Fingersmith (8 page)

'Fuck this,' said Gentleman in a hard peevish voice, when the wheel of a bath-chair ran over his toe. He stooped to wipe the dust from his boot, then straightened and lit up a cigarette, then coughed. He had his collar turned high and wore a black slouch hat. His eyes were yellow at the whites, as if stained with flip. He did not, at that moment, look like a man a girl would go silly over.

He coughed again. 'Fuck this cheap tobacco, too,' he said, pulling free a strand that had come loose on his tongue. Then he caught my eye and his face changed. 'Fuck this cheap life, in all its forms—eh, Suky? No more of that for you and me, soon.'

I looked away from him, saying nothing. I had danced a fast waltz with him the night before; now, away from Lant Street and Mrs Sucksby and Mr Ibbs, amongst all the men and women that were gathered grumbling about us, he seemed just another stranger, and I was shy of him. I thought,
You're nothing to me
. And again I almost said that we ought to turn round and go home; but I knew that if I did he would grow more peevish and show his temper; and so, I did not.

He finished his smoke, then smoked another. He went off for a piddle, and I went off for a piddle of my own. I heard a whistle blown as I was tidying my skirts; and when I got back, I found the guard had sent out the word and half the crowd had started up and was making in a great sweating rush for the waiting train. We went with them, Gentleman leading me to a second-class coach, then handing up my trunk to the man who was fixing the bags and boxes on the roof. I took a place beside a white-faced woman with a baby on her arm; across from her were two stout farmer-types. I think she was glad to see me get on, for of course, me being dressed so neat and comely, she couldn't tell—ha ha!—that I was a thieving Borough girl. Behind me came a boy and his old dad, with a canary in a cage. The boy sat beside the farmers. The old dad sat by me. The coach tilted and creaked, and we all put back our heads and stared at the bits of dust and varnish that tumbled from the ceiling where the luggage thumped and slithered about above.

The door hung open another minute and then was closed. In all the fuss of getting aboard I had hardly looked at Gentleman. He had handed me on, then turned to talk with the guard. Now he came to the open window and said,

'I'm afraid you may be very late, Sue. But I think the trap will wait for you at Marlow. I am sure it will wait. You must hope that it will.'

I knew at once that it would not, and felt a rush of misery and fear. I said quickly,

'Come with me, can't you? And see me to the house?'

But how could he do that? He shook his head and looked sorry. The two farmer-types, the woman, the boy and the old dad all watched us—wondering I suppose what house we meant, and what a man in a slouch hat, with a voice like that, was doing talking to a girl like me about it.

Then the porter climbed down from the roof, there came another whistle, the train gave a horrible lurch and began to move off. Gentleman lifted up his hat and followed until the engine got up its speed; then he gave it up—I saw him turn, put his hat back on, twist up his collar. Then he was gone. The coach creaked harder and began to sway. The woman and the men put their hands to the leather straps; the boy put his face to the window. The canary put its beak to the bars of its cage. The baby began to cry. It cried for half an hour.

'Ain't you got any gin?' I said to the woman at last.

'Gin?' she said—like I might have said, poison. Then she made a mouth, and showed me her shoulder—not so pleased to have me sitting by her, the uppity bitch, after all.

What with her and the baby, and the fluttering bird; and the old dad—who fell asleep and snorted; and the boy—who made paper pellets; and the farmer-types—who smoked and grew bilious; and the fog—that made the train jerk and halt and arrive at Maidenhead two hours later than its time, so that I missed one Marlow train and must wait for the next one—what with all that, my journey was very wretched. I had not brought any food with me, for we had all supposed I should arrive at Briar in time to take a servant's tea there. I had not had a morsel since that dinner of bread and dried meat, at noon: it had stuck to my gums then, but I should have called it wonderful at Maidenhead, seven hours later. The station there was not like Paddington, where there were coffee-stalls and milk-stalls and a pastry-cook's shop. There was only one place for vittles, and that was shut up and closed. I sat on my trunk. My eyes stung, from the fog. When I blew my nose, I turned a handkerchief black. A man saw me do it. 'Don't cry,' he said, smiling.

'I ain't crying!' I said.

He winked, then asked me my name.

It was one thing to flirt in town, however. But I wasn't in town now. I wouldn't answer. When the train came for Marlow I sat at the back of a coach, and he sat at the front, but with his face my way—he tried for an hour to catch my eye. I remembered Dainty saying that she had sat on a train once, with a gentleman near, and he had opened his trousers and showed her his cock, and asked her to hold it; and she had held it, and he had given her a pound. I wondered what I would do, if this man asked me to touch his cock— whether I would scream, or look the other way, or touch it, or what.

But then, I hardly needed the pound, where I was headed!

Anyway, money like that was hard to move on. Dainty had never been able to spend hers for fear her father should see it and know she'd been gay. She hid it behind a loose brick in the wall of the starch works, and put a special mark on the brick, that only she would know. She said she would tell it on her death-bed, and we could use the pound to bury her.

Well, the man on my train watched me very hard, but if he had his trousers open I never saw; and at last he tilted his hat to me and got off. There were more stops after that, and at every one someone else got off, from further down along the train; and no-one got on. The stations grew smaller and darker, until finally there was nothing at them but a tree—there was nothing to see anywhere, but trees, and beyond them bushes, and beyond them fog— grey fog, not brown—with the black night sky above it. And when the trees and the bushes seemed just about at their thickest, and the sky was blacker than I should have thought a sky naturally could be, the train stopped a final time; and that was Marlow.

Here no-one got off save me. I was the last passenger of all. The guard called the stop, and came to lift down my trunk. He said,

'You'll want that carrying. Is there no-one come to meet you?'

I told him there was supposed to be a man with a trap, to take me up to Briar. He said, Did I mean the trap that came to fetch the post? That would have been and gone, three hours before. He looked me over.

'Come down from London, have you?' he said. Then he called to the driver, who was looking from his cab. 'She've come down from London, meant for Briar. I told her, the Briar trap will have come and gone.'

'That'll have come and gone, that will,' called the driver. 'That'll have come and gone, I should say three hours back.'

I stood and shivered. It was colder here than at home. It was colder and darker and the air smelt queer, and the people—didn't I say it?—the people were howling simpletons.

I said, 'Ain't there a cab-man could take me?'

'A cab-man?' said the guard. He shouted it to the driver. 'Wants a cab-man!'

'A cab-man!'

They laughed until they coughed. The guard took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth, saying, 'Dearie me, oh! dearie, dearie me. A cab-man, at Marlow!'

'Oh, fuck off,' I said. 'Fuck off, the pair of you.'

And I caught up my trunk and walked with it to where I could see one or two lights shining, that I thought must be the houses of the village. The guard said, 'Why, you hussy—! I shall let Mr Way know about you. See what he thinks—you bringing your London tongue down here—!'

I can't say what I meant to do next. I did not know how far it was to Briar.

I did not even know which road I ought to take. London was forty miles away, and I was afraid of cows and bulls.

But after all, country roads aren't like city ones. There are only about four of them, and they all go to the same place in the end. I started to walk, and had walked a minute when there came, behind me, the sound of hooves and creaking wheels. And then a cart drew alongside me, and the driver pulled up and lifted up a lantern, to look at my face.

'You'll be Susan Smith,' he said, 'come down from London. Miss Maud've been fretting after you all day.'

He was an oldish man and his name was William Inker. He was Mr Lilly's groom. He took my trunk and helped me into the seat beside his own, and geed up the horse; and when—being struck by the breeze as we drove—he felt me shiver, he reached for a tartan blanket for me to put about my legs.

It was six or seven miles to Briar, and he took it at an easy sort of trot, smoking a pipe. I told him about the fog—there was still something of a mist, even now, even there—and the slow trains.

He said, That's London. Known for its fogs, ain't it? Been much down to the country before?'

'Not much,' I said.

'Been maiding in the city, have you? Good place, your last one?'

'Pretty good,' I said.

'Rum way of speaking you've got, for a lady's maid,' he said then. 'Been
to
France ever?'

I took a second, smoothing the blanket out over my lap.

'Once or twice,' I said.

'Short kind of chaps, the French chaps, I expect? In the leg, I mean.'

Now, I only knew one Frenchman—a housebreaker, they called him Jack the German, I don't know why. He was tall enough; but I said, to please William Inker,

'Shortish, I suppose.'

'I expect so,' he said.

The road was perfectly quiet and perfectly dark, and I imagined the sound of the horse, and the wheels, and our voices, carrying far across the fields. Then I heard, from rather near, the slow tolling of a bell—a very mournful sound, it seemed to me at that moment, not like the cheerful bells of London. It tolled nine times.

'That's the Briar bell, sounding the hour,' said William Inker.

We sat in silence after that, and in a little time we reached a high stone wall and took a road that ran beside it. Soon the wall became a great arch, and then I saw behind it the roof and the pointed windows of a greyish house, half-covered with ivy. I thought it a grand enough crib, but not so grand nor so grim perhaps as Gentleman had painted it. But when William Inker slowed the horse and I put the blanket from me and reached for my trunk, he said,

'Wait up, sweetheart, we've half a mile yet!' And then, to a man who had appeared with a lantern at the door of the house, he called: 'Good night, Mr Mack. You may shut the gate behind us. Here is Miss Smith, look, safe at last.'

The building I had thought was Briar was only the lodge! I stared, saying nothing, and we drove on past it, between two rows of bare dark trees, that curved as the road curved, then dipped into a kind of hollow, where the air— that had seemed to clear a little, on the open country lanes—grew thick again. So thick it grew, I felt it, damp, upon my face, upon my lashes and lips; and closed my eyes. Then the dampness passed away. I looked, and stared again. The road had risen, we had broken out from between the lines of trees into a gravel clearing, and here—rising vast and straight and stark out of the woolly fog, with all its windows black or shuttered, and its walls with a dead kind of ivy clinging to them, and a couple of its chimneys sending up threads of a feeble-looking grey smoke—here was Briar, Maud Lilly's great house, that I must now call my home.

We did not cross before the face of it, but kept well to the side, then took up a lane that swung round behind it, where there was a muddle of yards and out-houses and porches, and more dark walls and shuttered windows and the sound of barking dogs. High in one of the buildings was the round white face and great black hands of the clock I had heard striking across the fields. Beneath it, William Inker pulled the horse up, then helped me down. A door was opened in one of the walls and a woman stood gazing at us, her arms folded against the cold.

'There's Mrs Stiles, heard the trap come,' said William. We crossed the yard to join her. Up above us, at a little window, I thought I saw a candle-flame shine, and flutter, and then go out.

The door led to a passage, and this led to a great, bright kitchen, about five times the size of our kitchen at Lant Street, and with pots set in rows upon a whitewashed wall, and a few rabbits hanging on hooks from the beams of the ceiling. At a wide scrubbed table sat a boy, a woman and three or four girls— of course, they looked very hard at me. The girls studied my bonnet and the cut of my cloak. Their frocks and aprons being only servants' wear, I didn't trouble myself to study them.

Mrs Stiles said, 'Well, you're about as late as you could be. Any longer and you should've had to stay at the village. We keep early hours here.'

She was about fifty, with a white cap with frills and a way of not quite looking in your eye as she spoke to you. She carried keys about her, on a chain at her waist. Plain, old-fashioned keys, I could have copied any one of them.

I made her half a curtsey. I did not say—which I might have—that she should be thankful I had not turned back at Paddington; that I wished I had turned back; and that for anyone to have had the time that I had had, in trying to get forty miles from London, perhaps went to prove that London wasn't meant to be left—I did not say that. What I said was:

'I'm sure, I'm very grateful that the trap was sent at all.'

The girls at the table tittered to hear me speak. The woman who sat with them—the cook, it turned out—got up and set about making me a supper-tray. William Inker said,

'Miss Smith've come from a pretty fine place in London, Mrs Stiles. And she've been several times in France.'

'Has she,' said Mrs Stiles.

'Only one or two times,' I said. Now everyone would suppose I had been boasting.

'She said the chaps there are very short in the leg.'

Mrs Stiles gave a nod. The girls at the table tittered again, and one of them whispered something that made the boy grow red. But then my tray was made, and Mrs Stiles said,