Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [112]
'What?' asked Daffy, dizzy.
'The leg he hasn't got. What's it like?'
Daffy wrestled with the metaphysics of this.
'I mean the bit of it he has, before it stops,' she said impatiently. 'Is it jagged, then? Can you see the teeth marks of the saw?'
'I've never seen it.'
'You must have.'
Daffy shook his head again.
She walked a little closer to him, and whispered: 'Is there anything else missing?'
This was a most forward and peculiar girl. His face was hot. He turned to face into the cool breeze and stared down into the valley. 'That's the Sugar Loaf,' he remarked after a minute. 'And there's Glamorganshire. They speak no English there.'
Mary gazed down on the foreign country. After a few minutes, she spoke as if continuing a silent conversation. 'You could do better.'
He glanced at her, bewildered.
'That Gwyn. She doesn't sound like she was much of a match, anyway. And first cousins shouldn't marry, I've heard; they have queer babies. I'm sure you could do better.'
He didn't know what to say. He felt like laughing, but no sound emerged.
Mary pointed to a flower with a big white head. 'What's that one?'
'Ah, yes,' he said. 'Ramsons, it's called. Rub it on your wrists for perfume.'
She obeyed, unguarded. A reek rose from her.
Daffy laughed aloud. 'Some call it wild garlic.'
She threw the crushed stems in his face and ran down the hill.
Mr. Jones had never made a bigger set: fat old Widow Tanner would need sixty bonings for her new Easter stays. Well, if he finished them by Good Friday he was going to charge her double, and defy her to query it! Mary Saunders held an arc of whalebone for him while he backstitched it into place. Her hands were sure; they never trembled.
'I'll name no names, Mary,' he murmured, tugging the thread taut, 'but some staymakers do no more than slot the bones into tucks in the cloth, so they ride about as they will.'
The girl sucked in her breath as if shocked at the very idea. He knew she was making fun of him; he didn't take offence. His eyes focused on the skeleton of boning in its skin of dull linen. It would take three more days of work before he could start adding the sets of laces—front, back, and side—that Mrs. Tanner's vast flesh would require.
'Will this pair be silk?'
He gave the girl an amused glance. He'd never known anyone to take such a relish in fine fabric. 'The cover will be. But that matters little, Mary. Any set of stays can look well on the outside, even if there's shoddy work within.' He moved the girl's cold hands infinitesimally, to change the angle of tension. 'It's the bones that matter.'
'I know that,' she said a little bored. 'But the new green paduasoy is so much handsomer than that old brocade you used on Mrs. Pringle's stays.'
Mr. Jones's mouth curled up at both ends. Ah, well now, beauty. Beauty demands sacrifice, Mary.'
'Sacrifice?'
'The French have never understood that,' he pronounced. 'Their lovelies are loose; all they care for is a row of glossy bows, and a plump decolletage. But here in England we make the most unyielding stays in the world. Upright in body, he quoted, 'upright in soul. English ladies' sides are straight and narrow beyond anything nature can produce.'
'Stays hurt though, sometimes. You should try them,' she remarked under her breath.
He let that bit of pertness go. 'There's a universal worship of beauty which the tender sex cannot escape. Did you ever see the Misses Gunning, Mary?'
She shook her head.
'No, of course not, you must have been a child,' he corrected himself. 'Well. They were the most famous beauties of their day, Miss Maria and Miss Susanna. Can you guess how Miss Maria died?'
Another impatient shake.
'Paint,' he said with grim satisfaction. 'She used a powder to make her face pale and smooth, and it poisoned her in the end.'
Mary gave a little shudder. 'So will you be making Hetta a pair of stays?' she asked after a minute.
He glanced at her curiously.
'Haven't you heard her asking for them?'
'The child's not six years old,' he murmured, pushing his long