Fingersmith

  It was like that, then, all the way: every time we met the crossing of two or three roads, I would stand for a minute and think hard of London; and just as if I were Dick Whittington, the idea would come to me which road we ought to take. When the sky grew even paler, we began to hear horses and wheels. We should have been glad of a lift, but I was afraid, each time, that the cart or coach might have been sent out after us, from the madhouse. Only when we saw an old farmer driving out of a gate in a donkey-cart, did I think we could be sure he was not one of Dr Christie’s men: we put ourselves in his way, and he slowed the donkey and let us ride beside him for an hour. I had combed out the plaits and stitches from my hair and it stood up like coir, and I had no hat, so put a handkerchief of Charles’s about my head. I said that we were brother and sister, and going back to London after a stay with our aunty.

  ‘London, eh?’ said the farmer. ‘They say a man can live forty years there and never meet his neighbour. Is that right?’

  He put us down at the side of the road at the edge of a town, and showed us the way we must take from there. I guessed we had gone about nine or ten miles. We had forty more to do. This was still early morning. We found a baker’s shop, and bought bread; but the woman in the shop looked so queerly at my hair and my gown, and my rubber boots, I wished we had given up the bread and gone hungry. We sat in a church-yard, upon the grass, against two leaning stones. The church bell rang, and we both started.

  ‘Seven o’clock,’ I said. I felt suddenly gloomy. I looked at Nurse Bacon’s comb. ‘They’ll be waking up now, and finding my empty bed; if they haven’t found it already.’

  ‘Mr Way will be polishing shoes,’ said Charles. His lip began to jump.

  ‘Think of Mr Rivers’s boots,’ I said quickly. ‘I bet they want a polish. London is awfully hard on a gentleman’s shoes.’

  ‘Is it?’

  That made him feel better. We finished our bread, and then rose and brushed the grass off. A man went by with a shovel. He looked at us rather as the woman in the baker’s shop had.

  ‘They think we’re tinkers,’ said Charles, as we watched him pass.

  But I imagined men coming from the madhouse, asking about after a girl in a tartan dress and rubber boots. ‘Let’s go,’ I said, and we left the road again and took a quiet path that went off across fields. We kept as much as we could to the hedges, though the grass was higher there, and harder and slower to walk on.

  The sun made the air grow warm. There came butterflies, and bees. Now and then I stopped and untied the handkerchief from about my head, and wiped my face. I had never walked so far, so hard, in my life; and for three months I had not been further than round and round the little walled garden at the madhouse. There were blisters on my heels, the size of shillings. I thought, ‘We shall never get to London!’

  But each time I thought it, I thought of Mrs Sucksby, and imagined the look upon her face when I turned up at the Lant Street door. Then I thought of Maud, wherever she was; and imagined her face.

  Her face seemed dim to me, however. The dimness bothered me. I said,

  ‘Tell me, Charles, what colour are Miss Lilly’s eyes? Are they brown, or blue?’

  He looked at me strangely.

  ‘I think they are brown, miss.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I think so, miss.’

  ‘I think so, too.’

  But I was not sure. I walked a little faster. Charles ran beside me, panting.

  Near noon that day we came across a row of little cottages, on the side of the path to a village. I made Charles stop, and we stood behind a hedge, and I watched the doors and windows. At one, a girl stood shaking cloths—though after a minute she went inside, and then the window was closed. At another, a woman with a bucket passed back and forth, not looking out. The windows of the next cottage down were all shut and dark; but I guessed there must be something behind them, worth stealing: I thought of going to the door and knocking and, if no-one came, trying the latch. But as I stood, working up my nerve, there came voices, from the very last house: we looked, and there at the garden gate was a woman and two little children. The woman was tying on a bonnet and kissing the children good-bye.

  ‘Now, Janet,’ she was saying to the biggest one, ‘mind you watch Baby nicely. I shall be back to give you your egg. You may hem your hankie if you like, if you’ll only be careful with the needle.’

  ‘Yes, Ma,’ said the girl. She put her face up to be kissed, then stood on the gate and swung it. Her mother walked quickly away from the cottage—past me and Charles, though she didn’t know it; for we were still hidden behind our hedge.

  I watched her go. Then I looked from her to the little girl—who had left the gate now, and was walking back up the path, leading her brother towards the open cottage door. Then I looked at Charles. I said,

  ‘Charles, here’s Fate turned our way at last. Give me a sixpence, will you?’ He felt about in his pocket. ‘Not that one. Haven’t you got a brighter?’

  I took the brightest he had, and gave it an extra shine on the sleeve of my gown.

  ‘What are you going to do, miss?’ he asked.

  ‘Never mind. Stay here. And if anyone comes, give a whistle.’

  I stood and straightened my skirt; then I went out from behind the hedge and walked smartly over to the gate of the cottage, as if I had come along the path. The little girl turned her head and saw me.

  ‘All right?’ I said. ‘You’ll be Janet. I just met your ma. Look here, what she gave me. A sixpence. Ain’t it a nice one? She said, “Please give this sixpence to my little girl Janet, and tell her to please go quick to the shop and buy flour.” Said she forgot, just now. Know what flour is, don’t you? Good girl. Know what else your ma said? She said, “My girl Janet is such a good little girl, tell her she’s to have the half-penny left over, for sweets.” Ah. Like sweets, do you? So do I. Nice, ain’t they? But hard on your teeth. Never mind. I dare say you ain’t got all your teeth yet. Oh! Look at them dazzlers! Like pearls on a string! Better nip down the shop, before the rest come up. I’ll stay here and mind the house, shall I? Don’t that sixpence shine! And here’s your little brother, look. Don’t you want to take him with you? Good girl . . .’

  It was the shabbiest trick there was, and I hated doing it; but what can I say? I had had a shabby trick played on me. All the time I spoke, I was glancing quickly about me, at the windows of the other cottages, and along the path; but no-one came. The little girl put the coin in the pocket of her apron and picked up her baby brother, and staggered away; and I watched her do it, then darted into the house. It was a pretty poor place, but in a trunk upstairs I found a pair of black shoes, more or less my size, and a print dress, put in paper. I thought the dress might have been the one that the woman was married in, and I swear to God! I almost didn’t take it; but in the end, I did.

  And I also took a black straw bonnet, a shawl, a pair of woollen stockings, a pie from the pantry; and a knife.

  Then I ran back to the hedge where Charles was hiding.

  ‘Turn round,’ I said, as I changed. ‘Turn round! Don’t look so frightened, you bloody big girl. Damn her! Damn her!’

  I meant Maud. I was thinking of the little girl, Janet, coming back to the cottage with the flour and her bag of sweets. I was thinking of her mother, coming home in time for tea, and finding her wedding-gown gone.

  ‘Damn her!’

  I got hold of Maud’s glove, and ripped it till the stitches gave. Then I threw it to the ground and jumped on it. Charles watched, with a look of terror on his face.

  ‘Don’t look at me, you infant!’ I said. ‘Oh! Oh!’

  But then I grew frightened of someone coming. I took the glove up again and put it back next to my bosom, and tied up the strings of the bonnet. I threw my madhouse gown and my rubber boots into a ditch. The blisters on my feet had opened, and were weeping like eyes; but the stockings were thick ones, and the black shoes were worn and soft. The dress had a pattern of roses o
n it, and the bonnet had daisies at the brim. I imagined how I must look—like a picture, I thought, of a milkmaid on a dairy wall.

  But that was just the thing, I supposed, for the country. We left the fields and the shady paths and went back to the road; and after a time another old farmer came by, and he drove us another few miles; and then we walked again.

  We still walked hard. Charles was silent all the way. Finally he broke out with:

  ‘You took them shoes and that gown, without asking.’

  ‘I took this pie as well,’ I said. ‘Bet you’ll eat it, though.’

  I said we would send the woman her clothes back, and buy her a brand-new pie, in London. Charles looked doubtful. We spent the night in the hay of an open barn, and he lay with his back to me, his shoulder-blades shaking. I wondered if he might run off to Briar while I slept; and I waited until he grew quiet, then tied the laces of one his boots to the laces of one of mine, so I should wake up if he tried to. He was an aggravating boy; but I knew I should do better with him than without him, just now—for Dr Christie’s men would be looking for a girl on her own, not a girl and her brother. I thought that if I had to, I would give him the slip once we reached London.

  But London still seemed far off. The air still smelled too pure. Some time in the night I woke, and the barn was full of cows: they stood in a circle and looked us over, and one of them coughed like a man. Don’t tell me that’s natural. I woke up Charles, and he was as frightened as I was. He got up and tried to run—of course, he fell down, and nearly took my foot off. I undid our laces. We went backwards out of the barn, then ran, then walked. We saw the sun rise over a hill.

  ‘That means east,’ said Charles. The night had been cold as winter, but the hill was a steep one and we grew warm as we climbed. When we got to the top, the sun was higher in the sky and the day was lightening up. I thought, The morning has broken.—I thought of the morning like an egg, that had split with a crack and was spreading. Before us lay all the green country of England, with its rivers and its roads and its hedges, its churches, its chimneys, its rising threads of smoke. The chimneys grew taller, the roads and rivers wider, the threads of smoke more thick, the farther off the country spread; until at last, at the farthest point of all, they made a smudge, a stain, a darkness—a darkness, like the darkness of the coal in a fire—a darkness that was broken, here and there, where the sun caught panes of glass and the golden tips of domes and steeples, with glittering points of light.

  ‘London,’ I said. ‘Oh, London!’

  16.

  Still, it took all that day to reach it. We might have found out the railway station and taken a train: but I thought we ought to keep the little money we had left, for food. We walked for a while with a boy who had a great big basket on his back, that he had filled with onions: he showed us to a place where waggons came, to pick up vegetables for the city markets. We had missed the best of the traffic, but we got a ride, in the end, with a man with a slow horse, taking scarlet beans to Hammersmith. He said Charles made him think of his son—Charles had that sort of face—so I let them ride up front together, and sat in the back of the cart, with the beans. I sat with my cheek against a crate, my eyes on the road ahead, and now and then the road would rise and show us London again, grown a little nearer. I might have slept; but I couldn’t keep from watching. I watched as the roads began to be busier and the country hedges began to give way to palings and walls; I watched the leaf become brick, the grass become cinders and dust, the ditches kerb-stones. When once the cart drew close to the side of a house that was pasted, two inches thick, with fluttering bills, I reached and tore free a strip of poster—held it for a second, then let it fly. It had a picture of a hand upon it, holding a pistol. It left soot on my fingers. Then I knew I was home.

  From Hammersmith, we walked. That part of London was strange to me, but I found I knew my way all right—just as I had known, in the country, which road to take at a fork. Charles walked beside me, blinking, and sometimes catching hold of the cuff of my sleeve; in the end I took his hand to lead him across a street, and he let his fingers stay there. I saw us reflected in the glass of a great shop window—me in my bonnet, him in his plain pea-jacket—we looked like the Babes in the bloody Wood.

  Then we reached Westminster, and got our first proper view of the river; and I had to stop.

  ‘Wait, Charles,’ I said, putting my hand to my heart and turning away from him. I did not want him to see me so stirred up. But then, the sharpest part of my feelings being over, I began to think.

  ‘We ought not to cross the water just yet,’ I said, as we walked on. I was thinking of who we might bump into. Suppose we chanced upon Gentleman? Or, suppose he chanced upon us? I did not think he would put a hand upon me, himself; but fifteen thousand pounds is a deal of money, and I knew he was up to hiring bullies to do his bad work for him. I had not thought of this, until now. I had thought only of reaching London. I began to look about me, in a new way. Charles saw me do it.

  ‘What is it, miss?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I answered. ‘Only, I’m afraid there may still be men, sent out by Dr Christie. Let’s cut down here.’

  I took him down a dark and narrow street. But then I thought, a dark and narrow street would be the worst kind of street to be caught in. I turned instead—we were somewhere near Charing Cross now—into the Strand; and after a time we came to the end of a road that had one or two little stalls, selling second-hand clothes. I went to the first we came to, and bought Charles a woollen scarf. For myself, I got a veil. The man who sold it to me teased me.

  ‘Don’t care for a hat, instead?’ he said. ‘Your face is too pretty to hide.’

  I held out my hand for my half-penny change. ‘All right,’ I said, impatient. ‘So’s my arse.’

  Charles flinched. I did not care. I put on the veil and felt better. It looked badly above my bonnet and pale print gown, but I thought I might pass for a girl with scars, or with some kind of ailment of the face. I made Charles draw the woollen scarf about his mouth and pull down his cap. When he complained that the day was hot I said,

  ‘If I get taken by Dr Christie’s spies before I bring you to Mr Rivers, how hot do you think you’ll find it, then?’

  He looked ahead, to the crush of coaches and horses at Ludgate Hill. It was six o’clock, and the traffic was at its worst.

  ‘Then when will you bring me to him?’ he said. ‘And how much further does he live?’

  ‘Not much at all. But, we must be careful. I have to think. Let us find somewhere quiet . . .’

  We ended up at St Paul’s. We went in, and I sat in one of the pews while Charles walked about and looked at the statues. I thought, ‘I must only get to Lant Street, and then I shall be saved’; but what was worrying me was the thought of the story that Gentleman might have put about the Borough. Say all of Mr Ibbs’s nephews had had their hearts turned against me? Say I met John Vroom before I reached Mrs Sucksby? His heart did not need turning; and he would know me, even behind my veil. I must be careful. I should have to study the house—make my move only when I knew how the land lay. It was hard, to be cautious and slow; but I thought of my mother, who had not been cautious enough. Look what happened to her.

  I shivered. St Paul’s was cold, even in July. The glass at the windows was losing its colours, as the afternoon turned to night. At Dr Christie’s, now, they would be waking us up to take us down to our suppers. We would have bread-and-butter, and a pint of tea . . . Charles came and sat beside me. I heard him sigh. He had his cap in his hands, and his fair hair shone. His lip was perfectly pink. Three boys in white gowns went about with flames on sticks of brass, lighting more lamps and candles; and I looked at him and thought how well he would fit in among them, in a gown of his own.

  Then I looked at his coat. It was a good one, though rather marked by dust.

  ‘How much money have we now, Charles?’ I said.

  We had a penny and a half. I took him to a pawn-shop on Watl
ing Street, and we pledged his coat for two shillings.

  He cried as he handed it over.

  ‘Oh how,’ he said, ‘shall I ever see Mr Rivers now? He’ll never want a boy in shirt-sleeves!’

  I said we would get the coat back in a day or two. I bought him some shrimps and a piece of bread-and-butter, and a cup of tea.

  ‘London shrimps,’ I said. ‘Yum, ain’t they lovely?’

  He did not answer. When we walked on, he walked a step behind me with his arms about himself, his eyes on the ground. His eyes were red—from tears, and also from grit.

  We crossed the river at Blackfriars, and from there, though I had been going so carefully, I went more carefully still. We kept away from the back lanes and alleys, and stuck to the open roads; and the twilight—which is a false light, and always a good light for doing any kind of shady business in, better even than darkness—helped to hide us. Every step we took, however, was taking me closer to home: I began to see certain familiar things—even, certain familiar people—and felt, again, a stir in my head and heart, that I thought would quite undo me. Then we reached Gravel Lane and the Southwark Bridge Road, turned up to the west end of Lant Street and stood looking along it; and my blood rushed so fast and my heart rose so high, I thought I should swoon. I gripped the brick wall we rested against and let my head drop, until the blood went slower. When I spoke, my voice was thick. I said,