Slammerkin (41 page)

But confession was impossible, Mary discovered between one breath and the next. There was nothing she could say that wouldn't hurt her mistress worse than anything she'd already done. 'I'm not the girl you think me,' was all she could come out with, hoarsely.

Mrs. Jones's narrow face was entirely innocent. The bonfire crackled and roared behind her.

'My mother ... I fought with my mother,' blurted Mary, improvising. 'Before she died. She never liked me. She never loved me,' she went on, a tear dripping into her collar. 'I wasn't the daughter she wanted.'

'Oh, Mary.' The woman's face screwed up and Mary thought perhaps she was shocked, but then Mrs. Jones started to laugh, in a weak sort of way, holding her stomach as if it still hurt her, as if she
was still bleeding inside. 'Oh, Mary, my love. We all fight with our mothers before they die.'

'Do we?' she asked stupidly.

'Of course. We only remember the fight because of the dying, see?'

Mary's face was wet with misery.

Mrs. Jones pulled the girl into her arms on the smoky hillside. 'There, there,
cariad.
Look now, I'll tell you a secret to make you laugh, will I?' she whispered into her ear.

In this embrace Mary felt entirely safe.

'Something not even Thomas knows?'

The girl nodded, her face against Mrs. Jones's cool neckerchief.

'Cob Saunders—your father—courted me long before he ever looked at your mother.'

Mary looked up in shock.

Mrs. Jones was wearing a little shamed smile. Her hand almost covered her mouth. 'He was all for marrying me and sweeping me off to the great city—but I was fearful. For all Cob was a charming fellow, you couldn't be sure of him. And when I let myself think of all that dirt and noise, and the thousands and thousands of strangers' faces—' Her spiralling voice broke off.

Mary shrugged, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand. 'London's just a place like any other.'

'Well, I'm only glad it wasn't me who went. Because while I was dithering, you see, didn't Cob take up with Su!'

The girl let herself think about that. Was there no friendship in the world without treachery hidden at the heart of it?

'I won't say I didn't mind at first,' Mrs. Jones went on, nodding judiciously, 'and I had quite a quarrel with Su over it, but it was true I'd had my chance with Cob before she ever stepped in, and besides, what was the use in harking back on maybes? And then not two years later, Thomas came home from Bristol, a master tailor, and we were married in a month. The gossips called me
another man's leavings,
but Thomas never thought there was anything in it.'

'But were you still—'

'Oh, I forgot your father fast enough. After Thomas and I set up the shop, I was too busy to fret about anything. I may have had moments of regret in my life, but you know, they wouldn't add up to an hour.'

Mary was letting herself think about the other ways the story might have run. Tears stood out in her eyes.

'What is it now, child?'

'It means—' She spoke with difficulty; her throat felt swollen. 'You could have been my mother.' She let the tears fall, flowing faster now. She was gathered to Mrs. Jones's soft bosom again, and the muslin neckerchief soaked up the salt water.

'Hush,' her mistress was murmuring in her ear. 'Don't cry,
cariad,
never you cry.'

The girl let grief rise up in her like a well. Such luxury.

Mrs. Jones rocked her, stroked her hair, whispered in her ear. 'Amn't I a mother to you now?'

Alone in the kitchen one hot Sunday morning in July while the Joneses were gone to service at St. Mary's, Abi felt the house close in on her. In one corner stood a great pile of breakfast dishes to be scoured with sand; in another, a half-jar of butter going sour. Only the surreptitious scratchings of the mice interrupted the silence.

A minute later she was halfway down Monnow Street, heading away from the sound of the church bells and the town ladies with their enormous skirts and hard faces. Abi rarely went out of the house, and when she did she always remembered why she didn't. A child stopped across the street, open-mouthed. A bigger one, behind him, scooped up a handful of last year's leaves. 'Blackie,' he shrieked as he threw them. The warm wind arced the leaves back into his face.

Abi walked on, faster. The ground slid away under her feet. She had the impression that now she'd started she'd never stop. She'd
walk across the world and no one would stand in her way. She might even reach the sun—the real sun, not the watery image of it that hovered over this country. She remembered Sundays on the Island, lying in the shade of the huts, too tired to move, with music like a dream of fever on the air.

'If the mistress won't listen to talk of wages, you could always try the Quakers,' Mary Saunders had said a few nights ago, casually. 'Why?'

'It's well known, that's all,' said Mary with a huge yawn; 'they've a liking for blacks.'

All Abi knew about the handful of townspeople known as Quakers was that they were freakish folk who wore grey and went hatless. How they might help improve her condition, she could hardly imagine. As she filled the irons with hot charcoal, or stirred the lettuce soup, she fretted over what that phrase might mean:
a liking for blacks.
Was it the sort of liking that men had for Mary, the men who paid her all those coins she hid under the bed when she thought Abi was asleep?

Sometimes Abi wished Mary Saunders had never come to the house on Inch Lane, never shaken Abi out of her long somnolence, never said words like
wages,
or
liberty.

It was the sticky restlessness in the air today that was prompting her to seek out the Quakers. Mary had said she thought they met upstairs at the Robin Hood, at the end of Monnow Street. The landlord cast Abi a curious glance now, as she crossed the sawdust-clotted floor of the Robin Hood, but he didn't say a word to stop her. The stairs creaked under her shoes. She put an ear to the door at the top, to hear what was going on, but there wasn't a sound. At first she thought the meeting was over. Then she heard a throat clearing, and another. It was as if the people behind the door were all waiting for someone important to speak. She stayed there, her ear pressed damply against the wood, for what felt like an hour, but nothing broke the silence.

When at last she heard chairs being pushed back, Abi fled. She
wasn't going to be discovered on the stairs, like some kind of spy. She waited under a tree across from the Robin Hood for another long stretch of time. Leaning on the parapet of the bridge she stared down into the hurry of the water. She didn't care if there was trouble when she got home. It was good to have empty hands, at least; to have nothing to fold or cook or wash, just for an hour.

Finally grey-frocked figures began to emerge in twos and threes from the side door of the Robin Hood. Abi's heart pounded. She waited for one of them to look up or catch her eye, but their heads were all bent. At last the trickle of people died away, and she knew she'd missed her chance. Then she cursed herself for a snivelling coward who deserved the life she'd got.

One more: an elderly wigless gentleman with a thick file of papers under his arm. Abi shook off her paralysis and shot down the street after him. She followed him all the way across Chippenham Meadow, but he never looked back; he seemed unaware of her steps behind his. She hadn't moved this fast in longer than she could remember. On Quay Street there was no one else within earshot, and 'Sir?' she cried, 'Sir?,' hoarsely.

He turned, his forehead creased. 'Why do you call me that?'

She backed away. The man was offended that she'd dared to speak to him.

But then he took a step towards her. 'Do I know you?'

Abi shook her head, very fast. 'No, sir. I mean, no,' she corrected herself.

'Don't be alarmed, sister,' he said, coming up close and speaking softly. 'I'm only a plain human soul like yourself; my name is Daniel Flyte. What need have we of titles?'

Abi's eyes narrowed to cracks. This was a very strange sort of Englishman. He wore his own hair, grey and thin. His buttons were made of horn. His coat, his shirt, his breeches, were all one grey, as if he'd been bleached in a sheep dip. But his face was brown from the sun and his eyes were bright.

'What can I do for you?' he prompted her.

She didn't know how to begin.

'Will you go along with me?' He resumed his brisk walk.

'My name Abi,' she said all at once, stumbling along beside him.

'Abi what?'

She was at a loss. 'That's all.' She stopped herself from saying
sir,
that time.

'Have you no surname?'

'Some say Abi Jones,' she admitted.

'Well, then,' he said patiently, as if to a child.

'But the Joneses not my family,' she blurted. 'They my owners.'

This, evidently, was the key to unlock Daniel Flyte. He stopped in his tracks, and his face came to life, all furrowed with distress. 'Sister,' he said, taking her by the wrist, 'no one owns you.'

Sometimes it was best to agree with whatever white folk said. Abi shrugged.

'You belong to your Maker, but your soul is free,' Daniel Flyte assured her. 'No man can hold another as property.'

'Well, the Joneses my masters, anywhichway,' Abi told him glumly. 'We live on Inch Lane.'

'You receive no remuneration?'

She blinked at him.

'Pay, that is? Wages?'

'No, sir.' She remembered his resentment of the title. 'I mean—'

'Never mind,' said Daniel Flyte with a wintry smile. 'Call me what you will.' His smile fell away and he tightened his grip on her arm. 'So these people, these Joneses, hold you in forced servitude?'

'I suppose,' said Abi.

The old man shook his head violently as if in pain. 'I belong to a Society of Friends,' he told her, 'who believe all men and women are worth the same, because they each have a bit of the same light in them. Do you see?'

She stared at him.

'A little fragment of light, hidden in each of our hearts. You follow me?'

She nodded, wary.

'Do you know what it says in the Bible about slavery?'

She shook her head, as he seemed to expect it.

Daniel Flyte's voice took on a fervent resonance. 'It says that masters must give fair wages to their servants, because they too have a master in heaven. It says,
You shall eat the fruit of the labour of your hands.
It says furthermore,
Do not submit to a yoke of slavery!'
His cheeks quivered with emotion; his lips were wet.

Abi was losing her grip on this conversation. She had to ask him, before they were interrupted. 'So I wonder,' she whispered, stepping closer, 'I wonder if you come, maybe. Come speak to my masters.'

'Ah.' Daniel Flyte let go of her wrist, then, and covered his mouth with his blunt-nailed hand as if he had just remembered something. 'Now therein lies a difficulty. I must tell you, sister, that our Society is a small and generally ill-liked one in these parts.' His voice had shrunk. 'Our policy is not to ... intervene directly. In private families, that is to say. The risks are such—the delicacy of our position with regard to our neighbours—'

Abi felt her strength drain away through her feet. When he came to a pause in his speech she muttered, 'Must go now. Mustn't be late.' She turned and walked away.

'But sister, if you come to our Meeting—'

She kept walking. Well, that was what you got for talking to strangers: less than nothing. The man in grey didn't attempt to stop her. She turned her head once, and he was standing with his hands by his sides, watching her.

Despite the disappointment, something he'd said hung in her mind as she hurried home:
the fruit of the labour of your hands.
She thought of all the fruit she hadn't seen since Barbados: plum, breadfruit, mango. She let herself imagine fruit, filling up her mouth.

That day Mrs. Ash began to reap her harvest. It had been slow work, often tedious, but it had borne great fruit in the end. How
many hours had she wasted in idle, worldly chit-chat with her neighbours, listening out for the name of Mary Saunders? But yesterday, by glorious accident, she'd been standing in the queue at the apothecary's, when who did she fall into conversation with but the drawer from the Crow's Nest? He was a very helpful lad, most articulate, especially after Mrs. Ash agreed to lend him a shilling. He told her so much about the girl known as
Sukie
that Mrs. Ash had to send Hetta to stand outside so her ears wouldn't be polluted.

To think of it, God's own curate in Monmouth was a pimp for that whorish girl! Now Mrs. Ash came to think of it, Cadwaladyr's sermons had always lacked rigour, smacked a little too much of the world.

She'd slept on it till today, Sunday; she'd wanted to do the Lord's work on the Lord's day. She sat at supper, dipping her barley bread in her soup and taking tiny bites, watching the London girl. All evening Mrs. Ash waited. She put Hetta to bed early and would accept no pleas for stories. She said nothing and did nothing when Mrs. Jones sent her pet down the road to fetch her a pint of liquor. Mrs. Ash simply went up to the last flight of stairs, leading to the attic, and sat there three steps from the top, as quiet as a cat at a hole.

When she heard Mary Saunders coming up through the silent house, she got to her feet. Her shadow slithered down the bare wood. The girl flinched when she saw her.
No peace for the wicked.

'What kept you so long, Miss, down at the Crow's Nest?' Mrs. Ash began civilly.

The girl stared up at her, blank-faced. 'Nothing. The cider takes a while to draw.'

'Is that so?' The silence lengthened. Mrs. Ash knew the girl wouldn't be able to resist answering.

'Don't you believe me, then?' said Mary, chin up.

The nursemaid folded her arms like snakes. 'All I know is what I hear.'

'What d'you hear, then?'

'That you've been seen,' said Mrs. Ash, savouring the sounds.

'Where?'

She threw the words out like trash. 'Round the back of the stinking alehouse, with all manner of men!'