Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [125]
The bald moon had slid through the shutters of the attic room. Abi's shape was a long shadow in the bed. A great weight bore down on Mary's shoulders as she bent to prise her shoes off.
She was a greasy harlot, that's what she was. Had always been and ever would be and had been a cretin to ever imagine otherwise. Had Mary been marked as a whore by the midwife who pulled her out, head first into the draughty world? Did she bear some tiny invisible brand? To think she'd come all that way across the country, only to find herself face-down under a dirty cully again. Like Doll's old joke: A yard's the same length anywhere.
Sticky in her palm, twelve pennies, her half share of the fee. Not enough, not half enough for a bandy-legged peddler. Then again, when was it ever enough? When had Mary ever walked away from a cully and felt fairly rewarded?
She peered through the moon-striped dark. The maid-of-all-work was flat in the bed like a tomb sculpture; light caught her glossy brown cheekbone. 'Abi?' whispered Mary warily.
No answer. Silence covered the sleeper like a blanket.
Mary's bag was under the bed; she pulled it out, slowly, making only a faint scrape on the boards. She knew the contents of her stocking without looking inside. She added the pennies, one by one.
You couldn't call it a plan. It was more like a hunger, starting up inside her sour stomach. Cadwaladyr was doing her a favour, really. The ten pounds a year the Joneses allowed her was only the beginning of what she needed. If she stayed here in Monmouth, where she never had to spend a shilling, she could build up a little stock against poverty by making the same trade she'd made all her grown life. That way when she went back to London—as early as next spring, maybe—it wouldn't be the same way she left it. She could drive back with unpatched linen, some fine new dresses, and a fat weight of coins in her pocket, heavy against her leg, to ward off all danger.
Lying still in bed, she spared a thought for Daffy. Was he asleep, or lying awake cursing her? How her life might have changed all at once with the slip of a syllable, a simple yes. To be a wife and a mother in a small country town was the life millions led and other millions prayed for. What gave Mary the right to resent the dull round of domestic duties, to demand a life of silks and gold? What was the tapeworm in her stomach that always made her hunger for more?
Mrs. Partridge hadn't yet made her toilette, Mrs. Jones and her maid were told when they called at Monnow House. The building rebuked them; three storys high, it drew its skirts back from the muddy thoroughfare. Mary stared up at the glinting windows and savoured the thought of being so rich you could sleep in till half past eleven. Mrs. Jones dipped her knee to the liveried footman and asked permission to call again at noon.
To Mary it seemed strangely illicit to dawdle under the churchyard yews in the middle of the day; it was the first time she'd ever seen her mistress wander without work in her hands. The May air was light and the trees smelt sharply green.
Mrs. Jones led the way across the north side of the churchyard. There were no stones marking the bumpy green turf. 'Why is no one buried here?' Mary asked.
'Oh, they are, my dear. Unbaptised babies, don't you know, and paupers from another parish.' Round the corner of the church, Mrs. Jones passed two truant boys who were playing leap-frog over the soft-edged tombstones. She didn't say a word to them, only smiled. On the worn white wall of St. Mary's was a carving. Are they soldiers, fighting?' asked Mary.
Her mistress peered at it. 'I think it's Adam and Eve. It was clearer in my grandmother's day.' Then she stepped back and pointed upwards. 'Look at that, now. Our great spire is said to be two hundred feet high.'
Mary nodded as if impressed. How could she explain the grandeur of St. Paul's to this woman who'd never been beyond Cheltenham? And then the breeze turned and the