Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [72]
Well, if they lost this one, it wouldn't be for want of feeding. Mary watched the child's mouth stretch around a vast lettuce leaf, and found herself grinning. Hetta caught her eye, and froze. Mary screwed up her nose. Hetta did the same, and laughed silently, open-jawed, the leaf hanging out. This child had a bit of wit, then, Mary decided.
But as soon as Mrs. Ash noticed their little game, she shut Hetta's mouth with a snap of her hand and announced to the table, in apocalyptic tones, that a crow had stolen her wedding ring off her window-sill.
Mary's eyebrows went up. 'I didn't know you had a husband,' she said in congratulatory tones.
The nurse flushed darkly.
'Mrs. Ash is a widow,' murmured Mrs. Jones. Mary hid a smile. To think of any man brave enough to lift that woman's dank skirts! No wonder he hadn't lasted long.
Her own sympathies lay with the crow. It should have known a gold ring was no use to it, but it clearly hadn't been able to resist the glow, the hint of hot sunlight in the depth of January.
Later that day Mary was washing the stairs—like any old skivvy, Doll mocked in her head—when the manservant passed through the hall under a gigantic bale of coarse linen. Any interruption was a chance to straighten her sore back, so Mary got to her feet and tugged her hoop back into the right shape. 'Where does Wales start, then?' she asked him, pressing a hand into the small of her back.
'Just over thataway,' said Daffy, jerking his head over his shoulder. 'The Black Mountains. It's mostly Welsh spoken beyond Abergavenny.'
'So this is England?' Mary felt a distinct sense of relief.
'Not at all,' said the man, sounding injured. 'It's the Marches. We're Marchermen.'
She let out an impatient breath. 'Which country are we in, then?'
'Both. Or neither, you might say,' Daffy added slyly, shifting the weight of the bale onto his other shoulder.
He headed for the door into the Stays Room where Mr. Jones worked. 'How can you people not know where you live?' she said to his back.
She thought at first that he hadn't heard. Then his head turned. 'You don't know the first thing about us,' he threw over his shoulder.
There was the mistress coming downstairs, drawing up her improvers on their iron hinges to squeeze past Mary with a smile. The girl pulled back her scrubbing brush and watched Mrs. Jones's shoes pick their way through the suds. The red heels were worn down at the back, she noticed; the family business mustn't be too profitable yet. It gave her a tiny prick of amusement to see the edge of one under-petticoat trail in a soapy puddle.
'Oh, Mary, you haven't even seen the shop yet, have you?'
Mary shook her head.
'What was I thinking of?' cried Mrs. Jones. 'Let you leave all this for now'—carrying the bucket and brush down to a corner of the tiny hallway—'and come with me this minute.'
'Very well.'
But the mistress paused then, in the hall, so Mary bumped into her from behind. 'Ah yes. My husband—' Mrs. Jones began awkwardly.
Mary waited, her arms folded.
'Mr. Jones thinks perhaps, that is to say, it might be best if you were to call me madam, Mary.'
'Very well.'
Purple suffused Mrs. Jones's cheeks. 'For instance,' she said, as if remarking on the weather, 'there you might say, "Very well, madam."'
'Very well, madam,' said Mary. Her mimicry was barely audible.
The shop was a small space, peopled entirely by clothes. A lady's embroidered bodice, laced up with silver, hung from hooks set in the ceiling. Ruched under-petticoats swayed in the icy draught from the door; Mary had the impression they'd just stopped dancing. A quilted petticoat