Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [45]
Dodds plucked at his throat to loosen his black ribbon. He opened his arms to the gallery. 'You see before you, most honourable Subscribers, a poignant display of true penitence. Do not the salt tears these lovely outcasts shed testify to their abhorrence of their crime?'
It is a crime
To waste time.
Mary shook her head, to clear it of the childish words. Think how much time she'd wasted, kneeling in this chapel, every day and twice on Sundays, and all for the sake of a roof over her head. And here she was, penned into a herd of snivelling girls, while the sermon dragged on and on, and this the best night in the city's calendar. Mary's eyes strayed to the western window. What wouldn't she give to be out there tonight in London's familiar dirt, the streets strung with lamps as if for a perpetual holiday?
Suddenly the city sounded like a story, believed for a moment, then fading away. Mary remembered the huge swollen dome of St. Paul's as if from a dream. How could it be less than two months since she'd been cooped up here like a hen?
The Reverend Dodds slammed his white hand on the pulpit. Mary jumped and almost fell, but there was no room where she knelt in the press of bodies. She couldn't feel her knees; she had the illusion that it was her hollow petticoats that bore her up. The preacher's cambric handkerchief was fluttering in his hand like a badge of surrender. His excitement reminded Mary of a cully's last thrusts before the moment of spending. 'Though the leopard or the Negro cannot change the colour of their skins,' cried Reverend Dodds, 'each of you can alter the hue of your heart, and this very night. Heaven,' he urged them in a cracking voice, 'is within your grasp.'
There might even be a riot, tonight, in the city; New Year's Eve was always a good time for trouble. Mary could black her face with chimney-dust in half a minute. She and Doll were liberal in their tastes; it didn't matter to them whether they were chanting 'Old Prices' or 'Dutchies Out,' forcing landlords to stand toasts or householders to light up their windows in honour of Hallowe'en. They'd once helped chase a pair of pickpockets all the way to Shoreditch.
Yes, that's where she knew that blond fellow from. Not a lawyer but a merchant; Mary had picked him up in Shoreditch one night last summer. Now she remembered: he couldn't keep his sail up, and she had to stuff it in by hand, and he splashed through her fingers and then tried to bilk her of her shilling. 'It's no fault of mine if you can't hold your liquor,' she bawled at him. He threw fivepence at her feet before weaving his way off in search of a carriage, the milk still dripping from his breeches. Mary waited till he was out of sight before she picked the coins out of the mud.
She stared up at him now; no chance of him recognising her in this Quakerish gear. Such a sleek look he had, with the gold seals hanging from his pocket and the snuffbox he passed to the lady beside him. Shoreditch was only a moment to him; it would have slipped from his memory by now. No doubt he had gone home to a house, a bed, a wife. A whore's life was made up of fragments of other people's.
He must have paid at least ten times fivepence for his ticket tonight, which amused Mary, until she remembered she wouldn't see a penny of it.
The Reverend Dodds was reaching his crisis. 'It only remains for these young women to choose life for ever. Choose, therefore,' he cried, turning to face them, flinging out both pink hands: 'choose for yourselves!' He held the moment. Then he took a reviving sniff at the nosegay pinned to his waistcoat, and bowed to the gallery before trotting down from the pulpit as the applause rained on his head.
Mary's hands clapped automatically. She discounted most of Dodds's remarks as sanctimonious nonsense, but she did try to remember the last time she chose, chose for herself. Had she chosen to kiss the peddler, to be kicked out of home, to go on the town? Maybe not, but she hadn't stopped herself either. She struggled to think