Slammerkin

  Abi had spent a fortnight thinking about it, but it still made her break out in a sweat along her hairline as she stood kneading bread on the kitchen table. All she knew was that to ask for something was to show a weakness: a back bared to the whip.

  'Mistress,' she said quietly as Mrs. Jones bustled out of the pantry, wiping her hands on her apron.

  Mrs. Jones spoke distractedly. 'Those meat dumplings are quite dried up, Abi, I fear we must throw them out.'

  'Yes, mistress. But please?'

  'What is it, then, Abi?'

  The maid-of-all-work looked down at her hands, covered in dough to the wrist. She spoke through a tightened throat. 'I think. Wonder. I hear—' And then she broke off. She couldn't mention Mary's name; that would be tale-bearing of the worst kind. On the plantation, you could end up with your throat cut in your sleep for that.

  'Come now, tell me what's the matter,' said the mistress with gentle impatience. 'Is it about the dumplings?'

  Abi shook her head. 'Some say—' she began again. And then, with a sudden bluntness, 'I want wages.'

  'Oh, my dear.' Mrs. Jones blinked at her. A long pause stretched between them. 'This is unexpected, Abi. After all the years you've been with us. Are you not content in our family?'

  Abi made a painful shrug.

  'What is it you lack? Tell me. Is it a new dress you'd like, for Easter? I never thought you cared about such things.'

  She shook her head violently. 'Wages,' she repeated, as if it were a magic word.

  'But what for, exactly? I mean, to buy what with?' Getting no answer, Mrs. Jones rushed on: 'You know you're still not used to our money, my dear. Remember that time you got tricked out of a whole shilling for that old slice of salt pork?'

  Abi bit down on her lip. She knew it: all she'd brought down on herself was disaster. That whoreson of a butcher, she remembered him now. It was her first year in Monmouth, and when she'd asked for her change he'd denied she'd given him any more than thrupence. 'I said sorry.'

  'Indeed you did, and it's all long gone and forgotten,' Mrs. Jones told her, patting Abi's floury elbow.

  The maid's voice was hoarse with frustration. 'I just want some wages.'

  'Well, now.' She could see the mistress's face change, withdraw into itself. 'I must discuss this with the master, of course. But I fear I know what he'll say: we haven't a penny to spare at the moment. We have such heavy expenses, and you've been with us long enough to know how the quality are about paying their bills, Abi!'

  The maid stared back at her, refusing to nod.

  'But maybe at Christmas, if our affairs are in a better state,' Mrs. Jones finished in a rush. 'Yes, that's a better notion. Not so much a wage as a sort of Christmas present. To reward you for all the years you've been part of the family.' Nodding, as if she had resolved the matter to everyone's satisfaction, the mistress made her escape.

  Abi stared after her. For eight years she had thought of Mrs. Jones as a good woman: the kindest mistress she'd had, anyway. But today she could see right into the woman's heart, to its kernel of cowardice.

  She stretched the dough apart in her hands, ripping it like flesh.

  The first Sunday in March, and the light was the shocking yellow of daffodils. After dinner the servants had their afternoon off, and Daffy slipped away as usual. But half a mile outside town on the Abergavenny road, he turned and folded his arms over his waistcoat. 'What do you want with me, Mary Saunders?'

  'A body's got a right to walk where they please.' She stepped out of the shadow of a cherry tree on which the first few blossoms had opened.

  'Well, the next time you follow someone on the sly, take off those clacking heels of yours. You couldn't track a deaf rabbit.'

  Mary gave him one of her unexpected red smiles. 'Is that all you do on your days off, then, go a-rabbiting?'

  Daffy shook his head.

  'How do you pass the time out here, then?'

  He shrugged. 'I look. I try,' he said sarcastically, 'to enjoy the quiet.'

  'What's there to look at?' asked Mary.

  'Plenty.'

  Farther up the hill he was pleasantly warm from exertion, and Mary was panting like an old dog, with her ridiculous pocket-hoops bouncing from side to side. He shortened his stride a little. To be fair to the girl, she didn't give up easily. They passed thin lambs; he pointed out the traces of their wool caught on the rough skin of the blackthorn trees. He paused for a minute, to watch a hare scudding across a field, and to let Mary catch her breath.

  The faint path wound between dried discs of cow dung, like dark clouds in the grass, holding tiny blue lakes from the last rain. It got very stony, then, and he heard a sudden skid of gravel behind him. Mary was down on one knee, and there was a muddy tear in her skirt, but she hadn't cried out. A laugh escaped from his mouth.

  'Pox on you,' she growled.

  'It's only a wee rip.'

  'It's only my best blue gown.'

  'Well, why'd you come out rambling after me in it?' Daffy gave her his hand to help her up, and again when they had to scramble over a pile of stones. 'This is the Kymin,' he told her.

  'I never climbed a mountain before,' puffed Mary.

  He let out another roar. It had been a long time since he'd found anything that funny. 'This isn't a mountain, girl! The Kymin's barely a hill. Now that,' he said, pointing over the skinny spires of Monmouth and far beyond, 'is a mountain.'

  Green upon green, and the smuts of sheep speckling the land. He waited for her eyes to find the long spine of the mountain, and the sharp drop where it ended. Blue-grey stone, almost transparent from this distance. 'Only a small one, mind, but she's a beauty,' he added.

  'What's it called?'

  'The Skyrrid. They're the three sleeping beasts: the Sugar Loaf, the Blorenge, and the Skyrrid.'

  'Have you climbed it?'

  'The Skyrrid? I have.'

  Mary shaded her eyes. 'I wonder why you'd claw your way up a vast rock, only to scramble down the other side again.'

  'So that you'd know you had,' said Daffy.

  Mary gave him a dubious glance.

  'The slopes were all covered in moss and whortleberries. When at last I got up onto the bare ridge, I thought I'd burst with the terror of it,' he told her. 'It was no wider across than a bed,' he hurried on, aware of her mocking eyes, 'but I walked all the way along it.'

  Her eyebrows hunched together. 'Whatever for?'

  'I wanted some soil from where the chapel used to be. It's considered a holy mountain.'

  'And did you get some?'

  'I have a bagful in my trunk,' he confided. 'It's said to ward off disease if you sprinkle it under the bed, and to put a soul to rest, if you scatter it on a coffin.'

  Mary's lips were pursed up with amusement. 'So even you, a rational fellow, is given over to superstition!'

  He shrugged, grinning uneasily. 'I don't exactly believe it, but I like to hedge my bets. And the mountain does have a holy feel to it. You can see nine counties from the top,' he added.

  He thought she might ask him to name them, but she only stared around her critically. 'Why are there fences round some fields, but not all of them?' she asked.

  'Ah,' said Daffy, 'that's the tide of history you're looking at.' He liked the phrase, but Mary slid him a scornful glance. 'By the time we die, you and I,' he hurried on, 'every inch of green in Britain will be parcelled up for farming, and there'll be no more common land. That's how Gwyn's family came down in the world,' he added; 'they used to keep pigs on the common down at Chepstow, till the lord had it enclosed.'

  'So it's an evil, then, this fencing?'

  He shrugged ruefully. 'I couldn't say. Progress depends on it; we can't stand in the way of the times.'

  Mary nodded abstractedly.

  'I could lend you a very good book on this very question.'

  'When do I get time to read books?' she asked him, her lips twisting with amusement.

  'Now there you show your ignorance,' he reproached her. '
Socalled female education is shockingly insufficient. You have an exceptional mind, I've noticed—'

  'Exactly,' said Mary, her black eyes mocking him. 'So I can do my own thinking instead of parroting from books!' A crow flapped overhead; she lifted her chin to watch.

  'Brân,' said Daffy, savouring the sound.

  'Beg your pardon?'

  'That's how we say crow, in Welsh.'

  'Oh, that gibberish,' said Mary with scorn. 'Get that from a book, did you?'

  'No, from my grandam.'

  Mary stared at the bedraggled bird, which had settled on a bush. 'It's not much to look at, is it?'

  'Ah, but your crow is a thoughtful and witty bird,' he told her.

  'Dirty nuisances.'

  He shook his head, once more amazed by how little the girl knew. 'I grant you they'll steal anything that shines, but they've a fine sense of humour, and they know things.'

  'What things?'

  'When it's going to rain, for instance.'

  The girl rolled her eyes.

  'And they're said to tell the future. Not that I credit that,' Daffy added. 'But I did read of one that lived to be a hundred years old.'

  'Books are full of lies,' Mary told him, laughing deep down in her throat.

  The crow flew closer, as if to hear its praises. It gripped a fence, claiming it for its own. There was a gloss like ice on its thick bristling coat. It let out a hoarse cry, its beak gaping to release the sound.

  'You must never kill a crow, by the way,' Daffy warned her.

  'The farmers do, don't they?'

  'Sometimes,' he said doubtfully, 'but it's bad luck. It might come back when you're asleep and peck out your eyes.'

  Mary laughed again, but he could hear an edge of fright in her voice. 'It's nothing to a vulture. I saw vultures at the Tower in London. Huge crooked-beaked frights.'

  'You forget I'm from London, fellow,' he quoted in a whinge, just as she'd put it on her first day in Monmouth. It was hard to make this girl flush, but Daffy thought he could detect a darkening along the cheekbone.

  'If you've spent your whole life in the back end of nowhere,' she told him loftily, 'you can hardly be expected to understand what you're missing. In London,' she went on before he could answer, 'there are things you wouldn't even know the words for, despite all your book-learning! The walls of rooms are hung with silks and satins of such beauty you couldn't imagine.'

  Daffy bent down suddenly, and picked a small startled white flower. 'Anemone,' he said, handing it over; he made her repeat the word until she had it right. 'Find me a silk to match that.'

  Mary rolled her eyes. 'Mrs. Jones and I can cover skirts in glorious flowers, without any need to go out in the mud to see them.'

  'Pugh!' he said rudely. 'Little neat stunted things, you embroider, all the same shape, and flat as thread. That's not nature.'

  She shrugged, her collarbone moving like cream in the gap where her kerchief had loosened.

  Daffy ran to and fro, picking flowers to fill her apron. Red campion, which wasn't red at all, he explained, but pink like the inside of a lip. Bugle, which sounded like music but was made up of little spikes of purple blue. After hooded vetch came a small pale thing he called cuckooflower, though some said lady's smock, and others, milkmaids.

  'What need has it for three names?' she asked.

  'What need have you for three dresses?'

  'You mock me.' Mary walked along, staring down into her apron. 'Nine,' she said finally.

  'Flowers?'

  'Dresses. That's if I count a bodice and a skirt as one.'

  He let out a whistle, mildly impressed. 'How did you amass such a fortune?'

  She went a little pink. 'I got most of them very cheap, in London.'

  'And why do you need all those dresses,' he teased, 'when the plants of the field have none?'

  'Ach,' she said scornfully—it was a sound she had picked up from her mistress, he noticed—'we'd be poor paltry creatures if we walked naked.'

  For an instant he let himself consider the image: Mary Saunders, walking buck naked across the top of the Kymin. Then he shook his head to clear it.

  'Now the Master,' said Mary, 'he doesn't even need two legs.'

  'Mr. Jones is a great man,' Daffy told her seriously. 'To overcome such a hindrance when he was only a boy—well, that's my idea of spirit.'

  'Is he a model to you, then?' asked Mary in her teasing voice. 'Are you going to grow up to be a one-legged staymaker and marry a dressmaker, too?'

  Daffy could feel a blush rise from his neckerchief, though he didn't quite know why. 'Mrs. Jones is ... the best of women. When I was a child, and my father was such a blunderer, she was the saving of us. She used to come by our filthy house with a basket of potted pears and clean linens, and my father's face would light up as if she were the Angel Gabriel.'

  'Had he a yearning for her, do you think?' asked the girl. 'He speaks very highly of her,' she added slyly.

  Daffy stopped short, disconcerted. 'You mean—when he was first widowed?'

  'Or even before that, when they were all young together. Cadwaladyr didn't marry till late, did he? Long after Mrs. Jones did. And he never took another wife after your mother died, though he could have done with the help, it sounds like.'

  'That's true,' said Daffy unwillingly.

  'And if your father did have a longing for the mistress,' Mary went on with animation, as if telling a story, 'that would explain why he so resented your coming to work for Mr. Jones.'

  'That wasn't it at all,' objected Daffy, his mind moving like mud. 'My father thinks the tavern—'

  'Damn the tavern!' Mary's dark eyes glittered. 'It's jealousy, pure and simple. He can't bear to see you in service to the man who stole the woman he wanted!'

  Daffy shook his head as if to get rid of a troublesome fly. 'You've read too many romances,' he said pointedly. 'You should try an encyclopaedia.'

  'Romances are more educational,' she called back. She was almost dancing, now, circling ahead of him across the green back of the hill.

  'They are not. They've misled you. Not all motives are low,' he insisted sternly. 'The human heart is not such a gutter as you think it.'

  'Daffy,' she said, coming up very close to him and speaking softly. 'Take my word for this. I know more about the human heart than you'll find in all your encyclopaedias.'

  Something in her eyes like bitterness, or sorrow. It shocked him. What had happened to these eyes, in only fifteen years of living? He wanted to reach out and shut them with his callused palm. He wanted to kiss Mary Saunders till the mountains wheeled around them.

  She turned away, as if she could read his mind. 'What's the master's leg like, tell me?' she asked after a minute, as breezy as ever.

  'What?' asked Daffy, dizzy.

  'The leg he hasn't got. What's it like?'

  Daffy wrestled with the metaphysics of this.

  'I mean the bit of it he has, before it stops,' she said impatiently. 'Is it jagged, then? Can you see the teeth marks of the saw?'

  'I've never seen it.'

  'You must have.'

  Daffy shook his head again.

  She walked a little closer to him, and whispered: 'Is there anything else missing?'

  This was a most forward and peculiar girl. His face was hot. He turned to face into the cool breeze and stared down into the valley. 'That's the Sugar Loaf,' he remarked after a minute. 'And there's Glamorganshire. They speak no English there.'

  Mary gazed down on the foreign country. After a few minutes, she spoke as if continuing a silent conversation. 'You could do better.'

  He glanced at her, bewildered.

  'That Gwyn. She doesn't sound like she was much of a match, anyway. And first cousins shouldn't marry, I've heard; they have queer babies. I'm sure you could do better.'

  He didn't know what to say. He felt like laughing, but no sound emerged.

  Mary pointed to a flower with a big white head. 'What's that one?'

  'Ah, yes
,' he said. 'Ramsons, it's called. Rub it on your wrists for perfume.'

  She obeyed, unguarded. A reek rose from her.

  Daffy laughed aloud. 'Some call it wild garlic.'

  She threw the crushed stems in his face and ran down the hill.

  Mr. Jones had never made a bigger set: fat old Widow Tanner would need sixty bonings for her new Easter stays. Well, if he finished them by Good Friday he was going to charge her double, and defy her to query it! Mary Saunders held an arc of whalebone for him while he backstitched it into place. Her hands were sure; they never trembled.

  'I'll name no names, Mary,' he murmured, tugging the thread taut, 'but some staymakers do no more than slot the bones into tucks in the cloth, so they ride about as they will.'

  The girl sucked in her breath as if shocked at the very idea. He knew she was making fun of him; he didn't take offence. His eyes focused on the skeleton of boning in its skin of dull linen. It would take three more days of work before he could start adding the sets of laces—front, back, and side—that Mrs. Tanner's vast flesh would require.

  'Will this pair be silk?'

  He gave the girl an amused glance. He'd never known anyone to take such a relish in fine fabric. 'The cover will be. But that matters little, Mary. Any set of stays can look well on the outside, even if there's shoddy work within.' He moved the girl's cold hands infinitesimally, to change the angle of tension. 'It's the bones that matter.'

  'I know that,' she said a little bored. 'But the new green paduasoy is so much handsomer than that old brocade you used on Mrs. Pringle's stays.'

  Mr. Jones's mouth curled up at both ends. Ah, well now, beauty. Beauty demands sacrifice, Mary.'

  'Sacrifice?'

  'The French have never understood that,' he pronounced. 'Their lovelies are loose; all they care for is a row of glossy bows, and a plump decolletage. But here in England we make the most unyielding stays in the world. Upright in body, he quoted, 'upright in soul. English ladies' sides are straight and narrow beyond anything nature can produce.'

  'Stays hurt though, sometimes. You should try them,' she remarked under her breath.