cared nothing for her opinion of his physical stature or the rank, ripe cheesy odour which came from his tiny body as he climbed upon the stool and hunched over his desk.
Ikey glanced scornfully at Mary over his spectacles as he took up his quill.
'You shall 'ave your challenge, my dear, and if you win, which I very much doubt, I shall make enquiries as to your past.' Ikey paused and shrugged his shoulders. 'If you pass you shall 'ave your billet, you 'ave me word for it.'
Mary laughed. 'And your word, it is to be trusted and mine is not, sir?'
Ikey did not reply, nor even look up, but he liked the point and the boldness it took to make it. He turned away from Mary's direction and briefly rubbed the tip of the quill with his thumb and forefinger, testing its sharpness, whereupon he dipped it into an inkwell and dabbed its point on the blotter which lay beside it.
'But if you lose…' Ikey looked down at the area of her skirt, now once again concealing her legs, and pointed the tip of his goose quill at its hemline. 'Lift, my dear, lift, lift, a little 'igher if you please!'
As Mary's skirts rose slowly to her thighs, she tried desperately to remember some past incident of embarrassment so that she would appear to flush with modesty. Instead she felt herself growing angry and fought to contain her temper while her face remained impassive. 'Now turn around, my dear, right around, that's it! Now lift, 'igher… Ah!' Mary now stood with her back to Ikey. 'That will do very nicely, my dear,' his voice grown suddenly hoarse. 'You may turn around again, though keep your skirt raised if you please.'
Mary's face was a deep purple as she beat back her rising anger. The display of her buttocks and now her cunny did not dismay her, it was the feeling of complete powerlessness which angered her. She was at Ikey's mercy. The billet he was empowered to give her could mean the beginning of a new life for her, but if he summarily dismissed her, she felt certain that she would not survive. She dropped her hands from her skirts and did not look directly at Ikey for fear her eyes might betray her anger.
'Ah, you 'ave done well to flush, my dear. A touch of modesty is most becoming in a laundry woman, even in a poor widow what 'as lost 'er darlin'
'usband and precious little ones, the one in water, the terrible stormy briny and t'others in a roastin' pit, the crackle o' hell itself!' Ikey paused and smiled his ferret smile. 'Perhaps you will make a modest clerk, a very modest clerk, so modest as not to be a clerk at all but altogether something else, eh? What do you say, my dear?'
'I shall be most pleased if you would give me your calculation, sir,' Mary said quietly. She kept her eyes averted, fearing that should she glance up she might lose control and spoil her chance to take him on at calculations.
Ikey leaned backwards in the high chair showing a surprisingly large erection through his tightly pulled breeches. He was most gratified at this unexpected event. He could not remember when he'd been so encouraged by a woman's display of immodesty, especially a woman such as the one who stood before him. Women and sex seldom entered his mind. He had thought simply to humiliate Mary and to erode her confidence before the contest by showing her he knew her to be a whore, yet she had stirred a part in him so seldom stirred that he had almost forgotten that it was possessed of a secondary purpose beyond pissing.
Ikey looked down at his swelling breeches with some approval, then looked up at Mary with a mixture of pleasure and fear. If anything, this woman, with her ridiculous contraption of wire and beads, had gained the upper hand and he knew he must do something at once to regain the advantage. The thought of losing to her caused an immediate diminishing within his breeches, but upon his becoming aware of this, the perverse monster came alive again, pushing hard against the cotton of his breeches.
Ikey concentrated desperately and cast his thoughts to embrace his wife Hannah, an act of mental flagellation which was at once sufficient to damp down the unaccustomed fire that burned in the region of his crotch.
Waving the goose feather quill in an expansive gesture above his head, Ikey announced to Mary, 'If you should lose, do not despair, my dear. Mrs Solomon, a woman of a most benign nature and generous heart, who 'erself is an expert on,' Ikey coughed lightly, '… er, figures… is in need of someone capable of your very well-presented, ah, hum… figurations'
Ikey moved forward, leaning both his elbows on the desk so that the area of his loins was concealed. His bony shoulders were hunched up above his ears to make him look like an Indian vulture bird. 'You will do very nicely, my dear, very nicely indeed, my wife will be most pleased to make your acquaintance!' Ikey felt immediately better for knowing what Hannah might do to the woman who stood before him should she lose to him.
Mary remained silent nor did she change her expression, though she was acquainted with Hannah's vile reputation and Ikey's insidious suggestions were not lost on her.
'I shall need a surface upon which to place down me abacus,' was all she said in reply.
Ikey motioned her to a small table and chair and Mary seated herself, placing the brightly beaded abacus at the required distance in front of her. Her voice was hardly above a whisper. 'I am ready please, sir.'
'Mmph!' Ikey said in a tight voice. 'Ready you may be, but beat me you shan't, not now, not never and not likely!'
It is a matter of history how Ikey threw all sorts of mathematical computations at Mary and before he could properly ink his quill her flying fingers sped the coloured beads this way and that to find the answer. This she announced in a steady voice free of emotion, fearing to upset Ikey if she appeared too bold and forward with her triumph over him.
She need not have feared, for had she whispered the answers in a voice most demure and modest she would have upset Ikey no less. He soon grew furious and, it being in his nature to cheat, attempted to grab back the advantage by trying to think ahead the total of the sum before announcing it. Yet Mary bested him, beat him on every occasion, until finally he was forced to concede defeat. This he did with the utmost bad temper, claiming a headache, a blunt quill and the mix of blacking ink in his pot not to his usual liking.
'You 'ave won the first round, my dear,' he finally mumbled without grace. 'The second test remains.'
Mary held her gaze steady as Ikey continued. 'Now we shall 'ear of your past, my dear, for the position of my clerk is one requiring great trust and I shall want to know that your background is spotless, blameless and pure as churchyard snow.'
Mary knew the game was up. The hideous little man was playing with her. She now realised that he'd been playing with her from the beginning, though she felt sure she'd caught him by surprise with the abacus. Why, she now asked herself, had she not simply told him the circumstances of her life? Why would her feigning of respectability, a widow fallen upon hard times, have influenced this odious creature? Perchance he would have preferred the real story of her descent into debauchery and whoring. It was much more the world he knew and understood.
Mary could feel her temper rising, the heat of her anger suffusing her entire body. She rose without haste from where she was seated and, taking up her abacus from the table, moved in slow, deliberate steps towards where Ikey sat smiling triumphantly at the counting desk. She came to a halt in front of the desk and it seemed that she was about to beg him for his mercy, but instead she lifted the abacus above her head and swung it as hard as she might at the grinning little fence. The abacus caught him on the side of the head and sent him sprawling from the high chair onto the floor. Ikey's spectacles launched from his head and landed with a clatter in the corner behind him.
'You can keep your poxy job, you bastard!' she cried. 'Fuck you!'
'No, no! Please! Don't 'it me! Please, no violence! I beg you, missus! Anythin', take anythin', but don't beat me!' Whereupon he began to sob loudly.
'You shit!' she said disgusted, though the anger had already gone half out of her voice as she looked at the pathetic, whimpering weasel cowering at her feet.
Ikey, sensing the danger was over, let go of her leg. He scrambled frantically to his haunches and with his arms propelled himself backwards into a corner. He sat down hard upon his spectacles which promptly broke and pierced through his breeches and cut into his scrawny bum.
'Ouch! Fuck!' he yelled, then lifting his arse he felt frantically at the damaged area and his hand came away with blood on the tips of his fingers. He looked down at his bloody paw, his expression incredulous. 'Blood! Oh, oh, I shall faint! Blood!' he sobbed. 'I shall bleed to death!'
Mary moved towards him, the abacus raised above her shoulders ready to strike him again. Ikey, sobbing, pulled up his knees and covered his head with his arms.
'No, no! I'll pay you! Don't 'urt me! For Gawd's sake, I beg you! Don't 'it a poor man what's bleedin' to death!'
