Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [28]
'Find yourself a girl,' she told him, 'and don't be wasting your money.'
He blew her a kiss before he ran off.
That night she and Doll lay on their leaking straw mattress in their dark room and talked till the poet who'd moved in next door battered the wall with his fists.
Ribbon rose, ribbon white
Each day ends with a night
Many a Miss was a purse-snatch too, which gave the trade a bad name, and was dangerous besides. 'Nobs can stand being poxed much sooner than being picked,' Doll advised. Besides, Mary had her principles. She'd only robbed a man the one time, and he was a lying dog who wouldn't pay the half a crown he'd promised her if she'd let him beat her with his shoe before the act. She waited till he'd drunk himself to sleep on the tavern table, then she ran off with two fine Pinchbeck shoe-buckles and a silver watch. 'Fair dues,' as Doll said.
Mary had yet to figure out why any woman would do it for free. There were some who did it to get children, she knew, and others for pleasure or what they called love. Doll occasionally did it for nothing, mostly with a soft-skinned journeyman carpenter. 'It's a comfort, ain't it?' she argued. Not to Mary. And Mercy Toft was sweet on a bookish Frenchman who was as pale as she was dark; she snuck him up to her room sometimes when her bully-man wasn't around. Mary found such longings unimaginable.
She'd never yet felt this thing called lust, but she knew enough about its signs to copy them. She'd learned the knack of dirty talk. It wasn't so much the words she used—though foul terms did excite some cullies—as the tone. If her voice was sufficiently arousing, she could be talking about porridge for all it mattered. The trick was to pretend to be excited herself. An intake of breath, a catch in the voice: it fooled the cullies every time, and speeded them up like nothing else.
The odd night she lay beside Doll and her carpenter, pretending to be asleep, while they moved together like fish. Doll rolled her head back as if in pain, but her mouth was tender, and her cheeks were wet. Mary stared through the darkness.
She'd never yet opened her legs for her own body's sake, but only for what it had earned her: money, shelter, bargaining time. It wasn't herself Mary sold, she was sure of that much. She just hired out a dress called skin.
Ribbon white, ribbon green,
Some grow fat, some grow lean.
In the months since Ma Slattery's cellar, Mary hadn't had her courses, which was just as well, she supposed. Safer. She'd thought at first that it was just a temporary reprieve, but by now she'd come to the conclusion that her bleeding days were over. It was a peculiar sensation, to know herself finished with all that at fourteen. But not uncommon, among the Misses, Doll said. And, all in all, wasn't it handy for a girl in the trade to get the belly business over and done with?
Mary had the impression that Doll had dropped a couple of brats in her early days. There was no point asking about them, she knew. They wouldn't have lived.
She itched to know her friend's story, but she had to get it by guile, a line at a time; direct questions got no answers. One day they were passing a wig shop on Monmouth Street when Doll mentioned that her first was a peruke-maker.
'Who's that?'
'My first. The man my old folks sold me to.'
Mary gave her a wary look. She was still never sure if Doll was joking or not.
'He'd heard a virgin was a sure cure for the pox,' said Doll, walking on. She let out a laugh like a pebble in a jar. 'Money down the drain!'
Mary ran to catch up. 'How old were you?'
Doll shrugged.
Did this mean that Doll didn't remember, Mary wondered, or didn't think it mattered?
The older girl said nothing more about it that day, but when Mary asked, another time, Doll added, 'I was young enough to know naught. I was so green, I reckoned the fellow was making water in me!' And that terrible laugh came from the very back of her throat.
Ribbon green, ribbon red
The tale's not told till you're dead
One night in March Mary came on to a pair of tars behind