Remember Me (47 page)

‘I think it’s myself I’ve lost faith in,’ she said with a sigh.

‘That is very understandable,’ he said, his dark eyes softening with sympathy. ‘Newgate tries to destroy all that comes in through its doors. But you must fight against it, Mary. Look around at the women who sell themselves for a glass of gin, the men who would steal a man’s boots while he sleeps, and remind yourself you are not one of them. You, because of your courage and forbearance, have captured the hearts of a nation. Each day people ask me how you are, they press money into my hands for you.’

‘They do?’ Mary said in surprise, and then her eyes narrowed. ‘So where is it?’

Boswell chuckled. ‘I’m keeping it safe for the time when you will need it. It wouldn’t be wise for you to have it here, but I jot every penny down, and when you are released it will go towards lodgings, clothes, food and transportation to wherever you wish to go.’

She nodded, taking heart that he had said ‘when’ rather than ‘if’. ‘Can you tell me how many more weeks before I know for sure?’

Boswell shook his head. ‘I can’t, Mary. I’m doing everything I can to force the hands of those with the power to get you released. I can do no more.’

After Boswell had left, Mary went to the tap-room in search of the men. Despite her aversion to the place, she was loath to wait alone in the cell for their return.

As always, the fumes of cheap spirit, tobacco and human odours almost knocked her back as she opened the door. The room was small, a cellar-like place with grey stone walls which felt cold and wet to the touch. It was lit by a smoking lantern and the only furniture was a couple of rickety benches. Fresh air only came in via the door, but the regular drinkers appeared to have adapted to the smog-like conditions.

It wasn’t as crowded as it normally was, perhaps because gaol fever was raging on the common side. But there were still around sixteen men and four women, two of whom Mary thought might be recent arrivals as she hadn’t seen them before. One of them, gaudily dressed in a purple and blue striped dress, was perched on a man’s knee, letting him fondle her breasts as she swigged at a bottle.

As always when she had occasion to come in here, Mary’s stomach churned. It wasn’t that she disapproved of people drinking here or anywhere else – drink was just as valid a way of coping with being in prison as prayer was. But the tap-room seemed to bring out the very worst in people. They boasted, they whined, they tore other people’s characters to shreds. Sexual fumbling, often with
a running commentary from the perpetrator, was a regular occurrence. She had come in here once to see a man push a woman off his lap, having just completed the sex act, and another man grabbed her and used her too, while people applauded him.

Plots against unpopular prisoners were hatched in here as well, and as jealousy was usually the reason behind most of the vicious attacks in Newgate, Mary often feared for herself and her friends.

‘Mary, my little darlin’!’ James exclaimed as he saw her in the doorway. ‘Come and have a drink with us!’

James had undergone a quite dramatic change since their arrival in Newgate. The notoriety, his ability to read and write, and his natural charm had set him apart from the other prisoners almost immediately. But his image had been further enhanced by the stream of ladies who came to visit him. In smart new clothes, clean-shaven and with his hair neatly trimmed, he now had the persona of a member of the Irish aristocracy. He could never be called a handsome man, with his big forehead and nose, but he wore the new clothes with style, and his humour and warmth were very attractive.

Mary’s heart sank when she saw his face flushed by drink and the way he staggered as he moved towards her, but far worse than the drunkenness was the company he was keeping. Amos Keating and Jack Sneed were real scum, as ugly in their appearance as they were in their hearts. The pair of them had bludgeoned a wealthy old widow to death when she caught them robbing her house. Even now, awaiting their execution, they showed absolutely
no remorse, they even bragged about it. Nat, Bill and Sam weren’t in the room, and Mary suspected they’d left because they didn’t wish to mix with the likes of Amos and Jack.

‘I just wanted to talk to you, James,’ she said, backing away. ‘But it will keep.’

‘Too high and mighty to drink with us?’ Amos, the smaller of the two men, leered at her, showing his rotting teeth.

Mary hesitated. It wasn’t in her nature just to walk away silently from such a remark. But her hesitation was her undoing, for Jack, Amos’s accomplice, a six-foot brute with a face like raw liver, was across the room in two strides and caught hold of her round her waist.

‘I like ’em ’igh and mighty,’ he said. ‘They’ve always got the tightest cunts.’

He lifted Mary up, holding her in a vice-like grip, and tried to kiss her. Mary slapped out at his face, but he only laughed.

‘That’s right, you fight me,’ he roared out in delight. ‘I don’t like me women too willin’.’

Mary struggled, but he was holding her too tightly to let her get free and, spurred on by strongly voiced encouragement from the other drinkers, he wasn’t going to relinquish her.

‘Let me go,’ she shouted, pummelling him with her fists. ‘James, help me!’

Mary saw him lurch forward, but Amos caught him around the neck to hold him back, and she knew in that instant that she was in real danger.

The majority of men in Newgate, whether prisoners or gaolers, believed all the women were theirs for the taking. Mary had always considered herself reasonably safe because of her elevated status as an escapee and her four male friends who stayed close to her. But Jack and Amos clearly weren’t in awe of her, and believed she was easy game.

‘A woman who lets herself be shared by four men shouldn’t mind someone new having a turn,’ Jack hissed in her ear, before flinging her down to the floor. He unbuckled his belt and leaped on top of her, the sour smell of his filthy clothes making her gag.

Mary screamed to James again, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of him as the other drinkers closed round to watch what Jack was going to do. James’s face looked stricken, but she guessed he was still being held back by Amos and could do nothing.

Mary fought Jack, pulling his hair and scratching his face, but he caught her two hands with one of his, while the other groped frantically under her clothes. He was hampered a little by her heavy great-coat, and she was wriggling like an eel.

‘Get off me, you filthy bastard,’ Mary yelled, spitting into his face. She tried desperately to get a grip on the floor with the heels of her boots in an attempt to force his body off her, but the surface was too slimy. She continued to scream at the top of her lungs, but that only seemed to inflame Jack more, along with all the other men watching. Desperately, she remembered that screams in Newgate were too commonplace for anyone to come to her rescue.

She could feel the sudden charge in the air as the onlookers grew excited, and if Jack got his way with her, she had no doubt other men would follow him. But she wasn’t going to succumb to rape after all she’d been through. She’d sooner die.

She fought him with every vestige of strength, getting her hands free again to claw his eyes with her nails, and pulling at his greasy hair until a handful came away in her hand. As he tried to suppress her with a kiss, she bit his lip hard.

‘You little hell-cat,’ he exclaimed, almost in admiration, pausing for a second to wipe blood from his mouth.

Mary took the opportunity to buck under him, and managed to get a few inches away to her left. But Jack was too quick; he grabbed her tightly again, pinning both her body and her right arm down, and pulled off his belt with his left hand.

‘No, you bastard!’ she heard James yell out, and perhaps he tried to get closer to help, though Mary couldn’t see. But if he did, he didn’t succeed, and Jack was clearly intending either to beat her into submission with the belt, or use it to tie her hands.

In a way the sight of the onlookers was even worse than what Jack was planning to do to her. The light from the lantern was dim, but she could still see the malicious glee on their faces clearly enough. Her terror grew into fury at their depravity and made her all the more determined not to give them the kind of entertainment they wanted.

Mary had always been observant, and over the last
seven years this had become even more finely honed out of necessity. She had noticed empty bottles lying on the floor when she’d been here before. It was too dark to see if there were any there today, but she stretched out her free arm and swept it quickly across the floor until she felt one.

Jack had now got his breeches unfastened, and his penis stood out like a purple-tipped barber’s pole. He lunged towards her again, his belt in his hand, and she guessed his intention was to choke her into submission and silence.

She screamed again to divert him, squeezing her legs together so he would be forced to let go of one end of the belt to prise them apart. He faltered, not quite knowing which end of her to attack first. Mary seized the opportunity to tap the bottle sharply against the floor, leaving a broken jagged edge, then with one swift movement she thrust it into his neck, just below his ear, with as much force as she could muster.

Jack let out a bellow of pain, jerking up on to his knees, his hands going to his neck. Mary leaped up off the floor and stood with her hands on her hips, panting from the exertion, looking contemptuously down at her attacker.

The tap-room fell silent. Jack was still on his knees, blood spurting out between his fingers. His eyes were rolling fearfully, and he was making a horrible gurgling noise in his throat.

‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ Mary said between her teeth, and kicked out at him so he keeled over.

She turned to the rest of the crowd, the broken bottle still in her hand. They moved back a step or two, assuming by her bared teeth that she was going to attack them too. For a moment she wanted to, but they reminded her of the rats in the hospital in Batavia. Like them, these people all had sharp features and a furtive manner. They preyed on the weak too. They were despicable and beneath her contempt.

‘If any one of you even thinks of touching me again, I’ll kill you,’ she snarled at them. ‘Now, get help for him. And James, you come with me.’

The other three men were not back in the cell, even though it was nearly dark now. James, who had been apologizing profusely all the way up the stairs, slumped down on to the straw, drew his knees up to his chin and lowered his head on to them.

‘You look as if you think I’m going to hit you,’ Mary said sharply. ‘Perhaps I should, for keeping company like that.’

‘What if he dies, Mary?’ James bleated out, his face chalk-white in the gloom.

‘Do you think anyone will care?’ she exclaimed as she lit a candle. ‘He’s a murderer and due to be hanged. But he won’t die from what I did, it was only a flesh wound. If it keeps you out of the tap-room for a week or two, I won’t have done it for nothing.’

James was silent for some time. Mary sat down and leaned her back against the wall. She felt very cold and shaky now, aware it was rather more luck than strength
or superior intelligence that had enabled her to overpower Jack.

‘Do you hate me?’ James asked after a little while, his voice quavery and weak. Mary thought the shock had sobered him up.

‘Now, why should I hate you?’ she retorted. ‘It wasn’t you that tried to rape me.’

‘I should have found a way to stop him. I let you down.’

‘All men let me down,’ Mary said, and suddenly she was crying. She hadn’t once resorted to tears since they’d arrived in Newgate. She had told herself that after losing her children, nothing could make her cry. But once again she had been forced to fight for herself, and it seemed to her that her entire life had been one long fight, which she was now too tired to continue.

‘Don’t, Mary,’ James said, and quickly moved across the floor to comfort her. ‘I can’t bear to see you cry.’

‘Why?’ she asked bitterly, tears running down her cheeks. ‘Are you afraid if I crumple there’ll be no hope for any of you?’

She had replied without thinking, but all at once she saw it was true. She had had people leaning on her, sapping her strength, right from the days back in the
Dunkirk
. She remembered setting up camp in Port Jackson, with everyone asking her how to do this, how to do that. They wanted her to listen to their problems, enlisted her help in everything from nursing a sick child to pleading with the officers for a blanket or a cooking pot. It never let up, right through the escape and afterwards.

But who did she have to lean on when things were
bad? Mary was forced to keep a grip on herself because she knew she couldn’t count on anyone.

‘We would flounder without you, that’s for sure,’ James said ruefully, as if he’d read her thoughts. ‘But you do know how much me and the others love you?’

‘I don’t know that I believe men can love,’ she sobbed. ‘When men can use the very same act when they say they love a woman, as they do to show her how much they despise or hate her, I can’t believe they have hearts.’

James put his arms tightly around her and rocked her against his chest. ‘That’s a very cynical thought, Mary. I’ve done a lot of things I’m ashamed of, but I’ve never taken a woman by force. And a man can love a woman with no thought of lying with her. Me, Nat, Bill and Sam, we all feel that way about you, you’re like a sister to us.’

‘But where are you every day if you care so much?’ she burst out. ‘I’m in here alone for hours on end. You leave me to see Mr Boswell, it’s me that bargains for the food from Spinks, gets our washing done. What do any of you do but drink?’

‘We leave you to see Boswell because we know it’s you he wants to see,’ James said indignantly. ‘You get better deals from Spinks too because he likes you. And if we leave you alone it’s because we thought that was what you wanted.’

‘Is that so?’ she retorted.

‘You certainly know it’s right about Boswell and Spinks,’ James replied defensively. ‘Was it something Boswell said that made you come to the tap-room for me?’