Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [29]
Then, then, we were able
to fuck or to fight,
our swords always drawn
and our pricks always right—
His friend burst in then, almost jolly:
but now we're a parcel
of shittle-come-shite—
They joined in harmony for the sweeping refrain.
Oh! the large cunts of old England,
and oh! the old English brown cunts!
Mary stood nearby, smiling as she waited for the end of the song. Finally, one of the sailors turned around with his breeches gaping and his yard in his hand. She stepped closer, and he punched her in the breast. 'Wouldn't take you with a pitchfork, my darling,' he crowed.
She backed away, clutching herself, but he pissed all over her, soaking her best violet overskirt. His friend tried to join in but was laughing too hard to aim.
'Rot you for a pair of sodomish arsers!' she shrieked.
She'd learned how to say what she meant, but it wasn't much comfort. Back at Rat's Castle, she sponged her skirt. Doll swore it was good as new, but Mary could still smell their sourness on it.
Not that she'd anything against doing it arseways. There were more than a few cullies who couldn't stand for it any other way. Some Misses declared they'd rather have their throats slit than submit to such filthiness, but Mary couldn't see that it much mattered. Arse and cunny were only an inch apart, after all. It was a clockmaker that taught her how to bear the thing, and though she'd left her teethmarks on his fingers, she was grateful to him for the lesson in the end. She wasn't ready for it, that first time; she didn't understand why he was spitting on himself. She let out a scream when he pushed into her. But she soon learned the trick of it, that night and other nights. If she thought of a door creaking open, or an orange with its peel coming off, it hardly hurt at all. Clearly there was nothing in Mary Saunders that couldn't learn, couldn't bend, couldn't open if it could turn a penny.
One morning she was up an alley with her hand down the stained breeches of a saddler, when she happened to turn her head and recognised the gates of her old school. It gave her an odd sort of feeling, to see the little figures in their grey buttoned smocks lining up in the yard. What a wet-eared innocent she'd been, only a year ago!
Mary and Doll were on King Street one night, sharing a pigeon pie and licking their burnt fingers as they broke it apart between them. Mary nodded at the fresh-varnished door of the brothel opposite. 'D'you think they're hiring?'
Doll blew out a contemptuous puff of air. All the street-cullies ask is a pair of open legs, my dear. In the bawdy-houses, gentlemen are paying so high, they expect a girl to roll her eyes in bliss.' She snorted at the idea.
'How d'you come to know so much about it?' asked Mary.
'Worked two years at Mother Griffith's, didn't I?'
'I didn't know that.'
Doll's lips formed into a sneer. 'You don't know everything, then. Reckon you know a bit more than when I picked you out of the ditch, but you still don't know much.'
'So tell me about Mother Griffith's,' said Mary lightly, refusing to fight.
Doll shrugged and spread her hands. 'What's there to tell? You lie on sofas waiting to get fucked, that's about it. So after two years I ran away, for a bit of liberty.'
Mary grinned at her.
'But the stinking bawd sent Caesar after me, to learn me a lesson.'
'Who's Caesar?'
'Aren't you the innocent,' said Doll fondly, 'not to know Caesar!'
She pointed him out to Mary the next day, down on the Strand. The man was an African, dressed all in white velvet, with a wig like a snowdrift; the polished yew of his face stood out against it. His skin had the high shine that only money gives. 'You'll know him next time.'
'Yes,' said Mary, staring.
'They say he was in a mutiny,' said Doll impressively.
'Where?'
'On a slaver, don't you know, in the Indies. The blacks all upped and massacred the masters, so they say. Imagine!'