Slammerkin (37 page)

No answer. Silence covered the sleeper like a blanket.

Mary's bag was under the bed; she pulled it out, slowly, making only a faint scrape on the boards. She knew the contents of her stocking without looking inside. She added the pennies, one by one.

You couldn't call it a plan. It was more like a hunger, starting up inside her sour stomach. Cadwaladyr was doing her a favour, really. The ten pounds a year the Joneses allowed her was only the beginning of what she needed. If she stayed here in Monmouth, where she never had to spend a shilling, she could build up a little stock against poverty by making the same trade she'd made all her grown life. That way when she went back to London—as early as next spring, maybe—it wouldn't be the same way she left it. She could drive back with unpatched linen, some fine new dresses, and a fat weight of coins in her pocket, heavy against her leg, to ward off all danger.

Lying still in bed, she spared a thought for Daffy. Was he asleep, or lying awake cursing her? How her life might have changed all at once with the slip of a syllable, a simple
yes.
To be a wife and a mother in a small country town was the life millions led and other millions prayed for. What gave Mary the right to resent the dull round of
domestic duties, to demand a life of silks and gold? What was the tapeworm in her stomach that always made her hunger for more?

Mrs. Partridge hadn't yet made her toilette, Mrs. Jones and her maid were told when they called at Monnow House. The building rebuked them; three storys high, it drew its skirts back from the muddy thoroughfare. Mary stared up at the glinting windows and savoured the thought of being so rich you could sleep in till half past eleven. Mrs. Jones dipped her knee to the liveried footman and asked permission to call again at noon.

To Mary it seemed strangely illicit to dawdle under the churchyard yews in the middle of the day; it was the first time she'd ever seen her mistress wander without work in her hands. The May air was light and the trees smelt sharply green.

Mrs. Jones led the way across the north side of the churchyard. There were no stones marking the bumpy green turf. 'Why is no one buried here?' Mary asked.

'Oh, they are, my dear. Unbaptised babies, don't you know, and paupers from another parish.' Round the corner of the church, Mrs. Jones passed two truant boys who were playing leap-frog over the soft-edged tombstones. She didn't say a word to them, only smiled. On the worn white wall of St. Mary's was a carving. Are they soldiers, fighting?' asked Mary.

Her mistress peered at it. 'I think it's Adam and Eve. It was clearer in my grandmother's day.' Then she stepped back and pointed upwards. 'Look at that, now. Our great spire is said to be two hundred feet high.'

Mary nodded as if impressed. How could she explain the grandeur of St. Paul's to this woman who'd never been beyond Cheltenham? And then the breeze turned and the golden bird at the top wheeled round, just like the one on St. Giles, the morning she'd run away. The tail glinted, taunting her.

For distraction she turned to the nearest headstone.

From earth my body first arose,
But here to earth again it goes,
I never desire to have it more
To plague me as it did before.

She thought of her body: the rubbery dampness of it. How it served her. How it wearied her.

'Very true, that one,' said Mrs. Jones enjoyably. 'Read me some more; my eyes are tired this morning.'

Mary recited the epitaphs of various Lucases, Prossers, Lloyds, and Adamses.
'In Memory of his Wife who Bore Him 2 Sons and 1 Daughter and Died in Childbed June 1713 Aged 38.'

Mrs. Jones gave a little shiver. 'Jessie Adams, that was; she was a friend of my grandma's.'

Mary moved on to the next, which was still bare of moss.
'Sacred to the memory of Grandison Jones
—' Her voice dried up all at once.

'—son of Thomas Jones, of Monmouth, and his wife Jane.'
The older woman's tone was gentle.

The girl couldn't think what to say.

'Now Delmont, our third,' said Mrs. Jones, pointing to the name farther down the headstone, 'I got that name out of a story by Mrs. Haywood. Even if she was a bit of a hussy!'

Mary counted the names. It was a small square, lightly scored with letters; she tried to guess its cost.

'Maybe Thomas would be better off with a young girl who could give him half a dozen boys,' Mrs. Jones went on, as if remarking on the weather.

Mary stared at her.

'But who could suit him or know his ways as I do? Besides,' murmured Mrs. Jones, moving on to the next grave, 'I've not quite given up yet.'

Something in her tone alerted the girl. Could it be? Surely not. A tiny laugh in the mistress's breath, as she smoothed her plain black bodice over her stomach.

'You're not—'

'Did I say so?' asked Mrs. Jones innocently.

Mary gave her a wide grin. 'I thought—' Then she stopped herself before the insult slipped out.

'You thought I was too old. Yes,' said Mrs. Jones meditatively, 'I was afraid I might be.'

They walked on a little way. Mary stooped to read an epitaph so old its letters were almost worn away.

We all must die, there is no doubt;
Your glass is running—mine is out.

Mrs. Jones slid her arm into Mary's as they moved on towards the river. 'I've not told Thomas, mind,' she murmured.

'Why?' asked Mary. At the thought that she was the first to know, she felt delight like a chip of sugar in her mouth

'Oh, I mustn't raise his hopes yet. I used to tell him every time I had the least expectation, but then he was sorely disappointed when it came to grief. And he was so very broken in his spirit when Grandison was taken last year. Mind you, it comes to all of us, rich or poor,' Mrs. Jones added, looking back at Monnow House, the highest in the line of creamy buildings. 'Madam in there's been brought to bed ten times, and not a one living.'

Mary tried to imagine it. Something like Ma Slattery's cellar, but ten times over; all your ambitions amounting to blood in a pail.

As they neared the river, she was startled by a glimpse of its blue. Though there was no visible sun, the Monnow shone like a broken sword cutting its way through the countryside. It held a slice of sky, that was what it was; Mary looked up and saw the bright blue, tucked between the clouds. At the end of the lane the cottages ran out and there was only muddy meadow. She and Mrs. Jones picked their way carefully, so as not to ruin their shoes.

The earth crumbled softly at the river edge, fraying into the
water. Mary watched the ripples advancing. Then she pointed in puzzlement. 'I thought it ran the other way, down to Chepstow?'

'Oh, it does,' said Mrs. Jones placidly. 'Look closer.'

Mary bent over the water and saw how she'd been tricked. The ripples were only on the surface, carved by the breeze.

'If you watch that twig, and those leaves coming down to us,' said Mrs. Jones, 'you'll see its true path, hidden under the ripples.'

The bell told them it was noon already. They turned to hurry back to Monnow House.

Mr. Jones was totting up the books. Meaning, he leant one elbow on the edge of the little polished desk and looked over the shoulder of Mary Saunders, who was quicker at calculations. 'Hmm,' he said every now and then, in a judicious tone.

He spent his time fretting.

He had read all the right literature. He had paid good money for volumes with titles like
Aristotle's Masterpiece
and
Conjugal Love
; he kept them in a locked drawer in this very desk, so as not to cause scandal among the servants. Between their covers he had gleaned much wisdom, such as: never perform your duty on an empty stomach. Or, a woman who lies on top will give birth to a dwarf. Thomas Jones considered himself a conscientious husband. He watched his wife for the sure signs of pregnancy: thickened ankles and a swollen vein under the eye. He did his best to give her pleasure, because without it, he knew, a woman never conceived.

But these days he had the feeling she was lost to him.

Mary Saunders had been making little stifled exclamations for some time. Now she jabbed at the ledger with her stubby quill. 'Twenty-two pounds, five and sixpence!'

He leant over to read the total. 'Ah. The Morgans.'

'They haven't paid you a penny in fourteen months.'

Mr. Jones licked his lips. 'Is it so long? Well, the Honourable Member is a busy man.'

'His wife swans in here every month.'

'Mary.' He sighed. 'You don't seem to realise the difficulty of our position. Such patrons must not be pressed.'

'Are you a worm under their boots?'

Mr. Jones gave her a very cold look, and she bit her lip. He tapped the ledger to indicate that she should carry on with the accounts.

He wondered where his wife was now. Sewing away in the shop, no doubt, her needle moving as fast as a swallow. She always let him know when she was going out to a patron's house, and informed him of what she'd told Abi to serve for dinner. And whenever he asked after her health, she would say, 'Very well, thank you, my dear,' or mention some trivial face-ache or stye. But for a long time now she hadn't told him anything that mattered. Above all, she didn't explain why she always seemed to fall asleep between the hour they retired to their room and the moment he climbed into bed after her.

Mr. Jones was not an excessively demanding man. Not as far as he knew. In the old days, for instance, whenever his wife was pregnant, he'd quite understood the importance of refraining, so the child wouldn't be shaken in the womb. Those had been burdensome times, but at least he had felt that he and Jane were at one, conspirators in a thrilling enterprise; their eyes might meet above the tea-kettle, and he would take a long scalding drink and know that all this self-command would be worth it in the end. After they'd lost Grandison last year, they had tried again at once, but it came to nothing, and then he hadn't wanted to put Jane to the trial again so soon. But the months had gone by, and still she didn't turn to him in bed, or so rarely that he hardly even remembered the last time. He didn't want to press her, but considering her age, their time was running out. And to wait, as he now did, without knowing when or why, was more than he could stand.

A terrible thought struck him. Had it not, in fact, been understood between them that they did indeed mean to try again? Perhaps Jane was worn out. Perhaps she had given up, without ever saying the words. And who was he to oblige her to hope again? What did he know of the dreadful disappointments of a woman's body?

He could hear Hetta in the passageway, bumping into something over and over, and laughing. Heaven knew, he was grateful for her. But a daughter, no matter how devoted to her parents, was only theirs for a time; she would marry into another family and bear children with another name. Was it presumptuous to long also for one single son? A son that would inherit the business, and support his parents when they were too old to work? It was a lot to ask, but he asked it. It was part of his quiet bargain with the Maker. It was the triumphant future for which the boy Thomas had swapped his leg.

Mary Saunders breathed heavily over the books. 'Do they balance?' he asked.

'Not yet.'

She was at her most handsome when she was concentrating, her lips pursed and dark from biting, her eyes on her work. His wife assured him the girl was not even a woman yet, which he found hard to credit, but she believed that grief, such as Mary's for her dead mother, might well delay the matter. He hoped she wouldn't leave them for a good ten years, for all her daft ambitions about going on the stage or catching a rich husband. Some local journeyman would marry the girl in the end, perhaps, or even a glover or stockinger. Women should not spend all their very best years in service, drying into spinsterhood. Look at poor Mrs. Ash; who would believe she was four years younger than his wife?

His eyes throbbed as he tried to follow the figures under Mary's pen. They would never add up. Drapers charged early, and patrons paid late, or never, and even in good months there was a scarcity of coin, which was all the fault of the Dutch. Sometimes he was amazed there was dinner on the table every night. His wife was such a capable manager, she never complained. She never told him her troubles anymore; not for months now. Instead she entrusted them to this chit of a girl. He heard the two of them murmuring like bees over their work in the shop, but if he walked in he could never tell what they were talking about. The chosen confidante was a stranger to the family who had none of his experience of the world, who
could offer no comfort—who, above all, didn't love Jane Jones as he did.

What was it that women had between them that made the words flow as easy as milk? What was it that his wife couldn't say to him?

One afternoon, by bad luck, Mrs. Harding and Mr. Valentine Morris both sent their carriages to Inch Lane with last year's suits, demanding an inch let out here and two inches there, and could Mrs. Jones kindly give the collar a more modish cut, and have the whole pressed and returned in time for the May Ball? Mr. Morris's German valet and Mrs. Harding's French maid swore at each other in narrow hall.

'I don't know at all, Mary, it's a whirling world,' said Mrs. Jones, letting her head sink back against the wall of the shop for a moment. Her heart was thudding, and she felt as heavy as oak, though her shape hadn't changed at all yet. 'New patterns every year, stitches so tiny I can hardly see them, names of stuffs I can't so much as pronounce ... Is there no end to it all?'

'Haven't fashions always come and gone?' said Mary Saunders.

Mrs. Jones shrugged her shoulders to ease their ache. 'It seems faster, these days. Sometimes I think of what my grandchildren will wear to church, and I might not even know the words for it.' Her hand rested on her belly, still flat, and she gave the girl a tiny smile.

Hetta was fractious; she insisted on playing with the needle box, and after Mrs. Ash had come into the shop three times to tell her she'd drop it, finally she did. The nurse took the child out of the room by the ear, muttering, 'This is what comes of having a name out of a storybook,' which of course was aimed at the mother. Mrs. Jones got down on her knees beside Mary to pick up the tiny needles.