Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [65]
His wife knotted the strings of her nightcap under her pointed chin. 'I feel badly now, that we told Daffy we couldn't take his cousin.'
'But Gwyneth is a farm girl.'
'That's true.'
'What would we have done with her?' he asked patiently. 'Haven't we Mrs. Ash for the child, and Abi and Daffy for everything else? Whereas this Saunders girl, she could sew for you and lend a hand with the patrons. An educated London girl will give an air of bon ton.
His wife could always hear when he was trying out a new phrase, picked up from the Bristol Mercury. And he could never deceive her, he knew, when he did her a favour and called it reasonableness. She smiled over her shoulder, forgetting to cover the gap in her teeth. 'You won't regret this, husband.'
He patted her place in the bed. She blew out the candle and took off the rest of her clothes in the smoky darkness.
He lay beside her, very still. It was safer not to touch his wife. He knew he couldn't put her through all that again, not six months after the last catastrophe. There was a limit to what the frailer sex could endure. So he stretched his leg out very quietly and listened to his own breath. Gradually Thomas Jones was getting the mastery of himself.
Then his wife turned over and laid her soft hot hand on him.
The light of a frosty morning silhouetted the Robin Hood. In the yard of the inn, Daffy Cadwaladyr introduced himself. 'Short for Davyd,' he said pleasantly.
The Londoner looked as if she'd never heard a sillier name in her life.
He heaved the bag onto his shoulder; its contents rumbled. 'What have you got in here then, cobblestones?'
Now she stared at him as if she'd been kicked. Her eyes were black as mineshafts, and her face was all angles. She was too bony to be handsome, he decided; a man needed a bit of flesh to get a hold of.
'Only asking a civil question,' he muttered.
Mary Saunders made no answer to that. She followed a few paces behind, all the way up Monnow Street, as if she feared he'd make off with her precious possessions. The worn soles of Daffy's boots skidded on the icy stones. He'd been saving up for a new pair for Christmas, but then he'd come across an encyclopaedia in ten volumes, going cheap. Boots might last ten years, at best, but knowledge was eternal.
It was Mrs. Jones who'd sent him down to carry the stranger's bag, though why a servant should start off by being treated like a lady, Daffy couldn't tell; if she hadn't the strength to hoist her own baggage she wouldn't be much use in the tall skinny house on Inch Lane. Nor had anyone informed him why there was suddenly to be a new maid in a family where none had been needed, a fortnight back.
Scraps of meat and paper were frozen to the cobbles. Peddlers were drifting in, bent under their loads. There were cages of old goats and six-week kids, and the fishmongers who came every Friday to sell salmon to the Papists were setting up their stalls already. 'Market Square,' he said over his shoulder, without stopping.
'This?' Mary Saunders's voice was deep and hoarse.
'Aye.'
'It's not a square,' she protested, 'it's a crude sort of diamond.'
Daffy turned to stare at her. Did London folk all talk in such a croak? Her dark hair was pulled back under a cap and her creased kerchief was tucked up to her neck, as tight as a noose. She had the look of a prude about her, except for that gash of a red mouth. 'It's only a name,' he said coolly.
'Also, I was wondering,' she called after him, 'why is the water so brown?'
'It's from the coal pits,' Daffy told her; 'they stain the streams. But it won't do you a tittle of harm.'
She looked as if she doubted that very much; as if there were poison creeping through her veins already.
Daffy hurried on down Grinder Street. He was mightily tempted to carry on to the Quays, duck between the piles of sacking and the wine barrels, and lose her there. Instead he turned down between the narrow walls of Inch Lane and stopped under the blackened sign that said Thos. Jones, Master Staymaker on one side,