Fingersmith (74 page)

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 hangings. 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 call-ing. 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.

But it was all I had; and I thought it might as well do. I hadn't the heart for finding out anything better. I hadn't the heart or the spirit for anything at all. Bit by bit, everything that was left at Lant Street had gone—been pawned, or sold. I still wore the pale print dress I had robbed from the woman in the country!—and now it looked worse on me than ever, for I had grown thin at Dr Christie's, and then thinner still. Dainty said I had got so sharp, if you could have found a way of threading me with cotton, you could have sewn with me.

And so, when I packed the bits of stuff I wanted to take with me to Woolwich, there was almost nothing. And when I thought of the people I ought to call on, to say good-bye to, I could not think of anyone. There was only one thing I knew I must do, before I went; and that was the picking up of Mrs Sucksby's things, from Horsemonger Lane.

I took Dainty with me. I did not think that I could bear it all alone. We went, one day in September—more than a month after the trial. London had changed, since then. The season had turned, and the days grown cooler at last. The streets were filled with dust and straw, and curling leaves. The gaol seemed darker and bleaker than ever. But the porter there knew me, and let me through. He looked at me, I thought, in pity. So did the matrons. They had Mrs Sucksby's things made ready for me, in a wax-paper parcel tied with strings. '
Released, to Daughter
,' they said, as they wrote in a book; and they made me put my name there, underneath.—I could write my name quick as anyone now, since my time at Dr Christie's… Then they led me back, across the yards, through the grey prison ground where I knew Mrs Sucksby was buried, with no stone upon her grave, so no-one could come and mourn her; and they took me out under the gate, with its low, flat roof, where I had last seen the scaffold raised. They passed under that roof every day of their lives, it was nothing to them. When they came to say good-bye, they made to take my hand. I could not give it.

The parcel was light. I carried it home, however, in a sort of dread; and the dread seemed to make it heavy. By the time I reached Lant Street, I was al-most staggering: I went quickly with it to the kitchen table, and set it down, and caught my breath and rubbed my arms. What I was dreading was having to open it and look at all her things. I thought of what must be inside: her shoes; her stockings, perhaps still in the shape of her toes and heels; her petticoats; her comb, perhaps with some of her hair in it— Don't do it.
^I
I thought.
Leave it! Hide it! Open it some other time, not today, not now
—.'

I sat, and looked at Dainty.

'Dainty,' I said, 'I don't think I can.'

She put her hand over mine.

'I think you ought to,' she said. 'For me and my sister was the same, when we got our mother's bits back from the morgue. And we left that packet in a drawer, and wouldn't look at it for nearly a year; and when Judy opened it up the gown was rotted through, and the shoes and bonnet perished almost to nothing, from having gone so long with river-water on them. And then, we had nothing to remember Mother by, at all; save a little chain she always wore.—Which Pa pawned, in the end, for gin-money…'

I saw her lip begin to quiver. I could not face her tears.

'All right,' I said. 'All right. I'll do it.'

My hands were still shaking though, and when I drew the parcel to me and tried to undo its strings, I found the matrons had tied them too tight. So then Dainty tried. She couldn't undo them either. 'We need a knife,' I said, 'or a pair of scissors…' But there was a time, after Gentleman died, when I hadn't been able to look at any kind of blade, without wincing; and I had made Dainty take them all away, there wasn't a single sharp thing—except me—in the whole of the house. I tugged and picked at the knots again, but now I was more nervous than ever, and my hands had got damp. At last, I lifted the parcel to my mouth and took hold of the knots with my teeth: and finally the strings unravelled and the paper sprang out of its folds. I started back. Mrs Sucksby's shoes, her petticoats and comb came tumbling out upon the table-top, looking just as I had feared. And across them, dark and spreading, like tar, came her old black taffeta gown.

I had not thought of that. Why hadn't I? It was the very worst thing of all. It looked like Mrs Sucksby herself was lying there, in some sort of swoon. The gown still had Maud's brooch pinned to its breast. Someone had prised the di-amends out—I didn't care about that—but the silver claws that were left had blood in them, brown blood, so dried it was almost powder. The taffeta itself was stiff. The blood had made it rusty. The rust was traced about with lines of white: the lawyers had shown the gown in court, and had drawn around each stain with chalk.

They seemed to me like marks on Mrs Sucksby's own body.

'Oh, Dainty,' I said, 'I can't bear it! Fetch me a cloth, and water, will you? Oh! How horrible it looks—!' I began to rub. Dainty rubbed, too. We rubbed in the same grim, shuddering way that we had scrubbed the kitchen floor. The cloths grew muddy. Our breaths came quick. We worked first at the skirt. Then I caught up the collar, drew the bodice to me and began to work on that.

And, as I did, the gown made a curious sound—a creaking, or rustling, sound.

Dainty put down her cloth. 'What's that?' she said. I did not know. I drew the dress closer, and the sound came again.

'Is it a moth?' said Dainty. 'Is it flapping about, inside?'

I shook my head. 'I don't think so. It sounds like a paper. Perhaps the matrons have put something there…'

But when I lifted the dress and shook it, and looked inside, there was nothing, nothing at all. The rustling came again, however, as I laid the gown back down. It seemed to me that it came from part of the bodice—from that part of the front of the bodice that would have lain just below Mrs Sucksby's heart. I put my hand to it, and felt about. The taffeta there was stiff—stiff not just from the staining of Gentleman's blood, but from something else, something that had got stuck, or been put, behind it, between it and the satin lining of the gown. What was it? I could not tell, from feeling. So then I turned the bodice inside-out, and looked at the seam. The seam was open: the satin was loose, but had been hemmed so as not to fray. It made a sort of pocket, in the gown. I looked at Dainty; then put in my hand. It rustled again, and she drew back.

'Are you sure it ain't a moth? Or a bat?'

But what it was, was a letter. Mrs Sucksby had had it hidden there—how long? I could not guess. I thought at first that she must have put it there for me—that she had written it, in gaol—that it was a message for me to find, after they had hanged her.—The thought made me nervous. But then, the letter was marked with Gentleman's blood; and so must have lain inside the gown since the night he died, at least. Then again, it seemed to me that it must have lain there a good deal longer than that: for as I looked more closely at it I saw how old it was. The creases were soft. The ink was faded. The paper was curved, from where Mrs Sucksby's taffeta bodice had held it, tight, against her stays. The seal—

I looked at Dainty. The seal was unbroken. 'Unbroken!' I said. 'How is that? Why should she have carried a letter, so close, so carefully, so long—and yet not read it?' I turned it in my hands. I gazed again at the direction. 'Whose name is there?' I said. 'Can you see?'

Dainty looked, then shook her head. 'Can't you?' she said. But I could not. Hand-writing was harder even upon my eye, than print; and this hand was small, and sloped, and—as I have said—was partly smeared and spotted with awful stains. I went to the lamp, and held the letter close to the wick. I screwed up my eyes. I looked and looked… And it seemed to me at last that if any name was written there, upon the folded paper, it was
my own
.—I was sure I could make out an S, and then the
u
that followed it; and then, again, an
s
—

I grew nervous again. 'What is it?' said Dainty, seeing my face.

'I don't know. I think the letter's for me.'

She put her hand to her mouth. And then: 'From your own mother!' she said.

'My mother?'

'Who else? Oh Sue, you got to open it.'

'I don't know.'

'But say it tells you— Say it tells you where treasure is! Say it's a map!'

I didn't think it was a map. I felt my stomach growing sour with fear. I looked again at the letter, at the S, and the
u
— 'You open it,' I said. Dainty licked her lips, then took it, slowly turned it, and slowly broke the seal. The room was so quiet, I think I heard the tumbling of the slivers of wax from the paper to the floor. She unfolded the page; then frowned.

'Just words,' she said.

I went to her side. I saw lines of ink—close, small, baffling. The harder I gazed, the more baffling they grew. And though I had got so nervous and afraid—so sure that the letter was meant for me, yet held the key to some awful, secret thing I should far rather never know—still, to have it open before me, not being able to understand what it said, was worse than anything.

'Come on,' I said to Dainty. I got her her bonnet, and found mine. 'Come out to the street, and we'll find someone to read it for us.'

We went the back way. I would not ask anyone I knew—anyone who had cursed me. I wanted a stranger. So we went north—went fast, towards the breweries up by the river. There was a man there on a corner. He had a tray on a string about his neck, full of nutmeg-graters and thimbles. But he wore eye-glasses and had—I don't know what—an intelligent look.

I said, 'He'll do.'

He saw us coming and gave us a nod. 'Want a grater, girls?'

I shook my head. 'Listen here,' I said—or tried to say, for the walk and my own feeling and fear had taken the breath quite from me. I put my hand to my heart. 'Do you read?' I asked him at last.

He said, 'Read?'

'Letters, in ladies' hands? Not books, I mean.'

Then he saw the paper I held, pushed the glasses further up his nose, and tilted his head.

'To
be opened
,' he read, '
on the eighteenth birthday
—' I shook right through when I heard that. He did not notice. Instead, he straightened his head, and sniffed. 'Not in my line,' he said. 'Not worth my while to stand here and read out letters. That ain't a-going to make the thimbles fly, is it… ?'

Some people will charge you for taking a punch. I put my shaking hand in my pocket and brought out all it held. Dainty did the same.