CHAPTER SIX
Bloom Fall
'DON'T FORGET the rowan.'
'Rowan?' repeated Mary, mending the handle of her basket with a bit of old twine.
'For nailing up over the door,' said Mrs. Jones patiently. 'To keep out witches.'
Mary stared at Mrs. Jones over the kitchen table, and gave a helpless shrug. 'Whatever you say.'
It was May Eve, and Mrs. Jones had released Mary from the endless hem of Mrs. Vaughan's muslin cape and sent her off to the woods to go blossoming. 'It brings the summer in,' Mrs. Jones explained, half-laughing. 'If we don't hang blossoms up by May Morning, nothing will bear fruit.'
And indeed, thought Mary, the world was full of strange things and stranger people, so what harm could it do to nail up a few branches of blossom?
In the warm evening the river was cluttered with swans and gulls. The trees shuddered with roosting crows. There were purple bunches Mary didn't recognise till she got up close, and breathed in, and remembered the baskets in Covent Garden: lilacs. How the scent of them used to swim above the stink of the discarded fruit underfoot. She walked deeper into the wood now. An old tree, slumped under its rolls of bark, was turning green all over; through cracks in its sides the fresh twigs were breaking out, hungry for the light.
In a clearing Mary passed half a dozen locals hacking branches off a fallen birch that was the length of four men. Jarrett the Smith looked up and wiped the sweat and insects off his forehead. 'How d'you like our Maypole, Mary Saunders?'
She gave him a quick smile.
'Long enough for you, is it?' And a sly guffaw from another fellow.
Who'd said that? Maybe the red-haired man at the back, one of the ones whose names she didn't know. But they all knew her, evidently. She walked on faster. Her heart was thumping in her chest. Would they have spoken that way to any female passing through the woods today, given that it was the season of rising sap and dirty jokes?
She was safe, Mary reminded herself. She was not yet sixteen, a virgin without a history. Her only secret was that she was engaged to be married to Daffy Cadwaladyr, a respectable manservant of twenty.
Nothing was impossible.
She wasn't sure which bush was rowan, but she started to fill her basket with white tangled blossom; if she brought home a bit of everything, she'd be all right.
The creak of a breaking branch, and she spun around. But it was only Daffy, his face lit up with a smile like a Roman candle. 'Sneaking after me, were you?' she asked, trying to be stern.
'Mrs. Jones sent me to carry your basket.'
'She didn't!'
'She did!'
'She knows, then,' Mary told him, letting him press his throat against her wide red mouth. 'She's such a romantic.'
'She can't know,' he said, troubled. 'I haven't said a word yet. We agreed, not a word till after Christmas.'
'The woman's got eyes in her head, hasn't she?' murmured Mary. 'And she can smell it on the air. Every bird and plant in this wood is getting mated. It's the season.'
Not a word from Daffy; he'd loosed her long dark hair from its starched cap and dipped his face into it. His breath was a live creature at the nape of her neck. And suddenly for the first time in her life Mary felt it. A flickering in her stomach; a thrill as sharp as a blackbird's note. It occurred to her that this must be what Doll had had with her journeyman: what ordinary women felt at the hands of ordinary men.
Was it indeed due to the season, the ripening on all sides? Or was it because of the seriousness of this man's fingers? Mary's body shook behind her rigid stays. There was no time to waste. When she ripped open Daffy's breeches, a button fell into the ivy. His eyes were startled, huge. 'Wait—' he stuttered.
Mary didn't bother answering. Hair hung damp in her eyes. She didn't care if she was giving herself away by such forwardness, or if her hands had the practised ease of a harlot. What mattered was to catch hold of this tiny feeling before it disappeared for ever.
She was on top of him, then he was on top of her. There were twigs in his wig. Her heel was caught in a loop of ivy. All round them the scent of crushed blossoms went up. Daffy's lips moved as if drinking Canary wine from an invisible bottle. His legs thrashed like flames.
She slid him into her, swallowed him up. Daffy's whole body went as stiff as a corpse. It was then that Mary realised he'd never done this before in his life. He was much too new at it to realise she was no virgin. She was touched; she was appalled. His bliss was so close she could nearly taste it. She waited for it to spread into her body, fill it up.
But the fact was, the act felt the same as it always had. A necessary conjunction. A temporary occupation. She was numb. She was a million miles away. Not half so big as his father, is he? remarked Doll in her head.
Mary squeezed her eyes shut. Her own thoughts repelled her.
It was all over in minutes. 'Oh, Mary,' Daffy cried in her ear, 'oh, Mary, oh, Mary,' till it became a sound that had no meaning.
His dead weight on her was the same as any other man's; the same crumpled feeling, the same stickiness, cooling as fast in the twilight. She wanted more than anything to shove him off her, and had only mercy enough to lie still.
When he raised his head she saw his eyes were wet. 'This is the happiest hour of my life,' he whispered huskily.
She strained her neck up to kiss one of his eyelids. The whole thing was impossible.
Kneeling up, searching in the foliage for his missing button, Daffy spoke more calmly. 'Let's come back here, to this very spot, every May Eve,' he said, 'for the rest of our lives.'
Mary stopped brushing leaves off her skirt, and stared at him. 'But Daffy,' she began warily, 'we won't be in Monmouth always.'
'Where else will we be?'
A watchman's wooden rattle started up in Mary's head. 'There won't be enough room for us here.'
'But Monmouth is growing apace,' he told her cheerfully. 'I believe it could soon bear two staymakers, and two dressmakers. We may need to begin in another town in the Marches, but it won't be long until we come home.'
Home. The word was bitter in her mouth. This was where the trap lay, she saw now. 'London's that,' she said, almost gruffly. 'My home is nowhere else. I'm a London girl.'
Daffy shook his head gently, as if at a child. 'Not any more, my sweetling. If you could see how much you've changed—'
Anger made spots behind Mary's eyes. 'I'm the same as I ever was. And as for you, I thought you claimed to have ambition!' she spat at him. 'I didn't know you planned to eke out your days in a miserable crow town.'
His face went white. 'If it's good enough for the Joneses—'
'Pox on the Joneses!' she roared. 'I want more from life than to end up a poor man's Mrs. Jones.'
Daffy's hands were twined together like wet rope. He wore the painful expression of someone trying to recall the second verse of a song. 'Mary, Mary,' he remonstrated, 'all else aside, how could we think of bringing up our children in the big city?'
She stared at him. For a moment she'd forgotten how little he knew about her. He had no idea who she really was: a barren, raddled whore. His innocence repelled her as much as her own deceit.
She and he were too unlike, she saw now; they could no more combine than oil and water. They wanted different things in life and had different plans for getting them. Mary's path and Daffy's had briefly crossed in this blossoming wood before snaking away in opposite directions. The old happy ending had no place in this particular story. How could she have been such a fool?
'I've made a mistake,' she said quietly, and turned to pick up her basket.
'What do you mean?'
'I can't marry you.'
'Not quite yet, I know,' Daffy blundered on, 'but in good time—'
How could she ever have thought of mating herself to such a plodding, ordinary man? 'Never,' said Mary, walking out of the wood.
John Niblett the coach driver brought news that the war with France was over at last after seven years, and the Gov
ernment had ordered public rejoicings in every town. But Mr. Jones spent the evening poring over the Bristol Mercury, and announced over griddle cakes at supper that this so-called peace was a disgrace. 'We beat the dogs fair and square, and now we're handing them back Guadaloupe and Martinique!'
Mary would have liked to stroll down to the bonfire on Chippenham Meadow—they said there was going to be dancing—but she feared to meet Daffy there. The man's eyes were as red as a rash these days. He kept hovering in her vicinity, as if he had some grand, decisive declaration to make. But she made sure never to be alone with him. Nothing he could say would make any difference.
Within a few weeks the blooming trees were scraggy again. Mrs. Jones said bloom fall was the season that always made her sad; it came on so quickly. The blossoms nailed to the walls of the house faded and curled after a few weeks, but their smell grew stronger.
To Abi, they always seemed to have a tang of rot. Late one warm May night she lay on her side of the bed and stared out the tiny window. The shutter had been left wide open to catch some air. There was nothing to see but an indigo sky. Beside her, Mary Saunders let out a long breath between her teeth.
'You fight with your fellow?' asked Abi.
Mary's head turned towards her as quickly as a bird's. 'What fellow?'
Abi snorted mildly. As if the way Daffy had been looking at Mary recently wasn't enough to spark tinder.
Mary turned her back and spoke very low into the darkness. 'He's not my fellow.'
That meant yes. A bad fight. Abi waited; sometimes silence was the loudest question.
'Besides,' said Mary, flouncing onto her back and staring up at the low ceiling, 'I wager I'll get farther on my own than if I harness myself to such a dumb ox.'
'Where you going to?'
'Never you mind.'
Again, Abi waited. She had learned not to be hurt by such automatic rebuffs. This girl had to be handled like a sharp-clawed cat.
'London, where else?' said Mary at last, as if the darkness were squeezing the words out of her.
'When?'
'Not anytime soon, but someday. There's no use going back till I have good clothes and money. Turn up empty-handed in the city,' said Mary scornfully, 'you might as well lie down in the road for the carthorses to trample.'
Abi shut her eyes and suddenly was back in Bristol, the day the ship from Barbados came in to port, nine years ago, in the chilliest rain she'd ever known. Her skin where the brass collar had been was naked, raw. The streets were no wider than outstretched arms, as crammed with faces as a trash heap with rats, and every face was white. While Abi had been waiting for the doctor to collect all his trunks, an enormous rattling cart had borne down on her, and it had occurred to her to step in front of it. What had stopped her, she wondered now? Cowardice? Or fear that her spirit, set loose in those tangled streets, would never find its way home to Africa?
'I ask for wages, like you said,' she mentioned.
'Why, I never thought you'd dare,' said Mary, animated. 'And?'
Abi shook her head mutely.
Mary let out a puff of contemptuous breath. 'A girl I used to know in London, she once told me, masters are like cullies.'
'Cullies?'
'You know,' the girl said hastily, 'men that go to whores. Masters are like that to servants; they use you up and toss you aside like paper. What did he say, when you asked?'
'She,' Abi corrected her. 'Was the mistress.'
A tiny pause, while Mary registered this. 'Oh,' she said at last, 'I thought it would have been the master. Still, Mrs. Jones can't go against his word, can she? When it comes down to it,' she added bitterly, 'a wife's only a kind of upper servant.'
'She say maybe give me present, at Christmas.' Abi heard the flatness of her own words.
She found her hand being pulled along the sheet and held very tight. It was a curious sensation, mildly uncomfortable, but also comforting. She tried to remember the last time anyone had held her hand like that: without trying to make it do anything.
Mary's narrow fingers traced the scar that went right through Abi's hand, from back to palm. 'What happened here?' she whispered. 'I know it was a knife, but what really happened? Was it long ago?'
Abi let out a tiny sigh. For a while she didn't say anything; long enough that she thought the girl might have drifted off. But the grip on her ragged palm never loosened. 'I come into house—' Abi began at last.
'This house?'
'No, no. Big estate in Barbados. Was house slave by then. Easier. Saved my life, you know? Wouldn't lasted half as long in the fields.'
'Go on.'
She squirmed a little. She'd never put words to this memory before, let alone English. 'So that day the door standing open.'
'Yes?'
'And master, he there on the floor, all bloody.'
Mary gave a little whistle of excitement.
'There was big knife,' Abi went on, 'stick up out of his eye. It look so bad.'
'What did you do?'
'Try take it out, but it stuck fast.'
'Ugh!'
Abi let out a little painful laugh. 'So then neighbour men run in, and find me with blood.'
'On your hands?'
'All over.'
'And they think you've done it?' asked Mary, leaning up on one elbow.
'They sure,' Abi corrected her, 'because of blood. And they want—what you call it? After killing.'
'A trial?'
Abi cleared her throat in frustration. 'A yes. Yes to killing.'
'A confession?'
'That the word. But I won't give no yes. Won't say I done nothing. Not me.'
'So they let you go?'
Abi stared up at the dark ceiling. What was the point of relating the facts when this girl just didn't understand what it was like, back on the island?
'Go on,' whispered Mary, like a child cheated of her bedtime story.
'So they put me on kitchen table,' said Abi weightily, 'tell me they going stick the knife into one bit and another bit till I say yes, then after they going kill me quick.'
The attic was quiet. 'My God.'
'They start with this hand here,' said Abi, tugging it out of Mary's grasp.
'So what stopped them from going on?'
'Another neighbour come in then, say they catched the man with blood on his shirt.'
'Which man?' asked Mary, bewildered.
'The killing one. He got master's moneybag in pocket.'
'Just in time for you!'
Abi let out a small snort. 'You don't know nothing.'
'Well, tell me, then!'
'Then the neighbours take me to auction, sell me for pay for master's funeral.'
'How much did you fetch?'
'Twenty pound,' Abi told her. Was the girl impressed by this figure, she wondered, or did she consider it trifling? 'It would be more,' she added a little defensively, 'except for my hand bleeding.'
Mary lay very still beside her.
All in all, Abi was glad she'd told this old story. It made it smaller, she found, to wrap it in words and fold it away. She rolled over now and pushed her face under the pillow, waiting for sleep.
On Mary's birthday, it so happened that Mr. Channing came back to Monmouth from the horse races and paid nine months of tailoring bills in full. Mr. Jones told his wife to bring the best port up from its hiding place in the scullery, for a double celebration. Mr. Channing rode off after a single glass, but Mr. Jones sat up after dinner toasting his king and country, his patrons, and all his family. 'To our maid Mary, the best of young women, with heartiest felicitations on completing her sixteenth year!'
They raised their glasses.
'To Henrietta Jones,' he declared next, 'the Belle of the West!'
'Why am I a bell?' Hetta demanded, tugging at her father's cuff-ruffle as he drank.
'Because you make so much noise,' suggested Mrs. Ash without looking up from her Bible.
'No, my dear,' he said, lifting her onto his lap, 'it's a
different kind of bell, that means beautiful lady.' And indeed as he looked down at her snow-white head, it did seem to him that Hetta was all he could ask for in a daughter. And for some men, that would be enough; some men wouldn't wake up in the middle of the night from dreams of driving in a carriage beside their fine handsome son.
She bounced violently on his knee and started up the old game. 'Fafa, where did your leg go?'
'Did I never tell you?' His eyes widened. 'One night I was fast asleep and a big rat chewed it off.'
'He didn't!' Her voice was delicious with fear.
'He did. Has he never woken you up nibbling your toes?'
'Don't scare the child,' laughed Mrs. Jones, looking up from her work.
On his ninth glass of port, her husband sensed a delightful cloudiness about his head. His throat opened, and words spilled out; he even insisted on wetting Hetta's lips with port, 'to give her a taste for the best.' After his wife had gone off with Mrs. Ash to put the child to bed, Mr. Jones couldn't seem to move from his chair. It was so very comfortable; the liquor had fitted every curve of horsehair to his body. At last only his maid Mary remained by the bottle, her head resting on one fist, listening.
'Oh, indeed, great plans, great plans. In a few years, Mary, I shall buy up a draper's business to combine with ours. The Joneses of Monmouth will be known as the most complete purveyors of sartorial goods west of Bristol.' He relished the genteel ring of the words.
'How many years are a few?' asked Mary.
Mr. Jones shrugged, insouciant. 'Certainly by the time our next boy is born.' He could see the girl come alert at the phrase, but he went on. 'My intelligencers tell me that our trade is likely to have tripled in value by then.'
'Really, sir.'
Did she disbelieve him? There was a dry edge to the girl's answers sometimes. Like her mother Su Rhys before her. What Mr. Jones didn't let himself remember in his wife's presence was that he'd never much liked her best friend. 'Hetta will go to a school for young ladies,' he hurried on, 'and my son will become a gentleman.'
'How can you be sure?' Mary asked.
'I shall send him to the best tutors—'