As the weather turned colder and the queue more desperate, the resentment against Mary grew out of all proportion. In the fevered imaginations of the unemployed clerks Bloody Mary's presence in a job queue soon took on all the aspects of a bad omen. When they returned home empty-handed to their ragged and starving families they had come to believe that her presence had 'soured the queue', so the luck they all felt they needed to gain a position had gone elsewhere.
Mary's face had grown gaunt for lack of sufficient nourishment and, in truth, there began to be a somewhat simian look about her. With her large green anxious eyes darting about and her head turning nervously this way and that, expecting danger from every corner, the men began to believe increasingly that she was an incarnation of some evil monkey spirit.
Her dress too began to be much the worse for wear and hung upon her thin frame to give Mary an altogether morbid appearance, her black cotton skirt and blouse, and modest bonnet and shawl, together with her worn boots peeping below the frayed edges of her skirt, all showed the wear and tear of the long hours spent standing patiently in every kind of inclement weather.
While there were tens of thousands of women in a similar state of dress, their own wives being of much the same appearance, they saw in Mary's forlorn and ragged clothing the black cloth of a witch's weeds. The monkey chant, as it became known, grew increasingly threatening in tone and it took the utmost stubbornness and will for Mary to present herself at an advertised location for a job interview.
Yet Mary persisted well beyond the dictates of commonsense and into the province of foolishness. The long hours spent at reading and writing and the childhood application she had demonstrated with the complexities of mathematics had somehow convinced her that within her capacity lay a destiny beyond her humble beginnings. Mary's father had told her almost from infancy that her abacus would be her salvation and she could not believe that she might end up like her consumptive silkweaver mother or the sad, destitute and drunken shipping clerk she knew as her father. She saw herself achieving something well beyond the modest expectations of a laundry maid, though quite what this could be was past anything she could imagine. She felt certain that this destiny would all begin, if only she could obtain a position as a clerk.
After six months Mary had used up most of her savings and had repeatedly changed her place of residence, on each occasion moving to a cheaper lodging house, until she ended up sharing a foul room with a family of five in the very cheapest of netherkens in Shoe Lane.
She would wake at dawn each morning and, with no more than a drink of water and without allowing herself to think, set out to seek employment, fearful that, should she pause to contemplate her increasingly desperate position, she would give up altogether and take herself to Waterloo Bridge and commit herself to the dark, foul river.
One bitterly cold morning she left her miserable lodgings at dawn to be the first in line for a clerk's position advertised in a warehouse on the south bank of the Thames at Saviour's Dock. This was one of the vilest slums in London, and the mist lay thick on the river, and the streets were dimmed to near blindness by the sulphurous-coloured smog from the first of the winter fires.
Huddled at the entrance of the gate and near frozen, Mary was thankful that her presence would be concealed by the thick fog. The misted air about her was filled with the groans of masts and cross stays. In her imagination, the dockside took on the shape of a jungle filled with the wild and fearsome growls of fantastical creatures, while the howl of the wind through a dozen mizzen masts and the slap of loose canvas became the spirits of the dead which had come to protect her from the living, the men who would soon be lined up behind her and who had the capacity to frighten her beyond any perceived ghosts.
She had not eaten for two days and in her state of weakness must have fallen asleep, for she was awakened by the toe of the gateman's boot placed against her buttocks.
'Be up now, the gov'nor will be on 'is way soon!' a gruff voice demanded. Mary stumbled to her feet, clutching her shawl about her thin shoulders. 'Blimey, if it ain't a female!' the voice exclaimed in surprise.
A large man dressed in a military great coat with a shako, polished like a mirror, upon his head stood towering over her. It was the shako cap, complete with its scarlet and white cockade and braid, otherwise devoid of any regimental insignia, that gave the man his fearsome authority. Mary had expected the customary gateman in cloth cap, woollen scarf, corduroy breeches and workman's boots, the advertisement having instructed simply that the queue would commence at the gate under the gateman's supervision.
'Yessir, I be enquirin' about the billet advertised. The one for a clerk?'
'Well then, I s'pose it ain't against the law now is it?' The gateman twisted the corner of his large moustache. 'It's a pretty rum turn, but I can't see that it be against the law. First is you? You shall 'ave your interview, miss.'
Glancing fearfully at the formless shapes of the men disappearing into the fog behind her, Mary felt suddenly safe and strangely hopeful. She told herself that such an unpropitious day must surely bring her luck. The first good omen had been that the men standing directly behind her were strangers and seemed not to recognise her. The ones behind them, pale shapes in the mist, would surely have among them a great many who were acquainted with her, but these had not yet become aware of her presence in the thick yellow fog.
The gateman turned away from her to address the vaguely defined line of men stretching away behind Mary.
'Now then, gentlemen, me name's Sergeant William Lawrence, late of the 40th regiment, veteran o' the Peninsular War, wounded in action at the Battle o' Waterloo. I am the gatekeeper 'ere and I'll brook no interference. It will be one at a time through the gate, no pushin' and shovin' and no idle chatter, if you please!'
There was a murmur in the crowd at the sound of a carriage rattling over distant cobblestones and then the rumble of its wheels as it drew onto the wooden dock-side and shortly afterwards came to halt at the gate, the horse snuffling and shaking its head, blowing frosted air from its distended nostrils.
Mary, who stood close enough to see clearly, observed a small, very fat man alight. He was dressed in a heavy coat which swept to within an inch of the ground in the manner of a woman's skirt, his shoes being quite lost from sight. He wore a top hat which sat upon his head down almost to his eyes and rose alarmingly high into the air for a man so short. The remaining space between head and shoulders was wrapped in a woollen scarf so that in the uncertainty of the mist the whole of him took on the proportions of a very large perambulating bottle. The gatekeeper snapped to immediate attention and gave the bottle shape a rigid salute, his jowls and side-burns quivering with the momentum of it.
'Mornin', Mr Goldstein, sah!' Sergeant Lawrence shouted at the very top of his voice as though addressing the commander of a battalion of soldiers who was about to embark on a parade inspection.
'Goot mornink,' the bottle replied in a muffled voice. Then, without glancing at the line of men it entered the gate and waddled into the mist towards the unseen warehouse not twenty feet away.
The gatekeeper, pushing his hand between two brass buttons and into the interior of the great coat, pulled from within it a watch chain which soon enough produced a large, though not expensive-looking, watch. Glancing down at it from under his peaked cap he addressed the queue.