Fingersmith

  She watched Gentleman walk and smoke his cigarette, as she always did; and then, when he had gone to Mr Lilly, she said she would like to walk, herself. The sun had come up weak. The sky was grey again, and the ground was filled with what seemed puddles of lead. The air was so washed and pure, it made me bilious. But we went, as usual, to the wood and the ice-house, and then to the chapel and the graves. When we reached her mother’s grave she sat a little near it, and gazed at the stone. It was dark with rain. The grass between the graves was thin and beaten. Two or three great black birds walked carefully about us, looking for worms. I watched them peck. Then I think I must have sighed, for Maud looked at me and her face—that had been hard, through frowning—grew gentle. She said,

  ‘You are sad, Sue.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I think you are,’ she said. ‘That’s my fault. I have brought you to this lonely place, time after time, thinking only of myself. But you have known what it is, to have a mother’s love and then to lose it.’

  I looked away.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She said, ‘You are brave . . .’

  I thought of my mother, dying game on the scaffold; and I suddenly wished—what I had never wished before—that she had been some ordinary girl, that had died in a regular way. As if she guessed it, Maud said quietly now,

  ‘And what—it doesn’t trouble you, my asking?—what did your mother die of?’

  I thought for a moment. I said at last that she had swallowed a pin, that had choked her.

  I really did know a woman that died that way. Maud stared at me, and put her hand to her throat. Then she gazed down at her own mother’s tomb.

  ‘How would you feel,’ she said quietly, ‘if you had fed her that pin yourself?’

  It seemed an odd sort of question; but, of course, I was used by now to her saying odd sorts of things. I told her I should feel very ashamed and sad.

  ‘Would you?’ she said. ‘You see, I have an interest in knowing. For it was my birth that killed my mother. I am as to blame for her death as if I had stabbed her with my own hand!’

  She looked strangely at her fingers, that had red earth at the tips. I said,

  ‘What nonsense. Who has made you think that? They ought to be sorry.’

  ‘No-one made me think it,’ she answered. ‘I thought it myself.’

  ‘Then that’s worse, because you’re clever and ought to know better. As if a girl could stop herself from being born!’

  ‘I wish I had been stopped!’ she said. She almost cried it. One of the dark birds started up from between the stones, its wings beating the air—it sounded like a carpet being snapped out of a window. We both turned our heads to see it fly; and when I looked at her again, her eyes had tears in them.

  I thought, ‘What do you have to cry for? You’re in love, you’re in love.’ I tried to remind her.

  ‘Mr Rivers,’ I began. But she heard the name and shivered.

  ‘Look at the sky,’ she said quickly. The sky had grown darker. ‘I think it will thunder again. Here is the new rain, look!’

  She closed her eyes and let the rain fall on her face, and after another second I could not have said what were raindrops, and what tears. I went to her and touched her arm.

  ‘Put your cloak about you,’ I said. Now the rain fell quick and hard. She let me lift her hood and fasten it, as a child might; and I think, if I had not drawn her from the grave, she would have stayed there and been soaked. But I made her stumble with me to the door of the little chapel. It was shut up fast with a rusting chain and a padlock, but above it was a porch of rotted wood. The rain struck the wood and made it tremble. Our skirts were dark with water at the hems. We stood close to one another, our shoulders tight against the chapel door, and the rain came down—straight down, like arrows. A thousand arrows and one poor heart. She said,

  ‘Mr Rivers has asked me to marry him, Sue.’

  She said it in a flat voice, like a girl saying a lesson; and though I had waited so hard to hear her say it, when I answered my words came out heavy as hers. I said,

  ‘Oh, Miss Maud, I am gladder than anything!’

  A drop of rain fell between our faces.

  ‘Are you truly?’ she said. Her cheeks were damp, her hair clinging to them. ‘Then,’ she went on miserably, ‘I am sorry. For I have not told him yes. How can I? My uncle—My uncle will never give me up. It wants four years until I am twenty-one. How can I ask Mr Rivers to wait so long?’

  Of course, we had guessed she’d think that. We had hoped that she would; for in thinking it she’d be all the more ready to run and be married in secret. I said, carefully, ‘Are you sure, about your uncle?’

  She nodded. ‘He will not spare me, so long as there are books still, to be read and noted; and there will always be those! Besides, he is proud. Mr Rivers, I know, is a gentleman’s son, but—’

  ‘But your uncle won’t think him quite enough a swell?’

  She bit her lip. ‘I’m afraid that if he knew Mr Rivers had asked for my hand, he would send him from the house. But then, he must go anyway, when his work here is finished! He must go—’ Her voice shook. ‘And how will I see him, then? How may you keep a heart, for four years, like that?’

  She put her hands to her face and wept in earnest. Her shoulders jumped. It was awful to see. I said, ‘You mustn’t cry.’ I touched her cheek, putting the damp hair from it. I said, ‘Truly, miss, you mustn’t cry. Do you think Mr Rivers will give you up now? How could he? You mean more to him than anything. Your uncle will come round, when he sees that.’

  ‘My happiness is nothing to him,’ she said. ‘Only his books! He has made me like a book. I am not meant to be taken, and touched, and liked. I am meant to keep here, in a dim light, for ever!’

  She spoke more bitterly than I had ever heard her speak before. I said,

  ‘Your uncle loves you, I’m sure. But Mr Rivers—’ The words got caught in my throat, and I coughed. ‘Mr Rivers loves you, too.’

  ‘You think he does, Sue? He spoke so fiercely yesterday, beside the river, while you slept. He spoke of London—of his house, his studio—he says he longs to take me there, not as his pupil, but as his wife. He says he thinks of nothing but that. He says he thinks that to wait for me will kill him! You think he means it, Sue?’

  She waited. I thought, ‘It’s not a lie, it’s not a lie, he loves her for her money. I think he would die if he lost it now.’ I said,

  ‘I know it, miss.’

  She looked at the ground. ‘But, what can he do?’

  ‘He must ask your uncle.’

  ‘He cannot!’

  ‘Then’—I drew in my breath—‘you must find another way.’ She said nothing, but moved her head. ‘You must do that.’ Still nothing. ‘Isn’t there,’ I said, ‘another way you might take . . . ?’

  She lifted her eyes to mine and blinked back her tears. She looked anxiously to left and to right, then drew a little closer. She said, in a whisper:

  ‘You’ll tell no-one, Sue?’

  ‘Tell them what, miss?’

  She blinked again, hesitating. ‘You must promise not to tell. You must swear it!’

  ‘I swear!’ I said. ‘I swear!’—all the time thinking, Come on, say it now!—for it was dreadful, seeing her so afraid to give up her secret, when I knew what the secret was.

  Then she did say it. ‘Mr Rivers,’ she said, more quietly than ever, ‘says we might go away, at night.’

  ‘At night!’ I said.

  ‘He says we might be privately married. He says my uncle might try to claim me then; but he does not think he will. Not once I am a—a wife.’

  Her face, as she said the word, grew pale, I saw the blood fall out of her cheek. She looked at the stone on her mother’s grave. I said,

  ‘You must follow your heart, miss.’

  ‘I am not sure. After all, I am not sure.’

  ‘But to love, and then to lose him!’ Her ga
ze grew strange. I said, ‘You love him, don’t you?’

  She turned a little, and still looked queer, and would not answer. Then she said,

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Don’t know? How can you not know a thing like that? Doesn’t your blood beat hard when you see him coming? Doesn’t his voice thrill in your ears, and his touch set you shaking? Don’t you dream of him, at night?’

  She bit her plump lip. ‘And those things mean I love him?’

  ‘Of course! What else could they mean?’

  She did not answer. Instead, she closed her eyes and gave a shiver. She put her hands together, and again she stroked the spot upon her palm where he had yesterday touched his lips.

  Only now I saw, she was not stroking the flesh so much as rubbing at it. She was not nursing the kiss. She felt his mouth like a burn, like an itch, like a splinter, and was trying to rub the memory of it away.

  She didn’t love him at all. She was afraid of him.

  I drew in my breath. She opened her eyes and held my gaze.

  ‘What will you do?’ I said, in a whisper.

  ‘What can I do?’ She shivered. ‘He wants me. He has asked me. He means to make me his.’

  ‘You might—say no.’

  She blinked, as if she could not believe I had said it. I could not believe it, either.

  ‘Say no to him?’ she said slowly. ‘Say no?’ Then her look changed. ‘And watch him leave, from my window? Or perhaps when he goes I shall be in my uncle’s library, where the windows are all dark; and then I shan’t see him leave at all. And then, and then—oh, Sue, don’t you think I should wonder, over the life I might have had? Do you suppose another man will come visiting, that will want me half as much as he? What choice have I?’

  Her gaze, now, was so steady and so bare, I flinched from it. I did not answer for a moment, but turned and gazed down at the wood of the door we stood against, and the rusting chain that held it closed, and the padlock. The padlock is the simplest kind of lock. The worst are the kind that keep their business parts guarded. They are devils to crack. Mr Ibbs taught me that. I closed my eyes and saw his face; and then, Mrs Sucksby’s. Three thousand pounds—! I drew in my breath, looked back to Maud, and said,

  ‘Marry him, miss. Don’t wait for your uncle’s word. Mr Rivers loves you, and love won’t harm a flea. You will learn to like him as you ought, in time. Till then go with him in secret, and do everything he says.’

  For a second, she looked wretched—as if she might have been hoping I would say anything but that; but it was only for a second. Then her face grew clear. She said,

  ‘I will. I’ll do it. But, I can’t go alone. You mustn’t make me go with him, quite on my own. You must come with me. Say you will. Say you’ll come and be my maid, in my new life, in London!’

  I said I would. She gave a high, nervous laugh and then, from having wept and been so low, she grew almost giddy. She talked of the house that Gentleman had promised her; and of the fashions of London, that I would help her choose; and of the carriage she would have. She said she would buy me handsome gowns. She said she wouldn’t call me her maid then, but her companion. She said she would get me a maid of my own.

  ‘For you know I shall be very rich,’ she said simply, ‘once I am married?’

  She shivered and smiled and clutched at my arm, and then she drew me to her and put her head against mine. Her cheek was cool, and smooth as a pearl. Her hair was bright with beads of rainwater. I think she was weeping. But I did not pull away to try and find out. I did not want her to see my face. I think the look in my eyes must have been awful.

  That afternoon she set out her paints and her painting, as usual; but the brushes and the colours stayed dry. Gentleman came to her parlour, walked quickly to her, and stood before her as if he longed to pull her to him but was afraid. He said her name—not Miss Lilly, but Maud. He said it in a quiet, fierce voice, and she quivered, and hesitated once, then nodded. He gave a great sigh, seized her hand and sank before her—I thought that was pushing it a bit, myself, and even she looked doubtful. She said, ‘No, not here!’ and gazed quickly at me; and he, seeing her look, said, ‘But we may be quite free, before Sue? You’ve told her? She knows all?’ He turned to me with an awkward gesture of his head, as if it hurt his eyes to look at anything but her.

  ‘Ah, Sue,’ he said, ‘if you were ever a friend to your mistress, be her friend now! If you ever looked kindly on a pair of foolish lovers, look kindly on us!’

  He gazed hard at me. I gazed hard back.

  ‘She has promised to help us,’ said Maud. ‘But, Mr Rivers—’

  ‘Oh, Maud,’ he said at that. ‘Do you mean to slight me?’

  She lowered her head. She said, ‘Richard, then.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  He was still on his knee, with his face tilted upwards. She touched his cheek. He turned his head and kissed her hands, and then she drew them quickly back. She said,

  ‘Sue will help us all she can. But we must be careful, Richard.’

  He smiled and shook his head. He said,

  ‘And you think, seeing me now, I shall never be that?’ He rose and stepped from her. He said, ‘Do you know how careful my love will make me? See here, look at my hands. Say there’s a cobweb spun between them. It’s my ambition. And at its centre there’s a spider, of the colour of a jewel. The spider is you. This is how I shall bear you—so gently, so carefully and without jar, you shall not know you are being taken.’

  He said that, with his white hands cupped; and then, as she gazed into the space between them, he spread his fingers and laughed. I turned away. When I looked at her again, he had taken her hands in his and was holding them loosely, before his heart. She seemed a little easier. They sat, and talked in murmurs.

  And I remembered all she had said at the graves, and how she had rubbed her palm. I thought, ‘That was nothing, she has forgotten it now. Not love him, when he’s so handsome and seems so kind?’

  I thought, ‘Of course she loves him.’ I watched as he leaned to her and touched her and made her blush. I thought, ‘Who wouldn’t?’

  Then he raised his head and caught my gaze and, stupidly, I blushed, too. He said,

  ‘You know your duties, Sue. You’ve a careful eye. We shall be glad of that, in time. But today—well, have you no other little business, that will take you elsewhere?’

  He gestured with his eyes to the door of Maud’s bedroom.

  ‘There’s a shilling in it for you,’ he said, ‘if you do.’

  I almost stood. I almost went. So used had I got, to playing the servant. Then I saw Maud. The colour had quite gone from her face. She said, ‘But suppose Margaret or one of the girls should come to the door?’

  ‘Why should they do that?’ said Gentleman. ‘And if they do, what will they hear? We shall be perfectly silent. Then they will go again.’ He smiled at me. ‘Be kind, Sue,’ he said slyly. ‘Be kind, to lovers. Did you never have a sweetheart of your own?’

  I might still have gone, before he said that. Now I thought suddenly, Who did he think he was? He might pretend to be a lord; he was only a con-man. He had a snide ring on his finger, and all his coins were bad ones. I knew more than he did about Maud’s secrets. I slept beside her in her own bed. I had made her love me like a sister; he had made her afraid. I could turn her heart against him if I wanted to, like that! It was enough that he was going to marry her at last. It was enough that he could kiss her, whenever he liked. I wouldn’t leave her now to be tugged about and made nervous. I thought, ‘Damn you, I’ll get my three thousand just the same!’

  So I said, ‘I shan’t leave Miss Lilly. Her uncle wouldn’t like it. And if Mrs Stiles was to hear of it, then I should lose my place.’

  He looked at me and frowned. Maud did not look at me at all; but I knew she was grateful. She said gently,

  ‘After all, Richard, we shouldn’t ask too much of Sue. We shall have time enough to be together, soon—shan’t we?’

&
nbsp; He said then that he supposed that that was true. They kept close before the fire, and after a while I went and sat and sewed beside the window and let them gaze at one another’s faces undisturbed. I heard the hiss of his whispers, the rush of his breath as he laughed. But Maud was silent. And when he left, and took her hand and pressed it to his mouth, she trembled so hard, I thought back to all the times I had watched her tremble before, and wondered how I had ever mistaken that trembling for love. Once the door was closed she stood at the glass, as she often did, studying her face. She stood there for a minute, then turned. She stepped very slowly and softly, from the glass to the sofa, from the sofa to the chair, from the chair to the window—she moved, in short, across the whole of the room, until she reached my side. She leaned to look at my work and her hair, in its net of velvet, brushed my own.

  ‘You sew neatly,’ she said—though I had not, not then. I had sewn hard, and my stitches were crooked.

  Then she stood and said nothing. Once or twice she drew in her breath. I thought there was something she longed to ask me, but dared not. In the end she moved away again.

  And so our trap—that I had thought so lightly of, and worked so hard to lay—was finally set; and wanted only time to go quickly by and spring it. Gentleman was hired to work as Mr Lilly’s secretary until the end of April, and meant to stay out his contract to the last—‘So that the old man won’t have the breaking of that to charge me with,’ he said to me, laughing, ‘alongside the breaking of certain other things.’ He planned to leave when he was meant to—that is, the evening of the last day of the month; but, instead of taking the train for London, he would hang about, and come back to the house at the dead of night, for me and Maud. He must steal her away and not be caught, and then he must marry her—quick as he could, and before her uncle should hear of it and find her and take her home again. He had it all figured out. He could not fetch her in a pony and cart, for he should never have got it past the gatehouse. He meant to bring a boat and take her off along the river, to some small out-of-the-way church where she would not be known as Mr Lilly’s niece.