Remember Me (34 page)

His cry, whether actually understood or not, had a galvanizing effect on the bystanders. One man came forward with a hooked pole and guided the boat into a berth. A small, half-naked brown man leaped down on to the boat, taking the rope and throwing it back to his companions on the wharf. Then, miraculously, a wooden bucket of water was passed down.

All the men lunged at the bucket, rocking the boat furiously. But Will filled a mug and passed it to Mary. She let Charlotte have the first drink, and she glugged it down so fast that much of it ran down her chest. Emmanuel was almost unconscious, so Mary had to coax him by dipping her fingers in the water and getting him to suck them until he rallied enough to drink. Finally Mary got some, and nothing in her whole life had ever felt so good as the sensation of cool water running over her parched, swollen tongue and throat.

Although she couldn’t understand a word of what the crowd were saying, she sensed by their frantic gesticulating and the tone of their shrill voices that they were in total sympathy with her, her children and the men. She tried to stand but she was so weak she fell back, and from then on everything became disjointed and hazy. She sensed rather than felt arms lifting her. It seemed to her she was laid down on solid ground, and then more water was given to her. Something pungent-smelling was thrust close to her face. She could hear a babble of voices around her, then she was lifted again, to be put down on something softer, and she could no longer see the sky above.

‘Charlotte, Emmanuel,’ she called out in panic.

A brown-faced woman was leaning over her, wiping her face with a cool, damp cloth. She spoke in a foreign tongue, yet whatever the words meant they were as soothing and kindly as the cloth, and Mary felt that at last she was safe enough to sleep.

She woke some time later to find herself lying on a mat, Emmanuel on one side of her, Charlotte on the other. A candle was burning on a low table, and she raised herself slightly to see a woman with glossy dark hair and brown skin asleep on another mat across the room.

Although the candle shed little light, Mary sensed by the peaceful way the children slept that they had been fed and washed. The room appeared to be a hut, larger than the one she and Will had lived in back in Sydney Cove, but similar. Tears of gratitude welled up in her eyes. A stranger had taken them in and cared for them, and she wished she knew this woman’s language to be able to thank her.

The following days were something like being lost in a fog, which now and then cleared enough for Mary to know she was being fed drinks and soft, mushy food. Through the fog she heard voices and dogs barking; she smelled food cooking and sometimes she even thought she heard Charlotte laughing. But she couldn’t quite manage to open her eyes and look around her.

She was finally brought out of it by Will. She heard his voice and that of James Martin.

‘She must get better,’ she heard Will say. ‘Wanjon wants to see her.’

‘She’s just worn out,’ James said. ‘There’s no hurry, he’ll wait.’

Mary had no desire to see or talk to anyone, she was happy in her little twilight world where no pain and anxiety could touch her. But Will’s voice struck a chord somewhere inside her, reminding her that she had responsibilities.

‘Will?’ she muttered, trying to focus her eyes and see him.

‘That’s my girl,’ he exclaimed, and knelt down beside the mat and took her hand in both of his. ‘You’ve been scaring us all. We thought you were lost to us.’

His hands were rough and callused, but the tenderness in them touched something deep inside her. ‘Charlotte, Emmanuel, are they dead?’ she asked.

‘Would I be sitting here grinning at you if they were?’ he replied.

She saw his grin then, the same cheeky one which had made her smile on the
Dunkirk
, but it was a minute or two before she realized what was different about him.

‘Your beard,’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s gone!’

He rubbed his bare chin. ‘A change was in order,’ he said.

He looked much younger without it, and although his face was very bony and gaunt, he looked much better. His eyes had regained the sparkle she had noted so often in the early days, and apart from flaking skin, he looked none the worse for their ordeal.

‘Where are we?’ she asked.

‘In Kupang, where else? Aren’t I the wonder boy getting you here?’

Mary smiled weakly, for his bragging assured her she wasn’t dreaming. ‘Where are the children, and the others?’

‘All close by, nothing to worry about,’ he said. ‘Emmanuel’s still weak, but he’s getting better by the day. You’re the one that had us in a spin.’

Mary sat up gingerly. She looked down at herself and found she was wearing a kind of shirt, long, loose-fitting and striped.

‘How long have I been here?’ she asked in bewilderment.

‘Ten days now. You’ve been waking and taking food, then going off again. But you’ve got to take notice now. The Dutch Governor, Wanjon, wants to see you.’

Will and James helped her up and took her outside. Mary stared around her in utter surprise. Although she hadn’t consciously formed any picture of the surroundings beyond the walls of the hut, she’d assumed by the amount of noise that she was in a town. In fact it was just a group of round huts, the roofs made of broad leaves. They were encircled by tall trees and thick bushes, like nothing she’d ever seen before. Around a dozen or so small, naked, brown-skinned children were playing together, and a few chickens, a couple of tethered goats and a group of old people sitting together completed the picture of a peaceful village.

‘That’s jungle,’ James said, pointing to the trees. ‘Through there,’ he pointed to a well-trodden track, ‘is the beach, as pretty as a picture.’

‘I thought there was a town.’ Mary frowned in
bewilderment. She vaguely remembered warehouses and brick-built houses at the wharf. Lots of people, hustle and bustle.

‘There is, back there.’ Will waved his hand vaguely. ‘You and the children were brought here after you passed out.’

Will helped Mary to sit down on a log, and then, sitting with her, he and James explained what had happened. After being given some food and drink and a night’s rest, they were taken to see the Dutch Governor, Timotheus Wanjon. They told him the story they had rehearsed while at sea, that their whaling ship had been wrecked back in the reef, and they’d taken to the cutter and sailed here.

‘He swallowed it,’ Will grinned. ‘Like I told you, being first mate of a whaler, I could have my wife and kids with me. I told him I thought the captain and the rest of the crew were in the other boat and maybe they’ll turn up too before long. I told them my name was Broad, wouldn’t do to use Bryant in case they get to hear of the escape from Sydney.’

James then went on to say that Wanjon, who seemed an understanding, decent sort of cove, had agreed they needed clothing, food and accommodation, and as Will was a merchant sailor he could sign for whatever he needed and all bills would be passed on to the English government for payment.

‘This place is heaven on earth,’ Will chortled with unconcealed glee. ‘Everything a man could want is here for the taking.’

For some odd reason that remark made Mary feel a
moment of disquiet. She asked Will to get the children and bring them to her, and the moment he’d gone she turned to James.

His beard was shaven too, but apart from that he looked exactly as he always had, skinny, wild-eyed and mischievous.

‘I hope Will has been behaving,’ she said.

‘He’s very full of himself,’ James admitted. ‘Especially when he’s got the drink in him.’

‘He’s been getting drunk?’

‘So would any red-blooded man who’d expected to die,’ James replied.

He had said just what she expected, yet she sensed a faint note of sarcasm in his voice.

‘Has he been bragging?’

James shrugged. ‘Only to us. We humour him mostly. We all know who really got us here.’

Mary blushed, knowing he meant her. ‘He did get us here,’ she said staunchly. ‘Maybe I bullied him, but it was his knowledge and skill that did it.’

‘The loyal little wife to the end,’ James said, giving her a wolf-like grin. ‘Will’s a lucky man.’

The moment Mary saw her children and held them in her arms again, she began to recover. Charlotte was just like any other four-year-old again, lively, inquisitive, full of mischief and prattling away about anything and everything. As the native women found her utterly beguiling she led a charmed life, being constantly fed with titbits, played with and petted. Although still very thin, she
had colour in her cheeks again, brightness in her eyes, even her hair was beginning to thicken and shine. She seemed to have forgotten what she’d so recently come through.

Emmanuel took much longer to recover. His stomach could only cope with the blandest of food, and he slept erratically. Before they left Sydney he had been taking a few hesitant steps, but this was arrested by being on the boat, and he still preferred just to sit rather than try to crawl or pull himself up on anything. But he was a very happy baby, smiling broadly at anyone who made a fuss of him, and everyone adored him because of his blond hair and blue eyes.

As for the other men, they had all recovered. Nat and Samuel Bird still had scars from sunburn, and Jamie had been weakened further by dysentery, but was now on the mend. Bill and William Moreton looked particularly well, for their darker skins had turned a rich brown, making them look almost like the natives. They were happy too, working in the dock, loading and unloading ships by day, coming back to the peaceful village by night where the native women would giggle flirtatiously as they cooked for them.

It seemed to Mary that God had not only answered her prayers and got them all here safely, but was showering her with extra blessings. The climate in Kupang was perfect, hot but not overpoweringly so, there was an abundance of food, and its people were happy and generous. It was so beautiful too, with the white sandy beaches, crystal-blue sea and lush green jungle.

Yet over and above the kindness and comfort they enjoyed now was the admiration and respect shown to Mary. Word had got around that it was she who had provided the men with the will to make it here, and everyone, from Wanjon right down to the poorest of the natives, had taken her and her children to their hearts. She had never known admiration before. As a girl in Fowey she had been constantly rebuked for being unfeminine. When she went to Plymouth she was laughed at for being so unworldly. Then, after her arrest, she was treated with utter contempt and cruelty. Even when Will became something of a hero in Sydney, she was vilified as being in some way unworthy of him.

All at once she was a person in her own right, considered brave, steadfast and intelligent. When the Assistant Governor’s wife gave her some new clothes, she was even told she looked beautiful by several men. Mary couldn’t put into words what it meant to put on a pretty pink dress, to wear a petticoat soft as thistledown beneath it. She might have lost her peachy bloom of youth through the sun and wind, she might be as skinny as a stray dog, but she no longer looked like a felon or a beggar.

She felt feminine now, somehow worldly-wise and special. These good people who smiled at her with such warmth didn’t know she had been in chains, or forced to barter her body just to stay alive. And she could forget that too, for she had saved her children from a life of hunger and degradation. Her plan to escape from New South Wales had worked, without loss of life. She had achieved what most people would consider impossible.

To Mary, Kupang was everything she’d ever dreamed of and more. The busy port had much in common with Plymouth, in as much as ships came in from every quarter of the globe. Because it was a major trading centre for the Dutch East India Company, it also had a rich and diverse brew of every nationality and religion. Up on the hills were grand houses where rich merchants’ wives sat gossiping in beautiful exotic gardens. There were elegant townhouses where Mary saw dusky maids with almond eyes and snowy-white aprons polishing the door knockers and sweeping the steps. And while it was true that there were far more of the crudest of shacks for the workers than grand places, and disreputable boarding-houses, brothels and bars frequented by the sailors, it all gave the place more colour and vibrancy.

She would remind herself when she saw the many beggars here that at least they weren’t cold and wet like their counterparts back in England. They could sit in the sunshine smiling at those who dropped alms into their bowls, they could sleep on the beach in comparative comfort, and fruit grew in abundance, free for the picking.

Mary had fallen in love with Kupang for giving her and her children back their health, for the kindness she’d received. She wanted nothing more than to stay here forever, to live the simple native life, fishing, collecting honey, swimming and bringing up happy, healthy children. She felt drunk on the aroma of sandalwood, which wafted through the village on the lightest of breezes. It clung to her clothes and skin, and she heard it was the
island’s main export. She felt she and Will had a future here, and they could live happily forever.

‘Pssst!’

Mary was just putting Emmanuel down to sleep in the hut she and Will had been given to live in, and she jumped at the hiss from the doorway. She turned to see James Martin beckoning to her. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ she said, assuming his reluctance to come inside was from propriety. ‘Has Will sent you with a message?’

Will had been absent a great deal in the past three or four weeks. He usually claimed this was through work in the port, but she knew perfectly well he was in a bar somewhere getting drunk. She just hoped James hadn’t come to tell her that he’d signed on a ship and left her. That was what he’d threatened to do several times.

‘No. But come outside.’

Mary bent to kiss Emmanuel, and after tucking a blanket around him she joined James outside. Her smile froze when she saw James’s expression. He looked haunted.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘Everything,’ James snapped, and taking her arm pulled her away from the hut towards the jungle surrounding the village. ‘A group of English sailors came into port just now in open boats,’ he whispered. ‘They were shipwrecked back in those Straits we came through.’