Slammerkin (26 page)

Mrs. Morgan's eyes didn't leave her image in the glass. 'I'll take the cap,' she cut in. She lifted it off as if it were a miniature crown and gestured to Mary to bring her black fur-trimmed cape. 'You may put it to my account.'

Mrs. Jones ran to help the Honourable Member's wife on with her cape. Georges the footman was waiting in the dark hall in a superb quilted jacket with pockets a foot wide. He opened the door for his mistress ceremoniously.

When it had closed behind the Morgan party, Mary let out her breath in a hiss. 'So she stays the full of an hour,' she protested, 'and all she spends is half a crown on an inch of cotton and lace, and gets it on credit too?'

'Mrs. Morgan's not always in the buying humour,' said Mrs. Jones tiredly.

'And what did you go telling her I could embroider for?' asked Mary, then smiled to soften the impudence.

'Because you'll pick it up in no time, I'm sure,' said Mrs. Jones. She took Mary's fingers in her own warmer ones and examined them. 'It's in your bones. Besides, I'll never find the time to get it done on my own, Mary,' she added plaintively, contemplating the great white waterfall of Mrs. Morgan's velvet slammerkin.

By the end of that week Mary had filled her practice square with violets, fronds, scrolls, and ribbons. The mistress had been right about her: she could flower like a natural. Her fingers were firm, and her eyes were sharp; she never confused her colours.

The day soon came when Mrs. Jones laid the hem of the white slammerkin in Mary's lap and threaded her a needle with silver. The woman's eyes were shining; she was on the point of tears, Mary realised with a prickling of embarrassment. 'What's the matter, madam?'

'It's only ... if your mother could only see you now!'

Mary managed a tight smile. For a moment she joined in the fiction. She imagined a true mother, tender in white wings, looking down on her from heaven and weeping with relief. She pushed her needle into the cloth; it was as soft as a rabbit.

Some afternoons there was a knock at the front door every half an hour. No matter how busy she and Mary were, Mrs. Jones always offered the ladies of Monmouth a dish of tea; she wouldn't dream of giving offence. One or two patrons were accompanied by lady's maids, who were much too grand to wait in the kitchen, but stood behind their mistresses' chairs with hands folded, scanning the furniture for dust.

Gossip was the local currency. 'There were two left dead after that football match last week.'

'Terrible.'

'Terrible!'

'There's a new family lodging in St. James's Square, I hear, acquaintances of the Philpotts.'

At such hints, Mary could see her mistress's mind whirring like a spinning-wheel. Perhaps they should call early at St. James's Square and leave a card offering Mrs. Jones's services?

'The Owen widow's daughter's looking very poorly.'

Mary knew what that meant, for all their pious nods. Miss Owen wouldn't be requiring any fancy gowns this spring, or ever.

'A funeral next week at St. Mary's?' repeated Mrs. Jones with animation. 'What was the crest on the carriage?'

'Two martlets.'

'No, it was three.'

'That'll be the Hardings of Pentwyn.'

Mary met her mistress's eyes. The Hardings would have need of mourning. Maybe they'd be in too much of a hurry to send to London for it...

It was Mary who carried in the big China tea-kettle Mr. Jones was so fond of. He wouldn't let Abi touch it, and even Mary had to submit to his instruction. The visitors sugared their tea in the saucers, blew on it, and drank with little genteel slurps. Mary watched them thirstily.

Mr. Jones had taught her to make a curtsy when leaving the room. He demonstrated on his single leg.

'Even if they're not looking my way?'

'Ah, but if you omit to do it,' he said, with a bark of a laugh, 'they'll be sure to see.'

And indeed, it seemed the ladies of Monmouth could not bear not to know what to make of Mary Saunders. 'Your maid is not from these parts, I understand? But her mother was?'

Hearing her fictional story told and retold in Mrs. Jones's tactful undertone—Susan Saunders's deathbed scene becoming more and more affecting, like something out of Mr. Richardson's novels—Mary almost felt ashamed. Sometimes she was troubled by an irresistible urge to laugh, as on one occasion when she was pinning up a hem for the Widow Tanner, who owned houses and coppices all over Monmouth. Seeing fat Mrs. Tanner's eyes bulge at her in concern, at the story's tragic climax, Mary had to run from the room with a muttered excuse about fetching more pins.

She stood in the passage, fingers sealing her mouth, and shook with guilty mirth. In the shop she heard their voices, hushed a little. Mrs. Jones wondered aloud if she had upset Mary. The Widow Tanner was of the opinion that it didn't befit a servant girl to be sensitive, who would have to make her way in the world.

Daffy Cadwaladyr knew he was only a stub of a man. With his short thick arms, and eyes sallow from night-time reading, he was nothing
much to look at. But when he walked down Monnow Street with his cousin Gwyneth at his side, he felt like that statue of the young David after beating Goliath that he'd seen engraved in the
Gentleman's Magazine.

She wouldn't take his arm today, however. There was something weighing on her spirits, he could tell that much. He didn't press her.

Despite the hard times Gwyneth had seen since her family had lost their holding down near Tintern, her cheeks were still the pink of fresh-cut logs, and her wrists were round where they emerged below the frayed ruffles of her sleeves. The line of hair below her limp mob-cap was creamy blonde. She had the kind of looks that put bony dark creatures like that Mary Saunders to shame, and she was as sensible as girls with twice her education. Not a very talkative creature today, his Gwyneth, but he was happy just strolling along beside her down the street where anyone could see the couple and draw their own conclusions.

He didn't care who called her a beggar. The era of such snobberies was drawing to an end. The light of reason was spreading round the world. In the coming times, he felt sure, what would matter was not your birth or upbringing, but what you managed to make of yourself. A woman had no rank of her own, besides; she could rise to the level of whomever she married. He watched his beloved's old pink shoes, and the tide-marks of slush on them.

'Daff,' she said at last, 'you know ... what's between us?'

A grin crinkled every line on his young face. 'Say no more.'

'No, but—'

'Gwyn,' he said, and he took her left hand into the two of his and held it, for all her squirming. 'You need have no fear.'

She sucked in her rosy lips.

'We reached a sort of understanding two years ago come St. John's Day,' he said, 'and to my line of thinking we have that understanding still.' Her mouth opened and shut again. A narrow ray of sunshine hit the wet cobbles of Monnow Street, and Daffy's voice
unrolled like a flag. 'I won't be a servant forever. One of these years, I'll be my own man—my own master, I should say—and I'll have a threshold to carry you over.'

She blinked her pale blue eyes at him. He rushed on before she could speak. 'And I tell you, my dearest Gwyn,'—and here he squeezed her hand between his like a leaf—'the present misfortunes of your family make not a whit of a difference to my intentions. It's only a matter of patience.'

She withdrew her hand from his damp embrace. 'Daff,' she said, with a constriction in her throat, 'I'm truly sorry.'

He stared at her.

'It weren't ... quite an understanding that we had, was it? Mean to say, we did talk things through, but to call it an understanding—'

At last it was clear to him why Gwyn was acting so oddly. Oh, the heart this girl had, as sound as an apple! She feared to keep him to his promise, to drag him down with her. As if there was anything in the world he wanted more than to marry her and keep her in comfort. A smile began to spread itself across his cheeks.

'I'm promised to Jennett the Gelder,' she said, dropping her eyes.

Daffy's legs kept moving down the street, like a rooster after its head had been cut off. He watched her, to see why she would say such a thing.

'October, it's to be, after the harvest.'

Finally he was able to speak. 'But our understanding—'

'It were rash of us,' she said, wet-faced.

'Rash?' he repeated, dazed. Then he gathered his forces. 'But you'd wed such a man as Jennett, who cuts the balls off hogs for a living?'

Gwyneth flushed, whether at his coarseness or from shame at her own treachery, he couldn't tell. She spoke even more faintly. 'He's taken my father on as a partner, see.'

Daffy saw.

'Father said he likes you well enough, but we must face facts, see.'

Facts? He had always been the one in charge of facts, before. He'd been the one who taught her how to make a reasoned argument.

'At present you're a servant,' she murmured, 'and a servant can't marry.'

'I have ambitions—' he burst out.

'Hopes,' she said softly.

He turned his scarlet face away from her. All at once he saw himself as others must see him: a man-of-all-work on ten pounds a year, whose wig was a little too small.

At dinner Mrs. Ash contemplated Daffy, who sat studying his plate, his cheeks sunken. So much for the beneficial effects of reading, she thought. All his education didn't bring him the consolation she got from her one Good Book.

Hetta's plump arms were wriggling out of the nurse's grasp. Her mother spoke mildly. 'Sit still by Mrs. Ash now.'

'But I want to go to Mary.'

The Londoner looked up from her plate, all innocent, as if she hadn't been playing wink with the child for the last half an hour.

Acid pooled in Mrs. Ash's stomach as she picked at the salt cod, and reminded herself how much the Joneses needed her. Didn't she possess the wisdom of years, the experience of life, the safeguards of piety—everything this new girl lacked? She stared right through Mary Saunders's neckerchief at the pert small breasts hiding in her stays. They'd never fed a child; never felt the absolute greed of a baby's mouth at the nipple. This girl had never known what it was to be necessary.

Hetta slithered down under the table now. Her blonde head emerged on the other side, gleeful. She sat up on the bench between Mary and Daffy. The man didn't even look up. Children were traitors all, thought Mrs. Ash. They gave you soft Judas kisses on the cheek, but they were always glancing over your shoulder.

'Such nonsense, Hetta,' murmured Mrs. Jones.

'Why do you prefer to sit by Mary?' asked the master disinterestedly, peeling his potato.

The child's smile showed her baby-teeth. 'She smells better.'

'Hetta!' Her mother was on her feet, leaning over to slap the child on the hand. A long wail went up.

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?