Slammerkin

  Afterwards, Mary supposed, the father and daughter would walk home hand in hand, and Mr. Jones would never let the name of Mary Saunders be said in his house again. From now on, thought Mary, the child would assume this was the way of the world. She'd always expect the people she loved to kill each other.

  It was Hetta's eyes, more than anything else, that made the salt tears start to fall. They rushed down Mary's face, blinding her.

  The crowd swayed round Mr. Jones like waves against a rock; the people of Monmouth were tired of waiting for the spectacle to begin. Mary stared blurrily down at her filthy shift. Would they burn it too, she wondered, or sell it scrap by scrap for souvenirs? She knew it was a petty matter, but she would have given anything to be hanged in black satin. How vanity endured to the end! Clothes being no protection, she told herself, folks might as well cast them off and go naked across the world.

  Terror squeezed her like a rag.

  Halfway down her stays, Mary's bound hands found the ribbon. Faded to the colour of beetroot, Doll's red ribbon. She wound it round her numb fingers, tight enough to hurt. Nothing could have scared Doll, not even a gallows. Chin high, me old muck-mate.

  All at once she remembered the way out. If you were about to hang and you had no friend in the world to haul on your feet, then there was only one way to escape a slow strangulation: jump. She remembered the Metyard woman at Tyburn, who'd cheated the crowd; that stony face, that leap into space. How innocent Mary had been in those days; she'd thought the people who committed murder were a different species. She'd assumed that they hated the people they killed, if they were capable of emotion at all. She would never have guessed that such things could happen as easily as sickness, or weather, or love.

  Her thighs tensed like branches in a high wind now. She had to bide her time; she mustn't show her intentions. She had to wait till she knew the end of the rope was knotted to the scaffold. Till the hangman pulled the white bag over her face, and climbed down from the cart, and slapped the horse's rump. That would be her cue to jump. If she tried too early, she'd make a mess of it, and they'd haul her back into the cart.

  Mary's heart was smashing against her ribs with fear and excitement. She felt the rope around her neck begin to move; her head whipped round, but the hangman was only unwinding the coils, heaving the end over the scaffold, like any sailor about to make for open sea. He pulled the knot tight around the wood. A scattering of applause.

  He came up to the cart, then, the little white bag in his hand. He swung himself up like a child playing on a fence. 'Forgive me,' he muttered formally to Mary.

  Her last chance for a touch of human skin. She obeyed her impulse and kissed the man on one bristly cheek, below the mask. His skin was warm. He jerked a little, but didn't shudder or wipe it off. He lifted the white bag, and dropped it over her head.

  The light was blotted out. The cart shook as he jumped down.

  Sackcloth, coarse against Mary's nose; her temples itched. She'd never thought to take a last look at the world. She should have stared up at the sky while it was still there. A little light filtered through the floury cloth. Mary gathered all her forces and waited to hear the hangman slap the horse's rump. What if the noise of the crowd drowned the little sound out? What if the next thing she knew was the slow mauling of the rope, lugging her by the throat into the air? Terror, now, knocking on her ribs like a debt collector who wouldn't wait any longer.

  In times of trouble remember your namesake, Mary. That voice in her head, mild as milk. The girl could almost believe it was Mrs. Jones. She could almost feel her mistress's soft hand in hers.

  Let the Queen of Scots be a lesson to you to keep your head high.

  She would. She'd jump higher than the spire of St. Mary's Church.

  Come along now, girl.

  The townsfolk would cover their faces and gasp, to see her swing like a dark angel.

  It's time, my dear.

  Soon she would be rid of the whole business; soon she'd have left this messy and cumbersome self behind.

  Mary. This way.

  The hangman's whistle, almost merry. The cry of a child, tugged out of the way.

  Mary?

  That sound of the hangman's hand on his horse's rump, so intimate, so familiar.

  Coming, mistress, she said in her head.

  Mary staggered to her feet on the jolting cart as the noose tightened its kiss on her neck. She leaped into space, high, higher than she'd ever been in her life. She came down with a clean snap, and the crowd scattered like birds from the swing of her feet.

  Note

  SLAMMERKIN IS a fiction, inspired by the surviving facts of the real Mary Saunders's life, which are disputed and few. She was a servant in the employment of one Mrs. Jones in—or just outside—the town of Monmouth, which at the time was in England but now is in Wales. On 13 September 1763 she killed Mrs. Jones with a cleaver. She was held in Monmouth Gaol until the Assizes on 7 March 1764, when she was convicted of murder. On 21 March 1764, at the age of sixteen or seventeen, she was either hanged, or burned, or both.

  Some other real people make brief appearances in this novel: Mrs. Farrel, who squeezed a fortune out of her twenty lodging houses in St. Giles; the Metyards, a mother and daughter who killed their apprentice Nanny Nailor and were executed by Thomas Turlis on 19 July 1762; James Boswell and Samuel Johnson; the prostitutes Alice Gibbs, Elizabeth Parker, and Ann Pullen (alias Rawlinson) who was charged with stealing her mistress's clothes in January 1763; at the Magdalen Hospital, Matron Elizabeth Butler, and the Reverend William Dodds, who went on to be hanged in 1777 for forging Lord Chesterfield's name.

  Doll Higgins is an invention, but several women were found starved and frozen to death in London in the terrible winter of 1762-63. The character of Abi is inspired by the case of an anonymous woman who was enslaved in Angola and brought to Barbados, then Bristol, and whose genitals were displayed in a fold-out engraving in a book published by Dr. James Parsons.

  What little contemporary commentary there was about the murder of Mrs. Jones suggested various motives. The Gentleman's Magazine claimed that Mary Saunders had planned the crime carefully in order to get hold of her mistress's savings. But, according to a broadsheet, The Confession and last Dying-Words of Mary Saunders, the girl did it because she longed for 'fine clothes.'

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  Reading Group Guide

  Slammerkin is based on a real case of a girl who killed her employer in 1763. How do you think this factual basis has affected Emma Donoghue's writing of the novel? If you had not known that it was based on fact, would you have read Slammerkin differently?

  Why do you think an author would choose to set a novel in the past rather than the present? Should novels like Slammerkin be put in the category of historical fiction, or does that make them sound formulaic? Does a story set in the past have to be absolutely true to the facts of history? Which aspects are most important for a realistic writer to get 'right': the physical surroundings, the dates of events or inventions, the dialogue, the mindset of the characters? Might those also be the ones that have been the least documented?

  As authors often do, Donoghue has created a protagonist with many unlikeable qualities. What did you find hardest to tolerate about Mary Saunders? What about her character or situation made you keep reading?

  According to one of Donoghue's sources, the real Mary Saunders killed for the sake of 'fine clothes'. In the novel, two of the whores' rules are about dress: 'Clothes make the woman,' and 'Clothes are the greatest lie ever told.' Explore the different things clothes mean to people in Slammerkin.

  It could be said that Slammerkin is an archetypal story about the longing for, and the killing of, the mother. Do you agree? Compare the kinds of 'mothering' Mary gets from Susan Digot, Doll Higgins, and Jane Jones.

  Slammerkin contains some graphic sex scenes. Did these add to or detract from your enjoyment of the book? How did prostitution compare to the other ways women earned a living? Do you think Mary's
prostitution is crucial to the story, or could Donoghue have chosen some other 'trade' for her heroine?

  In the eighteenth century, the word 'family' could mean the whole household, servants included. From Chapter Four on, Slammerkin is told from the points of view of six different members of the Jones's household. Why do you think Donoghue has done this? How did this broadened focus affect your reading of the second half of the book? Did it make you see Mary differently?

  Although American historical novels often include black characters, Slammerkin is unusual in this respect. Why do you think Donoghue gave Abi such a central role in the story? What effect does she have on the other characters' behaviour, and on how we judge them?

  Mary Saunders's trade has made her suspicious of men. Think about how the men she gets to know in Monmouth (Mr. Jones, Daffy, Cadwaladyr) relate to her. Which of them sees her most clearly? Which of them does most to make her question her own hostility?

  Is Slammerkin a woman's story, or an exploration of powerlessness in all its forms? Try to arrange the members of the Jones's household in a hierarchy, paying attention to their gender, race, age, physical ability, legal position, wealth, and job status. Can you draw a line between the haves and the have-nots? Who is least free, most free?

  When Mary Saunders moves from London to the Welsh Borders, she is startled by the many pagan traditions that have survived there. Is this just 'local colour', or does the clash between urban London and traditional Welsh culture play an important part in Mary's story?

  When do you think Mary's downfall begins: when she starts whoring for Cadwaladyr's customers? When she breaks off her engagement to Daffy? When she refuses to lend Abi the money? Ultimately, why do you think she kills Mrs. Jones? Is it her choice, or her fate?

  It is sometimes said that a novel should only be set in a past era if its story grows out of the specific realities of that era, rather than being a story that could have happened anytime. Do you agree? How much is Mary Saunders a product, or a victim, of her historical moment? How much of your character depends on the circumstances of your upbringing?

  Unlike the majority of films and novels, Slammerkin offers no happy ending. Did you find it depressing? What kind of pleasures can be gained from reading about suffering? Could you imagine a plausible 'happy ending' for Mary Saunders, before the murder, or even after it?

  Slammerkin, set in an era of high birth and mortality rates, is full of dead parents and dead children. With life expectancy in developed nations now in the 70s or 80s, and the birth rate very low, what has changed in the way family members tend to relate to each other today?

  Does a historical novel have to comment obliquely on modern life? A century and a half after the murder of Mrs. Jones, how relevant are the novel's issues (for instance, class, prostitution, slave labour, rural versus urban life, the criminal justice system) to the society we live in now? How much has changed, how much has stayed the same? Does reading Slammerkin make you relieved to be living now rather than then, or is there anything remarkable about that period you feel we have lost?

  * * *

  An excerpt from Emma Donoghue's latest novel, Life Mask, available now.

  THE SPRING Season was in full flow, now, and the tiny diamond that was Mayfair (tucked between Hyde Park, Oxford Street, Bond Street and Piccadilly) was criss-crossed every night with carriages lit up like fireflies, taking their occupants to routs, drums and assemblies, ridottos of 10,000 or musical evenings for a dozen. There were alfresco breakfasts (everyone still in their furs) and calls to pay from afternoon into evening. The World watched a balloon ascent in Hyde Park, and kept an eye out for the sumptuously dressed Prince of Wales and his pink-cheeked Mrs Fitzherbert dashing by in an open phaeton with a pair of bays. Mayfair residents roamed outside their preserve only for certain purposes: the gentlemen to debates at the Lords or Commons in Westminster Palace, or to gamble at their clubs on St James's, perhaps to buy a hat at Lock's, or wine at Berry's; the ladies to shop on the Strand or admire the crocuses at Kew. And, of course, everyone drove east to attend the Opera House and the two patent theatres of Covent Garden and Drury Lane.

  Every few days, now, the Richmond House Players (as they affected to call themselves) made their way south-east, on horseback, in sedan-chairs or carriages, from their Mayfair homes to the great house in Whitehall. Already they were experiencing that united delusion, that derangement of the senses known as theatre. On waking, or during the tedious hours it took for them to be dressed for dinner, they muttered their lines, sketched their gestures on the air. They'd never worked so hard in their lives, or felt so necessary.

  Today they were to rehearse in Richmond's library, where all the furniture was white and gold. Eliza found Mrs Damer standing at the window, looking remarkably handsome for nearly forty. Everything about the sculptor was pointed—a long chin and aristocratic nose, sharp cheekbones, precisely etched eyelids—which should have been off-putting, but wasn't; her vitality warmed and softened all her lines. Eliza looked past her, to the Privy Garden's constant traffic of Members of Parliament, clerks, messenger boys and lovers. 'A sort of stage on which all London struts and frets its hour.'

  Mrs Damer spun round, her brown eyes lively. 'Exactly. All so busy—and so aware of being looked at—'

  'But restless, as if they might forget their lines at any moment.' Eliza stared past the Banqueting House to where she could pick out the clean white spire of St Martin-in-the-Fields. A gentleman, Derby had once remarked, was a man with no visible means of support. In her mind's eye a little fellow deftly walked the high-wire between two spires, tiptoeing across the abyss as if to fall was inconceivable because he had invisible means of support: angels, perhaps, holding up his hands and feet. Eliza sometimes felt like that herself these days. Yesterday, for instance, when the Duke had mentioned how lucky they were to have secured the aid of a lady of such genius, Eliza had felt the thin wire vibrate under her foot and wondered what tiny, unseen fingers were bearing her up.

  Are you lost in admiration of the Medici Faun?'

  Eliza's head turned. 'Oh. Indeed,' she lied. That must be the statue standing in the window.

  'The one that moves me is the Apollo Belvedere,' said Mrs Damer, reaching out to touch the shoulder of a handsome curly-haired god shown from the waist up, gazing to one side.

  'What a quantity of lovely antiquities your brother-in-law has collected,' said Eliza, looking around the library.

  Only the tiny pause told her that she'd made a faux pas. 'Yes,' said Mrs Damer breezily, 'it was back in the days of his sculpture academy that Richmond commissioned these copies for students to work from.'

  'Oh, was that when you took up your art?' asked Eliza, a little hot-faced, but she didn't think it showed. Well, how could she have known? Richmond was certainly rich enough to buy a dozen old statues.

  'No, I was only a child at the time,' said Mrs Damer, 'this was back in the late '50s. The students were rather wild and, if the casts were plaster, they'd break off the fingers and toes, just for devilment.'

  Eliza produced one of her tinkling laughs.

  'That's why Richmond had to invest in marble copies. But when I took up carving myself, after I was widowed, I did find them very useful to study. That's from the David, of course,' Mrs Damer murmured, pointing to a large, graceful foot.

  Eliza thought it looked odd, standing there on a plinth as if it had been ripped from a giant's corpse, but she nodded respectfully.

  Here came Derby at last, hurrying into the library but without any unseemly scramble. That was the aristocratic walk that her colleague Jack Palmer caught so well when he was playing lords: a swan's glide. Today Derby was elegant in blue silk. 'My apologies,' he murmured and Eliza let him kiss her hand, but her cheeks flamed up a little again, because really he should have gone to Mrs Damer first, then to Mrs Bruce and so on down, distributing his politesse according to rank. She knew how to be with Derby in public and how to be with him in private (with her mother for a chaperone),
but these rehearsals at Richmond House were something peculiarly in between.

  When he began his scene as Lovemore, the yawning rakish husband, Eliza stiffened a little, as usual, but actually he was remarkably good. Of course, Derby had a fine-toned voice and plenty of spirit, but what surprised her was that he took so naturally to the role of a callous husband. (She herself had never known him as anything but quietly, relentlessly gallant.) His looks gave an extra twist to the role, Eliza thought; it was quite sinister that this ugly little man should be so indifferent to a wife as tall and handsome as Mrs Damer.

  AFTER EACH rehearsal Eliza felt relief whenever Derby's carriage dropped the Farrens off at their respectable but unfashionable second-floor lodgings on Great Queen Street, just round the corner from Drury Lane. She was always tired out. She'd come this far by pleasing, but still she couldn't risk failing to please. She knew it was absurd to complain of the strain, given that her whole life since coming to London at fifteen had been aimed like an arrow at the ranks of the Beau Monde. 'They're strange beings, though, carriage folk,' she told her mother over a dish of ragout. Carriage folk was what her father used to call them, in caustic homage: people who had their own carriages.

  'But you're one of them, Betsy, or as near as makes no matter.'

  Eliza shook her head. 'I only borrow Lord Derby's carriage, I don't own it, and you and I still ride in hackneys on occasion. Besides, I'll never be one of them if you keep saddling me with Betsy.'

  'Eliza,' Mrs Farren corrected herself. 'I do try, really; I never call you the old name in company at least.'

  'Thank heaven for that! Betsy Farren sounds like the kind of jolly hoyden Mrs Jordan might play, who pops into breeches for Act Three to play a trick on her lover; I don't know how I bore it so long.'