Tamar Read Free Page B

turned around in a lazy half-circle and began heading back into port.

C HAPTER T WO
    T he Rebecca Jane was seven days into her voyage. Mild seasickness had set in amongst her less robust passengers almost as soon as she reached open water, but Tamar herself was hardly afflicted; she quickly found her sea legs and as long as she went up on deck for fresh air, she felt fine.
    She was sharing the single women’s quarters with another eighteen young women, plus the ship’s matron, Mrs Mary Joseph, a quiet, ineffectual-looking woman in her mid-forties. Her husband, a skilled carpenter, was accommodated in the men’s quarters. Like most on board, they were emigrating to New Zealand to start a new life. Myrna McTaggart’s four girls were also in the single women’s quarters, but Myrna was not. Tamar had come to know the girls, Vivienne, Bronwyn, Jessica and Letitia, quite well over the past week. It was difficult not to, in such intimate and close quarters.
    Tamar had remarked that, for sisters, they did not look at all alike, although they were all very pretty. The girls burst out laughing, then informed Tamar they were not sisters and Myrna was not their mother; she was their employer. Myrna ran a training school for domestic servants and had decided to move her business out to New Zealand where the demand for skilled domestics was high. The girls were her first trainees in the new colony. Myrna,they said, was a shrewd businesswoman and could afford to pay for a private cabin.
    The diminutive but relentlessly cheerful Scotswoman, however, had so far elected to spend a considerable amount of her time in the single women’s quarters, to Mrs Joseph’s unvoiced but obvious disapproval. She privately thought Myrna vulgar with her flashy clothes and coarse language. Myrna seemed to get on with almost everyone, but confessed that at times she found the company of most of the cabin passengers dull and their attitude towards her standoffish. She thought the girls were much more fun.
    Tamar agreed. She had barely had time to be lonely since the Rebecca Jane sailed from Plymouth. Although there were long hours when there was little to do, there was always someone to talk to. Most of the girls were young and eager to reach New Zealand, and never tired of talking about their plans and what, or who, they might find there. Tamar liked most of her cabin mates, although she was wary of a handful of fairly rough girls. Their ringleader, a big, aggressive English girl called Eliza, was rude, foul-mouthed and somewhat intimidating.
    It had taken several days for the girls’ daily routine to establish itself. Mrs Joseph had lectured them vigorously on where they were permitted to go on the ship. There was strictly no entering the single men’s or crew’s quarters under any circumstances, no access to the poop deck which was for the sole use of cabin passengers, and they were to avoid going through the family quarters at night; it would certainly not do for a married man to see a young woman in her night attire, or vice versa. There was a closet privy in the single women’s quarters and this, for modesty’s sake, was to be used rather than the other sanitary facilities. Bathing would be carried out regularly every second day, using buckets of sea water, and laundry was to be done on Fridays.
    The girls had worked out a roster detailing who would collectand prepare the rations, which were prescribed by the ship’s surgeon, Dr Adams, and handed out under supervision. The food was adequate some of the time but, in Tamar’s opinion, frequently left a lot to be desired. On one occasion they received spoiled meat that had to be thrown overboard, but emigrants who had come from poverty more dire than Tamar’s thought the food was lovely. Every few days a supply of preserved meat, with rice or potatoes, pickled cabbage or dried peas, mustard and flour was served out to those on mess duty. Women nursing babies were allocated a quantity of beer