Taking Liberties

John Beasley was twisting frantically round on his bollard. Catching sight of her he raised the crutch, pointing with it to an old man sitting on a neighbouring bollard. ‘He’s seen her. He saw her.’

For a moment she didn’t believe him. Don’t let me hope again. Then she ran forward.

‘Tell her,’ Beasley said. ‘He saw the Riposte come in, didn’t you? Tell her.’

‘That I did,’ the old man said.

Boston had these, too: palsied old mariners, more sea water than blood in their veins and nothing to do but watch, with the superciliousness of experts, the comings and goings of other sailors, other ships.

‘Saw the prisoners brought ashore, didn’t you? June it was. Stood on this very quay, they did. Tell her.’ Beasley looked round the stone setts as if Christ’s sandalled foot had touched them. ‘Same bloody quay.’

‘Very same quay,’ the old man agreed.

‘A girl round about ten or eleven, he says. And a boy.’

‘Powder monkey, I reckon. Always tell a powder monkey. Black hands.’

Beasley couldn’t wait. He’d heard it already, in slow Devonian. ‘They were put to one side while the militia came for the prisoners. An officer told them to wait where they were ’til he’d finished seeing to the men. Nobody paid them attention, did they? And the boy slipped off.’

The old man nodded. ‘Diddun want no more o’ the navy, I reckon.’

‘But what did the girl do? Tell her what the girl did.’ In an aside to Makepeace, he said: ‘His name’s Packer. Able Seaman Packer.’

The old man snickered. ‘Like I said, she were wunnerful fond of one of the prisoners. Blackie, he was. Black as the Earl of Hell’s weskit. Kept hollerin’ to ’un she did and he were hollerin’ back.’

‘But what did she do?’ insisted Beasley. ‘Tell her what she did.’

‘Prisoners was lined up,’ Able Seaman Packer said, slowly. ‘Job lot, Yankees mostly. Hunnerd or more. Militia got ’em into longboats and made ’em pull down the Narrows, round Stonehouse towards Millbay. And the liddle maid, she ran along the bank after they, far as she could ’til she come to the watter, so then she makes for the bridge, still hollerin’ to the nigger, tryin’ to follow him, like.’

‘But she came back, didn’t she?’

A nod. ‘She come back. Liddle while later, that was. Girnin’ fit to bust.’

‘Crying,’ translated Beasley. ‘She was crying.’

‘Wouldn’t let her over the bridge, see. Hadn’t got a ha’penny, see.’ Satisfaction bared teeth like lichened tombstones. ‘Right and proper, too. Comin’ over here, usin’ our bridges for free when a honest man as served his country has to pay.’

‘She couldn’t pay the halfpenny toll,’ Beasley said. ‘She was trapped in Dock. She couldn’t get in to Plymouth proper. She’s here somewhere, don’t you see?’

She was seeing it. Philippa. No Susan, just Philippa. Who was the black man? Someone who’d been kind to her, perhaps, now being taken away from her. She was running along this very quay, desperate not to lose, among terrifying officialdom, one person who’d shown her humanity.

‘What did she do then? Where did she go? Have you seen her since?’ begged Makepeace.

Faded little crocodile eyes looked at her briefly but the answer was made to Beasley. ‘Didn’t see her after that day.’

She fell on her knees to the old man. ‘Where would you look? If you were me, where’d you look for her?’

‘Been near two month,’ he said. Again it was Beasley whom Packer addressed. Makepeace realized that he thought he was talking to a fellow war veteran. If it had been her sitting on the bollard, she’d still be in ignorance. ‘If so be she were a maid then, she bain’t now.’

She wanted to kill him. Mind your own business, you old devil. But if he minded his business, she wouldn’t find Philippa. She got out her purse and extracted a guinea from it, waving it like a titbit to a dog.

He took off his cap and laid it casually across his knees. She dropped the guinea into it. ‘Please.’

‘You come back yere four bells this evening,’ he told Beasley, ‘you might …’ He paused, searching for the phrase, and found it triumphantly. ‘… might see something as is to your advantage.’

‘If you know something, tell us,’ Makepeace pleaded. ‘I’ll pay whatever you want.’

‘Pay us at four bells.’ Further than that, he refused to budge. Here was drama to enliven his old age, better than gold; they were to return, the second act must be played out.

Beasley reverted to his accustomed gloom, as if ashamed that he’d shown excitement. Hopping back over the bridge, he said: ‘Four bells?’

‘Six o’clock,’ Makepeace said. ‘Second dog watch.’ She hadn’t run an inn on the edge of the Atlantic for nothing.

Back at the inn, Makepeace forced herself to eat – a matter of fuelling for whatever lay ahead. Beasley urged her to get some sleep and she tried that, too, but kept getting up. She ordered a basket of food in case Philippa should be hungry when they found her.

She knew they wouldn’t find her, the old man was playing games with them for the excitement. Then she added a cloak to the basket because Philippa’s own clothes would be rags by now.

She buried her child again – what possible advantage could the old bugger on the bollard promise her? Then she put her medicine case into the basket … She was worn out by the time they crossed the Halfpenny Bridge again.

The clang for four bells sounding on the anchored ships skipped across the Hamoaze like uncoordinated bouncing pebbles, none quite simultaneous with the others, summoning new watches and releasing the old. The flurry on the river increased as off-duty officers were rowed ashore, hailing their replacements in passing.

It was nearly as hot as it had been at noon; the setts of the quay threw back the heat they had absorbed all day. John Beasley, lowering himself gratefully onto his bollard, rose again sharply as its iron threatened to scorch his backside.

Able Seaman Packer was still on his. Fused to it, Makepeace thought feverishly, like a desiccated mushroom. ‘Well?’ she demanded.

‘Missed ’em,’ he said. ‘Should’ve been here earlier.’

‘Missed who?’

‘The whores.’ He nodded to a flotilla of rowing boats with wakes that were diverging outwards as they approached the fleet anchored in the middle of the river. At this distance, they seemed full of gaudy flowers.

‘Don’t hit him!’ John Beasley caught Makepeace’s arm before it connected with the old man’s head in a haymaker that would have toppled him onto the quay. Balancing awkwardly, he pushed her behind him. ‘Tell us, will you, or I’ll let her at you. Is our girl on one of those boats?’

‘Ain’t sayin’ now.’ Packer’s lower lip protruded in a sulk that lasted until Makepeace, still wanting to punch him, was forced to move away.

She watched Beasley pour more of her money into Packer’s cap and the old man’s need to stay the centre of attention gradually reassert itself.

Beasley hopped over to her. ‘She’s not in those boats. He says her friend is.’

‘What friend?’

‘A woman who talked to her the day she landed.’

‘He didn’t tell us that. He said he hadn’t seen her since.’

‘No more I haven’t,’ the old man called; Makepeace’s wail had carried.

‘He’s eking out what he knows, he don’t get much of interest,’ Beasley said. ‘He’s lonely. His daughter doesn’t let him back in her house until night.’