Fingersmith

  Now, to marry a girl at any church you must have been living in the parish of it for fifteen days; but he fixed that up, as he fixed everything. A few days after Maud had promised him her hand, he found some excuse and took a horse and went riding off to Maidenhead. He got a special licence for the wedding there—that meant they should not have to put out the banns—and then he went about the county, looking out for the right kind of church. He found one, in a place so small and broken-down it had no name—or anyway, that’s what he told us. He said the vicar was a drunkard. Hard by the church there was a cottage, owned by a widow who kept black-faced pigs. For two pounds she said she would keep him a room and swear to whoever he liked that he had lived there a month.

  Women like that will do anything for gentlemen like him. He got back to Briar that night looking pleased as a weasel, and handsomer than ever; and he came to Maud’s parlour and sat us down and spoke to us in murmurs of all he had done.

  When he had finished, Maud looked pale. She had begun to leave off eating, and was grown thin about the face. Her eyes were dark at the lids. She put her hands together.

  ‘Three weeks,’ she said.

  I thought I knew what she meant. She had three weeks left to make herself want him. I saw her counting the days in her head, and thinking.

  She was thinking of what was coming at the end of them.

  For, she never learned to love him. She never grew to like his kisses or the feel of his hand upon hers. She still shrank from him in a miserable fright—then nerved herself to face him, let him draw her close, let him touch her hair and face. I supposed at first he thought her backwards. Then I guessed he liked her to be slow. He would be kind to her, then pressing, and then, when she grew awkward or confused he would say,

  ‘Oh! now you are cruel. I think you mean only to practise on my love.’

  ‘No indeed,’ she would answer. ‘No, how can you say it?’

  ‘I don’t think you love me as you ought.’

  ‘Not love you?’

  ‘You won’t show it. Perhaps’—and here he’d give a sly glance, to catch my eye—‘perhaps there’s someone else you care for?’

  Then she would let him kiss her, as if to prove that there was not. She would be stiff, or weak as a puppet. Sometimes she would almost weep. Then he would comfort her. He would call himself a brute that did not deserve her, that ought to give her up to a better lover; then she would let him kiss her again. I heard the meeting of their lips, from my cold place beside the window. I heard the creeping of his hand upon her skirt. Now and then I would look—just to be sure he had not put her in too much of a fright. But then, I didn’t know what was worse—seeing her face shut up, her cheek made pale, her mouth against his beard; or meeting her eye as the tears were pressed from it and came spilling.

  ‘Let her alone, why don’t you?’ I said to him one day, when she had been called from the room to find a book for her uncle. ‘Can’t you see she don’t care for it, having you pestering her like that?’

  He looked at me queerly for a second; then raised his brows. ‘Not care for it?’ he said. ‘She is longing for it.’

  ‘She is afraid of you.’

  ‘She is afraid of herself. Girls like her always are. But let them squirm and be dainty as much as they like, they all want the same thing in the end.’

  He paused, then laughed. He thought it a filthy kind of joke.

  ‘What she wants from you is to be taken from Briar,’ I said. ‘For the rest, she knows nothing.’

  ‘They all say they know nothing,’ he answered, yawning. ‘In their hearts, in their dreams, they know it all. They take it in their milk from the breasts of their mothers. Haven’t you heard her, in her bed? Doesn’t she wriggle, and sigh? She is sighing for me. You must listen harder. I ought to come and listen with you. Shall I do that? Shall I come to your room, tonight? You could take me to her. We could watch to see how hard her heart beats. You could put back her gown for me to see.’

  I knew he was teasing. He would never have risked losing everything, for a lark like that. But I heard his words, and imagined him coming. I imagined putting back her gown. I blushed, and turned away from him. I said,

  ‘You should never find my room.’

  ‘I should find it, all right. I’ve had the plan of the house, from the little knife-boy. He’s a good little boy, with a chattering mouth.’ He laughed again, rather harder, and stretched in his chair. ‘Only think of the sport! And how would it harm her? I would creep, like a mouse. I am good at creeping. I would only want to look. Or, she might like to wake and find me there—like the girl in the poem.’

  I knew many poems. They were all about thieves being plucked by soldiers from their sweethearts’ arms; and one was about a cat being tipped down a well. I didn’t know the one he mentioned now, however, and not knowing made me peevish.

  ‘You leave her alone,’ I said. Perhaps he heard something in my voice. He looked me over, and his voice turned rich.

  ‘Oh, Suky,’ he said, ‘have you grown squeamish? Have you learned sweet ways, after your spell with the quality? Who would have said you should take so to serving ladies, with pals like yours, and a home like your home! What would Mrs Sucksby say—and Dainty, and Johnny!—if they could see your blushes now?’

  ‘They would say I had a soft heart,’ I said, firing up. ‘Maybe I do. Where’s the crime in that?’

  ‘God damn it,’ he answered, firing up in his turn. ‘What did a soft heart ever do for a girl like you? What would it do, for a girl like Dainty? Except, perhaps, kill her.’ He nodded to the door through which Maud had gone to her uncle. ‘Do you suppose,’ he said, ‘she wants your qualms? She wants your grip, on the laces of her stays—on her comb, on the handle of her chamber-pot. For God’s sake, look at you!’ I had turned and picked up her shawl, and begun to fold it. He pulled it from my hands. ‘When did you become so meek, so tidy? What do you imagine you owe, to her? Listen to me. I know her people. I’m one of them. Don’t talk to me as if she keeps you at Briar for kindness’ sake—nor as if you came out of sweetness of temper! Your heart—as you call it—and hers are alike, after all: they are like mine, like everyone’s. They resemble nothing so much as those meters you will find on gas-pipes: they only perk up and start pumping when you drop coins in. Mrs Sucksby should have taught you that.’

  ‘Mrs Sucksby taught me lots of things,’ I said, ‘and not what you are saying now.’

  ‘Mrs Sucksby kept you too close,’ he answered. ‘Too close. The boys of the Borough are right, calling you slow. Too close, too long. Too much like this.’ He showed me his fist.

  ‘Go and fuck it,’ I said.

  At that his cheeks, behind his whiskers, grew crimson, and I thought he might get up and hit me. But he only leaned forward in his seat, and reached to grip the arm of my chair. He said quietly,

  ‘Let me see you in your tantrums again and I will drop you, Sue, like a stone. Do you understand me? I have come far enough now, to do without you if I must. She will do anything I tell her. And say my old nurse, in London, should grow suddenly sick, and need her niece to tend her? What would you do then? Should you like to put on your old stuff gown again, and go back to Lant Street with nothing?’

  I said, ‘I should tell Mr Lilly!’

  ‘Do you think he would have you in his room, long enough to hear you?’

  ‘Then, I should tell Maud.’

  ‘Go ahead. And why not tell her, while you are about it, that I have a tail with a point, and cloven hooves? So I would have, were I to act my crimes upon the stage. No-one expects to meet a man like me in life, however. She would choose not to believe you. She cannot afford to believe you! For she has come as far as we have, and must marry me now, or be more or less ruined. She must do as I say—or stay here, and do nothing, for the rest of her life. Do you think she’ll do that?’

  What could I say? She had as good as told me herself that she would not. So I was silent. But from that point on, I think I hated him.
He sat with his hand on my chair, his eyes on mine, for another moment or two; then there came the pat of Maud’s slippers on the stairs, and after a second her face about the door. And then, of course, he sat back and his look changed. He rose, and I rose, and I made a hopeless sort of curtsey. He went quickly to her and led her to the fire.

  ‘You are cold,’ he said.

  They stood before the mantel, but I saw their faces in the glass. She looked at the coals in the hearth. He gazed at me. Then he sighed and shook his hateful head.

  ‘Oh, Sue,’ he said, ‘you are terribly stern today.’

  Maud looked up. ‘What’s this?’ she said.

  I swallowed, saying nothing. He said,

  ‘Poor Sue is weary of me. I’ve been teasing her, while you were gone.’

  ‘Teasing her, how?’ she asked, half-smiling, half-frowning.

  ‘Why, by keeping her from her sewing, by talking of nothing but you! She claims to have a soft heart. She has no heart at all. I told her my eyes were aching for want of gazing at you; she told me to wrap them in flannel and keep to my room. I said my ears were ringing, for want of your sweet voice; she wanted to call for Margaret to bring castor-oil to put in them. I showed her this blameless white hand, that wants your kisses. She told me to take it and—’ He paused.

  ‘And what?’ said Maud.

  ‘Well, put it in my pocket.’

  He smiled. Maud looked once at me, in a doubtful way. ‘Poor hand,’ she said at last.

  He lifted his arm. ‘It still wants your kisses,’ he said.

  She hesitated, then took his hand and held it in her own two slender ones and touched his fingers, at the knuckles, with her lips.—‘Not there,’ he said quickly, when she did that. ‘Not there, but here.’

  He turned his wrist and showed his palm. She hesitated again, then dipped her head to it. It covered her mouth, her nose, and half her face.

  He caught my eye, and nodded. I turned away and wouldn’t look at him.

  For he was right, damn him. Not about Maud—for I knew that, whatever he said about hearts and gas-pipes, she was sweet, she was kind, she was everything that was gentle and handsome and good. But, he was right about me. How could I go back to the Borough, with nothing? I was meant to make Mrs Sucksby’s fortune. How could I go back to her, and to Mr Ibbs—and to John—saying, I had thrown off the plot, let slip three thousand pounds, because—

  Because what? Because my feelings were finer than I thought? They would say my nerve had failed me. They would laugh in my face! I had a certain standing. I was the daughter of a murderess. I had expectations. Fine feelings weren’t in them. How could they be?

  And then, say I gave it all up—how would that save Maud? Say I went home: Gentleman would go on and marry her, and lock her up anyway. Or, say I peached him up. He would be sent from Briar, Mr Lilly would keep her all the closer—she might as well be put in a madhouse, then. Either way, I didn’t say much to her chances.

  But her chances had all been dealt her, years before. She was like a twig on a rushing river. She was like milk—too pale, too pure, too simple. She was made to be spoiled.

  Besides, nobody’s chances were good, where I came from. And though she was to do badly, did that mean I must?

  I didn’t think it did. So though, as I have said, I was sorry for her, I was not quite sorry enough to want to try and save her. I never really thought of telling her the truth, of showing up Gentleman as the villain he was—of doing anything, anything at all, that would spoil our plot and keep us from our fortune. I let her suppose he loved her and was kind. I let her think that he was gentle. I watched her try to make herself like him, knowing all the time that he meant to take her, trick her, fuck her and lock her away. I watched her grow thin. I watched her pale and dwindle. I watched her sit with her head in her hands, passing the points of her fingers across her aching brow, wishing she might be anyone but herself, Briar any house but her uncle’s, Gentleman any man but the man she must marry; and I hated it, but turned away. I thought, It can’t be helped. I thought, It’s their business.

  But, here was a curious thing. The more I tried to give up thinking of her, the more I said to myself, ‘She’s nothing to you’, the harder I tried to pluck the idea of her out of my heart, the more she stayed there. All day I sat or walked with her, so full of the fate I was bringing her to I could hardly touch her or meet her gaze; and all night I lay with my back turned to her, the blanket over my ears to keep out her sighs. But in the hours in between, when she went to her uncle, I felt her—I felt her, through the walls of the house, like some blind crooks are said to be able to feel gold. It was as if there had come between us, without my knowing, a kind of thread. It pulled me to her, wherever she was. It was like—

  It’s like you love her, I thought.

  It made a change in me. It made me nervous and afraid. I thought she would look at me and see it—or Gentleman would, or Margaret, or Mrs Stiles. I imagined word of it getting back to Lant Street, reaching John—I thought of John, more than any of them. I thought of his look, his laugh. ‘What have I done?’ I imagined I’d say. ‘I haven’t done anything!’ And I hadn’t. It was only, as I’ve said, that I thought of her so, that I felt her so. Her very clothes seemed changed to me, her shoes and stockings: they seemed to keep her shape, the warmth and scent of her—I didn’t like to fold them up and make them flat. Her rooms seemed changed. I took to going about them—just as I had done, on my first day at Briar—and looking at all the things I knew she had taken up and touched. Her box, and her mother’s picture. Her books. Would there be books for her, at the madhouse? Her comb, with hairs snagged in it. Would there be anyone to dress her hair? Her looking-glass. I began to stand where she liked to stand, close to the fire, and I’d study my face as I’d seen her studying hers.

  ‘Ten days to go,’ I would say to myself. ‘Ten days, and you will be rich!’

  But I’d say it, and across the words might come the chiming of the great house bell; and then I would shudder to think of our plot being so much as a single hour nearer its end, the jaws of our trap that little bit closer and tighter about her and harder to prise apart.

  Of course, she felt the passing hours, too. It made her cling to her old habits—made her walk, eat, lie in her bed, do everything, more stiffly, more neatly, more like a little clockwork doll, than ever. I think she did it, for safety’s sake; or else, to keep the time from running on too fast. I’d watch her take her tea—pick up her cup, sip from it, put it down, pick it up and sip again, like a machine would; or I’d see her sew, with crooked stitches, nervous and quick; and I’d have to turn my gaze. I’d think of the time I had put back the rug and danced a polka with her. I’d think of the day I had smoothed her pointed tooth. I remembered holding her jaw, and the damp of her tongue. It had seemed ordinary, then; but I could not imagine, now, putting a finger to her mouth and it being ordinary . . .

  She began to dream again. She began to wake, bewildered, in the night. Once or twice she rose from her bed: I opened my eyes and found her moving queerly about the room. ‘Are you there?’ she said, when she heard me stirring; and she came back to my side and lay and shook. Sometimes she would reach for me. When her hands came against me, though, she’d draw them away. Sometimes she would weep. Or, she would ask queer questions. ‘Am I real? Do you see me? Am I real?’

  ‘Go back to sleep,’ I said, one night. It was a night close to the end.

  ‘I’m afraid to,’ she said. ‘Oh, Sue, I’m afraid . . .’

  Her voice, this time, was not at all thick, but soft and clear, and so unhappy it woke me properly and I looked for her face. I could not see it. The little rush-light that she always kept lit must have fallen against its shade, or burned itself out. The curtains were down, as they always were. I think it was three or four o’clock. The bed was dark, like a box. Her breath came out of the darkness. It struck my mouth.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  She said, ‘I dreamed—I dreamed I was ma
rried . . .’

  I turned my head. Then her breath came against my ear. Too loud, it seemed, in the silence. I moved my head again. I said,

  ‘Well, you shall be married, soon, for real.’

  ‘Shall I?’

  ‘You know you shall. Now, go back to sleep.’

  But, she would not. I felt her lying, still but very stiff. I felt the beating of her heart. At last she said again, in a whisper: ‘Sue—’

  ‘What is it, miss?’

  She wet her mouth. ‘Do you think me good?’ she said.

  She said it, as a child might. The words unnerved me rather. I turned again, and peered into the darkness, to try and make out her face.

  ‘Good, miss?’ I said, as I squinted.

  ‘You do,’ she said unhappily.

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t. I wish I wasn’t. I wish—I wish I was wise.’

  ‘I wish you were sleeping,’ I thought. But I did not say it. What I said was, ‘Wise? Aren’t you wise? A girl like you, that has read all those books of your uncle’s?’

  She did not answer. She only lay, stiff as before. But her heart beat harder—I felt it lurch. I felt her draw in her breath. She held it. Then she spoke.

  ‘Sue,’ she said, ‘I wish you would tell me—’

  Tell me the truth, I thought she was about to say; and my own heart beat like hers, I began to sweat. I thought, ‘She knows. She has guessed!’—I almost thought, Thank God!

  But it wasn’t that. It wasn’t that, at all. She drew in her breath again, and again I felt her, nerving herself to ask some awful thing. I should have known what it was; for she had been nerving herself to ask it, I think, for a month. At last, the words burst from her.

  ‘I wish you would tell me,’ she said, ‘what it is a wife must do, on her wedding-night!’