‘Must we go far?’ I ask her at last.
‘Not too far, dearie.’
Her voice is still rough, her face without expression. I say, fretfully, ‘Do you call me that? I wish you wouldn’t.’
She shrugs. The gesture is so bold and yet so careless, I think I do then grow uneasy. I put my face again to the window, to try to draw in air. The air will not come. Where is Holywell Street, I think, from here?
‘I don’t like this,’ I say, turning back to the woman. ‘May we not walk?’
‘Walk, in them slippers?’ She snorts. She looks out. ‘Here’s Camden Town,’ she says. ‘We’ve a fair way, yet. Sit back and be good.’
‘Will you talk to me, so?’ I say again. ‘I am not a child.’
And again, she shrugs. We drive on, more smoothly. We drive for, perhaps, half an hour, up a rising road. The day is darker now. I am tenser. We have left the lights and shops, and are in some street—some street of plain buildings. We turn a corner, and the buildings grow plainer still. Presently we draw up before a great, grey house. There is a lamp, at the foot of its steps. A girl in a ragged apron is reaching with a taper to light it. The glass of its shade is cracked. The street is perfectly silent.
‘What’s this?’ I say to the woman, when the coach has stopped and I understand it will not go on.
‘Here’s your house,’ she says.
‘The hotel?’
‘Hotel?’ She smiles. ‘You may call it that.’ She reaches for the latch on the door. I put my hand on her wrist.
‘Wait,’ I say—feeling real fear now, at last. ‘What do you mean? Where has Mr Hawtrey directed you to?’
‘Why, to here!’
‘And what is here?’
‘It’s a house, ain’t it? What is it to you, what sort? You shall get your supper all the same.—You might leave off gripping me, mind!’
‘Not until you tell me where I am.’
She tries to pull her hand away, but I will not let her. Finally, she sucks her teeth.
‘House for ladies,’ she says, ‘like you.’
‘Like me?’
‘Like you. Poor ladies, widow ladies—wicked ladies, I shouldn’t wonder.—There!’
I have thrust her wrist aside.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I say. ‘I am meant to come to an hotel. Mr Hawtrey paid you for that—’
‘Paid me to bring you here, and then to leave you. Most particular. If you don’t like it—’ She reaches into her pocket. ‘Why, here’s his very hand.’
She has brought out a piece of paper. It is the paper that Mr Hawtrey put about the coin. It has the name of the house upon it—
A home, he calls it, for destitute gentlewomen.
For a moment I gaze at the words in a sort of disbelief: as if my gazing at them will change them, change their meaning or shape. Then I look at the woman. ‘This is a mistake,’ I say. ‘He didn’t mean this. He has misunderstood, or you have. You must take me back—’
‘I’m to bring you, and leave you, most particular,’ she says stubbornly again. ‘ “Poor lady, weak in her head, needs taking to a charity place.” There’s charity, ain’t it?’
She nods again to the house. I do not answer. I am remembering Mr Hawtrey’s look—his words, the odd tone of his voice. I think, I must go back! I must go back to Holywell Street!—and yet, even as I think it, I know, with a dreadful chill contraction of my heart, what I will find there if I do: the shop, the men, the youth; and Mr Hawtrey gone, to his own home—his home, which might be anywhere in the city, anywhere at all . . . And after that, the street—the street in darkness.—How shall I manage it? How shall I live a night, in London, on my own?
I begin to shake. ‘What am I to do?’ I say.
‘What, but go over,’ says the woman, nodding again to the house. The girl with the taper is gone, and the lamp burns feebly. The windows are shuttered, the glass above them black, as if the rooms are filled with darkness. The door is high—divided in two, like the great front door at Briar. I see it, and am gripped by panic.
‘I cannot,’ I say. ‘I cannot!’
Again the woman sucks her teeth. ‘Better that than the road—ain’t it? It’s one or the other. I am paid to bring you here and leave you, that’s all. Go on out, now, and let me get home.’
‘I cannot,’ I say again. I grab at her sleeve. ‘You must take me, somewhere else.’
‘Must I?’ She laughs—does not shake me off, however. Instead, her look changes. ‘Well, I will,’ she says; ‘if you’ll pay me.’
‘Pay you? I have nothing to pay you with!’
She laughs again. ‘No money?’ she says. ‘And a dress like that?’
She looks at my skirt.
‘Oh, God,’ I say, plucking at it in desperation. ‘I would give you the gown, if I might!’
‘Would you?’
‘Take the shawl!’
‘The shawl’s my own!’ She snorts. She still looks at my skirt. Then she tilts her head. ‘What you got,’ she says more quietly, ‘underneath?’
I shudder. Then slowly, shrinkingly, I draw up my hem, show her my petticoats—two petticoats there are, one white and one crimson. She sees them, and nods.
‘They’ll do. Silk, are they? They’ll do.’
‘What, both?’ I say. ‘Will you take both?’
‘There’s the driver needs his fare, ain’t there?’ she answers. ‘You must pay me, once for myself; and once for him.’
I hesitate—but what can I do? I lift my skirt higher, find out the strings at my waist and pull them loose; then, modestly as I can, draw the petticoats down. She does not look away. She takes them from me and tucks them swiftly under her coat.
‘What the gentleman don’t know, eh?’ she says, with a chuckle; as if we are close conspirators now. She rubs her hands. ‘Where to, then? Eh? Where must I tell the driver?’
She has opened the window, to call. I sit with my arms about myself, feeling the prickle of the fabric of my gown against my bare thighs. I think I would colour, I think I would weep, if I had life enough.
‘Where to?’ she asks again. Beyond her head, the street is filled with shadow. A moon has risen—a crescent, slender, filthy-brown.
I bow my head. With this last, awful bafflement of my hopes, I have only one place to go. I tell her, she calls it, and the coach starts up. She settles herself more comfortably in her seat, rearranges her coat. She looks at me.
‘All right, dearie?’ she says. I do not answer, and she laughs. She turns away. ‘Don’t mind it now, does she?’ she says, as if to herself. ‘Don’t mind it, now.’
Lant Street is dark when we reach it. I know the house to stop at, from the house which faces it—the one with the ointment-coloured shutters, that I have gazed at so hard from Mrs Sucksby’s window. John answers my knock. His face is white. He sees me, and stares. ‘Fuck,’ he says. I go past him. The door leads into what I suppose is Mr Ibbs’s shop, and a passage from that takes me directly into the kitchen. They are all there, apart from Richard. He is out in search of me. Dainty is weeping: her cheek is bruised, worse than before, her lip split and bleeding. Mr Ibbs paces in his shirt-sleeves, making the floorboards jump and creak. Mrs Sucksby stands, her eyes on nothing, her face white as powder, like John’s. She stands still. But when she sees me come she folds and winces—puts her hand to her heart as if struck.
‘Oh, my girl,’ she says.
I don’t know what they do after that. Dainty screams, I think. I go by them, not looking. I go up the stairs to Mrs Sucksby’s room—my room, our room, I suppose I must call it now—and I sit upon the bed, my face to the window. I sit with my hands in my lap, my head bowed. My fingers are marked with dirt. My feet have begun, again, to bleed.
She gives me a minute, before she comes. She comes quietly. She closes the door and locks it at her back—turning the key gently in the lock, as if she thinks me sleeping and fears to wake me. Then she stands at my side. She does not try to touch me. I know, however, that
she is trembling.
‘Dear girl,’ she says. ‘We supposed you lost. We supposed you drowned, or murdered—’
Her voice catches, but does not break. She waits and, when I do nothing, ‘Stand up, sweetheart,’ she says.
I do. She takes the gown from me, and the stays. She does not ask what has become of my petticoats. She does not exclaim over my slippers and feet—though she shudders, as she draws off my stockings. She puts me, naked, into the bed; draws up the blanket to my jaw; then sits beside me. She strokes my hair—teases out the pins and tangles with her hands. My head is loose, and jerks as she tugs. ‘There, now,’ she says.
The house is silent. I think Mr Ibbs and John are talking, but talking in whispers. Her fingers move more slowly. ‘There, now,’ she says again; and I shiver, for her voice is Sue’s.
Her voice is Sue’s, but her face—The room is dark, however, she has not brought a candle. She sits with her back to the window. But I feel her gaze, and her breath. I close my eyes.
‘We thought you lost,’ she murmurs again. ‘But you came back. Dear girl, I knew you should!’
‘I have nowhere else,’ I answer, slowly and hopelessly. ‘I have nowhere and no-one. I thought I knew it; I never knew it till now. I have nothing. No home—’
‘Here is your home!’ she says.
‘No friends—’
‘Here are your friends!’
‘No love—’
She draws in her breath; then speaks, in a whisper.
‘Dear girl, don’t you know? Ain’t I said, a hundred times—?’
I begin to weep—in frustration, exhaustion. ‘Why will you say it?’ I cry, through my tears. ‘Why will you? Isn’t it enough, to have got me here? Why must you also love me? Why must you smother and torment me, with your grasping after my heart?’
I have raised myself up; but the cry takes the last of my strength and soon, I fall back. She does not speak. She watches. She waits, until I have grown still. Then she turns her head and tilts it. I think, from the curve of her cheek, that she is smiling.
‘How quiet the house is,’ she says, ‘now so many infants are gone! Ain’t it?’ She turns back to me. I hear her swallow. ‘Did I tell you, dear girl,’ she says softly, ‘that I once bore an infant of my own, that died? Round about the time that that lady, Sue’s mother, came?’ She nods. ‘So I said. So you’ll hear it told, round here, if you ask. Babies do die. Who’d think that queer . . . ?’
There is something to her voice. I begin to shake. She feels it, and reaches again to stroke my tangled head. ‘There, now. Hush, now. You are quite safe, now . . .’ Then the stroking stops. She has caught up a lock of hair. She smiles again. ‘Funny thing,’ she says, in a different tone, ‘about your hair. Your eye I did suppose brown, and your colour white, and your waist and hands I knew would be slender. Only your hair come out rather fairer than I had it pictured . . .’
The words drop away. In reaching, she has moved her head: the light from the street-lamp, and from the sliver of tarnished moon, falls full upon her, and all at once I see her face—the brown of her own eye, and her own pale cheek—and her lip, that is plump and must, I understand suddenly, must once have been plumper . . . She wets her mouth. ‘Dear girl,’ she says. ‘My own, my own dear girl—’
She hesitates another moment; then speaks, at last.
Part Three
14.
I shrieked. I shrieked and shrieked. I struggled like a fiend. But the more I twisted, the tighter I was held. I saw Gentleman fall back in his seat and the coach start up and begin to turn. I saw Maud put her face to the window of cloudy glass. At sight of her eyes, I shrieked again.
‘There she is!’ I cried, lifting my hand and pointing. ‘There she is! Don’t let her go! Don’t you fucking let her go—!’
But the coach drove on, the wheels throwing up dust and gravel as the horse got up its speed; and the faster it went, the harder I think I fought. Now the other doctor came forward, to help Dr Christie. The woman in the apron came, too. They were trying to pull me closer to the house. I wouldn’t let them. The coach was speeding, growing smaller. ‘They’re getting away!’ I cried. Then the woman got behind me and seized my waist. She had a grip on her like a man’s. She lifted me up the two or three steps that led to the house’s front door, as if I might be so many feathers in a bag.
‘Now then,’ she said as she hauled me. ‘What’s this? Kick your legs, will you, and trouble the doctors?’
Her mouth was close to my ear, her face behind me. I hardly knew what I was doing. All I knew was, she had me there, and Gentleman and Maud were escaping. I felt her speak, bent my head forward, then took it sharply back.
‘Oh!’ she cried. Her grip grew slack. ‘Oh! Oh!’
‘She’s becoming demented,’ said Dr Christie. I thought he was talking about her. Then I saw he meant me. He took a whistle from his pocket and gave it a blow.
‘For God’s sake,’ I cried, ‘won’t you hear me? They have tricked me, they have tricked me—!’
The woman grabbed me again—about the throat, this time; and as I turned in her arms she hit me hard, with the points of her fingers, in my stomach. I think she did it in such a way, the doctors did not see. I gave a jerk, and swallowed my breath. Then she did it again. ‘Here’s fits!’ she said.
‘Watch your hands!’ called Dr Graves. ‘She may snap.’
Meanwhile, they had got me into the hall of the house and the sound of the whistle had brought another two men. They were pulling on brown paper cuffs over their coat-sleeves. They did not look like doctors. They came and caught hold of my ankles.
‘Keep her steady,’ said Dr Graves. ‘She’s in a convulsion. She may put out her joints.’
I could not tell them that I was not in a fit, but only winded; that the woman had hurt me; that I was anyway not a lunatic, but sane as them. I could not say anything, for trying to find my breath. I could only croak. The men drew my legs straight, and my skirts rose to my knees. I began to be afraid of the skirts rising higher. That made me twist about, I suppose.
‘Hold her tight,’ said Dr Christie. He had brought out a thing like a great flat spoon, made of horn. He came to my side and held my head, and put the spoon to my mouth, between my teeth. It was smooth, but he pushed it hard and it hurt me. I thought I should be choked: I bit it, to keep it from going down my throat. It tasted bad. I still think of all the other people’s mouths it must have gone in, before mine.
He saw my jaws close. ‘Now she takes it!’ he said. ‘That’s right. Hold her steady.’ He looked at Dr Graves. ‘To the soft room? I think so. Nurse Spiller?’
That was the woman that held me by the throat. I saw her nod to him, and then to the men in the cuffs, and they turned so that they might walk with me, further into the house. I felt them do it and began to struggle again. I was not thinking, now, of Gentleman and Maud. I was thinking of myself. I was growing horribly afraid. My stomach ached from the nurse’s fingers. My mouth was cut by the spoon. I had an idea that, once they got me into a room, they would kill me.
‘A thrasher, ain’t she?’ said one of the men, as he worked for a better grip on my ankle.
‘A very bad case,’ said Dr Christie. He looked into my face. ‘The convulsion is passing, at least.’ He raised his voice. ‘Don’t be afraid, Mrs Rivers! We know all about you. We are your friends. We have brought you here to make you well.’
I tried to speak. ‘Help! Help!’ I tried to say. But the spoon made me gobble like a bird. It also made me dribble; and a bit of dribble flew out of my mouth and struck Dr Christie’s cheek. Perhaps he thought I had spat it. Anyway, he moved quickly back, and his face grew grim. He took out his handkerchief.
‘Very good,’ he said to the men and the nurse, as he wiped his cheek. ‘That will do. Now you may take her.’
They carried me along a passage, through a set of doors and a room; then to a landing, another passage, another room—I tried to study the way, but they had me on my back: I coul
d make out only so many drab-coloured ceilings and walls. After about a minute I knew they had got me deep into the house, and that I was lost. I could not cry out. The nurse kept her arm about my throat, and I still had the spoon of horn in my mouth. When we reached a staircase they took me down it, saying, ‘To you, Mr Bates,’ and, ‘Watch this turn, it’s a tight one!’—as if I might be, not a sack of feathers now, but a trunk or a piano. Not once did they look me in the face. Finally, one of the men began to whistle a tune, and to beat out the time of it, with his finger-ends, on my leg.
Then we reached another room, with a ceiling of a paler shade of drab; and here they stopped.
‘Careful, now,’ they said.
The men put down my legs. The woman took her arm from my neck and gave me a push. It was only a little push and yet, they had so pulled and shaken me about, I found I staggered and fell. I fell upon my hands. I opened my mouth and the spoon fell out. One of the men reached, quick, to take it. He shook the spit from it.
‘Please,’ I said.
‘You may say please, now,’ said the woman. Then she spoke to the men. ‘Gave me a crack with her head, upon the steps. Look here. Am I bruised?’
‘I believe you shall be.’
‘Little devil!’
She put her foot to me. ‘Now, does Dr Christie have you here to give us all bruises? Eh, my lady? Mrs What-is-your-name? Mrs Waters, or Rivers? Does he?’
‘Please,’ I said again. ‘I ain’t Mrs Rivers.’
‘She ain’t Mrs Rivers? Hear that, Mr Bates? And I ain’t Nurse Spiller, I dare say. And Mr Hedges ain’t himself. Very likely.’
She came closer to me, and she picked me up about my waist; and she dropped me. You could not say she threw me, but she lifted me high and let me fall; and me being just then so dazed and so weak, I fell badly.
‘That’s for cracking my face,’ she said. ‘Be glad we ain’t on stairs, or a roof. Crack me again—who knows?—we might be.’ She pulled her canvas apron straight, and leaned and caught hold of my collar. ‘Right, let’s have this gown off. You may look like thunder, too. That’s nothing to me. Why, what small little hooks! And my hand’s hard, is it? Used to better, are you? I should say you are, from what I’ve heard.’ She laughed. ‘Well, we don’t keep ladies’ maids, here. We has Mr Hedges and Mr Bates.’ They still stood, watching, at the door. ‘Shall I call them over?’