Slammerkin by Donoghue Emma

Author:Donoghue, Emma [Donoghue, Emma]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780156007474
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2002-05-01T05:00:00+00:00

Mrs. Jones came back from putting the child in her cot and found Daffy still staring into the dying fire. He nibbled at a callus on the side of his thumb. It wasn't like him to cause unpleasantness; she'd always thought of him as an easy-natured fellow. She could see the girl had got under his skin.

A prickly burr on the outside, was Su Rhys's daughter, but that was only her armour. So much would be obvious to anyone who looked into those dark, searching eyes. A bare fifteen, and lost her mother as fast and brutally as a baby abandoned in a gutter! Mrs. Jones didn't like to dwell on it. When she thought of her friend Su's life in London, she shuddered. She thanked her Maker for giving her a husband she could rely on through all trials, and a solid trade, and a house to raise her daughter in, and maybe even a son to come.

She picked up her darning as she sat down across from the manservant. It would be easier to say nothing, and safer, but sometimes it seemed to Mrs. Jones that she'd spent her whole life choosing the easy and the safe, and saying nothing.

But it was Daffy who began. 'I'm sorry for cursing.'

'Oh, it's not that, Daffy. You were very sharp with the girl, that's all,' she said softly.

'If I was, it was no more than she deserved.' His voice came out like a roar. What was the matter with the man?

'But—'

'You must admit she's a sullen hussy, that Saunders girl,' he interrupted. 'Swanning round the house with her citified airs and her clacking tongue—'

'She's a stranger among us, Daffy. She doesn't know our ways.'

'She knows enough to carp and gibe!'

Mrs. Jones let out a long tired breath. Authority had never come naturally to her. Living alongside her servants, she found it hard to think of them as anything other than family: her own adopted flesh and blood. 'You were never acquainted with Su Rhys, were you?' she asked instead.

He stared at her, as if she'd made a feeble effort to change the subject.

Mrs. Jones clucked her tongue at her own stupidity. 'What am I talking about? She'd have gone off to London when you were only a boy. What I meant to say was, Su—Susan Saunders, as she became—was a very fine woman.'

'Is that where the girl gets her eyes, then?' he asked neutrally.

She made a little amused note of that: he was not immune to the newcomer's eyes. 'No, Daff, I don't mean handsome, I mean good. Su was the best of friends to me till her husband took her off to London. And for Mary to grow up with such a mother, living as close as two females can be, and then to have her snatched away in the blinking of an eye—' Her voice trembled. 'And for Mary to come back here to her native place, but not to know its ways any better than a stranger—well, is

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