Girl on the Orlop Deck (21 page)

The next afternoon, the storm began in earnest and it blew for three days. The rain was torrential, the sky perpetually dark, there was no possibility of anyone putting out to sea in such weather, and it took the combined efforts of all the survivors in the fleet to keep their damaged ships afloat. While her carpenter rigged up jury topmasts and a mizzen, the
Victory
was taken in tow by an old ship called the
Polyphemus
, but the seas were so rough that her captain had to cut the towing hawser for fear of being rammed. The prize ships were tossed about like corks, as the great fleet was scattered by the force of the waves. It was an anxious time.

Marianne wrapped an old sack round her shoulders to keep out the worst of the rain and went down to the beach twice every day, watching the weather and hoping it would clear. It pleased her to see that the fleet was still there even if she knew she couldn’t get a boat to take her out to rejoin them. She stood by the edge of that great sea, aching to be back aboard her ship, just as she’d done more than four months ago in the heat of the Caribbean. How life do repeat itself, she thought, rubbing the rain out of her eyes. But the thought was cheering. She’d got out of Barbados, so she could get out of Spain. ’Twas just a matter a’
perseverance
. Meantime she helped Mama to sweep the floor and prepare the food, her clothes gradually dried so that she could wear them again, although she had to keep the chemise on too for modesty’s sake. There was plenty of bread and fish to eat, and Juan chopped up the ship’s timber and the spar and used it to build a blazing fire that kept them all warm in the evenings. The storm would pass. They always did.

On the morning of the fourth day the wind began to drop and two strange men arrived in a state of high excitement with some sort of news for Juan and Sandro. They stood in the doorway all talking at once and waving their arms about and, after they’d gone, Juan began to talk to Marianne, waving
his
arms about, pointing west and pulling at her sleeve to follow him. So she found her sack, draped it round her shoulders and went out into the damp air.

The beach was unchanged, the fleet was still there, but there was a
pale sun shining and the sea was blue-green instead of that awful grey. Juan set off at a great speed glancing back from time to time to check that she was following and telling her things at voluble length that she couldn’t understand as they walked west. It had better be worth it, she thought, for it’s a mortal long way. But when they’d followed the path round a small curved headland, it
was
worth it, oh it was more than worth it, for there was a British longboat pulled up on the beach and a group of British sailors, gathered round a huge driftwood fire. She could hear their easy familiar English from where she stood. She ran towards them at once, her spirits lifted by the mere sight of them and only stopped when she remembered that she hadn’t thanked her rescuer. ‘Thank ’ee kindly, sir,’ she called to him. ‘I’m much obliged to ’ee.’

He waved his cap and called back, but now it didn’t matter that she couldn’t understand him. She only had to join the company round that fire and she would be on her way back to her ship.

The company round the fire looked up when she called out and one of them shouted. ‘Here’s another of ’em, Mr Templeman.’

The name stopped her onward rush. ‘Jem?’ she said, looking at the group. It couldn’t be Jem, surely to goodness, not after the battle an’ all and when she’d been looking for him so long. ‘Oh my dear heart alive, is it you?’

And Jem stood up and left his shipmates and walked towards her. The sound of her voice had triggered his memory most powerfully. Reason told him it couldn’t possibly be her, not here, not like this, his memory was playing tricks on him, he was dreaming it. But the closer he got to her the more sure he became. It was Marianne, there was no doubt about it, Marianne, wrapped in a piece of sacking and looking at him with the oddest expression on her face, wearing sailor’s breeches and sailor’s shoes, but Marianne, here on a Spanish beach. ‘Marianne!’ he said and began to run.

To hear his voice was too much for her. She was caught up in a
whirlwind
of emotion, the shock of surprise, a five-day accumulation of suppressed grief and terror, and a quite extraordinary, overwhelming, unexpected happiness ‘Oh Jem,’ she said ‘Oh my dear heart alive.’ There was a great pulse throbbing in her throat and she put up her hand to steady it – and fell in a faint. He only just had time to run forward and catch her before she hit the ground.

When she struggled back to consciousness she was lying in his lap in
front of the fire and he was holding her very close and stroking her hair and kissing her fingers. ‘Now that’s better,’ he said, as she opened her eyes. ‘I can’t have ’ee in a faint. My stars, ’tis the most amazing thing to see thee. I can’t get over it.’

She became aware that there were fire-lit eyes all around her, glinting as they stared at her, and she struggled to sit up. ‘Stay still,’ Jem said, putting his arm round her. ‘We en’t a-goin’ nowhere. Stay by the fire an’ get warm an’ let me look at ’ee. My dear heart alive, if this en’t the most amazing thing.’

‘So who is he?’ one of the sailors asked. ‘An’ where’s he sprung from?’

‘He en’t a he,’ Jem explained. ‘That’s the beauty of it. He’s a she an’ she’s my wife! My own dear wife what I never thought to see again. Can ’ee believe it?’

Happiness cradled her like a warm sea. She’d found him. After all these months and all that searching, after the horror of that dreadful battle with Nelson dying an’ all, and being washed overboard an’ lost at sea, after being becalmed and facing storms and losing her poor baby, and just when she’d given up hope, she’d found him. And he was calling her ‘my own dear wife’.

‘So what you doin’ on this ’ere beach, gel?’ one of the sailors asked, ‘An’ in them slops? Tell me that.’

‘’Tis a long story,’ she said, smiling at Jem. Oh how good it was going to be to tell him. ‘I come to sea for to find my Jem, I took the shilling the self-same day as he done, an’ bein’ they don’t take women aboard I had to be a boy.’

Jem was stunned. ‘You mean you been in the navy all this time?’ he said. ‘Across the Atlantic an’ back again?’

What a triumph it was to be able to say yes. ‘An’ looking for ’ee at every port we come to,’ she said.

His face was a study in astonishment. ‘My stars!’ he said.

‘You got a pearl there, Mr Templeman,’ one of his mates told him.

He was still struggling to take it all in. How she must love me, he thought, to follow me round the world. She’d never ha’ done that if she hadn’t loved me true. ‘My stars!’ he said again.

‘So you was aboard in the battle, was yer?’ another man asked.

‘I was on the
Victory
,’ she told him with enormous pride. ‘On the orlop deck. I seen Lord Nelson die an’ a better, braver man you couldn’t imagine.’ Then she was overwhelmed again and began to cry.

‘Hush, my little lovely one,’ Jem soothed, cuddling her. ‘Don’ ’ee cry. You’re with me now. There en’t a thing to harm ’ee. You’re with me.’ How easy it was to talk to her and how much he loved her. She
was
a pearl, there was no denying it, a pearl of great price and he would love her for ever.

But his shipmates wanted to hear her story and, as the weather wasn’t quite fit enough for the long row back to the fleet, they built up the fire with more driftwood and gathered round its warmth to listen while she told them what had happened to her. Not everything that had happened, naturally, but the important things.

‘An’ here you are,’ Jem said, when the tale was done, ‘an’ damn my eyes if you en’t a giddy marvel. Tha’s my opinion of it.’

‘Never heard the like an’ that’s a fact,’ his companions said. ‘An’ to find ’ee here in this wild place, I means for to say.’

The sun had risen in the sky and although it was still pale there were signs of better weather to come, a gentle breeze from the right quarter, the sea more blue than green, the waves tame, the clouds white, seagulls wheeling overhead, even a songbird trilling somewhere nearby. ‘Time we was getting back,’ Jem said.

They hauled the boat into the sea – one two six, one two six – and Marianne hauled with the best. When they jumped aboard she jumped too, neatly like the seaman she was, knowing that Jem was watching her and admiring her. And when they set off, she and her husband pulled on the same oar, sitting so close together he could have been holding her in his arms. She had never had such a happy journey.

A
S THE LONGBOAT
creaked steadily on towards the fleet, the sea hissing at its prow, a small schooner called
Pickle
hove to alongside the
Royal Sovereign
with orders to wait for dispatches from Admiral Collingwood. The storm had taken all the admiral’s attention for the last four days but, now that it was abating, he was eager to send news of the victory and of Nelson’s death to the Admiralty in London. It was one of the most difficult dispatches he’d ever written, but it was done and sealed.

‘Proceed with all speed,’ he said to Lieutenant Lapenotiere, as he handed it over, and the captain saluted and assured him that not a second would be lost.

Now, Collingwood thought, I must attend to the wounded, who must be sent to the naval hospital at Gibraltar, and then I must arrange for such repairs as can be carried out while we are in harbour. It was going to be a difficult business sailing his great fleet and their prizes safely back to England and he meant to have them as seaworthy as he could get them.

The
Pickle
made excellent time, arriving in Falmouth Bay at a quarter to ten in the morning on 4 November and Lieutenant Lapontiere hired a post-chaise immediately, made a flag pole from an old broom handle so that he could fly the Union Jack and a tattered Tricolour as he travelled, and set off on his long journey to London. In ordinary circumstances it would have taken him a week, but with determination and nineteen horse changes, he managed it in thirty-seven hours, arriving at the Admiralty at one in the morning on 6 November. There was nobody about and the city was shrouded in fog so thick that he couldn’t see from one side of Whitehall to the other even with a lantern held aloft to guide
him, but, not to be deterred, he knocked boldly and loudly, told the answering servant that he had despatches from Admiral Collingwood and was admitted at once. Within minutes the First Lord was out of bed and at his desk to receive him. By three o’clock the news had been sent to King George, Mr Pitt and all his ministers and the Prime Minister was up and about, being far too distressed by the news to go back to sleep. By first light a special edition of a
Gazette Extraordinary
was on sale in the streets.
‘It is with mixed sensations of transport and anguish,’
it said
‘that we have to report a glorious victory and a great loss
.’

The newspaper reached Portsmouth the following morning and was read by everybody who could get hold of a copy for themselves or purloin someone else’s. Mary Morris and Lizzie Templeman read it in the pie shop and cried copiously.

‘But what of Jem an’ Marianne?’ Mary said. ‘That’s what I wants for to know. If they’ve shot Lord Nelson just think what they could have done to
them
. Anything could have happened to them. Any mortal thing.’

‘Your Marianne’ll write an tell ’ee, whatever it is,’ Lizzie said, ‘what I don’t suppose my Jem’ll even think of.’

But she was wrong. Both their children had written to them and their letters were already on their way home.

The fleet took sail to Gibraltar as soon as they had a fair wind and the first thing Marianne did after they arrived in Rosia Bay was to help the men she now thought of as ‘her wounded’ to struggle down the
gangplank
and into the carriages that were waiting to take them to the hospital. It took all morning and the combined efforts of all the
loblollies
and both Mr Beattie’s assistants and by the time the last man had been eased on his way Marianne was so tired her back ached. She was standing on the quayside, watching the last carriage leave and thinking of dinner when somebody came up behind her and put a hand on her shoulder. At first she was startled, then she turned her head and saw that it was Jem.

‘My stars, Jem Templeman,’ she said, ‘you made me jump.’

‘Come an’ see the town,’ he said. ‘You’m finished here.’

Hunger pangs made her hesitate. ‘What about my dinner?’

‘I’ll buy ’ee dinner,’ he told her and jingled the coins in the pocket of his jacket. ‘Come on. ’Tis our leisure time.’

So, since they were both officially at leisure, they walked into town. It was quite a jaunt, even though they had to be discreet and couldn’t walk arm in arm as they would have liked, nor stop to kiss, which they would have liked even more. But for the moment it was enough to be together, talking of their ships and their voyages, and enjoying one another’s company. Marianne thought the town was a splendid place ‘with all them carriages an’ all’ and she ate a rather weird meal of rice, fish and onions and was hungry enough to enjoy it and drank so much wine it made her head swim and declared she hadn’t had such a day since Heaven knows when.

‘Last time we ate hearty together was our wedding,’ Jem said, as they started their walk back to the quay. And then stopped, feeling too close to dangerous ground.

‘Aye, so ’twas,’ she said and waited, looking at him steadily. The street was full of people and some of them were looking at them quizzically, as they stood facing one another on the cobbles, hesitating.

It was necessary to speak of it, painful though it would most certainly be. ‘I should never have left ’ee, Marianne,’ he said. ‘I know that now.’

She considered him seriously. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have.’

‘I wouldn’t leave ’ee now.’

‘Nor I you,’ she said and laughed. ‘Not when it’s took me so long to find ’ee again.’

There was so much he wanted to say to her. If only they weren’t in such a public place. If he could kiss her it would be easier.

‘We could walk out again tomorrow,’ he suggested. ‘If ’ee’d like to. ’Twill take a deal a’ time to make repairs. By my reckoning we shall be here a week or two at the very least. What do ’ee think to that? Comin’ out, I means, not makin’ repairs. We could climb to the top of the rock. ’Twould be more private-like up there.’

She thought it an excellent suggestion. So the next day they climbed to the top of the great rock where they ate a very British meat pie, had a fine view of the Straits and the distant coast of Africa and were pestered by a tribe of inquisitive monkeys. Not that either of them worried about monkeys. What was important was that they were far away from
inquisitive
human beings and could kiss one another at last, and whenever the spirit moved them, which it did with increasing ardour and frequency.

On the fifth day a sea mist came up and the town was swathed in such a thick damp cloud that they could barely see one another when they
were in the streets and they were still ribboned by swirls of mist when they’d reached the top of the rock. But that didn’t worry them either. It just meant they were even better hidden and could kiss as long and as often as they liked.

When they’d finally kissed to a halt and had decided to find a suitable rock where they could sit and eat their pies, they fell to talking about the West Indies and what an amazing place it was.

‘Some of them islands are …’ Jem began. But then he had to stop because he couldn’t find the word he needed. ‘Well, magic places, seems to me. Not magic like conjurors an’ so forth. I don’t mean that. Magic, like places where you face up to things, an’ make decision, if you knows what I means.’

‘Yes,’ she said, remembering that poor baby. ‘I do.’

‘When we was in Dominica I fell to thinkin’,’ Jem said. And then stopped again because he was afraid he was going to make a confession and he wasn’t sure it was the right thing to be doing.

She snuggled against his side, feeling glad of his warmth. ‘What about?’ she encouraged him.

He put his arm round her and thought before he answered, because this
was
a confession. ‘About us, I s’pose, now I comes to think of it,’ he said eventually. ‘About how I meant to live my life if I come through the battle. I made a list of all the things I didn’t like and how I’d change ’em if I got the chance.’

‘An’ what did ’ee decide?’

‘’Twas four things,’ he remembered, seeing the list in his head. ‘To take my pay and leave the navy honourable, what I certainly means to do the minute it can be done; to settle down on dry land on account of I’d had enough of sailing round the world; to be my own master an’ work as a carpenter in my own town; and to find you an’ see if.…’

She leant back a little and looked up at him and waited.

He gave her a wry smile, feeling very unsure of himself. Confession was uncommon hard. But he’d come so far he had to tell her now. ‘Well then, to see if you’d take me back,’ he admitted, ‘what I wouldn’t ha’ been surprised if you hadn’t, bein’ I left ’ee on our weddin’ day, what was a blamed fool thing to do.’

It was an apology and she recognized it and was glad of it for it would put things right between them. ‘’Tis all forgot now,’ she told him. ‘We been to the other side a’ the word an’ back an’ lived through a battle an’
seen Lord Nelson die – seems to me we got a right to live our own lives, wouldn’ ’ee say?’

Oh he would, he would, and kissed her to prove it.

So their gentle courtship continued and although their need for one another soon grew into an ache that they couldn’t satisfy out there in the open, they were happy to be together and to dream of the future.

When church was rigged on their second Sunday in harbour their captains told them that a state funeral was being arranged for Admiral Lord Nelson. It was no surprise to anyone in the fleet. ‘Quite right,’ they said to one another, nodding approval ‘Tha’s what ’ee would expect.’ It felt like a justification of their efforts. And when Captain Hardy told his crew that six of them were to be chosen to carry the coffin and that a ‘sizeable contingent’ of them were to walk in the procession carrying his flag, the nods became a cheer. It was right and proper. They were his men. They’d fought with him and suffered with him and some of them had died along of him and now they would carry him to his grave.

Later that day the men who’d been chosen were called to the
quarter-deck
to be told the news. And among the ‘sizeable contingent’ was Matt Morris, loblolly boy.

‘What do ’ee think to that?’ she said to Jem, when they met up again two days later.

He was looking saucy. ‘I think ’tis all very right an’ proper,’ he said. ‘That’s my opinion of it.’ Then he paused and grinned at her. ‘On account of I’m to be one a’ the contingent too, bein’ I’m a ship’s carpenter. We can walk side by side. What do ’ee think to
that
?’

The idea delighted her. ‘What a thing to tell Ma,’ she said. ‘You an’ me in the same percession. I wish I hadn’t ha’ sent my letter now.’

‘I wish I hadn’t ha’ sent mine neither,’ he said.

She looked at him in open astonishment. ‘You’ve never writ a letter!’ she said. ‘My stars! I never thought I’d live to see the day. Your ma’ll fall down in a faint.’

Her teasing made him uncomfortable. ‘I can write well enough,’ he said huffily. It wasn’t true. He’d had a terrible time of it writing that letter, what with the spelling being tricky and the ink smudging and getting all over his fingers and not having written for so long – but there was no need to tell her that. ‘’Tis just I’ve had too much to do for letter writin’, on account a’ bein’ a carpenter an’ all.’

‘I’ll believe you,’ she said and added, ‘thousands wouldn’t.’

‘If you’m a-goin’ to mock,’ he said, ‘I shan’t tell ’ee what I said in it, what you’d like to know.’

She held on to his jacket and reached up to kiss him, understanding him very well. ‘So what did ’ee say?’ she asked.

He was mollified but only slightly. ‘Well …’ he said.

She kissed him again. ‘Never mind well, what did ’ee say?’

‘I told ’em we’d found one another, what I thought they’d like for to know, an’ I asked Ma to find us a room for when we gets back. We shall need somewhere to live. Won’t we?’ It was a real question asked with some trepidation and Marianne was surprised and touched by it. Why he’s shy, she thought. Who’d ha’ thought
that
? Shy an’ tender an’ I thought he was a great rough critter, what ’ud hurt you soon as look at you an’ then walk away an’ join the navy. We’ve come a long way since them days, the both of us.

‘Yes,’ she said, easily. ‘We will. We got to have somewhere to live.’

‘Then I’m glad I asked her,’ he said.

Seven days later, he heard that the
Sirius
would be sailing the following day, ‘what I’d rather she didn’t on account of we shan’t see one another again once we’m a-sailin’, not till we reach England anyways, what’ll be a blamed long time.’

‘’Twill pass,’ she comforted. ‘No voyage takes for ever, not even across the Aterlantic, an’ we done
that
twice. We just got to have a bit a’ patience, that’s all, bit a’ patience an’ then we shall be home in our own town an’ in our own room an’ we can live as we please.’

‘Might take a bit a’ time afore I can get free of the service,’ he warned. ‘I’ll have to stay till I’ve got me pay and me bounty and signed off an’ so forth. I don’t mean for to leave empty handed. Not after all this.’

She understood that perfectly. ‘’Course you don’t.’

‘You’m a-goin’ to Portsmouth seemingly,’ he told her. ‘So you’ll be home afore I am. But don’t you go leaving without your full pay neither. We needs every penny we’ve earned.’

‘An’ we shall have it,’ she promised. She wasn’t at all sure how she had to set about claiming it, but it would be done, he had her word. ‘I wonder what Ma’ll think to see us again.’

Their letters arrived in Portsmouth in the middle of November to great excitement in both houses and, like her daughter-in-law, Lizzie was
amazed that Jem had written. ‘I means for to say,’ she said to her husband, ‘our Jem writing us a letter. Wonders’ll never cease.’

Later in the day she went down to see Mary Morris so that
she
could read the letter too and the two woman swapped letters and read them both twice, exclaiming at every sentence.

‘Somewhere to live you see,’ Mary approved. ‘That’s sensible. Once the fleet gets back there’ll be sailors every which way, all a-wantin’ rooms. Better to get that settled afore they arrives. He’s got good sense your Jem.’