Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [134]
He'd never done it standing up before. He'd never done it anywhere but in his bed. He'd never touched a woman who wasn't his wife. Not since the death of his last son had he known such grief.
At breakfast, Mary kept her face blank. No one would know, to look at this girl in her starched neckerchief, that anything had ever happened to her. Her mind ticked like a watch as she made her calculations. She watched Mr. Jones's hands on his knife and spoon, and remembered how his fingers had closed on the hard sides of her stays. All her triumph and excitement had given way to shame. Neither met the other's eyes. Mary nibbled her toast and tried to remember to breathe. She considered what hold this man had over her, and she over him.
Maybe he'd send his wife an anonymous letter, Seven-Dials style: Yore mades a hor. You ony have to look at her. But Mary was quite prepared to burst into tears and confess that the master had been forcing her since the very first night she came to this house. Would that save her? Who would Mrs. Jones believe? Would she trust her beloved Su's daughter over her husband? Maybe she would side with him anyway, not much caring about a dalliance with a servant: men would be men, after all.
Mary could only hope that inside her master, guilt, confusion, and lust had stirred up such a thick soup that he'd say and do nothing at all.
At mid-morning she was embroidering alone in the shop. She had a question about the colour of a thread, and she couldn't find the mistress anywhere, so finally she went upstairs and knocked on the Jones's chamber door.
A sound from behind the wood; like a bird in a trap. Mary knocked again, then pushed the door open.
Mrs. Jones was alone, crouching on the floor. Sweat patched her face. Mary shut the door and leaned against it. Her mistress looked up and made an attempt to speak. Had she found out, was that it? Did she know what her husband and Mary Saunders had done last night? Could she smell betrayal on the air, and was it breaking her heart?
'Are you ill?'
No words.
'Mistress! Shall I fetch Mrs. Ash?'
A violent shake of the head. And then the older woman's face seemed to crack like a bowl, and tears leaked out of every line.
Mary knelt beside her mistress, holding her up. She tried to pull her towards the bed, but Mrs. Jones clung to the ground, her petticoats weighing like tents. 'Blood.' The mistress's narrow wet mouth formed the word again. 'Blood in the pot.'
'Perhaps it's only a little,' said Mary doubtfully, and she reached under Mrs. Jones's skirts to pull the pot out.
Dark blood ran along the floorboards, pooled in a knot of wood. In the overflowing pot, something that wasn't blood. Mary pressed her mistress's face to her own shoulder, not so much to comfort as to blind her. Mrs. Jones began to shake now, her shudderings made no noise.
Oh Christ, had Mary somehow brought this on? Was this the Maker's wrath? But if so, the wrong woman was being punished. In her mind, Mary was back in Ma Slattery's cellar, with Doll gripping her wrists, and the red worm in the basin. At least she'd been glad to be rid of it. But to Mrs. Jones the same swimming shape was more precious than all the gold in creation. Mary crushed the weeping face harder against her collarbone.
Words came up, muffled; she released the woman. All that's over now,' said Mrs. Jones.
'No,' said Mary, and again, faster, 'no. You've time yet, surely.'
'I am forty-three years old,' said Mrs. Jones, her voice flat and formal. 'I have no son to give my husband.' Then she got to her feet with one sickening lurch and picked up the chamber pot.
Mary took it from her, as on any other day; she had to pull a little to make Mrs. Jones's hands release it. She covered it with a cloth. 'I'll come back up with water,' she said. 'For the floor.'
'Very good.'
'Will you go to bed now, madam?'
Mrs. Jones was still hunched over. She wiped her face on her sleeve. 'No, Mary, there's work to be