Taking Liberties. Diana Norman

sun. Below was the quay, the old man on his bollard, and a view across the Hamoaze to the green hill that was Mount Edgcumbe. The tide was turning and three of the warships were getting ready to make for the open sea; with no wind penetrating the protection afforded by the river’s bend, they were having sweeps attached to pull them out.

      Usually ships and their manoeuvres were beautiful to her; this evening she saw them as the lethal artefacts they were, off to blow into pieces other ships and men. French? Americans she’d grown up with?

      England had been good to her; it had allowed her that magical man, Philip Dapifer, before taking him away again. At the last it had given her happiness with Andra and wealth and employment she loved. Yet it had done so with reluctance; if she hadn’t had astounding luck and the ability to fight like a tiger she, too, could have been reduced to somewhere like Dock, struggling not to drown in its filth.

      And who would have cared? God knew, this was an uncaring country. With Philip she’d sat at tables loaded with plate worth a king’s ransom and listened to conversations in which the poor were derided for being poor, where landowners had boasted of the poachers they’d hung, where magistrates lobbied to have more capital offences added to statute books that already carried over one hundred.

      It hadn’t occurred to them that they were the culprits, that what they called criminals were ordinary people made desperate by enclosure of what had been common land, by their fences being thrown over, by costly turnpikes on roads they had once used for free.

      She had supped with those who made their own grand theft into law and she had walked in the dust thrown up by their carriage wheels with those they used that law against.

      Oh no, there’d be no cheers from her as England’s ships sailed off to impose the same inequality on her native country. America deserved its freedom, had to have it, would eventually gain it.

      She knew that, in the two years since the war began, she had puzzled Andra and Oliver, both of them supporters of the American cause, by her refusal to pin her flag to the mast of her native country.

      Yet what freedom had America allowed her, an insignificant tavern-keeper, for rescuing Philip Dapifer from Bostonian patriots trying to kill him merely for being English? For that act of humanity, they’d tarred and feathered her brother and burned her home. Even now she could only hope that it did not cherry-pick which of its citizens were to be free. Would it include Indians, like her old friend, Tantaquidgeon? Negroes like Betty and her son? Are you fighting somewhere across that ocean, Josh, my dear, dear boy? For which side?

      It wasn’t only business that had stopped her from visiting Philippa in America or fetching her back. It was reluctance to return to a country that talked of liberty but had punished her for not falling into line. Oh God, to have patriotism again, certainty of country, right or wrong, like that old bugger on his bollard.

      The sun lowered, lighting the underside of sea-going gulls and seeming for a moment to preserve the Hamoaze in amber. The noise in the taproom started on a crescendo to the slam of doors in the corridor as guests departed to their various night activities.

      Riding lights began to make reflective twinkles in the water.

      Further along the quay, out of her sight, there was a sudden commotion, scuffling, male shouts, female screams. A longboat emerged into view, heading for the fleet; it was difficult to make out in the twilight but it looked as if a sack in the thwarts was putting up a fight.

      ‘What’s that?’ Beasley asked.

      ‘Press gang, I think,’ she told him. ‘Your disguise ain’t in vain.’

      He grunted. After a while he said: ‘See, Missus, they don’t let most of the crews come ashore. Afraid they’ll abscond.’

      ‘I know,’ she said.

      ‘Giving ’em women stops ’em getting restive.’

      ‘I know.’

      She heard him struggling with straps to ease his cramped knee. ‘Think anybody’d notice if I swopped peg-legs?’

      Beasley, she knew, was telling her to be sorry for whores, perhaps preparing her for Philippa being one of them. To him they were victims of a vicious society. She had never seen them like that; her Boston Puritanism had left her with a loathing for the trade; she could pity all those forced into criminality by poverty, except those who sold their bodies. Over there, below those sweating decks, women were allowing themselves to be used as sewers, disposing of effluent so that His Majesty’s Navy could function more efficiently. If Philippa …

      Her thoughts veered away and fractured into illogical fury at the husbands who’d deserted her, the one by dying, the other by travelling.

      I was always in second place for you, Andra Hedley, wasn’t I? The lives of miners were your priority, not me. Finding out about fire-damp, why it blows miners up. I don’t care why it blows the buggers up, I want you here, I want Philippa …

      Heavy boots on the stairs jerked her to attention. Revellers were coming back from wherever they’d been, talking, breathing alcohol, one or two uttering a tipsy goodnight to her as they went to their rooms. It seemed only a moment since they’d been leaving them …

      She looked out at the view and saw that Packer’s bollard was empty, the old man had gone; she’d been asleep.

      She trampled Beasley as she scrambled from the window-seat, screaming: ‘I fell asleep, we’ve missed ’em!’

      He joined her out on the quay where she was running up and down, hopelessly trying to distinguish the shape of rowing boats against the loom of ships’ sides which were casting a shadow from the low, westerly moon.

      To keep her sanity there was nothing to do but assume that the prostitutes were still prostituting. She refused to leave the quay in case she fell asleep again and paced up and down, the click of her heels the only sound apart from ripping snores coming from an open window at the inn and the occasional soft cloop of water against the quay wall.

      The sky, which at no point had turned totally black, began to take on a velvety blueness.

      ‘I think they’re coming,’ Beasley said.

      A light like a glow-worm had sprung up and was heading for the quay, showing itself, as it came, to be a lantern on a pole in a rowing boat which led a small flotilla of others. It swayed, sometimes reflecting on water, sometimes on the mushrooms that were the hatted heads of women clustered above the thwarts.

      ‘Missus, you’re not to pounce on this female,’ Beasley said. ‘We got to keep her sweet.’

      ‘I don’t pounce.’

      ‘Yeah, you do. You’re too much for people sometimes, especial other women. You bully ’em. You’re an overwhelmer.’

      What was he talking about? Granted, she had to be forceful or she’d have remained the poverty-pinched wreck left by Dapifer’s death. You try coping politely with Newcastle coalers. And other women managed their lives so badly …

      ‘You do the talking then,’ she snapped.

      The leading boat held back, allowing its link-boy to light the quay steps for the others. The sailors who’d done the rowing leaned on their oars, letting their passengers transfer themselves from the rocking boats to the steps.

      Beasley positioned himself at the top, holding out his hand to help the women up to the quay. Some took it, some didn’t. As they came the link lit their faces from below, distorting their features into those of weary gargoyles.

      Makepeace moved back under the eaves of the inn – and not just to allow Beasley free rein but because the harlots repelled her. How can he touch them? Yet why wasn’t he questioning them? Which one was he waiting for? The old man had said they’d know which she was, but how?

      She teetered in the shadows, wanting to interfere, not wanting to interfere, watching one or two of the women limp off into the alleys. Others waited for their sisters, dully, not speaking,