Taking Liberties

She was shown into the dining hall – it was breakfast-time – where forty-two children in identical grey calico uniforms sat on the benches of a long table eating porridge from identical bowls with identical spoons. High windows let in bars of light that shone on heads whose hair was hidden beneath all-covering identical grey calico caps.

The room was undecorated except for some embroidered Bible texts on the bare walls. It smelled of whale-oil soap.

Reverend Hambledon ushered Makepeace in and forty-two spoons clattered down as forty-two girls stood to attention. She was led along the rows. ‘This is Jane, who came to us in June. And this is Joan. Say good morning to Mrs Hedley, girls.’

Two mites chorused: ‘Good morning, Mrs Hedley.’

Reverend Hambledon’s voice did not alter pitch as he added: ‘Sometimes they come in with unsuitable names and we rechristen them. Most had not been christened at all.’

Holding back tears, Makepeace smiled at the little girls and shook her head.

When she got outside, Sanders said: ‘Bad, was it, Missus?’

‘I’d like to adopt the lot of ’em,’ she said.

There’d been no evidence of unkindness there, but none of kindness either. The porridge they’d been eating did not smell unappetizing but nor did it attack the nose with pleasure. The children did not look unhappy yet they weren’t happy.

What had stabbed her was that, as she’d entered the dining room, every head had turned to her before expectation died in the eyes, as it died in her own. Well, there was little she could do about that but she would send money to Reverend Hambledon on the understanding that it was spent on dolls and pretty dresses.

She found herself longing for the two little girls she’d left behind in Northumberland. God spare them from the unloving wilderness in which the children she’d just left had to exist.

‘I tell you this much, Peter,’ she said, ‘I’m going to let Andra and Oliver run the business from now on. When we get home I’m going to stay home.’

Sanders nodded without conviction; he knew her.

But she meant it. She was being punished for neglecting her eldest child. Philip Dapifer’s accusations haunted her dreams. She would not do the same by Sally and Jenny. And she would take in some of those poor scraps she’d just seen, dress them in colours, let them run free over the Northumberland hills. Oh yes, when she got home …

It occurred to her sharply that, if she did not find Philippa and Susan, she could never go home. How could she abandon the place holding the vague promise that they might turn up one day? She would have to stay, like a dog waiting for ever by the grave of its lost master …

She balled her fists and knocked them together so that the knuckles hurt. Cross that bridge when you get to it, Makepeace Hedley. You may not have to.

She returned to the search.

She scanned rows of uniformed children in another orphanage, shaven-headed children in the hospital and dispensaries, children spinning yarn in the Home for Foundlings, children knitting stockings in the workhouse, picking oakum in the prison, young women chanting their catechism in the Asylum for Deserted Girls, dumb and staring wrecks in the local bedlam.

‘Dear God, Peter,’ she said, crying, ‘where d’they all come from?’

‘It’s a sailors’ town, Missus. Wages of sin.’

She began to break down and at nights Sanders had to assist her, almost too tired to walk, back to the inn.

Beasley had no success either.

They sat in facing settles across a table in a dark corner of the George’s large, low-beamed taproom. The windows were open, allowing in the scent of grass and the calls of men on the inn’s skittle ground. Further away, someone was playing a fiddle.

‘I reckon we’re looking in the wrong place,’ Beasley said, when they’d ordered food. ‘The Riposte anchored in the Hamoaze, which is over that way.’ He jerked his head to the west. ‘So that’s where the prisoners were put ashore. Not in Plymouth at all.’

‘Oh God,’ said Makepeace, ‘there’s another town?’

‘It’s called Dock.’ He shrugged. ‘Because it was a dock at one time, I suppose. But it’s grown so it’s … yes, it’s another town.’

‘Then that’s where we’ll go tomorrow.’ Makepeace closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I think I’ll get to bed. I don’t want anything to eat.’

The two men watched her go.

‘She can’t stand much more,’ Sanders said.

‘She’ll have to,’ said Beasley. ‘We’re never going to find that girl. Or Susan Brewer. They went down with the bloody boat – if they were ever on it in the first place.’

‘I don’t think that’s right, Mr Beasley,’ Sanders said. ‘There was a young girl landed here, we know that. Well, how many children would be on a warship, eh? It’s got to be Miss Philippa. About Miss Susan I don’t know.’

‘Yere you are, my dearrs. Mrs Hedley not eatin’ tonight?’ The landlord, John Bignall, had brought their food. An enormously fat man – he was known for his ability to bounce troublemakers out of the door by using his stomach as a battering ram – he ran a good inn and had warmed to these, his newest guests, in the days since they’d been with him.

Makepeace he’d decided was respectable but strange – for one thing, she allowed her coachman to eat at the same table and at the same time as herself. Curious about those whose provenance mystified him, he’d learned something of Makepeace’s by plying Sanders with after-hours ale. Immediately, his sympathy had been engaged. ‘Poor little maid being chased by they American pirates across the ocean,’ he said. ‘Enough to make any soul lose its wits.’

‘I can see from your sad faces as you an’t had no more luck finding that little maid than yesterday,’ he said now.

‘No,’ Beasley told him. ‘We’re going to try Dock tomorrow.’

‘Iss fay, I was thinking of Dock, plenty of places in Dock,’ Bignall said.

‘What sort of places?’

The landlord tapped his nose. ‘Ah, that’s why I been slow to mention ’un to Mrs Hedley. If so be the maid’s in Dock, ’tis mebbe better she an’t found at all.’

‘She knows,’ Beasley said. ‘She still wants her found.’

‘Fine woman, that. No side to her.’ The innkeeper finished putting dishes on the table. ‘Good luck to ee then, an’ mind the press gangs. My brother-in-law from Bovey Tracey, he was a tailor. Three year ago he took a dress coat to Dock as a cap’n had ordered. Us bain’t seen ’un since.’

‘Jesus,’ Beasley said, watching him go. ‘Missus doesn’t realize. I’ve been looking over my bloody shoulder for a week.’

‘Me and all,’ Sanders said.

Acting on behalf of a seriously undermanned navy, the wartime Impressment Service was ubiquitous throughout the country but its greatest activity was in the ports, its gangs waiting behind corners like lurking octopuses to haul in unwary passers-by into His Majesty’s service.

Both Beasley and Sanders, neither of whom possessed the exemption certificates carried by men in protected trades, had been at risk merely walking along a Plymouth street, and knew it. Dock was likely to be even more dangerous.

‘I got better things to do with my life than get beaten and buggered for the rest of it,’ Beasley said.

‘Beggin’ your pardon, Mr Beasley, but I don’t intend to. There’s a lot I’d do for Missus but I got a wife and childer. I ain’t going with her to Dock. I’ll go round some more places here.’

‘I suppose I could dress up as a woman,’ Beasley said gloomily.

Sanders’s gravity flickered. ‘Can’t say you got the bubbies for it.’ Then his face returned to its usual impassivity. ‘Cheer up, sir. We’ll find ’em.’

Beasley just sighed.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_c15f1986-f323-5106-85f9-0cf74f75b95d)