Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [21]
Mary tried to join in.
'Now all you need is a dab of powder'—Doll pulled out a box and puff, and set to work on Mary's face—'and a lick of ribbon red.'
'Ribbon red?'
Doll let out that little sigh that meant exasperation, but also a delight in her own knowledge. 'Quicker than carmine,' she said, 'and cheaper too.' She pulled down the end of her own scarlet hair ribbon and spat on the limp strip of satin, then sucked it. She rubbed it hard against Mary's lips as if polishing the tarnish off a teapot. She moved on to Mary's cheekbones and the warm pink spread, like a flush of health: magic.
In the mirror Mary watched the mask take shape. This wasn't her anymore; this was some vivid, fearless puppet. She tried a smile.
Doll stuck out her tongue at Mary: it was as red as a devil's from the ribbon.
The girl laughed aloud. She was a quick learner, like Doll kept saying. Already she was picking up the language: words of spite and laughter, words she'd never heard at school or in the cramped rooms on Charing Cross Road.
That night Mary stood at the Dials with one hip pushed out the way Doll had shown her, and tried to mimic her friend's crooked smile. Grease and powder lay like armour on her face, but her knees trembled under the petticoats revealed by the gauzy orange slammerkin. The bell shape of her skirt was full of icy air. She kept the fur muff over her stomach so her bump wouldn't show. Doll would have been with her, except that she'd passed out cold on the mattress after half a bottle of gin.
Mary had only had a few gulps. The drink washed around in her stomach, warm and queasy. She remembered her instructions: coyness gets you nowhere. She would have to learn to think of every passer-by in breeches as a cully. How bold the other Misses were, accosting a stranger or laying a hand on his thigh. 'What d'ye lack, gentlemen?' called one woman in a felt bonnet.
'Need of company?' asked another, linking arms with a soldier as he passed, but he shook her off.
'A shilling for a glimpse of Eden!' cried a girl in a brown wig. Alice Gibbs, that was her name, Mary remembered; she was rumoured to let cullies go in her mouth. Mary was revolted by the thought, and looked away.
She cleared her throat as a man in fine plush breeches hurried by. 'Fourteen and clean, sir,' she whispered.
He gave her a brief stare, but kept walking. The corner swallowed him.
That's what Doll had told her to say as her come-on. Fourteen and clean. Only half of it was a lie. It could have been a child's skipping rhyme. What was the one Mary had learned at school?
Spick and span without, within,
Soul and body cleansed of sin.
'Trade's ever so slow tonight, ain't it?' said a fair-skinned girl in a silver-edged sack gown, and Mary nodded back. 'Have I seen you before?'
'No,' said Mary nervously, and gave her name, before it occurred to her that now might have been a good time to change it.
The Miss was called Nan Pullen. By day she was a maidservant on Puddle Dock Hill, she told Mary rather proudly, but as soon as she was sure her mistress was asleep, she borrowed a handsome dress from the oak wardrobe and walked the streets half the night. The fine clothes worked a treat; she was rarely short of trade. 'Quilting keeps the worst of the cold out,' she said professionally, slapping her heavy underskirt. And she always got home by four in the morning, to snatch a little shut-eye. 'Saving my shillings, don't you know.'
Are you?' said Mary.
'Someday I'm going to have my own lodging-house,' boasted Nan, 'and be beholden to nobody.' She left soon after that, saying she had an instinct the cullies were all hanging round the Piazza at Covent Garden tonight. 'I follow my nose,' she said, tapping it. She waved at the other Misses as she swept off, her fine gown scattering the dust.
A while later, a man hurried by with his hands in his pockets.