do that with my bairns.’ She nodded her head as if remembering and then started to weep.

Meg wiped her hand on her skirt and dipped her finger into the jug of water, then put her finger to the baby’s mouth. ‘Hey, he’s tekking it,’ she said. ‘Ha, it tickles!’

The vessel pitched again and Meg clutched the child to her. They heard a crash above deck and water trickled in through the seams of the ship, soaking their blankets.

Emily watched Meg as she held the baby and thought of the child she had lost. If he had lived, I wonder how things would have been? Would we both be starving somewhere in the streets of Hull? Would I have had to live on charity? She thought of what Mr Linton had suggested to her, that she live with him as his housekeeper. I didn’t think that he would stay in Australia, I thought he would be sailing on to some other land or else going back to England. But he says that he is going to buy a small farm! I find that so surprising. He was disappointed, I think, when I told him that I had promised to stay with Meg.