Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [154]
Mary's mind raced. Then let them work for their bread, just as she had!
'You can put it out of your mind, now,' gabbled Mrs. Jones, watching her face. 'You can make a fresh start. We won't speak of it again.' She leaned over and patted Mary's hand. She let out a breath of relief. 'Now I think I'll step out for a little air, too, the evening's so close.' She hurried to the door.
The silence of the house closed in around Mary Saunders, and she stayed sitting there like an unfinished statue. It was all a great puzzle and bewilderment. Her mind was tired from the fever still, that had to be it. Any minute now she'd understand.
Then outrage swept through her veins, intoxicating her like gin. Charity, that was what they called it.
Grateful we must always be
For the gifts of charity.
But what about the thefts of charity? The sins of charity? The arrogance of a woman who confiscated another's whole hard-earned fortune and dropped it in the Poor Box? Who made herself a Lady Bountiful with another woman's sweat, with the proceeds of a hundred nights round the back of the Crow's Nest?
With one bound Mary reached the stairs. Time to pay herself back. In the Joneses' room she went straight for the wardrobe. The box was locked, but that wouldn't stop her. Mary ran downstairs, her heart pounding like a drum. In the empty kitchen she picked up the first thing she could find, a cleaver with smears of mutton fat on its blade. On the way back upstairs she heard herself panting like a wolf. With the back of the cleaver she smashed the lock of the box till it came clean off. The lid opened with one loud crack.
She counted, and counted again, sure her eyes were cheating her. There was only eight pounds, three and sixpence. Mrs. Jones's puny, private store. For a moment Mary almost pitied her mistress.
Then she remembered the Poor Box, and rage began to bubble up in her again. This fury was bigger than the fever. It moved like a great wind that sucked up everything in its path. It astonished her. Rage at every cully Mary had ever serviced, every disapproving woman's face, her mother, even Doll—everyone who'd ever judged her and tutted over her and thought they knew best and let her down in the end. Kicked her out or left her, one or the other or both, always and everywhere. All Mary's old griefs welled up now, but rage swallowed them as fast as they could come. Her mouth was bitter, her legs were locked, her hands were sharp. The bitch is going to get what she deserves.
First Mary filled her pocket with the contents of the smashed box. She'd be damned if she was going back to London without some money to start a new life. Then she went to her room and rouged her mouth and her cheekbones. She ran downstairs again; nothing could tire her now. She used the cleaver to whack open the store cupboard. She had the strength of ten women. She ripped the cork out of a bottle of best Canary and drank it right off, though its harshness made her cough. She took another bottle into the shop.
If she went back to London without fine clothes, Mary thought blurrily, she'd be nothing but a beast of the field, a vagabond, shooed along from parish to parish till she ended up in the workhouse with her feet chained to the wall. Time seemed to have slowed down now. The long mirror tempted her, so she shucked off her plain brown dress and climbed into Mrs. Morgan's white velvet slammerkin. A loose dress for a loose woman, you sleezy slut of a slammerkin, laughed Doll in her head. It was hard to fasten the dress on her own with fingers made clumsy by the drink, but she managed. She filled the dress as if it had been made for her. The little silver snakes were wriggling on their long train. Mary stood and twirled in front of the mirror, and the whole world seemed to turn. Enraptured, she grabbed the bottle of wine and toasted herself, from her endless train to her scarlet lips. She'd never seen anything more beautiful.
It was hard to decide what else to take. Her mind was gliding along as if on ice. Her future might depend