Fingersmith

  ‘I am too nervous.’

  He does not answer. He turns, to raise a brush to his head. I lean and seize his coat—find the pocket, the bottle of drops—but he sees, comes quickly to me and plucks it from my hand.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he says, as he does it. ‘I won’t have you half in a dream—or risk you muddling the dose, and so spoiling everything! Oh, no. You must be quite clear in your mind.’

  He returns the bottle to the pocket. When I reach again, he dodges.

  ‘Let me have it,’ I say. ‘Richard, let me have it. One drop only, I swear.’ My lips jump about the words. He shakes his head, wipes at the nap of the coat to remove the impression of my fingers.

  ‘Not yet,’ he says. ‘Be good. Work for it.’

  ‘I cannot! I shan’t be calm, without a dose of it.’

  ‘You shall try, for my sake. For our sake, Maud.’

  ‘Damn you!’

  ‘Yes, yes, damn us all, damn us all.’ He sighs; then returns to the brushing of his hair. When after a moment I sink back, he catches my eye.

  ‘Why throw such a tantrum, hey?’ he says, almost kindly. And then: ‘You are calmer, now? Very good. You know what to do, when they see you? Have Sue make you neat, no more than that. Be modest. Weep if you must, a little. You are sure what to say?’

  I am, despite myself; for we have planned this, many times. I wait, then nod. ‘Of course,’ he says. He pats at his pocket, at the bottle of drops. ‘Think of London,’ he says. ‘There are druggists on every street corner, there.’

  My mouth trembles in scorn. ‘You think,’ I say, ‘I shall still want my medicine, in London?’

  The words sound weak, even to my ears. He turns his head, saying nothing, perhaps suppressing a smile. Then he takes up his pen-knife and stands at the fire and cleans his nails—now and then giving a flick of the blade, to cast slivers of dirt, fastidiously, into the flames.

  He takes them first to talk with Sue. Of course, they suppose her his wife, turned mad, thinking herself a servant, speaking in the manner of a maid, keeping to a maid’s room. I hear the creaking of the stairs and floorboards beneath their boots. I hear their voices—low, monotonous—but not their words. Sue’s voice I do not hear at all. I sit upon the bed until they come, and then I stand and curtsey.

  ‘Susan,’ says Richard quietly. ‘My wife’s maid.’

  They nod. I say nothing, yet. But I think my look must be strange. I see them studying me. Richard also watches. Then he comes close.

  ‘A faithful girl,’ he says to the doctors. ‘Her strength has been sadly overtaxed, these past two weeks.’ He makes me walk from the bed to the arm-chair, puts me in the light of the window. ‘Sit here,’ he says gently, ‘in your mistress’s chair. Be calm, now. These gentlemen only wish to ask you a number of trifling questions. You must answer them honestly.’

  He presses my hand. I think he does it to reassure or to warn me; then I feel his fingers close about one of mine. I still wear my wedding-ring. He draws it free and holds it, hidden, against his palm.

  ‘Very good,’ says one of the doctors, more satisfied now. The other makes notes in a book. I watch him turn a page and, suddenly, long for paper. ‘Very good. We have seen your mistress. You do well to think of her comfort and health for—I am sorry to tell you this—we fear she is ill. Very ill indeed. You know she believes her name to be your name, her history one that resembles yours? You know that?’

  Richard watches.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I say, in a whisper.

  ‘And your name is Susan Smith?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you were maid to Mrs Rivers—Miss Lilly, as was—in her uncle’s house, of Briar, before her marriage?’

  I nod.

  ‘And before that—where was your place? Not with a family named Dunraven, at the supposed address of Whelk Street, Mayfair?’

  ‘No, sir. I never heard of them. They are all Mrs Rivers’s fancy.’

  I speak, as a servant might. And I name, reluctantly, some other house and family—some family of Richard’s acquaintance, who might be relied on to provide the history we need, if the doctors think to seek them out. We do not think they will, however.

  The doctor nods again. ‘And Mrs Rivers,’ he says. ‘You speak of her “fancy”. When did such fancies begin?’

  I swallow. ‘Mrs Rivers has often seemed strange,’ I say quietly. ‘The servants at Briar would speak of her as of a lady not quite right, in the brain. I believe her mother was mad, sir.’

  ‘Now, now,’ says Richard smoothly, interrupting. ‘The doctors don’t want to hear the gossip of servants. Go on with your observations, only.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I say. I gaze at the floor. The boards are scuffed, there are splinters rising from the wood, thick as needles.

  ‘And Mrs Rivers’s marriage,’ says the doctor. ‘How did that affect her?’

  ‘It was that, sir,’ I say, ‘which made the change in her. Before that time, she had seemed to love Mr Rivers; and we had all at Briar supposed his care, which was’—I catch Richard’s eye—‘so good, sir!—we had all supposed it would lift her out of herself. Then, since her wedding-night, she has started up very queer . . .’

  The doctor looks at his colleague. ‘You hear,’ he says, ‘how well the account matches Mrs Rivers’s own? It is quite remarkable!—as if, in making a burden of her life, she seeks to hand that burden to another, better able to bear it. She has made a fiction of herself!’ He returns to me. ‘A fiction, indeed, ’ he says thoughtfully. ‘Tell me this, Miss Smith: does your mistress care for books? for reading?’

  I meet his gaze, but my throat seems to close, or be splintered, like the boards on the floor. I cannot answer. Richard speaks in my behalf. ‘My wife,’ he says, ‘was born to a literary life. Her uncle, who raised her, is a man dedicated to the pursuit of learning, and saw to her education as he might have seen to a son’s. Mrs Rivers’s first passion was books.’

  ‘There you have it!’ says the doctor. ‘Her uncle, an admirable gentleman I don’t doubt. But the over-exposure of girls to literature—The founding of women’s colleges—’ His brow is sleek with sweat. ‘We are raising a nation of brain-cultured women. Your wife’s distress, I’m afraid to say, is part of a wider malaise. I fear for the future of our race, Mr Rivers, I may tell you now. And her wedding-night, you say, the start of this most recent bout of insanity? Could that’—he drops his voice meaningfully, and exchanges a glance with the doctor who writes—‘be plainer?’ He taps at his lip. ‘I saw how she shrank from my touch, when I felt for the pulse at her wrist. I noted, too, that she wears no marriage ring.’

  Richard starts into life at the words, and pretends to draw something from his pocket. They say fortune favours villains.

  ‘Here it is,’ he says gravely, holding out the yellow band. ‘She put it from her, with a curse.—For she speaks like a servant now, and thinks nothing of mouthing filthy words. God knows where she learned them!’ He bites at his lip. ‘You might imagine the sensations that produced, sir, in my breast.’ He puts his hand to his eyes, and sits heavily upon the bed; then rises, as if in horror. ‘This bed!’ he says hoarsely. ‘Our marriage-bed, I thought it. To think my wife would rather the room of a servant, a pallet of straw—!’ He shudders. That’s enough, I think. No more. But he is a man in love with his own roguery.

  ‘A wretched case,’ says the doctor. ‘But we will work on your wife, you may be sure, to shake her of her unnatural fancy—’

  ‘Unnatural?’ says Richard. He shudders again. His look grows strange. ‘Ah, sir,’ he says, ‘you don’t know all. There is something else. I had hoped to keep it from you. I feel now, I cannot.’

  ‘Indeed?’ says the doctor. The other pauses, his pencil raised.

  Richard wets his mouth; and all at once I know what he means to say, and quickly turn my face to his. He marks it. He speaks, before I can.

  ‘Susan,’ he says, ‘you do well to feel shame in behalf of your mistress. You need feel no
ne, however, in behalf of yourself. No guilt attaches to you. You did nothing to invite or encourage the gross attentions my wife, in her madness, attempted to force on you—’

  He bites at his hand. The doctors stare, then turn to gaze at me.

  ‘Miss Smith,’ says the first, leaning closer, ‘is this true?’

  I think of Sue. I think of her, not as she must be now, in the room beyond the wall—satisfied to have betrayed me, glad to suppose herself about to return at last to her home, the dark thieves’ den, in London. I think of her holding herself above me, her hair let down, You pearl . . .

  ‘Miss Smith?’

  I have begun to weep.

  ‘Surely,’ says Richard, coming to me, putting his hand heavily upon my shoulder, ‘surely these tears speak for themselves? Do we need to name the unhappy passion? Must we oblige Miss Smith to rehearse the words, the artful poses—the caresses—to which my distracted wife has made her subject? Aren’t we gentlemen?’

  ‘Of course,’ says the doctor quickly, moving back. ‘Of course. Miss Smith, your grief does you credit. You need not fear for your safety, now. You need not fear for the safety of your mistress. Her care will soon be our concern, not yours. Then we shall keep her, and cure her of all her ills. Mr Rivers, you understand—a case such as this—the treatment may well be a lengthy one . . . ?’

  They rise. They have brought papers, and look for a surface on which to put them out. Richard clears the dressing-table of brushes and pins and they lay them there, then sign: a paper each. I don’t watch them do it, but hear the grinding of the pen. I hear them moving together, to shake each other’s hands. The staircase thunders as they go down. I keep in my seat beside the window. Richard stands in the path to the house while they drive off.

  Then he comes back. He closes the door. He steps to me and tosses the wedding-ring into my lap. He rubs his hands together and almost capers.

  ‘You devil,’ I say, without passion, wiping the tears from my cheek.

  He snorts. He moves to the back of my chair and puts his hands to my head, one hand to either side of my face; then tilts it back until our gazes meet. ‘Look at me,’ he says, ‘and tell me, honestly, that you don’t admire me.’

  ‘I hate you.’

  ‘Hate yourself, then. We’re alike, you and I. More alike than you know. You think the world ought to love us, for the kinks in the fibres of our hearts? The world scorns us. Thank God it does! There was never a profit to be got from love; from scorn, however, you may twist riches, as filthy water may be wrung from a cloth. You know it is true. You are like me. I say it again: hate me, hate yourself.’

  His hands are warm upon my face, at least. I close my eyes.

  I say, ‘I do.’

  Then Sue comes from her room, to knock upon our door. He keeps his pose, but calls for her to enter.

  ‘Look here,’ he says when she does, his voice quite changed, ‘at your mistress. Don’t you think her eyes a little brighter . . . ?’

  We leave next day, for the madhouse.

  She comes to dress me, for the final time.

  ‘Thank you, Sue,’ I say, in the old soft way, each time she hooks a button or draws a lace. I wear, still, the gown in which I left Briar, that is spotted with mud and river-water. She wears my gown of silk—blue silk, against which the white of her wrists and throat is turned to the colour of cream, and the browns of her hair and eyes are made rich. She has grown handsome. She moves about the room, taking up my linen, my shoes, my brushes and pins, and putting them carefully in bags. Two bags, there are: one destined for London, the other for the madhouse—the first, as she supposes, for herself; the second for me. It is hard to watch her make her choices—to see her frown over a petticoat, a pair of stockings or shoes, to know she is thinking, These will surely be good enough for mad people and doctors. This she ought to take, in case the nights are cool. Now, that and those (the bottle of drops, my gloves) she must have.—I move them, when she leaves me, and place them deep in the other bag.

  And one other thing I put with them, that she does not know I keep: the silver thimble, from the sewing-box at Briar, with which she smoothed my pointed tooth.

  The coach comes, sooner than I think it will. ‘Thank God,’ says Richard. He carries his hat. He is too tall for this low and tilting house: when we step outside, he stretches. I have kept to my room so long, however, the day feels vast to me. I walk with Sue’s arm gripped in mine, and at the door of the coach, when I must give it up—give it up, for ever!—I think I hesitate.

  ‘Now, now,’ says Richard, taking my hand from her. ‘No time for sentiment. ’

  Then we drive. I feel it, as more than a matter of galloping horses and turning wheels. It is like an undoing of my first journey, with Mrs Stiles, from the madhouse to Briar: I put my face to the window as the carriage slows, and almost expect to see the house and the mothers I was snatched from. I should remember them still, I know it. But, that house was large. This one is smaller, and lighter. It has rooms for female lunatics, only. That house was set in bare earth. This one has a bed of flowers beside its door—tall flowers, with tips like spikes.

  I fall back in my seat. Richard catches my eye.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he says.

  Then they take her. He helps her into their hands, and stands before me at the door, looking out.

  ‘Wait,’ I hear her say. ‘What are you doing?’ Then: ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen! ’—an odd and formal phrase.

  The doctors speak in soothing tones, until she begins to curse; then their voices grow hard. Richard draws back. The floor of the carriage tilts, the doorway rises, and I see her—the two men’s hands upon her arms, a nurse gripping her waist. Her cloak is falling from her shoulders, her hat is tilted, her hair is tearing from its pins. Her face is red and white. Her look is wild, already.

  Her eyes are fixed on mine. I sit like a stone, until Richard takes my arm and presses, hard, upon my wrist.

  ‘Speak,’ he whispers, ‘damn you.’ Then I sing out, clear, mechanically:

  ‘Oh! My own poor mistress!’ Her brown eyes—wide—with that darker fleck. Her tumbling hair. ‘Oh! Oh! My heart is breaking!’

  The cry seems to ring about the coach, even after Richard has swung closed the door and the driver whipped the horse into life and turned us. We do not speak. Beside Richard’s head is a lozenge-shaped window of milky glass, and for a moment I see her again: still struggling, lifting her arm to point or reach—Then the road makes a dip. There come trees. I take off my wedding-ring and throw it to the floor. I find, in my bag, a pair of gloves, and draw them on. Richard watches my trembling hands.

  ‘Well—’ he says.

  ‘Don’t speak to me,’ I say, almost spitting the words. ‘If you speak to me, I shall kill you.’

  He blinks, and attempts to smile. But his mouth moves strangely and his face, behind his beard, is perfectly white. He folds his arms. He sits, first one way and then another. He crosses and uncrosses his legs. At length he takes a cigarette from his pocket, and a match, and tries to draw down the carriage window. It will not come. His hands are damp, grow damper, and finally slide upon the glass. ‘Damn this!’ he cries then. He rises, staggers, beats upon the ceiling for the driver to stop the horse, then fumbles with the key. We have gone no more than a mile or two, but he jumps to the ground and paces, coughs. He puts his hand to the lock of springing hair at his brow, many times. I watch him.

  ‘How like a villain,’ I say, when he takes his seat again, ‘you are now.’

  ‘And how like a lady, you!’ he answers, with a sneer.

  Then he turns his face from me, rests his head against the jolting cushion; and pretends, with twitching eye-lids, to sleep.

  My own eyes stay open. I gaze through the lozenge of glass at the road we have travelled—a winding red road, made cloudy by dust, like a thread of blood escaping from my heart.

  We make part of our journey like this, but then must give up the asylum carriage and take a train. I hav
e never ridden a train before. We wait at a country station. We wait at an inn, since Richard is still afraid that my uncle will have sent out men to watch for us. He has the landlord put us in a private room and bring me tea and bread-and-butter. I will not look at the tray. The tea grows brown and cool, the bread curls. He stands at the fire and rattles the coins in his pocket, then bursts out: ‘God damn you, do you think I take food for you, for free?’ He eats the bread-and-butter himself. ‘I hope I see my money soon,’ he says. ‘God knows I need it, after three months with you and your uncle, doing what he calls a gentleman’s labour, receiving wages that would barely keep a proper gentleman in cuffs. Where’s that damn porter? How much do they mean to swindle me of for our tickets, I wonder?’

  At last a boy appears to fetch us and take our bags. We stand on the station platform and study the rails. They shine, as if polished. In time they begin to purr, and then—unpleasantly, like nerves in failing teeth—to hum. The hum becomes a shriek. Then the train comes hurtling about the track, a plume of smoke at its head, its many doors unfolding. I keep my veil about my face. Richard hands a coin to the guard, saying easily: ‘You’ll see to it, perhaps, that my wife and I are kept quite private, till London?’ The guard says he will; and when Richard comes and takes his place in the coach across from me he is more peevish than ever.

  ‘That I must pay a man to think me lewd, so I may sit chastely, with my own little virgin of a wife! Let me tell you now, I am keeping a separate account of the costs of this journey, to charge against your share.’

  I say nothing. The train has shuddered, as if beaten with hammers, and now begins to roll upon its tracks. I feel the growing speed of it, and grip the hanging strap of leather until my hand cramps and blisters in its glove.

  So the journey proceeds. It seems to me that we must cross vast distances of space.—For you will understand that my sense of distance and space is rather strange. We stop at a village of red-bricked houses, and then at another, very similar; and then at a third, rather larger. At every station there is what seems to me a press of people clamouring to board, the thud and shake of slamming doors. I am afraid the crowds will overburden the train—perhaps overturn it.