have seemed to her unthinkable.
In fact, Mary was both streetwise and naive all at once. While she longed for romance she knew in her heart that it was not intended for her kind, that doing it in some privacy with a clean and half-decent someone was the best she could hope for. Her body developed into a very desirable womanliness, and she would often feel the ache to use it other than by the deployment of her probing and urgent fingers.
Her moment came one morning at Shepherd Market in nearby Mayfair where she had been sent by Mrs Hodge to purchase the master's luncheon sole, Billingsgate being too far to walk and the coachman out with the mistress of the house all morning.
'Take the one wif the clearest eyes, lovey.' The young man pointed to a fish which lay upon a block of ice slightly to one side. 'That one! See the eyes, clear as a gypsy's crystal.'
Mary turned towards the voice and its owner smiled, showing two missing front teeth with the eye tooth on either side framing the gap and capped with gold. It was a smile devoid of any calculation, though mischievous enough.
Mary found herself smiling back, even though more prudent behaviour was called for from a servant girl in a nice house involved in a casual meeting with a strange man. She found herself immediately taken by the flash young man standing beside her and her heart beat in quite the strangest manner.
The possessor of these two astonishing gold teeth was flash in other ways too and wore a fancy corduroy waistcoat with a watch chain. His ankle boots, below a fashionable pair of breeches, were stitched with patterns of hearts and roses. His cloth coat with contrasting plush lapels was clean and carried large expensive pearl buttons and was cut to the back into heavily braided calf-clingers with an artful line of buttons at their extremity. On his head he wore a beaver-napped top hat that looked to be in excellent order, its nap neatly brushed and shining.
'Name o' Bob Marley, pleased to meetcha,' he'd said in a single breath, giving her another big grin which caused his incisor teeth to once more gleam and flash. 'Honoured to make yer acquaintance, Miss…?'
Mary had observed that he hadn't once taken his eyes away from her face and unlike most men with whom she had the slightest passing acquaintance, hadn't allowed his eyes to wander over those parts of her anatomy which usually brought a glazed look into their eyes and a gravel tone in their voices. His smile was ingenuous, quite open and impossible to resist.
'Mary,' she said simply. 'Them's lovely teeth,' she added, smiling.
Bob Marley jabbed a finger at his mouth, 'Like 'em does ya? Eighteen carat, that is! Pure gold, can't get none better!'
Bob Marley cast his eyes over Mary's firm breasts and trim waist, and in an unabashed voiced declared, 'What a corker! Care for a drop o' ruin?' He indicated the public house with a toss of his head. 'Come on then, I'll buy ya a taste o' whatever's yer fancy, gin is it, or a pint o' best beer?'
Mary, though sorely tempted, could not accept his invitation for fear of upsetting Mrs Hodge by being late and returning to the house with the smell of strong spirits on her breath. She was not accustomed to drink, though on the rare occasions when, on a public holiday, she'd ventured out with Mrs Hodge, she'd found gin left her very excited in a physical sort of way.
'I'll not be seen with a costermonger,' she said tartly, this seeming the best way to end a relationship where she was already beginning to feel at a distinct disadvantage. She noted too that her breasts were heaving and she was finding it difficult to breathe.
Bob Marley drew back with an exaggerated expression of hurt. Cocking his head to one side, his mouth turned down at the corner, he looked down at his chest as though closely examining his apparel. 'Costermonger? Not bleedin' likely, lovey.' He patted a velvet lapel. 'This is me disguise. I'm what ya might call an hoperator, I do a bit o' this and a bit o' that, finding' a bit 'ere and disposin' of it over there, if ya knows what I mean?'
'Oh, a tout?' Mary shot back, bringing her fingers to her lips as she tried to contain her laughter.
'Well not exactly that neiver, jus'… well… er,' he smiled his golden smile, 'an hoperator!' He seemed disinclined to further discuss the subject of his occupation.
'Well, what 'bout yer place, then?' Bob Marley said cheekily tugging on his watch chain and taking Mary by the elbow.
'Who do you think I am? I ain't no dollymop! Shame on you, Bob Marley!' Mary pulled her arm away from him. But then she laughed, enchanted by the young rogue standing beside her. 'You can walk me 'ome and no touchin', that's all I'll promise for now.'
By the time they reached the house in Chelsea Mary was completely smitten by the young rogue. She kept him waiting in the lane at the back of the house while she unlocked the stout door set into the kitchen garden wall, whereupon she went directly into the kitchen to deliver the sole to Mrs Hodge, who, predictably, scolded her for the time she had taken on her errand.
Mary's heart pounded in her breast as she returned down the garden path to open the garden door and let Bob Marley within the precincts of the kitchen garden. Quickly locking the door behind him, she led him into the laundry.
Now, with less than half an hour having passed, fat Mrs Hodge stood over Mary's half-naked body having hysterics and crying out in alarm at the astonishing gymnastics taking place on a pile of dirty linen at her feet.
Bob Marley was the first to react. Frantically pulling on his breeches and snatching up his embroidered boots, he jumped to his feet and fled the scene, knocking aside the stout cook with his shoulder and escaping into the kitchen garden. Not bothering to test the door set into the garden wall, he threw his boots over the top into the lane beyond and, quick as a rat up a drainpipe, scrambled after them, stubbing his toe badly in the process, pausing only long enough on the other side to retrieve his boots before making good his escape down the lane and into the Kings Road beyond.
Mary found herself dismissed from her place of employment without references or even the wages due to her. Not an hour after her interrupted dalliance with Bob Marley she stood in the lane outside the rear of the large Chelsea house, her sole possessions the small wicker basket at her feet and her precious abacus under her arm. She glanced up at the big house and observed the odious Nanny Smith looking down at her from a top window. When the old woman realised Mary had seen her she leaned further out of the window and commenced to hiss in much the same manner as Waterloo Smith had done.
'The pox on you, you old cow!' Mary shouted up at her and then, picking up her basket, she proceeded to cross the lane. Then turning once again to look up at Nanny Smith, she yelled, 'I pushed your bloody cat off the window sill with me broom, it done two somersaults before it splattered on the ground!'
Then, head held high and without further ado, Mary proceeded in the direction of Hyde Park, not knowing why she'd bothered to lie to the old crone and not even sure why she had chosen this direction from any other, thinking only that she would find a quiet spot under one of the giant old beech trees and try to sort things out in her head.
Mary's future lay in tatters. She found a bench beside the Serpentine adjacent to a willow which hid her presence from passers-by. But no sooner was she seated than a dozen small brown ducks glided towards her, their webbed feet paddling frantically below the surface to give their smooth little bodies the look of effortless gliding. It was clear that they anticipated food from the wicker basket.
When Mary saw the ducks, quacking and fussing at the edge of the water, she realised Mrs Hodge hadn't even offered her a morsel to eat. A stern Mr Bishop had bid her pack her things and had shown her the door in the kitchen garden. Then, to Mary's enormous surprise, just as he was closing the door behind her, Mr Bishop pressed a small parcel upon her and announced in a deeply injured tone, 'You are ruined, my girl, utterly and completely ruined!' He paused and then added in the same melancholy voice, 'Now I simply cannot propose marriage to you.'
The door had closed behind her before Mary could fully comprehend this curious protestation. Mr Bishop had never entered the smallest part of her amorous imaginings, nor had he, perhaps with the exception of the obtaining of books from the master's library, shown any inclination to be especially kind to her. She placed the squarish parcel absently within her basket.
Now hungry and with nowhere to go, Mary started to weep softly. Although truthfully her tears were more for the warmth and security of Mrs Hodge's kitchen and the steaming plates of food so regularly placed in front of her than they were for love's labour lost with Bob Marley or, for that matter, Mr Bishop.
After a while Mary wiped her nose and dried her reddened eyes. 'C'mon, girl, cryin' never got a day's work
