Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [119]
Daffy's hands were twined together like wet rope. He wore the painful expression of someone trying to recall the second verse of a song. 'Mary, Mary,' he remonstrated, 'all else aside, how could we think of bringing up our children in the big city?'
She stared at him. For a moment she'd forgotten how little he knew about her. He had no idea who she really was: a barren, raddled whore. His innocence repelled her as much as her own deceit.
She and he were too unlike, she saw now; they could no more combine than oil and water. They wanted different things in life and had different plans for getting them. Mary's path and Daffy's had briefly crossed in this blossoming wood before snaking away in opposite directions. The old happy ending had no place in this particular story. How could she have been such a fool?
'I've made a mistake,' she said quietly, and turned to pick up her basket.
'What do you mean?'
'I can't marry you.'
'Not quite yet, I know,' Daffy blundered on, 'but in good time—'
How could she ever have thought of mating herself to such a plodding, ordinary man? 'Never,' said Mary, walking out of the wood.
John Niblett the coach driver brought news that the war with France was over at last after seven years, and the Government had ordered public rejoicings in every town. But Mr. Jones spent the evening poring over the Bristol Mercury, and announced over griddle cakes at supper that this so-called peace was a disgrace. 'We beat the dogs fair and square, and now we're handing them back Guadaloupe and Martinique!'
Mary would have liked to stroll down to the bonfire on Chippenham Meadow—they said there was going to be dancing—but she feared to meet Daffy there. The man's eyes were as red as a rash these days. He kept hovering in her vicinity, as if he had some grand, decisive declaration to make. But she made sure never to be alone with him. Nothing he could say would make any difference.
Within a few weeks the blooming trees were scraggy again. Mrs. Jones said bloom fall was the season that always made her sad; it came on so quickly. The blossoms nailed to the walls of the house faded and curled after a few weeks, but their smell grew stronger.
To Abi, they always seemed to have a tang of rot. Late one warm May night she lay on her side of the bed and stared out the tiny window. The shutter had been left wide open to catch some air. There was nothing to see but an indigo sky. Beside her, Mary Saunders let out a long breath between her teeth.
'You fight with your fellow?' asked Abi.
Mary's head turned towards her as quickly as a bird's. 'What fellow?'
Abi snorted mildly. As if the way Daffy had been looking at Mary recently wasn't enough to spark tinder.
Mary turned her back and spoke very low into the darkness. 'He's not my fellow.'
That meant yes. A bad fight. Abi waited; sometimes silence was the loudest question.
'Besides,' said Mary, flouncing onto her back and staring up at the low ceiling, 'I wager I'll get farther on my own than if I harness myself to such a dumb ox.'
'Where you going to?'
'Never you mind.'
Again, Abi waited. She had learned not to be hurt by such automatic rebuffs. This girl had to be handled like a sharp-clawed cat.
'London, where else?' said Mary at last, as if the darkness were squeezing the words out of her.
'When?'
'Not anytime soon, but someday. There's no use going back till I have good clothes and money. Turn up empty-handed in the city,' said Mary scornfully, 'you might as well lie down in the road for the carthorses to trample.'
Abi shut her eyes and suddenly was back in Bristol, the day the ship from Barbados came in to port, nine years ago, in the chilliest rain she'd ever known. Her skin where the brass collar had been was naked, raw. The streets were no wider than outstretched arms, as crammed with faces as a trash heap with rats, and every face was white. While Abi had been waiting for the doctor to collect all his trunks, an enormous rattling cart had borne down on her, and it had occurred to her to step in front of it. What had stopped her, she wondered