Slammerkin - Emma Donoghue [90]
Mary Saunders looked down and gave the child beside her a slow, dazzling smile. Mrs. Ash could catch a whiff of the maid's perfume from where she sat: spoiled fruit, and spirits, and all manner of wickedness.
The nurse spoke impersonally through Hetta's sobs. 'What will happen to the eye that mocks a father and scorns to obey a mother?'
The Londoner looked across the table at her as if she were mad. Clearly not versed in the Scriptures, Mrs. Ash noted.
'Well, Hetta? What will happen to the eye?'
Hetta gulped and screwed up her face with the effort of remembering. 'Crows?'
'It will be picked out by the crows of the valley,' intoned Mrs. Ash with a nod, 'and eaten by the vultures. Proverbs, Chapter Thirty, Verse Seventeen.'
'You'd think the crows would eat it themselves, not give it to the vultures,' murmured Mary through a mouthful of salt fish.
Mrs. Ash shot her a look.
'Not much of a meal for a pack of vultures, one little eye.'
Mrs. Jones let out a tiny involuntary snort. Open-mouthed, Hetta laughed uncertainly. The Londoner's eyes met her mistress's over the cooling dinner.
Mrs. Ash knew when she was being scorned. They were making mock of the Scriptures and laughing in her face. She'd given the best of her life to this family; they had quite literally drained her dry.
'Any news of the war with France in the newspaper, sir?' Daffy asked the master blandly, not even troubling to hide the fact that he was changing the subject.
'Oh, you know how these things go on,' said Mr. Jones, rather grim. 'Win one battle, lose the next.'
Mrs. Ash sat frozen as the Saunders girl took Hetta up in her smooth arms and whispered in her ear. She watched the pair, and gripped her knife. She imagined an axe descending over and over on those slim shoulders, leaving the Londoner armless, spouting blood from her stumps like the maiden in the old story.
The candles used to be Mrs. Ash's job, but now it was Mary who lit them and trimmed them. It gratified the girl to feel she was usurping the bitter old Bible-thumper, even in such a little thing. It's not so bad to make an enemy, as Doll used to say; it helps a body feel at home.
Mary had come to know exactly how much wax it would take to ward off night for an hour longer. Light was a clear badge of rank, she'd learned. The Joneses could stay up a little later than most of their neighbours on Inch Lane, live a little more of each day, not let the darkness drag them down quite so soon. Below in the town, in the squalid alley called Back Lane, families went to bed supperless at six o'clock, because what else could they do in the dark? If you couldn't afford any kind of candle, Mary thought—even the stubs and rush-lights Daffy read by in his cellar room—you were little better than a beast. Someday, she promised herself, someday she would have a house full of candelabras and light them all at once, even in rooms where no one ever went. She'd sup at ten, drink claret at three in the morning, and spit at the darkness.
The Joneses ate supper at seven in the little parlour, very hungry but proud to have waited until such a genteel hour. Turnip soup or a poached egg apiece with toasted crusts, but never both. After Abi had cleared away the dishes, the family drew their hard-backed chairs closer to the fire and listened to the wind. Mrs. Ash muttered over her Bible, just loud enough to annoy but not loud enough to be understood. If there was darning for the family, Mrs. Jones took it out now, and Mary felt obliged to help her. She'd never seen a woman work so hard, except maybe her mother—but Mrs. Jones never wore Susan Digot's martyred look. Was it London that soured people, Mary wondered? If lots had been reversed, and the Joneses had gone up to the great city and the Saunderses had stayed behind, would it have been Mrs. Jones who grew hard lines in her forehead? Would it have been she who'd have thrown her only daughter out in the street?
Only after supper did the master let the cares of the day slip from him. Mr. Jones liked to tease Daffy about his