Fingersmith

  ‘See that black door, Charles, with the window in it? That’s the door to my own house. The lady lives there, that’s been like my mother. I should like more than anything now, to run to that door; but I shan’t. It ain’t safe.’

  ‘Not safe?’ he said. He gazed about him, fearfully. I suppose those streets—that looked so dear to my eyes I could have lain down and kissed them—might have looked rather low to his.

  ‘Not safe,’ I said again, ‘while Dr Christie’s men are still behind us.’

  But I looked along the street, at Mr Ibbs’s door, and then at the window above it. It was the window to the room I shared with Mrs Sucksby, and the temptation to go closer to it was too great. I caught hold of Charles and pushed him before me, and we walked, then stood at a wall where there was a bit of shadow between two bulging bow-windows. Some kids went by, and laughed at my veil. I knew their mothers, they were neighbours of ours; and I began to be afraid again, of being seen, and recognised. I thought I was a fool, after all, to have come so far down the street; then I thought, ‘Why don’t I just make a run at the door, calling out for Mrs Sucksby?’ Maybe I’d have done it. I can’t say. For I had turned, as if to rearrange my bonnet; and while I was still making up my mind Charles put his hand to his mouth, and cried out, ‘Oh!’

  The kids that had laughed at my veil had run far down the street, and then had parted, to let someone walk between them. It was Gentleman. He was wearing that old slouch hat, and had a scarlet cloth at his throat. His hair and whiskers were longer than ever. We watched him saunter. I think he was whistling. Then, at Mr Ibbs’s shop-door, he came to a stop. He put his hand to the pocket of his coat and drew out a key. He kicked his feet against the step—first the right, then the left—to knock the dust from them; then he fitted the key in the lock, glanced idly about, and went inside. He did it all, in the easiest and most familiar way you can imagine.

  I saw him, and quivered right through. But my feelings were queer. ‘The devil!’ I said. I should like to have killed him, to have shot him, to have run at him and struck his face. But the sight of him had also made me afraid—more afraid than I ought to have been—as afraid as if I were still at Dr Christie’s and might at any moment be taken, shaken, bound and plunged in water. My breath came strangely, in little catches. I don’t think Charles noticed. He was thinking of his shirt-sleeves.—‘Oh!’ he still said. ‘Oh! Oh!’ He was looking at his finger-nails, and at the smudges of dirt on his cuffs.

  I caught hold of his arm. I wanted to run—back, the way we had come. I wanted to run, more than anything. I almost did. ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Come, quick.’ Then I looked again at Mr Ibbs’s door—thought of Mrs Sucksby behind it—thought of Gentleman, cool and easy at her side. Damn him, for making me afraid of my own home! ‘I won’t be chased away!’ I said. ‘We’ll stay, but we’ll hide. Come, here.’ And I gripped Charles tighter and began to push him, not away from Lant Street, but further along it. There were rooming-houses, all along that side. We reached one, now. ‘Got beds?’ I said, to the girl at the door.—‘Got half a one,’ she said. Half was not enough. We went to the next house, and then the next. They were both full. At last we reached the house right across from Mr Ibbs’s. There was a woman on the step with a baby. I did not know her. That was good.

  ‘Got a room?’ I said quickly.

  ‘Might have,’ she answered, trying to see beyond my veil.

  ‘At the front?’ I looked up and pointed. ‘That one?’

  ‘That one costs more.’

  ‘We’ll have it for the week. I’ll give you a shilling now, and pay you the rest tomorrow.’

  She made a face; but she wanted gin, I knew it. ‘All right,’ she said. She got to her feet, put the baby on the step, and took us up a slippery staircase. There was a man dead drunk on the landing. The door to the room she led us into had no lock to it, only a stone for propping it shut. The room was small and dark, with two low beds and a chair. The window had shutters closed before it, on the street-side, and there was a stick with a hook hung next to the glass, meant for opening them.

  ‘You do it like this,’ said the woman, beginning to show us. I stopped her. I said I had a weakness of the eye and didn’t care for sunlight.

  For I had seen straight away that the shutters had little holes cut in them, that were more or less perfect for what I wanted; and when the woman had got our shilling off us and gone, I shut the door behind her, took off my veil and bonnet, then put myself at the glass and looked out.

  There was nothing to see, however. Mr Ibbs’s shop door was still shut, and Mrs Sucksby’s window dark. I watched for quite a minute before I remembered Charles. He was standing, gazing at me, squeezing his cap between his hands. In some other room a man gave a shout, and he jumped.

  ‘Sit down,’ I said. I put my face back to the window.

  ‘I want my jacket,’ he said.

  ‘You can’t have it. The shop is closed. We shall get it tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You told a lie to that lady, about having a poor eye. You took that gown and those shoes, and that pie. That pie made me sick. You have brought me to a horrible house.’

  ‘I have brought you to London. Ain’t that what you wanted?’

  ‘I thought London would be different.’

  ‘You haven’t seen the best parts yet. Go to sleep. We’ll get your jacket back in the morning. You shall feel like a new man then.’

  ‘How shall we get it? You just gave our shilling to that lady.’

  ‘I shall get us another shilling tomorrow.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You mustn’t ask. Go to sleep. Ain’t you tired?’

  ‘This bed’ve got black hairs in it.’

  ‘Then take the other.’

  ‘That one has red hairs.’

  ‘Red hairs won’t hurt you.’

  I heard him sit and rub his face. I thought he might be about to cry again. But then, after a minute he spoke, and his voice had changed.

  ‘Weren’t Mr Rivers’s whiskers long, though?’ he said.

  ‘Weren’t they,’ I answered, my eye at the shutter still. ‘I’d say he needs a boy to trim them.’

  ‘Don’t he just!’

  He sighed then, and lay back upon the bed, putting his cap over his eyes; and I kept watch at the glass. I kept watch, like cats keep watch at mouse-holes—not minding the hours as they passed, not thinking of anything but what I gazed at. The night grew dark, and the street—that was a busy street, in summer—grew empty and still, the kids all gone to their beds, the men and women come back from the public houses, the dogs asleep. In the other rooms in the house, people walked, pulled chairs across the floor; a baby cried. A girl—she was drunk, I suppose—laughed, on and on. Still I watched. Some clock struck off the hours. I could not hear bells without wincing, now, and felt every one of them: at last came the twelve, and then the half, and I was listening out for the three-quarters—still watching, still waiting; but beginning to wonder, perhaps, what it was I thought I would see—when this happened:

  There came a light and a shadow, in Mrs Sucksby’s room; and then a figure—Mrs Sucksby herself! My heart nearly flew into bits. Her hair showed white, and she had her old black taffeta gown on. She stood with a lamp in her hand, her face turned from me, her jaw moving—she was talking to someone else farther back in the room, someone who now came forward, as she moved back. A girl. A girl, very slim at the waist . . . I saw her, and began to shake. She came on, while Mrs Sucksby moved about the room behind her, taking off her brooches and rings. She came right to the glass. She lifted her arm to rest it upon the bar of the window-sash, and then she stood with her brow upon her wrist, and grew still. Only her fingers moved, as they plucked idly at the lace across the window. Her hand was bare. Her hair was curled. I thought, It can’t be her.

  Then Mrs Sucksby spoke again, the girl lifted her face, the light of the street-lamp fell full upon it; and I cried out loud.

  She might have heard me?
??though I don’t think she can have—for she turned her head and seemed to look at me, to hold my gaze across the dusty street and the darkness, for quite a minute. I don’t think I blinked, in all that time. I don’t think she did, her eyes stayed open—I saw them, and remembered their colour at last. Then she turned back into the room, took a step away, caught up the lamp; and as she lowered the flame Mrs Sucksby went close to her, lifted her hands, and begin to unfasten the hooks at the back of her collar.

  Then came darkness.

  I moved back from the window. My own white face was reflected there, the streetlight striking it—on the cheek, beneath my eye—in the shape of a heart. I turned from the glass. My cry had woken Charles, and I suppose my look was peculiar.

  ‘Miss, what is it?’ he said in a whisper.

  I put my hand before my mouth.

  ‘Oh, Charles!’ I said. I took a couple of staggering steps towards him. ‘Charles, look at me! Tell me who I am!’

  ‘Who, miss?’

  ‘Not miss, don’t call me miss! I never was a miss, though they made me out one.—Oh! She has taken everything from me, Charles. She has taken everything and made it hers, in spite. She has made Mrs Sucksby love her, as she made—Oh! I’ll kill her, tonight!’

  I ran in a kind of fever, back to the shutter, to look at the face of the house. I said, ‘Now, might I climb to the window? I could force the bolt, creep in, and stab her as she lies sleeping. Where is that knife?’

  I ran again, and caught it up and tried its edge. ‘Not sharp enough,’ I said. I looked about me, then picked up the stone that was used as a door-stop, and drew the blade across it. ‘Like this?’ I said to Charles. ‘Or like this? Which makes the best edge? Come on, come on. You’re the bloody knife-boy, aren’t you?’

  He watched me in terror; then came and, with trembling fingers, showed me how. I ground the blade. ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘That will feel good, with its point against her breast.’ Then I stopped. ‘But, don’t you think that, after all, a death by stabbing comes rather quick? Had I not ought to find a slower way?’—I thought of stifling, strangling, beating with a club.—‘Have we a club, Charles? That will take longer; and oh! I should like to have her know me, as she dies. You shall come with me, Charles. You shall help.—What’s the matter?’

  He had walked to the wall and stood with his back against it, and begun to quiver.

  He said, ‘You ain’t—You ain’t the lady you seemed to be at Briar!’

  I said, ‘Look at you. You ain’t the boy. That boy had nerve.’

  ‘I want Mr Rivers!’

  I laughed, a mad laugh. ‘I’ve got news for you. Mr Rivers ain’t quite the gent you thought him, either. Mr Rivers is a devil and a rogue.’

  He stepped forward. ‘He ain’t!’

  ‘He is, though. He ran off with Miss Maud, told everyone I was her and put me in a madhouse. Who else do you think it was, signed my order?’

  ‘If he signed it, it must have been true!’

  ‘He’s a villain.’

  ‘He’s a gem of a man! Everyone at Briar said so.’

  ‘They never knew him like I did. He’s bad, he’s rotten.’

  He made his hands into fists. ‘I don’t care!’ he cried.

  ‘You want to man for a devil?’

  ‘Better that, than—Oh!’ He sat upon the floor and hid his face. ‘Oh! Oh! I was never more miserable, in all of my life. I hate you!’

  ‘And I hate you,’ I said, ‘you fucking nancy.’

  I still had the stone in my hand. I threw it at him.

  It missed him by about a foot; but the sound of it striking the wall and floor was awful. I was shaking, now, almost as badly as he was. I looked at the knife I held, then put it from me. I touched my face. My cheek and brow were wet with a horrible sweat. I went to Charles and knelt beside him. He tried to push me away.

  ‘Get off me!’ he cried. ‘Or, kill me now! I don’t care!’

  ‘Charles, listen to me,’ I said, in a steadier voice. ‘I don’t hate you, truly. And you mustn’t hate me. I am all you’ve got. You have lost your place at Briar, and your aunty don’t want you. You can’t go back to the country now. Besides, you should never find your way out of Southwark, without my help. You should wander and grow bewildered; and London is full of cruel hard men who do unspeakable things to bewildered fair-haired boys. You might be taken by the master of a ship, and finish up in Jamaica. How should you like that? Don’t cry, for God’s sake!’—He had begun to sob.—‘You think I shouldn’t like to cry? I have been dreadfully cheated, and the person that cheated me worst is lying at this moment in my own bed, with my own mother’s arms about her. This is a greater thing than you can understand. This is a matter of life and death. I was foolish to say I would kill her tonight. But give me a day or two more, and let me think. There’s money over there and—I swear it, Charles!—there are people there too who, once they know how I’ve been wronged, will give any kind of sum to the boy that has helped me back to them . . .’

  He shook his head, still crying; and now, at last, I began to cry, too. I put my arm about him and he leaned into my shoulder, and we shuddered and wailed until, finally, someone in the room next door began to bang on the wall and call out for us to stop.

  ‘There, now,’ I said, wiping my nose. ‘You’re not afraid, now? You’ll sleep, like a good boy?’

  He said he thought he would, if I would keep beside him; and so we lay together on the bed with the red hairs in it, and he slept, with his pink lips parted, and his breaths coming even and smooth.

  But I kept wakeful, all through that night. I thought of Maud, across the street, lying breathing in Mrs Sucksby’s arms, her mouth open like his, like a flower, her throat perfectly slender, and perfectly white and bare.

  By the time the morning came, I had the beginnings of a plan worked out. I stood at the window and watched Mr Ibbs’s door for a time but then, seeing no-one stirring, gave it up. That could wait. What I needed now was money. I knew how to get it. I made Charles brush his hair and put a parting in it, then took him quietly from the house, by the back way. I took him to Whitechapel—a place, I thought, far enough from the Borough for me to risk going about without my veil. I found a spot on the High Street.

  ‘Stand here,’ I said. He did. ‘Now, remember how you cried so hard last night? Let’s see you do it again.’

  ‘Let’s what?’

  I caught hold of his arm and pinched it. He gave a squeal, then began to snivel. I put my hand on his shoulder and looked up and down the street, in an anxious way. A few people gazed curiously at us. I beckoned them over.

  ‘Please, sir, please, lady,’ I said. ‘I just come upon this poor boy, he’s come in from the country this morning and has lost his master. Can you spare a couple of farthings, set him back upon his way? Can you? He’s all alone and don’t know no-one, don’t know Chancery Lane from Woolwich. He has left his coat in his master’s cart.—God bless you, sir! Don’t cry, mate! Look, this gentleman is giving you twopence. Here comes some more! And they say Londoners’ hearts is hard, in the country—don’t they . . . ?’

  Of course, the idea of a gentleman giving him money made Charles cry worse than ever. His tears were like so many magnets. We made three shillings, that first day—which paid for our room; and when we tried the same dodge the day after, on a different street, we made four. That got us our suppers. The money that was left over after that I kept, along with the ticket to Charles’s coat, in my shoe. I wore my shoes, even in bed. ‘I want my jacket,’ Charles would say, a hundred times an hour; and every time I’d answer, ‘Tomorrow. I swear. I promise. Just one more day . . .’

  And then, all day, I would stand at the shutters, my eye at the heart-shaped hole. I was watching the house, figuring out its habits. I was marking it, patient as a cracksman. I saw thieves come, bringing pieces of poke to Mr Ibbs: I saw him turn the lock on his door, pull down his blind. The sight of his hands, of his honest face, made me want to weep. I’d think,
‘Why can’t I go to him?’ Then, a little later, I’d see Gentleman, and be filled again with fear. Then I’d see Maud. I’d see her at the window. She liked to stand there, with her face against the sash—as if she knew I was watching, and mocked me! I saw Dainty, helping her dress in the mornings, fastening up her hair. And I saw Mrs Sucksby, at night, letting it down.—Once I saw her lift a tress of it to her mouth, and kiss it.

  With each new thing, I would press my face so hard against the glass I stood at, it would groan in its frame. And at night, when the house was dark, I would take up my candle and walk, back and forth, back and forth, from one wall to another.

  ‘They have got them all in their power,’ I’d say. ‘Dainty, and Mr Ibbs, and Mrs Sucksby; and I dare say John and even Phil. Like two great spiders, they have spun their web. We’ve got to be careful, Charles. Oh, haven’t we! For say they know, through Dr Christie, that I’ve escaped? They must know by now! They are waiting, Charles. They are waiting for me. She never leaves the house—that’s clever!—for, in keeping there, she keeps near Mrs Sucksby. He goes, however. I’ve seen him. I’ve been waiting, too. They don’t know that. He goes. We’ll make our move, next time he does. I’m the fly they want. They shan’t get me. We’ll send them you. They won’t have thought of that! Hey, Charles?’

  Charles never answered. I had kept him so long in that dark room, doing nothing, his face had got pale, and his eyes had begun to grow glassy, like a doll’s. ‘I want my jacket,’ he still said, now and then, in a feeble sort of bleat; but I think he had almost forgotten what it was he wanted it for. For at last there came a time when he said it, and I answered: ‘All right. Today you’ll get it. We’ve waited long enough. Today’s our day’; and instead of looking pleased, he stared and looked frightened.

  Perhaps he thought he saw a certain feverish something in my eye. I don’t know. It seemed to me I was thinking like a sharper, for the first time in my life. I took him back to Watling Street and got his jacket out of pawn. But I kept hold of it. Then I took him on a ’bus.—‘For a treat,’ I said. ‘Look out the window, at the shops.’