Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [166]
The words were very near, Mrs. Ash was convinced of it. They were building up, as if behind a membrane. Any day now Mr. Jones would put the question. It might come bluntly, or as a delicate hint; it might sound flat, or bring tears of relief to her scratchy eyes, but surely she'd recognise it when she heard it.
Or should she begin, she wondered? Men were such cowards.
Hetta wrenched her small hand out of the nurse's sticky grip and hid behind her father's leg. Mr. Jones glanced down, absently.
'She needs a mother,' remarked Mrs. Ash, seeing her chance.
Pain ran across the man's face like a lizard.
Briefly she regretted causing it, then pressed on. 'I'd not intrude on your grief, my dear Mr. Jones, but have you ever considered...'
Had he considered her? Ever? Had he for one moment of the years they had lived under one roof truly considered Nance Ash, noted her many inestimable qualities, her worth, beyond rubies?
She ploughed on. 'For the sake of your child. Of your children,' she faltered, 'not yet born.'
He stared at her, the skin around his eyes almost black. 'You think I should take another wife, Mrs. Ash?' he said, his tone indecipherable.
She nodded deeply. She couldn't let herself seem too enthusiastic. 'That may be God's hidden plan.'
Mr. Jones shrugged, as if his Maker's views were neither here nor there. His eyes had returned to the carpenter on the scaffold; he lifted Hetta high onto his shoulders to give her a better view. After a minute, he said, 'All I know is, I'm no good alone.'
Mrs. Ash's mouth curved into a smile, then she swallowed it. 'Have you given any thought—have you met with any woman who has the qualities you seek?'
Now. It had to come now. The labourer deserves the fruit of his toil.
'As it happens, yes.'
A pause, a lifetime long.
'I've spoken to Rhona Davies. The dressmaker, you know,' said Mr. Jones flatly, his eyes on the scaffold. 'We're to wed in June.'
A sword in the heart.
Mrs. Ash turned her face away so he wouldn't see it break. Hetta stared down blankly.
Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.
'Hush now, Hetta,' he told his restless daughter, letting her down for a minute and giving her another bit of gingerbread. Blinded by the crowd, she stumbled as they pushed against her, and gripped her father's crutch for support. Mrs. Ash, her face in her hands, didn't seem to notice. Surely she wasn't weeping for Mary Saunders? How strange, Mr. Jones thought: such misapplied tenderness in a dry old peapod like her.
Hetta still clung to his birch crutch, smoothing the wood with her thumb. Without this small sticky-faced child, he thought, there would be no purpose to anything, and he might as well go down to the banks of the Wye. It would be quite deserted; everyone was here in the Square this morning. He could let himself fall into the rushing river, let the weed drag him under the current.
Mr. Jones put that thought to one side and went back to making plans. He considered certain incontrovertible facts. Rhona Davies was twenty-seven years old, and a perfectly good seamstress, though not known for fine embroidery. She would in all likelihood make a perfectly good wife. It couldn't be easy for a woman to run a business on her own, he supposed; certainly she had jumped at the chance of a partnership with the widowed staymaker, said yes with no coyness or prevarication.
She would be kind to Hetta, he knew. She would sit in his dead wife's chair, using her workbag, mending his twice-darned stockings, pouring tea from his China kettle. (He had thought of smashing it, that first night, just for something to break, but Jane wouldn't have approved.) This second marriage would feel like a mummery and a mockery at first, but perhaps he'd get used to it. He and Rhona Davies might have half a lifetime ahead of them; twenty years of chances