Fingersmith (25 page)

He waved his hand, and Dr Graves and the woman came forward. I said,

'It's not me you want! What are you doing? Mrs Rivers? I'm Susan Smith! Gentleman! Gentleman, tell them!'

Dr Christie shook his head.

'Still keeping up the old, sad fiction?' he said to Gentleman.

Gentleman nodded and said nothing, as if he were too unhappy to speak. I hope he was! He turned and took down one of the bags—one of Maud's mother's bags. Dr Christie held me tighter. 'Now,' he said, 'how can you be Susan Smith, late of Whelk Street, Mayfair? Don't you know there's no such place? Come, you do know it. And we shall have you admitting it, though it take us a year. Now, don't twist so, Mrs Rivers! You are spoiling your handsome dress.'

I had struggled against his grip. At his words, I grew slack. I gazed at my sleeve of silk, and at my own arm, that had got plump and smooth with careful feeding; and then at the bag at my feet, with its letters of brass—the
M
, and the
L
.

It was in that second that I guessed, at last, the filthy trick that Gentleman had played on me.

I howled.

'You bloody swine!' I cried, twisting again, and pulling towards him. 'You fuckster! Oh!'

He stood in the doorway of the coach, making it tilt. The doctor gripped me harder and his face grew stern.

'There's no place for words like those in my house, Mrs Rivers,' he said.

'You sod,' I said to him. 'Can't you see what he's done? Can't you see the dodge of it? It ain't me you want, it's—'

I still pulled, and he still held me; but now I looked past him, to the swaying coach. Gentleman had moved back, his hand before his face. Beyond him, the light in bars upon her from the louvred blinds, sat Maud. Her face was thin, her hair was dull. Her dress was worn with use, like a servant's dress. Her eyes were wild, with tears starting in them; but beyond the tears, her gaze was hard. Hard as marble, hard as brass.

Hard as a pearl, and the grit that lies inside it.

Dr Christie saw me looking.

'Now, why do you stare?' he said. 'You know your own maid, I think?' I could not speak. She could, however. She said, in a trembling voice, not her own:

'My own poor mistress. Oh! My heart is breaking!'

You thought her a pigeon. Pigeon, my arse. That bitch knew everything. She had been in on it from the start.

T
he start, I think I know too well. It is the first of my mistakes.

I imagine a table, slick with blood. The blood is my mother's. There is too much of it. There is so much of it, I think it runs, like ink. I think, to save the boards beneath, the women have set down china bowls; and so the silences between my mother's cries are filled—
drip drop! drip drop
!—with what might be the staggered beating of clocks. Beyond the beat come other, fainter cries: the shrieks of lunatics, the shouts and scolds of nurses. For this is a madhouse. My mother is mad. The table has straps upon it to keep her from plunging to the floor; another strap separates her jaws, to prevent the biting of her tongue; another keeps apart her legs, so that I might emerge from between them. When I am born, the straps remain: the women fear she will tear me in two! They put me upon her bosom and my mouth finds out her breast. I suck, and the house falls silent about me. There is only, still, that falling blood—
drip drop! drip, drop
!—the beat telling off the first few minutes of my life, the last of hers. For soon, the clocks run slow. My mother's bosom rises, falls, rises again; then sinks for ever.

I feel it, and suck harder. Then the women pluck me from her. And when I weep, they hit me.

I pass my first ten years a daughter to the nurses of the house. I believe they love me. There is a tabby cat upon the wards, and I think they keep me, rather as they keep that cat, a thing to pet and dress with ribbons. I wear a slate-grey gown cut like their own, an apron and a cap; they give me a belt with a ring of miniature keys upon it, and call me 'little nurse'. I sleep with each of them in turn, in their own beds, and follow them in their duties upon the madhouse wards. The house is a large one—seems larger to me, I suppose—and divided in two: one side for female lunatics, one side for male. I see only the female. I never mind them. Some of them kiss and pet me, as the nurses do. Some of them touch my hair and weep. I remind them of their daughters. Others are troublesome, and these I am encouraged to stand before and strike with a wooden wand, cut to my hand, until the nurses laugh and say they never saw anything so droll.

Thus I learn the rudiments of discipline and order; and incidentally apprehend the attitudes of insanity. This will all prove useful, later.

When I am old enough to reason I am given a gold ring said to be my father's, the portrait of a lady called my mother, and understand I am an orphan; but, never having known a parent's love—or rather, having known the favours of a score of mothers—I am not greatly troubled by the news. I think the nurses clothe and feed me, for my own sake. I am a plain-faced child but, in that childless world, pass for a beauty. I have a sweet singing voice and an eye for letters. I suppose I shall live out all my days a nurse, contentedly teasing lunatics until I die.

So we believe, at nine and ten. Some time in my eleventh year, I am summoned to the nurses' parlour by the matron of the house. I imagine she means to make me some treat. I am wrong. Instead, she greets me strangely, and will not meet my eye. There is a person with her—a gentleman, she says—but then, the word means little to me. It will mean more, in time. 'Step closer,' the matron says. The gentleman watches. He wears a suit of black, and a pair of black silk gloves. He holds a cane with an ivory knob, upon which he leans, the better to study me. His hair is black tending to white, his cheek cadaverous, his eyes imperfectly hidden by
a
pair of coloured glasses. An ordinary child might shrink from gazing at him; but I know nothing of ordinary children, and am afraid of no-one. I walk until I stand before him. He parts his lips, to pass his tongue across them. His tongue is dark at the tip.

'She's undersize,' he says; 'but makes enough noise with her feet, for all that. How's her voice?'

His own voice is low, tremulous, complaining, like the shadow of a shivering man.

'Say a word to the gentleman,' says the matron quietly. 'Say how you are.'

'I am very well,' I say. Perhaps I speak stoutly. The gentleman winces.

'That will do,' he says, raising his hand. Then: 'I hope you can whisper? I hope you can nod?'

I nod. 'Oh yes.'

'I hope you can be silent?'

'I can.'

'Be silent, then.—That's better.' He turns to the matron. 'I see she wears her mother's likeness. Very good. It will remind her of her mother's fate, and may serve to keep her from sharing it. I don't care at all for her lip, however. It is too plump. It has a bad promise. Likewise her back, which is soft, and slouches. And what of her leg? I shan't want a thick-legged girl. Why do you hide her leg behind so long a skirt? Did I ask for that?'

The matron colours. 'It has been a harmless sport of the women, sir, to keep her dressed in the costume of the house.'

'Have I paid you, to provide sport for nurses?'

He moves his stick upon the rug, and works his jaws. He turns again to me, but speaks to her. He says, 'How well does she read? How fair is her hand? Come, give her a piece of text and let her demonstrate.'

The matron hands me an open Bible. I read a passage from it, and again the gentleman winces. 'Softly!' he says, until I speak it in a murmur. Then he has me write the passage out while he looks on.

'A girl's hand,' he says, when I have finished, 'and burdened with serifs.' But he sounds pleased, nonetheless.

I am also pleased. I understand from his words that I have marked the paper with the marks of angels. Later I will wish that I had scrawled and blot-ted the page. The fair characters are my undoing. The gentleman leans harder upon his stick and tilts his head so low I can see, above the wire of his spectacles, the bloodless rims of his eyes.

'Well, miss,' he says, 'how should you like to come and live in my house? Don't push your pert lip at me, mind! How should you like to come to me, and learn neat ways and plain letters?'

He might have struck me. 'I should like it not at all,' I say at once.

The matron says, 'For shame, Maud!'

The gentleman snorts. 'Perhaps,' he says, 'she has her mother's unlucky temper after all. She has her dainty foot, at least. So you like to stamp, miss? Well, my house is a large one. We shall find a room for you to stamp in, far away from my fine ears; and you may work yourself into fits there, no-one shall mind you; and perhaps we shall mind you so little we shall forget to feed you, and then you shall die. How should you like that—hmm?'

He rises and dusts down his coat, that has no dust upon it. He gives some instruction to the matron and does not look at me again. When he has gone, I take up the Bible I have read from and throw it to the floor.

'I
will
not go!' I cry. 'He
shall
not make me!'

The matron draws me to her. I have seen her take a whip to fractious lunatics, but now she clutches me to her apron and weeps like a girl, and tells me gravely what my future is to be, in the house of my uncle.

Some men have farmers raise them veal-calves. My mother's brother has had the house of nurses raise him me. Now he means to take me home and make me ready for the roast. All at once, I must give up my little madhouse gown, my ring of keys, my wand: he sends his housekeeper with a suit of clothes, to dress me to his fancy. She brings me boots, wool gloves, a gown of buff—a hateful, girlish gown, cut to the calf, and stiffened from the shoulder to the waist with ribs of bone. She pulls the laces tight and, at my complaints, pulls them tighter. The nurses watch her, sighing. When it comes time for her to take me, they kiss me and hide their eyes. Then one of them quickly puts a pair of scissors to my head, to take a curl of hair to keep inside a locket; and, the others seeing her do that, they seize the shears from her, or take up knives and scissors of their own, and pluck and grasp at me until my hair tears at the root. They reach and squabble over the falling tresses like gulls—their voices rousing the lunatics in their own close rooms, making them shriek. My uncle's servant hurries me from them. She has a carriage with a driver. The madhouse gate shuts hard behind us.

'What a place to raise a girl in!' she says, passing a handkerchief across her lip.

I will not speak to her. My strait gown cuts me and makes my breath come quick, and my boots chafe at my ankles. My wool gloves prickle—at last I tear them from my hands. She watches me do it, complacently. 'Got a temper, have you?' she says. She has a basket of knitting and a parcel of food. There are bread rolls, a packet of salt and three white eggs, boiled hard. She rolls two of the eggs across her skirt, to break their shells. The flesh inside is grey, the yolk as dry as powder. I will remember the scent of it. The third egg she places on my lap. I will not eat it, but let it jerk there until it falls upon the carriage floor and is spoiled. 'Tut tut,' she says at that. She takes out her knitting, then her head droops and she sleeps. I sit beside her, stiff, in a miserable rage. The horse goes slowly, the journey seems long. Sometimes we pass through trees. Then my face shows in the window-glass, dark as blood.

I have seen no house but the madhouse I was born in. I am used to grim-ness and solitude, high walls and shuttered windows. It is the stillness of my uncle's house that bewilders and frightens me, that first day. The carriage stops at a door, split down the middle into two high, bulging leaves: as we watch, they are tugged from within and seem to tremble. The man who opens them is dressed in dark silk breeches and what I take to be a powdered hat. 'That's Mr Way, your uncle's steward,' says the woman, her face beside mine. Mr Way observes me, then looks at her; I think she must make some gesture with her eyes. The driver puts the steps down for us, but I will not let him take my hand; and when Mr Way makes me a bow, I think he does it to tease—for I have many times seen nurses curtsey, laughing, to lady lunatics. He shows me past him, into a darkness that seems to lap at my buff gown. When he closes the door, the dark at once grows deeper. My ears feel full, as if with water or with wax. That is the silence, that my uncle cultivates in his house, as other men grow vines and flowering creepers.