Fingersmith

  Then the hour sounded, and I lifted my hand and knocked. A man’s thin voice called out for me to enter.

  I saw Maud first: she was sitting at a desk with a book before her, her hands upon the covers. Her hands were bare, she had her little white gloves laid neatly by, but she sat beside a shaded lamp, that threw all its light upon her fingers, and they seemed pale as ashes upon the page of print. Above her was a window. Its glass had yellow paint upon it. All about her, over all the walls of the room, were shelves; and the shelves had books on—you never saw so many. A stunning amount. How many stories does one man need? I looked at them and shuddered. Maud rose, closing the book that was before her. She took up the white gloves and drew them back on.

  She looked to her right, to the end of the room that, because of the open door, I could not see. A cross voice said,

  ‘What is it?’

  I pushed the door further, and saw another painted window, more shelves, more books, and a second great desk. This one was piled with papers, and had another shaded lamp. Behind it sat Mr Lilly, Maud’s old uncle; and to describe him as I saw him then, is to tell everything.

  He wore a velvet coat, and a velvet cap, that had a stub of red wool jutting from it where a tassel might once have hung. In his hand there was a pen, that he held clear of the paper; and the hand itself was dark, as Maud’s was fair—for it was stained all over with India ink, like a regular man’s might be stained with tobacco. His hair, however, was white. His chin was shaved bare. His mouth was small and had no colour, but his tongue—that was hard and pointed—was almost black, from where he must have given a lick to his finger and thumb, when turning pages.

  His eyes were damp and feeble. Before them he had a pair of glasses, shaded green. He saw me and said,

  ‘Who the devil are you?’

  Maud worked at the buttons at her wrist.

  ‘This is my new maid, Uncle,’ she said quietly. ‘Miss Smith.’

  Behind Mr Lilly’s green glasses, I saw his eyes screw themselves up and grow damper.

  ‘Miss Smith,’ he said, looking at me but talking to his niece. ‘Is she a papist, like the last one?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Maud. ‘I have not asked her. Are you a papist, Susan?’

  I didn’t know what that was. But I said, ‘No, miss. I don’t think so.’

  Mr Lilly at once put his hand across his ear.

  ‘I don’t care for her voice,’ he said. ‘Can’t she be silent? Can’t she be soft?’

  Maud smiled. ‘She can, Uncle,’ she said.

  ‘Then why is she here, disturbing me now?’

  ‘She has come to fetch me.’

  ‘To fetch you?’ he said. ‘Did the clock sound?’

  He put his hand to the fob of his waistcoat and drew out an ancient great gold repeater, tilting his head to catch the chime, and opening his mouth. I looked at Maud, who stood, still fumbling with the fastening of her glove; and I took a step, meaning to help her. But when he saw me do that, the old man jerked like Mr Punch in the puppet-show, and out came his black tongue.

  ‘The finger, girl!’ he cried. ‘The finger! The finger!’

  He held his own dark finger to me, and shook his pen until the ink flew: I saw later that the piece of carpet underneath his desk was quite black, and so guessed he shook his pen rather often. But at that moment he looked so strange, and spoke so shrilly, my heart quite failed me. I thought he must be prone to fits. I took another step, and that made him shriek still harder—at last Maud came to me and touched my arm.

  ‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said softly. ‘He means only this, look.’ And she showed me how, at my feet, there was set into the dark floorboards, in the space between the doorway and the edge of the carpet, a flat brass hand with a pointing finger.

  ‘Uncle does not care to have servants’ eyes upon his books,’ she said, ‘for fear of spoiling them. Uncle asks that no servant advance further into the room than this mark here.’

  She placed the toe of her slipper upon the brass. Her face was smooth as wax, her voice like water.

  ‘Does she see it?’ said her uncle.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered, drawing back her toe. ‘She sees it very well. She will know next time—shan’t you, Susan?’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ I said—hardly knowing what I should say, or how or who I should look at; for it was certainly news to me, that gazing at a line of print could spoil it. But what did I know, about that? Besides which, the old man was so queer, and had given me such a turn, I thought that anything might have been true. ‘Yes, miss,’ I said, a second time; and then: ‘Yes, sir.’

  Then I made a curtsey. Mr Lilly snorted, looking hard at me through his green glasses. Maud fastened her glove, and we turned to leave him.

  ‘Make her soft, Maud,’ he said, as she pulled the door behind us.

  ‘I will, Uncle,’ she murmured.

  Now the passage seemed dimmer than ever. She took me round the gallery and up the staircase to the second floor, where her rooms were. Here there was a bit of lunch laid out, and coffee in another silver pot; but when she saw what Cook had sent up, she made a face.

  ‘Eggs,’ she said. ‘Done soft, like you must be. What did you think of my uncle, Susan?’

  I said, ‘I’m sure he’s very clever, miss.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘And writing, I believe, a great big dictionary?’

  She blinked, then nodded. ‘A dictionary, yes. A great many years’ labour. We are presently at F.’

  She held my gaze, as if to see what I thought of that.

  ‘Astonishing,’ I said.

  She blinked again, then put a spoon to the side of the first of the eggs and took its head off. Then she looked at the white and yellow mess inside it and made another face, and put it from her. ‘You must eat this for me,’ she said. ‘You must eat them all. And I shall have the bread-and-butter.’

  There were three eggs there. I don’t know what she saw in them, to be so choosy over. She passed them to me and, as I ate them, she sat watching me, taking bites of bread and sips of coffee, and once rubbing for a minute at a spot upon her glove, saying, ‘Here is a drop of yolk, look, come upon my finger. Oh, how horrid the yellow is, against the white!’

  I saw her frowning at that mark, then, until the meal was finished. When Margaret came to take the tray away, she rose and went into her bedroom; and when she came back her gloves were white again—she had been to her drawer and got a new pair. The old ones I found later, as I put coal on her bedroom fire: she had cast them there, at the back of the grate, and the flames had made the kid shrink, they looked like gloves for a doll.

  She was certainly, then, what you would call original. But was she mad, or even half-way simple, as Gentleman said at Lant Street? I did not think so, then. I thought her only pretty lonely, and pretty bookish and bored—as who wouldn’t be, in a house like that? When we had finished our lunch she went to the window: the sky was grey and threatening rain, but she said she had a fancy to go out walking. She said, ‘Now, what shall I wear for it?’, and we stood at the door of her little black press, looking over her coats, her bonnets and her boots. That killed nearly an hour. I think that’s why she did it. When I was clumsy over the lacing of her shoe, she put her hands upon mine and said,

  ‘Be slower. Why should we hurry? There is no-one to hurry for, is there?’

  She smiled, but her eyes were sad. I said,

  ‘No, miss.’

  In the end she put on a pale grey cloak, and over her gloves she drew mittens. She had a little leather bag kept ready, that held a handkerchief, a bottle of water, and scissors: she had me carry this, not saying what the scissors were for—I supposed she meant to cut flowers. She took me down the great staircase to the door, and Mr Way heard us and came running to throw back the bolts. ‘How do you do, Miss Maud?’ he said, making a bow; and then: ‘And you, Miss Smith.’ The hall was dark. When we went outside we stood blinking, our hands at our eyes against the sky and the watery sun
.

  The house had seemed grim when I first saw it, at night, in the fog, and I should like to say it seemed less grim when you saw it by daylight; but it seemed worse. I suppose it had been grand enough once, but now its chimneys were leaning like drunks, and its roof was green with moss and birds’ nests. It was covered all over with a dead kind of creeper, or with the stains where a creeper had long ago crept; and all about the foot of the walls were the chopped-off trunks of ivy. It had a great front door, split down the middle; but rain had made the wood swell, they only ever opened up one half. Maud had to press her crinoline flat, and walk quite sideways, in order to leave the house at all.

  It was odd to see her stepping out of that gloomy place, like a pearl coming out of an oyster.

  It was odder to watch her going back in, and see the oyster shell open, then shut at her back.

  But there was not much to stay for, out in the park. There was that avenue of trees, that led up to the house. There was the bare bit of gravel that the house was set in. There was a place they called a herb-garden, that grew mostly nettles; and an overgrown wood with blocked-off paths. At the edge of the wood was a little stone windowless building Maud said was an ice-house. ‘Let us just cross to the door and look inside,’ she would say, and she’d stand and gaze at the cloudy blocks of ice until she shivered. At the back of the ice-house there started a muddy lane, that led you to a shut-up old red chapel surrounded by yews. This was the queerest, quietest place I ever saw. I never heard a bird sing there. I didn’t like to go to it, but Maud took that way often. For at the chapel there were graves, of all the Lillys that had come before her; and one of these was a plain stone tomb, that was the grave of her mother.

  She could sit and look at that for an hour at a time, hardly blinking. Her scissors she used, not for gathering flowers, but only for keeping down the grass that grew about it; and where her mother’s name was picked out in letters of lead she would rub with her wet handkerchief to take off stains.

  She would rub until her hand shook and her breath came quick. She would never let me help her. That first day, when I tried, she said,

  ‘It is a daughter’s duty, to tend to the grave of her mother. Walk off a while, and don’t watch me.’

  So I left her to it, and wandered among the tombs. The ground was hard as iron and my boots made it ring. I walked and thought of my own mother. She didn’t have a grave, they don’t give graves to murderesses. They put their bodies in quicklime.

  Did you ever pour salt on the back of a slug? John Vroom used to do it, and then laugh to see the slug fizz. He said to me once,

  ‘Your mother fizzed like that. She fizzed, and ten men died that smelt it!’

  He never said it again. I took up a pair of kitchen shears and put them to his neck. I said, ‘Bad blood carries. Bad blood comes out.’ And the look on his face was something!

  I wondered how Maud would look, if she knew what bad blood flowed in me.

  But she never thought to ask. She only sat, gazing hard at her mother’s name, while I wandered and stamped my feet. Then at last she sighed and looked about her, passed her hand across her eyes, and drew up her hood.

  ‘This is a melancholy place,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk a little further.’

  She led me away from the circle of yews, back down the lane between the hedges, then away from the wood and the ice-house, to the edge of the park. Here, if you followed a path that ran alongside a wall, you reached a gate. She had a key for it. It took you to the bank of a river. You could not see the river from the house. There was an ancient landing-place there, half rotted away, and a little upturned punt that made a kind of seat. The river was narrow, its water very quiet and muddy and filled with darting fish. All along the bank there grew rushes. They grew thick and high. Maud walked slowly beside them, gazing nervously into the darkness they made where they met the water. I supposed she was frightened of snakes. Then she plucked up a reed and broke it, and sat with the tip of it pressed against her plump mouth.

  I sat beside her. The day was windless, but cold, and so quiet it hurt the ears. The air smelled thin.

  ‘Pretty stretch of water,’ I said, for politeness’ sake.

  A barge went by. The men saw us and touched their hats. I waved.

  ‘Bound for London,’ said Maud, looking after them.

  ‘London?’

  She nodded. I didn’t then know—for, who would have guessed it?—that that trifling bit of water was the Thames. I thought she meant the boat would join a bigger river further on. Still, the idea that it would reach the city—maybe sail under London Bridge—made me sigh. I turned to watch it follow a bend in the water; then it passed from sight. The sound of its engine faded, the smoke from its chimney joined the grey of the sky and was lost. The air was thin again. Maud still sat with the tip of the broken reed against her lip, her gaze very vague. I took up stones and began to throw them into the water. She watched me do it, winking at every splash. Then she led me back up to the house.

  We went back to her room. She got out a bit of sewing—a colourless, shapeless thing, I don’t know if it was meant to be a tablecloth, or what. I never saw her working on anything else. She sewed in her gloves, very badly— making crooked stitches and then ripping half of them out. It made me nervous. We sat together before the spluttering fire, and talked in a weak kind of way—I forget what of—and then it grew dark, and a maid brought lights; and then the wind picked up and the windows began to rattle worse than ever. I said to myself, ‘Dear God, let Gentleman come soon! I think a week of this will kill me’; and I yawned. Maud caught my eye. Then she also yawned. That made me yawn harder. At last she put her work aside and tucked up her feet and laid her head upon the arm of the sofa, and seemed to sleep.

  That’s all there was to do there, until the clock struck seven. When she heard that she gave a bigger yawn than ever, put her fingers to her eyes, and rose. Seven o’clock was when she must change her dress again—and change her gloves, for ones of silk—to have supper with her uncle.

  She was two hours with him. I saw nothing of that of course, but took my dinner in the kitchen, with the servants. They told me that, when he had eaten, Mr Lilly liked his niece to sit and read to him in the drawing-room. That was his idea of fun, I suppose, for they said he hardly ever had guests, and if he did then they were always other bookish gentlemen, from Oxford and London; and it was his pleasure, then, to have Maud read books to them all.

  ‘Does she do nothing, poor girl, but read?’ I asked.

  ‘Her uncle won’t let her,’ said a parlourmaid. ‘That’s how much he prizes her. Won’t hardly let her out—fears she’ll break in two. It’s him, you know, that keeps her all the time in gloves.’

  ‘That’s enough!’ said Mrs Stiles. ‘What would Miss Maud say?’

  Then the parlourmaid fell silent. I sat and thought about Mr Lilly, with his red cap and his gold repeater, his green eye-glasses, his black finger and tongue; and then about Maud, frowning over her eggs, rubbing hard at her mother’s grave. It seemed a queer kind of prizing, that would make a girl like her, like that.

  I thought I knew all about her. Of course, I knew nothing. I had my dinner, listening to the servants talk, not saying much; and then Mrs Stiles asked me, Should I like to come and take my pudding with her and Mr Way, in her own pantry? I supposed I ought to. I sat gazing at the picture made all of hair. Mr Way read us pieces from the Maidenhead paper, and at every story—that were all about bulls breaking fences, or parsons making interesting sermons in church—Mrs Stiles shook her head, saying, ‘Well, did you ever hear the like?’ and Mr Way would chuckle and say, ‘You’ll see, Miss Smith, that we are quite a match for London, news-wise!’

  Above his voice came the faint sound of laughter and scraping chairs, that was Cook and the scullery-maids and William Inker and the knife-boy, enjoying themselves in the kitchen.

  Then the great house clock struck, and immediately after it the servants’ bell sounded; and that meant that Mr
Lilly was ready to be seen by Mr Way into his bed, and that Maud was ready to be put by me into hers.

  I almost lost my way again, on my way back up; but even so, when she saw me she said,

  ‘Is that you, Susan? You are quicker than Agnes.’ She smiled. ‘I think you are handsomer, too. I don’t think a girl can be handsome—do you?—with red hair. But nor with fair hair, either. I should like to be dark, Susan!’

  She had had wine with her supper, and I had had beer. I should say we were both, in our own ways, rather tipsy. She had me stand beside her at the great silvery glass above her fireplace, and drew my head to hers, to compare the colours of our hair. ‘Yours is the darker,’ she said.

  Then she moved away from the fire, for me to put her into her nightgown.

  It was not much like undressing the chair in our old kitchen, after all. She stood shivering, saying, ‘Quick! I shall freeze! Oh, heavens!’—for her bedroom was as draughty as everywhere else there, and my fingers were cold and made her jump. They grew warm, though, after a minute. Stripping a lady is heavy work. Her corset was long, with a busk of steel; her waist, as I think I have said, was narrow: the kind of waist the doctors speak against, that gives a girl an illness. Her crinoline was made of watchspring. Her hair, inside its net, was fixed with half a pound of pins, and a comb of silver. Her petticoats and shimmy were calico. Underneath it all, however, she was soft and smooth as butter. Too soft, I thought her. I imagined her bruising. She was like a lobster without its shell. She stood in her stockings while I fetched her nightgown, her arms above her head, her eyes shut tight; and for a second I turned, and looked at her. My gaze was nothing to her. I saw her bosom, her bottom, her feather and everything and—apart from the feather, which was brown as a duck’s—she was as pale as a statue on a pillar in a park. So pale she was, she seemed to shine.