Fingersmith (47 page)

'Surprise you?' he says, with a curious laugh. 'Oh, Maud, sweet Maud, we haven't begun to do that.'

I don't understand him. I hardly try to. I am thinking still of my uncle, my mother—my mother, ill, ruined, coming here… Richard puts his hand to his chin, works his lips. 'Mrs Sucksby,' he says, 'do you keep any drink up here? I find myself rather dry about the mouth. It's the anticipation, I think, of sensation. I am the same at the casino, at the spinning of the wheel; and at the pantomime, when they're about to let fly the fairies.'

Mrs Sucksby hesitates, then goes to a shelf, opens a box, lifts out a bottle. She produces three short tumblers with gold about the rim. She wipes them, on a fold of her skirt.

'I hope, Miss Lilly, you won't suppose this sherry,' she says, as she pours. The scent of the liquid comes sharp and sickly upon the close air of the room. 'Sherry in a lady's chamber I could never agree to; but a bit of honest brandy, meant for use now and then as a bracer—well, you tell me, where's the harm in that?'

'No harm at all,' says Richard. He holds a glass to me and, so confused am I—so dazed and enraged—I take it at once, and sip it as if it were wine. Mrs Sucksby watches me swallow.

'Got a good mouth for spirits,' she says approvingly.

'Got a mouth for them,' says Richard, 'when they're marked up,
Medicine
. Hey, Maud?'

I will not answer. The brandy is hot. I sit, at last, upon the edge of the bed and unfasten the cord of my cloak. The room is darker than before: the day is turning into night. The horse-hair screen looms black, and casts shadows. The walls—that are papered here in a pattern of flowers, there in muddy diamonds—are gloomy and close. The scarf stands out against the window: a fly is caught behind it, and buzzes in hopeless fury against the glass.

I sit with my head in my hands. My brain, like the room, seems hedged about with darkness; my thoughts run, but run uselessly. I do not ask—as I would, I think, if this were some other girl's story and I was only reading it or hearing it told—I do not ask why they have got me here; what they mean to do with me now; how they plan to profit from the cheating and stunning of me. I only rage, still, against my uncle. I only think, over and over: M;y
mother, ruined, shamed
, coming
here, lying bleeding in a house of thieves
. Not
mad, not mad
…

I suppose my expression is a strange one. Richard says, 'Maud, look at me. Don't think, now, of your uncle and your uncle's house. Don't think of that woman, Marianne.'

'I shall think of her,' I answer, 'I shall think of her as I always have: as a fool! But, my father— You said, a gentleman? They have made me out an orphan, all these years. Does my father still live? Did he never—?'

'Maud, Maud,' he says, sighing, moving back to his place at the door. 'Look about you. Think how you came here. Do you suppose I snatched you from Briar, did the deed I did this morning—ran the risks I have run—so that you might learn family secrets, no more than that?'

'I don't know!' I say. 'What do I know, now? If you will only give me a little time, to think in. If you will only tell me—'

But Mrs Sucksby has come to me, and lightly touches my arm.

'Wait up, dear girl,' she says, very gently. She puts a finger to her lip, half closes one eye. 'Wait up, and listen. You ain't heard all my story. The better part's to come. For there's the lady, you remember, that's been made rags of. There's the father and the brother and the bully, due in one hour's time. There's the baby, and me saying, "What'll we name her? What about your own name, Marianne?", and the lady saying as how she'd sooner curse her, than call her that. You remember, my dear? "As for being the daughter of a lady," says the poor girl next, "you tell me this: what does being a lady do for you, except let you be ruined? I want her named plain," she says, "like a girl of the people. I want her named plain." "You name her plain, then," I say still meaning, as it were, to humour her. "I will,' she says. "I will. There was a servant that was kind to me once—kinder than ever my father or my brother was. I want her named for her. I shall call her'for her. I shall call her—"

'
Maud
,' I say, wretchedly. I have lowered my face again. But when Mrs Sucksby is silent, I lift it. Her look is strange. Her silence is strange. She slowly shakes her head. She draws in her breath—hesitates, for another second—and then says:

'Susan.'

Richard watches, his hand before his mouth. The room, the house, is still. My thoughts, that have seemed to turn like grinding wheels, now seem to stop. Susan. Susan. I will not let them see how the word confounds me. Susan. I will not speak. I will not move, for fear I should stumble or shake. I only keep my eyes upon Mrs Sucksby's face. She takes another, longer sip from her glass of brandy, then wipes her mouth. She comes and sits again, beside me, upon the bed.

'Susan,' she says again. 'That's what the lady named her. Seems a shame to have named that baby for a servant, don't it? So I thought, anyway. But what could I say? Poor girl, she was quite off her head—still crying, still shrieking, still saying as how her father would come, would take the child, would make her hate her own mother's name. "Oh, how can I save her?" she said. "I would rather anyone got her, than him and my brother! Oh, what can I do? How can I save her? Oh, Mrs Sucksby, I swear to you now, I would rather they took any other poor woman's baby, than mine!"'

Her voice has risen. Her cheek is flushed. A pulse beats, briefly—very fast—in the lid of her eye. She puts her hand to it, then drinks again, and again wipes her mouth.

'That's what she said,' she says, more quietly. 'That's what she said. And as she says it, all the infants that are lying about the house seem to hear her, and all start up crying at once. They all sound the same, when you ain't their mother. They all sounded the same to her, anyway. I had got her to the stairs, just outside that door'—she tilts her head, Richard shifts his pose and the door gives a creak—'and now, she stops. She looks at me, and I see what she's thinking, and my heart goes cold. "We can't!" I say. "Why can't we?" she an-swers. "You have said yourself, my daughter shall be brought up a lady. Why not let some other little motherless girl have that, in her place—poor thing, she shall have the grief of it, too! But I swear, I'll settle a half my fortune on her; and Susan shall have the rest. She shall have it, if you'll only take her for me now, and bring her up honest, and keep her from knowing about her inheritance till she has grown up poor and can feel the worth of it! Don't you have," she says, "some motherless baby we can give to my father in Susan's place? Don't you? Don't you? For God's sake, say you do! There's fifty pounds in the pocket of my gown. You shall have it!—I shall send you more!—if you'll only do this thing for me, and not tell a living soul you've done it."'

Perhaps there is movement in the room below, in the street—I do not know, I do not hear it if there is. I keep my gaze on Mrs Sucksby's flushed face, on her eyes, her lips.—'Now, here was a thing,' she is saying, 'to be asked to do. Wouldn't you say, dear girl? Here was a thing, all right. I think I never thought harder or quicker before in all my life. And what I said at last was: "Keep your money. Keep your fifty pounds. I don't want it. What I want, is this: Your pa is a gentleman, and gents are tricky. I'll keep your baby, but I want for you to write me out a paper, saying all you mean to do, and signing it, and sealing it; and that makes it binding." "I'll do it!" she says, straight off. "I'll do it!" And we come in here, and I fetch her a bit of paper and ink, and she sets it all down—just as I have told you, that Susan Lilly is her own child, though left with me, and that the fortunes are to be cut, and so on—and she folds it and seals it with the ring off her finger, and puts on the front that it ain't to be opened till the day her daughter turns eighteen. Twenty-one, she wanted to make it: but my mind was running ahead, even as she was writing, and I said it must be eighteen—for we oughtn't to risk the girls taking husbands, before they knew what was what.' She smiles. 'She liked that. She thanked me for it.

'And then, no sooner had she sealed it than Mr Ibbs sends up a cry: there's a coach, pulled up at his shop door, with two gents—an old one, and a younger—getting out, and with them, a bully with a club. Well! The lady runs shrieking to her room and I stand, tearing the hair out of my head. Then I go to the cribs, and I fetch up this one particular baby that is there—a girl, same size as the other, looks to turn out fair, like her—and I carry her upstairs. I said, "Here! Take her quick, and be kind to her! Her name's Maud; and that's a name for a lady after all. Remember your word." "Remember yours! the poor girl cries; and she kisses her own baby, and I take it, and bring it down and lay it in the empty cot . . '

She shakes her head. 'Such a trifling little thing it was to do!' she says. '—And done in a minute. Done, while the gentlemen are still hammering at the door. "Where is she?" they're crying. "We know you've got her!" No stopping them, then. Mr Ibbs lets them in, they fly through the house like furies— see me and knock me down, next thing I know, there's the poor lady being dragged downstairs by her pa—her gown all flapping, her shoes undone, the mark of her brother's stick on her face—and there's you, dear girl—there's you in her arms, and nobody thinking you was anyone's but hers.—Why should they? Too late to change it, then. She gave me one quick look as her father took her down, and that was all; I fancy she watched me, though, from the window of the coach. But if she was ever sorry she done it, I can't tell you. I dare say she thought often of Sue; but no more than— Well, no more than she ought.'

She blinks and turns her head. She has placed her glass of brandy upon the bed between us; the seams in the quilt keep it from spilling. Her hands she has clasped: she is stroking the knuckles of one with the blunt red thumb of the other. Her foot in its slipper goes tap upon the floor. She has not taken her eyes from my face, all the time she has spoken, until now.

My own eyes I close. My hands I place before them, and I gaze into the darkness that is made by my palms. There is a silence. It lengthens. Mrs Sucksby leans closer.

'Dear girl,' she murmurs. 'Won't you say a word to us?' She touches my hair. Still I will not speak or move. Her hand falls. 'I can see this news've dashed your spirits, rather,' she says. Perhaps she gestures then to Richard, for he comes and squats before me.

'You understand, Maud,' he says, trying to see about my fingers, 'what Mrs Sucksby has told you? One baby becomes another. Your mother was not your mother, your uncle not your uncle. Your life was not the life that you were meant to live, but Sue's; and Sue lived yours…'

They say that dying men see, played before their eyes with impossible swiftness, the show of their lives. As Richard speaks, I see mine: the madhouse, my baton of wood, the gripping gowns of Briar, the string of beads, my uncle's naked eyes, the books, the books… The show flickers and is gone, is lost and useless, like the gleam of a coin in murky water. I shudder, and Richard sighs.

Mrs Sucksby shakes her head and tuts. But, when I show them my face they both start back. I am not weeping, as they suppose. I am laughing—I am gripped with a terrible laughter—and my look must be ghastly.

'Oh, but this,' I think I say, 'is perfect! This is all I have longed for! Why do you stare? What are you gazing at? Do you suppose a girl is sitting here? That girl is lost! She has been drowned! She is lying, fathoms deep. Do you think she has arms and legs, with flesh and cloth upon them? Do you think she has hair? She has only bones, stripped white! She is as white as a page of paper! She is a book, from which the words have peeled and drifted—'

I try to take a breath; and might as well have water in my mouth: I draw at the air, and it does not come. I gasp, and shake and gasp again. Richard stands and watches.

'No madness, Maud,' he says, with a look of distaste. 'Remember. You have no excuse for it now.'

'I have excuse,' I say, 'for anything! Anything!'

'Dear girl—' says Mrs Sucksby. She has caught up her tumbler of liquor and is waving it close to my face. 'Dear girl—' But I shudder with laughter still—a hideous laughter—and I jerk, as a fish might jerk on the end of a line. I hear Richard curse; then I see him go to my bag and grope inside it, bring out my bottle of medicine: he lets the liquid drop, three times, into the glass of brandy, then seizes my head and presses the glass to my lips. I taste it, then swallow and cough. I put my hands to my mouth. My mouth grows numb. I close my eyes again. I do not know how long I sit, but at length I feel the blanket that covers the bed come against my shoulder and cheek. I have sunk upon it. I lie—still twitching, from time to time, in what feels like laughter; and again Richard and Mrs Sucksby stand, in silence, and watch me.

Presently, however, they come a little nearer. 'Now,' says Mrs Sucksby softly, 'are you better, darling?' I do not answer. She looks at Richard. 'Oughtn't we to go, and let her sleep?'

'Sleep be damned,' he answers. 'I still believe she thinks we have brought her here for her own convenience.' He comes, and taps my face. 'Open your eyes,' he says.

I say, 'I have no eyes. How could I? You have taken them from me.'

He catches hold of one of my lids and pinches it hard. 'Open your damn eyes!' he says. 'That's better. Now, there is a little more for you to know— just a little more, and then you may sleep. Listen to me. Listen! Don't ask me, how you are meant to, I shall cut the fucking ears off the sides of your head if you do. Yes, I see you hear that. Do you feel this, also?' He strikes me. 'Very good.'

The blow is not so hard as it might have been: Mrs Sucksby has seen him lift his arm and tried to check it.

'Gentleman!' she says, her cheek growing dark. 'No call for that. No call at all. Hold your temper, can't you? I believe you've bruised her. Oh, dear girl.'

She reaches towards my face. Richard scowls. 'She ought to be grateful,' he says, straightening, putting back his hair, 'that I have not done worse, any time in the past three months. She ought to know I will do it again, and count it nothing. Do you hear me, Maud? You have seen me at Briar, a sort of gentleman. I make a holiday from gallantry, however, when I come here. Understand?'