Fingersmith

  I turned my face away. I think she still watched me, though. I did not care. I cared for nothing, now. I had kept up my nerve and my spirit, all that time. I had waited for my chance of escaping and got nowhere. Suddenly, my memories of Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs, of Gentleman, even of Maud, seemed to grow dim. It was as if my head were filled with smoke, or had a fluttering curtain across it. When I tried to go over the streets of the Borough in my mind, I found I lost my way. No-one else in that house knew those streets. If the ladies spoke of London ever, they spoke of a place they remembered from when they were girls, in Society—a place so different from the city I knew, it might as well have been Bombay. No-one called me by my own name. I began to answer to Maud and Mrs Rivers; sometimes it seemed to me I must be Maud, since so many people said I was. And sometimes I even seemed to dream, not my own dreams, but hers; and sometimes to remember things, from Briar, that she had said and done, as if I had said and done them.

  The nurses—all except Nurse Bacon—grew cooler than ever with me, after the night I was plunged. But I got used to being shaken and bullied and slapped. I got used to seeing other ladies bullied in their turn. I got used to it all. I got used to my bed, to the blazing lamp, to Miss Wilson and Mrs Price, to Betty, to Dr Christie. I should not, now, have minded a leech. But he never brought one. He said my calling myself Maud showed, not that I was better, but only that my malady had taken a different turn, and would turn back. Until it did, there was no point in trying to cure me; so he stopped trying. I heard, however, that the truth was he had gone off cures altogether: for he had cured the lady who had spoken like a snake, and done it so well her mother had taken her home; and what with that, and the ladies who had died, the house had lost money. Now, each morning, he felt my heart-beat and looked into my mouth, and then moved on. He did not stay long in the bedrooms at all, once the air grew so close and so foul. We, of course, spent most of our time there; and I even got used to that.

  God knows what else I might have got used to. God knows how long they would have kept me in that place—maybe, years. Maybe as long as poor Miss Wilson: for perhaps she—who knows?—was as sane as I had been, when her brother first put her in. I might be there, today. I still think of that and shudder. I might never have got out; and Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs, and Gentleman, and Maud—where would they be, now?

  I think of that, too.

  But then, I did get out. Blame Fortune. Fortune’s blind, and works in peculiar ways. Fortune sent Helen of Troy to the Greeks—didn’t it?—and a prince, to the Sleeping Beauty. Fortune kept me at Dr Christie’s nearly all that summer long; then listen to who it sent me.

  This was five or six weeks, I suppose, after they had plunged me—some time in July. Think how stupid I had got by then. The season was still a warm one, and we had all begun to sleep, all the hours of the day. We slept in the mornings, while we waited for the dinner-bell to be rung; and, in the afternoons, you would see ladies all over the drawing-room, dozing, nodding their heads, dribbling into their collars. There was nothing else to do. There was nothing to stay awake for. And sleeping made time pass. I slept as much as anyone. I slept so much that when Nurse Spiller came to our room one morning and said, ‘Maud Rivers, you’re to come with me, you’ve a visitor,’ they had to wake me up and tell me again; and when they had, I didn’t know what they meant.

  ‘A visitor?’ I said.

  Nurse Spiller folded her arms. ‘Don’t want him, then? Shall I send him home?’ She looked at Nurse Bacon, who was still rubbing her knuckles and wincing. ‘Bad?’ she said.

  ‘Like scorpions’ stings, Nurse Spiller.’

  Nurse Spiller tutted. I said again,

  ‘A visitor? For me?’

  She yawned. ‘For Mrs Rivers, anyway. Are you her today, or not?’

  I did not know. But I rose, on shaking legs, feeling the blood rush from my heart—for if the visitor was a man then I could only think that, whether I was Maud, or Sue, or whoever I was, he must be Gentleman. My world had shrunk to that point, that I only knew that I had been harmed, and that he had done it. I looked at Miss Wilson. I had an idea that I had said to her, three months before, that if Gentleman came I would kill him. I had meant it, then. Now the thought of seeing his face was so unexpected, it made me sick.

  Nurse Spiller saw me hesitate. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘if you are coming! Don’t mind your hair.’—I had put my hand to my head. ‘I’m sure, the madder he knows you to be, the better. Saves disappointment, don’t it?’ She glanced at Nurse Bacon. Then: ‘Come on!’ she said again; and I gave a twitch, then stumbled after her into the passage and down the stairs.

  It was a Wednesday—that was luck, though I did not know it yet, for on Wednesdays Dr Christie and Dr Graves went off in their coach to drum up new lady lunatics, and the house was quiet. Some nurses, and one or two men, were standing about in the hall, taking breaths from the open door; one of the men held a cigarette and, when he saw Nurse Spiller, he hid it. They did not look at me, however, and I hardly looked at them. I was thinking of what was to come, and feeling sicker and stranger by the second.

  ‘In here,’ said Nurse Spiller, jerking her head towards the door of the drawing-room. Then she caught my arm and pulled me to her. ‘And you remember: none of your fibs. The pads are nice and cool, on a day like this. Ain’t been used in a while. My word’s as good as a man’s, while the doctors are away. You hear me?’

  She shook me. Then she pushed me into the room. ‘Here she is,’ she said, in a different voice, to the person waiting there.

  I had expected Gentleman. It wasn’t him. It was a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy in a blue pea-jacket, and in the first second of my seeing him I felt a rush of mixed relief and disappointment so sharp, I almost swooned away; for I thought him a stranger, and supposed that there had been a mistake, he must have come for someone else. Then I saw him looking over my features in a bewildered sort of way; and then at last, at last—as if his face and name were slowly rising to the surface of my brain, through mists or cloudy water—at last I knew him, even out of his servant’s suit. He was Charles, the knife-boy from Briar. He looked me over, as I have said; then he tilted his head and looked past me, and past Nurse Spiller, as if he thought that Maud must be coming along behind. Then he looked at me again, and his eyes grew wide.

  And it was that, that saved me. His were the first two eyes, in all the time that had passed since I left Mrs Cream’s, that had looked at me and seen, not Maud, but Sue. They gave me back my past. They gave me my future, too—for in the second of standing in the doorway, meeting his gaze, seeing it slip from me and then come back baffled, my own confusion began to leave me and I formed a plan. I formed it whole, complete in every part.

  It was desperate.

  ‘Charles!’ I said. I was not used to speaking, and it came out like a croak. ‘Charles, you hardly know me. I think—I think I must be very changed. But oh, how good of you to come and make a visit to your old mistress!’

  And I went to him and caught hold of his hand, not taking my eyes away from his; and then I pulled him to me and I whispered, almost weeping, in his ear:

  ‘Say I’m her, or I’m done for! I’ll give you anything at all! Say I’m her! Oh, please say I’m her!’

  I kept hold of his hand, and wrung it. He stepped back. He had been wearing a cap, that had left a scarlet line across his brow. Now his face grew scarlet all over. He opened his mouth. He said,

  ‘Miss, I—Miss—’

  Of course, he called me that, at Briar. Thank God he did! Nurse Spiller heard him and said, in a sort of nasty satisfaction, ‘Well, ain’t it marvellous how quick a lady’s head will clear, when she sees a dear face from home? Shan’t Dr Christie be pleased?’

  I turned and caught her eye. She looked sour. She said, ‘Will you keep your young man standing? That have come all this way? That’s right, you sit. Not too close though, young sir, if I was you. We can’t say when they won’t fly off and start clawing; even the meek ones. That’s better.
Now, I’ll keep over here, by the door, and if she starts kicking up, you sing out—all right?’

  We had sat, in two hard chairs, close to the window. Charles still looked bewildered; now he also began to wink and look afraid. Nurse Spiller stood in the open doorway. It was cooler there. She folded her arms and watched us; but she also, now and then, turned her head into the hall, to nod and murmur to the nurses beyond.

  I still held Charles’s hand in both of mine. I could not give it up. I leaned towards him, trembling, and spoke in a whisper. I said,

  ‘Charles, I—Charles, I never was so glad to see anyone, anyone in all my life! You have—You have to help me.’

  He swallowed. He said, in the same low voice,

  ‘You are Miss Smith?’

  ‘Hush! Hush! I am. Oh, I am!’ My eyes began to water. ‘But you mustn’t say it here. You must say—’ I glanced at Nurse Spiller, then spoke more quietly still. ‘You must say I’m Miss Lilly. Don’t ask me why.’

  What was I thinking of? Well, the fact was I was thinking of the lady who had spoken like a snake, and the two old ladies that had died. I was thinking of what Dr Christie had said, about my malady having taken a different turn, but being sure, in time, to turn back. I was thinking that if he heard Charles say that I was Sue not Maud, he might find a way to keep me closer—perhaps bind me, pad me, plunge me, plunge Charles too.—In other words, terror had turned my brain. But I also had that plan. It was growing clearer by the second.

  ‘Don’t ask me why,’ I said again. ‘But, oh, what a trick has been played on me! They have made out I’m mad, Charles.’

  He looked about him. ‘This house is a house for mad people?’ he said. ‘I supposed it a great hotel. I supposed I should find Miss Lilly here. And—and Mr Rivers.’

  ‘Mr Rivers,’ I said. ‘Oh! Oh! That devil! He has swindled me, Charles, and gone to London with money that was to be mine. Him and Maud Lilly! Oh! What a pair! They have left me here, to die—!’

  My voice had risen, I could not help it: someone else—someone really mad—might have been speaking out of my mouth. I squeezed Charles’s fingers, to keep from talking louder. I squeezed them, almost out of their joints. And I glanced fearfully towards Nurse Spiller at the door. Her head was turned. She had her back to the doorpost and was laughing with the nurses and the men. I looked back at Charles, meaning to speak again. But his face had changed, and stopped me. His cheek had turned from flaming scarlet, to white. He said, in a whisper,

  ‘Mr Rivers, gone to London?’

  ‘To London,’ I said, ‘or to heaven knows where. To hell, I shouldn’t wonder!’

  He swallowed. He twitched. Then he tore his fingers from mine and covered his face with his hands.

  ‘Oh! Oh!’ he said, in a shaking voice—just as I had. ‘Oh, then I’m ruined!’

  And to my very great astonishment, he began to cry.

  His story came leaking out, then, along with his tears. It turned out that—just as I had guessed, months before—a life spent sharpening knives at Briar seemed a life not worth having, once Gentleman had gone. Charles had felt it so hard, he had begun to mope. He had moped so long, Mr Way the steward had taken a whip to him.

  ‘He said he would whip me raw,’ he said; ‘and he did. Lord, how he made me shriek! But that whipping was nothing—I should say, a hundred whippings would be nothing!—compared to the smarting, miss, of my disappointed heart.’

  He said that, in a way that made me think he had practised it; then he held himself stiff, as if he imagined I would hit him, or laugh, and was ready to suffer any blow. But what I said—bitterly—was, ‘I believe you. Mr Rivers makes hearts do that.’

  I was thinking of Maud’s. Charles seemed not to notice. ‘He does!’ he said. ‘What a gentleman! Oh, but ain’t he?’

  His face grew shiny. He wiped his nose. Then he started crying again. Nurse Spiller looked over and curled her lip. But that was all she did. Perhaps people cried a lot, when they came to see their lady relatives, at Dr Christie’s.

  When she had looked into the hall again, I turned back to Charles. Seeing him so miserable made me calmer in my own head. I let him shake a little longer and, as he did it, studied him closer. I saw, what I had not seen at first—that his neck was dirty, and his hair was strange—here pale and fluffy as feathers, here dark and stiff where he had wet it to make it lie smooth. There was a twig caught up in the wool of the sleeve of his jacket. His trousers were marked with dust.

  He wiped his eyes and saw me looking, and blushed harder than ever. I said quietly,

  ‘Be a good boy now, and tell me the truth. You’ve run off, haven’t you, from Briar?’

  He bit his lip, then nodded. I said, ‘And all for Mr Rivers’s sake?’ He nodded again. Then he drew in a shuddering breath.

  ‘Mr Rivers used to say to me, miss,’ he said, ‘that he would take me on to man for him, if only he’d the money for a proper man’s wages. I thought, I would rather work for him for no wages at all, than stay at Briar. But how was I to find him out, in London? Then came all that stir, with Miss Lilly taking off. The house’ve been on its head since then. We did suppose her flown after him, but no-one was quite sure. They are calling it a scandal. Half the girls have gone. Mrs Cakebread’ve gone, to another man’s kitchen! Now Margaret cooks. Mr Lilly ain’t in his right mind. Mr Way has to feed him his dinners off a spoon!’

  ‘Mrs Cakebread,’ I said, frowning. ‘Mr Way.’ The names were like so many lights: each time one was lit, another part of my brain grew brighter. ‘Margaret. Mr Lilly.’ And then: ‘Off a spoon! And all—And all from Maud’s running off with Mr Rivers?’

  ‘I don’t know, miss.’ He shook his head. ‘They say it took him a week to feel it. For he was calm at first; then he found some harm had been done to some of his books—or, something like that. Then he fell in a fit on his library floor. Now he can’t hold a pen or anything, and forgets his words. Mr Way made me push him about, in a great wheeled chair; but, I could hardly go ten yards—I could hardly do anything!—for breaking out crying. In the end I got sent to my aunty’s, to look at her black-faced pigs. They do say’—he wiped his nose again—‘they do say that watching pigs cures melancholy. It never cured mine, though . . .’

  I had stopped listening. There had come on a light in my head, that was brighter than all the rest. I took his hand again. ‘Black-faced pigs?’ I said, screwing up my eyes. He nodded.

  His aunty was Mrs Cream.

  I suppose it’s like that in the country. I had never thought to ask him his last name. He had slept in the very same room as me, on the same straw mattress, that was filled with bugs. When his aunty had begun to talk of the gentleman and lady that had come and been secretly married, he had guessed at once who they were but, hardly believing his own luck, had said nothing. He found out they’d gone off together in a coach; and from his cousin—Mrs Cream’s eldest son, who had talked with the coachman—he had got the name of Dr Christie’s house, and where it was.

  ‘I supposed it a great hotel,’ he said again—again looking fearfully about him, at the wire on the lamps, the bare grey walls, the bars on the windows. He had run off from Mrs Cream’s three nights before, and had slept in ditches and hedges since then.—‘Too late,’ he said, ‘to turn back, when I got here. I asked at the gate for Mr Rivers. They looked in a book, and said I must mean his wife. Then I remembered what a kind lady Miss Maud always was; and that if anyone should talk Mr Rivers round to taking me on, she should. And now—!’

  His lip began again to tremble. Really, Mr Way was right: he was far too big a boy to be so tearful, and at any other time, in any other, ordinary place, I should have hit him myself. But for now, I looked at his tears, and to my bruised and desperate eyes they were like so many pick-locks and keys.

  ‘Charles,’ I said, leaning closer to him and nerving myself to seem calm. ‘You can’t go back to Briar.’

  ‘I can’t, miss,’ he said. ‘Oh, I can’t! Mr Way would skin me alive!’
r />   ‘And I dare say your aunty don’t want you.’

  He shook his head. ‘She would call me a fool, for running off.’

  ‘It’s Mr Rivers you’re after.’

  He bit his lip, and nodded, still crying.

  ‘Then listen to me,’ I said—barely speaking at all, barely whispering now, only breathing the words, for fear Nurse Spiller would catch them. ‘Listen to me. I can take you to him. I know where he is. I know the very house! I can take you to him. But first, you must help me out of here.’

  If it wasn’t quite true that I knew where Gentleman was, then it wasn’t quite a lie, either; for I was pretty certain that, once I reached London and got help from Mrs Sucksby, I should find him. But I would have lied anyway, just then. I dare say you would have, too. Charles stared at me, and wiped his face with the heel of his hand.

  ‘Help you out of here, how?’ he said. ‘Why mayn’t you walk out, miss, just whenever you please?’

  I swallowed. ‘They think I’m mad, Charles. There’s an order been signed—well, never mind by who—that keeps me here. It’s the law. See that nurse? See her arm? They’ve got twenty nurses with arms like that; and they know how to use ’em. Now, look at my face. Am I mad?’

  He looked, and blinked. ‘Well—’

  ‘Of course I ain’t. But here, there are some lunatics so crafty, they pass as sane; and the doctors and nurses can’t see the difference between me, and one of them.’