Slammerkin

  There might even be a riot, tonight, in the city; New Year's Eve was always a good time for trouble. Mary could black her face with chimney-dust in half a minute. She and Doll were liberal in their tastes; it didn't matter to them whether they were chanting 'Old Prices' or 'Dutchies Out,' forcing landlords to stand toasts or householders to light up their windows in honour of Hallowe'en. They'd once helped chase a pair of pickpockets all the way to Shoreditch.

  Yes, that's where she knew that blond fellow from. Not a lawyer but a merchant; Mary had picked him up in Shoreditch one night last summer. Now she remembered: he couldn't keep his sail up, and she had to stuff it in by hand, and he splashed through her fingers and then tried to bilk her of her shilling. 'It's no fault of mine if you can't hold your liquor,' she bawled at him. He threw fivepence at her feet before weaving his way off in search of a carriage, the milk still dripping from his breeches. Mary waited till he was out of sight before she picked the coins out of the mud.

  She stared up at him now; no chance of him recognising her in this Quakerish gear. Such a sleek look he had, with the gold seals hanging from his pocket and the snuffbox he passed to the lady beside him. Shoreditch was only a moment to him; it would have slipped from his memory by now. No doubt he had gone home to a house, a bed, a wife. A whore's life was made up of fragments of other people's.

  He must have paid at least ten times fivepence for his ticket tonight, which amused Mary, until she remembered she wouldn't see a penny of it.

  The Reverend Dodds was reaching his crisis. 'It only remains for these young women to choose life for ever. Choose, therefore,' he cried, turning to face them, flinging out both pink hands: 'choose for yourselves!' He held the moment. Then he took a reviving sniff at the nosegay pinned to his waistcoat, and bowed to the gallery before trotting down from the pulpit as the applause rained on his head.

  Mary's hands clapped automatically. She discounted most of Dodds's remarks as sanctimonious nonsense, but she did try to remember the last time she chose, chose for herself. Had she chosen to kiss the peddler, to be kicked out of home, to go on the town? Maybe not, but she hadn't stopped herself either. She struggled to think of one day in more than fifteen years of life when instead of drifting along like a leaf on the river she'd simply grabbed what she wanted.

  The ostrich feather bobbed, high above her. Mary had put such a feather against her throat once, in a milliner's; its touch made her shiver all over. She stared up now at the Lady Subscriber who sat wiping a tear from her eye with a square of lace. Her skirt filled up the pew like a bank of snow. Every line, every button, every shadow was beautiful. Mary spoke aloud inside her head: That's what I choose. That's who I'll be. Everything you have will someday be mine, I swear it.

  Meanwhile, it occurred to her, life was much too short to while away on her knees. She pressed down on her hands and lifted herself to a sitting position. Her knees throbbed with pain and relief. She was the only upright body among the Magdalens; she registered the shock all round her, the eyes skidding sideways. She felt like the Queen, and smiled to herself.

  Her eye caught that of Matron Butler, in the aisle, who made an unmistakable though tiny gesture with her finger: On your knees. Mary considered the matter, then let her eyes unfocus as if she hadn't seen the Matron. She sat back against the bench, luxuriating in the support of the firm mahogany. The prayer book slid down into the curve of her skirt. They'd be letting off fireworks at Tower Hill in a couple of hours, bright enough to splash against the scrubbed windows of the Magdalen.

  'Why such indecent haste?' Sitting in her wainscoted office, Matron Butler was an owl staring at its prey.

  'My health is quite restored. I think I've stayed here long enough, madam. And the offer is such a good one—' Mary's voice was jerky. She used to be a better liar than this. Overhead she could hear the dull thumps of the other girls going to bed with the remains of their bread and butter.

  The Matron let out a long sigh, and for a moment Mary was somehow sorry for what she had to say. Then the Matron folded her long arms like barricades on the desk. 'If you are indeed so fortunate as to have a place with a dressmaker in Monmouth, far from the wickedness of this city,' she said, 'then I see no reason to dissuade you. It only remains for me to inspect the letter.'

  Mary wet her lips. 'The letter?'

  The Matron held out her hand for it. 'The letter, Saunders, in which your late mother's friend makes this generous and, if I may say so, extraordinary offer. The letter,' she went on acidly, 'that reached you without passing under the eyes of myself, the Assisting Matrons, or the Porter.'

  Mary stared at the panelling; ugly wood, for all its expense. 'There wasn't—there's no need for a letter.'

  Matron Butler's arms folded back into place. 'Indeed?'

  'Mrs. Jane Jones, as I said, she was so devoted to my—my poor departed mother,' Mary stumbled on, 'she always said, she always used to promise, she'd take me on any time if I wanted to leave London.'

  'Take on a girl who must own herself to be fouled?' The Matron said the word as if she could taste it.

  Mary was surprised to feel herself blush like a coal. 'She said she would. Mrs. Jones, I mean. She always said she would, whatever happened, for my mother's sake.'

  Matron Butler made Mary wait while she straightened her linen apron. 'If this woman Jones is still living,' she said thoughtfully, 'and if she still resides in Monmouth, and if her family happens to be in need of a maidservant—what persuades you that her husband would be willing to let into his house, among his children, a known prostitute?'

  Mary couldn't remember why she had ever had even a half-liking for this bitter old sow. She had run out of answers, now she bit on her bottom lip till it hurt. She heard a clatter upstairs. Hunger was a stone in her stomach. And then she looked up into the Matron's grey eyes. Words floated out of her mouth. 'You have to let me go.'

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'I've a right to my liberty,' said Mary softly. 'I remember it from the rules; I was listening, all those times. No one is kept here against her will. It's not a prison; it only feels like one.'

  Matron Butler's eyes suddenly reminded Mary of her mother's, on the last night in Charing Cross Road. She looked away, unable to bear their weight. A long moment, and then the Matron's voice vibrated like the string of a violin. 'In the space of a month or two, Mary Saunders, when you are lying broken and naked in Fleet Ditch—'

  'I'm not a whore any more,' said Mary. The vehemence of her own words startled her.

  The Matron's eyebrows lifted infinitesimally.

  'That's all over,' said Mary, almost pleading. 'I want ... a better life.'

  Those stony eyes softened a little. The Matron pulled her chair nearer and leaned over the desk. 'Mary,' she murmured as if imparting a secret. 'I know you to be a young woman of great capacities. Your education is solid, your wits are original, and your will is strong. In less than two months, with my own eyes I have seen you blossom into a seamstress of remarkable skill. But still the shadow hangs over you.'

  Mary looked away.

  'If you truly mean to escape from your former degradation, and your former so-called friends, then you must stay here with us until all your old habits are broken.'

  'They are,' said Mary shortly.

  Matron Butler shook her head sorrowfully. 'Not yet. You're still restless and perverse. I've seen you pick up work and then throw it down a minute later. Your face shuts up like a safe whenever you hear the Holy Word of God. You tell lies, such as this nonsensical story about Monmouth. The seeds may be planted, my dear, but it's not yet harvest-time.'

  Mary stared at the wall, traced the pattern of the wainscoting.

  'Just a few months,' coaxed the Matron. Her hand slid across the desk and enclosed Mary's chilly fingers. 'To prepare you for a truly better life, you need to remain a little longer here in the safety and sanctity of—'

  'I can't,' the girl interrupted, throwing off the Matron's hand. The words broke out of her throat
. 'This is no life!'

  The Matron watched Mary as if across a great gulf. 'Very well,' she said, almost coolly. She got up and turned her back, lifting down a huge leather-bound volume and placing it in the dead centre of the desk. She pressed her hands flat on its cover. 'You are among the third.'

  'The third what?'

  'Ever since this institution was founded,' said the Matron, 'it has been our experience that we cannot expect to save more than two of every three.'

  Mary was struck between the ribs by something like regret. 'I truly mean to better myself,' she mumbled.

  The Matron ignored that. She opened the huge volume with two hands as if it were Scripture, and read in a low voice: 'Sarah Shore, restored to her friends by the grace of God, placed in service as a washerwoman in Glasgow.'

  God help Sally, thought Mary; bleeding from the nails by now.

  'Betty Vale, sent to St. Benet's Hospital.' The Matron ran the words together under her breath. Mary remembered Betty, who somehow hid her belly till her waters broke in Chapel. How the Reverend Dodd extemporised!

  'Moll Gatterly, dismissed for irregularities.'

  Was that the word for it? Moll had threatened the smaller girls with her needle till they handed over their puny wages.

  'Jessie Haywood,' the Matron murmured, 'restored to her friends by the grace of God, married a journeyman of good character. Lucy Shepherd, died contrite.'

  Died raving about worms, more like, remembered Mary. Did this book contain the full list of destinies, ever since the Magdalen had opened its gates?

  'And Mary Saunders,' said the Matron at last, slowing down as her quill marked an inky path across the page, 'discharged at her own request.' She looked up, her eyes as dry as salt. 'What reason?'

  'Uneasy under confinement,' suggested Mary gravely.

  The Matron paused a moment, then wrote it down. 'You will leave at the end of the week.'

  'No,' breathed Mary, 'tonight.'

  CHAPTER THREE

  Liberty

  THE ROCKET cracked a mile above her head. Mary felt the jolt in her spine; her eardrums crackled and itched. Another, and another; the yellow-tailed stars fell as slow as leaves on the heads of the watchers. Spiked high on the wall of the Tower, a Catherine wheel spun like a soul in hellfire. Squibs moved like snakes, straining to escape across the sky, before they too coughed out their guts of light. Dark white smoke against the black night, drifting like fog, and the glitter of the fireworks caught in it, gold rain.

  Mary couldn't believe how cold the air was tonight; it lit up the inside of her mouth like a bunch of spearmint. It didn't make her cough, though; her lungs were strong again. Grit fell in her eyes; she covered them, then bared them again, peering round her hand. Colours she'd never seen, had no words for, were lavished on the hard sky. She couldn't imagine how this magic was done, how the air exploded without killing the watchers, how the stars were made to come out all at once in every colour of the rainbow.

  At the base of the Tower, men bared to the waist ran up with tapers, sweating in the cold, then dashed to a safe distance. 'Last year one of them run the wrong way, and stumbled on a rocket,' commented an old man to his neighbour, just in front of Mary.

  'I remember,' the woman said in satisfaction. 'I heard there was a hole burnt clear through him!'

  Silver lights plummeted and faces appeared again all round Mary, hundreds and thousands of them, thick-set like primroses all over Tower Hill. No one was looking back at her; their eyes were all on the extravagant lights. In the crowd she saw a child with his face to the sky, his mouth an O of wonder. Then she noticed his small hand picking the pocket of the gentleman beside him, and she laughed out loud. It felt like the first time she'd laughed all winter.

  The white fog of smoke rolled over the crowd and the bodies surged backwards. The woman in front of Mary stood on her foot; Mary shoved her away. Burning ash landed on wigs and bonnets; screams went up. People pressed against Mary from all sides, squeezing the breath out of her. She won herself a space with her elbows.

  The smoke sank. Was that the last of it? 'More,' bawled the crowd. A silence; that plaintive sound of something whizzing up into the sky, and every mouth in the city seemed to hold its breath. Then a crack like a gun, and the darkness split again. Rockets exploded like blood jetting from a dozen cuts. A Roman candle spat out stars. Mary's neck was stiff from watching the world turned upside down. She could almost believe those preachers who claimed earthquakes were a sign of God's wrath. How could the Mighty Master not be irked by such a stealing of his thunder?

  When the show was finally over and the sky cleared, the crowd began to stretch and thin. Mary stumbled; she couldn't feel her frozen legs. She was seized from behind by an old fellow with one arm. 'Sound of war, that is,' he boasted fearfully in her ear.

  'As if you'd remember!' said Mary, not unkindly.

  She picked out a small coin from the sewing wages the Matron had given her, and bought a cup of hot gin from a barrow-woman to warm up her insides; its harsh perfume mixed with the smoke on her tongue. If she kept moving she'd be all right. She spent another few pence on a small pot of rouge and applied it to her mouth and cheekbones. Glancing in a shop window, she saw her reflection, her old familiar red-lipped harlot's face.

  Rounding the corner to Billingsgate she crashed into a man with his waistcoat hanging from one shoulder and his shirt billowing. 'Give's a kiss for luck then.' He wrapped himself round her like a flag.

  She thrust him away.

  'Can't say no tonight, m'dear.' He breathed pure brandy in her face. 'Nobody can't say no on New Year's.'

  His mouth was warm and liquid. Mary let him dip his tongue in for a minute before she pulled loose and walked on. She tripped over a stick that was still smoking. It shocked her to recognise it as a firework; all that glory come down to a blackened skewer. How much all this had to cost! They might as well toss banknotes on a fire, like leaves at the end of summer.

  Such a hard icy night she'd picked to make her grand exit from the Magdalen. Still, Mary had no regrets. She walked faster, taking the liberty of her legs after two months cooped up like an old hen. The cold made her gasp. Her clothes, which Matron Butler had passed over to her at the door of the ward like soiled bandages, were so much thinner than she remembered. However had she survived in them before? Now her cotton pocket-hoops thrust her pink skirt over her hips, swinging it as she walked, scooping up icy air around her legs. The sheen of her jacket-bodice delighted her fingertips after their long starvation, but underneath, her skirt was hard with goose-pimples.

  The street lamps gave off the familiar stink of oil. She breathed in deeply, though it made her eyes prickle. The city was a frozen puddle of mud, and Mary was an exile come home. She remembered its dangers but none of them could touch her tonight. Even the names of the streets thrilled her, because she was free to stride down any she pleased. Clement's Lane, Poultry Street, Cheapside ... The sounds of the midnight bells swelled across the city. She picked up speed as she came in sight of St. Pauls.

  Around the towering dome the streets were black with revellers. Guisers went by in fox and rabbit heads; St. George was busy saving the Lady at two different street corners. A red-eyed young gentleman in cream brocade tossed coins high in the air, barking with laughter as the beggars scrabbled for them. On the steps of the Cathedral, a fat man was wrestling an old bear; they embraced like Cain and Abel.

  Buying whisky and an oatcake to toast the New Year, Mary kept one eye out for Doll, who surely had to be on the town tonight. It would be very merry to surprise her. 'Evening, old muck-mate,' Mary would call out, as if she'd seen her only the other day. Was that Doll there, under the apple-laden kissing bough lashed to a lamppost? No, it was another girl, with an unmarked face, baring her breasts to the sharp night air, a man at each nipple.

  Mary's legs were beginning to give way; she felt as brittle as an icicle. Deep in her stomach, the whisky fought the gin. Time to head for home.

  Hurryin
g by the vast blank fortress of Newgate she spared a thought for the prisoners inside. Surely the sounds of pleasure taunted them; how they must have longed to be set free for one night. Mary tried to imagine what it would be like to sit and wait for your fate, whether the noose or the Americas. In the back of her mind she saw the great dark bulk of her father, squatting in the straw. What had Cob Saunders's last days been, before the gaol fever took him? What had he seen in that delirium?

  There were times in her childhood when Mary had almost believed what her mother said about Cob Saunders: that he was a fool who'd thrown himself away like a bit of paper. But then all at once would come a memory of pale arms like the branches of an oak wrapped around her, and a thick black beard standing between Mary and all harm. She couldn't see his face; it was blurred like a coin worn flat from handling. But she knew he'd never have thrown his daughter out on the street, no matter what she'd done. And it occurred to her now that he must have been some kind of hero, her rebel father—to join a riot and wager all the years he had left in him, for the sake of eleven stolen days.

  They'd never even given his body back, after the fever had left him cold. He was somewhere behind those high Newgate walls in the locked Burying Ground, his bones scattered in the general pit. When the authorities laid hold of you, Mary thought with bitterness, nothing was your own anymore, not even your body. She would have liked it if there'd been a grave. She could have gone there tonight, and knelt for a moment on the iron earth, as if to say she'd come home.