The Penny Heart (34 page)

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.

21

Delafosse Hall

November 1792