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Matchet, I drew stares and comments, ‘Ooh, what did you do for that beating?’ and the like. Mine wasn’t a mug any young lad would find to make sheep-eyes at. And yet – there he was. I didn’t know if he meant to mock me, or if Ma or Mr Dryer had paid him to watch me, or if he was touched in the head. He could’ve been any or all three. I hated him, and yet I looked for him too.
    Then came the day I climbed down from the ring, stretching and sore, the inside of my lips tender and tasting of blood, my knuckles numb with the promise of pain to come. Suddenly it was Tom’s hands pushing ale into my own, though now he wouldn’t look at me at all. I only took it and held it in my stiff hand. I was scared to drink it – I had wild thoughts of poison. He was confusing me so, I was near as loosely tied in the head as Ma.
    Ma by then was grown devilish queer. She’d never been a trusting woman but now she was suspicious in the wildest ways; accusing the girls of sneaking away to meet cullies when they went to the water-pump, saying they were out to cheat her of her cut. She accused them of pleasuring the bullies for no charge, the same charge she threw at that slow-smiling negress so long ago. If I walked too close behind her she whirled about to face me, as though she thought I’d a mind to push her down the stairs. She peered at the coins handed her, feeling them all over with her fingers, counting them over and again before she believed them fair and put them in her purse. She began always to touch the walls as she went about the house – I thought perhaps she was going blind, but then she sometimes wobbled so upon her pins she could just as easily have been holding the wall to keep steady. I didn’t know whether she was took sick; she wasn’t a woman you could ask such a thing of. She began to feed scraps of her dinner to her dog before she’d taste it. Sometimes when her wine was poured she made one or other of us swap cups with her; her eyes then would flame as though she’d foiled a plot to poison her.
    Now I looked at the ale Tom gave me in the same way, and felt the bindings of my sense unravel. What did he want from me? I couldn’t bear it. I pushed the cup back at him so firmly that it hit his chest and splashed up against him, leaving a brown half-moon stain against his shirt. The folks about us laughed and cried out.
    ‘What’s this?’
    ‘Scorned, sonny!’
    Hands clapped Tom upon the shoulder so that he jumped a little.
    Tom’s mug reddened and he took his cup back. He looked lost as a choir boy in hell.
    I let myself be carried off then, in the crowd of culls clapping me upon the back as though I were a man. I felt a little spark of glad spite that I’d thrust his cup back at him. There now , I thought, let him goggle-eye someone else .
    I went for home not long after. The street was dark, lit only by the lamp hanging over The Hatchet’s door and what little light came through the windows of the houses. I stepped out onto the soft grime of the road and even before I was out of the circle of lamplight he was at my shoulder. I span around fast enough that he had to step back, and he must’ve known I was ready to plant him one by the look on my mug. He held up a hand, palm out.
    ‘Please,’ he said, ‘I only want to walk with you.’
    I’d never heard his voice before. It was the voice of a farmer, soft and thick as fur. His eyes were like a dog’s, though that sounds badly. They were brown, deep and trusting.
    ‘But, why?’ I said. ‘What in all the hells would you seek me out for?’
    He didn’t flicker at my language.
    ‘I’d like to talk to you,’ he said, ‘and see you home safe.’
    I laughed at him and put all the scorn I had into it. It was a whore’s laugh.
    ‘I’ll be safe enough,’ I said, ‘and if I’m not, why, it’s nothing I’m not used to.’
    If he’d continued to look soft I believe I’d have been off then, but he laughed instead.
    ‘Then, I hope we’ll