Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [4]
While Mary was waiting at the corner for the milkmonger each morning—and especially if he'd bittered the milk with snail juice to make it froth as if fresh—she took refuge in her best memories: the time her mother had taken her to watch the Lord Mayor's Procession, or the sky-splitting fireworks on Tower Hill last New Year's Eve. As she hugged her pint basin of tea and soaked her crusts to soften them, she conjured up a luxurious future. She dwelt on how she would have her maid wind a scarlet ribbon into her plaits every morning; how its gaudy stain would make her hair gleam like coal. The sounds of her future would be foreign ones: flutes, and galloping horses, and high trills of laughter.
All day at school Mary thought of gaudy colours as she copied out Precepts and corrected the spelling of the girls in the neighbouring desks. None of the tasks set demanded more than a fraction of her mind, that was the problem. The Superintendent called her proud, but Mary thought it would be nonsense to pretend she didn't know she had quick wits. As far back as she could remember, she had found her schoolwork ludicrously simple. Now she busied herself with fantasies of hooped gowns with ten-foot trains as she stood—a full head above the younger girls—reciting the Principles of Goodness:
Put upon this Earth to work
None but wicked children shirk.
Mary was so used to these rhymes by now that she could join in with the chorus of voices while her mind was altogether elsewhere. Could chant the Five Requirements for Salvation, for instance, while deciding that once she was grown to womanhood she would never wear beige. She tried not to think about how empty her stomach was, or the Mighty Master in the sky, or what piece-work he was going to hand her, or how long a life she'd have to do it in. That Immortal Soul the teachers harped on so much—Mary knew she'd swap it quick as a blink for the merest inch of beauty. A single scarlet ribbon.
In September, old King George dropped dead and young George was the new king. William Digot said things might take a turn for the better now. This fellow had been born on English soil, which was more than you could say for his dad and his grandad, 'and Lord knows we've had enough of those Germans and their fat wives.'
When he fell asleep in his chair, Mary peered over his shoulder at the newspaper in his lap. She suspected her stepfather couldn't read one word in three; he just stumbled his way through the headlines and looked at the pictures. Under the title 'King of Great Britain, Ireland, Gibraltar, Canada, the Americas, Bengal, the West Indies, and Elector of Hanover' there was a full-length drawing of the young king; his expression a little nervous, his thighs in their velvet breeches as smooth as fish.
Crouched by the window to catch the last of the daylight, Susan Digot nibbled her lip. Mary knew her mother took no interest in politics. All the woman had ever wanted was to be a proper dressmaker, shaping elegant skirts and jackets instead of quilting coarse six-inch squares twelve hours a day for dirt pay from a master she'd never met. She and Cob Saunders had both grown up in a faraway city called Monmouth before they'd come to London in '39. 'What was it brought you and my father to London in the first place?' asked Mary now, softly, so as not to wake the coalman.
'Whatever makes you ask a thing like that?' Susan Digot's eyes were startled, red at the rims. But she didn't wait for an answer. 'Myself and Cob, we thought we'd better ourselves, but we should have bided at home.' Her fingers moved like mice across a hem, stitching as fast as breath. 'It can't be done.'
'What can't?'
'Bettering yourself,' said her mother bleakly. 'Cob didn't know the London cobblers had the trade all sewn up, did he? He never got the work he wanted, the fine skilful stuff. Patching holes with cardboard, that was about the height of it. Here, count these.'
Mary went over and knelt at her mother's knee, lining up the squares stuffed with muslin. She imagined