A Taste for Nightshade (23 page)

Jack's hut was no more than a few planks of rough board with a dirt floor, but it was theirs alone; a sanctuary from hollering and drunken carousing. The scum of exhaustion began to lift from her thoughts and her old clear-sightedness returned. She persuaded Jack to go out with the fishing crew at night, dragging the seine nets through the inky waters. Soon the hut filled with the smell of crisply roasted fish and, afterwards, with full stomachs, they could talk without listening ears. They were newly rich too, for the extra fish Jack smuggled could be traded, food being the only currency left in the colony. At last she had gained proper standing in the camp, at the side of a smart loyal man.

Peg could bear the silence no longer. To be reckoned inferior in love to such as Mrs Croxon? Never to have known love? Damn her sorry heart, that was a lie.

‘Course, I did know it once,' she burst out suddenly.

‘What's that? You knew love?'

She nodded, suddenly stirred up at the memory. ‘Aye.' She glanced up at the ceiling, weighing the urge to let it all spill out. She would have to tell it differently – invent a few bits and bobs, and curb her rambling tongue.

‘Tell me,' Mrs Croxon urged. ‘I promise on my own love, I will keep it secret. Who was it?'

Swear on her own love? What, her and the master? That was the last straw.

‘He was a sailor. His name was Jack.'

‘So where did you meet?' Mrs Croxon was scribbling away fluently now, making long sweeping strokes.

‘We met at sea. On the
Queen Mary
, it was.'

Mrs Croxon's face swung up at that. ‘I never knew you went to sea, Peg. I thought you had been cook to an alderman.'

‘Yes, well – this was when I was very young. My father was a sailor. That was how it started. When I was fifteen, he persuaded his ship's master I might go with him as a passenger to Cape Town, in Africa.'

As she spoke, Peg became aware of how hard an artist scrutinises a face as it is drawn. Mrs Croxon's peering appraisal of her features made her uneasy. The art of the patterer was distraction; the spinning of tales was best accompanied by flashy gestures. She faked a little cough, so she could rearrange her features.

‘What route did you take?' her mistress asked, coolly. So she wanted to test Peg's geography, did she?

‘Our first port was Tenerife – that was about three weeks from sailing. It was as hot as a flatiron, mind, you wouldn't believe how our laundry dried across the rail. And the sea were like blue glass, you might see the fish twinkling silver in the depths. I asked my father if we might live there forever, but he had his business in the Cape and would not leave off it.

‘Well, it was there I first noticed a fair-haired youth, casting me the eye. One night the men sang about the mainmast in such a stirring manner, of home and sweethearts, and foreign lands that I ventured outside to listen. My fair lad was playing the penny whistle and seemed to know every tune in the world. Later, when we got to Rio, he shared his grog with me, and I let him kiss me, for the stars shone upon us like diamonds, and the scent of flowers drifted from the gardens of the city.'

Peg smiled at the empty air, for that at least was true. Not that they had been allowed to disembark at Rio, but the captain had allowed them a little air on deck. Mrs Croxon nodded encouragement, her pencil working fast.

‘And did your father approve of him?'

She answered without hesitation. ‘No. Jack was young and starting out in life.'

‘And when you reached Cape Town?'

‘We never got there.' Peg looked boldly into Mrs Croxon's startled face. ‘We was shipwrecked.' She didn't blink, just held the woman's gaze, willing her to swallow it.

‘You? Shipwrecked?' Mrs Croxon gave a mocking little laugh. ‘Are you certain?'

Damn her eyes; Peg's influencing stare didn't work on her. Still, she ploughed on. ‘Oh, aye. Stranger things do happen in life. Stranger than you might fancy.'

Mrs Croxon's features stiffened very slightly. ‘Wait a moment. I need to fetch a new brush.' She left the room, leaving Peg's challenge ringing in the air.

∗ ∗ ∗

‘I've had me fill of this place,' she had told Jack one night as they sat in the hut at Sydney Cove. ‘We should make a bolt for it now, while we're strong.'

They were drinking the broth she remembered Granny boiling up, leftover bones and a handful of herbs and roots. Her body was regaining strength. Now she had Jack to help her, and her own pot and fire, her country upbringing gave her an advantage over town-bred lags. Everyone talked of escape, but no one succeeded. In the early days, they had thought that China lay to the north, and bands of convicts set off on foot, most returning footsore and sheepish a few days later. The less fortunate were found with native spears in their backs, or gnawed to bits by wild beasts.

‘I'm thinking of the fishing boat, Jack.' He had scratched his hair that was newly washed and tied back with a plait of grass.

‘Head for the Indies, you mean? It's thousands of leagues away, sweetheart.'

The more they talked of escape, the harder it was to dowse the flame, for it shone like a gateway to a golden world. The Dutch Indies were famed as the most beautiful string of islands in the world, green hillocks scattered in calm blue seas, blessedly free of the head-hunters that plagued the Pacific. As for food, Jack had heard tell of luxurious feasts, of roast pig and yellow rice: the very words made their stomachs rumble.

The notion of escape coursed through them both like a witch's tonic. They would live a while on some peaceable island, before taking a passage to Holland, then secretly sailing back to England. Making ready, they began to trade spare fish, all on the sly, in return for extra dry rations and a compass. Mary helped with the fishing, too. They worked separately, Jack chatting with those who looked after the cutter, sharing tales of life at sea and learning how the boat was guarded. Mary moved amongst the redcoats, wheedling out gossip that might affect their plans. Like everyone else, they lived on their nerves, homesick eyes forever trained on the horizon in hope of the first sight of a ship carrying food. But no ship came. The anniversary of two long years passed. Even the marines were downhearted; outraged at being abandoned by the old country.

In three months they were ready. Jack and Mary had a cache of desiccated meat from kangaroos, rats, possums and other nameless creatures, buried near their hut. They were pals with the two guards who would be on duty at midnight when the tide changed. And Mary had exchanged her precious store of salt pork rations for a compass. It was the work of a few desperate minutes to surprise the guards at knifepoint and secure them with ropes. With the water above their waists, they waded out into the rolling waves of Sydney Cove, and scrambled aboard the cutter. Sailing off from the camp had felt beautiful and dangerous, the vast Pacific sky as black as the Prince of Hell's cloak. As Jack set the boat to float silently on the tide through the Heads, they toasted the plan with a mouthful of grog. The tropical warmth, the stars like numberless diamonds, the urgent speed of the ocean's pull; she had thought her heart would burst.

The first few days they rejoiced on the rolling waves. But it was their sixth night at sea that their joy turned to fear. Goose pimples rose on her skin as the night air plummeted from hot to cold. There was a snapping noise, like little gunshots – the tug of the sails in a mischievous wind. Yes, she would have no trouble talking up a storm for Mrs Croxon.

Her mistress returned with a tiny parcel and unwrapped a doll's-sized brush. ‘Tell me, then, about this shipwreck,' she said guardedly.

Peg described gales that howled like wolves, and a sea that heaved and rolled; the king of all storms, threatening to crack the sky in two. Once she had manoeuvred her and Jack into a fabulated lifeboat she relaxed into the tale, for now every word was true.

‘At the end of so many stormy nights I lost count, I was baling when an eerie stillness broke upon us. Our mast had cracked, our sails were in tatters. Jack pointed at a grey landmass, rising above the roiling sea. He was knotting ropes around a couple of casks. “Head for that shore,” he croaked. “Hold onto this cask. The skiff will not last the hour. ”'

Mrs Croxon sat quite still, her pencil unmoving in her hand. ‘Go on,' she said.

‘On Jack's signal we jumped into the surf. The ocean walloped against my chest, then filled my eyes, and mouth. Still, I held onto the knotted cask, came up to the surface and sucked in a gulp of air. One moment I glimpsed the dark shore; the next I swallowed vile-tasting brine. I struggled like a wild thing, for safety was but a hundred yards away. Life or death, I told myself. This is it, life or death: take your choice, girl. I held onto that cask in that spinning whirlpool. Then with a jolt, I felt rough sand beneath me, and with each wave I was carried further, till I raised my head, coughing and spitting. Finally, I fell into a swoon.

‘It was dawn when I came to my senses and there was just me and a few screaming seagulls, on that beach. Honest to God, it were the loneliest place I ever knew. The sand was dirty black stuff, beside a cliff like a prison wall, covered in rambling green bushes. Savage was how it looked; strange and uncultivated. No people, no houses, nothing. I did think then, what's to live for here? I might as well have drowned and been done with it.

‘All morning I traipsed about in my muddy shift, wondering if it were worse to die of thirst or die of drowning. It was getting to night again when I got to the furthest end of the beach and spied a human figure, kneeling by a rock pool. Then the man stood, and with a cry of joy, I saw that it was Jack. We fell in each other's arms, and danced a jig to find each other alive. He held me tightly and looked long into my face. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said. “Now I've found you, we shall overcome this trial together. ”'

‘You had hope for the future,' her mistress said gently.

‘I did, mistress. He'd found a sweet-water stream that I drank from, and for dinner we found winkles that we ate baked on stones. We watched the sun set like a peach on the sea, making plans of how we might live till a ship called by.

‘Next we made a better camp beside a river and had ourselves a pretty bathing pool all bordered with ferns; lovely it was, with marvellous red parrots chasing through the trees. Our home was a hut made of branches thatched with flat leaves, a right cosy place to sleep in. We had fat birds that Jack snared for our dinner, and made fire using a shard of looking glass I found in my pocket. We had lost the compass in the water, but didn't lament it. I roasted fish and winkles in the embers. For entertainment we even had Jack's penny whistle. It was a paradise, it was.'

‘You loved him,' her mistress said softly, as her pencil resumed its hissing across the paper. Peg fought a choking feeling in her chest. Aye, she had loved him – a damned sight more than this woman could ever know.

‘He loved me like his own breath,' she said, in a voice that was dangerously plaintive. ‘He said he thanked God for the day he met me.' Peg's eyes brimmed full; she was as weak as water. The rest of her tale stuck in her throat like a fishbone.

Mrs Croxon murmured that Peg might be released from her pose. Peg stared into space, again seeing Jack's face, so fierce and true. He had looked down so gently on her pitiful self; on her bruises and her bony body dressed in salt-hard rags. His blue eyes had met hers like a beacon shining on her naked soul.

‘I see past your always acting the tough girl,' he insisted with boyish stubbornness. ‘I'll be taking care of you now. So that's settled.' And she'd thought to herself, so this is it, girl. All them love stories, all them ballads that you always thought were a load of old tripe – love has found you out, and here you are.

Mrs Croxon returned with a glass of water, and Peg drank greedily. She forced herself to continue with self-mocking gusto. ‘When we lay down together in our grass house we whispered vows to stay true for ever and a day. We took pleasure from each other's bodies, and I can tell you, mistress, he were no green youth, but all grown man. So we were man and wife before God – and that's the truth.'

She faced out Mrs Croxon with a bold stare. ‘You probably think such as me don't love so strong and tender, but I loved Jack Pierce like we was both put on earth just to find each other. And that night I made a wish,' Peg said, raising herself as if from a trance, ‘a foolish wish it were – that me and Jack might never be rescued. That the rotten world would just leave us be.'

The clock in the corner chimed noon, and Peg started up in alarm. How had she let herself run on like this? ‘Mrs Croxon, I must get the dinner going.'

‘Tell me first. What happened to Jack?'

‘Gone. It couldn't last.'

‘And your father?'

‘Went down with the ship,' she shrugged.

Mrs Croxon dismissed her with a nod of her head that was sympathetic, but also sceptical. Like lowering a drape onto a window, Peg subdued herself and bobbed farewell. Nevertheless, she felt a crawling on her back – a feeling of being watched mighty closely as she closed the door quietly behind her.

 

 

I would like to say I was happy from the moment Michael and I were truly married; but that would not be true. My husband continued a model of capriciousness. He treated me with great regard one moment, and the next behaved unjust or petulant. Some nights he would follow me keenly to my bedchamber, and on others he would rise from the dining table and stride away without a word. Even in good humour, he never lost his spark of cruelty, in wit or thoughtless action. Yet it scarcely mattered. I was a beggar feasting on crumbs and could not draw away from him. My love for him suffused me like poppy juice – unsweetened, raw, addictive. The more I had of him the giddier I became. I felt agitated and shameless, but also potently alive.

Following my new resolve, I regularly called on the Earlby postmaster, and so a letter from Anne was placed directly in my hand. Her journey south in the public coach had been cold and distressing, and she grievously missed me and our holiday in York. The date of her departure from England was the very next day, preventing me from sending a few lines of Godspeed; and even with fair winds and tides, she would not make landfall until July of the following year. Anne's confinement was expected in April, but the ship's surgeon had dismissed her so callously, she looked for little assistance from him. My instructions were to write to her via a supply ship to be despatched by the Navy Office some time the following year. Such would be the prodigious distance between us that any letter I wrote might not find her for eight or ten months, if it found her at all.

Repeating this to Michael, he answered in one of his flippant moods. ‘All that earnest voyaging around the globe – and what if the convicts don't want to be saved?'

‘Then I hope she will come home.'

He yawned. ‘Not with that zealot of a husband, I hope. He deserves a life sentence.'

But he was not entirely insensitive, for soon after he called me over to sit with him by the fire. We talked of small domestic matters, until I found myself unable to resist a little probing. ‘Peter told me he has a friend in the colony. Do you know him?'

He took a long draught of coffee and set down his cup. ‘I can assure you that Peter's friends are all gadflies like himself. The man he knows is a marine officer, a complete fool. He deserved such a posting.'

‘
The Lady's Magazine
says it is a very fine place.'

‘Whitewash. Your friend should as soon have flown to the first circle of hell as set out for such a pit of felons. The criminal classes should be stamped out like vermin, not sailed away around the world. She will be back on the next ship if she has any sense.'

‘How do you know all this?'

He raised his chin bullishly. ‘Give me credit for reading somewhat loftier periodicals than
The Lady's Magazine
. The colony is an appalling experiment. The government has made an even worse mess than usual. Officers, convicts, the lot; all will be dead in a few years.'

I didn't answer. I was growing used to Michael's outbursts. Those in authority were idiots, while he alone had the superior judgement to comprehend their follies. He perpetually blamed his ills upon his family, the school where he had been flogged, the government, the world.

‘We should pity such unfortunate convicts, not mock them.'

All at once, one of his whirlwind changes of character occurred. Michael's expression softened, he took my hand and sighed as if exhausted. ‘Grace, they don't deserve your pity.'

Shortly afterwards he rose; he was off to meet an engine maker in Halifax. I must have looked dismayed, for he put his arms around me and kissed my lips, promising cheerily to be home for supper. After that I sat on, staring into the fire.

So much had happened that I felt I was tumbling through empty air. I knew Michael uttered phrases for dramatic effect, and had a constant need to pour scorn on others. It was annoying yet pitiful, his parade of youthful bluster. Yet still I loved him. My heart jumped every time I looked into his expressive eyes, or admired the creamy pallor of his skin. I had a hunger for his visits to my bed, spending my days like a dusty moth infolded on itself, that only sprang to life in the nocturnal hours. Yet I was not simple-minded; I did understand he was somehow unnatural. Each time we shared our bodies I tried not to dwell on his habits – the litanies of self-accusation he mumbled into the bedclothes, that appeared to have little to do with me. There was no doubt that the act itself gave me all I desired of animal pleasure. My disappointment was that we were not, as a poet might say, mingling our souls as hectically as our bodies. In our lovemaking his eyes remained screwed tight, his transports slaking a private appetite.

It was afterwards, entwined in the dark, that we conversed in a frank manner for the first time. We talked of Greaves, and the constraints of living in narrow-minded company. I even made him laugh with my tales of the Brabantists and their faith in dreams. ‘I should like to hear their prognostications on my dreams,' he mused.

‘Tell me,' I murmured. In the firelight his body was rosy marble, lean muscle half-draped in sheets, like a paragon of a Classical sculptor. He rolled over and laid his arm over his eyes. ‘The most common are the slights of childhood – Father's impatience with me, while Peter could do no wrong. But my worst nightmares are those of school – Good God, I wake up sweating with relief to find myself free of that place. There was a master, a vile man …'

He fell silent, turning away from me onto his side, and then said, ‘I do not need help to unravel my dreams. If dreams foretell the future, I am damned.'

So which wife would not be uneasy? I loved him, but I was not happy, and I knew, in some remote and sensible chamber of my heart, that the path I had taken was not a wise one. I knew it, but I continued just the same.

Amidst all this my chief support was Peg. Her joy at having me home again was so sincere I was flattered. I asked her about the missing letters and wished I hadn't, so furious was she at learning of a thief in the village. After that, it seemed petty to scold her for trivial matters. After all, what were they? Holding my dress before a mirror, anticipating my wants, and protecting me, as she would see it, from annoyance. My one vexation was that preposterous tale of the shipwreck. It hurt me that she had invented it, for she had no need to spin such nonsense to impress me. I knew of penny chapbooks of marvellous tales, of this or that mariner's marvels, or indeed, the much-talked-of adventures of Robinson Crusoe and Alexander Selkirk. As to that fond father of hers, I was convinced he was a figment. Other tokens of what might charitably be called embroidery had also struck me: hesitations over certain words and a false brightness to her speech. What little I knew of geography made the route unlikely – was not Rio in South America and Cape Town in Africa, on quite different sides of the world? However, I was certain it was not all a fabrication. When she spoke of her great love, Jack Pierce; then she shone with truth-telling, for the merest mention of him brought a flush to her skin.

At Whitelow the building work was continually hampered by delays and frustrations. Sweetly complaisant after a night of lovemaking, I capitulated and agreed to borrow a further £1000 to buy a great machine, so the mill could operate even when the river level dropped. Again, I took great care in signing the paper and set it with my own seal, and delivered it straight to the postmaster. But the machine was still being prepared in Nottingham, and the necessary foundations to house it were proving difficult to set in place. I noticed with some disappointment, that the bill from Mr Delahunty was also still outstanding, so that also had to be paid from that loan.

Then, in early December, Michael returned one night from Whitelow and threw a paper on the table.

‘Read that.' Reluctantly I picked up a cheap sheet of butcher's paper on which was scrawled in large letters:

There had been rumours of certain handloom weavers protesting that their livelihood was to be destroyed, but this was wholly unexpected. I flung it down. ‘What will you do?'

Michael was too distressed to be rational. ‘I shall be forced to bring pauper children in from outside. Damn Earlby's weavers. Let them starve!' Michael slapped his palm on the tablecloth. My own opinion was that a promise of decent wages and safe conditions might ease the matter. That, however, would require a calm head and honest dealing.

But that evening it was Michael alone who concerned me. I was beginning to understand that the mill was an altogether new, and arduous, undertaking for my husband. I did my best to calm him, and even made a few sensible suggestions, that he briskly accepted. When Peg served dinner I coaxed him to eat a favourite dish, a burned filbert cream, deliciously sweet and smoky.

‘I can't eat.' He pushed most of his food away, raking his fingers though his hair. Peg scowled when she cleared the table and saw so much of her hard work untouched. With extreme ill-timing Peg began to complain to Michael that the kitchen fire would not light.

‘Damn it, when will it work? Perhaps you don't want it to work?'

Once Peg had huffed away I urged him to attend to his nourishment and rest during this time of great exertion.

‘That is easy for you to say.' He flung himself down on the sofa and rifled through the newspaper, throwing that down a moment later. In such a mood, if I had not loved Michael, he would have been utterly unbearable.

‘I think a sleeping draught might calm you.'

‘Do you?' he answered in an accusing tone.

‘One good night's sleep would help, surely?'

‘Oh, perhaps. My wounds still ache damnably where Dancer threw me. Perhaps a night's oblivion would be welcome.'

I sought out Peg downstairs in her housekeeper's quarters, and told her of the night's events. She was loyally outraged on our behalf. ‘Those wicked spongers should be clapped up in irons for making such threats.'

‘Perhaps. But my first thought is for the master. Do you have any preparation to help him? He cannot sit still. He will never sleep.'

‘Have you none of Dr Sampson's mixture left?'

I told her it was finished, though I had in fact poured it away, not liking the curious dreams it gave me.

‘I have the very thing. Only I need to fetch it from downstairs. I'll bring it up to you.'

‘No need. I'll wait here. You have a good fire.'

Peg looked at me, surprised, and gestured me away with a dismissive wave of her hand. ‘Go on, mistress. I'll run up shortly.'

Any ordinary person would have responded to Peg's prompting, but this, I decided irritably, was exactly the sort of behaviour that had annoyed me before I went to York. Manipulation would be too strong a word for it, but there was a persistent manoeuvring of my actions.

‘No,' I said bluntly. ‘I am waiting here.'

Still she hesitated, like a cat not knowing which way to spring. Then she hurried away in the direction of the kitchen.

The housekeeper's quarters were flanked by a set of unused reception chambers, now in disrepair. It comprised a sitting room and bedroom, the floor laid with painted oil cloth and the furniture very plain. It was what it lacked, that I noticed: no prints on the wall, or jugs of flowers or china knick-knacks on the mantelpiece. It might have been a room in an institution. Yet Peg revelled in my own lovely things; I had expected to find an abundance of her own pretty goods here. Turning to the table, there lay
Mother Eve's Secrets
and a heap of bills, and – this surprised me – the leather folio of our room plans. I opened the first page, pondering. Yet had she not played a large part in seeing the work done? Though they should have been returned to me, it was at least comprehensible that they were still in her possession.

What I saw next prompted no such easy answer. A green silk rag protruded from a bag beside the table – it was one of my own drawstring bags bearing my initials. I recognised it at once as a scrap of a gown I had disliked, for it had been made up in the wrong colour. I pulled on the end, and a strip of fabric slithered out like a ragged green serpent. In the bag were the remains of my whole gown, all in tatters.