Slammerkin (15 page)

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.

Hurrying 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.

She let the broad frosted river of humanity that was the Strand take her all the way, up Aldwych and Drury Lane. From a basement door she heard the sharp chatter of the dice, the roars of winners and losers. Two mollies slipped by in taffeta skirts, arm in arm; their stubble showed through the powder. Men of their kind weren't safe on the streets, but who could stay home on New Year's Eve? Down High Holburn, and Mary was nearing her own parish of St. Giles now; she knew every stinking cobble of it. The Seven Dials at last: the spinning centre of the world.

The Misses were out in force tonight;
Some whores just don't know how to take a holiday,
laughed Doll in Mary's head. There was Nan Pullen in one of her mistress's well-made silk mantelets, pacing to ward off the cold; she nodded back at Mary and covered a yawn with thin fingers.

What was Alice Gibbs doing here, so far from her beat on Downing Street, in such a faded old wrapping gown? 'Will you give me a glass of wine, sir?' she called out to a passing lawyer, shrill as ever, but he turned into Short's Gardens instead. Mary nodded at Alice as she passed, but the older woman's eyes had unfocused already.

A stumbling baker, flour-dusted, paused to look Mary up and down. He pursed up his mouth as if to guess a price. She'd forgotten the manners of the trade; she almost blushed. For a moment she was filled with an absurd regret for the plain brown gown and apron
she'd left crumpled on her bed in the Magdalen Hospital; for the wide straw hat that had sheltered her from strangers' eyes, and the unpainted face, which was its own kind of mask. It seemed years, not months, since she had been a stroller, and all at once she began to doubt whether she could take up her old life where she'd left off. Maybe what she'd told the Matron was true; maybe she wasn't a whore anymore.

The moon was full over St. Giles-in-the-Fields, spiked on the gold weather-vane like an apple. Tiny spears of ice frilled the high railings, and the trees were covered in soft white spines. Mary took gulps of the frozen air; it weighed on her lungs like stone. She was shuddering with weariness; she couldn't think of anything but her bed, hers and Doll's. The merriment and stale warmth of it. She wanted to share her first fingerful of snuff in months and tell Doll all about the Magdalen, shake off the weight of the place at last. She planned to show her friend what penitence looked like, and how to behave as a Presidor should; she'd make Doll laugh till she clutched her stays and gasped with pain. If anyone could remind Mary why a harlot's life was the only true liberty, Doll could. If anyone could restore her to herself, it would be Doll Higgins.

Mary crouched to look in the ice-pocked window of the cider cellar. A few pickpockets she knew, or knew of—Scampy, Huckle, Irish Ned, and Jemmy the Shuffler—as well as a handful of St. Giles blackbirds with their ebony faces glowing against white shirts. No sign of Doll playing a game of brag in her usual corner. The door spat out a pair of sailors, and a song leaked into the street, in a rumbling bass.

My thing is my own
And I'll keep it so still,
Yet other young lasses
May do what they will.

Mary hurried on, past the night-soil men, who wheeled their foetid barrows with blank faces. Maybe, she thought, in time you grew accustomed to your toil, whatever it might be. She ducked
through an arch. Rat's Castle was a good name for the worst pit she'd ever called home, but how glad she was to reach it. And a little surprised to find it still standing, its stained timbers clinging together like drunkards. Every time she'd ever climbed these stairs, she'd wondered when they were going to splinter under her.

Without a candle, she had to feel her way up the damp walls. As she passed Mercy Toft's door, she could hear the funereal thump of one of the girl's cullies. At that pace he'd never finish, Mary thought professionally. On the third floor a door hung open, creaking in the icy draught; that forger whose name Mary could never remember was asleep on his papers, his wig half off. She stumbled through a pile of rubbish. In the rot she smelt something peculiar: an orange? She was no longer accustomed to dirt; the clean vinegar-rinsed floors of the Magdalen had softened her senses, left her open to every passing stench. She bent her head as she mounted higher and the walls closed in.

The garret seemed empty, filled with a greasy darkness. There was a long lump on the mattress, and Mary bent to touch it lightly, but it gave under her fingers: not Doll, only a knot of blankets.

Mary had come a long way. She lay down and was asleep before she could shrug off her shoes.

She dreamed the best dream she'd ever had. She was on horseback, cutting through the crowd, her heels higher than their heads. The pale back of the stallion moved under her like fresh cream; plaited in its mane were ruby ribbons. Mary's powdered wig was topped with a tricorne; her cheeks were untouched snow. The white velvet of her riding-habit flared from the side-saddle like a river in spate. A balladeer began a song about her, but she couldn't make out the words. She pretended not to hear; she smiled to herself, and stroked the pulsing neck of her horse. Now the whole crowd was shouting out her name:
Lady Mary! Lady Mary!

It might have been the cold that woke her, or the skittering of a rat in the corner. It was still dark—about four in the morning, she guessed—but now her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she
could see that the room was absolutely bare. Disgust rose up in her stomach. At least in the Magdalen there were chairs to sit on; here the floor was sticky with nameless dirt. This wasn't a home, but a sty. The nails stuck out of the wall, but there was nothing hanging on them. It occurred to Mary now to wonder where all her things were—her bit of looking-glass, for instance, and her clothes, that Doll had promised to keep safe. Could the greedy jade have pawned them? Gambled or drunk them all away?

Mary stumbled to her feet; her thin shoes felt full of stones. She wrapped a blanket round her and clambered downstairs through the silent house. Cold hit her a blow as she stumbled into the dark street. Only as she caught a stale whiff from the chop-house on the corner did she realise how hungry she was. The last thing she'd eaten was dinner in the Magdalen: boiled buttock of mutton at three o'clock yesterday.

She stuck her face in the window of the gin-shop where four or five men nodded over their mugs; no sign of Doll. Then Mary remembered the alley behind Rat's Castle. If Doll was working all night, there was a good chance of finding her there, having a rest between cullies.

Mary's steps quickened as she reached the alley. 'Doll?' Her voice was hoarse with sleep. No answer from the bottom of the alley, but the moonlight caught something. Mary strolled down, a smile beginning to twist her mouth. The walls were furred with frost, white as mould. 'There you are, old slut,' she called out.

The woman sitting on the heap of rubble against the wall didn't stir. Her feet were drawn up under her gauzy blue overskirt which shifted in the night breeze. The tops of her breasts stood out like wax pears. Her hand was curved around a bottle of gin. The scar on her cheek caught the moonlight.

It must have been the cold that was slowing Mary's thoughts. She stared at the small movements of the sky-blue gauze. Her mind dragged along like a mule on a tether. First she thought, what a blunderbuss was Doll Higgins to snooze on stone on a night like this.

Dead drunk, probably.

Only then did it occur to her:
dead.

She stepped close enough to register the signs, the blue showing through the lead-whitened skin. There was no stink; it was too cold for that.

Mary swayed as if a sudden gale had filled the alley. She tasted blood, salty on her tongue. What she did next shocked her a little, afterwards. She stepped forward until she was near enough to touch her friend, to say the word that would wake her. Instead she reached for the bottle. It came away from the dead hand with a twist and a tug. Mary heard a little cracking sound like an icicle dropping from the eaves. Eyes shut, she put the bottle to her lips. Its rim was scaly. The perfumed gin made her gag but she swallowed it down, and kept swallowing until the bottle was empty. When she could bear to look again, the hand was poised, cupping air, like a guest at an imaginary banquet.

Breach in the hull; all hands to deck.

Mary wouldn't be sick; she'd never had any time for pukers. She set the empty bottle down, and the glass clinked against the stone. She made herself look. No blood, no fresh bruises on those crimsoned cheeks, nothing out of the ordinary. The silver horsehair wig, ornamented with a limp red ribbon, was only slightly askew; from underneath, a strand of pale brown hair escaped over one ear. The broad lips were flaking under their traces of scarlet. Doll leaned back against the wall as if taking a little breather, snatching a moment's tête-à-tête with Madam Gin, as on any other night of her life.

And it could have been any night during this long cold snap when she'd fallen asleep and never woken up. There was nothing to tell Mary how long Doll had been here, waiting with this ironical curve to her lips. Had she been hungry? Feverish? Too drunk to remember to go home at the end of the night? Too cold to feel how cold she was, or too old to fight it off any more? Had she not a friend in the world to come looking?

Mary could have bawled, but she feared Doll might laugh.

What's to do, lovey?

Mary had to try to be the clever one, now. But she didn't know how to begin. This much she remembered, that when a body was found in the streets of London, it was put on a hurdle and dragged to the nearest churchyard and thrown in the Poor Hole. Not a scatter of earth went over it till the pit was full up with nameless corpses at the end of summer.
Mary, my sweet,
Doll once said, holding her nose,
never go within sniff of a churchyard till the first frost.

How strange to see her sit so still now, Doll Higgins who couldn't even sleep without heaving and thrashing, who moved along the Strand like a posture girl would dance on tables, all legs and jutting breasts, jiggling at the punters. There was a curious kind of modesty about her last pose: her azure skirt pulled well over her ankles, her carmined mouth wearing only the ghost of a smile.