Fingersmith

  I supposed she meant to strip me bare; which I would rather die first, than endure. I got on to my knees and twisted from her.

  ‘You may call who you like, you great bitch,’ I said, in a pant. ‘You ain’t having my dress.’

  Her face grew dark. ‘Bitch, am I?’ she answered. ‘Well!’

  And she drew back her hand and curled her fingers into a fist, and she hit me.

  I had grown up in the Borough, surrounded by every kind of desperate dodger and thief; but I had had Mrs Sucksby for a mother, and had never been hit. The blow knocked me almost out of my head. I put my hands to my face, and lay down in a crouch; but she got the gown off me anyway—I suppose she was used to getting gowns off lunatics, and had a trick for it; and next she got hold of my corset and took that. Then she took my garters, and then my shoes and stockings, and finally my hair-pins.

  Then she stood, darker-faced than ever, and sweating.

  ‘There!’ she said, looking me over in my petticoat and shimmy. ‘There’s all your ribbons and laces gone. If you chokes yourself now, it’ll be no business of ours. You hear me? Mrs Ain’t-Mrs-Rivers? You sit in the pads for a night, and stew. See how you care for that. Convulsions? I think I know a temper from a fit. Kick all you like in here. Put out your joints, chew your tongue off. Keep you quiet. We prefers them quiet, makes our job nicer.’

  She said all that, and she made a bundle of my clothes and swung them over her shoulder; and then she left me. The men went with her. They had seen her hit me, and done nothing. They had watched her take my stockings and stays. I heard them pull off their paper cuffs. One began to whistle again. Nurse Spiller closed the door and locked it, and the whistling grew very much fainter.

  When it had grown so faint I could no longer hear it, I got to my feet. Then I fell down again. My legs had been pulled so hard they shook like things of rubber, and my head was ringing, from the punch. My hands were trembling. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, properly funked. I went, on my knees, to the door, to look at the key-hole. There was no handle. The door itself was covered in a dirty canvas, padded with straw; the walls were covered in padded canvas, too. The floor had oil-cloth on it. There was a single blanket, very much torn and stained. There was a little tin pot I was meant to piddle in. There was a window, high up, with bars on. Beyond the bars were curling leaves of ivy. The light came in green and dark, like the water in a pond.

  I stood and looked at it all, in a sort of daze—hardly believing, I think, that those were my cold feet on the oil-cloth floor; that it was my sore face, my arms, that the green light struck. Then I turned back to the door and put my fingers to it—to the key-hole, to the canvas, to the edge, anywhere—to try and pull it. But it was tight as a clam—and, what was worse, as I stood plucking at it I began to make out little dints and tears in the dirty canvas— little crescents, where the weave was worn—that I understood all at once must be the marks left by the finger-nails of all the other lunatics—all the real lunatics, I mean—who had been put in that room before me. The thought that I was standing, doing just what they had done, was horrible. I stepped away from the door, the daze slipped from me, and I grew wild with fright. I flung myself back, and began to beat at the padded canvas with my hands. Each blow made a cloud of dust.

  ‘Help! Help!’ I cried. My voice sounded strange. ‘Oh, help! They have put me in here, thinking I’m mad! Call Richard Rivers!’ I coughed. ‘Help! Doctor! Help! Can you hear me?’ I coughed again. ‘Help! Can you hear me—?’

  And so on. I stood and called, and coughed, and beat upon the door—only stopping, now and then, to put my ear to it, to try to tell if there might be anyone near—for I can’t say how long; and no-one came. I think the padding was too thick; or else, the people that heard me were used to lunatics calling, and had learned not to mind. So then I tried the walls. They were also thick. And when I had given up banging and shouting, I put the blanket and the little tin pot together in a heap beneath the window, and climbed on them, trying to reach the glass; but the tin pot buckled, and the blanket slithered and I fell.

  At last I sat on the oil-cloth floor and cried. I cried, and my own tears stung me. I put my finger-tips to my cheek and felt about my swelling face. I felt my hair. The woman had pulled it to take the pins out, and it lay all about my shoulders; and when I took up a length of it, meaning to comb it, some of it came away in my hands. That made me cry worse than ever. I don’t say I was much of a beauty; but I thought of a girl I knew, who had lost her hair to a wheel in a workshop—that hair had never grown back. Suppose I should be bald? I went over my head, taking out the hair that was loose, wondering if I ought to keep it, perhaps for making a wig with later; but there was not much of it, after all. In the end I rolled it up and put it in a corner.

  And as I did that, I saw something, pale upon the floor. It looked like a crumpled white hand, and it gave me a start, at first; then I saw what it was. It had fallen out of my bosom when the nurse had got the gown off me, and been kicked out of sight. There was the mark of a shoe upon it, and one of its buttons was crushed.

  It was that glove of Maud’s, that I had taken that morning from her things and meant to hold on to, as a keepsake of her.

  I picked it up and turned it over and over in my hands. If I had thought myself funked, a minute before—well, that funking was nothing to what I felt now, looking at that glove, thinking of Maud, and of the awful trick that she and Gentleman had played me. I hid my face in my arms, for very shame. I walked, from one wall to another, and from that to another: if I once tried to be still, it was as if I was resting on needles and pins—I started up, crying out and sweating. I thought of all my time at Briar, when I had supposed myself such a sharper, and been such a simpleton. I thought of the days I had spent, with those two villains—the looks the one must have given the other, the smiles. Leave her alone, why don’t you? I had said to him, feeling sorry for her. And then, to her: Don’t mind him, miss. He loves you, miss. Marry him. He loves you.

  He will do it like this . . .

  Oh! Oh! I feel the sting of it, even now. Then, I might really have been demented. I walked, and my bare feet went slap, slap, slap on the oil-cloth; and I put the glove to my mouth and I bit it. Him I suppose I expected no better of. It was her I thought of most—that bitch, that snake, that—Oh! To think I had ever looked at her and taken her for a flat. To think I had laughed at her. To think I had loved her! To think I had thought she loved me! To think I had kissed her, in Gentleman’s name. To think I had touched her! To think, to think—!

  To think I lay on the night of her wedding with a pillow over my head, so I should not hear the sound of her tears. To think that, if I had listened, I might have heard—might I? might I?—the sound of her sighs.

  I could not bear it. I forgot, for the moment, the little detail of how, in swindling me, she had only turned my own trick back on myself. I walked, and moaned, and swore, and cursed her; I gripped and bit and twisted that glove, until the light beyond the window faded, and the room grew dark. No-one came to look at me. No-one brought me food, or a gown, or stockings. And though I was warm at first, from all the walking, when at last I grew so tired I found I must lie upon the blanket or drop, I became cold; and then I could not get warm again.

  I did not sleep. From the rest of the house there came, every so often, queer noises—shouts, and running feet and, once, the blowing of the doctor’s whistle. At some hour of the night it began to rain, and the water went drip against the window. In the garden, a dog barked: I heard that and began to think, not of Maud, but of Charley Wag, of Mr Ibbs and Mrs Sucksby—of Mrs Sucksby in her bed, the empty place beside her, waiting for me. How long would she wait?

  How soon would Gentleman go to her? What would he say? He might say I was dead. But then, if he said that, she would ask for my body, to bury.—I thought of my funeral, and who would cry most. He might say I was drowned or lost in marshes. She would ask for the papers to prove it. Could those papers be faked? He
might say I had taken my share of the money, and cut.

  He would say that, I knew it. But Mrs Sucksby wouldn’t believe him. She would see through him like he was glass. She would hunt me out. She had not kept me seventeen years to lose me now, like this! She would look in every house in England, until she found me!

  That’s what I thought, as I grew calmer. I thought I must only speak with the doctors and they would see their mistake and let me go; but that anyway, Mrs Sucksby would come, and I should get out like that.

  And when I was free, I would go to wherever Maud Lilly was, and—wasn’t I my mother’s own daughter, after all?—I would kill her.

  You can see what little idea I had of the awfulness of the fix I was really in.

  Next morning, the woman who had thrown me about came back for me. She came, not with the two men, Mr Bates and Mr Hedges, but with another woman—nurses, they called them there; but they were no more nurses than I was, they only got that work through being stout and having great big hands like mangles. They came into the room and stood and looked me over. Nurse Spiller said,

  ‘Here she is.’

  The other, who was dark, said,

  ‘Young, to be mad.’

  ‘Listen here,’ I said, very carefully. I had worked this out. I had heard them coming, and had got to my feet and put my petticoat straight, and tidied my hair. ‘Listen here. You think I am mad. I am not. I am not the lady you and the doctors suppose me to be, at all. That lady, and her husband—Richard Rivers—are a pair of swindlers; and they have swindled you, and me, and just about everybody; and it is very important that the doctors know it, so I may be let out and those swindlers caught. I—’

  ‘Right in the face,’ said Nurse Spiller, speaking across my words. ‘Right here, with her head.’

  She put her hand to her cheek, close to her nose, where there was the smallest, faintest mark of crimson. My own face, of course, was swollen like a pudding; and I dare say my eye was almost black. But I said, still carefully,

  ‘I am sorry I hurt your face. I was only so thrown, to be brought in here, as a lunatic; when all the time it was the other lady, Miss Lilly—Mrs Rivers—that was meant to come.’

  Again they stood and looked me over.

  ‘You must call us nurse when you speak to us,’ the dark one said at last. ‘But between you and me, dear, we would rather you didn’t speak to us at all. We hear that much nonsense—well. Come along. You must be bathed, so that Doctor Christie may look at you. You must be put in a gown. Why, what a little girl! You must be no more than sixteen.’

  She had come close, and made to catch at my arm. I drew away from her.

  ‘Will you listen to me?’ I said.

  ‘Listen to you? La, if I listened to all the rubbish I heard in this house, I should go mad myself. Come on, now.’

  Her voice, that had started off mild, grew sharper. She took hold of my arm. I flinched from the feel of her fingers. ‘Watch her,’ said Nurse Spiller, seeing me twitch.

  I said, ‘If you’ll only not touch me, I’ll go with you, wherever you want.’

  ‘Ho!’ said the dark nurse then. ‘There’s manners. Come with us, will you? Very grateful, I’m sure.’

  She pulled me and, when I tugged against her grip, Nurse Spiller came to help her. They got their hands beneath my arms and more or less lifted me, more or less dragged me, out of the room. When I kicked and complained—which I did, from the shock of it—Nurse Spiller got those great hard fingers of hers into my arm-pit, and jabbed. You can’t see bruises in an arm-pit. I think she knew it. ‘She’s off!’ she said, when I cried out.

  ‘That’s my head ringing for the rest of the day,’ said the other. And she gripped me tighter and shook me.

  Then I grew quiet. I was afraid I should be punched again. But I was also looking hard at the way we were taking—at the windows and the doors. Some doors had locks. All the windows had bars on. They looked over a yard. This was the back part of the house—what should have been, in a house like Briar, the servants’ part. Here it was given over to nurses. We met two or three of them as we walked. They wore aprons and caps, and carried baskets, or bottles, or sheets.

  ‘Good morning,’ they all sang out.

  ‘Good morning,’ my nurses answered.

  ‘New ’un?’ one asked at last, with a nod at me. ‘Come up from the pads? Is she bad?’

  ‘Cracked Nancy on the cheek.’

  She whistled. ‘They should bring ’em in bound. Young, though, ain’t she?’

  ‘Sixteen, if she’s a day.’

  ‘I’m seventeen,’ I said.

  The new nurse looked at me, in a considering sort of way.

  ‘Sharp-faced,’ she said, after a minute.

  ‘Ain’t she, though?’

  ‘What’s her trouble? Delusions?’

  ‘And the rest,’ said the dark nurse. She dropped her voice. ‘She’s the one—you know?’

  The new nurse looked more interested. ‘This one?’ she said. ‘Looks too slight for that.’

  ‘Well, they come in all sizes . . .’

  I didn’t know what they meant. But being held up for strangers to study, and talk and smile over, made me ashamed, and I kept silent. The woman went off on her way and my two nurses gripped me tight again and took me, down another passage, to a little room. It might have once been a pantry—it was very like Mrs Stiles’s pantry, at Briar—for there were cupboards, with locks upon them, and an arm-chair and a sink. Nurse Spiller sat down in the chair, giving a great sigh as she did so. The other nurse put water in the sink. She showed me a slip of yellow soap and a dirty flannel.

  ‘Here you are,’ she said. And then, when I did nothing: ‘Come on. You’ve hands, haven’t you? Let’s see you wash.’

  The water was cold. I wet my face and arms, then made to wash my feet.

  ‘That will do,’ she said, when she saw me do that. ‘Do you think Dr Christie cares how dusty your toes are? Here, now. Let’s see your linen.’ She caught hold of the hem of my shimmy, then turned her head to Nurse Spiller, who nodded. ‘Good, ain’t it? Too good for this house. That’ll boil up to nothing, that will.’ She gave it a tug. ‘You take that off, dear. We shall keep it, quite safe, against the day you leave us.—What, are you shy?’

  ‘Shy?’ said Nurse Spiller, yawning. ‘Don’t waste our time. And you, a married lady.’

  ‘I ain’t married,’ I said. ‘And I’ll thank you both to keep your hands off my linen. I want my own gown back, and my stockings and shoes. I need only speak with Dr Christie, and then you’ll be sorry.’

  They looked at me and laughed.

  ‘Hoity-toity!’ cried the dark nurse. She wiped her eyes. ‘Dear me. Come, now. It’s no use growing sulky. We must have your linen—it’s nothing to me and Nurse Spiller, it’s the rules of the house. Here’s a new set, look, and a gown and—look here—slippers.’

  She had gone to one of the cupboards and brought out a set of greyish underthings, and a wool gown, and boots. She came back to me, holding them, and Nurse Spiller joined her; and it was no good then how hard I argued and cursed, they got hold of me and stripped me bare. When they took off my petticoat, that glove of Maud’s fell out. I had had it under the waistband. I bent and caught it up. ‘What’s that?’ they said at once. Then they saw it was only a glove. They looked at the stitching inside the wrist.

  ‘Here’s your own name, Maud,’ they said. ‘That’s pretty work, that is.’

  ‘You shan’t have it!’ I cried, snatching it back. They had taken my clothes and my shoes; but I had walked and torn and bitten that glove all night, it was all I had to keep my nerve up. I had the idea that, if they were to take it, I should be like a Samson shorn.

  Perhaps they noticed a look in my eye.

  ‘One glove’s no use, after all,’ said the dark nurse to Nurse Spiller, quietly. ‘And remember Miss Taylor, who had the buttons on a thread that she called her babies? Why, she’d take the hand off, that tried to get a hold of one of those!’
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  So they let me keep it; and then I stood limp and let them dress me, through fear they would change their minds. The clothes were all madhouse things. The corset had hooks instead of laces, and was too big for me.—‘Never mind,’ they said, laughing. They had chests like boats. ‘Plenty of room for growing in.’ The gown was meant to be a tartan, but the colours had run. The stockings were short, like a boy’s. The shoes were of india-rubber.

  ‘Here you are, Cinderella,’ said the dark nurse, putting them on me. And then, looking me over: ‘Well! You shall bounce like a ball all right, in those!’

  They laughed again then, for quite a minute. Then they did this. They sat me in the chair and combed my hair and made it into plaits; and they took out a needle and cotton, and sewed the plaits to my head.

  ‘It’s this, or cut it,’ the dark nurse said when I struggled; ‘and no skin off my nose either way.’

  ‘Let me see to it,’ said Nurse Spiller. She finished it off—two or three times, as if by accident, putting the point of the needle to my scalp. That is another place that don’t show cuts and bruises.

  And so, between the two of them, they got me ready; and then they took me to the room that was to be mine.

  ‘Mind, now, you remember your manners,’ they said as we walked. ‘Start going off your head again, we shall have you back in the pads, or plunge you.’

  ‘This ain’t fair!’ I said. ‘This ain’t fair, at all!’

  They shook me, and did not answer. So then I fell silent and, again, tried hard to study the way they took me. I was also growing afraid. I had had an idea in my head—that I think I had got from a picture, or a play—of how a madhouse should be; and so far, this house was not like it. I thought, ‘They have got me in the place where the doctors and nurses live. Now they’ll take me to the mad bit.’—I think I supposed it would be something like a dungeon or a gaol. But we walked only down more drab-coloured corridors, past door after drab-coloured door, and I began to look about me and see little things—such as, the lamps being ordinary brass ones, but with strong wire guards about the flames; and the doors having fancy latches, but ugly locks; and the walls having, here and there, handles, that looked as though they might, if you turned them, ring bells. And finally it broke upon me that this was the madhouse after all; that it had once been an ordinary gentleman’s house; that the walls had used to have pictures and looking-glasses on them, and the floors had used to have rugs; but that now, it had all been made over to mad-women—that it was, in its way, like a smart and handsome person gone mad itself.