Fingersmith

  So we believe, at nine and ten. Some time in my eleventh year, I am summoned to the nurses’ parlour by the matron of the house. I imagine she means to make me some treat. I am wrong. Instead, she greets me strangely, and will not meet my eye. There is a person with her—a gentleman, she says—but then, the word means little to me. It will mean more, in time. ‘Step closer,’ the matron says. The gentleman watches. He wears a suit of black, and a pair of black silk gloves. He holds a cane with an ivory knob, upon which he leans, the better to study me. His hair is black tending to white, his cheek cadaverous, his eyes imperfectly hidden by a pair of coloured glasses. An ordinary child might shrink from gazing at him; but I know nothing of ordinary children, and am afraid of no-one. I walk until I stand before him. He parts his lips, to pass his tongue across them. His tongue is dark at the tip.

  ‘She’s undersize,’ he says; ‘but makes enough noise with her feet, for all that. How’s her voice?’

  His own voice is low, tremulous, complaining, like the shadow of a shivering man.

  ‘Say a word to the gentleman,’ says the matron quietly. ‘Say how you are.’

  ‘I am very well,’ I say. Perhaps I speak stoutly. The gentleman winces.

  ‘That will do,’ he says, raising his hand. Then: ‘I hope you can whisper? I hope you can nod?’

  I nod. ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘I hope you can be silent?’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Be silent, then.—That’s better.’ He turns to the matron. ‘I see she wears her mother’s likeness. Very good. It will remind her of her mother’s fate, and may serve to keep her from sharing it. I don’t care at all for her lip, however. It is too plump. It has a bad promise. Likewise her back, which is soft, and slouches. And what of her leg? I shan’t want a thick-legged girl. Why do you hide her leg behind so long a skirt? Did I ask for that?’

  The matron colours. ‘It has been a harmless sport of the women, sir, to keep her dressed in the costume of the house.’

  ‘Have I paid you, to provide sport for nurses?’

  He moves his stick upon the rug, and works his jaws. He turns again to me, but speaks to her. He says, ‘How well does she read? How fair is her hand? Come, give her a piece of text and let her demonstrate.’

  The matron hands me an open Bible. I read a passage from it, and again the gentleman winces. ‘Softly!’ he says, until I speak it in a murmur. Then he has me write the passage out while he looks on.

  ‘A girl’s hand,’ he says, when I have finished, ‘and burdened with serifs.’ But he sounds pleased, nonetheless.

  I am also pleased. I understand from his words that I have marked the paper with the marks of angels. Later I will wish that I had scrawled and blotted the page. The fair characters are my undoing. The gentleman leans harder upon his stick and tilts his head so low I can see, above the wire of his spectacles, the bloodless rims of his eyes.

  ‘Well, miss,’ he says, ‘how should you like to come and live in my house? Don’t push your pert lip at me, mind! How should you like to come to me, and learn neat ways and plain letters?’

  He might have struck me. ‘I should like it not at all,’ I say at once.

  The matron says, ‘For shame, Maud!’

  The gentleman snorts. ‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘she has her mother’s unlucky temper after all. She has her dainty foot, at least. So you like to stamp, miss? Well, my house is a large one. We shall find a room for you to stamp in, far away from my fine ears; and you may work yourself into fits there, no-one shall mind you; and perhaps we shall mind you so little we shall forget to feed you, and then you shall die. How should you like that—hmm?’

  He rises and dusts down his coat, that has no dust upon it. He gives some instruction to the matron and does not look at me again. When he has gone, I take up the Bible I have read from and throw it to the floor.

  ‘I will not go!’ I cry. ‘He shall not make me!’

  The matron draws me to her. I have seen her take a whip to fractious lunatics, but now she clutches me to her apron and weeps like a girl, and tells me gravely what my future is to be, in the house of my uncle.

  Some men have farmers raise them veal-calves. My mother’s brother has had the house of nurses raise him me. Now he means to take me home and make me ready for the roast. All at once, I must give up my little madhouse gown, my ring of keys, my wand: he sends his housekeeper with a suit of clothes, to dress me to his fancy. She brings me boots, wool gloves, a gown of buff—a hateful, girlish gown, cut to the calf, and stiffened from the shoulder to the waist with ribs of bone. She pulls the laces tight and, at my complaints, pulls them tighter. The nurses watch her, sighing. When it comes time for her to take me, they kiss me and hide their eyes. Then one of them quickly puts a pair of scissors to my head, to take a curl of hair to keep inside a locket; and, the others seeing her do that, they seize the shears from her, or take up knives and scissors of their own, and pluck and grasp at me until my hair tears at the root. They reach and squabble over the falling tresses like gulls—their voices rousing the lunatics in their own close rooms, making them shriek. My uncle’s servant hurries me from them. She has a carriage with a driver. The madhouse gate shuts hard behind us.

  ‘What a place to raise a girl in!’ she says, passing a handkerchief across her lip.

  I will not speak to her. My strait gown cuts me and makes my breath come quick, and my boots chafe at my ankles. My wool gloves prickle—at last I tear them from my hands. She watches me do it, complacently. ‘Got a temper, have you?’ she says. She has a basket of knitting and a parcel of food. There are bread rolls, a packet of salt and three white eggs, boiled hard. She rolls two of the eggs across her skirt, to break their shells. The flesh inside is grey, the yolk as dry as powder. I will remember the scent of it. The third egg she places on my lap. I will not eat it, but let it jerk there until it falls upon the carriage floor and is spoiled. ‘Tut tut,’ she says at that. She takes out her knitting, then her head droops and she sleeps. I sit beside her, stiff, in a miserable rage. The horse goes slowly, the journey seems long. Sometimes we pass through trees. Then my face shows in the window-glass, dark as blood.

  I have seen no house but the madhouse I was born in. I am used to grimness and solitude, high walls and shuttered windows. It is the stillness of my uncle’s house that bewilders and frightens me, that first day. The carriage stops at a door, split down the middle into two high, bulging leaves: as we watch, they are tugged from within and seem to tremble. The man who opens them is dressed in dark silk breeches and what I take to be a powdered hat. ‘That’s Mr Way, your uncle’s steward,’ says the woman, her face beside mine. Mr Way observes me, then looks at her; I think she must make some gesture with her eyes. The driver puts the steps down for us, but I will not let him take my hand; and when Mr Way makes me a bow, I think he does it to tease—for I have many times seen nurses curtsey, laughing, to lady lunatics. He shows me past him, into a darkness that seems to lap at my buff gown. When he closes the door, the dark at once grows deeper. My ears feel full, as if with water or with wax. That is the silence, that my uncle cultivates in his house, as other men grow vines and flowering creepers.

  The woman takes me up a staircase while Mr Way looks on. The stairs are not quite even, and the rug is sometimes torn: my new boots make me clumsy, and once I fall. ‘Come up, child,’ says the woman when I do that; and now when she puts her hand upon me, I let it stay there. We climb two flights. I grow more frightened, the higher we go. For the house seems awful to me—the ceilings high, the walls not like the smooth undecorated walls of the madhouse, but filled with portraits, shields and rusting blades, creatures in frames and cases. The staircase turns upon itself, to make a gallery about the hall; at every turning there are passages. In the shadows of these, pale and half-hidden—like expectant grubs, in the cells of a hive—there stand servants, come to see me make my progress through the house.

  I do not know them for servants, however. I see their aprons and suppose them nurs
es. I think the shadowy passages must hold rooms, with quiet lunatics.

  ‘Why do they watch?’ I say to the woman.

  ‘Why, to see your face,’ she answers. ‘To see if you turned out handsome as your mother.’

  ‘I have twenty mothers,’ I say at that; ‘and am handsomer than any of them.’

  The woman has stopped before a door. ‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ she says. ‘I mean your proper mother, that died. These were her rooms, and are now to be yours.’

  She takes me into the chamber beyond, and then into the dressing-room that joins it. The windows rattle as if battered by fists. They are chill rooms even in summer, and it is winter now. I go to the little fire—I am too small to see my face in the glass above—and stand and shiver.

  ‘Should have kept your mittens,’ says the woman, seeing me breathe upon my hands. ‘Mr Inker’s daughter shall have those.’ She takes my cloak from me, then draws the ribbons from my hair and brushes it with a broken comb. ‘Tug all you like,’ she says as I pull away. ‘It shall only hurt you, it shan’t harm me. Why, what a business those women made of your head! Anyone would have supposed them savages. How I’m to see you neat, after their work, I can’t say. Now, look here.’ She reaches beneath the bed. ‘Let’s see you use your chamber-pot. Come along, no foolish modesty. Do you think I never saw a little girl lift up her skirts and piddle?’

  She folds her arms and watches me, and then she wets a cloth with water and washes my face and hands.

  ‘I saw them do this for your mother, when I was parlourmaid here,’ she says, pulling me about. ‘She was a deal gratefuller than you are. Didn’t they teach you manners, in that house of yours?’

  I long for my little wooden wand: I would show her all I’d learned of manners, then! But I have observed lunatics, too, and know how to struggle while only seeming to stand limp. At length she steps from me and wipes her hands.

  ‘Lord, what a child! I hope your uncle knows his business, bringing you here. He seems to think he’ll make a lady of you.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a lady!’ I say. ‘My uncle cannot make me.’

  ‘I should say he can do what he likes, in his own house,’ she answers. ‘There now! How late you’ve made us.’

  There has come the stifled ringing of a bell, three times. It is a clock; I understand it, however, as a signal to the house, for I have been raised to the sound of similar bells, that told the lunatics to rise, to dress, to say their prayers, to take their dinners. I think, Now I shall see them!, but when we go from the room the house is still and quiet as before. Even the watchful servants have retired. Again my boots catch on the carpets. ‘Walk softly!’ says the woman in a whisper, pinching my arm. ‘Here’s your uncle’s room, look.’

  She knocks, then takes me in. He has had paint put on the windows years before, and the winter sun striking the glass, the room is lit strangely. The walls are dark with the spines of books. I think them a kind of frieze or carving. I know only two books, and one is black and creased about the spine—that is the Bible. The other is a book of hymns thought suitable for the demented; and that is pink. I suppose all printed words to be true ones.

  The woman sets me very near the door and stands at my back, her hands like claws upon my shoulders. The man they have called my uncle rises from behind his desk; its surface is hidden by a mess of papers. Upon his head is a velvet cap with a swinging tassel on a fraying thread. Before his eyes is another, paler, pair of coloured glasses.

  ‘So, miss,’ he says, stepping towards me, moving his jaw. The woman makes a curtsey. ‘How is her temper, Mrs Stiles?’ he asks her.

  ‘Rather ill, sir.’

  ‘I can see it, in her eye. Where are her gloves?’

  ‘Threw them aside, sir. Wouldn’t have them.’

  My uncle comes close. ‘An unhappy beginning. Give me your hand, Maud.’

  I will not give it. The woman catches my arm about the wrist and lifts it. My hand is small, and plump at the knuckles. I am used to washing with madhouse soap, which is not kind. My nails are dark, with madhouse dirt. My uncle holds my finger-ends. His own hand has a smear or two of ink upon it. He shakes his head.

  ‘Now, did I want a set of coarse fingers upon my books,’ he says, ‘I should have had Mrs Stiles bring me a nurse. I should not have given her a pair of gloves, to make those coarse hands softer. Your hands I shall have soft, however. See here, how we make children’s hands soft, that are kept out of their gloves.’ He puts his own hand to the pocket of his coat, and uncoils from it—one of those things, that bookmen use—a line of metal beads, bound tight with silk, for keeping down springing pages. He makes a loop of it, seeming to weigh it; then he brings it smartly down upon my dimpling knuckles. Then, with Mrs Stiles’s assistance, he takes my other hand and does the same to that.

  The beads sting like a whip; but the silk keeps the flesh from breaking. At the first blow I yelp, like a dog—in pain, in rage and sheer astonishment. Then, Mrs Stiles releasing my wrists, I put my fingers to my mouth and begin to weep.

  My uncle winces at the sound. He returns the beads to his pocket and his hands flutter towards his ears.

  ‘Keep silence, girl!’ he says. I shake and cannot. Mrs Stiles pinches the flesh of my shoulder, and that makes me cry harder. Then my uncle draws forth the beads again; and at last I grow still.

  ‘Well,’ he says quietly. ‘You shan’t forget the gloves in future, hmm?’

  I shake my head. He almost smiles. He looks at Mrs Stiles. ‘You’ll keep my niece mindful of her new duties? I want her made quite tame. I can’t have storms and tantrums, here. Very well.’ He waves his hand. ‘Now, leave her with me. Don’t stray too far, mind! You must be in reach of her, should she grow wild.’

  Mrs Stiles makes a curtsey and—under cover of plucking my trembling shoulder as if to keep it from falling into a slouch—gives me another pinch. The yellow window grows bright, then dim, then bright again, as the wind sends clouds across the sun.

  ‘Now,’ says my uncle, when the housekeeper has gone. ‘You know, do you not, why I have brought you here.’

  I put my crimson fingers to my face, to wipe my nose.

  ‘To make a lady of me.’

  He gives a quick, dry laugh.

  ‘To make a secretary of you. What do you see here, all about these walls?’

  ‘Wood, sir.’

  ‘Books, girl,’ he says. He goes and draws one from its place and turns it. The cover is black, by which I recognise it as a Bible. The others, I deduce, hold hymns. I suppose that hymn-books, after all, might be bound in different hues, perhaps as suiting different qualities of madness. I feel this, as a great advance in thought.

  My uncle keeps the book in his hand, close to his breast, and taps its spine.

  ‘Do you see this title, girl?—Don’t take a step! I asked you to read, not to prance.’

  But the book is too far from me. I shake my head, and feel my tears return.

  ‘Ha!’ cries my uncle, seeing my distress. ‘I should say you can’t! Look down, miss, at the floor. Down! Further! Do you see that hand, beside your shoe? That hand was set there at my word, after consultation with an oculist—an eye-doctor. These are uncommon books, Miss Maud, and not for ordinary gazes. Let me see you step once past that pointing finger, and I shall use you as I would a servant of the house, caught doing the same—I shall whip your eyes until they bleed. That hand marks the bounds of innocence here. Cross it you shall, in time; but at my word, and when you are ready. You understand me, hmm?’

  I do not. How could I? But I am already grown cautious, and nod as if I do. He puts the book back in its place, lingering a moment over the aligning of the spine upon the shelf.

  The spine is a fine one, and—I will know it well, in time—a favourite of his. The title is—

  But now I run ahead of my own innocence; which is vouchsafed to me a little while yet.

  After my uncle has spoken he seems to forget me. I stand for another quarter-hour before
he lifts his head and catches sight of me, and waves me from the room. I struggle a moment with the iron handle of his door, making him wince against the grinding of the lever; and when I close it, Mrs Stiles darts from the gloom to lead me back upstairs. ‘I suppose you’re hungry,’ she says, as we walk. ‘Little girls always are. I should say you’d be grateful for a white egg now.’

  I am hungry, but will not admit to it. But she rings for a girl to come, and the girl brings a biscuit and a glass of sweet red wine. She sets them down before me, and smiles; and the smile is harder to bear, somehow, than a slap would have been. I am afraid I will weep again. But I swallow my tears with my dry biscuit, and the girl and Mrs Stiles stand together, whispering and watching. Then they leave me quite alone. The room grows dark. I lie upon the sofa with my head upon a cushion, and pull my own little cloak over myself, with my own little whipped, red hands. The wine makes me sleep. When I wake again, I wake to shifting shadows, and to Mrs Stiles at the door, bringing a lamp. I wake with a terrible fear, and a sense of many hours having passed. I think the bell has recently tolled. I believe it is seven or eight o’clock.

  I say, ‘I should like, if you please, to be taken home now.’

  Mrs Stiles laughs. ‘Do you mean to that house, with those rough women? What a place to call your home!’

  ‘I should think they miss me.’

  ‘I should say they are glad to be rid of you—the nasty, pale-faced little thing that you are. Come here. It’s your bed-time.’ She has pulled me from the sofa, and begins to unlace my gown. I tug away from her, and strike her. She catches my arm and gives it a twist.