Fingersmith

  I sit and watch him speak. At last I say, in a whisper: ‘Are you truly so wicked as this?’ He shrugs. I turn to Mrs Sucksby. ‘And you,’ I say. ‘Are you so wicked? To think, of Sue—Are you so vile?’

  She waves her hand before her face, says nothing. Richard snorts. ‘Wickedness,’ he says. ‘Vileness. What terms! The terms of fiction. Do you think, that when women swap children, they do it, as nurses do it in the operettas—for comedy’s sake? Look about you, Maud. Step to the window, look into the street. There is life, not fiction. It is hard, it is wretched. It would have been yours, but for Mrs Sucksby’s kindness in keeping you from it.—Christ!’ He moves from the door, puts his arms above his head and stretches. ‘How tired I am! What a day’s work I have done today—haven’t I? One girl pressed into a madhouse; another—Well.’ He looks me over, nudges my foot with his. ‘No arguments?’ he says. ‘No bluster? That may come later, I suppose. No matter if it does. Sue’s birthday falls at the start of August. We have more than three months, to persuade you into our plot. I think three days—of Borough living, I mean—will do that.’

  I am gazing at him, but cannot speak. I am thinking, still, of Sue. He tilts his head. ‘Don’t say we have broken your spirit, Maud,’ he says, ‘so quickly? I should be sorry to think it.’ He pauses. Then: ‘Your mother,’ he adds, ‘would have been sorry, also.’

  ‘My mother,’ I start to say.—I think of Marianne, with lunacy in her eye. Then I catch my breath. Through all of it, I have not thought of this. Richard watches, looks sly. He puts his hand to his collar and stretches his throat, and coughs, in a feeble, girlish and yet deliberate kind of way.

  ‘Now, Gentleman,’ says Mrs Sucksby anxiously as he does it, ‘don’t tease her.’

  ‘Tease her?’ he says. He still pulls at his collar as if it chafes him. ‘I am only dry about the throat, from talking.’

  ‘You have said too much, that’s why,’ she answers. ‘Miss Lilly—I’ll call you that, shall I, my dear? Seems natural, don’t it?—Miss Lilly, don’t mind him. We’ve plenty of time for talking of that.’

  ‘Of my mother, you mean,’ I say. ‘My true mother, that you made out to be Sue’s. That choked—you see, I know something!—that choked, on a pin.’

  ‘On a pin!’ says Richard, laughing. ‘Did Sue say that?’ Mrs Sucksby bites her mouth. I look from one to the other of them.

  ‘What was she?’ I ask wearily. ‘For God’s sake, tell me. Do you think I have it in me, now, to be astonished? Do you imagine I care? What was she? A thief, like you? Well, if I must lose the madwoman, a thief I suppose will do . . .’

  Richard coughs again. Mrs Sucksby looks away from me, and joins and works her hands. When she speaks, her voice is quiet, grave. ‘Gentleman,’ she says, ‘you ain’t got nothing more to tell Miss Lilly, now. I have some words, however. The sort of words a lady likes to say to a girl in private.’

  He nods. ‘I know,’ he says. He folds his arms. ‘I am dying to hear them.’

  She waits, but he will not leave. She comes and, again, sits beside me; again, I flinch away.

  ‘Dear girl,’ she says. ‘The fact of it is, there ain’t a pleasant way to tell it; and I ought to know, if anyone ought!—for I told it once already, to Sue. Your mother—’ She wets her lips, then looks at Richard.

  ‘Tell her,’ he says. ‘Or I will.’

  So then she speaks again, more quickly. ‘Your mother,’ she says, ‘was took before the courts, not just for thieving, but for killing a man; and—oh, my dear, they hanged her for it!’

  ‘Hanged?’

  ‘A murderess, Maud,’ says Richard, with relish. ‘You may see the place they hanged her, from the window of my room—’

  ‘Gentleman, I mean it!’

  He falls silent. I say again, ‘Hanged!’

  ‘Hanged game,’ says Mrs Sucksby—as if this, whatever it means, will make me bear it better. Then she studies my face. ‘Dear girl, don’t think of it,’ she says. ‘What does it matter now? You’re a lady, ain’t you? Who’ll trouble with where you come from? Why, look about you here.’

  She has risen, and lights a lamp: a score of gaudy surfaces—the silk dressing-gown, the cloudy brass of the bedstead, china ornaments upon the mantel-shelf—start out of the darkness. She goes again to the wash-hand stand, and again she says: ‘Here’s soap. What soap! Got from a shop up West. Come in a year ago—I saw it come and thought, “Now, shan’t Miss Lilly like that!” Kept it wrapped in paper, all this time. And here’s a towel, look—got a nap like a peach. And scent! Don’t care for lavender, we’ll get you one of rose. Are you looking, dear?’ She moves to the chest of drawers, pulls the deepest drawer open. ‘Why, what have we here!’ Richard leans to see. I also look, in a kind of horrified wonder. ‘Petticoats, and stockings, and stays! Bless me, here’s pins for a lady’s hair. Here’s rouge for a lady’s cheek. Here’s crystal drops—one pair of blue, one red. That comes of my not knowing, darling, the shade of the eyes they was to match! Well, Dainty shall have the blue pair . . .’

  She holds the gaudy beads up by their wires, and I watch the crystals turn. The colour seems to blur. I have begun, in hopelessness, to weep.

  As if weeping could save me.

  Mrs Sucksby sees me, and tuts. ‘Oh, now,’ she says, ‘ain’t that a shame! Crying? And all these handsome things? Gentleman, you see her? Crying, and for what?’

  ‘Crying,’ I say bitterly, unsteadily, ‘to find myself here, like this! Crying to think of the dream I lived in, when I supposed my mother only a fool! Crying in horror at the closeness and foulness of you!’

  She has stepped back. ‘Dear girl,’ she says, dropping her voice, gazing quickly at Richard, ‘do you despise me so, for letting them take you?’

  ‘I despise you,’ I say, ‘for bringing me back!’

  She stares, then almost smiles. She gestures about the room. ‘Don’t think,’ she says, with a look of amazement, ‘I mean for you to keep at Lant Street! Dear girl, dear girl, you was taken from here so they might make a lady of you. And a lady they’ve made you—a perfect jewel! Don’t think I shall have you wasting your shine in this low place. Haven’t I said? I want you by me, dear, when I am rich. Don’t ladies take companions? Only wait till I have got my hands on your fortune; then see if we don’t take the grandest house in London! See what carriages and footmen we’ll have then!—what pearls, what dresses!’

  She puts her hands on me again. She means to kiss me, to eat me. I rise and shake her off. ‘You don’t think,’ I say, ‘I shall stay with you, when your wretched scheme is done?’

  ‘What else?’ she says. ‘Who ought to have you, if not me? It was fortune took you; it is me that has got you back. I been working it over for seventeen years. I been plotting and thinking on this, every minute since I first laid you in the poor lady’s arms. I been looking at Sue—’

  She swallows. I cry still harder. ‘Sue,’ I say. ‘Oh, Sue . . .’

  ‘Now, why look like that? Didn’t I do everything for her, just as her mother wanted?—kept her safe, kept her tidy, made a commonplace girl of her? What have I done, but give her back the life you had from her?’

  ‘You have killed her!’ I say.

  ‘Killed her? When there’s all those doctors about her, all supposing her a lady?—And that don’t come cheap, I can tell you.’

  ‘It certainly doesn’t,’ says Richard. ‘You’re paying for that, don’t forget. I should have had her in the county asylum, were it down to me.’

  ‘You see, dear girl? Killed her! Why, she might have been killed any day of her life, but for me! Who was it nursed her, when she took sick? Who kept the boys off her? I should have given my hands, my legs, my lungs, for the saving of hers. But do you think, that when I did those things I was doing them for her? What use will a commonplace girl be to me, when I am rich? I was doing them for you! Don’t think of her. She was water, she was coal, she was dust, in comparison with what’s been made of you.’

  I stare at her. ‘My God!’
I say. ‘How could you? How could you?’

  Again, she looks amazed. ‘How could I not?’

  ‘But, to cheat her! To leave her, there—!’

  She reaches, and pats my sleeve. ‘You let them take her,’ she says. Then her look changes. She almost winks. ‘And oh, dear girl, don’t you think you was your mother’s daughter, then?’

  From the rooms below there come again shrieks, and blows, and laughter. Richard stands watching, with folded arms. The fly at the window still buzzes, still beats against the glass. Then the buzzing stops. As if it is a signal, I turn, and sink out of Mrs Sucksby’s grasp. I sink to my knees at the side of the bed, and hide my face in the seams of the quilt. I have been bold and determined. I have bitten down rage, insanity, desire, love, for the sake of freedom. Now, that freedom being taken from me utterly, is it to be wondered at if I fancy myself defeated?

  I give myself up to darkness; and wish I may never again be required to lift my head to the light.

  13.

  The night which follows I remember brokenly. I remember that I keep at the side of the bed with my eyes quite hidden, and will not rise and go down to the kitchen, as Mrs Sucksby wishes. I remember that Richard comes to me, and again puts his shoe to my skirts, to nudge me, then stands and laughs when I will not stir, then leaves me. I remember that someone brings me soup, which I will not eat. That the lamp is taken away and the room made dark. That I must rise at last, to visit the privy; and that the red-haired, fat-faced girl—Dainty—is made to show me to it, then stands at the door to keep me from running from it into the night. I remember that I weep again, and am given more of my drops in brandy. That I am undressed and put in a night-gown not my own. That I sleep, perhaps for an hour—that I am woken by the rustling of taffeta—that I look in horror to see Mrs Sucksby with her hair let down, shrugging off her gown, uncovering flesh and dirty linen, snuffing out her candle, then climbing into the bed beside me. I remember that she lies, thinking me sleeping—puts her hands to me, then draws them back—finally, like a miser with a piece of gold, catches up a lock of my hair and presses it to her mouth.

  I know that I am conscious of the heat of her, the unfamiliar bulk and sour scents of her. I know that she falls swiftly into an even sleep, and snores, while I start in and out of slumber. The fitful sleeping makes the hours pass slowly: it seems to me the night has many nights in it—has years of nights!—through which, as if through drifts of smoke, I am compelled to stumble. I wake now, believing I am in my dressing-room at Briar; now, in my room at Mrs Cream’s; now, in a madhouse bed, with a nurse vast and comfortable beside me. I wake, a hundred times. I wake to moan and long for slumber—for always, at the last, comes the remembrance, sharp and fearful, of where I truly lie, how I arrived there, who and what I am.

  At last I wake and do not sleep again. The dark has eased a little. There has been a street-lamp burning, that has lit the threads of the bleached net scarf hung at the window; now it is put out. The light turns filthy pink. The pink gives way, in time, to a sickly yellow. It creeps, and with it creeps sound—softly at first, then rising in a staggering crescendo: crowing cocks, whistles and bells, dogs, shrieking babies, violent calling, coughing, spitting, the tramp of feet, the endless hollow beating of hooves and the grinding of wheels. Up, up it comes, out of the throat of London. It is six or seven o’clock. Mrs Sucksby sleeps on at my side, but I am wide awake now, and wretched, and sick at my stomach. I rise, and—though it is May, and milder here than at Briar—I shiver. I still wear my gloves, but my clothes and shoes and leather bag Mrs Sucksby has locked in a box—‘In case you should wake bewildered, darling, and, thinking you was at home, get dressed, walk off and be lost.’—I remember her saying it, now, as I stood dosed and dazed before her. Where did she put the key?—and the key to the door of the room? I shiver again, more violently, and grow sicker than ever; but my thoughts are horribly clear. I must get out. I must get out! I must get out of London—go anywhere—back to Briar. I must get money. I must, I think—this is the clearest thought of all—I must get Sue! Mrs Sucksby breathes heavily, evenly. Where might she have put the keys? Her taffeta gown is hanging from the horse-hair screen: I go silently to it and pat the pockets of its skirt. Empty. I stand and study the shelves, the chest of drawers, the mantelpiece—no keys; but many places, I suppose, where they might be concealed.

  Then she stirs—does not wake, but moves her head; and I think I know—think I begin to remember . . . She has the keys beneath her pillow: I recall the crafty movement of her hand, the muffled ringing of the metal. I take a step. Her lips are parted, her white hair loose upon her cheek. I step again, and the floorboards creak. I stand at her side—wait a moment, uncertain; then put my fingers beneath the edge of pillow and slowly, slowly, reach.

  She opens her eyes. She takes my wrist, and smiles. She coughs.

  ‘My dear, I loves you for trying,’ she says, wiping her mouth. ‘But the girl ain’t been born that’s got the touch that will get past me, when I’ve a mind to something.’ Her grip is strong about my arm; though turns to a caress. I shudder. ‘Lord, ain’t you cold!’ she says then. ‘Here, sweetheart, let us cover you up.’ She pulls the knitted quilt from the bed and puts it about me. ‘Better, dear girl?’

  My hair is tangled, and has fallen before my face. I regard her through it.

  ‘I wish I were dead,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, now,’ she answers, rising. ‘What kind of talk is that?’

  ‘I wish you were dead, then.’

  She shakes her head, still smiles. ‘Wild words, dear girl!’ She sniffs. There has come, from the kitchen, a terrible odour. ‘Smell that? That’s Mr Ibbs, a-cooking up our breakfasts. Let’s see who wishes she was dead, now, that’s got a plate of bloaters before her!’

  She rubs her hands again. Her hands are red, but the sagging flesh upon her arms has the hue and polish of ivory. She has slept in her chemise and petticoat; now she hooks on a pair of stays, climbs into her taffeta gown, then comes to dip her comb in water and brush her hair. ‘Tra la, hee hee,’ she sings brokenly, as she does it. I keep my own tangled hair before my eyes, and watch her. Her naked feet are cracked, and bulge at the toe. Her legs are almost hairless. When she bends to her stockings, she groans. Her thighs are fat and permanently marked by the pinch of her garters.

  ‘There now,’ she says, when she is dressed. A baby has started crying. ‘That will set my others all off. Come down, dear girl—will you?—while I give ’em their pap.’

  ‘Come down?’ I say. I must go down, if I am to escape. But I look at myself. ‘Like this? Won’t you give me back my gown, my shoes?’

  Perhaps I say it too keenly, however; or else my look has something of cunning, or desperation, in it. She hesitates, then says, ‘That dusty old frock? Them boots? Why, that’s walking-gear. Look here, at this silken wrapper.’ She takes up the dressing-gown from the hook on the back of the door. ‘Here’s what ladies wear, for their mornings at home. Here’s silken slippers, too. Shan’t you look well, in these? Slip ’em on, dear girl, and come down for your breakfast. No need to be shy. John Vroom don’t rise before twelve, there’s only me, and Gentleman—he’s seen you in a state of dishabilly, I suppose!—and Mr Ibbs. And him, dear girl, you might consider now in the light of—well, let’s say an uncle. Eh?’

  I turn away. The room is hateful to me; but I will not go with her, undressed, down to that dark kitchen. She pleads and coaxes a little longer; then gives me up, and goes. The key turns in the lock.

  I step at once to the box that holds my clothes, to try the lid. It is shut up tight, and is stout.

  So then I go to the window, to push at the sashes. They will lift, by an inch or two, and the rusting nails that keep them shut I think might give, if I pushed harder. But then, the window frame is narrow, the drop is great; and I am still undressed. Worse than that, the street has people in it; and though at first I think to call to them—to break the glass, to signal and shriek—after a second I begin to look mo
re closely at them, and I see their faces, their dusty clothes, the packets they carry, the children and dogs that run and tumble at their sides. There is life, said Richard, twelve hours ago. It is hard, it is wretched. It would have been yours, but for Mrs Sucksby’s kindness in keeping you from it . . .

  At the door to the house with the shutters with the heart-shaped holes, a girl in a dirty bandage sits and feeds her baby. She lifts her head, catches my gaze; and shakes her fist at me.

  I start back from the glass, and cover my face up with my hands.

  When Mrs Sucksby comes again, however, I am ready.

  ‘Listen to me,’ I say, going to her. ‘You know that Richard took me away from my uncle’s house? You know my uncle is rich, and will seek me out?’

  ‘Your uncle?’ she says. She has brought me a tray, but stands in the door-place until I move back.

  ‘Mr Lilly,’ I say, as I do it. ‘You know who I mean. He still thinks me his niece, at least. Don’t you suppose he will send a man, and find me? Do you think he will thank you, for keeping me like this?’

  ‘I should say he will—if he cares so much about it. Ain’t we made you cosy, dear?’

  ‘You know you have not. You know you are keeping me here against my will. For God’s sake, give me my gown, won’t you?’

  ‘All right, Mrs Sucksby?’—It is Mr Ibbs. My voice has risen, and has brought him out of the kitchen to the foot of the stairs. Richard, too, has stirred in his bed: I hear him cross his floor, draw open his door, and listen.

  ‘All right!’ calls Mrs Sucksby lightly. ‘There, now,’ she says to me. ‘And here’s your breakfast, look, growing chilly.’

  She sets the tray upon the bed. The door is open; but I know that Mr Ibbs still stands at the foot of the stairs, that Richard waits and listens at the top. ‘There, now,’ she says again. The tray has a plate and a fork upon it, and a linen napkin. Upon the plate there are two or three amber-coloured fish in a juice of butter and water. They have fins, and faces. About the napkin there is a ring of polished silver, a little like the one that was kept for my especial use at Briar; but without the initial.