Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [30]
Mary gazed at the man called Caesar, who stood talking to a pale girl, one hand resting lightly on his hip. He wore immaculate doeskin breeches: a thrill flickered through her. To think that this fellow once lay in chains, and now here he was, lording it up and down the Strand. It wasn't true, if it ever had been, what Susan Digot used to tell her daughter: that people had to stay all their lives in the places allotted to them.
'She must be one of his whores, and there's another over between the columns, as well as those two flirting with the Grenadier Guard,' Doll added, pointing. 'Caesar runs this whole beat, from George Court to Carting Lane. Not a soul gets in his way. They say he has a protection on him.'
'A protection?'
'Black magic, don't you know.'
It was true that no one came within a yard of the pimp and his girl; the crowds parted round them like water. When Mary walked near enough to see the length of the knife in his glossy belt, she knew why. The heavy scent of Caesar's pomaded wig hung on the air, and he was grinning. She didn't meet his milky eye. She hurried back to Doll, and a terrible thought struck her as she looked her friend in the face. 'I don't suppose it was him—'
Doll fingered her scar as if appraising its value, but her eyes still rested on the stately African. 'Aye. Caesar was Mother Griffith's own bully-man in those days, before he struck out as his own master. Mind you, he let me off easy, I'll give him that.'
'Easy?' Mary put out a hand to her friend's jagged face, but didn't quite touch it. How could Doll speak so lightly, as if it was someone else's story she was telling?
'You know that card-sharp with half a nose we saw the other night?' asked Doll.
Mary nodded.
'And there was a girl found in Pig Lane with no face at all, that was the bastard's work too; they say she'd run off with some money that was owing him.'
Mary covered her mouth. She imagined the great knife descending.
'Well, they wouldn't hire him if he weren't the best, would they?' asked Doll reasonably.
There was no answering that.
'So really it might have been worse. I call this my lucky scratch,' said Doll, tapping her scar with one long grimy nail. She slung an arm around Mary's shoulders and they walked on. 'Let it be a lesson to you, dear heart, never to pay poundage to any idle pimp or bawd. Every girl for herself, remember? Here's the first rule: Never give up your liberty.'
So this was liberty. Mary was beginning to recognise the taste of it in her mouth: terror salting the sweetness.
Doll could read anyone by the cut of their cloth, from Lyons velvet right down to grubby fustian. One night at the cold end of March, she and Mary were on their way home from Cock Lane in Smithfield, where they'd paid halfpence each to see the famous ghost of the Poisoned Lady, but she hadn't appeared. Doll pointed out a girl on the corner of Maiden Lane, with a thin, pleasant face, a torn shift, and one petticoat. 'That one won't live till summer,' said Doll, as if commenting on the weather.
Mary peered at the girl, as if to distinguish the hand of death on her. 'Will she freeze?'
'Starve,' explained Doll. 'Unless she begs or borrows or steals a good gown, no cully's going to waste a look.'
'She's a pretty thing, though,' Mary objected, glancing back at the diminishing figure at the street corner.
'It's not us they want, you dolt!' said Doll. 'In those rags, the girl can't let on to be anything but herself. Remember, sweetheart, you should go without a week of dinners sooner than pawn your last good gown.'
That was rule two: Clothes make the woman.
Dawdling outside Almack's, another night, they saw a phaeton fly up, and its door bend back like a wing.
Mary elbowed Doll. 'Who's that dazzler?'
'Her?' Doll's smile was broad and wet; it creased her scar. 'Nothing but a painted whore, no better nor you nor me, and ten years older.'
'No! She's quality, surely.'
'What a fool you are for a spangle, Mary Saunders.'
They watched from behind a pillar as a thick-waisted gentleman ran round to hand the lady down.
'What