Well, the ship went on sailing, and the days went on passing, and the days come to be weeks and the weeks come to be months, and everything was always the same. The same old smell, the same old jobs, the same old feelings of bleak in our hearts for them ones of us what hadn’t took emselves sailors or officers to love.
It was Ma Dwyer I spent my days with, as much as I could, because even though she was a gadje lady, she was a kushti one and come with a lot of kindness about her, and I wasn’t the sorta girl to turn my back on kindness, just because it come from the gadje. I reckoned my Gypsy folk’d probably of understood that, considering these was particular circumstances of a particular sorry sort.
We spent our nights together, too, me and Ma Dwyer, because Katie-May’d gone off with the sailor, and I ain’t too proud to admit to getting sad and afraid in them hours of night what was full up of the snoring and moaning and wailing and groaning of convicts. And Ma Dwyer was a kushti sorta person to hold on to, because there was a lot of her, and although it ain’t always comfy, holding on to a big person in a hammock, it give me a feeling of being safe and that was all what I wanted.
Sometimes, though, I used to wake up before morning’d come, and I’d find myself on my own, for all what I’d fell asleep with Ma Dwyer right next to me. And then I’d worry a while about where she’d gone and what’d happened to her. But the next day, when the bell rung to get us all outta bed, she’d be there again, sleeping soft beside me, and it’d make me wonder if maybe I’d dreamed her away in the night, after all.
So the mornings kept coming round and we hadn’t got ourselves no sight of no land for longer than I could remember, and it made me feel strange inside to only be looking at the sea for ever. Once, on the day we finished off sewing the ship her new set of sails, I said to one of the sailors, ‘How far does this sea go?’
‘As far as you can see, until you reach the shore,’ he said, what wasn’t much of a satisfactory sorta answer in my opinion.
Now the new sails was all sewn we was back to our old duties of deck-scrubbing and pot-washing. One afternoon, when the sun was roasting that top deck and making us sweat like a whole lot of cows and horses, Katie-May went and stopped for a minute, just so’s she could catch her breath back, and one of the sailors looked at her and smiled in an understanding sorta way. ‘Hard work, ain’t it?’ he said.
And she smiled back at him, a weak sorta smile, because I s’pose with all the work she was having to do all night as well there wasn’t a lot of energy left in the bones of poor Katie-May. ‘Yes,’ she said.
And truly, that was all what’d gone on – nothing more than a couple of words and a watery sorta smile – when sudden outta nowhere come Katie-May’s own sailor man, and he took her by the collar and dragged her off to where no one could see her, but we could hear him bellowing at her, loud as a lion and no less fierce, neither.
When she come back after that, she didn’t speak much. She just kept her eyes on the deck and went on cleaning. But I could see her shoulders was shaking with sobbing, and I knew then that these was proper sorta tears, and not just the sort to go catching a man with.
We did get to see land again, sooner than we was meant to. The ship got itself some sorta problem – one what I didn’t much understand – and had to stop off somewhere in Africa a few days while it got sorted out and mended.
Africa was hot, and not just hot like the summers was in England. It was hot enough to bake a girl’s skin and then keep on baking her till she’d got burned on the inside, too. There wasn’t no escaping that heat. The bottom deck got hotter and hotter till you reckoned you’d suffocate with just taking yourself one breath, but the top deck wasn’t much easier, neither, because the sun up there’d beat your body to blisters.
Ma Dwyer said, ‘Stay on the top with me, Miriam. If we find the right crew men to ask, maybe they’ll let us go for a swim.’
Well, that was a kushti-sounding idea to me, though of course I couldn’t swim, but the thought of wading through all that clear-looking sea water give me the sorta feeling in my heart like what I reckoned drunkards got when they was promised more beer. So me, Ma Dwyer and Katie-May took ourselves up to the top deck and sat there among the sails, because they was a good sorta shade for us, and if ever the wind did blow a bit, they give us a nice feeling like we was getting fanned or something.
The sailors and crew men was busy with ropes and anchors and longboats and rigging and such, and Ma Dwyer was keeping her eye out for the sailor she wanted to ask about us going for a walk in the sea when, all of a sudden, one of the other convict girls what’d been resting nearby us let out such a scream, I reckoned there must’ve been a shark or a sea monster swimming about the ship.
Well, the sight what we saw was even more of a frightening one than sharks and monsters, and pretty well everyone was watching it with their mouths hanging open, even the lady Ma Dwyer’d told me about, what’s name was Rose and what got special treatment because of being a better class of person than what we was. She was staring hard and looking shocked about her face at the ship coming in beside us, full up to bursting with creatures what looked a bit like they was human beings, but their skin was so dark and their hair so black, and they was chained up in irons with such misery about their faces, it was impossible not to think as they’d just been took from outta hell itself. I wondered if that was how I was gonna end up in the next life, if I didn’t take a bit more notice of all my religious learning, so I made myself a vow right there and then that I was gonna start saying my prayers and believing proper in the Lord.
I looked at Ma Dwyer because the fear’d took hold of me so hard, I was needing some help with steadying myself.
‘Slaves,’ she muttered. ‘Getting took to America.’
They was a noisy crowd – all of em shouting and crying and screaming, even worse than the convicts down in the bottom decks. And a lot of em’d got sores round their mouths and was shining with sweat, and I couldn’t much bear to look at em, so I turned my face away and started praying hard to the Lord to keep me from turning into a creature of that sorry and frightening sort.