Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [50]
The Misses were out in force tonight; Some whores just don't know how to take a holiday, laughed Doll in Mary's head. There was Nan Pullen in one of her mistress's well-made silk mantelets, pacing to ward off the cold; she nodded back at Mary and covered a yawn with thin fingers.
What was Alice Gibbs doing here, so far from her beat on Downing Street, in such a faded old wrapping gown? 'Will you give me a glass of wine, sir?' she called out to a passing lawyer, shrill as ever, but he turned into Short's Gardens instead. Mary nodded at Alice as she passed, but the older woman's eyes had unfocused already.
A stumbling baker, flour-dusted, paused to look Mary up and down. He pursed up his mouth as if to guess a price. She'd forgotten the manners of the trade; she almost blushed. For a moment she was filled with an absurd regret for the plain brown gown and apron she'd left crumpled on her bed in the Magdalen Hospital; for the wide straw hat that had sheltered her from strangers' eyes, and the unpainted face, which was its own kind of mask. It seemed years, not months, since she had been a stroller, and all at once she began to doubt whether she could take up her old life where she'd left off. Maybe what she'd told the Matron was true; maybe she wasn't a whore anymore.
The moon was full over St. Giles-in-the-Fields, spiked on the gold weather-vane like an apple. Tiny spears of ice frilled the high railings, and the trees were covered in soft white spines. Mary took gulps of the frozen air; it weighed on her lungs like stone. She was shuddering with weariness; she couldn't think of anything but her bed, hers and Doll's. The merriment and stale warmth of it. She wanted to share her first fingerful of snuff in months and tell Doll all about the Magdalen, shake off the weight of the place at last. She planned to show her friend what penitence looked like, and how to behave as a Presidor should; she'd make Doll laugh till she clutched her stays and gasped with pain. If anyone could remind Mary why a harlot's life was the only true liberty, Doll could. If anyone could restore her to herself, it would be Doll Higgins.
Mary crouched to look in the ice-pocked window of the cider cellar. A few pickpockets she knew, or knew of—Scampy, Huckle, Irish Ned, and Jemmy the Shuffler—as well as a handful of St. Giles blackbirds with their ebony faces glowing against white shirts. No sign of Doll playing a game of brag in her usual corner. The door spat out a pair of sailors, and a song leaked into the street, in a rumbling bass.
My thing is my own
And I'll keep it so still,
Yet other young lasses
May do what they will.
Mary hurried on, past the night-soil men, who wheeled their foetid barrows with blank faces. Maybe, she thought, in time you grew accustomed to your toil, whatever it might be. She ducked through an arch. Rat's Castle was a good name for the worst pit she'd ever called home, but how glad she was to reach it. And a little surprised to find it still standing, its stained timbers clinging together like drunkards. Every time she'd ever climbed these stairs, she'd wondered when they were going to splinter under her.
Without a candle, she had to feel her way up the damp walls. As she passed Mercy Toft's door, she could hear the funereal thump of one of the girl's cullies. At that pace he'd never finish, Mary thought professionally. On the third floor a door hung open, creaking in the icy draught; that forger whose name Mary could never remember was asleep on his papers, his wig half off. She stumbled through a pile of rubbish. In the rot she smelt something peculiar: an orange? She was no longer accustomed to dirt; the clean vinegar-rinsed floors of the Magdalen had softened her senses, left her open to every passing stench. She bent her head as she mounted higher and the walls closed in.
The garret seemed empty, filled with a greasy