Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [124]
A long pause. She half-expected him to laugh in her face. 'Might have,' he murmured at last.
'Is it still a shilling each?'
Cadwaladyr nodded, his face blank under his tufted eyebrows.
All round Mary rose the wet stench of the dung heaps. No stars out tonight, and the moon wasn't up over the Meadow yet, thank the Maker. She set the tankard of cider down on a brick and moved farther into the dark shadows along the back wall of the inn. She reached the rickety staircase and laid her hand on it. Her stomach growled.
Here he lurched at last round the side of the building, the traveller, his inflamed face hanging like an udder. His coats swayed open, lined with curling lengths of colour. A ribbon peddler; Mary felt the sourness in her mouth, and almost laughed.
She stood and faced him for a moment. Here was her old life coming to suck her in again. Time was a loop, not a line. She was fourteen again, walking up to the St. Giles ribbon man, and there was no way out.
Mary turned and climbed the thin wooden stairs; they were slick with moss. The peddler hiccuped delightedly and followed her. All the room held was a straw mattress and some packing-crates. Everything stank of beer; the walls seemed to sweat it out. She wasted no time; she bunched up her skirts around her waist and lay face-down on the mattress. That way she wouldn't have to look at him.
After some fumbling the man was up to the hilt. Her ribs jerked against the rough mattress. Her insides tightened automatically. Like dancing a jig, Doll said behind her eyes; the body never forgets. The cully panted tiredly but ploughed on. How the beast in a man kept him going! Mary thought of the staked birds she'd seen in Market Square on Shrove Tuesday, staggering about in their own blood till the laughing cocksquailers clubbed them down. 'Why do the men do that?' asked Hetta, and all Mary could tell her was 'Because they like to.'
This was going to take a while; the peddler was past his prime. Mary's thighs were aching. She began to squeeze with all her force, though her back hurt from hours of smoothing Mrs. Harding's new petticoats with the charcoal iron. To encourage the fellow, she made a sound in the back of her throat; not a cry of pleasure, which she knew from experience could put some men off their stride, but a mild grunt of pain.
She was appalled to hear the church bell strike ten. Even Mrs. Jones would never believe it took this long to fetch a cup of cider. Panic began to rise in Mary's throat. Oh, merciful providence, let them not send Daffy back down to look for her...
She was tempted to buck the peddler off into the straw and make a run for it, but then she'd never see her shilling, though he'd had the use of her for a quarter of an hour. Hands pressed against the bristling straw, Mary took the weight of the man's desperate thrusts. What was that rhyme they'd taught her at school?
As the worms that work the soil,
Man was made for constant toil.
Finally she remembered a line she used to save for such occasions, when an aging cully seemed to be taking all night. 'Why you hurt me,' she complained, turning her head so she could feel the peddler's hot wheezing in her ear. 'You're too big.' He thrust harder. After another minute, Mary added a whimper: 'You'll tear me in two!' She could almost feel the words crowding together in the man's head, quickening his pulse, stiffening his guilty resolve.
A moment later it was all over, and his foam soaked the tops of her stockings.
Scurrying up Inch Lane with a small clink-clink in her pocket, Mary rehearsed her lines. Shame pulled on her sticky legs like a ball and chain.
In the parlour, the fire was almost out and Mrs. Jones snoozed alone over her darning. 'A peddler jostled me in the lane, madam,' Mary said breathlessly, 'and your cider spilled. I had to go all the way back for more.'
'Never mind, Mary,' yawned Mrs. Jones,