POLLY OF THE LADY MOLLY

It was one day in June when it all started.
Ever since I was younger I'd always wanted to be a pirate. Being six gave me the perfect opportunity to play pretend games; pretend that I was indeed a pirate.
But now I was fifteen I couldn't pretend anymore. My father wouldn't hear of it. "No daughter of mine is going to be a pirate," he would say.
My father and I are two members of the Charm family, an aristocratic family going back years. The other members are my mother and my two older sisters, Penny and Prudence.
When I was younger, I would beg Penny and Prudence to play pirates with me, but they were already at the age where they'd stopped playing with dolls and were more concerned with flaunting themselves up so that boys would notice them. "Oh, Polly, you're not playing pirates again. Isn't it about time you discovered the joys of make-up?" They would say, whenever I begged them to play with me.
Flaunting themselves up did them no good at all. Right now, Penny was twenty-six and Prudence twenty-five, and they were still unmarried.
Even though I was fifteen I couldn't help still wishing I was a pirate in private. When I was six, I was able to do it publicly, but now I am fifteen, I was 'at that age', as my mother puts it. The age where I should stop fantasising about being a pirate, and start fantasising about being in a young man's arms.
Every time it was a nice, sunny day, I would run down to the port to watch the ships sailing in or sailing out, and try to imagine myself getting on or getting off one of them. I always wondered what it must be like to actually be a pirate. Their lives must be so different to the games I played when I was younger.

"Polly! Polly!" I was in my bedroom, wondering what dress to wear today. I was deciding to wear the billowy, pink one that I wasn't that struck on. I was planning to take another walk to the port to watch the ship sailing out. It had been the gossip of the area for over a month now. The famous ship "The Lady Molly" was to set sail today and I was going to go down and watch it. I wasn't planning on wearing my dress there, but I didn't want to arouse suspicion. I would change before I went. I had pulled over my dress when my father called out my name again and entered my bedroom.
"Father!" I exclaimed. "It's a good job I'm dressed!"
"So sorry, Polly, but this is an emergency. The Prices are coming over today, with their sons, Masters Edmund and George. We are hoping to get Penny and Prudence married off at last!" He looked at my dress. "Ah! So glad to see that you haven't forgotten the posh tea we are to have with the Prices," he smiled and left.
The thing is, I had forgotten about the Prices coming over, with the excitement of "The Lady Molly" setting sail that afternoon.
'Oh no," I groaned to myself now. 'How am I supposed to get out of tea with the Prices?'
I stayed in my bedroom all day to think about it. The ship setting sail was at the same time as our tea, there was no way Father would let me go. It would've been an entirely different matter if one or the other was before or after the other one.
I thought and thought about it. At last, there was still an hour to go before the ship set sail. I crept outside my room. I heard my family go down to the Banquet Hall to layout our tea with the Prices. The front door was quite a way away from the Banquet Hall. I could just make a run for it.
My father appeared at the bottom of the stairs. "Come down, Polly!" He shouted up. "Come and help with the tea arranging!"
"I'll be down in a minute!" I shouted back.
I watched him saunter back to the Banquet Hall. I went back to my room, and grabbed my bonnet to put it on. The bonnet was a terribly huge thing. It was so huge that it hid my face. If anyone recognised me... But then I thought of another brilliant idea. I opened up the drawer to my desk, and took out the small knife I kept there. I went over to the looking-glass which stood next to my window. This was the first time I'd used my looking-glass. Mother had brought it for me, in the hope I'd end up like Penny and Prudence, and would want to start wearing make-up to impress favourable suitors. Something which, she was very disappointed about, never happened.
I held my hair up to determine which length made me look different. Using the knife, I chopped off my hair. Lovely brown curls fell at my feet. I felt a pang as I watched them tumble, but I knew that I was doing this for a very good reason.
When I'd finished, I took a proper look in the looking-glass. Yeah, I looked like a boy now. Nobody would recognise me. Now all I had to do was find some decent clothes and think up a name...
I crept along the landing to the Master bedroom where Mother and Father slept. I peeked in the long oak wardrobe where they kept their clothes. I found some dark brown breeches hung up. They were the breeches Father wore only when he was going out somewhere important. 'Perfect," I thought to myself. I took the breeches out of the wardrobe and sneaked them back to my room where I proceeded to try them on. They fit snugly.
I crept back outside and listened at the top of the stairs. A clatter and a shriek rang out. It sounded like a Prudence shriek, which meant she'd dropped something. That also meant they were all still in the Banquet Hall. I waited for about five minutes to make sure they weren't going to come back out; ran quietly down the stairs and headed for the door.
As I got outside in the blazing sun, I ran clear from the house and gardens, and then walked the rest of the way to the port.
As I got closer, I saw a massive ship sitting in the port. It had a black belly, with the words The Lady Molly written on the side in gold. It's white sails billowed in the light breeze. I was just in time. I ran all the way down to the ship where there were loads of men hugging and saying goodbye to their families. These men were to board the ship to look for better places. And then I saw him. The captain of the ship. I knew this because he looked different from the others. He was wearing a long, flowing brown cloak, and a hat which spilled over the sides of his head. And he looked handsome, in a weird kind of way. I plucked up my courage and walked over to him.
"Captain!" I called out. "Captain!"
He turned and saw me. "Come to join my crew, lad?"
"Yes."
"What's your name, lad?"
"Uh, William. William Scarm."
“William Scarm, eh? Well, my name’s Alonzo. Alonzo Sparner. But you can call me Captain Sparner. Come on board. But say goodbye to your family first, eh?”
“Oh, I have no family,” I lied.
“You mean you’re an orphan?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“And what made you want to be a pirate, eh?”
“Well, I’ve been brought up by a couple in an inn not to far from here, and they never told me why my parents died.” This lie was getting easier to tell, spinning out of my mouth like silk. “They recently told me they have no idea who my mother was, but that my father was named Edgar Scarm, and he came into their inn one stormy night, claiming my mother died in childbirth and he couldn’t take care of me because he was a pirate and his first love was the sea. And now, I want to be a pirate, just like him.”
“Uh huh. Well, you’ve made no mistake, young William. A pirate’s life is the best you could have. Drinking rum all hours of the night, robbing other ships of their gold. Well, come along, young William, follow me, and we’ll set you up a bed for the night.”
As I followed Captain Sparner onto the ship, I couldn’t believe my good luck. I’d left my family and old life, but I’d finally found the life I was much more better suited at, at last...

The End by Charlene Samm