‘Do you hear me?’ I cry.
The man winces again, and puts his finger to his ear as if to clear it of wax. ‘Like a blade,’ he says, to no-one, to everyone. ‘Ain’t it?’
‘Damn you!’ I say. I look wildly about me for a moment, then make a sudden grab at my bag. Richard reaches it first, however, he hooks it with his long leg and kicks it across the floor, almost playfully. The boy takes it up, and holds it in his lap. He produces a knife and begins to pick at the lock. The blade flashes.
Richard folds his arms. ‘You see you cannot leave, Maud,’ he says simply. ‘You cannot go, with nothing.’
He has moved to the door, to stand before it. There are other doors, that lead, perhaps to a street, perhaps only into other dark rooms. I shall never choose the right one.
‘I am sorry,’ he says.
The boy’s knife flashes again. Now, I think, they will kill me. The thought itself is like a blade, and astonishingly sharp. For haven’t I willed my life away, at Briar? Haven’t I felt it rising from me, and been glad? Now I suppose they mean to kill me; and I am more afraid than I have imagined it possible to be, of anything, anything at all.
You fool, I say to myself. But to them I say: ‘You shan’t. You shan’t!’ I run one way, and then another; finally I dart, not for the door at Richard’s back, but for the slumbering, swollen-headed baby. I seize it, and shake it, and put my hand to its neck. ‘You shan’t!’ I say again. ‘Damn you, do you think I have come so far, for this?’ I look at the woman. ‘I shall kill your baby first!’—I think I would do it.—‘See, here! I shall stifle it!’
The man, the girl, the boy, look interested. The woman looks sorry. ‘My dear,’ she says, ‘I have seven babies about the place, just now. Make it six, if you want. Make it’—with a gesture to the tin box beneath the table—‘make it five. It is all the same to me. I fancy I am about to give the business up, anyway.’
The creature in my arms slumbers on, but gives a kick. I feel the rapid palpitation of its heart beneath my fingers, and there is a fluttering at the top of its swollen head. The woman still watches. The girl puts her hand to her neck, and rubs. Richard searches in his pocket for a cigarette. He says, as he does it, ‘Put the damn child down, Maud, won’t you?’
He says it mildly; and I become aware of myself, my hands at a baby’s throat. I set the child carefully down upon the table, among the plates and china cups. At once, the boy takes his knife from the lock of my bag and waves it over its head.
‘Ha-ha!’ he cries. ‘The lady wouldn’t do it. John Vroom shall have him—lips, nose and ears!’
The girl squeals, as if tickled. The woman says sharply, ‘That’s enough. Or are all my infants to be worried out of their cradles, into their graves? Fine farm I should be left with then. Dainty, see to little Sidney before he scalds himself, do. Miss Lilly will suppose herself come among savages. Miss Lilly, I can see you’re a spirited girl. I expected nothing less. But you don’t imagine we mean to hurt you?’ She comes to me again. She cannot stand without touching me—now she puts her hand upon me and strokes my sleeve. ‘You don’t imagine you ain’t more welcome here, than anyone?’
I still shake, a little. ‘I can’t imagine,’ I say, pulling myself away from her hands, ‘that you mean me any kind of good, since you persist in keeping me here, when I so clearly wish to leave.’
She tilts her head. ‘Hear the grammar in that, Mr Ibbs?’ she says. The man says he does. She strokes me again. ‘Sit down, my darling. Look at this chair: got from a very grand place, it might be waiting for you. Won’t you take off your cloak, and your bonnet? You shall swelter, we keep a very warm kitchen. Won’t you slip off your gloves?—Well, you know best.’
I have drawn in my hands. Richard catches the woman’s eye. ‘Miss Lilly,’ he says quietly, ‘is rather particular about the fingers. Was made to wear gloves, from an early age’—he lets his voice drop still further, and mouths the last few words in an exaggerated way—‘by her uncle.’
The woman looks sage.
‘Your uncle,’ she says. ‘Now, I know all about him. Made you look at a lot of filthy French books. And did he touch you, dear, where he oughtn’t to have? Never mind it now. Never mind it, here. Better your own uncle than a stranger, I always say.—Oh, now ain’t that a shame?’
I have sat, to disguise the trembling of my legs; but have pushed her from me. My chair is close to the fire and she is right, it is hot, it is terribly hot, my cheek is burning; but I must not move, I must think. The boy still picks at the lock. ‘French books,’ he says, with a snigger. The red-haired girl has the fingers of the baby’s hands in her mouth and is sucking on them, idly. The man has come nearer. The woman is still at my side. The light of the fire picks out her chin, her cheek, an eye, a lip. The lip is smooth. She wets it.
I turn my head, but not my gaze. ‘Richard,’ I say. He doesn’t answer. ‘Richard!’ The woman reaches to me and unfastens the string of my bonnet and draws it from my head. She pats my hair, then takes up a lock of it and rubs it between her fingers.
‘Quite fair,’ she says, in a sort of wonder. ‘Quite fair, like gold almost.’
‘Do you mean to sell it?’ I say then. ‘Here, take it!’ I snatch at the lock she has caught up and rip it from its pins. ‘You see,’ I say, when she winces, ‘you cannot hurt me as much as I can hurt myself. Now, let me go.’
She shakes her head. ‘You are growing wild, my dear, and spoiling your pretty hair. Haven’t I said? We don’t mean to harm you. Here is John Vroom, look; and Delia Warren, that we call Dainty: you shall think them cousins, I hope, in time. And Mr Humphry Ibbs: he has been waiting for you—haven’t you, Mr Ibbs? And here am I. I’ve been waiting for you, hardest of all. Dear me, how hard it has been.’
She sighs. The boy looks up at her and scowls.
‘Jigger me,’ he says, ‘if I know which way the wind is blowing now.’ He nods to me. ‘Ain’t she meant to be’—he hugs his arms about himself, shows his tongue, lets his eyes roll—‘on a violent ward?’
The woman lifts her arm, and he winks and draws back.
‘You watch your face,’ she says savagely. And then, gazing gently at me: ‘Miss Lilly is throwing in her fortunes with ours. Miss Lilly don’t know her own mind just yet—as who would, in her place? Miss Lilly, I daresay you ain’t had a morsel of food in hours. What we got, that will tempt you?’ She rubs her hands together. ‘Should you care for a mutton chop? A piece of Dutch cheese? A supper of fish? We got a stall on the corner, sells any kind of fish—you name me the breed, Dainty shall slip out, bring it back, fry it up, quick as winking. What shall it be? We got china plates, look, fit for royalty. We got silver forks—Mr Ibbs, pass me one of them forks. See here, dear. A little rough about the handle, ain’t it? Don’t mind it, darling. That’s where we takes the crest off. Feel the weight of it, though. Ain’t them prongs very shapely? There’s a Member of Parliament had his mouth about those. Shall it be fish, dear? Or the chop?’
She stands, bending to me, with the fork close to my face. I push it aside.
‘Do you suppose,’ I say, ‘I mean to sit and eat a supper with you? With any of you? Why, I should be ashamed to call you servants! Throw in my fortunes with yours? I should rather be beggared. I should rather die!’
There is a second of silence; then: ‘Got a dander,’ says the boy. ‘Don’t she?’
But the woman shakes her head, looks almost admiring. ‘Dainty’s got a dander,’ she answers. ‘Why, I’ve got one myself. Any ordinary girl can have one of them. What a lady has, they call something else. What do they call it, gentleman?’ She says this to Richard, who is leaning tiredly to tug upon the ears of the slavering dog.
‘Hauteur,’ he answers, not looking up.
‘Hauteur,’ she repeats.
‘Mersee,’ says the boy, giving me a leer. ‘I should hate, after all, to have mistook it for common bad manners, and punched her.’
He returns to the clasp of my bag. The man watches, and winces. ‘Ain’t you l
earned yet,’ he says, ‘the handling of a lock? Don’t prise it, boy, and mash the levers. That’s sweet little work. You are just about to bust it.’
The boy makes a final stab with his knife, his face darkening. ‘Fuck!’ he says.—The first time I have ever heard the word used as a curse. He takes the point of the blade from the lock and puts it to the leather beneath, and before I can cry out and stop him he slices it, swiftly, in one long gash.
‘Well, that’s like you,’ says the man complacently.
He has taken out a pipe, and lights it. The boy puts his hands to the slit in the leather. I watch him do it and, though my cheek is still burning from the heat of the fire, I grow cold. The cutting of the bag has shocked me, more than I can say. I begin to tremble.
‘Please,’ I say. ‘Please give me back my things. I shall not trouble about the policeman, if you will only give back what is mine, and let me go.’
I suppose my voice has some new, piteous note to it; for now they all turn their heads and study me, and the woman comes close again and again strokes my hair.
‘Not frightened, still?’ she says amazedly. ‘Not frightened, of John Vroom? Why, he is just being playful.—John, how dare you? Put your knife away and pass me Miss Lilly’s bag.—There. Are you sorry for it, dear? Why, it’s a creased old thing, that looks like it ain’t been used in fifty years. We shall get you a proper one. Shan’t we, though!’
The boy makes a show of grumbling but gives up the bag; and when the woman hands it to me I take it and hug it. There are tears, rising in my throat.
‘Boo hoo,’ says the boy in disgust, when he sees me swallow. He leans and leers at me again. ‘I liked you better,’ he says, ‘when you was a chair.’
I am sure he says that. The words bewilder me, and I shrink away. I twist to look at Richard. ‘Please, Richard,’ I say. ‘For God’s sake, isn’t it enough to have tricked me? How can you stand so coolly while they torment me?’
He holds my gaze, stroking his beard. Then he says to the woman: ‘Haven’t you a quieter place, for her to sit in?’
‘A quieter place?’ she answers. ‘Why, I have a room made ready. I only supposed Miss Lilly should like to warm her face first down here. Should you like to come up dear, now? Make your hair neat? Wash your hands?’
‘I should like to be shown to the street, and a hackney,’ I answer. ‘Only that, only that.’
‘Well, we shall put you at the window; and you shall see the street from there. Come up, my darling. Let me take that old bag.—Want to keep it? All right. Ain’t your grip a strong one! Gentleman, you come along too, why don’t you? You’ll take your old room, at the top?’
‘I will,’ he answers, ‘if you’ll have me. For the wait.’
They exchange a glance. She has put her hands upon me and, in drawing from her grasp, I have risen. Richard comes and stands close. I shrink from him, too, and between them—as a pair of dogs might menace a sheep into a pen—they guide me from the kitchen, through one of the doors, towards a staircase. Here it is darker and cooler, and I feel the draught perhaps of a street-door, and slow my steps; but I think, too, of what the woman has said, about the window: I imagine I might call from it, or drop from it—or fling myself from it—should they try to hurt me. The staircase is narrow, and bare of carpet; here and there, on the steps, are chipped china cups half-filled with water, holding floating wicks, casting shadows.
‘Lift your skirts, dear, above the flames,’ says the woman, going up before me. Richard comes, very close, behind.
At the top there are doors, all shut: the woman opens the first, and shows me through it to a small square room. A bed, a wash-hand stand, a box, a chest of drawers, a horse-hair screen—and a window, to which I instantly cross. It is narrow, and has a bleached net scarf hung before it. The hasp has been broken long ago: the sashes are fixed together with nails. The view is of a slip of muddy street, a house with ointment-coloured shutters with heart-shaped holes, a wall of brick, with loops and spirals marked upon it in yellow chalks.
I stand and study it all, my bag still clutched to me, but my arms growing heavy. I hear Richard pause, then climb a second set of stairs; then he walks about the room above my head. The woman crosses to the wash-hand stand and pours a little water from the jug into the bowl. Now I see my mistake, in coming so quickly to the window: for she stands between me and the door. She is stout, and her arms are thick. I think I might push her aside, however, if I was to surprise her.
Perhaps she is thinking the same thing. Her hands are hovering about the wash-hand stand, her head is tilted, but she is watching me, in the same close, eager, half-awed, half-admiring way as before.
‘Here’s scented soap,’ she says. ‘And here’s a comb. Here’s a hair-brush.’ I say nothing. ‘Here’s a towel for your face. Here’s eau-de-Cologne.’ She draws the stopper from the bottle and the liquid slops. She comes to me, her wrist bared and made wet with a sickening perfume. ‘Don’t you care,’ she says, ‘for lavender?’
I have stepped away from her, and look at the door. From the kitchen, the boy’s voice comes very clearly: ‘You tart!’
‘I don’t care,’ I say, taking another step, ‘to be tricked.’
She steps, too. ‘What trickery, darling?’
‘Do you think I meant to come here? Do you think I mean to stay?’
‘I think you are only startled. I think you ain’t quite yourself.’
‘Not quite myself? What’s myself to you? Who are you, to say how I might or might not be?’
At that, her gaze falls. She draws her sleeve over her wrist, returns to the wash-hand stand, touches again the soap, the comb, the brush and towel. Downstairs, a chair is drawn across the floor, something is thrown or falls, the dog barks. Upstairs, Richard walks, coughs, mutters. If I am to run, I must do it now. Which way shall I go? Down, down, the way I have come. Which was the door, at the bottom, that they led me through?—the second, or the first? I am not sure. Never mind, I think. Go now! But I do not. The woman lifts her face, catches my eye, I hesitate; and in the moment of that hesitation Richard crosses his floor and steps heavily down the stairs. He comes into the room. He has a cigarette behind his ear. He has rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, and his beard is dark with water.
He closes the door, and locks it.
‘Take your cloak off, Maud,’ he says.
I think: He is going to strangle me.
I keep my cloak quite fastened, and move backwards, slowly, away from him and from the woman, back to the window. I will smash it with my elbow if I must. I will shriek into the street. Richard watches me and sighs. He makes his eyes wide. ‘You need not,’ he says, ‘look so like a rabbit. Do you think I would bring you all this way, to hurt you?’
‘And do you think,’ I answer, ‘I will trust you not to? You told me yourself, at Briar, what lengths you will go to, for money’s sake. I wish I had listened harder, then! Tell me now you don’t mean to cheat me of all my fortune. Tell me you shan’t get it, through Sue. I suppose you will fetch her, after some slight delay. She will be cured, I suppose.’ My heart contracts. ‘Clever Sue. Good girl.’
‘Shut up, Maud.’
‘Why? So you may kill me in silence? Go on and do it. Then live with the deed upon your conscience. I suppose you have one?’
‘Not one,’ he says, quickly and lightly, ‘that would be troubled by the murder of you, I assure you.’ He presses his fingers to his eyes. ‘Mrs Sucksby, however, would not like it.’
‘Her,’ I say, with a glance at the woman. She is still gazing at the soap, the brush, not speaking. ‘You do everything, at her word?’
‘Everything in this case.’ He says it meaningfully; and when I hesitate, not understanding, he goes on: ‘Listen to me, Maud. The scheme was hers, all of it. From start to finish, hers. And, villain that I am, I am not so great a swindler that I would swindle her of that.’
His face seems honest—but then, it has seemed honest to me before. ‘You are lying,’ I say. r />
‘No. This is the truth.’
‘Her scheme.’ I cannot believe it. ‘She that sent you to Briar, to my uncle? And before that, to Paris? To Mr Hawtrey?’
‘She that sent me to you. No matter all the twisting paths I took to reach you. I might have taken them anyway, and not known what lay at the end of them. I might have passed you by! Perhaps many men have. They have not had Mrs Sucksby, guiding their steps.’
I glance between them. ‘She knew of my fortune, then,’ I say after a moment. ‘So anyone might, I suppose. She knew—who? My uncle? Some servant of the house?’
‘She knew you, Maud, you; before almost anyone.’
The woman lifts her eyes to mine again at last, and nods.
‘I knew your mother,’ she says.
My mother! My hand goes to my throat—a curious thing, for my mother’s portrait lies with my jewels, its ribbon fraying, I have not worn it in years. My mother! I came to London to escape her. Now, all at once, I think of her grave in the park at Briar—untended, untrimmed, its white stone creeping with grey.
The woman still watches. I let my hand drop.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say. ‘My mother? What was her name?—tell me that.’
She begins to look sly. ‘I know it,’ she says, ‘but won’t say it just yet. I’ll tell you the letter that started it, though. That was a M, like what starts your name. I’ll tell you the second letter. That was a A.—Why, that’s like your name, too! The next letter, though, is where they runs off different. That was a R . . .’
She knows it, I know she knows it. How can she? I study her face—her eye, her lip. They seem familiar to me. What is it? Who is she?
‘A nurse,’ I say. ‘You were a nurse—’
But she shakes her head, almost smiles. ‘Now, why should I have been that?’
‘You don’t know everything, then!’ I say. ‘You don’t know that I was born in a madhouse!’
‘Was you?’ she answers quickly. ‘Why do you say so?’
‘You think I don’t remember my own home?’
‘I should say you remember the place you lived in when you was little. Why, so do we all. Don’t mean we was born there.’