Slammerkin by Emma Donoghue Page A

backwards over the Bridge in broad daylight with the gulls egging him on. It occurred to Mary that he was ashamed; she could have laughed in his face. But the older gentleman turned around. His plump fingers were ink-stained, and he shook his heavy head. 'No no, my girl,' he said, 'it won't do.'
    Mary took two steps closer, as if she were about to curtsy, and gave him the finger. His face registered pain before Mr. Armour pulled him away. She watched the two of them hurry off. She was oddly shaken.
    What else was she meant to do, she should have asked the old fellow? What else was she good for?
    After Bartholomew's Fair in September, the heat began to drain out of the sky. It occurred to Mary that she never wanted to see a man drop his breeches again. 'Time for a holiday,' said Doll. 'Let's go to Vauxhall.'
    That evening a Westminster waterboy who couldn't have been more than ten rowed them across to the south bank in their best gauze slammerkins. Mary had never seen the Gardens before. There were neatly boarded walks, and seats with scenes from plays painted on their backs. Fiddle-players sat hidden high up in the trees, and lemon ice melted in glass troughs, and Mary and Doll strolled about and sat slurping their tea in an arbour swathed in honeysuckle, making much play of the ugliness of various lords and ladies. They recognised three purse-snatches from the Rookery, keeping their hands in, as it were. When the organ in the high wooden gallery blasted out its triumphant chorus, the crows lifted from the trees and wheeled in shock through the navy-blue sky.
    Much later, after the music was over, the night turned chilly. Mary found Doll with her head in a uniform's lap, helpless with gin, laughing so violently she seemed in danger of choking. 'Excuse us, soldier. Time we were getting home,' said Mary, hauling on Doll's hand.
    Her friend yawned and grinned guiltily. 'Got the fare for two, ducky?' she slurred. 'Because I must admit—'
    'Oh, Doll! Not again!' Mary looked pointedly at the soldier, but all he managed was to turn out his pocket, which held nothing but crumbs.
    So much for a holiday. Mary left them on the bench and went off down the long gravel walk, to where the lights ran out, and the path branched into a sort of maze, and gauzy figures stood around waiting. Trade was poor; it took her half an hour to find a cully. He had lace cuffs that hung to his fingertips, and a clammy, unhealthy look to his neck. But she got two shillings off him, which took herself and Doll safe home across the river with drinking money to spare.

    When Mary tried to be witty, these autumn days, it came out sour. Doll had taken to calling her Miss Crab. 'Have a go at Miss Crab here, but mind her claws,' she'd say, shoving Mary into some cully's arms; 'you might wake up missing a bit!'
    These days the pair of them didn't stroll the whole length of the river just for larks anymore. Instead, they'd taken to meeting for a snifter and a gossip in a dead-end alley behind Rat's Castle. There they could rest their bones on a heap of bricks and pebbles someone had hidden and never come back for. Mary and Doll ducked down that alley whenever they got word that the Reformation Society had sent out their men.
    The strollers had no fear of the city constables, who spent their time in exhausted pursuit of thieves and murderers, and rarely bothered a girl at her honest trade. But the Reformation bullies were hired by their Society to do nothing but stamp out vice, as they called it. One night in early October Mary didn't move fast enough. When the cry around Seven Dials turned into a chorus—
Reformers, it's the bleeding Reformers!
—she was engaged in finishing off a buttonmaker by hand, in a doorway in Neal's Yard. She tried to run, but the men cut her off at the top of the yard. They had sticks with metalled ends, and they were fast runners. They shouted at the cullies, calling them sinners and whoremongers, but they arrested only the