Girl on the Orlop Deck (17 page)

‘Off tom-catting, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Johnny Galley said, grinning at him.

‘I’ll have their guts for garters,’ the lieutenant said furiously, ‘and they needn’t think I shan’t report ’em. Could be a flogging matter, could this, an’ we ain’t had a good flogging for months.’

Johnny Galley raised his eyebrows. He didn’t hold with flogging boys and especially for tom-catting.

‘Do ’em good,’ the lieutenant said. ‘Make men of ’em.’

But the boys were already in the nearest slop shop and half way back to their original sex, buying old skirts, jackets and bonnets for themselves, in a state of exquisite excitement.

‘We’ll keep our sailors’ slops,’ Peg said, framing her now decidedly feminine face in a rather battered straw bonnet, ‘in case we has to work our passage. We could buy one a’ them shawls and make a parcel of ’em. What do ’ee think?’

Moll was still marvelling at how easy their escape had been. ‘What a stroke a’ luck ol’ Nelson a-coming out like that,’ she said. ‘Who’d ha’ thought it?’

That evening Nelson dined with the governor, caught up with the local news and hardened in his determination to return to Portsmouth. The next day, while the bum boats were still ferrying provisions, he wrote to Emma to tell her he was coming home and that he should be with her in two or three weeks –
given a fair wind
. Then he sent out orders that all mail from the fleet was to be made ready for collection and, once it had all been
gathered
in, he dispatched a cutter post haste to Portsmouth to deliver it. After that, it was simply a matter of giving up hope and preparing himself for home. Whatever was to happen now was in the lap of the gods.

It was raining in Portsmouth when the postman arrived and Mary Morris was complaining to her old friend Lizzie Templeman. ‘Dratted weather,’ she said, rubbing her back. ‘That’s five days’ rain on the trot. Five days’ rain non-stop an’ how I’m supposed to get the washing dry I do not know. ’Tis enough to try the patience of a saint.’

‘Can’t command the weather, my lover,’ Lizzie told her, ‘an’ that’s a fact. We just has to put up with weather.’

The room was hung with washing steaming in the heat of the stove and the two women were taking a dish of tea to rouse their spirits. ‘All this steam,’ Mary complained. ‘’Ten’t good for a body. I’m forever hackin’ an’ coughin.’ Which was true enough for she was coughing as she spoke. The first knock their postman gave was lost in the noise she was making. But he was a stolid young man and knew he had to knock until he was answered.

‘Letter for Mrs Morris,’ he said, holding it out. ‘Come in this mornin’ on a cutter, so it did.’

Rain, laundry and coughing fits were all forgotten. ‘’Tis Marianne,’ Mary cried, holding out her hand for it. ‘Give it here quick. Where’s my purse, Lizzie? Oh quick, quick.’

The purse was found, the money paid, the letter opened. Lizzie was most impressed by it. ‘My stars!’ she said. ‘Will you look at the size of it. She must ha’ been writing it for months. Can you read it all?’

It was read aloud and with great pleasure, twice, to make sure they’d got it right.

‘Snakes what could eat you alive,’ Mary said. ‘Imagine that.’

‘You notice she don’t say nothin’ about my Jem,’ Lizzie said and sighed. ‘I’m beginning to think I shall never see him again. All these years. You’d ha’ thought he’d ha’ sent me a line or two. Just to know he was still alive. I means for to say your Marianne’s writ a book. I wouldn’t ha’ hurt him to write a line or two. I means for to say.’

Mary wasn’t paying much attention. She’d heard the complaint before and even though she sympathized there was nothing she could do to help. ‘There’s a postscript writ up the sides,’ she said, noticing it. ‘Perhaps that’s about him.’ She patted her friend’s arm. ‘She’ll find him come the finish, Lizzie. Never you fear. She’d made her mind up to it.’

‘What does it say?’ Lizzie said as Mary turned the paper sideways.

But Mary was screeching. ‘She’s coming home, Lizzie. Look what she says:
We are in Gibralter. We are coming home. I shall see you in a week or two
.’

They were long impatient weeks and, after the first of them, the two women walked down to Portsmouth Point every day to see if there were any arrivals. But it wasn’t until the 18 August that there was any news
and then it fired the town quicker than gunpowder. There were two ships of the line anchored at Spithead, the
Victory
and the
Superb
.

‘Praise be,’ Mary said. ‘Now I shall have her home at last.’

But the day passed and there were no boats arriving at shore, only a bum boat that had been sent out to pick up letters from the Port Admiral and when that came alongside the quay, it came with the news that the ships were in quarantine ‘on account of they put in at Gibraltar where they got the yellow fever’.

‘Oh for pity’s sake!’ Mary said. ‘And how long are they to be kept waitin’ out there?’

‘No good askin’ me,’ the boatman told her. ‘I don’t make the rules. I’m only the poor beggar what’s the messenger. That’ll be up to the Port Admiral.’

‘Well he’d better make his mind up sharpish,’ Mary said, glaring at the poor man. ‘That’s all I got to say. Keepin’ ’em waiting out there after all the time they been away. ’Tis a scandal, so it is.’

The next day was Sunday and to nobody’s surprise it was raining again. Not that a spot of rain could deter the people of Portsmouth. The ramparts were crowded throughout the morning and every single place that could command a view of the harbour entrance was packed with people waiting to catch a glimpse of their hero when he finally came ashore. Mary and Lizzie were pushed and jostled whenever they tried to find a space and Mary’s temper was worn to shreds long before dinner time. But she was determined not to be put off by silly crowds, no matter how pressing they were, and she and Lizzie came back to push their way to a viewpoint as soon as they’d fed their families. This time they were determined to stay where they were until the crews came ashore.

It was past seven o’clock before Nelson’s barge was sighted heading for the quayside and the great crowd cheered it every foot of the way, waving their hats and shouting themselves hoarse. Then there was so much pushing and shoving that Mary was afraid she was going to be end up in the sea.

‘Why don’t you look where you’re going?’ she yelled at a man who was running straight at her.

‘I knows where I’m goin’, ma’am,’ he yelled back. ‘I’m follerin’ Lord Nelson to the commisioner’s office to give him one last cheer. Tha’s what I’m doin’.’

‘Blamed fool,’ Mary said. ‘He could’ve had me over.’

But the crowds were thinning, which was a relief to her, and after a few more minutes there were hardly any people left on the quayside at all and those who
were
still standing there were obviously wives and
relations
waiting for news of their menfolk. It was dark and cold and they were all wet.

There was a sailor walking towards them, heading towards the barge.

‘Wait there,’ Mary said to Lizzie. ‘I’m going to ask that feller what’s what. I shan’t be a minute.’

That feller was damp but courteous. ‘No, ma’am,’ he said. ‘There won’t be no one else comin’ ashore this time a’ night. We only come out for Lord Nelson, you see. Everyone else is to wait till morning. That’s the style of it.’

It didn’t please her at all but there was nothing she could do about it. ‘They come all this way,’ she grumbled to Lizzie as they trailed home, ‘and then they got to wait till morning. I don’t see the sense in it.’

‘Be morning afore you knows where you are,’ Lizzie tried to
commiserate
.

‘It’ud better be,’ Mary said, as they rain dripped off the end of her nose. ‘I’ve had enough a’ waiting.’

M
ARIANNE WAS WOKEN
at four o’clock that Monday, at the start of the morning watch. Normally she would have growled out of her hammock like everyone else but this time she got up at once, ready and eager, dark though it was, for this was the day she was going to jump ship. She had everything planned. She would do her work as quickly as she could, have her breakfast and pack her belongings in her ditty bag and then she would ask for permission to go ashore and see her parents. Now that Nelson had been rowed off in his barge to report to the Admiralty and see that Lady Hamilton of his, they could hardly keep everyone else on board, even if they wanted to, and especially if Portsmouth was their home town. They’d let her go sooner or later, they were bound to, and then she’d walk straight home and change into her woman’s clothes and take up her old life and have done with all this seafaring – even if she hadn’t got a husband to live with and it would mean going back to her father’s house. The one thing she wasn’t going to do was to stay aboard the
Victory
, sail out to a certain battle and put herself in danger. Peg and Moll had been right: if there was a battle coming, you jumped ship and got out the way of it. ’Twas the only sensible thing to do.

She had a disturbing moment when she asked permission because the lieutenant told her she was to find Mr Beattie and ask him, ‘being you’re one of his boys’ and Mr Beattie was stern.

‘You may go ashore,’ he said, ‘but on one condition. We have a battle ahead of us, as you know, and I shall need every pair of hands once we come under fire. Every single pair of hands. I trust you understand that. Very well then, I must have your word that you will return to the ship as soon as you see the signal that we are about to sail. The bum boats will be sent out to bring all crew members back on board but you must make it your responsibility to keep a daily watch. Do I have your word?’

It was painful to have to lie to him because he was a good man and she admired him but it had to be done. ‘Aye, sir,’ she said. ‘You do, sir.’

‘Then you have my permission,’ the surgeon said. ‘Don’t let me down.’

Then it was just a matter of seeing the purser and persuading him to give her some of her pay, which he did somewhat grudgingly warning her not to drink it all in one go, and waiting for the bum boat to take her ashore.

Two hours later she was in her mother’s kitchen. It was a fine August day bright with summer sunshine and she’d been blown along by the same lively wind that had scudded her out of the church on her wedding day. The force of it lifted her spirits quite wonderfully and by the time she got home her cheeks were red and she looked so fit and strong and brown-skinned that her mother squealed with pleasure at the sight of her.

‘Oh my dear life, child,’ she said, ‘how well you do look.’ Then she burst into tears. ‘Don’t ’ee mind me,’ she apologized, wiping her eyes on her apron. ‘’Tis just … I means for to say … I thought I’d never live to see you again, an’ last night when we’d been waitin’ all day and no sign of ’ee, I thought … An’ now here you are. Oh my dear heart alive.’

Marianne threw her arms round her mother’s shoulders and hugged her for a very long time, standing there in that familiar kitchen with the smells of new baked bread and newly prepared starch sweetening the air around her and the tears running down her brown face. Oh it
was
good to be home. But hadn’t she known it would be?

‘Now,’ she said, ‘I’ll just get changed into my old clothes. Still in the closet, are they?’

Her mother didn’t answer. She dried her eyes and took down her shopping basket from its hook on the wall. ‘We must go an’ tell your father,’ she said. ‘He said to be sure to tell him the minute you come home. An’ here you are.’

‘What now?’ Marianne said. ‘Can’t he wait for me to get changed?’ She really didn’t want to go rushing off to the wheel-yard in her sailor’s slops.

‘This very minute as ever is,’ her mother told her. ‘I promised him.’

‘What about the laundry?’ Marianne hoped, looking at the baskets full of clean bed linen. ‘En’t you goin’ to make a start on it?’ If Ma was ironing she could slip away and get changed in no time at all.

But her mother waved her work away. ‘That’ll keep,’ she said. ‘I can’t be doin’ with laundry at a time like this. Come on.’ And she opened the door and bustled them both out.

They walked through the narrow streets to the wheel-yard arm in arm, looking for all the world like a proud mother with her sailor son. Passers-by smiled approval, knowing that this stocky boy with his weather-browned face would have come from one of Nelson’s ships, although one or two of the neighbours they passed who’d known Marianne when she was a girl, looked at her somewhat askance. What a difference clothes do make she thought, smiling at their bewilderment, and she wished she’d had time to change and could have greeted them properly.

The wheel-yard was the same as she remembered it, smelling of wood shavings and piled about with bundles of spokes and rows of hubs and lengths of new wood, and her father and her brother Johnny were hard at work in the midst of it. They’d just eased a red-hot iron rim onto a cartwheel and were dousing it with buckets of water, tapping it tight as it cooled, their brawny arms and intense faces half hidden by rising steam. This wasn’t the sort of work that could be left, not even to look up and wave a greeting, and Marianne knew it. She and her mother waited patiently in the doorway until the job was done. But the minute her father stood up and straightened his back, Marianne smiled towards him. She could still remember how foolish he’d been when she’d enlisted but he was still her Pa.

‘’Lo, Pa,’ she said. ‘still makin’ your ol’ wheels then?’

‘Well bless my soul!’ her father said. ‘’Tis Marianne as ever is. Look’ee here Johnny, if this en’t your blessed sister turned up again. You was right, Mother. You said she’d be here.’ Then he wasn’t sure how to greet her because she was standing in front of him looking so exactly like a boy that it made him feel confused. In the end he thumped her on the arm. And at that Johnny thumped her between the shoulders. It was just like being on board ship.

‘Where’s my breeches?’ Johnny asked. ‘You’ve never left ’em behind.’

Marianne had forgotten all about his breeches but remembered them now, left behind in her old ditty bag on the
Amphion
when she went ashore to birth that poor baby. Not that she could tell him any of that. ‘You an’ your breeches,’ she said, making a joke of it. ‘I got better things to think about than your ol’ breeches.’ And was thumped all over again.

Mary thought it time to intervene. ‘Leave her be, you great gawks,’ she said. ‘You’ll do her a mischief.’

That made Marianne laugh. ‘This en’t nothing, Ma,’ she said. ‘Not compared to what goes on aboard ship. They thumps you about all the time on board ship.’

‘Well if that’s the truth of it I’d rather not hear it,’ her mother said. ‘Come on.’ And she gave Marianne’s arm a tug. ‘We’m off to Mr Templeman’s, Jack, to buy a pie for our dinner,’ she explained. ‘We got somethin’ to celebrate.’

Marianne wasn’t sure she wanted to see Mr Templeman just yet but her mother gave her no choice in the matter. She took her arm and marched her off towards the pie shop, chattering all the way. But when they reached the door, she stopped and put her hand over her mouth in some dismay.

‘Lawks a’ mercy, child,’ she said. ‘What am I a-thinking of? You won’t want to see ’em in them clothes. I quite forgot.’

‘’Ten’t just the clothes, Ma,’ Marianne told her. ‘’Tis worse than clothes. ’Tis what they must think of me with Jem running off to sea like that.’

‘Why, what would they think of ’ee, child?’ Mary said, patting her arm. ‘’Tweren’t your fault. He was drunk, that’s the truth of it, or he’d never have done such a blamed fool thing. Drunk an’ silly. Come on. They’ll be glad to see you home.’

Which they seemed to be, for Lizzie Templeman who was behind the counter serving the pies, and dusty to the elbows with flour, came out into the shop at once to kiss her and hug her and tell her how glad she was to see her, and her husband was equally welcoming.

‘Pleased to see ’ee,’ he said in his shy way. ‘No news a’ Jem, I daresay?’

They were both looking so hopeful it pained her to have to disappoint them. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but ’tweren’t for want a’ trying. Truly it weren’t. I asked for him at every ship I could find at every port we come to, over an’ over, and I couldn’t find a soul what had heard of him. Not one single soul. I
did
try.’

Mr Templeman smiled at her sadly. ‘You done your best,’ he sighed. ‘You’m a good gel.’

‘’Tis a great fleet,’ Marianne explained. ‘That’s the size of it. You never see so many ships. Scores an’ scores of ’em. ’Twould take a month a’ Sundays to ask ’em all. ’Tis like a great forest when we’re all in harbour,
all them masts. Biggest fleet you ever saw.’ She was swollen with pride just thinking of it. ‘But I can tell ’ee, he’s on one ship or another. Bound to be. You can depend on it. An’ when this battle’s over, they’ll all come home. You’ll see. ’Tis only chasing Johnny Frenchman what’s kep’ us at sea so long. Once we’ve caught up with the beggar an’ fought him an’ beat him, that’ll be the end of it an’ he’ll come home. You’ll see.’

Then she realized that all three of them were gazing at her with their mouths open.

‘What’s all this about a battle?’ her mother asked. ‘You never said nothin’ about no battle. You said the Frenchies cut an’ run. I remembers a-readin’ of it.’

‘And so they did, Ma,’ Marianne said, ‘on account of they’re
lily-livered
cowards, every man jack of ’em. Took one look at us, so they did, and cut off quick. But they’ll have to stand and fight us come the finish. The Admiral’s set his heart on it and when the Admiral’s set his heart on somethin’ it’ll come about sure as fate. He’s off a-telling the Admiralty so this very minute.’ She was bragging with the best now and enjoying it hugely. ‘Oh yes, Ma, there’ll be a battle come the finish. Don’t you make no mistake about that. An’ when it comes ’twill be a mighty big battle. A mighty big battle. We shall see ’em off good an’ proper.’

‘Well if that’s the size of it,’ Mary said, ‘Thank the Lord you’re home an’ out of it. That’s all I got to say.’

But Lizzie’s face was crumpling with distress and seeing it Marianne realized that her bragging had taken her too far and that she’d spoken out of turn because Jem was still out there in the fleet somewhere.

‘He’ll be killed as sure as fate,’ Lizzie said. ‘They gets killed like flies in battles.’

‘Not your Jem,’ Marianne tried to comfort. ‘He won’t. You’ll see. He’ll come home large as life an’ twice as handsome. They don’t kill carpenters on account of they couldn’t keep the ship afloat without ’em.’

But Lizzie was too near tears to listen to her. ‘Sure as fate,’ she said.

Perhaps it was just as well that her husband was in the shop for he knew what to do. ‘What was it you was wanting, Mrs Morris?’ he said, turning their attention to trade. ‘A nice pie was it?’

They chose a meat pie which he promised them would eat tasty and Marianne carried it home in their basket with a cloth to cover it against the dust of the street. She was still feeling ashamed of herself for
bragging
and upsetting poor Lizzie Templeman, but there was nothing she
could do about it now. This is what comes a’ wearing these slops, she thought. The sooner I gets into my old clothes the better.

‘Oh Marianne,’ Mary said, looking at her as they battled against the wind, ‘it is good to have you home.’

She was to say it so often as they set the table and served the pie that Marianne got quite sick of hearing it, true though it obviously was. She’d grown tough while she was away, that was the truth of it, and she didn’t like to be fussed over. When they were eating their pie, the entire family together as if they’d never been apart, she launched into the story of the great cutlasses the slaves used to cut the sugar cane and how they could slash a man in half with one swipe. She’d chosen the tale partly to entertain them and partly to show them how tough her life had been but she’d barely said more than a dozen words before her father leant across the table, winked at her and dropped a spoonful of salt on her plate.

‘You don’t believe a word I’m a-sayin’, do ’ee, Pa?’ she said.

‘I believes the odd one here an’ there,’ he told her. ‘Only I en’t so trustin’ as your ma. I heard too many old salts a-spinnin’ yarns.’

‘Is that what I am then, Pa?’ Marianne asked him. ‘An ol’ salt?’ She wasn’t sure whether to feel flattered or affronted.

‘Don’t you pay him no mind, child,’ Mary said, scowling at her husband. ‘He don’t know nothin’ at all, stuck there in that ol’ workshop a’ his. I believe you.’

‘Thousands wouldn’t,’ her husband said. And that made Marianne laugh aloud and the moment passed.

‘Did ’ee get my letters?’ she asked her mother, when they’d eaten in silence for a while.

‘Oh them letters,’ her father said. ‘I should just say she got ’em. She been a-readin’ ’em non-stop ever since they come. We knows ’em by heart, we does.’

Marianne grinned at him. ‘Then I don’t need to tell ’ee nothing for you knows it all-a-ready,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes, you do,’ Mary told her, ‘on account of I wants to hear it all again. Did those ol’ snakes really swallow you alive?’

‘Not me, they never,’ Marianne said, grinning at her father. ‘They know’d better’n to try an’ swallow me, don’t ’ee worry. I’d ha’ choked ’em. But they was mighty big.’ And she held out her arms to show the length of them. ‘Boa conscriptors they called ’em, but don’t ask me for why.’

That afternoon, when her father and brother had gone back to their wheel, her mother pulled her long-suffering face and returned to the ironing. ‘I’ll just get these things done an’ out the way,’ she said, ‘an’ then I’ll run the iron over your proper clothes an’ you can get out a’ that rig an’ be yourself again. I can’t be doin’ with you talkin’ about battles an’ lookin’ like a boy all the time. It sets my teeth on edge.’

‘You don’t have to iron
my
clothes, Ma,’ Marianne told her. ‘I can wear ’em as they are. I don’ mind creases.’