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 215
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?'
I lie, nursing my cheek, my eyes on his, saying nothing. Mrs Sucksby wrings her hands. He takes the cigarette from behind his ear, puts it to his mouth, looks for a match.
'Go on, Mrs Sucksby,' he says as he does it. 'Tell the rest. As for you, Maud: listen hard, and know at last what your life was lived for.'
'My life was not lived,' I say in a whisper. 'You have told me, it was a fiction.'
'Well'— he finds a match, and strikes it— 'fictions must end. Hear now how yours is to.'
'It has ended already,' I answer. But his words have made me cautious. My head is thick with liquor, with medicine, with shock; but not so thick that I cannot, now, begin to be fearful of what they will tell me next, how they plan to keep me, what they mean to keep me for ...
Mrs Sucksby sees me grow thoughtful, and nods. 'Now you start to get it,' she says.
'You are starting to see. I got the lady's baby and, what's better, I got the lady's word.— The word's the thing, of course. The word's the thing with the money in— ain't it?' She smiles, touches her nose. Then she leans a little closer. 'Like to see it?' she says, in a different sort of voice. 'Like to see the lady's word?'
She waits. I do not answer, but she smiles again, moves from me, glances at Richard, then turns her back to him and fumbles for a second with the buttons of her gown. The taffeta rustles. When the bodice is part-way open she reaches inside— reaches, it 216
seems to me, into her very bosom, her very heart— and then draws out a folded paper.
'Kept this close,' she says, as she brings it to me, 'all these years. Kept this closer than gold! Look, here.'
The paper is folded like a letter, and bears a tilting instruction: To Be Opened on the Eighteenth Birthday of My Daughter, Susan Lilly.— I see that name, and shudder, and reach, but she holds it jealously and, like my uncle— not my uncle, now!— with an antique book, won't let me take it; she lets me touch it, however. The paper is warm, from the heat of her breast. The ink is brown, the folds furred and discoloured. The seal is quite unbroken. The stamp is my mother's— Sue's mother's, I mean; not mine, not mine—
M.L.
'You see it, dear girl?' Mrs Sucksby says. The paper trembles. She draws it back to herself, with a miser's gesture and look— lifts it to her face and puts her lips to it, then turns her back and restores it to its place inside her gown. As she buttons her dress, she glances again at Richard. He has been watching, closely, curiously; but says nothing.
I speak, instead. 'She wrote it,' I say. My voice is thick, I am giddy. 'She wrote it. They took her. What then?'
Mrs Sucksby turns. Her gown is closed and perfectly smooth again, but she has her h a n d u p o n t h e b o d i c e , a s i f n u r s i n g t h e w o r d s b e n e a th. 'The lady?' she says, distractedly. 'The lady died, dear girl.' She sniffs, and her tone changes. 'Bust me, however, if she didn't linger on another month before she done it! Who would have thought? That month was against us. For now her pa and her brother, having got her home, made her change her will.— You can guess what to. No penny to go to the daughter— meaning you, dear girl, so far as they knew— till the daughter marries.
There's gentlemen for you— ain't it? She sent me a note to tell me, by a nurse. They'd got her into the madhouse by then, and you alongside her— well, that soon finished her off. It was a puzzle to her, she said, how things might turn out now; but she took her consolation from the