Slammerkin (42 page)

Mary was silent, as if with astonishment. 'Who says?' she asked.

Mrs. Ash shrugged, as if to suggest that her informants were the elements themselves.

'Well, it's not true,' hissed Mary. 'None of it! I don't know what kind of troublemakers you've been talking to, but it's perjury, the lot of it.'

The nurse let the girl's blustering words hang in the air till they faded. She wanted to remember every sweet moment of this.

Mary inhaled heavily and walked upstairs. Mrs. Ash grabbed the girl's skirt as she passed. She rifled the folds feverishly, though the girl struggled. Yes, there it was, a wet mark, as big as her hand. She stretched out the blue cloth to display the stain. 'What's that, then?'

'I must have sat on something,' said the girl, faltering.

The nurse let out a snort of derision.

'Would you call me a liar?' Mary went on, shrilly.

'No, that's not what I'd call you,
Sukie,'
said Mrs. Ash deliberately.

The girl's face was white with guilt. It was as if the house were beginning to shake under their feet.

'Yea,'
Mrs. Ash declaimed,
'you have polluted the land with your whoredoms and sorceries.'

Mary stared at her crazily.

'Filthy harlot!
The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption,'
quoted Mrs. Ash triumphantly,
and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee till thou perish.'
It was as if the words had been stored up in her head all her life, just for this moment.

'Get away from me,' said Mary Saunders. She struggled up the
stairs, but Mrs. Ash was still holding her by the skirt, so she floundered like a boat in high seas.

'And the Lord shall smite thee with madness,
hissed the nurse, 'and
blindness, and astonishment of heart.'

Was the girl going to cry? Her eyes were burning holes in her pale face as she turned.
'Judge not,'
she told Mrs. Ash in a shaking voice, 'that's what the Good Book says too.
Judge not, lest ye—
'

But before she could summon up the rest, she'd been interrupted. Mrs. Ash's sharp fingertips almost met in the girl's soft arm. 'You dare to quote Scripture at me, you poxy little drab!'

Mary shook her off with one violent motion. In the girl's eyes, Mrs. Ash could see a change, as Mary registered the fact that there was no use in further denials. The serpent shed her disguise. 'At least men pay good money for me,' Mary spat over her shoulder as she went up the last few steps. 'You'd have to pay them yourself.'

Mrs. Ash's ears were ringing like church bells. She made a last grab.

'Take your hands off my dress!'

There was an appalling rip. The dirty white shift showed through the cloth of Mary's skirt. The girl reached down and gave the nurse a shove hard enough to send her down five steps.

Mrs. Ash landed against the wall. She dusted herself with trembling hands. Her breath was loud with panic and outrage. 'Very well,' she gasped, 'I'll trouble you no further. I'll just go and wake the Joneses now, if they're not awake already. You'd best be packing your bags.'

'You wouldn't.' The girl's tone was doubtful.

Mrs. Ash could suddenly see how young this creature was. She'd never felt such power before. It swelled like yeast in her mouth: 'See if I don't.'

Now it was Mary's turn to crouch down on the steps. 'Please.'

'Please what, you godless whore? What can you say for yourself?'

The girl was silent.

Mrs. Ash put her hands on her hips, and looked up at her. 'Did you think you could bring your sluttish ways into a respectable town like this and no one would notice? Turning our own curate into a filthy-pawed pimp? How dare you serve a good mistress by day and go trulling round town by night, dragging this whole household down into the dirt with you!'

'Don't tell the mistress.' The girl was beginning to sob, but her cheeks were still dry. 'She'll turn me out of doors.'

'Good enough for you.'

Mary's eyes were glittering when she raised her head. 'I've nowhere else to go. Please, Mrs. Ash. I'm sorry for what I said. Please don't tell. I was driven to do what I did, at the Crow's Nest,' said the girl finally, the words spilling out. 'It was only a couple of times. I needed the money.'

'For what?'

'Old debts.'

That came out a little too glibly; was the girl lying? Mrs. Ash peered up at her, trying to read her pale face.

'It was the only way I could think of to pay them off,' Mary rushed on. Then her voice turned a little wheedling. 'You know yourself, madam, what it's like to be so reduced in your circumstances, that...'

'That what?' asked the nurse, dangerously.

'That you have to make a ... a trade of your body.'

Mrs. Ash was rooted to the spot. She let herself imagine smashing this girl's head against the wall. 'It is hardly the same,' she said icily.

'No. Not at all.' With another sob: 'Forgive me.'

The nurse stared up at the harlot. Her triumph was suddenly mixed with exhaustion. She knew she wouldn't go and wake Mrs. Jones. Not tonight, not just yet. She would hold onto this moment as long as she liked. Maybe a day, maybe a month. Such a gorgeous
sensation, might and mercy mixed. And the girl abased on the steps and weeping like a baby, knowing that it was in the older woman's power to ruin her, any hour of any day. 'I'm going to my bed now,' Mrs. Ash told her with the gravity of a queen.

Mary, watching the dark figure disappear in the stairwell below, blinked the tears back into her sockets. She stood up and examined the damage; the seam was ripped all along her waist. The old bitch would pay for that, somehow, she promised herself. The hypocrisy of the woman, too—not to admit that they'd both lived by renting themselves out. Cunny or tit, what was the difference?

In her own room, Mary sat on the edge of the bed, softly. Her heart was still crashing around from rib to rib. Now there in Mrs. Ash, thought Mary, was an example of a woman who had risked nothing and ended up with nothing. That's what you got for being a servant of no ambition: a shrunken life, hung up like a gibbet as a warning to others.

Abi was face down in the pillow; how tired she must have been to have slept through all that racket outside the door. Mary bent and pulled her bag out from under the bed. Her stocking was full, voluptuous with weight. She spilled the coins into her lap, very gently. They covered the width of her dress. The scaly heft of them gratified her hands.

Mary tried not to think of Mrs. Jones's face, if Mrs. Ash did decide to tell. Instead she concentrated on the coins beneath her hands. If all else failed, she had this: some kind of future, spread out in her lap. A few coins were dull, others gleaming, and they all bore different faces. Funny how she couldn't tell, now, whether any one of them had been purchased with a week's hard labour with her needle or a quarter-hour behind a tavern. She rubbed a few coins between the ruffles at her elbows, to polish them. She'd tested them all by biting, as soon as she got them, but tonight she was haunted
by the idea that in her absence they might somehow have been replaced with counterfeits, or rusted away. She chose one and closed her teeth on it, despite a pang from a rotten molar. She'd like to eat the coin, she thought. To swallow them all, and keep them safe in the gilded cavern of her body.

Abi couldn't stay still any longer. When Mary had slid the bag under the bed and slipped between the sheets, Abi went up on her elbow and whispered, 'Mary.'

'What is it?'

'Talked to a Quaker man today.'

'Did you?' Absently. 'So will he come speak to the mistress?'

'No,' said Abi bleakly.

Mary turned her head towards her. 'You should run away,' she said, on impulse.

Abi curled her lip. What kind of nonsense was that?

'I mean it,' said the girl with animation. 'You wouldn't stand for such treatment if you'd a spark of spirit in you.'

Resentment flared up in the maid-of-all-work. She flung back the blanket and hauled her nightshirt up to the top of her thigh. She put her finger to the old brand.

'What's that?' asked Mary, staring. 'Another master's name?'

'Look close,' said Abi gruffly.

Mary brought the wavering candle near enough to the skin to make out the letter R, stamped in black.

'That means Runaway,' Abi told her before she could ask. 'Means I done it before, in Barbados. Means I know running gets you nowhere.'

'Tell me,' said Mary eagerly. 'What happened? Was it long ago?'

Abi wrenched up the blanket and turned on her side. 'Told you enough,' she said through clenched teeth.

'All right then, don't tell me. All I'll say,' added Mary, 'is that
your chances are better in this country. If you got as far as London, they'd never find you in the crowds.'

Confusion filled Abi's head, and a sort of grief. Was the girl trying to get rid of her? Did she want the whole bed to herself? Did she not have any need of Abi's company in the long nights? 'What you care, anyway?' she asked hoarsely.

Mary shrugged. 'I just ... it seems to me that masters shouldn't be allowed to think they own people, that's all.' She leaned over and snuffed out the candle with her fingers.

The maid-of-all-work lay and brooded on this for a minute. Then she spoke up in the darkness. 'If I did.'

'Mm?'

'If I run. You tell me where to go? In London?'

'Of course I could,' said Mary with animation.

'You give me money?'

A cold, prickling silence filled up the bed.

'Mary?'

'What money?' came the answer, almost formal.

Abi was suddenly sick of these games. 'You think I deaf?' She didn't care if her voice could be heard in the room below. 'You think I don't know what money sounds?'

'It's none of your business.'

'You got a stocking full!'

'I earned it.'

'I need some. I never get away without some money.'

Mary lay as stiff as wood.

'Please!'

'I'm sorry for you, Abi, but no. As a friend of mine used to say,
Every girl for herself.
'

It occurred to Abi now how easy it would be to pick up the pillow and press it down on this girl's haughty face.

'Oh, and by the way, I know how much I have, down to the last ha'penny,' Mary threatened softly. 'And you know I'd be able to smell your hands on it if you ever so much as touched it.'

Abi's fingers were full of murder. She put them in her mouth and bit down.

In the dog days of August, hives walked their way up Mary's ribs; her sleeves stuck to the crooks of her elbows. The air was full of dust from the hay harvest. For the first time in months Mary missed London, found herself pining for all the worst things about it, even the reek of the Thames lying low.

Trade was slack. There was a spinster called Rhona Davies who'd recently set up as a dressmaker over on Wye Street; she offered nothing fancy, but her low prices were tempting old customers away from the Joneses. At the house on Inch Lane, Mary sweated over the accounts, while Mrs. Jones nibbled her thumbnail. Missing sums, outstanding bills, bad debts. Everything depended on the Morgans, that was about the sum of it. If Mrs. Jones—rather than some smooth Bristol dressmaker, or even, God forbid, a London firm—got the commission for young Miss Anna's coming-out trousseau, the family on Inch Lane would be eating good beef all winter. Most of their other patrons were off taking the waters or shut up in their houses with gigantic paper fans; nobody was in a paying humour.

Over breakfast, dinner, and supper, on the stairs and in the yard, Mary felt herself being watched by Mrs. Ash like a Recording Angel. Any day, on a whim, this woman could choose to bring down destruction on her head. That was what tortured Mary: the not knowing whether or when. She kept her eyes low and did nothing to provoke the nurse. When one morning Hetta clung to Mary's skirts and said she wanted to learn to embroider, Mary had to push her off: 'Go back to Mrs. Ash.'

The child heard the hint of poison in the maid's voice, and clearly thought it was for herself; her lip hung down. But what could she do, Mary asked herself? Mrs. Ash smiled placidly and held out her hand for Hetta.

The girl never went near the Crow's Nest, in case Mrs. Ash ever
came to hear of it; she got Mrs. Jones's cider from the Green Oak instead, and told her mistress it was much fresher. On the rare occasions when she saw the Reverend Cadwaladyr, at market or in the church porch after service, she looked away. Her hoard of coins had stopped growing. They stuck to her palms when she counted them. They were all she had, but they weren't enough.

She and Abi shared a room without meeting each other's eyes; at night they lay rigid, inches apart.

The air reeked of fermentation from the cider brewing. Mary's forehead bore a permanent crease. 'Whatever's the matter with you these days?' Mrs. Jones asked one afternoon when they were down in the kitchen, pressing sheets.

'Blame the heat,' said Mary shortly.

Right through August, storms blew up every few days; no sooner was washing pinned up on the line than it was soaked through again. The farmers complained of mildew in the corn. Mary had a sense of waiting, but for what? These days all she was doing was killing time.

Mrs. Morgan walked in on the first of September for the final fitting of her velvet slammerkin. For all the heat, she was still swathed in her black fur-edged cape. Reverently Mrs. Jones lifted down the snowy velvet dress and spread it in Mrs. Morgan's lap to show how the snakes and apples on its train caught the light. 'Just think how the silver thread will set off madam's hair!' she said.

Meaning, thought Mary, bored, that Mrs. Morgan was as grey as an old dog.

'How this will eclipse them all at Bath!' trilled Mrs. Jones.

Yes, even if a mule wore it, thought Mary. Her hives were driving her demented. To distract herself from the itch, she stroked the nap of the velvet slammerkin with one pin-callused finger.

'It's fine work,' the Honourable Member's wife conceded at last. 'Well done, Mrs. Jones.'