Remember Me (53 page)

Mary nodded in sympathy. She thought this was very likely. But there was also the question of fortune hunters. Dolly would want a man to love her for herself, not for her money. Mary guessed it could be quite difficult to be certain of a man’s real feelings until well after the wedding.

‘You don’t ever intend to go back?’ Boswell asked Dolly. He wondered if there was already a man in her life. Castel clearly had designs on her, but Boswell didn’t think the attraction was mutual.

‘Maybe in a few years,’ she said, then looking at Mary she smiled. ‘But I think Mary should go. At least to see our folks. They will be so overjoyed to know she is safe and well.’

Mary asked if she was sure their parents didn’t know about what had happened to her.

‘They certainly didn’t when I heard from Father last year. You see, he mentioned you, and said he hoped it was a husband and children which had prevented you returning from Plymouth.’

Mary thought on this for a moment. It seemed almost laughable that her parents had imagined her just forty miles away in Plymouth, when in fact she had been right round the world. If she were to go home, how on earth was she ever going to be able to explain everything she’d done and seen? It was hard enough to deal with her memories, the contrasts, and the sheer distances she’d covered in her life, herself. She didn’t think her mother, who’d never been further than twenty miles from Fowey, could possibly grasp it.

‘Might Father have discovered about me since the letter he sent you?’ she asked.

‘Maybe,’ Dolly said with a frown. ‘Mr Castel told me there was much about you in the newspapers. But if I didn’t hear about it, here in London, why should they, so far away?’

Mary sighed. ‘Perhaps it’s better that they never know about me, Dolly. It’s too shocking.’

‘Better to be a little shocked than to go through life
believing their daughter deserted them or is dead,’ Dolly insisted.

Boswell left with Castel and Dolly later, and the two sisters arranged that Dolly would come again on her day off. After they’d gone Mary went off to her room, for she very much wanted to be alone.

She sat by the open window, looking out into the darkness. Sounds of carriage wheels, chatter, laughter, babies crying, and the tinkle of a distant piano wafted up to her on the still, warm air as it had on many an evening since she’d been with Mrs Wilkes. It was the sound of family life going on all around her, and until tonight she had always felt terribly alone when she heard it because fate had estranged her from her own.

Sometimes she had even had cynical thoughts about her freedom. She had thought that although she could walk around the town, she was still shackled mentally by guilt, shame and grief. She knew too that she was utterly dependent on Boswell, and that made him another gaoler of sorts. A kindly one, of course, but he decided everything, where she would go, who she would meet, and provided for her too. Until now she hadn’t been able to see any way that she could step out of that dependency and into a life that was truly her own.

That chance had come now.

‘But are you brave enough to go home?’ she murmured to herself. It was one thing to tell it all to Dolly, she was still young, without any hard-held prejudices. Her father
would probably be as understanding too, for he had sailed to many different countries, met men from all walks of life.

But her mother was a different story. Her world was a tiny one, bound by the church and her neighbours. Would she be able to open her mind wide enough to accept that Mary had received far more punishment for her original crime than it warranted? Could she forgive and remain resolute in the face of village gossip?

Mary doubted it. Grace Broad had never been a forgiving or tolerant person. As a child Mary had been considered odd because she liked to hang around the fishermen, went swimming, climbed trees and wandered away from home. Her father had laughed and said she ought to have been a boy, but her mother’s face had always been dark with disapproval.

Yet Mary could understand why that was now. Becoming a mother herself had made sense of many things which once seemed so odd. A mother’s role was to nurture and protect, showing praise and disapproval were merely ways of guiding a child to keep them safe. She had no doubt now that her mother had been frightened by her daughter’s wilfulness. Maybe she always feared it would get Mary into serious trouble. And she was right of course.

Mary also doubted that the gossips in Fowey would see heroism in the daring escape, as people in London did. They would brood on the aspects of prison hulks, chains and the shadow of the gallows, whisper that she’d spent much of her time with a gang of men, and that would be interpreted as her being a wanton woman.

A tear trickled down Mary’s cheek. She knew she’d been foolhardy and selfish as a young girl, but all that was gone now, and she so wanted to be taken back into her family. She had never been able to speak to anyone about the agony of losing her two children, but perhaps if her mother enfolded her in her arms, she’d be able to tell her. She wanted to tell the whole family the place they had in her heart throughout her imprisonment. Perhaps as an adult she could make amends for all the sadness and worry she’d brought them.

Mary also felt that she needed the familiar peace and loveliness of her own village to cleanse her soul of the ugliness trapped within it. She may have had forgiveness from the King and the government, but that meant little without the forgiveness of her own people.

During the next few days Mary’s thoughts became even more confused. The day spent alone with Dolly was one of the best in her whole life, as they talked through everything that had happened to them both in the last nine years.

Dolly had always been held up to Mary as a paragon of feminine virtue. Her skill with the needle, the care she took in cleaning and laundry, her ability to cook tasty meals from almost nothing, and of course her lack of insolence and her sweet nature had all served to make her seem dull company in the youthful Mary’s eyes. Yet nine years on, Mary found her older sister had a far more lively mind than she had supposed.

Dolly had used her position as lady’s maid to become
acquainted with all aspects of the gentry’s way of life. There was little she didn’t know, from how to dress a fashionable woman’s hair to the running of a large household. But she had picked up a great deal more than domestic skills from her master and mistress. She knew their secrets, their views on everything from religion to politics. Through them she had become educated, and she was no longer an innocent country girl. She might still be timid, in as much as she wouldn’t speak out of turn or go out alone at night, but she had had two lovers.

She confided in Mary that one was a younger brother of her master, and it had made her realize that an intelligent woman could control her own destiny. She said she had no intention of marrying a humble footman or even a tradesman like Mr Castel and spending the rest of her life bringing up children in reduced circumstances. She said that if she didn’t find a gentleman as a husband within the next few years, she intended to start up her own business, perhaps a bureau for domestic staff.

Dolly said that her father wouldn’t reveal the size of the bequest for security reasons. In the letter he’d had written for him, all he would say was that it was enough to live on very comfortably and that if she required a ‘nest egg’ to advance her own position, she had only to ask.

As Mary listened to Dolly, she had no doubt that her sister could start her own business. Beneath her sweet, calm exterior there was a great deal of determination and good sense. So when Dolly insisted that Mary should go home to Cornwall, she was inclined to believe she was right.

Dolly had foresight and imagination. She said that with just a little capital, Mary could run a boarding-house down in Cornwall. She suggested Truro as many people passed through there, or even Falmouth where she could cater for ships’ officers and their families. Another idea was that their parents might be persuaded to buy a small farm, and Mary could grow produce to sell.

‘I might even join you in it if London begins to pall for me,’ Dolly laughed. ‘What you’ve got to keep in mind, Mary, is that you aren’t an ordinary woman, you are brave, strong and sharp-witted. That’s more than enough to succeed. If you stay in London, the only positions open to you will be lowly ones, like kitchen maid. You’ll hate it. You can’t kow-tow to a grumpy cook or a snooty mistress, you’ve seen too much for that. Be brave once more and go home.’

September came in with glorious weather, and whenever Dolly could get away from her mistress for a few hours, she spent them with Mary. The shared laughter, the pleasure of discovering how much they had in common, eased Mary’s grief for her children, and she felt her old optimism and strength returning.

Mr Castel, with Boswell’s help, had written to Ned Puckey to ask him to pass on the news of Mary to the Broads. Boswell had written to his friend the Reverend John Baron of Lostwithiel, seeking his help too in making sure Grace and William Broad were willing to receive Mary home.

Yet long before either the Puckeys or the Reverend Baron could have received these letters, one arrived at
Boswell’s home from Elizabeth Puckey, Ned’s wife. It seemed her family had only heard about Mary when she was pardoned. At that time the story about her transportation and subsequent escape was in a Cornish newspaper. Now they were very anxious to know how and where she was. Elizabeth urged that Mary should come home to her family, who as she put it ‘
were now in very different circumstances, due to a sizeable inheritance
’. She said Mary would have the warmest of welcomes from all members of the family and that William and Grace Broad were very relieved and happy to know their younger daughter had survived her terrible troubles.

While that letter assured Mary of her family’s affection for her, and made her wholeheartedly wish to see them, she was still torn. She liked London, she wanted to stay close to Dolly, Boswell was such a good friend and such stimulating company, and then there was Mrs Wilkes too, of whom she’d grown very fond.

Boswell showed her a life which didn’t exist in Cornwall. He took her to the theatre, coffee houses and restaurants. With Dolly she could recapture her girlhood, discuss men, clothes and the many differences in their lives now to the one they were born to.

Mrs Wilkes was a mother–aunt figure. She was wise and kind, knowledgeable and refined too. Mary sensed she wanted her to stay with her, and help her run her boarding-house. This was very appealing to Mary, for she felt safe there, but as Dolly pointed out, she would have to do the rough work, emptying slop pails, carrying hot
water, doing laundry and scrubbing floors. Dolly said she should aspire to more than that.

Then there were the men still in Newgate. Mary didn’t feel able to leave London while they remained in prison. Soon after she met up with Dolly again, despite advice from both Boswell and Mrs Wilkes, she went to visit them. After living in such comfortable surroundings, she was horrified and appalled by Newgate, and it seemed impossible that she could have borne those terrible conditions for the best part of a year. Whilst she knew Boswell was still battling for her friends, there was no pardon in sight yet.

Sam was so demoralized that he’d applied to enlist in the New South Wales Corps, a body of men who were to take over the role of the Marines and police the new colony. His reason for this change of heart was that he’d come to see England had nothing to offer men like him, and out in New South Wales as a free man he would be given a grant of land.

James was still working on his memoirs. He said Nat and Bill had a different idea every day for what they were going to do when they became free. Mary was terribly afraid that day would never come, but the men insisted it would, that they were happy enough, and that she must get on with her own life and not be held back by thoughts of them.

It was Sam who managed to convince her that she must separate her life from theirs. He walked her to the gates alone and talked to her.

‘We will be pardoned,’ he insisted. ‘But you must not wait for that, Mary. Us four won’t stay together when we are released, we’ve been held together this long by circumstance, not by choice. I want to go back to New South Wales, James talks of Ireland. Bill will go to Berkshire and Nat back home to Essex. We have shared the biggest adventure and the hardest times imaginable, but once free that will be just a memory, nothing more.’

Mary knew he was telling her that they’d only become so close because of adversity, and that was the only thing they had in common. She guessed too that he wanted to distance himself from the others because he was afraid they could become a liability. Deep down inside her she shared that fear, though she wouldn’t have voiced it.

‘You saved my life on the wharf in Port Jackson,’ he said, his voice growing thick with emotion. ‘I hope one day I’ll be telling my children about you. But go now, and don’t come back to visit again. You’ve done enough for all of us.’

Mary cupped her two hands round his bony face and kissed his lips lightly. ‘Good luck, Sam,’ she said tenderly, remembering how she’d once seen him as her safety net. She knew now that she didn’t need one.

Towards the end of September the glorious weather ended suddenly with a huge storm, uprooting trees in the parks and flooding the streets. It continued to rain even after the gales had abated, and all at once Mary saw for herself the conditions Boswell had described on her release from Newgate.

The streets were treacherous, cloying mud mixed with human and animal refuse, showering anyone rash enough to attempt walking anywhere. Fever sprang up in the poorest districts and Boswell told Mary that the pits where the dead were taken for mass burial were filling rapidly. An evil stench hung in the air constantly, along with a sulphurous fog that swept in each night.

Mary was virtually imprisoned in the house in Little Titchfield Street, and it came to her that unless she left for Cornwall soon, before winter set in, she would be here till the spring. Her parents were getting old, and she would never forgive herself if something happened to either of them before she got there. And then there was the call of Cornwall itself, a siren that sang its beguiling song each night when she closed her eyes, urging her to return to where she belonged.