Fingersmith (51 page)

If I had a dart, I think, I might threaten them with it, make Mrs Sucksby give up her keys. If I had a broken bottle. If I had a knife.

Richard lights his cigarette, narrows his eyes against the smoke and looks me over. 'Pretty dress,' he says. 'Just the colour for you.' He reaches for one or the yellow ribbon trimmings, and I hit his hand away. Tut, tut,' he says then. Temper not much improved, I fear. We were in hopes that you would sweeten up in confinement. As apples do. And veal-calves.'

'Go to hell, will you?' I say.

He smiles. Mrs Sucksby colours, then laughs. 'Hark at that,' she says-'Common girl says that, sounds awfully vulgar. Lady says it, sounds almost sweet. Still, dear'—here she leans across the table, drops her voice—'I wish you mightn't speak so nasty.'

I hold her gaze. 'And you think,' I answer levelly, 'you wishes are something to me, do you?'

She flinches, and colours harder; her eyelids flutter and she looks away.

I drink my coffee, then, and don't speak again. Mrs Sucksby sits, softly beating her hands upon the table-top, her brows drawn together into a frown. John and Richard play again at dice, and quarrel over the game. Dainty washes napkins in a bowl of brown water, then sets them before the fire to steam and stink. I close my eyes. My stomach aches and aches. If I had a knife, I think again. Or an axe…

But the room is so stiflingly hot, and I am so weary and sick, my head falls back and I sleep. When I wake, it is five o'clock. The dice are put away. Mr Ibbs is returned. Mrs Sucksby is feeding babies, and Dainty is cooking a supper. Bacon, cabbage, crumbling potatoes and bread: they give me a plate and, miserably picking free the strips of fat from the bacon, the crusts from the bread, as I pick bones from my breakfasts of fish, I eat it. Then they put out glasses. 'Care for some tipple, Miss Lilly?' Mrs Sucksby says. 'A stout, or a sherry?'

'A gin?' says Richard, some look of mischief in his eye.

I take a gin. The taste of it is bitter to me, but the sound of the silver spoon, striking the glass as it stirs, brings a vague and nameless comfort.

So that day passes. So pass the days that follow. I go early to bed—am undressed, every time, by Mrs Sucksby, who takes my gown and petticoats and locks them up, then locks up me. I sleep poorly, and wake, each morning, sick and clear-headed and afraid; and I sit in the little gold chair, running over the details of my confinement, working out my plan of escape. For I must escape. I will escape. I'll escape, and go to Sue. What are the names of the men who took her? I cannot remember. Where is their house? I do not know. Never mind, never mind, I shall find it out. First, though, I will go to Briar, beg money from my uncle—he'll still believe himself my uncle, of course—and if he'll give me none, I'll beg from the servants! I'll beg from Mrs Stiles! Or, I'll steal! I'll steal a book from the library, the rarest book, and sell it—!

Or, no, I won't do that.—For the thought of returning to Briar makes me shudder, even now; and it occurs to me in time that I have friends in London, after all. I have Mr Huss and Mr Hawtrey. Mr Huss—who liked to see me climb a staircase. Could I go to him, put myself in his power? I think I could, I am desperate enough… Mr Hawtrey, however, was kinder; and invited me to his house, to his shop on Holywell Street.—I think he'll help me. I am sure he will. And I think Holywell Street cannot be far—can it? I do not know, and there are no maps here. But I shall find out the way. Mr Hawtrey will help me, then. Mr Hawtrey will help me find Sue…

So my thoughts run, while the dawns of London break grubbily about me; while Mr Ibbs cooks bloaters, while his sister screams, while Gentleman coughs in his bed, while Mrs Sucksby turns in hers, and snores, and sighs.

If only they would not keep me so close!
One day
, I think, each time a door is made fast at my back,
one day they'll forget to lock it. Then I'll run. They'll grow tired of always watching
.—But, they do not. I complain of the thick, exhausted air. I complain of the mounting heat. I ask to go, oftener than I need, to the privy: for the privy lies at the other end of that dark and dusty passage at the back of the house, and shows me daylight. I know I could run from there to freedom, if I had the chance; but the chance does not come: Dainty walks there with me every time, and waits until I come out.—Once I do try to run, and she easily catches me and brings me back; and Mrs Sucksby hits her, for letting me go.

Richard takes me upstairs, and hits me.

'I'm sorry,' he says, as he does it. 'But you know how hard we have worked for this. All you must do is wait, for the bringing of the lawyer. You are good at waiting, you told me once. Why won't you oblige us?'

The blow makes a bruise. Every day I sea how it has lightened, thinking,
Before that bruise quite fades, I will escape
!

I pass many hours in silence, brooding on this. I sit, in the kitchen, in the shadows at the edge of lamp-light—
Perhaps they'll forget me
, I think. Some' times it almost seems that they do: the stir of the house goes on, Dainty and John will kiss and quarrel, the babies will shriek, the men will play at cards and dice. Now and then, other men will come—or boys, or else, more rarely, women and girls—with plunder, to be sold to Mr Ibbs and then sold on. They come, any hour of the day, with astonishing things—gross things, gaudy things—poor stuff, it seems to me, all of it: hats, handkerchiefs, cheap jewels, lengths of lace—once a hank of yellow hair still bound with a ribbon. A tumbling stream of things—not like the books that came to Briar, that came as if sinking to rest on the bed of a viscid sea, through dim and silent fathoms; nor like the things the books described, the things of convenience and purpose— the chairs, the pillows, the beds, the curtains, the ropes, the rods…

There are no books, here. There is only life in all its awful chaos. And the only purpose the things are made to serve, is the making of money.

And the greatest money-making thing of all, is me.

'Not chilly, dear girl?' Mrs Sucksby will say. 'Not peckish? Why, how warm your brow is! Not taking a fever, I hope? We can't have you sick.' I do not answer. I have heard it all before. I let her tuck rugs about me, I let her sit and chafe my fingers and cheek. 'Are you rather low?' she'll say. 'Just look at them lips. They'd look handsome in a smile, they would. Not going to smile? Not even'—she swallows—'for me? Only glance, dear girl, at the almanack.' She has scored through the days with crosses of black. There's a month nearly gone by already, and only two more to come. Then we know what follows! That ain't so long, is it?'

She says it, almost pleadingly; but I gaze steadily into her face—as if to say that a day, an hour, a second, is too long, when passed with her.

'Oh, now!' Her fingers clench about my hand; then slacken, then pat. 'Still seems rather queer to you, does it, sweetheart?' she says. 'Never mind. What can we get you, that will lift you spirits? Hey? A posy of flowers? A bow, for your pretty hair? A trinket box? A singing bird, in a cage?' Perhaps I make some movement. 'Aha! Where's John? John, here's a shilling—it's a bad one, so hand it over fast—nip out and get Miss Lilly a bird in a cage.—Yellow bird, my dear, or blue?—No matter, John, so long as it's pretty…'

She winks. John goes, and returns in half an hour with a finch in a wicker basket. They fuss about that, then. They hang it from a beam, they shake it to make it flutter; Charley Wag, the dog, leaps and whines beneath it. It will not sing, however—the room is too dark—it will only beat and pluck at its wings and bite the bars of its cage. At last they forget it. John takes to feeding it the blue heads of matches—he says he plans, in time, to make it swallow a long wick, and then to ignite it.

Of Sue, no-one speaks at all. Once, Dainty looks at me as she puts out our suppers, and scratches her ear.

'Funny thing,' she says, 'how Sue ain't come back from the country, yet. Ain't it?'

Mrs Sucksby glances at Richard, at Mr Ibbs, and then at me. She wets her mouth. 'Look here,' she says to Dainty, 'I haven't wanted to talk about it, but you might as well know it, now. The truth is, Sue ain't coming back, not ever. That last little bit of business that Gentleman left her to see to had money in. More money than was meant for her share. She's up and cut, Dainty, with the cash.'

Dainty's mouth falls open. 'No! Sue Trinder? What was like your own daughter?—Johnny!' John chooses that moment to come down, for his supper. 'Johnny, you ain't going to guess what! Sue's took all of Mrs Sucksby's money, and that's why she ain't come back. Done a flit. Just about broke Mrs Sucksby's heart. If we see her, we got to kill her.'

'Done a flit? Sue Trinder?' He snorts. 'She ain't got the nerve.'

'Well, she done it.'

'She done it,' says Mrs Sucksby, with another glance at me, 'and I don't want to hear her name said in this house. That's all.'

'Sue Trinder, turned out a sharper!' says John.

'That's bad blood for you,' says Richard. He also looks at me. 'Shows up in queer ways.'

'What did I just say?' says Mrs Sucksby hoarsely. 'I won't have her name said.' She lifts her arm, and John falls silent. But he shakes his head and gives a whistle. Then after a moment, he laughs.

'More meat for us, though, ain't it?' he says, as he fills his plate. '—Or would be, if it wasn't for the lady there.'

Mrs Sucksby sees him scowling at me; and leans and hits him.

After that, if the men and women who come to the house ask after Sue, they are taken aside and told, like John and Dainty, that she has turned out wicked, double-crossed Mrs Sucksby and broken her heart. They all say the same: 'Sue Trinder? Who'd have thought her so fly? That's the mother, that is, coming out in the child…' They shake their heads, look sorry. But it seems to me, too, that they forget her quickly enough. It seems to me that even John and Dainty forget her. It is a short-memoried house, after all. It is a short-memoried district. Many times I wake in the night to the sound of footsteps, the creak of wheels—a man is running, a family taking flight, quietly, in darkness. The woman with the bandaged face, who nurses her baby on the step of the house with the shutters with the heart-shaped holes, disappears; her place is taken by another—who, in her turn, moves on, to be replaced by another, who drinks. What's Sue, to them?

What's Sue, to me? I'm afraid, here, to remember the pressing of her mouth, the sliding of her hand. But I'm afraid, too, of forgetting. I wish I could dream of her. I never do. Sometimes I take out the picture of the woman I supposed my mother, and look for her features there—her eyes, her pointed chin. Mrs Sucksby sees me do it. She watches, fretfully. Finally she takes the picture away.

'Don't you be thinking,' she says, 'on things that are done and can't be changed. All right, dear girl? You think of the time to come.'

She imagines I brood upon my past. But I am still brooding on my future. I am still watching keys as they are turned—soon one will be left in a lock, I know it. I am watching Dainty and John, Mr Ibbs—they are growing too used to me. They'll turn careless, they'll forget.
Soon
, I think.
Soon
,
Maud
.

So I think; until this happens.

Richard takes to leaving the house each day, not saying where he is going. He has no money, and will have none until the bringing of the lawyer: I think he goes only to walk the dusty streets, or to sit in the parks; I think the heat and the closeness of the Borough kitchen stifles him as much as it stifles me. One day, however, he goes, but returns in an hour. The house is quiet, for once: Mr Ibbs and John are out, and Dainty is sleeping in a chair. Mrs Sucksby lets him into the kitchen, and he throws off his hat and kisses her cheek. His face is flushed and his eyes are gleaming.

'Well, what do you think?' he says.

'Dear boy, I can't imagine! Have all your horses come up at once?'

'Better than that,' he says. He reaches for me. 'Maud? What do you think? Come, out of the shadows. Don't look so fierce! Save that, till you've heard my news. It concerns you, rather.'

He has seized my chair and begun to haul me closer to the table. I shake him off. 'Concerns me, how?' I say, moodily. I have been sitting, thinking over the shape of my life.

'You'll see. Look here.' He puts his hand to his waistcoat pocket and draws something out. A paper. He waves it.

'A bond, dear boy?' says Mrs Sucksby, stepping to his side.

'A letter,' he says, 'from—well, guess who? Will you guess, Maud?' I say nothing. He pulls a face. 'Won't you play? Shall I give you a clue? It is someone you know. A friend, very dear.'

My heart gives a lurch. 'Sue!' I say at once. But he jerks his head, and snorts.

'Not
her
. You think they give them paper, where she is?' He glances at Dainty; who opens and closes her eyes, and then sleeps on. 'Not
her
,' he says again, more quietly. 'I mean, another friend of yours. You won't guess?'

I turn my face. 'Why should I? You mean to tell me, don't you?'

He waits another moment; then: 'Mr Lilly,' he says. 'Your uncle, that was.—Aha!' I have started. 'You
are
interested!'

'Let me see,' I say. Perhaps my uncle is searching for me, after all.

'Now, now.' He holds the letter high. 'It has my name upon it, not yours.

'Let me see!'

I rise, pull down his arm, see a line oft ink; then push him away.

'That's not my uncle's hand,' I say—so disappointed, I could strike him-

'I never said it was,' says Richard. The letter's from him, but sent by another: his steward, Mr Way.'

'Mr Way?'

'More curious still, hmm? Well, you shall understand that, when you read it. Here.' He unfolds the paper and hands it to me. 'Read this side, first. It's a postscript; and explains, at least—what I've always thought so queer—why we've heard nothing from Briar, till now…'

The hand is cramped. The ink is smeared. I tilt the paper to catch what light I can; then read.

Dear Sir
.—
I found today among my master's private papers, this letter, & do suppose he meant it to be sent; only, he fell into a grave indisposition shortly after having wrote it, sir, which indisposition he continues in to this day
.—Mrs
Stiles & me did think at first, that this was through his niece having run off in such a scandalous manner; though we beg leave to notice, sir, that his words herein suggest him not to have been overly astonished by that deed; as, begging leave again sir, no more were we
.—
We send this respectfully, sir, and presume to hope it finds you cheerful
.—
Mr Martin Way, Steward of Briar
.