Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [139]
'Oh, but Thomas, it's only once a year—'
'Stay,' he told his wife. 'I'll take her home.' And without another word he was off down the hill, oddly graceless on one splayed crutch. Hetta clung round her father's neck, and stared almost drunkenly over his shoulder.
Mrs. Jones stared after him troubled. 'I do think the child might have stayed up a little longer.'
Beside her, Mary stood with her face in her hands. Her teeth were chattering as if with cold. What had she done to this family?
'Mary, sweetheart, what is it? What ails you?'
'I—I have to tell you,' the girl said all in a rush, sobbing.
'Yes?'
But confession was impossible, Mary discovered between one breath and the next. There was nothing she could say that wouldn't hurt her mistress worse than anything she'd already done. 'I'm not the girl you think me,' was all she could come out with, hoarsely.
Mrs. Jones's narrow face was entirely innocent. The bonfire crackled and roared behind her.
'My mother ... I fought with my mother,' blurted Mary, improvising. 'Before she died. She never liked me. She never loved me,' she went on, a tear dripping into her collar. 'I wasn't the daughter she wanted.'
'Oh, Mary.' The woman's face screwed up and Mary thought perhaps she was shocked, but then Mrs. Jones started to laugh, in a weak sort of way, holding her stomach as if it still hurt her, as if she was still bleeding inside. 'Oh, Mary, my love. We all fight with our mothers before they die.'
'Do we?' she asked stupidly.
'Of course. We only remember the fight because of the dying, see?'
Mary's face was wet with misery.
Mrs. Jones pulled the girl into her arms on the smoky hillside. 'There, there, cariad. Look now, I'll tell you a secret to make you laugh, will I?' she whispered into her ear.
In this embrace Mary felt entirely safe.
'Something not even Thomas knows?'
The girl nodded, her face against Mrs. Jones's cool neckerchief.
'Cob Saunders—your father—courted me long before he ever looked at your mother.'
Mary looked up in shock.
Mrs. Jones was wearing a little shamed smile. Her hand almost covered her mouth. 'He was all for marrying me and sweeping me off to the great city—but I was fearful. For all Cob was a charming fellow, you couldn't be sure of him. And when I let myself think of all that dirt and noise, and the thousands and thousands of strangers' faces—' Her spiralling voice broke off.
Mary shrugged, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. 'London's just a place like any other.'
'Well, I'm only glad it wasn't me who went. Because while I was dithering, you see, didn't Cob take up with Su!'
The girl let herself think about that. Was there no friendship in the world without treachery hidden at the heart of it?
'I won't say I didn't mind at first,' Mrs. Jones went on, nodding judiciously, 'and I had quite a quarrel with Su over it, but it was true I'd had my chance with Cob before she ever stepped in, and besides, what was the use in harking back on maybes? And then not two years later, Thomas came home from Bristol, a master tailor, and we were married in a month. The gossips called me another man's leavings, but Thomas never thought there was anything in it.'
'But were you still—'
'Oh, I forgot your father fast enough. After Thomas and I set up the shop, I was too busy to fret about anything. I may have had moments of regret in my life, but you know, they wouldn't add up to an hour.'
Mary was letting herself think about the other ways the story might have run. Tears stood out in her eyes.
'What is it now, child?'
'It means—' She spoke with difficulty; her throat felt swollen. 'You could have been my mother.' She let the tears fall, flowing faster now. She was gathered to Mrs. Jones's soft bosom again,