Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [109]
'Well, now.' She could see the mistress's face change, withdraw into itself. 'I must discuss this with the master, of course. But I fear I know what he'll say: we haven't a penny to spare at the moment. We have such heavy expenses, and you've been with us long enough to know how the quality are about paying their bills, Abi!'
The maid stared back at her, refusing to nod.
'But maybe at Christmas, if our affairs are in a better state,' Mrs. Jones finished in a rush. 'Yes, that's a better notion. Not so much a wage as a sort of Christmas present. To reward you for all the years you've been part of the family.' Nodding, as if she had resolved the matter to everyone's satisfaction, the mistress made her escape.
Abi stared after her. For eight years she had thought of Mrs. Jones as a good woman: the kindest mistress she'd had, anyway. But today she could see right into the woman's heart, to its kernel of cowardice.
She stretched the dough apart in her hands, ripping it like flesh.
The first Sunday in March, and the light was the shocking yellow of daffodils. After dinner the servants had their afternoon off, and Daffy slipped away as usual. But half a mile outside town on the Abergavenny road, he turned and folded his arms over his waistcoat. 'What do you want with me, Mary Saunders?'
'A body's got a right to walk where they please.' She stepped out of the shadow of a cherry tree on which the first few blossoms had opened.
'Well, the next time you follow someone on the sly, take off those clacking heels of yours. You couldn't track a deaf rabbit.'
Mary gave him one of her unexpected red smiles. 'Is that all you do on your days off, then, go a-rabbiting?'
Daffy shook his head.
'How do you pass the time out here, then?'
He shrugged. 'I look. I try,' he said sarcastically, 'to enjoy the quiet.'
'What's there to look at?' asked Mary.
'Plenty.'
Farther up the hill he was pleasantly warm from exertion, and Mary was panting like an old dog, with her ridiculous pocket-hoops bouncing from side to side. He shortened his stride a little. To be fair to the girl, she didn't give up easily. They passed thin lambs; he pointed out the traces of their wool caught on the rough skin of the blackthorn trees. He paused for a minute, to watch a hare scudding across a field, and to let Mary catch her breath.
The faint path wound between dried discs of cow dung, like dark clouds in the grass, holding tiny blue lakes from the last rain. It got very stony, then, and he heard a sudden skid of gravel behind him. Mary was down on one knee, and there was a muddy tear in her skirt, but she hadn't cried out. A laugh escaped from his mouth.
'Pox on you,' she growled.
'It's only a wee rip.'
'It's only my best blue gown.'
'Well, why'd you come out rambling after me in it?' Daffy gave her his hand to help her up, and again when they had to scramble over a pile of stones. 'This is the Kymin,' he told her.
'I never climbed a mountain before,' puffed Mary.
He let out another roar. It had been a long time since he'd found anything that funny. 'This isn't a mountain, girl! The Kymin's barely a hill. Now that,' he said, pointing over the skinny spires of Monmouth and far beyond, 'is a mountain.'
Green upon green, and the smuts of sheep speckling the land. He waited for her eyes to find the long spine of the mountain, and the sharp drop where it ended. Blue-grey stone, almost transparent from this distance. 'Only a small one, mind, but she's a beauty,' he added.
'What's it called?'
'The Skyrrid. They're the three sleeping beasts: the Sugar Loaf, the Blorenge, and the Skyrrid.'
'Have you climbed it?'
'The Skyrrid? I have.'
Mary shaded her eyes. 'I wonder why you'd claw your way up a vast rock, only to scramble down the other side again.'
'So that you'd know you had,' said Daffy.
Mary gave him a dubious glance.
'The slopes were all covered in moss and whortleberries. When at last I got up onto the bare ridge, I thought I'd burst with the terror of it,' he told her. 'It was no wider across than a bed,' he hurried on, aware of her mocking