Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [129]
Sometimes when she glanced up from her sewing it was as if twenty years had rolled up like a carpet and she was a girl again, doing her darning with Su. She talked to her old friend sometimes; more and more these last months, ever since she'd begun to suspect her condition. Su, she said in her head, thank you for your daughter. I only wish you could have seen mine. There was an infinitesimal hint of a curve below her ribs, but not enough to show, yet. She shut her eyes and wished hard that this one would be a boy. One who would live.
Her husband was looking hangdog these days. In bed at night, his eyes rested on the ceiling; he never guessed that his future was sprouting like a seed beside him. She would have comforted him in the best way she knew how, except that it might endanger the child. Time was she used to tell Thomas everything, but that was years ago, before their family grew and shrank again, before any of the necessary secrets. She longed to give him the good news, but something laid a chill hand on her and said to wait. Just a little longer. It mightn't be true. It mightn't last; it mightn't live. So for now she kept the secret hidden in her mouth like a pearl. She sat and stood and walked as if her skirts were lined with silver, but nobody noticed except Mary.
Now the two of them were laughing over some bit of nonsense when Daffy came into the shop to deposit a stack of trunks. Mary's laughter cut off as if a door had slammed shut. Mrs. Jones looked up from her needle, and noticed that the two servants both looked everywhere in the room except at each other. 'Mary,' she said quietly, a few minutes after Daffy had left, 'is there anything you wish to tell me?'
The girl shook her head, eyes on her sewing.
'I mean to say, I did once think—that is, I know how young you are, but I once imagined that you and Daffy might be beginning to have ... a fondness for each other. Was I wrong?'
'No,' muttered Mary.
'These things do often occur, in a household,' said Mrs. Jones vaguely. 'It's only natural.'
Finally the girl looked up, her cheeks flushed. 'The truth is—he asked me to marry him.'
'At sixteen!' said Mrs. Jones, her mouth puckered with shock.
'He wanted to marry me and take me away from here, and I said no.'
'Mary!' exclaimed Mrs. Jones, her eyes brimming over at the thought of it. 'My poor girl. My poor good girl.' The maid smiled a little, shyly, while the mistress searched in all her pockets for a handkerchief. 'Don't mind my foolishness,' Mrs. Jones stammered through her tears. 'It's only my condition.'
Mary handed over a clean folded handkerchief, and Mrs. Jones mopped her eyes with it. How glad she was; how blessed by such loyalty. To know there was someone who cared about her too much to leave her service, who would stand by her through all trials!
'Cider's ever so strengthening in the early months, I've heard,' Mary told her mistress, and frequently offered to go down to fetch her some from the Crow's Nest after dinner. Mr. Jones was all in favour of whatever could restore a bit of colour to his wife's cheeks.
Mary's life was folded over like a hem. There was a day side and a night side, and to look at one you'd never guess the other. She wasn't too sure which Mary was the real one. It was strange, but it was how it was.
Hidden in her bag under the bed, her single gold-clocked stocking was getting heavier, the coins mounting up. Grubby ones, shiny ones, a few with edges clipped off by coiners, and a whole crown a sozzled lawyer from Edinburgh had dropped between her breasts for a tip, probably thinking it was a penny. Cadwaladyr was civil, these days, apart from his mocking eyebrows; he always gave her a few minutes to get round the back and out of sight in the little room above the stable, before sending the cullies out to her. Sukie—his own invention—was the name he gave her. 'Tell Sukie I sent you,' was what he said to the cullies. They were always