Fingersmith

  They drew his picture in the papers. Girls all over England were said to have cut it out and worn it next to their hearts.

  But when I looked at that picture—and when I heard people talk of the awful murder of Mr Bunt, and of vices, and sordid trades—it seemed to me as though they must be talking of something else, something else entirely, not of Gentleman, being hurt, by mistake, in my own kitchen, with my own people all about. Even when the judge sent off the jury, and we waited, and watched the newspaper-men getting ready to run with the verdict as soon as it came; even when the jury, after an hour, returned, and one of them stood and gave back their answer in a single word; even when the judge covered up his horse-hair wig with a cloth of black, and hoped that God would have mercy on Mrs Sucksby’s soul—even then, I did not really feel it as you would suppose I might, did not believe, I think, that so many dark and sober gentlemen speaking so many grave and monotonous words could pinch out the spirit and the heat and the colour from the lives of people like me and Mrs Sucksby.

  Then I looked at her face; and saw the spirit and heat and colour half-gone from it, already. She was looking dully about her, at the murmuring crowd—looking for me, I thought, and I rose, and lifted my hand. But she caught my eye, and her gaze, as it had before, moved on: I watched it roam about the room, as if looking for someone or something else—finally it settled and seemed to clear, and I followed it and picked out, at the back of the rows of watchers, a girl dressed all in black, with a veil, that she was just putting down—It was Maud. I saw her, not expecting to see her: and I’ll tell you this, my heart flew open; then I remembered everything, and my heart flew shut. She looked miserable—that was something, I thought. She was sitting alone. She made no sort of sign—to me, I mean; and none to Mrs Sucksby.

  Then our lawyer called me to him, to shake my hand and say he was sorry. Dainty was weeping and needed my arm to help her walk. When I looked at Mrs Sucksby again, her head was sunk upon her breast; and when I looked for Maud, she had gone.

  The week that passed after that I remember, now, as not a week at all, but as a single great endless day. It was a day without sleep—for how could I sleep, when sleep might take away thoughts of Mrs Sucksby, who was so soon to die? It was a day, almost, without darkness—for they kept lights in her cell, that burned all through the night; and in the hours I could not be with her, I kept lights burning at Lant Street—every light I could find in the house, and every light I could borrow. I sat alone, with blazing eyes. I sat and watched, as though she might be ill at my side. I hardly ate. I hardly changed my clothes. When I walked, it was to walk quickly to Horsemonger Lane, to be with her; or to walk slowly back, having left her there.

  They had her now, of course, in the condemned cell, and one or other of a pair of matrons was always with her. They were kind enough, I suppose; but they were great stout women, like the nurses at Dr Christie’s, and they wore similar canvas aprons, and carried keys: I would catch their eyes and flinch, and all my old bruises would seem to start up aching. Then again, I could never quite find it in my heart to like them, on their own accounts—for surely, if they were truly worth liking, they would open the door and let Mrs Sucksby go? Instead they were keeping her there, for men to come and hang her.

  I tried not to think of that, however—or rather, like before, I found I could not think of it, could not believe it. How much Mrs Sucksby brooded upon it, I can’t say. I know they sent the prison chaplain to her and she spent some hours with him; but she never told me what he said to her, or if it brought her any comfort. Now more than ever, she seemed to like not to speak at all, only to feel the gentle holding of my hand in hers; though now more than ever, too, her gaze as she looked at me would seem sometimes to grow cloudy, and she would colour, and struggle as if with the awful burden of things unsaid . . .

  But she said only one thing to me, that she meant for me to remember; and that was on the day before her last—the final time I ever saw her. I went to her, with my heart almost breaking, and thought I should find her pacing her cell or plucking at the bars on her window—in fact, she was calm. It was me who wept, and she sat in her prison chair and let me kneel with my head in her lap, and she put her fingers to my hair—taking the pins from it and letting it fall, until it lay across her knee. I had not had the heart to curl it. It seemed to me that I should never have heart enough, ever again.

  ‘How shall I do, Mrs Sucksby, without you?’ I said.

  I felt some tremor pass through her. Then: ‘Better, dear girl,’ she whispered, ‘than with me.’

  ‘No!’

  She nodded. ‘Better, by far.’

  ‘How can you say it? When, if I had stayed with you—if I had never gone with Gentleman to Briar—Oh, I should never have left your side!’

  I hid my face in the folds of her skirt, and wept again.

  ‘Hush, now,’ she said. She stroked my head. ‘Hush, now . . .’ Her gown was rough upon my cheek, the prison chair hard against my side. But I sat and let her soothe me, as though I might be a child; and at last we both fell silent. There was a little window, high in the wall of her cell, that let in two or three strips of sunlight: we watched them creep across the stone flags of the floor. I never knew light could creep like that. It crept, like fingers. And when it had crept almost from one wall to another, I heard a step, then felt the matron lean to lay her hand upon my shoulder.—‘It’s time,’ she murmured. ‘Say your good-byes, now. All right?’

  We stood. I looked at Mrs Sucksby. Her gaze was clear still, but her cheek, in a moment, had changed—was grey, and damp, like clay. She began to tremble.

  ‘Dear Sue,’ she said, ‘you have been good to me—’ She drew me to her, and put her mouth against my ear. It was cold as the mouth on a corpse, already; but twitched, like it might have been palsied. ‘Dear girl—’ she began, in a broken whisper. I almost drew back. Don’t say it! I thought.—Though I do not know if I could have said what it was I wished she would not say; I only knew I was suddenly afraid. Don’t say it! She gripped me tighter. ‘Dear girl—’ Then the whisper grew fierce. ‘Watch me, tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Watch me. Don’t cover your eyes. And then, if you should ever hear hard things of me when I am gone, think back—’

  ‘I will!’ I said. I said it, half in terror, half in relief. ‘I will!’—Those were my last words to her. Then the matron I suppose must have touched me again; must have led me, stumbling, into the passage beyond the gate.—I don’t recall. What I remember next is passing through the prison yard, feeling the sun come upon my face—and giving a cry, turning away—thinking, how queer and wrong and awful it was, that the sun should shine, still shine, even now, even there . . .

  There came a keeper’s voice. I heard the rumble of it, but not the words. He was asking something of the matron at my side. She nodded.

  ‘One of ’em,’ she said, with a glance at me. ‘The other came this morning . . .’

  I only wondered later what she meant. For now, I was too dazed and miserable to wonder anything. I walked, in a sort of trance, back to Lant Street—only keeping, as much as I could, to the shadows, out of the blazing sun. At the door to Mr Ibbs’s shop I found boys, chalking nooses on the step—they saw me come and ran off, shrieking. I was used to that, however, and let them run; but kicked the nooses away. Inside, I stood a minute to get my breath, and to look about me—at the locksmith’s counter, streaked with dust; and the tools and key-blanks, that had lost their shine; and the hanging baize curtain, that had got torn from its loops and was drooping. When I walked through to the kitchen, my footsteps crunched: for sometime—I couldn’t say when—the brazier had been knocked from its stand, and coals and cinders still lay scattered on the floor. It seemed too ordinary a thing to do, to sweep them up, set the brazier right; and anyway, the floor was ruined—broken and gaping, from where the police had torn up boards. Underneath it seemed dark, till you brought a light: then you could see earth, two feet below—damp earth, with bones and oyster shells in it, and be
etles and wriggling worms.

  The table had been pushed to the corner of the room. I went and sat at it, in Mrs Sucksby’s old chair. Charley Wag lay beneath it—poor Charley Wag, he had not barked since Mr Ibbs had jerked so hard on his collar: he saw me now, and beat his tail, and came and let me tug his ears; but then he slunk away and lay with his head on his paws.

  I sat, as still and quiet as him, for almost an hour; then Dainty came. She had brought us a supper. I didn’t want it, and neither did she; but she had stolen a purse to buy it, and so I got out bowls and spoons and we ate it slowly, in silence, looking all the time, as we did, at the clock—the old Dutch clock on the mantel—that we knew was steadily ticking, ticking away the last few hours of Mrs Sucksby’s life . . . I meant to feel them, if I could. I meant to feel each minute, each second. ‘Won’t you let me stay?’ said Dainty, when it came time for her to go. ‘It don’t seem right, you being here all on your own.’ But I said that that was how I wanted it; and finally she kissed my cheek and went; and then it was just me and Charley Wag again, and the house, growing dark about us. I lit more lights. I thought of Mrs Sucksby, in her bright cell. I thought of her, in all the ways I had seen her, not there, but here, in her own kitchen: dosing babies, sipping tea, lifting up her face so I might kiss it. I thought of her carving meat, wiping her mouth, and yawning . . . The clock ticked on—quicker, and louder, it seemed to me, than it had ever ticked before. I put my head upon the table, upon my arms. How tired I was! I closed my eyes. I could not help it. I meant to keep awake; but I closed my eyes, and slept.

  I slept, for once, without dreaming; and I was woken by a curious sound: the tramping and scuffing of feet, and the rising and falling of voices, in the street outside. I thought, in my half-sleep: ‘It must be a holiday today, there must be a fair. What day is it?’—Then I opened my eyes. The candles I had lit had burned to puddles of wax, and their flames were like so many ghosts; but the sight of them made me remember where I was. It was seven o’clock in the morning. Mrs Sucksby was going to be hanged in three hours’ time. The people I could hear were on their way to Horsemonger Lane, to get their places for watching. They had come down Lant Street first, for a look at the house.

  There came more of them, as the morning went on. ‘Was it here?’ I could hear them say. And then: ‘Here’s the very identical spot. They say the blood ran so fast and so hard, the walls were painted in it.’—‘They say the murdered chap called out against heaven.’—‘They say the woman stifled babies.’—‘They say he’d bilked her of rent.’—‘Puts you into a creep, don’t it?’—‘Serves him right.’—‘They say—’

  They would come, and stop a minute, and then pass on; some found their way to the back of the house and rattled the kitchen door, stood at the window and tried to see through the chinks in the shutters; but I kept everything locked and fast. I don’t know if they knew I was inside. Now and then a boy would call: ‘Let us in! A shilling, if you’ll show us the room!’ and, ‘Hoo! hoo! I’m the ghost of the feller as was stabbed, come back to haunt you!’—but I think they did it to tease their friends, not to tease me. I hated to hear them, though; and Charley Wag, poor thing, kept close at my side, and shivered and started and tried to bark, with every call and rattle.—At last I took him upstairs, where the sounds were fainter.

  But then, after a while the sounds grew fainter still; and that was worse, for it meant that the people had all passed on, found their spots for watching from, and it was almost time. I left Charley then, and climbed the next set of stairs alone—climbed them slowly, like a girl with limbs of lead; then stood at the attic door, afraid to go in. There was the bed I had been born in. There was the wash-stand, the bit of oil-cloth tacked to the wall. The last time I had come here, Gentleman had been alive and drunk and dancing with Dainty and John, downstairs. I had stood at the window, put my thumb to the glass, made the frost turn to dirty water. Mrs Sucksby had come and stroked my hair . . . I went to the window, now. I went, and looked, and almost swooned away, for the streets of the Borough, that had been dark and empty then, were bright, and filled with people—so many people!—people standing in the road, stopping the traffic; and besides them, people on walls, on sills, clinging to posts and trees and chimneys. Some were holding children up, some were craning for a better view. Most had their hands across their eyes, to keep the sun off. All had their faces turned one way.

  They were looking at the roof of the gate of the gaol. The scaffold was up, the rope already on it. A man was walking about, examining the drop.

  I saw him do it, feeling almost calm, feeling almost sick. I remembered what Mrs Sucksby had asked, with her last words to me: that I should watch her. I had said I would. I had thought I should bear it. It seemed such a little thing to bear, compared with what she must suffer . . . Now the man had taken the rope in his hands and was testing the length of it. The people in the crowd stretched their necks further, so they might see. I began to be afraid. Still I thought, however, that I would watch, to the end. Still I said to myself, ‘I will. I will. She did it for my own mother; I’ll do it for her. What else can I do for her now, except this?’

  But I said it; and then came the slow, steady striking of ten o’clock. The man at the rope stood down, the door to the prison steps was thrown open, the chaplain showed himself upon the roof, and then the first of the keepers. —I couldn’t do it. I put my back to the window and covered my face with my hands.

  I knew what followed, then, from the sounds that rose up from the streets. The people had fallen silent at the striking of the clock, the coming of the chaplain; now I heard them all start up with hisses and with hoots—that, I knew, was for the hangman. I heard the very spreading of the sound about the crowd, like oil on water. When the hoots grew louder, I knew the hangman had made some sign or bow. Then, in an instant, the sound turned again, moved faster, like a shiver, like a thrill, through the streets: the cry was sent out: ‘Hats off!’, and was mixed with bursts of dreadful laughter. Mrs Sucksby must have come. They were trying to see her. I grew sicker than ever, imagining all those strangers’ eyes straining out of their sockets to see what figure she would make, yet not being able to look, myself; but I could not, I could not. I could not turn, or tear the sweating hands from before my face. I could only listen. I heard the laughter change to murmurs and calls for hush: that meant the chaplain was saying prayers. The hush went on, and on. My own heartbeats seemed to fill it. Then the Amen was said; and even while the word was still travelling about the streets, other parts of the crowd—the parts that were nearest the gaol and could see best—broke out in an uneasy sort of murmur. The murmur grew louder, got taken up by every throat—then turned, to something more like a moan, or groan . . . And I knew that meant that they had led her up to the scaffold; that they were tying her hands, and covering up her face, and putting, about her neck, the noose . . .

  And then, and then, there came a moment—just a single moment, less time than it takes to say it—of perfect, awful stillness: of the stopping of babies’ cries, the holding of breaths, the clapping of hands to hearts and open mouths, the slowing of blood, the shrinking back of thought: This cannot be, this will not be, they won’t, they can’t—And, next, too soon, too quick, the rattle of the drop, the shrieks, as it fell—the groaning gasp, when the rope found its length, as if the crowd had a single stomach and a giant hand had punched it.

  Now I did open my eyes, just for a second. I opened them, and turned, and saw—not Mrs Sucksby, not Mrs Sucksby at all, but what might have been a dangling tailor’s figure, done up to look like a woman, in a corset and a gown, but with lifeless arms, and a drooping head like a bag of canvas stuffed with straw—

  I moved away. I did not weep. I went to the bed and lay upon it. The sounds changed again, as people found their breaths and voices—unstopped their mouths, unloosed their babies, shuffled and danced about. There came more hoots, more cries, more dreadful laughter; and finally, cheers. I think I had used to cheer myself, at other han
gings. I never thought what the cheering meant. Now I listened as those hurrahs went up, and it seemed to me, even in my grief, that I understood. She’s dead, they might as well have been calling. The thought was rising, quicker than blood, in every heart. She’s dead—and we’re alive.

  Dainty came again that night, to bring me another supper. We didn’t eat any of it. We only wept together, and talked of what we had seen. She had watched with Phil and some other of Mr Ibbs’s nephews, from a spot close to the gaol. John had said only pigeons watched from there. He knew a man with a roof, he said; and went off to climb it. I wondered if he had watched at all; but didn’t say that to Dainty. She herself had seen everything, except the final drop. Phil, who had seen even that, said the fall was a clean one. He thought it was true, after all, what people said, about how the hangman put the knot, when it came to dropping women. Everyone agreed, anyway, that Mrs Sucksby had held herself very boldly, and died very game.

  I remembered that dangling tailor’s figure, gripped tight in its corset and gown; and I wondered how, if she had shuddered and kicked, we ever should have known it.

  But that was something not to be thought on. There were other things to see to, now. I had become an orphan again; and as orphans everywhere must, I began, in the two or three weeks that followed, to look about me, with a sinking heart; to understand that the world was hard and dark, and I must make my own way through it, quite alone. I had no money. The rent on the shop and house had fallen due in August: a man had come and banged on the door, and only gone because Dainty bared her arms and said she would hit him. He had left us alone since then. I think the house had got known as a murder-house, and no-one wanted to take it. But I knew they would, in time. I knew the man would come back one day, with other men, and break in the door. Where would I live, then? How should I do, on my own? I might, I supposed, take a regular job, at a dairy, a dyer’s, a furrier’s—The very thought of it, however, made me want to be sick. Everybody in my world knew that regular work was only another name for being robbed and dying of boredom. I should rather stay crooked. Dainty said she knew three girls who worked, in a gang, as street-thieves, Woolwich-way, and wanted a fourth . . . But she said it, not quite catching my eye; for we both knew that street-thieving was a pretty poor lay, compared to what I was used to.