Fingersmith

  ‘Don’t be frightened,’ I would always answer. ‘Oh, don’t be frightened.’—And at that moment, the dream would slip from me and I would wake. I would wake in a kind of dread, to think that, like Nurse Bacon, I might have said the words aloud—or sighed, or quivered. And then I would lie and be filled with a terrible shame. For I hated her! I hated her!—and yet I knew that, every time, I secretly wished that the dream had gone on to its end.

  I began to be afraid I would rise in my sleep. Say I tried to kiss Mrs Price, or Betty? But if I tried to stay awake, then I grew bewildered. I imagined fearful things. Those nights were queer nights. For though the heat made us all grow stupid, it also now and then sent ladies—even quiet, obedient ladies—into fits. You caught the commotion of it from your bed: the shrieking, the ringing of bells, the pounding of running feet. It broke into the hot and silent night, like a clap of thunder; and though you knew, each time, what it was, still the sounds came so strangely—and sometimes one lady would set off another; and then you would lie and wonder whether that mightn’t set off you, and you would seem to feel the fit gathering inside you, you would start to sweat, perhaps to twitch—oh, those were dreadful nights! Betty might moan. Mrs Price would start to weep. Nurse Bacon would rise: ‘Hush! Hush!’ she’d say. She would open the door, lean out and listen. Then the shrieking would stop, the footsteps begin to fade. ‘That’s got her,’ she’d say. ‘Now, will they pad her, I wonder, or plunge her?’—and at that word, plunge, Betty would moan again, and Mrs Price and even old Miss Wilson would shudder and hide their heads. I didn’t know why. The word was a peculiar one and no-one would explain it: I could only suppose it must involve being pumped, like a drain, with a black rubber sucker. That thought was so horrible that soon whenever Nurse Bacon said it I began to shudder, too.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re quaking at,’ she would say to all of us, nastily, as she went back to her bed. ‘Wasn’t one of you that went off, was it?’

  But then, one time, it was. We woke to the sound of choking and found sad Mrs Price on the floor beside her bed, biting her fingers so hard she was making them bleed. Nurse Bacon went for the bell, and the men and Dr Christie came running: they bound Mrs Price and carried her off downstairs, and when they brought her back, an hour later, her gown and her hair were streaming water and she looked half-drowned.—I learned then that being plunged meant being dropped in a bath. That gave me some comfort, at least; for it seemed to me that being bathed could not be nearly so bad as being suckered and pumped . . .

  I still knew nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

  Then something happened. There came a day—I think it was the hottest day of all that stifling summer—that turned out to be Nurse Bacon’s birthday; and on the night of it, she had some other nurses come secretly to our room, to give them a party. They did this, sometimes, as I think I have said. They weren’t allowed to, and their talking made it harder than ever for the rest of us to sleep; but we should never have dared tell a doctor—for then the nurses would have put it down to delusions and, after, hit us. They made us lie very still, while they sat about playing cards or dominoes, drinking lemonade and, sometimes, beer.

  They had beer on this night, on account of it being Nurse Bacon’s birthday night; and because it was hot they took too much of it and got drunk. I lay with the sheet across my face, but kept my eyes half open. I dared not try to sleep while they were there, in case I dreamed of Maud again; for it had got with me what you might call—or what Dr Christie, I suppose, might call—a morbid fear, of giving myself away. And then again, I thought I ought to keep awake, in case they drank so much they drank themselves into a stupor; for then I could rise and steal their keys . . .

  They did not, however. Instead, they grew livelier and more noisy and red in the face, and the room grew hotter. I think that now and then I did fall into a doze: I began to hear their voices like the far-off, hollow voices you hear in dreams. Then, every so often one of them would give a shout, or snort with laughter; the others would shush her, then snort with laughter themselves—that would bring me back to myself, with a horrible jolt. At last I looked at their fat red sweating faces and their great wet open mouths, and wished I had a gun and could shoot them. They sat boasting of which ladies they had recently hurt, and how they had done it. They fell to comparing grips. They put their hands to one another’s, palm to palm, to see who had the biggest. Then one of them showed her arm.

  ‘Let us see yours, Belinda,’ another cried then. Belinda was Nurse Bacon. They all had dainty names like that. You could imagine their mothers looking at them when they were babies, thinking they would grow up ballerinas. ‘Go on, let us see it.’

  Nurse Bacon pretended to look modest; then she put back her cuff. Her arm was thick as a coal-whipper’s, but white. When she bent it, it bulged. ‘That’s Irish muscle,’ she said, ‘come down on my grandmother’s side.’ The other nurses felt it, and whistled. Then one of them said,

  ‘I should say, with an arm like that, you’re almost a match for Nurse Flew.’

  Nurse Flew was a swivel-eyed woman with a room on the floor below. She was said to have once been a matron in a gaol. Now Nurse Bacon coloured up. ‘A match?’ she said. ‘I should like to see her arm beside mine, that’s all. Then we’d see whose was the greater. A match? I’ll match her, all right!’

  Her voice woke Betty and Mrs Price. She looked, and saw them stirring. ‘Get back to sleep,’ she said. She did not see me, watching her and wishing her dead through half-closed eyes. She showed her arm again, and again made the muscle bulge. ‘A match, indeed,’ she grumbled. She nodded to one of the nurses. ‘You fetch Nurse Flew up here. Then we’ll see. Margaretta, you get a string.’

  The nurses rose, and swayed, and tittered, and then went off. The first came back after a minute with Nurse Flew, Nurse Spiller, and the dark-headed nurse that had helped to undress me on my first day. They had all been drinking together, downstairs. Nurse Spiller looked about her with her hands on her hips and said,

  ‘Well, if Dr Christie could see you!’ She belched. ‘What’s this about arms?’

  She bared her own. Nurse Flew and the dark nurse bared theirs. The other nurse came back with a length of ribbon and a ruler, and they took it in turns to measure their muscles. I watched them do it, as a man in a darkened wood might, disbelieving his own eyes, watch goblins; for they stood in a ring and moved the lamp from arm to arm, and it threw strange lights and cast queer shadows; and the beer, and the heat, and the excitement of the measuring made them seem to lurch and hop.

  ‘Fifteen!’ they cried, their voices rising. Then: ‘Sixteen!—Seventeen!—Eighteen-and-a-half!—Nineteen! Nurse Flew has it!’

  They broke their circle then, and put down the light, and fell about quarrelling—not so much like goblins, suddenly, as like sailors. You half expected them to have tattoos. Nurse Bacon’s face was darker than ever. She said sulkily,

  ‘As to arms, well, I’ll let Nurse Flew take it this time; though I’m sure fat oughtn’t to count the same as muscle.’ She rubbed her hands across her waist. ‘Now, what about weight?’ She put up her chin. ‘Who here says they’re heavier than me?’

  At once, two or three of them got up beside her and said they were. The others tried to pick them up, in order to prove it. One of them fell down.

  ‘It’s no good,’ they said. ‘You wriggle about so, we can’t tell. We need another way. What say you stand upon a chair and jump? We’ll see who makes the floor creak most.’

  ‘What say,’ said the dark-haired nurse with a laugh, ‘you jump on Betty? See who makes her creak.’

  ‘See who makes her squeak!’

  They looked at Betty’s bed. Betty had opened her eyes at the sound of her name—now she shut them and began to shake.

  Nurse Spiller snorted. ‘She’d squeak for Belinda,’ she said, ‘every time. Don’t make it her, that ain’t fair. Make it old Miss Wilson.’

  ‘She’d squeak all right!’

  ‘Or
, Mrs Price.’

  ‘She’d cry! Crying’s no—’

  ‘Make it Maud!’

  One of them said it—I don’t know who—and, though they had all been laughing, now their laughter died. I think they looked at each other. Then Nurse Spiller spoke.

  ‘Pass a chair,’ I heard her say, ‘for standing on—’

  ‘Wait! Wait!’ cried another nurse. ‘What are you thinking of? You can’t jump on her, it’ll kill her.’ She paused, as if to wipe her mouth. ‘Lie on her, instead. ’

  And at that, I put back the sheet from my face and opened my eyes up wide. Perhaps I shouldn’t have done it, just then. Perhaps, after all, they had only been larking. But I put back the sheet, and they saw me looking; and then they all started laughing again and came towards me in a rush. They plucked the blankets off me and took the pillow from under my head. Two of them leaned on my feet, and another two caught my arms. They did it in a moment. They were like one great hot sweating beast with fifty heads, with fifty panting mouths and a hundred hands. When I struggled, they pinched me. I said,

  ‘You leave me alone!’

  ‘Shut up,’ they said. ‘We aren’t going to hurt you. We only want to see who’s heaviest out of Nurse Bacon, Nurse Spiller and Nurse Flew. We only want to see which of them will make you squeak most. Are you ready?’

  ‘Get off me! Get off me! I’ll tell Dr Christie!’

  Someone hit me in the face. Someone else jerked my leg. ‘Spoil sport,’ they said. ‘Now, who’s to go on her first?’

  ‘I will,’ I heard Nurse Flew say, and the others moved back a little for her to come forward. She was smoothing down her gown. ‘Have you got her?’ she said.

  ‘We’ve got her.’

  ‘Right. Hold her still.’

  Then they pulled me tight, as if I were a wet sheet and they meant to wring me. My thoughts, at that moment, aren’t fit to be described. I was sure they would tear the arms and legs off me. I was sure they would snap my bones. I started to shout and, again, I was struck in the face and jerked about; so then I fell silent. Then Nurse Flew got on to the bed and, lifting up her skirt, knelt astride of me. The bed gave a creak. She rubbed her hands and fixed me with her swivel-eye. ‘Here I come!’ she said, making to fall upon me. But the fall never came, though I screwed up my face and drew in my breath, to take it. Nurse Bacon had stopped her.

  ‘No dropping,’ she said. ‘Dropping won’t be fair. Go down slowly, or not at all.’

  So Nurse Flew moved back, then came slowly forward, and lowered herself down by her hands and knees until her weight was all upon me. The breath I had drawn in was all squeezed out. I think, if I had had a floor underneath me instead of a bed, she would have killed me. My eyes, my nose and mouth, began to run. ‘Please—!’ I said.

  ‘She cries Please!’ said the dark-haired nurse. ‘That means five points to Nurse Flew!’

  They eased off tugging me, then. Nurse Flew kissed my cheek and got off me, and I saw her stand with her hands above her head, like the winner of a boxing match. I sucked in my breath, I spluttered and coughed. Then they drew me tight again, for Nurse Spiller’s turn. She was worse than Nurse Flew—not heavier, but more awkward, for she lay with the points of her limbs, her knees and her elbows and her hips, pressing hard into mine; and her corset was a stiff one, with edges that seemed to cut me like a saw. Her hair had an oil upon it and smelt sour, and her breath was loud, like thunder, in my ear. ‘Come on, you little bitch,’ she said to me, ‘sing out!’—but I had some pride, even then. I closed my jaws and wouldn’t, though she pressed and pressed; at last the nurses cried, ‘Oh, shame! No points for Nurse Spiller at all!’—and she gave a final grind to her knees, and swore, and got off. I lifted my head from the mattress. My eyes were streaming water, but beyond the circle of nurses I could see Betty and Miss Wilson and Mrs Price, looking on and shaking but pretending to sleep. They were afraid of what might be done to them. I don’t blame them. I let my head fall back, and again shut tight my jaws. Now came Nurse Bacon. Her cheeks were still flushed, and her swollen hands so red against the white of her arms, she might have had gloves on.

  She sat astride of me as Nurse Flew had, and flexed her fingers.

  ‘Now, Maud,’ she said. She caught hold of the hem of my nightgown, and pulled it and made it tidy. She patted my leg. ‘Now then, Miss Muffet. Who’s my own good girl?’

  Then she came upon me. She came faster than the others, and the shock and the weight of her was awful. I cried out, and the nurses clapped. ‘Ten points!’ they said. Nurse Bacon laughed. I felt the shudder of it, like rolling-pins; and that made me screw up my eyes and cry out louder. Then she shuddered again, on purpose. The nurses cheered. Then she did this. She pushed herself up on her hands, so that her face was above me but her bosom and stomach and legs still hard on my own; and she moved her hips. She moved them in a certain way. My eyes flew open. She gave me a leer.

  ‘Like it, do you?’ she said, still moving. ‘No? We heard you did.’

  And at that, the nurses roared. They roared, and I saw on their faces as they gazed at me that nasty look I had seen before but never understood. I understood it now, of course; and all at once I guessed what Maud must have said to Dr Christie, that time at Mrs Cream’s. The thought that she had said it—that she had said it, before Gentleman, as a way of making me out to be mad—struck me like a blow to the heart. I had had many such blows, since I left Briar; but this, just then, seemed like the worst. It was as if I were filled with gunpowder, and had just been touched with a match. I began to struggle, and to shriek.

  ‘Get off me!’ I shrieked. ‘Get off me! Get off me! Get off!’

  Nurse Bacon felt me wriggle, and her laughter died. She pushed again upon me, harder, with her hips. I saw her hot red face above my own and butted it with my head. Her nose went crack. She gave a cry. There came blood on my cheek.

  Then, I can’t quite say what happened. I think the nurses that were holding me let go; but I think I kept on struggling and shrieking, as if they had me still. Nurse Bacon rolled from me; I think that someone—probably, Nurse Spiller—hit me; yet still my fit kept on. I have an idea that Betty started up bellowing—that other ladies, in rooms close by, took up the screams and shouts from ours. I think the nurses ran. ‘Catch up these bottles and cups!’ I heard one of them say, as she flew off with the others. Then someone must have taken fright and caught hold of one of the handles in the hall: there came a bell. The bell brought men and then, after another minute, Dr Christie. He was pulling on his coat. He saw me, still kicking and thrashing on the bed, with the blood from Nurse Bacon’s nose upon me.

  ‘She’s in a paroxysm,’ he cried. ‘A bad one. Good Lord, what was it set her off?’

  Nurse Bacon said nothing. She had her hand at her face, but her eyes were on mine. ‘What was it?’ Dr Christie said again. ‘A dream?’

  ‘A dream,’ she answered. Then she looked at him, and started into life. ‘Oh, Dr Christie,’ she said, ‘she was saying a lady’s name, and moving, as she slept!’

  That made me shriek all over again. Dr Christie said, ‘Right. We know our treatment for paroxysms. You men, and Nurse Spiller. Cold water plunge. Thirty minutes.’

  The men caught hold of me by the arms and picked me up. I had been pressed so hard by the nurses that it seemed to me now, as they set me upright, that I was beginning to float. In fact, they dragged me: I found the grazes upon my toes, next day. But I don’t remember, now, being taken down from that floor, to the basement of the house. I don’t remember passing the door to the pads—going on, down that dark corridor, to the room where they kept the bath. I remember the roaring of the faucets, the chill of the tiles beneath my feet—but, only dimly. What I recall most is the wooden frame they fixed me to, at the arms and legs; and then, the creaking of it, as they winched it up and swung it over the water; the swaying of it, as I pulled against the straps.

  Then I remember the drop, as they let fly the wheel—the shock, as they caught it—the
closing of the icy water over my face, the rushing of it into my mouth and nose, as I tried to gasp—the sucking of it, when I spluttered and coughed.

  I thought they had hanged me.

  I thought I had died. Then they winched me up, and dropped me again. A minute to winch me, and a minute to plunge. Fifteen plunges in all. Fifteen shocks. Fifteen tugs on the rope of my life.

  After that, I don’t remember anything.

  They might have killed me, after all. I lay in darkness. I did not dream. I did not think. You could not say I was myself, for I was no-one. Perhaps I never was to be quite myself, again. For when I woke, everything was changed. They put me back in my old gown and my old boots and took me back to my old room, and I went with them just like a lamb. I was covered in bruises and burns, yet hardly felt them. I did not weep. I sat and, like the other ladies, looked at nothing. There was talk of putting canvas bracelets on me, in case I should break out in another fit; but I lay so quietly, they gave the idea up. Nurse Bacon spoke with Dr Christie, in my behalf. Her eye was black where I had butted it, and I supposed that, getting me alone, she would knock me about—I think that, if she had, I would have taken the blows, unflinching. But it seemed to me that she was changed, like everything else. She looked at me oddly; and when that night I lay in bed and the other ladies had closed their eyes, she caught my gaze. ‘All right?’ she said softly. She glanced at the other beds, then looked back at me. ‘No harm—eh, Maud? All fun, ain’t it? We must have our bit of fun, mustn’t we? or we should go mad . . .’