Fingersmith

'Where to?' she asks again. Beyond her head, the street is filled with shadow. A moon has risen— a crescent, slender, filthy-brown.

I bow my head. With this last, awful bafflement of my hopes, I have only one place to go. I tell her, she calls it, and the coach starts up. She settles herself more comfortably in her seat, rearranges her coat. She looks at me.

All right, dearie?' she says. I do not answer, and she laughs. She turns away. 'Don't mind it now, does she?' she says, as if to herself. 'Don't mind it, now.'

Lant Street is dark when we reach it. I know the house to stop at, from the house which faces it— the one with the ointment-coloured shutters, that I have gazed at so hard from Mrs Sucksby's window John answers my knock. His face is white. He sees me, and stares 'Fuck,' he says. I go past him. The door leads into what I suppose is Mr Ibbs's shop, and a passage from that takes me directly into the kitchen. They are all there, apart from Richard. He is out in search of me. Dainty is weeping: her cheek is bruised, worse than before, her lip split and bleeding. Mr Ibbs paces in his shirt-sleeves, making the floorboards jump and creak. Mrs Sucksby stands, her eyes on nothing, her face white as powder, like John's. She stands still. But when she sees me come she folds and winces— puts her hand to her heart as if struck.

'Oh, my girl,' she says.

I don't know what they do after that. Dainty screams, I think. I go by them, not looking. I go up the stairs to Mrs Sucksby's room— my room, our room, I suppose I must call it now— and I sit upon the bed, my face to the window. I sit with my hands in my lap, my head bowed. My fingers are marked with dirt. My feet have begun, again, to bleed.

She gives me a minute, before she comes. She comes quietly. She closes the door and locks it at her back— turning the key gently in the lock, as if she thinks me sleeping and fears to wake me. Then she stands at my side. She does not try to touch me. I know, however, that she is trembling.

' D e a r g i r l , ' s h e s a y s . ' W e s u p p o s e d y o u l o s t . W e s u p p o s e d y o u d r o w n e d , o r murdered— '

Her voice catches, but does not break. She waits and, when I do nothing, 'Stand up, sweetheart,' she says.

I do. She takes the gown from me, and the stays. She does not ask what has become of my petticoats. She does not exclaim over my slippers and feet— though she shudders, as she draws off my stockings. She puts me, naked, into the bed; draws up the blanket to my jaw; then sits beside me. She strokes my hair— teases out the pins and tangles with her hands. My head is loose, and jerks as she tugs. 'There, now,' she says.

The house is silent. I think Mr Ibbs and John are talking, but talking in whispers. Her fingers move more slowly. 'There, now,' she ays again; and I shiver, for her voice is Sue's.

Her voice is Sue's, but her face— The room is dark, however, she has not brought a candle. She sits with her back to the window. But I feel her gaze, and her breath. I 251

close my eyes.

'We thought you lost,' she murmurs again. 'But you came back. Dear girl, I knew you should!'

'I have nowhere else,' I answer, slowly and hopelessly. 'I have nowhere and no-one. I thought I knew it; I never knew it till now. I have nothing. No home— '

'Here is your home!' she says.

'No friends— '

'Here are your friends!'

'No love— '

She draws in her breath; then speaks, in a whisper.

'Dear girl, don't you know? Ain't I said, a hundred times— ?'

I begin to weep— in frustration, exhaustion. 'Why will you say it?' I cry, through my tears. 'Why will you? Isn't it enough, to have got me here? Why must you also love me? Why must you smother and torment me, with your grasping after my heart?'

I have raised myself up; but the cry takes the last of my strength and soon, I fall back.

She does not speak. She watches. She waits, until I have grown still. Then she turns her head and tilts it. I think, from the curve of her cheek, that she is smiling.

'How quiet the house is,' she says, 'now so many infants are gone! Ain't it?' She turns back to me. I hear her swallow. 'Did I tell you, dear girl,' she says softly, 'that I once bore an infant of my own, that died? Round about the time that that lady, Sue's mother, came?' She nods. 'So I said. So you'll hear it told, round here, if you ask. Babies do die. Who'd think that queer . . .?'

There is something to her voice. I begin to shake. She feels it, and reaches again to stroke my tangled head. 'There, now. Hush, now. You are quite safe, now . . .' Then the stroking stops. She has caught up a lock of hair. She smiles again. 'Funny thing,' she says, in a different tone, 'about your hair. Your eye I did suppose brown, and your colour white, and your waist and hands I knew would be

slender. Only your hair come out rather fairer than I had it pictured The words drop away. In reaching, she has moved her head: the light from the street- lamp, and from the sliver of tarnished moon, falls full upon her, and all at once I see her face— the brown of her own eye, and her own pale cheek— and her lip, that is plump and must, I understand suddenly, must once have been plumper . . . She wets her mouth. 'Dear girl,' she says. 'My own, my own dear girl— '

She hesitates another moment; then speaks, at last.

Part Three

252

C h a p t e r F o u r t e e n

I shrieked. I shrieked and shrieked. I struggled like a fiend. But the more I twisted, the tighter I was held. I saw Gentleman fall back in his seat and the coach start up and begin to turn. I saw Maud put her face to the window of cloudy glass. At sight of her eyes, I shrieked again.

'There she is!' I cried, lifting my hand and pointing. 'There she is! Don't let her go!

Don't you fucking let her go— !'

But the coach drove on, the wheels throwing up dust and gravel as the horse got up its speed; and the faster it went, the harder I think I fought. Now the other doctor came forward, to help Dr Christie. The woman in the apron came, too. They were trying to pull me closer to the house. I wouldn't let them. The coach was speeding, growing smaller. 'They're getting away!' I cried. Then the woman got behind me and seized my waist. She had a grip on her like a man's. She lifted me up the two or three steps that led to the house's front door, as if I might be so many feathers in a bag.

'Now then,' she said as she hauled me. 'What's this? Kick your legs, will you, and trouble the doctors?'

Her mouth was close to my ear, her face behind me. I hardly knew what I was doing.

All I knew was, she had me there, and Gentleman and Maud were escaping. I felt her speak, bent my head forward, then took it sharply back.

'Oh!' she cried. Her grip grew slack. 'Oh! Oh!'

'She's becoming demented,' said Dr Christie. I thought he was talking about her. Then I saw he meant me. He took a whistle from his pocket and gave it a blow.

'For God's sake,' I cried, 'won't you hear me? They have tricked me, they have tricked me— !'

The woman grabbed me again— about the throat, this time; and as I turned in her arms she hit me hard, with the points of her fingers, in my stomach. I think she did it in such a way, the doctors did not see. I gave a jerk, and swallowed my breath. Then she did it again. 'Here's fits!' she said.

'Watch your hands!' called Dr Graves. 'She may snap.'

Meanwhile, they had got me into the hall of the house and the sound of the whistle had brought another two men. They were pulling on brown paper cuffs over their coat-sleeves. They did not look like doctors. They came and caught hold of my ankles.

'Keep her steady,' said Dr Graves. 'She's in a convulsion. She may put out her joints.'

I could not tell them that I was not in a fit, but only winded; that the woman had hurt me; that I was anyway not a lunatic, but sane as them. I could not say anything, for trying to find my breath. I could only croak. The men drew my legs straight, and my skirts rose to my knees. I began to be afraid of the skirts rising higher. That made me twist about, I suppose.