Remember Me (48 page)

Mary thought for a moment. She had all but forgotten what had passed between her and Boswell. ‘I think I was just upset because he had no news of our pardon,’ she said, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. ‘I’m beginning to think there will never be one.’

‘Then maybe it’s time I wrote to the newspapers,’ James said. ‘A little reminder we are all still here, it might prompt some action.’

Mary was aware that the men weren’t as desperate as she was to be freed. They wanted it of course, but they had grown used to Newgate, and as long as money came to them for drink and food, they were content. But in Mary’s opinion James was living in a fool’s paradise. He’d had ambitions when they first got here, of writing a book and going home to Ireland to breed horses, but all he did now was drink the time away. He didn’t seem to realize that none of the women who found him so fascinating now would want to know him or help him once he was released. He had to start thinking about that day, now.

She sat up and caught hold of his face between her two hands. ‘Listen to me, James,’ she insisted. ‘You’ve got to stop going into the tap-room. The people you meet in there aren’t doing you any good. Please spend your time writing your book, reading, anything other than drinking, or when we do get out you’ll get yourself in trouble again and you’ll end up back here.’

‘Don’t preach, Mary,’ he said, shrugging her away. ‘I know all that.’

‘Do you?’ she asked. ‘Then you are a great deal cleverer
than me. You see, I’ve thought about it constantly, and I still don’t know how I’m going to live. I ask myself, what can a woman do to make an honest living when she can’t read or write? I wonder what right-minded person would want a convicted felon working in their fine house.’

‘There’s always someone,’ he said blithely.

Mary raised one eyebrow questioningly. ‘Oh really? You believe that the stink of prison will disappear the moment I walk out the gate? That there’ll be a kindly person waiting for me, ready to take me to their house and run the risk I might run off with their family silver?’

James winced. He never liked it when Mary reminded them all that they were convicted thieves. ‘Mr Boswell will help you. Besides, some fine fella will come along and marry you, maybe you’ll have children again too.’

Mary gave a harsh little laugh. ‘I look like an old crow, James, what man would want to marry me?’

‘I would,’ he said, taking her hand and squeezing it. ‘Sam too. You are beautiful, Mary, you are strong, brave, good and honest. Any man with half an eye would be joyful to have you.’

It was on the tip of Mary’s tongue to point out that if she chose to marry either of them, her problems would be doubled rather than solved. But she realized James had intended it as a compliment, and it would be churlish to demean it. ‘You could charm most of the women in London speaking like that,’ she said with a watery smile. ‘But not me, James, I know you too well.’

‘But you don’t know yourself very well,’ he said, leaning over to kiss her cheek. ‘Believe me, you are a prize, Mary. Worth far more than you know.’

James Boswell stood warming his backside by the fire in his drawing room, a glass of brandy in his hand. It was past seven in the evening and he felt drained, both mentally and physically.

It was a week since he’d seen Mary, and her despair had made him redouble his efforts for her. Since ten this morning he’d been calling on his most influential friends and acquaintances to secure their involvement. While most had heard him out and had even shown enough sympathy to give him a donation for her fund, not one had been sufficiently moved by her plight to offer their time or expertise to get her freed.

He moved over to his armchair and sat down heavily. As he leaned back in the chair and sipped his brandy reflectively, he had yet another sharp mental picture of Mary. Her large grey eyes which reminded him of stormy seas. That mane of thick dark curly hair, the pert little nose and lips that so easily curved into a warm smile. She was too thin and sallow-skinned to be a beauty, hard times had left their mark and the elements had aged her prematurely, yet there was something indefinably arresting about her.

They had had so many meetings, both alone and with the four men. Boswell knew the escape story inside out now, the individual character of each of those involved, including the ones who had lost their lives after the
capture. He had learned to tune in to what lay behind Mary’s words, for she always simplified a tale, usually leaving out her own crucial part in it. She had said what day in December Emmanuel had died in the Batavia hospital, and also mentioned how Will arrived at the hospital before then. Only a chance remark later, about when she rejoined the other men in the guard ship, made him see that she had stayed on at the hospital with Will until he died.

Boswell knew how the other men felt about Will, and why. Mary too felt he had betrayed them all. When he asked why she stayed with him until his death, she shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t leave anyone to die alone without some comfort,’ she said.

To Boswell, that was the core of Mary’s character. She didn’t see such action as noble or generous, to her it was basic humanity. Most women who had just lost their baby would want the father to suffer even if he was only partially responsible. Mary could certainly have used that valuable time to escape with Charlotte, but she didn’t. She stayed and cared for Will.

It hadn’t been easy to really understand Mary. She was adept at changing the subject, making light of incidents and giving others credit when it ought to have gone to her. But Boswell was tenacious and also had a very good memory, and by fitting things the men had told him about Mary with what she had said herself, the truth emerged.

Her courage, endurance and intelligence were all remarkable. There was something decidedly masculine about the way she showed so little emotion under stress,
yet she was very feminine in other ways. She was passionate in her anxiety about babies born in prisons, and the lack of care for the mothers. She would admire Boswell’s fancy waistcoats, tears had welled up in her eyes when he brought her a posy of snowdrops, and she showed real concern when he arrived out of breath. He had noted her tenderness towards her friends, and the way she kept herself and their cell clean and tidy. In Newgate, that was almost unheard of.

It was well below freezing outside, but Boswell’s drawing room was warm from the blazing fire, and very comfortable. Shutters and heavy brocade curtains kept out the draughts, his armchair supported him perfectly. He had only to ring the bell and his housekeeper would bring him anything he wanted – a plate of ham or cheese, a bottle of port, or even a blanket to put round his knees. She would warm his bed with a hot brick before he got into it and his night-shirt would be hung by the fire to warm too. In the morning he was woken with a tray of tea, the fire would already be lit, and hot water ready for his morning wash.

Tonight in Newgate it would be bitingly cold, and he could hardly bear to think of Mary trying to sleep huddled on straw. Yet she never complained about the conditions, in fact she showed gratitude that she had been spared the common side of the prison. It was only when she recalled her native Cornwall that he saw a hunger in her eyes for fresh air, the majesty of the pounding sea and the wildness of the moors.

His own trip to Cornwall had made sense of some of
Mary’s traits. While he had in the main found it a wet and cheerless place, with worse poverty in some areas than London, when the sun came out and he had seen the spectacular scenery, he had felt humbled.

The way the tiny fishing villages had insinuated themselves into the shelter of the cliffs spoke reams about its natives’ tenacity. They fished, went down mines and farmed. However poor they were, the Cornish didn’t kow-tow to the wealthy landowners. James had a sense all the time he was there that the common folk had the heart and the courage to rise up and take back what was rightfully theirs, if they so chose. Mary was Cornish through and through, sturdy and wild as a moorland pony, as tenacious as the limpets in rock pools, and often as deep as its pit shafts.

But last week he’d thought she was sinking, that she was unable to take much more of everything she’d endured so stoically. He was afraid that her low state would make her vulnerable to infection, and she’d have no strength left to fight it.

Perhaps he had initially looked for glory by defending her, but he certainly cared nothing for that now. He wanted so much to lead her from that dreadful place, to watch her blossom with good food, pretty clothes and freedom.

A friend had teased him recently by asking if there weren’t enough whores in London to satisfy him, without rescuing a convict. Once he would have laughed off such a remark, and in the past his ultimate aim would have been to bed the woman once she was free. But Mary had
touched something deep inside him that had nothing to do with lust. It stung that his friends didn’t see this.

Mary, he believed, was his chance to redeem himself for past carelessness with women. He had truly loved his wife Margaret, but he had neglected her and been unfaithful many times. All those scores of whores, serving maids and often innocent young women he’d bedded! He wasn’t guilty of callousness, for many of them had engaged his heart. But he had been like a butterfly, sipping nectar here and there, moving on as soon as the sweetness faded.

He wasn’t going to lose interest in Mary, though – for once in his life he intended to see this through, whatever the cost to him. His aim went beyond getting her and her friends pardoned, he was going to help Mary on to a secure and prosperous life as well.

He swallowed the last of his brandy and reached out for the decanter to pour himself some more. He couldn’t have picked a worse time to plead for Mary. For the past three years, the whole country had been in a state of unrest. The poor had good reason to feel bitter, the Enclosures Act forced many of them off the land into the cities, and craftsmen were finding that their skills were no longer needed as new manufacturing processes came in. They voiced their discontent in huge riots, and with men like Thomas Paine inciting rebellion with his belief that the monarchy should be abolished and the working classes rise to take control, the government was running scared.

Rioters were being arrested, charged and transported
before they had a chance to infect others with their inflammatory views, and although Henry Dundas had originally agreed that the five returned transportees should be pardoned, quite recently, when James asked him to fulfil his promise, he had denied making it and accused him of having a vivid imagination.

Boswell had gone to Evan Nepean, the Under Secretary of State. This man had been responsible for organizing the First Fleet of transport ships, and it was said he had been appalled to hear so many convicts died on the ships of the Second Fleet. There was no doubt that Nepean did care in general about the welfare of convicts, but he took the view that the government had already been lenient in not hanging these five, and saw no reason why they should be pardoned.

James felt a little ashamed now that he’d allowed Mary to believe Henry Dundas was an old and close friend. Their only connection was that they’d been at school together but they hadn’t even liked each other. He would contact him yet again tomorrow, though, and write to Lord Falmouth too.

‘I cannot, will not give up,’ James muttered to himself. ‘Right must triumph if I remain persistent.’

As James dozed later that evening in front of his warm fire, Mary was lying awake in the dark, her face wet with tears. She was so cold she could no longer feel her toes or even shiver, and every bone in her body ached.

She could hear someone wailing in the distance. It was a cry not of pain but of sheer hopelessness, and the sound
echoed her own feelings. She was so weary of fighting that once again death looked desirable. She could no longer remember why survival had once been so important to her. What was there to live for?

Chapter twenty

‘What’s the date today, James?’ Mary asked, turning on the crate she was standing on to see out of the cell window. She couldn’t see anything more than the roof of the part of the prison opposite and the sky beyond, but it was infinitely better to look at the clouds and birds than at the cell walls.

James was sitting on the floor writing. He stopped at her question and looked up. ‘The second of May,’ he replied. ‘Any special reason you want to know?’

It was mid-morning and they were all in the cell, Sam whittling an animal from a piece of wood. Nat busy sewing a patch on his breeches, Bill laboriously plaiting straw into fancy shapes. He called them ‘corn dollies’, and said that in the Berkshire village where he grew up they were considered fertility symbols. James had more than once joked that if there was a sudden increase in births in the prison, Bill would be responsible.

Since the attack on Mary in the tap-room, they all spent much less time there. Jack had survived his wound, but he was hanged for his crimes just a couple of weeks later. Since then Mary had found herself treated with extreme
caution by the existing prisoners. But there were new arrivals every day, and many of them were even more dangerous than Jack, so the men had taken Mary’s advice and kept out of the way.

They had all become adept at finding ways to fill the daylight hours. Mary was knitting a shawl, they played cards, they visited other prisoners in their cells, on fine days they went out into the yard. They also reminisced a great deal about New South Wales and their escape, as James was finally writing his book about it. When they did visit the tap-room it was only for a couple of hours in the evening.

‘The second of May!’ Mary exclaimed. ‘Then it was my birthday two days ago, and we’ve been here nearly eleven months.’ Her birthday meant little to her other than it came the day before May Day, which had always been special in Cornwall. No one had even mentioned that in here, so perhaps Londoners didn’t celebrate it.

‘It seems we’ve been here a whole lifetime, and they say it’s bad manners to ask a lady’s age,’ James said with an impudent grin.