A Tattooed Heart (28 page)

Friday had a good stare at him. He was a handsome man, if you liked that sort of thing. His skin was a copper-brown colour, and he had high cheekbones, dark eyes and quite a bit of a nose on him. Like that cheeky Frog, Pierre, his black hair was braided, though his plaits hung down his chest, which you could see a lot of. What a fop. Could you be a fop if you weren't English? He wore strange clothes, too: loose trousers and a shirt made from some sort of soft fabric with no buttons, and a heavy belt of silver and turquoise with a knife jammed in it.

‘Is there something you want?' he asked her coolly.

‘No.'

‘The captain has asked that you all remain below deck while the ship gets under way. You will only be a nuisance if you come up. Pierre will prepare tea and food for you shortly.'

‘Where's the privy?' Sarah asked.

‘The head is at the bow.'

Friday said, ‘I didn't see one.'

Hawk nearly smiled. ‘It is not like a privy you would find ashore.'

‘Well, come on, show us.' The shame of it if they accidentally peed in a bucket or something, thinking it was the shitter.

Hawk sighed, but beckoned patiently and they filed back up the steep steps and along the deck. And there it was, a tiny cubicle formed by a partition open to the elements at the very point of the bow, just above the figurehead. Hawk opened the door, revealing a plank with a hole in it. Friday peered down, noting gentle bow waves rolling past below. How high could fish
jump? she wondered. She didn't fancy getting her arse bitten off by a shark halfway up the east coast of New South Wales. Feeling dizzy, she retreated and shared a dismayed glance with Aria, who shrugged.

‘At least there is a wall,' she said. ‘On the whaler on which I came to Sydney there was no wall, just the plank.'

Overhead the sails billowed and cracked as the wind blowing off shore caught them. Ahead, the figure in the little rowboat struggled to haul up the
Katipo
's anchor, then turned and rowed back towards the ship. Finally, it seemed, they were under way.

Hawk said, ‘Please go below again and stay there. We are busy.'

‘All right, no need to go on about it,' Friday grumbled as she stomped off towards the cabin. Bossy bugger. She hated being at sea; it terrified the shit out of her.

Below deck, sitting around the table, Sarah said, ‘Now what? What are we going to do down here for eight hours?'

‘Sleep?' Friday suggested.

‘I can't sleep,' Harrie said. ‘I'm too worried.'

The sunlight from the open cabin door was momentarily blotted out as Pierre bounded down the steps. ‘Mademoiselles! I will make for you the scones and tea? You are preferring the cheese or the sultana?'

‘I hate cheese in my tea,' Sarah said.

Pierre beamed. ‘Ooh, you are the witty one! Does Mademoiselle Harrie wish to choose?'

‘Me?' Harrie looked startled. ‘Oh. Um, sultana?'

‘Sultana! Oui!' Pierre declared, as though Harrie had just solved the riddle of life. ‘She is the excellent choice! The captain, he likes the sultana.'

‘For fuck's sake,' Friday muttered. The captain, the captain, the bloody captain. What was so special about Rian bloody Farrell? Sour-faced bastard.

‘Can I help you in the kitchen, Pierre?' Harrie offered.

‘She is called the galley, mademoiselle, and non, she is too small. One of us will end up with a burnt part.' Pierre mimed receiving a painful burn on his backside, then bowed ridiculously low. ‘But merci beaucoup. The offer she is appreciated.' Then he hurried off into the galley, humming away, and proceeded to make a lot of noise involving bowls and other cooking implements.

‘That man is a buffoon,' Aria said.

Harrie said, ‘I quite like him.'

‘Only because he likes you,' Sarah remarked.

‘I reckon he fancies you,' Friday said.

‘Oh, he does not!' Harrie went red. ‘Why do you have to make everything . . . lecherous?'

‘I'm not. Anyway, fancying someone isn't lecherous. It's normal.'

Aria said, ‘Not when you are
my
lover, it is not. Why would you lust after anyone else but me?'

Friday reached out and patted her hand. ‘Well, I wouldn't,' she said without a trace of guile. ‘No one else could ever compare with you.'

‘I should think not.'

‘He's just being kind,' Harrie said. ‘Maybe he's trying to make up for, you know, what Mick did. God, I'm so glad he's not here.'

Friday agreed. ‘That
would
have been awkward. Lucky Farrell booted him off the ship. Good on him.' Whoops, she'd just said something nice about the captain.

She sat for a moment, gazing at the well-scrubbed table top. Why
was
she being so nasty about him? She didn't even know the cove. It was just the way his crew ran around bowing and scraping as if he were King William; it annoyed the shite out of her. But, actually, that wasn't quite right — they didn't bow and scrape, did they? They listened to him, they did what he asked of them, they even laughed with him, but he still seemed to command their respect, and obviously their loyalty. Once upon a time
she'd
commanded the respect of Harrie, Rachel and even Sarah, and she
couldn't have asked for more loyal friends. But now, even Harrie quite regularly told her to shut up, and neither she nor Sarah trusted her an inch. Even Aria didn't trust her, she was sure of it. And she didn't blame them: she'd let them all down that often, one way or another.

A crash came from the galley, followed by what sounded like loud swearing in French.

‘Do you think he's all right?' Harrie asked.

‘Christ, who cares?' Friday plonked her elbows on the table. Surely it must be just about time for her to sneak off and open a bottle of her ‘lemonade'?

Sarah stabbed a finger at her. ‘Look, if you're going to grumble and bitch all the way to Newcastle, it's going to be a bloody long eight hours. This is for Charlotte, not you. If you didn't want to come, you should have stayed at home.'

‘I'm not grumbling and bitching!'

‘You are, you bloody old curmudgeon.'

Friday stared at her, horrified.
‘Me?
A curmudgeon?' How could anyone accuse her of that? She was always laughing and taking the piss and making jokes. She always looked on the bright side. Didn't she?

‘Yes,
you.'

‘I'm
not
grumbling. I just don't like being on the water. You know that.'

‘It's only for eight hours,' Harrie said soothingly. ‘That's not even long enough to get sick.'

Then why do I feel so queasy? Friday thought. Probably because I haven't had a drink since ten o'clock. And why's everyone being so mean to me? A pewter cruet set on a wooden tray in the middle of the table began to slide slowly to the right, then stopped and slid back the other way, accompanied by ominous creaks and grunts from the
Katipo's
timbers.
Shit.

‘Are we tipping over?' she blurted.

‘No, probably just getting out into the swell,' Sarah said. ‘The Heads?'

‘What heads?' Friday felt panic rise up in her like the tide they'd waited for all morning.

‘North Head and South Head. We have to go out between them to leave the harbour and go up the coast.'

Her fear ratcheting up a notch, Friday looked around wildly, trying to orient herself. No windows. Bloody typical.

‘Don't worry,' Sarah said, her voice a shade more gentle, ‘I doubt we'll even lose sight of land. And anyway, if you're sick, I will be, too. We can keep each other company spewing our guts out over the rail.'

‘Do you get seasick?' Friday asked Aria.

‘No.'

‘Neither does Harrie. Guts like cast iron.' Friday turned back to Sarah. ‘And I
did
want to come. 'Course I did.'

‘I know,' Sarah said. ‘I know you did.'

There was a clang as Pierre slammed something shut in the galley. He poked his head into the mess room. ‘Scones in ten minutes. The butter or the cream?' He made a vigorous twirling action with his hand. ‘Only the cream, she must be whipped.'

‘Oh God,' Friday muttered at the thought of either.

‘Butter,' Aria ordered imperiously.

They sat in silence, the ship rocking smoothly from side to side as if she were taking long, regular steps.

Finally, Harrie asked, ‘What are we going to do when we get there? I mean, where do we even start looking?'

‘Leo says not many folk actually live in Newcastle,' Sarah said. ‘He reckons they all live on farms and in little settlements up the Hunter Valley.'

‘How does he know?' Friday asked.

‘He went there once.'

‘When?'

‘I don't know, do I? After the penal colony shut down, I think.'

‘When was that?'

Harrie said, ‘James said in 1822.'

Friday snorted. ‘Ten years ago? It could have changed completely since then.'

‘Doesn't mean Leo went there ten years ago, though, does it?'

Aria banged her hand sharply on the table. ‘You three are being very boring. Newcastle will be what it is. We will have to wait and see. In any event, we need a plan.'

‘Well, go on then, think one up,' Sarah said sweetly.

‘I already have. We will start by going into all of the drinking houses in the town and asking if anyone has seen or heard of this Jonah Leary.'

‘What, all of us traipsing into every single pub and asking after him? You don't think that'll attract a bit of attention?'

Aria stabbed Sarah with a rapier-like stare. ‘We will split up. Take a handful of hotels each. Venture out individually. Go on our own. Am I being clear enough for you?'

Friday liked the sound of that. In a pub you'd definitely have to have a few gins to blend in.

‘I don't want to go into a hotel on my own,' Harrie said. ‘Especially not in a strange town.'

‘Not even for Charlotte?' Friday asked.

Sarah said, ‘That's mean.'

Friday felt awful. ‘Sorry, love, really, I didn't mean it to come out like that.' About to suggest that she and Harrie go round the pubs together, she realised with a jolt of alarm that she wouldn't be able to get on the jar if Harrie was with her. ‘Look, why don't you and Sarah go together? That'll be all right, won't it?' she asked the others.

‘Why can't she go with you?' Sarah said. ‘Or don't you want her getting in the way of your drinking?'

Friday glared at her. ‘I won't
be
drinking.'

‘Yes, you will.'

‘No, I won't.'

‘She will not,' Aria said. ‘She has promised.'

‘Really? Then what was clanking in her bag when we came aboard? Ginger beer?'

‘Bottles of lemonade. Ivy prepared it for her.'

The smell of something nice wafted out of the galley.

‘She will drink,' Sarah insisted. ‘She
always
drinks.'

Friday couldn't believe what she was hearing. ‘That's right, talk about me like I'm not even here.'

Sarah did. ‘Aria, she'll drink, get swattled, and end up doing something stupid or not being somewhere she should, and ruin everything. It's what she always does. You should know that by now.'

Adamant, Aria shook her head. ‘No, she promised. This is important. This is the life of the little girl. She would not put the little girl at risk just for gin.' She turned to Friday. ‘Would you?'

Friday had a sudden stark and very ugly image of herself — like one of those satirist's drawings you saw in the papers — guzzling piggishly from a bottle while, only feet away, Leary throttled the last, dying breaths out of Charlotte. It was
horrible.

‘Of course I wouldn't! Christ almighty! What do you think I am!' She felt insulted, wounded and . . . woefully full of shit.

‘See?' Aria said. ‘She has promised.'

‘Oh, for God's sake,' Sarah said wearily. ‘She always bloody well promises.
Always
.'

Silence fell around the table. After a few moments no one would look at Friday, not even Aria. It was the last straw. She thought, fuck this, I need a drink, and she got up and went to the tiny berth behind the curtain where she and Aria had dumped their bags, and sat on the narrow bunk, head in her hands.

Why are they all being so horrible? she grizzled to herself. It isn't my fault if I need a sip of gin now and then. Who's it hurting?
Their trouble — all of them, Aria, Sarah, Harrie, Mrs H, Leo, the whole bloody lot of them — is that they don't understand what it's like to be me. If they'd all just leave me alone, I'd be all right. It's only because they interfere that things go wrong.

She reached into her bag and pulled out a bottle, wincing when it banged against another and made a noise loud enough to rival the bells of Bow. She gripped the cork between her teeth, then paused.

What if she did get drunk?

She
was
bloody useless when she was mashed, and she knew it. She started fights or passed out, or made stupid mistakes, or turned up late or not at all, or was too sick to be useful. What if she did just one of those things and they couldn't get Charlotte back because of it? Or Charlotte was hurt, or — God forbid — killed? Aria wouldn't want anything to do with her ever again, and Harrie and Sarah certainly bloody well wouldn't. And what about Rachel — if she was still around? They'd all hate her and she'd be alone for the rest of her life.

Nearly as bad, she'd hate herself.

She wasn't exactly fond of herself now.

She couldn't understand it; if everyone else was ruining her life, why was it herself she loathed the most? She should hate the others, but she didn't. She missed them desperately.

Opening the porthole above the bunk, she threw the bottle out, sent the other two after it, then burst into tears.