Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [100]
One day at the afternoon tea table, Mrs. Jones and her patrons were full of veiled allusions to someone called Sally Mole.
'You never met her,' said Mrs. Jones afterwards.
'Who is she, though?' asked Mary.
'Was.' The mistress sighed, shaking her head over her tiny perfect stitches. 'She's dead now, poor wretch. Complications.'
'What sort of complications?'
Mrs. Jones rolled her eyes. 'You're a terrible one for the questions, Mary Saunders. If you must know—'
'Yes?'
'Sally Mole ... she was a local girl. Known to go with men. Strangers.' Mrs. Jones covered her mouth with her hand. 'It makes a body's skin crawl.'
And indeed Mary, sitting there beside her mistress, did feel shame rise like a sickness inside her. Strangers, she thought. A body's skin. Heat scalded her cheeks.
'See, now, I've made you blush!' Mrs. Jones reproached herself. 'It's not fitting, at your age, to hear such foul things.'
So Mary dipped her head and attended to her hemming.
Nance Ash had been keeping an eye on the Londoner for a while. Well, somebody had to be vigilant. She'd questioned her own judgement, at first. Could it be that she disliked Mary Saunders simply because of her youth and vigour? Certainly, it galled her to see such a stripling playing tig in the hallway with Hetta, the two of them charging about like dogs and crashing into the furniture. And then, Mary Saunders had a habit of questioning the nurse's authority in apparently tiny things—the choice of a word, a prediction about trade or weather—as a way of undermining her in greater matters. The new maid was in very thick with the mistress, these days; there was much talk of her mother's hands, and such a genius for the needle. As if sewing a few flowers was real work, deserving of gratitude. As if it could compare with the endless burden of raising a girl child, and a brattish one like Hetta at that.
So Mrs. Ash had continued to pray to the Lord for understanding and patience to enable her to bear sharing a house with Mary Saunders. Only gradually, over the weeks, had she let herself become convinced that the Londoner was rotten through and through.
It was not a matter of hard evidence yet, just a sort of vapour that hung about the girl. But it was only a matter of time before the corruption burst out and revealed itself. Mrs. Ash comforted herself with the Book of Job:
How oft is the candle of the wicked put out!
They are as stubble before the wind,
and as chaff that the storm carrieth away.
'There's something not right about her, don't you think?' she remarked to Daffy one morning as he was sanding a miniature wooden sailboat for Hetta in the yard.
'Who?' He looked up, startled.
'The Londoner, of course.'
'Oh, do you still call her that?'
'I think she rouges. Those lips aren't a natural shade.'
'They look all right to me,' he said lightly.
Mrs. Ash gave him a stern stare. Surely the Saunders creature hadn't got her claws into him already? 'And it wouldn't surprise me if she turned out to be a thief,' she added. 'It's said the big city's full of them.'
'You're a bit hard on the girl,' said Daffy, his wig slipping as he bent over the toy, sanding vigorously.
'You know you must tell the mistress if you catch her out in any dishonesty, though,' remarked Mrs. Ash. 'It's our Christian duty.'
'It seems to me,' muttered Daffy, 'that our Christian duty is to mind our own business.'
The nurse went purple to her cheekbones. The manservant had never given her such a back-answer before, in the year since he'd come to live on Inch Lane. So much was clear to her: Mary Saunders was spreading seeds of rebellion wherever she turned.
One morning when the girl was out at market, Mrs. Ash climbed the creaking stairs to the little attic room where the two maids slept. And there she found her proof at last. The mattress was scattered with colour: