Fingersmith (62 page)

'As to arms, well, I'll let Nurse Flew take it this time; though I'm sure fat oughtn't to count the same as muscle.' She rubbed her hands across her waist. 'Now, what about weight?' She put up her chin. 'Who here says they're heavier than me?'

At once, two or three of them got up beside her and said they were. The others tried to pick them up, in order to prove it. One of them fell down.

'It's no good,' they said. 'You wriggle about so, we can't tell. We need another way. What say you stand upon a chair and jump? We'll see who makes the floor creak most.'

'What say,' said the dark-haired nurse with a laugh, 'you jump on Betty? See who makes
her
creak.'

'See who makes her squeak!'

They looked at Betty's bed. Betty had opened her eyes at the sound of her name—now she shut them and began to shake.

Nurse Spiller snorted. 'She'd squeak for Belinda,' she said, 'every time. Don't make it her, that ain't fair. Make it old Miss Wilson.'

'She'd squeak all right!'

'Or, Mrs Price.'

'She'd cry! Crying's no—'
^:

'Make it
Maud
!'

One of them said it—I don't know who—and, though they had all been laughing, now their laughter died. I think they looked at each other. Then Nurse Spiller spoke.

'Pass a chair,' I heard her say, 'for standing on—'

'Wait! Wait!' cried another nurse. 'What are you thinking of? You cant jump on her, it'll kill her.' She paused, as if to wipe her mouth. 'Lie on her, in' stead.'

And at that, I put back the sheet from my face and opened my eyes up wide. Perhaps I shouldn't have done it, just then. Perhaps, after all, they had only been larking. But I put back the sheet, and they saw me looking; and then they all started laughing again and came towards me in a rush. They plucked the blankets off me and took the pillow from under my head. Two of them leaned on my feet, and another two caught my arms. They did it in a moment. They were like one great hot sweating beast with fifty heads, with fifty panting mouths and a hundred hands. When I struggled, they pinched me. I said,

'You leave me alone!'

'Shut up,' they said. 'We aren't going to hurt you. We only want to see who's heaviest out of Nurse Bacon, Nurse Spiller and Nurse Flew. We only want to see which of them will make you squeak most. Are you ready?'

'Get off me! Get off me! I'll tell Dr Christie!'

Someone hit me in the face. Someone else jerked my leg. 'Spoil sport,' they said. 'Now, who's to go on her first?'

'I will,' I heard Nurse Flew say, and the others moved back a little for her to come forward. She was smoothing down her gown. 'Have you got her?' she said.

'We've got her.'

'Right. Hold her still.'

Then they pulled me tight, as if I were a wet sheet and they meant to wring me. My thoughts, at that moment, aren't fit to be described. I was sure they would tear the arms and legs off me. I was sure they would snap my bones. I started to shout and, again, I was struck in the face and jerked about; so then I fell silent. Then Nurse Flew got on to the bed and, lifting up her skirt, knelt astride of me. The bed gave a creak. She rubbed her hands and fixed me with her swivel-eye. 'Here I come!' she said, making to fall upon me. But the fall never came, though I screwed up my face and drew in my breath, to take it. Nurse Bacon had stopped her.

'No dropping,' she said. 'Dropping won't be fair. Go down slowly, or not at all.'

So Nurse Flew moved back, then came slowly forward, and lowered her-self down by her hands and knees until her weight was all upon me. The breath I had drawn in was all squeezed out. I think, if I had had a floor under-neath me instead of a bed, she would have killed me. My eyes, my nose and mouth, began to run. 'Please—!' I said.

'She cries Please!' said the dark-haired nurse. That means five points to Nurse Flew!'

They eased off tugging me, then. Nurse Flew kissed my cheek and got off me, and I saw her stand with her hands above her head, like the winner of a boxing match. I sucked in my breath, I spluttered and coughed. Then they drew me tight again, for Nurse Spiller's turn. She was worse than Nurse Flew—not heavier, but more awkward, for she lay with the points of her limbs, her knees and her elbows and her hips, pressing hard into mine; and her corset was
a
stiff one, with edges that seemed to cut me like a saw. Her hair had an oil upon it and smelt sour, and her breath was loud, like thunder, in my ear. 'Come on, you little bitch,' she said to me, 'sing out!'—but I had some pride, even then. I closed my jaws and wouldn't, though she pressed and pressed; at last the nurses cried, 'Oh, shame! No points for Nurse Spiller at all!'—and she gave a final grind to her knees, and swore, and got off. I lifted my head from the mattress. My eyes were streaming water, but beyond the circle of nurses I could see Betty and Miss Wilson and Mrs Price, looking on and shaking but pretending to sleep. They were afraid of what might be done to them. I don't blame them. I let my head fall back, and again shut tight my jaws. Now came Nurse Bacon. Her cheeks were still flushed, and her swollen hands so red against the white of her arms, she might have had gloves on.

She sat astride of me as Nurse Flew had, and flexed her fingers.

'Now, Maud,' she said. She caught hold of the hem of my nightgown, and pulled it and made it tidy. She patted my leg. 'Now then, Miss Muffet. Who's my own good girl?'

Then she came upon me. She came faster than the others, and the shock and the weight of her was awful. I cried out, and the nurses clapped. 'Ten points!' they said. Nurse Bacon laughed. I felt the shudder of it, like rolling-pins; and that made me screw up my eyes and cry out louder. Then she shuddered again, on purpose. The nurses cheered. Then she did this. She pushed herself up on her hands, so that her face was above me but her bosom and stomach and legs still hard on my own; and she moved her hips. She moved them in a certain way. My eyes flew open. She gave me a leer.

'Like it, do you?' she said, still moving. 'No? We heard you did.'

And at that, the nurses roared. They roared, and I saw on their faces as they gazed at me that nasty look I had seen before but never understood. I understood it now, of course; and all at once I guessed what Maud must have said to Dr Christie, that time at Mrs Cream's. The thought that she had said it—that she had said it, before Gentleman, as a way of making me out to be mad—struck me like a blow to the heart. I had had many such blows, since I left Briar; but this, just then, seemed like the worst. It was as if I were filled with gunpowder, and had just been touched with a match. I began to struggle, and to shriek.

'Get off me!' I shrieked. 'Get off me! Get off me! Get off!'

Nurse Bacon felt me wriggle, and her laughter died. She pushed again upon me, harder, with her hips. I saw her hot red face above my own and butted it with my head. Her nose went crack. She gave a cry. There came blood on my cheek.

Then, I can't quite say what happened. I think the nurses that were holding me let go; but I think I kept on struggling and shrieking, as if they had me still. Nurse Bacon rolled from me; I think that someone—probably, Nurse Spiller—hit me; yet still my fit kept on. I have an idea that Betty started up bellowing—that other ladies, in rooms close by, took up the screams and shouts from ours. I think the nurses ran. 'Catch up these bottles and cups!' I heard one of them say, as she flew off with the others. Then someone must have taken fright and caught hold of one of the handles in the hall: there came a bell. The bell brought men and then, after another minute, Dr Christie. He was pulling on his coat. He saw me, still kicking and thrashing on the bed, with the blood from Nurse Bacon's nose upon me.

'She's in a paroxysm,' he cried. 'A bad one. Good Lord, what was it set her off?'

Nurse Bacon said nothing. She had her hand at her face, but her eyes were on mine. 'What was it?' Dr Christie said again. 'A dream?'

'A dream,' she answered. Then she looked at him, and started into life. 'Oh, Dr Christie,' she said, 'she was saying a lady's name, and moving, as she slept!'

That made me shriek all over again. Dr Christie said, 'Right. We know our treatment for paroxysms. You men, and Nurse Spiller. Cold water plunge. Thirty minutes.'

The men caught hold of me by the arms and picked me up. I had been pressed so hard by the nurses that it seemed to me now, as they set me upright, that I was beginning to float. In fact, they dragged me: I found the grazes upon my toes, next day. But I don't remember, now, being taken down from that floor, to the basement of the house. I don't remember passing the door to the pads—going on, down that dark corridor, to the room where they kept the bath. I remember the roaring of the faucets, the chill of the tiles beneath my feet—but, only dimly. What I recall most is the wooden frame they fixed me to, at the arms and legs; and then, the creaking of it, as they winched it up and swung it over the water; the swaying of it, as I pulled against the straps.

Then I remember the drop, as they let fly the wheel—the shock, as they caught it—the closing of the icy water over my face, the rushing of it into my mouth and nose, as I tried to gasp—the sucking of it, when I spluttered and coughed.

I thought they had hanged me.

I thought I had died. Then they winched me up, and dropped me again. A minute to winch me, and a minute to plunge. Fifteen plunges in all. Fifteen shocks. Fifteen tugs on the rope of my life.

After that, I don't remember anything.

They might have killed me, after all. I lay in darkness. I did not dream. I did not think. You could not say I was myself, for I was no-one. Perhaps I never was to be quite myself, again. For when I woke, everything was changed. They put me back in my old gown and my old boots and took me back to my old room, and I went with them just like a lamb. I was covered in bruises and burns, yet hardly felt them. I did not weep. I sat and, like the other ladies, looked at nothing. There was talk of putting canvas bracelets on me, in case I should break out in another fit; but I lay so quietly, they gave the idea up-Nurse Bacon spoke with Dr Christie, in my behalf. Her eye was black where I had butted it, and I supposed that, getting me alone, she would knock me about—I think that, if she had, I would have taken the blows, unflinching.

But it seemed to me that she was changed, like everything else. She looked at me oddly; and when that night I lay in bed and the other ladies had closed their eyes, she caught my gaze. 'All right?' she said softly. She glanced at the other beds, then looked back at me. 'No harm—eh, Maud? All fun, ain't it? We must have our bit of fun, mustn't we? or we should go mad…'

I turned my face away. I think she still watched me, though. I did not care. I cared for nothing, now. I had kept up my nerve and my spirit, all that time. I had waited for my chance of escaping and got nowhere. Suddenly, my memories of Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs, of Gentleman, even of Maud, seemed to grow dim. It was as if my head were filled with smoke, or had a fluttering curtain across it. When I tried to go over the streets of the Borough in my mind, I found I lost my way. No-one else in that house knew those streets. If the ladies spoke of London ever, they spoke of a place they remembered from when they were girls, in Society—a place so different from the city I knew, it might as well have been Bombay. No-one called me by my own name. I began to answer to
Maud
and
Mrs Rivers;
sometimes it seemed to me I
must
be Maud, since so many people said I was. And sometimes I even seemed to dream, not my own dreams, but hers; and sometimes to remember things, from Briar, that she had said and done, as if I had said and done them.

The nurses—all except Nurse Bacon—grew cooler than ever with me, after the night I was plunged. But I got used to being shaken and bullied and slapped. I got used to seeing other ladies bullied in their turn. I got used to it all. I got used to my bed, to the blazing lamp, to Miss Wilson and Mrs Price, to Betty, to Dr Christie. I should not, now, have minded a leech. But he never brought one. He said my calling myself Maud showed, not that I was better, but only that my malady had taken a different turn, and would turn back. Until it did, there was no point in trying to cure me; so he stopped trying. I heard, however, that the truth was he had gone off cures altogether: for he had cured the lady who had spoken like a snake, and done it so well her mother had taken her home; and what with that, and the ladies who had died, the house had lost money. Now, each morning, he felt my heart-beat and looked into my mouth, and then moved on. He did not stay long in the bedrooms at all, once the air grew so close and so foul. We, of course, spent most of our time there; and I even got used to that.

God knows what else I might have got used to. God knows how long they would have kept me in that place—maybe, years. Maybe as long as poor Miss Wilson: for perhaps she—who knows?—was as sane as I had been, when her brother first put her in. I might be there, today. I still think of that and shudder. I might never have got out; and Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs, and Gentleman, and Maud—where would they be, now?

I think of that, too.

But then, I did get out. Blame Fortune. Fortune's blind, and works in peculiar ways. Fortune sent Helen of Troy to the Greeks—didn't it?—and a prince, to the Sleeping Beauty. Fortune kept me at Dr Christie's nearly all that summer long; then listen to who it sent me.

This was five or six weeks, I suppose, after they had plunged me—some time in July. Think how stupid I had got by then. The season was still a warm one, and we had all begun to sleep, all the hours of the day. We slept in the mornings, while we waited for the dinner-bell to be rung; and, in the afternoons, you would see ladies all over the drawing-room, dozing, nodding their heads, dribbling into their collars. There was nothing else to do. There was nothing to stay awake for. And sleeping made time pass. I slept as much as anyone. I slept so much that when Nurse Spiller came to our room one morning and said, 'Maud Rivers, you're to come with me, you've a visitor,' they had to wake me up and tell me again; and when they had, I didn't know what they meant.