He had first come across the rapid clack-clack-clacking of beads sliding on elegant slender wire runners in Batavia. To his mortification, the framed contraption being used by the Chinee clerks in the spice warehouses soon proved superior in making calculations to his most ardent application by means of quill and blacking. Johannes Klerk soon learned that he could never hope to defeat the speed of their heathen calculations and so he determined to learn for himself the ancient art of the Chinese abacus. This curious skill, never developed to a very high aptitude in John Klerk, together with a few elementary lessons in reading and writing, was his sole inheritance to his daughter.

As an infant, the bright red and black beads had enchanted Mary and by the age of six she had grasped the true purpose of the colourful grid of wooden counters. By ten she had developed a propensity for calculation that left the shipping clerks at her father's sometime places of employment slack-jawed at her proficiency with numbers.

Alas, it was a skill which her family's poverty seldom required. But this did not discourage Mary, who practised until her fingers flew in a blur and her mind raced ahead of the brilliant lacquered beads. Despite her father's attempts to obtain a position for her as an apprentice clerk in one of the merchant warehouses on the docks, no such establishment would countenance a child who played with heathen beads. Added to this indignity, God had clearly indicated in his holy scriptures that those of her sex were not possessed of brain sufficient to work with numbers, and her ability to do so just as clearly indicated a madness within her.

When Mary was eleven, she was entered into domestic service by her father, her consumptive mother having died two years previously. John Klerk passed away not long after he'd secured employment for his daughter; he was a victim of a minor cholera epidemic which struck in the East India Docks.

Mary found herself quite alone in the world as a junior scullery maid in a large house where she was to begin what became a career, the outcome of which was determined more often by her fiery disposition than her maidenly demeanour.

Mary was popular among the below-stairs servants, well liked for her cheery disposition and bold intelligence, but her quick temper at some injustice shown to those unable to come to their own defence got her into constant hot water. She would inevitably alienate the cook or under-butler or coachman, those most terrible senior snobs in most households, who would thereafter wait for an opportunity to bring her undone. As a consequence Mary's career as a domestic servant was always somewhat tenuous.

At fifteen Mary was promoted above stairs, where she was a bedroom maid who would sometimes assist as lady's maid to her mistress. Her lively intelligence made her popular with her mistress, who felt she showed great promise as a future lady's maid. That is, until an incident occurred with a lady of grand title from Dorset, a weekend guest to the London house of her mistress to whom Mary was assigned as lady's maid.

Mary was most surprised when the very large duchess took her by the wrist after she had delivered her breakfast tray to her bed.

'Come into bed with me, m'dear. You will be well rewarded, now there's a dear. Come, my little cherub, and I promise you will learn one or two useful little things in the process!'

Whereupon the duchess, visibly panting with excitement, had pulled Mary off her feet so that she fell onto the bed across her large bosom.

'Oh I do hope you are a virgin, a nice little virgin for mummy!' the duchess exclaimed, planting several kisses on top of Mary's head.

Mary, a product of the Spitalfields rookery, wasn't easily given over to panic. She simply attempted to pull away from the fat duchess. Whereupon the huge woman, thinking this most coquettish, locked her arms about her and smothered her in further wet kisses. At this point Mary lost her temper. 'Lemme go, you old cow!' she gasped, still not taken to panicking at the mixture of sweet-smelling rouge and foul, dyspeptic breath which assailed her senses.

The duchess, much larger and stronger than the young servant girl, clasped her tighter so that Mary found her face smothered in heaving breasts and thought she might at any moment suffocate. She was no match for the strength of the duchess even though she fought like a tiger to break free.

'Such a silver tongue! Oh, you are a fiery little maidikins! A plump little partridge and all of it for mummy!'

With one huge arm the duchess continued to pin Mary down and with the other attempted to remove her bodice.

'Come now, darling,' she panted, 'be nice to mummikins!'

Mary, pushing away with her arms, momentarily managed to get her head free from the giant canyon of heaving flesh.

'You fat bitch!' she yelled. 'You keep your soddin'

'ands off me!'

It was to this last remark that her mistress, hearing the commotion, had entered the room. As a consequence, Mary lost her job, though her mistress was careful to furnish her with a good reference. It was well known in all the better houses that the duchess preferred her own sex to the wizened Duke of Dorset. She had, after all, come from poor stock, an ex-Drury Lane actress who had married the elderly and heirless duke and given him two sons in an amazingly short time, whereupon she had converted her stylish figure and good looks into lard and her taste from male to her own sex, with a decided preference for plump young servant girls.

In those late-Georgian times there remained in some London households a little of an earlier tolerance for the sexual proclivities, preferments and foibles of the nobility, and Mary's mistress was not as scandalised over the incident as might have been the case a little further into the century when the young Victoria ascended to the throne. Her parting words to Mary had proved most instructive to the young maidservant.

'You are a good worker, Mary, and quite a bright little creature, though you really must learn to respect the wishes of your betters and to control your peppery tongue. Have you not been instructed in your childhood in the manners required of your kind? Were you not taught by Mr Bothwaite the butler by heart the verse of the noble Dr Watts when you came into our employment?'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'And what does it say? Repeat it, if you please!'

Mary scratched around in her mind for the words to the catechism which every young domestic was expected to know upon commencement of employment in a big house. In a voice barely above a whisper she now recited the words to the verse:

'There you are, so very neatly put in a single verse by the great hymnist, you would do well to remember it in the future.'

Whereupon Mary's mistress gave her a not unkindly smile.

'Now you will not mention this unfortunate incident at your next position, will you? I have given you an excellent reference,' she paused, 'though it can always be withdrawn if it comes to my ears that there has been some idle tittle-tattle below stairs.' She placed her hand on Mary's arm. 'You do understand what I'm saying, don't you, my dear?'

Mary understood perfectly well. From the incident with the duchess she had derived several lessons; the first being not to resist the advances made to her, but instead to profit from them. The next, that a scandal, should she be caught with a member of the family or guest, gave her power to negotiate and so to leave her place of employment with her reputation intact.