The Hills of Singapore Read Free Page B

eight o’clock of boiled oats and sugar, corned beef and biscuit as hard as a stone, sometimes an egg if she felt like paying for it; at two, a hot lunch of chicken stew, cabbage and potatoes. Afternoon tea was at six o’clock, and at nine a cold supper of bread, cheese and whatever was left over. This was the menu from Monday to Sunday. When the vegetables ran out and after all the chickens had been slaughtered, there was nothing left but weevily oats, sugar, salt pork and biscuit.
    Charlotte had been advised to bring her own supplies of tea, cheese and preserves, but by the time they dropped anchor at the Cape, whatever she had left was wormy and decayed. Rain water was only for drinking. Washing was in salt water, and she never felt clean, despite the quantities of soap she had brought. Without rain, after a week, the drinking water smelled and tasted foul and stale. When it rained she used her chamber pot and washing bowl to gather water to wash her hair so that for a brief period she might not feel covered in salt. She had a store of tobacco and brandy and bars of soap to bribe the sailors to get rain water for her and, in their leisure moments, to do odd repairs on the cabin. These came in handy also to encourage the steward—who had the service of thirty passengers—to supply hot water, bring tea, arrange laundry services or perform other duties above and beyond those he was engaged for, which were unspecified and negotiable.
    Once or twice Charlotte was asked to attend at Captain Wentworth’s table, especially after forming a flirtatious attachment to First Lieutenant Mallory, whom she was, however, careful to keep at arm’s length. For this formal occasion everyone dressed in the most elegant clothes and was seated according to their social rank. Charlotte’s own rank being rather humble, she was, naturally, not often asked to attend. She liked the old captain very much though, and he too, when he could, spent time with her, chatting about nautical matters and the Malay language which Charlotte spent much of her time, buried in Marsden’s grammar and dictionary, endeavouring to learn.
    The meal at the captain’s table was well worth the eating and of quite a different order to her usual fare. The first time she sat down for lunch precisely at two o’clock, there were sixteen people, and the meal included pea soup, roast leg of mutton, hogs’ puddings, two fowls, two hams, two ducks, corned round of beef, mutton pies, pork pies, mutton chops, stewed cabbages and potatoes. This was followed by an enormous plum pudding and washed down with porter, spruce beer, sherry, gin and rum.
    After the meal the ladies withdrew, leaving the men to enjoy a glass of port. How the captain and the officers resumed their duties after this gargantuan meal rather baffled her, but this they did.
    She had received the most pressing attentions from almost every unattached and many attached males aboard the ship. Charlotte’s experience with men was limited to a few rather tepid fumblings with a friend of her cousin Duncan and a more lively exchange with Will, the good-looking son of a farmer, who had however, been whipped away into the navy before anything of consequence occurred. But she was not naive. Her life growing up on the island had been educational, her mother happy to explain the sexual nature of human beings, which she considered natural and which was on open display all around her. In Scotland, of course, the subject had been taboo, and she was glad she had acquired this knowledge and a certain down-to-earth attitude to it before arriving on those chilly shores.
    There were few women on board. Of her roundhouse companions, three were travelling with their husbands and six were married women with children joining their men in India. The four who were single received almost overwhelming attention, even the devout and plain Miss Devenish, going out to India to save the young girls of