Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [41]
It was the drink Mary missed most. After a week without so much as a pint of burnt wine to warm her stomach, she felt always on the point of running away. The water they were given smelled fresh, but it was like drinking nothingness; Mary felt even emptier afterwards. The idea was to wipe the Penitents clean like slates, she knew, and to make them start again from scratch. The plan was to make them forget who they were.
But she had promised Doll to give it a try, and strings of ice were hanging from the eaves outside; the winter was proving just as bad as the fortune-tellers had predicted. Mary burrowed under the blanket and thought of the other Petitioners: the ones turned away for being too old, too poxed, too bad at faking repentance. She wondered how many of them had a roof over their heads tonight. Not that she'd spare a tear for them. Every girl for herself, as Doll always said.
What was that other line of Doll's? Never give up your liberty. How grand it sounded. And now, on her advice, here was Mary Saunders, a Magdalen fallen and lifted, lost and found, undone and restored—and locked up tighter than any bawdy-house girl.
The workroom had fallen silent. Matron Butler held out the needle, point up.
'I don't sew, madam,' repeated Mary, a little louder. She coughed violently against the back of her hand.
'You must understand, Saunders,' said the Matron gently, 'that there is nothing else for you to do.'
The girl tightened her folded arms.
'It is certainly unfortunate that you've not been taught this most useful of female skills,' Matron Butler went on, 'but it's never too late to make a new start, as Reverend Dodds likes to remind us.'
Mary glanced up. Was that a hint of irony?
'The Governors,' the Matron said in her official voice, 'wish the Penitents to acquire the habit of industry by means of shirt- and glove-making for persons of quality who are kind enough to extend the Hospital their patronage.'
Mary nodded, bored.
Matron Butler leaned her pale fists on the table and spoke, soft and urgent. 'It's also a chance for you to earn honest wages by honest work for the first time in your life.'
Mary could hear the anger sing in her blood. As if she didn't know what work meant. How easy it would be to cause a minor riot now, in this over-packed chicken coop! She could break a few heads, tear a few skirts, get herself kicked out and be back in Rat's Castle with Doll before nightfall.
But the thought of Doll steeled her: she had promised to stay till her cough was gone. So, after a long minute, Mary took the needle between finger and thumb. Its tip was sharp. She thought of what damage it could do.
The Matron set to teaching her plain-stitch. Mary thought of a plan: she would be such an incompetent needlewoman that after a day or two the implement would be taken away from her for good. She meant to scratch her thumb and cover her square of linen with brown smears.
She never anticipated that halfway through the morning, as she watched her needle duck in and out of the cloth like an otter in a stream, she would feel pleasure like heat in her fingers. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she caught Matron Butler smiling, but when she glanced up, the Matron's head had turned away.
By the end of the month Saunders was the deftest seamstress in the Magdalen, and Matron Butler smiled at her every other day. The Ruineds tossed their heads, and Mary was generally disliked. It wasn't the meagre wages that kept her going, but the satisfaction of the stitching itself. It was a most peculiar thing.
Thread seemed to obey Mary; cloth lay down obediently at her touch. She couldn't