Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [147]
Mrs. Jones couldn't eat a bite of supper. Afterwards, she waited till she was alone with her husband.
'Jane?'
She looked up, startled at the first name.
Mr. Jones laid a warm hand over hers. 'You're not yourself this evening.'
She blinked at him with grateful tears. 'It's nothing.'
'Has the child been tiring you?'
How she would have liked to nod, to blame it all on the petty exhaustions of an ordinary day. It wouldn't be the first time she'd have kept something from Thomas, after all. She had had bigger secrets, lies of omission.
But she shook her head regretfully. 'It's only—Mary. She was ... pert. With Mrs. Morgan.'
His forehead drew into a knot. 'Pert?'
'She meant no real harm—she only laughed—'
'Laughed? At what?' he interrupted, his face dark.
'Nothing,' said Mrs. Jones unconvincingly. Somehow she couldn't bear to describe the incident, the breast in all its pallid limpness. She was half afraid she might laugh herself.
'And what of the commission?'
His wife squirmed. 'That's what's worrying me. That's why I've brought it up at all. When she first came in today, Mrs. Morgan asked me to undertake three sets of clothes for her daughter—'
'And now it seems Mary Saunders has caused an utter breach in our relations with our most prominent patron!' He pronounced the words as if in a court of law.
His wife flinched. 'I don't know about that, Thomas. Mrs. Morgan left in such a hurry—'
His hand thumped the table. 'We'll be lucky,' he growled, 'if any member of that family ever steps into our shop again.'
Mrs. Jones put her face in her hands.
'As for the girl, I'll give her pert, he roared. 'I'll give her no harm. Bring the chit down this minute and I'll whip the smile off her face.'
His wife could feel her face stiffen into a mask of horror. 'But my dear, consider—'
'Bring her down for a round dozen this minute, I say. Her kind can't be reasoned with.'
'Thomas.' Mrs. Jones tried to gather her forces. 'We've never re-sorted to such punishment in our family. I cannot agree—'
'You cannot?' The vein on his nose stood out. 'Well, what matter if you can agree or not? I hope we'll have no petticoat government in this house!'
In the whole length of their marriage, through money troubles and domestic disputes, she'd never seen her husband's face so distorted, so beyond her reach. It was as if, by some piece of girlish foolishness, Mary Saunders had ruined her master's life.
Mr. Jones pushed his chair back; it made a dreadful squeal. Every nerve in his wife's body strained away from him, but she stayed where she was. He stood, breathing heavily. Something was softening his face—not kindness, it seemed to her, but some obscure doubt. As he scrabbled for his crutches, he mumbled something, so low she barely caught it.
'I beg your pardon?' she whispered.
'You do it. More seemly.' And with that he'd lurched out of the room.
'Abi said I was wanted.'
When Mary came in, the mistress was standing in the parlour like a thief, red-eyed, her hands behind her. 'Mary,' she said very fast, 'Mr. Jones—that is, we—have decided, my husband and I, that you deserve a whipping for your conduct today.' A birch rod emerged from behind her skirts. She toyed with it, as if it was some fashionable accessory she didn't know how to use.
Mary looked at her mistress very hard. They waited in a dull silence. Mary couldn't quite believe it. She hadn't been whipped since she was thirteen years old, and lost the penny through a hole in her pocket.
Mrs. Jones's words squeezed out painfully: 'What you did was very bad.'
'What did I do, exactly?'
The older woman's lips trembled. 'You laughed at Mrs. Morgan.'
'I meant nothing by it. I said I was sorry.'
Her mistress put her hand up to cover her mouth. Realising it still held the birch, she put it down again. 'It was the way you looked at her, when you were laughing.'
'I'm not responsible for my face, madam!'
But Mary knew this was bluster. When she had