Fingersmith

  And he had gone, before I said it.

  My head grew clearer as the day wore on, though. I lay on my bed and tried to think. They made us keep to our rooms in the morning, and we were meant to sit and be silent—or to read, if we liked—while Nurse Bacon watched. But I think what books there were in the house, the ladies had already read; for they only, like me, lay upon their beds, doing nothing, and it was Nurse Bacon who sat, with her feet put up on a stool, looking over the pages of a little magazine—now and then licking one of her fat red fingers, to turn a page; and now and then chuckling.

  And then, at twelve, she put the magazine away and gave a great yawn, and took us downstairs for our dinners. Another nurse came to help her. ‘Come on, come on,’ they said. ‘No dawdling.’

  We walked in a line. The pale old lady—Miss Wilson—pressed close at my back.

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ she said, ‘of—Don’t turn your head! Hush! Hush!’ I felt her breath on my neck. ‘Don’t be frightened,’ she said, ‘of your soup.’

  Then I walked faster, to be nearer Nurse Bacon.

  She led us to the dining-room. They were ringing a bell there, and as we went our line was joined by other nurses, with ladies from the rooms they watched in. I should say there were sixty or so ladies kept in that house; and they seemed to me now, after my spell in the pads, a vast and horrible crowd. They were dressed as I was—I mean badly, in all sorts of fashions; and this—and the fact that some had had their hair cut to their heads; and some had lost teeth, or had their teeth taken from them; and some had cuts and bruises, and others wore canvas bracelets or muffs—this made them look queerer than perhaps they really were. I’m not saying they weren’t all mad, in their own fashions; and to me, just then, they looked mad as horse-flies. But there are as many different ways of being mad, after all, as there are of being crooked. Some were perfect maniacs. Two or three, like Betty, were only simpletons. One liked to shout bad words. Another threw fits. The rest were only miserable: they walked, with their eyes on the floor, and sat and turned their hands in their laps, and mumbled, and sighed.

  I sat among them, and ate the dinner I was served. It was soup, as Miss Wilson had said, and I saw her looking at me, nodding her head, as I supped it; but I would not catch her eye. I would not catch anyone’s eye. I had been drugged and stupid, before; now I was back in a sort of fright—a sort of fever of fright—sweating, and twitching, and wild. I looked at the doors and windows—I think, if I had seen a window of plain glass, I should have run through it. But the windows all had bars on. I don’t know what we should have done in a fire. The doors had ordinary locks, and with the right sort of tools I suppose I might have picked them. But I hadn’t any kind of tool—not so much as a hair-pin—and nothing to make one with. The spoons we ate our soup with were made of tin, and so soft, they might have been rubber. You could not have picked your nose with them.

  Dinner lasted half an hour. We were watched by the nurses and a few stout men—Mr Bates and Mr Hedges, and one or two others. They stood at the side of the room, and now and then walked between the tables. When one drew close I twitched and lifted up my hand and said,

  ‘Please sir, where are the doctors? Sir? May I see Dr Christie, sir?’

  ‘Dr Christie is busy,’ he said. ‘Be quiet.’ He walked on.

  A lady said, ‘You shan’t see the doctors now. They come only in the mornings. Don’t you know?’

  ‘She is new here,’ said another.

  ‘Where are you from?’ asked the first.

  ‘From London,’ I said, still looking after the man. ‘Though here they think I come from somewhere else.’

  ‘From London!’ she cried. Some of the other ladies said it, too: ‘London!’ ‘Ah! London! How I miss it!’

  ‘And the season just beginning. That is very hard for you. And so young! Are you out?’

  I said, ‘Out?’

  ‘Who are your people?’

  ‘What?’ The stout man had turned and was walking back towards us. I lifted my hand again, and waved it. ‘Will you tell me,’ I said to him, ‘where I can find Dr Christie? Sir? Please, sir?’

  ‘Be quiet!’ he said again, moving past.

  The lady beside me put her hand upon my arm. ‘You must be familiar,’ she said, ‘with the squares of Kensington.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘No.’

  ‘I should say the trees are all in leaf.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. I never saw them.’

  ‘Who are your people?’

  The stout man walked as far as the window, then turned and folded his arms. I had raised my hand again, but now let it droop.

  ‘My people are thieves,’ I said miserably.

  ‘Oh!’ The ladies made faces. ‘Queer girl . . .’

  The woman beside me, however, beckoned me close.

  ‘Your property gone?’ she said, in a whisper. ‘Mine, too. But see here.’ She showed me a ring that she wore, on a string, around her neck. It was gilt, and wanted stones. ‘Here’s my capital,’ she said. ‘Here’s my security.’ She tucked the ring beneath her collar, and touched her nose, and nodded. ‘My sisters have taken the rest. They shan’t have this, however! Oh, no!’

  I spoke to no-one, after that. When dinner was ended the nurses took us to a garden and made us walk about it for an hour. The garden had walls on every side, and a gate: the gate was locked, but you could see through its bars to the rest of the park that the house was set in. There were many trees there, some of them close to the great park wall. I made a note of that. I had never climbed a tree in my life, but how hard could it be? If I might get to a high enough branch I would risk breaking both my legs in a jump, if the jump meant freedom.

  If Mrs Sucksby didn’t come first.

  But then, I still supposed, too, that I should make my case with Dr Christie. I meant to show him how sane I was. At the end of our hour in the garden a bell was rung, and we were taken back to the house and made to sit, until tea-time, in a great grey room that smelt of leaking gas, that they called the drawing-room; and then we were locked back in our bedrooms. I went—still twitching, still sweating—and said nothing. I did all that the other ladies—sad Mrs Price, and pale Miss Wilson, and Betty—did: I washed my face and hands, at the wash-stand, when they were finished with the water; and cleaned my teeth, when they had all used the brush; and put my hateful tartan gown in a tidy heap, and pulled on a night-gown; and said Amen, when Nurse Bacon mumbled out a prayer. But then, when Nurse Spiller came to the door with a can of tea and gave me a basin of it, I took it, but did not drink it. I tipped it on the floor, when I thought no-one was looking. It steamed for a second, then seeped between the boards. I put my foot on the place I had tipped it. I looked up, and saw Betty watching.

  ‘Made a mess,’ she said loudly. She had a voice like a man’s. ‘Bad girl.’

  ‘Bad girl?’ said Nurse Bacon, turning round. ‘I know who’s one of them, all right. Into your bed. Quick! quick! all of you. God bless me, what a life!’

  She could grumble like an engine. All the nurses there could. We had to be quiet, however. We had to lie still. If we didn’t, they came and pinched or smacked us.—‘You, Maud,’ said Nurse Bacon, that first night, when I turned and trembled. ‘Stop moving!’

  She sat up, reading, and the light of her lamp shone in my eyes. Even when, after hours and hours, she put down her magazine and took off her apron and gown and got into her bed, she left a light still burning, so she could see us if we stirred in the night; and then she went straight to sleep and started snoring. Her snores were like the sound of a file on iron; and made me more homesick than ever.

  She took her chain of keys to bed with her, and slept with it about her neck.

  I lay with Maud’s white glove in my fist, and now and then put the tip of one of its fingers to my mouth, imagining Maud’s soft hand inside it; and I bit and bit.

  But I slept, at last; and when next morning the doctors came back on their round with Nurse Spil
ler, I was ready.

  ‘Mrs Rivers, how are you?’ said Dr Christie, after he had given Betty her sugar and spent a minute looking over Mrs Price and Miss Wilson.

  ‘I am perfectly clear in my head,’ I said.

  He looked at his watch. ‘Splendid!’

  ‘Dr Christie, I beg you—!’

  I dipped my head and caught his eye, and I told him my story, all over again—how I was not Maud Rivers, but had only been put in his house through a terrible trick; how Richard Rivers had had me at Briar as Maud Lilly’s servant, so I might help him marry her and, afterwards, make her out to be mad. How they had swindled me and taken her fortune, all for themselves.

  ‘They have played me false,’ I said. ‘They have played you false! They are laughing at you! You don’t believe me? Bring anyone from Briar! Bring the vicar of the church they were married in! Bring the great church book—you’ll see their names put there, and next to them, my own!’

  He rubbed his eye. ‘Your name,’ he said. ‘Susan—what are you calling it, now?—Trinder?’

  ‘Susan—No!’ I said. ‘Not in that book. It is Susan Smith, in there.’

  ‘Susan Smith, again!’

  ‘Only in there. They made me put it. He showed me how! Don’t you see?’

  But now I was almost weeping. Dr Christie began to look grim. ‘I have let you say too much,’ he said. ‘You are growing excited. We cannot have that. We must have calm, at all times. These fancies of yours—’

  ‘Fancies? God help me, it’s the plainest truth!’

  ‘Fancies, Mrs Rivers. If you might only hear yourself! Terrible plots? Laughing villains? Stolen fortunes and girls made out to be mad? The stuff of lurid fiction! We have a name for your disease. We call it a hyper-aesthetic one. You have been encouraged to over-indulge yourself in literature; and have inflamed your organs of fancy.’

  ‘Inflamed?’ I said. ‘Over-indulge? Literature?’

  ‘You have read too much.’

  I looked at him and could not speak.

  ‘God help me,’ I said at last, as he turned away, ‘if I can read two words in a row! As for writing—give me a pencil, and I’ll put you down my name; and that’s as much as I should ever be able to put, though you sit me down and make me try it for a year!’

  He had begun to walk to the door of the room, with Dr Graves close behind him. My voice was broken, for Nurse Spiller had caught hold of me to keep me from following after. ‘How dare you speak,’ she said, ‘to the doctors’ backs! Don’t pull from me! I should say you’re wild enough to be put back in the pads. Dr Christie?’

  But Dr Christie had heard my words and had turned at the door and was looking at me in a new sort of way, his hand at his beard. He glanced at Dr Graves. He said quietly,

  ‘It would show us, after all, the extent of the delusion; and may even serve to startle her out of it. What do you say? Yes, give me a page from your note-book. Nurse Spiller, let Mrs Rivers go. Mrs Rivers—’ He came back to me and gave me the little piece of paper that Dr Graves had torn from his book. Then he put his hand to his pocket and brought out a pencil, and made to give me that.

  ‘Watch her, sir!’ said Nurse Spiller, when she saw the pencil’s point. ‘She’s a sly one, this one!’

  ‘Very good, I see her,’ he answered. ‘But I do not think she means us any harm. Do you, Mrs Rivers?’

  ‘No, sir,’ I said. I took the pencil in my hand. It trembled. He watched me.

  ‘You may hold it better than that, I think,’ he said.

  I moved it in my fingers, and it fell. I picked it up. ‘Watch her! Watch her!’ said Nurse Spiller again, ready to make another grab at me.

  ‘I am not used to holding pencils,’ I said.

  Dr Christie nodded. ‘I think you are. Come, write me a line upon this paper.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you can. Sit neatly on the bed and rest the paper on your knee. That is how we sit to write, is it not? You know it is. Now, write me your name. You can do that, at least. You have told us so. Go on.’

  I hesitated, then wrote it. The paper tore beneath the lead. Dr Christie watched and, when I had finished, took the sheet from me and showed it to Dr Graves. They frowned.

  ‘You have written Susan,’ said Dr Christie. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘It is my name.’

  ‘You have written badly. Did you do so on purpose? Here.’ He gave me the paper back. ‘Write me out a line, as I requested first.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t!’

  ‘Yes, you can. Write a single word, then. Write me this. Write: speckle.’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Come, come,’ he said, ‘this word is not difficult. And you know the first letter of it, we have seen you write that already.’

  Again, I hesitated. And then, because he watched so closely—and because, beyond him, Dr Graves and Nurse Spiller and Nurse Bacon, and even Mrs Price and Miss Wilson, also tilted their heads to see me do it—I wrote an S. Then I made a hazard at the other letters. The word went on and on, and grew larger as I wrote.

  ‘You still press hard,’ Dr Christie said.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You know you do. And your letters are muddled, and very ill-formed. What letter is this? It is one of your own imagining, I think. Now, am I to understand that your uncle—a scholar, I believe?—would countenance work like this, from his assistant?’

  Here was my moment. I quivered right through. Then I held Dr Christie’s gaze and said, as steadily as I could:

  ‘I haven’t an uncle to my name. You mean old Mr Lilly. I dare say his niece Maud writes neatly enough; but you see, I ain’t her.’

  He tapped at his chin.

  ‘For you,’ he said, ‘are Susan Smith, or Trinder.’

  I quivered again. ‘Sir, I am!’

  He was silent. I thought, That’s it! and almost swooned, with relief. Then he turned to Dr Graves and shook his head.

  ‘Quite complete,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it? I don’t believe I ever saw a case so pure. The delusion extending even to the exercise of the motor faculties. It’s there we will break her. We must study on this, until our course of treatment is decided. Mrs Rivers, my pencil if you please. Ladies, good-day.’

  He plucked the pencil from between my fingers, and turned, and left us. Dr Graves and Nurse Spiller went with him, and Nurse Bacon locked the door at their backs. I saw her turn the key, and it was just as if she had struck me or knocked me down: I fell upon my bed and broke out crying. She gave a tut—but they were too used to tears in that house, it was nothing to see a woman sitting at dinner, weeping into her soup, or walking about the garden crying her head off. Her tut turned into a yawn. She looked me over, then looked away. She sat in her chair and rubbed her hands, and winced.

  ‘You think you’ve torments,’ she said, to me or to all of us. ‘Have these knuckles for an hour—have these thumbs. Here’s torments, with mustard on. Here’s torments, with whips. Oh! Oh! God bless me, I think I shall die! Come, Betty, be a good girl to your poor old nurse. Fetch out my ointment, will you?’

  She still held her chain of keys. The sight of them made me cry worse. She shook one free, and Betty took it to the nurse’s cupboard, unlocked the door, and brought out a jar of grease. The grease was white and hard, like lard. Betty sat, took a handful of it, and began to work it into Nurse Bacon’s swollen fingers. Nurse Bacon winced again. Then she sighed, and her face grew smooth.

  ‘That finds the mark!’ she said; and Betty chuckled.

  I turned my head into my pillow and closed my eyes. If the house had been hell, and Nurse Bacon the Devil, and Betty a demon at her side, I could not have been more wretched. I cried until I could cry no more.

  And then there came a movement beside my bed, and then a voice, very gentle.

  ‘Come, my dear. You must not give in to tears.’

  It was the pale old lady, Miss Wilson. She had put out her hand to me. I saw it, and flinched.

  ‘Ah,’ sh
e said then. ‘You shrink from me. I don’t wonder at it. I am not quite in my right mind. You will grow used to that, here. Hush! Not a word. Nurse Bacon watches. Hush!’

  She had taken a handkerchief from her sleeve, and made signs that I should dry my face. The handkerchief was yellow with age, but soft; and the softness of it, and the kindness of her look—which, for all that she was mad, was the first piece of kindness that anyone had shown me since I came to the house—made me begin to cry again. Nurse Bacon looked over. ‘I’ve got my eye on you,’ she said to me. ‘Don’t think I haven’t.’ Then she settled back in her chair. Betty still worked grease into her fingers.

  I said quietly,

  ‘You mustn’t think I cry so easily as this, at home.’

  ‘I am sure you do not,’ answered Miss Wilson.

  ‘I’m only so frightened they will keep me here. I have been done very wrong. They say I am mad.’

  ‘You must keep your spirit. This house is not so hard as some others. But nor is it perfectly kind. The air of this room, for example, that we must breathe, like oxen in a stall. The suppers. They call us ladies, yet the food—the merest pap!—I should blush to see it served to a gardener’s boy.’

  Her voice had risen. Nurse Bacon looked over again, and curled her lip.

  ‘I should like to see you blush, you phantom!’ she said.

  Miss Wilson worked her mouth and looked embarrassed.

  ‘A reference,’ she said to me, ‘to my pallor. Will you believe me if I tell you, there is a substance in the water here, related to chalk—? But, hush! No more of that!’

  She waved her hand, and looked for a moment so mad, my heart quite sank.

  ‘Have you been here very long?’ I asked, when her fluttering hand had fallen.

  ‘I believe—let me see—we know so little of the passing seasons . . . I should say, many years.’

  ‘Two-and-twenty,’ said Nurse Bacon, still listening. ‘For you were quite an old hand—were you not?—when I first come in as a young one. And that was fourteen years, this autumn.—Ah, press harder, Betty, there! Good girl.’