Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [81]
Finally Daffy glanced up at her. 'One day, when you're reduced in your circumstances, you'll regret your uncharitable talk.'
Mary regretted it a little already. Sometimes words were like glass that broke in her mouth.
For Abi, the last Monday of each month started hours before dawn. The washerwomen, hired for the day, gave her the stick to churn the sheets while they measured out the lye. Only bent over this cauldron in the scullery did she ever begin to feel warm. The women were always glad when Mrs. Ash sent Abi to help them; she could face the steam twice as long as any Christian, they said. 'Leather in place of skin, that's for why.' They thought she didn't understand them, just because she never bothered to engage in foolish chit-chat. Sometimes, Abi had discovered, it was useful to be thought a halfwit—or a half-ape, more likely.
They set up a tub on the kitchen table for the white small-clothes and poured in fresh boiled water. 'Bestir yourself now, Abi,' said the younger washerwoman loudly, tipping a load of clothes into the froth.
The maid-of-all-work smiled with her lips shut, having learned that the sight of her bright teeth could cause outbursts of nervous laughter among white folk. Lye stung the pink cracks in her hands as she immersed them to begin the scrubbing. Abi could read volumes off the folds of cloth as they moved in the water; every stain told a story. The child Hetta, for instance; her woollen bodice was tiny and easily scrubbed between fingers and thumb. Her petticoat was rimmed with dust and splashed with yellow. What was the polite phrase the mistress liked to use? Like takes out like. Meaning, that petticoat would need boiling in a pot of fresh piss after the first wash.
The washerwomen in the scullery were laughing like drunkards. She'd have to check the level of the beer after they were gone.
The Londoner's sleeve ruffles had waxy grease on them; clearly Mary Saunders wasn't used to trimming and snuffing the candles yet. Abi would have to melt the tallow off with the end of a hot loaf later, and she'd get no thanks for it either. The girl's shift smelled of her lemony scent. She was said to be fifteen, this Mary Saunders, but her eyes were twice that. Where had she picked up that hard stare? Maybe folk were all like that in London.
Abi rather regretted that she'd never made it to the great city. After the long voyage, eight years ago, her master the doctor had come up from Bristol to winter at Monmouth, and commissioned the Joneses to make him a new suit for the season, from hat to shoe-buckles. When he set off the following March, he still owed them six pounds ten, so he handed over Abi in lieu of the cash. She had cried without a sound for three days—not because she missed the doctor, but because everything was alien to her in England.
The Joneses hadn't quite known what to do with her, at first, but they'd soon found her useful. In this chilly house on Inch Lane, she'd learned how to make soap from ash and lights from reeds, when to curtsy, how to say yes, sir, yes, madam, who not to annoy (above all, the Ash woman). Daffy the manservant had offered to teach her to read, but at first she'd distrusted his motives—since when did a white man ever want nothing for something?—and even when she did allow him to show her a page of his book, the scratchings on the page repelled her. They were some form of magic she didn't want to touch.
'Abi?' The London girl, her arms piled high with lawn. 'The mistress sent me in to wash this batch of new handkerchiefs, if I may.'
The maid-of-all-work cleared her throat. 'Wait a while. This water dirty.'
'Very good,' said Mary Saunders with conspicuous civility, depositing her load on the table and drawing up a stool.
Abi worked on, uneasy under the stranger's gaze.
After a few minutes' silence, Mary Saunders leaned her chin on her hands like a child. 'Hardly a chatterbox, are you?' she murmured.
Abi scrubbed harder.