Fingersmith (12 page)

She could sit and look at that for an hour at a time, hardly blinking. Her scissors she used, not for gathering flowers, but only for keeping down the grass that grew about it; and where her mother's name was picked out in letters of lead she would rub with her wet handkerchief to take off stains.

She would rub until her hand shook and her breath came quick. She would never let me help her. That first day, when I tried, she said,

'It is a daughter's duty, to tend to the grave of her mother. Walk off a while, and don't watch me.'

So I left her to it, and wandered among the tombs. The ground was hard as iron and my boots made it ring. I walked and thought of my own mother. She didn't have a grave, they don't give graves to murderesses. They put their bodies in quicklime.

Did you ever pour salt on the back of a slug? John Vroom used to do it, and then laugh to see the slug fizz. He said to me once,

'Your mother fizzed like that. She fizzed, and ten men died that smelt it!'

He never said it again. I took up a pair of kitchen shears and put them to his neck. I said, 'Bad blood carries. Bad blood comes out.' And the look on his face was something!

I wondered how Maud would look, if she knew what bad blood flowed in me.

But she never thought to ask. She only sat, gazing hard at her mother's name, while I wandered and stamped my feet. Then at last she sighed and looked about her, passed her hand across her eyes, and drew up her hood.

'This is a melancholy place,' she said. 'Let's walk a little further.'

She led me away from the circle of yews, back down the lane between the hedges, then away from the wood and the ice-house, to the edge of the park. Here, if you followed a path that ran alongside a wall, you reached a gate. She had a key for it. It took you to the bank of a river. You could not see the river from the house. There was an ancient landing-place there, half rotted away, and a little upturned punt that made a kind of seat. The river was narrow, its water very quiet and muddy and filled with darting fish. All along the bank there grew rushes. They grew thick and high. Maud walked slowly beside them, gazing nervously into the darkness they made where they met the water. I supposed she was frightened of snakes. Then she plucked up a reed and broke it, and sat with the tip of it pressed against her plump mouth.

I sat beside her. The day was windless, but cold, and so quiet it hurt the ears. The air smelled thin.

'Pretty stretch of water,' I said, for politeness' sake.

A barge went by. The men saw us and touched their hats. I waved.

'Bound for London,' said Maud, looking after them.

'London?'

She nodded. I didn't then know—for, who would have guessed it?—that that trifling bit of water was the Thames. I thought she meant the boat would join a bigger river further on. Still, the idea that it would reach the city— maybe sail under London Bridge—made me sigh. I turned to watch it follow a bend in the water; then it passed from sight. The sound of its engine faded, the smoke from its chimney joined the grey of the sky and was lost. The air was thin again. Maud still sat with the tip of the broken reed against her lip, her gaze very vague. I took up stones and began to throw them into the water. She watched me do it, winking at every splash. Then she led me back up to the house.

We went back to her room. She got out a bit of sewing—a colourless, shapeless thing, I don't know if it was meant to be a tablecloth, or what. I never saw her working on anything else. She sewed in her gloves, very badly— making crooked stitches and then ripping half of them out. It made me nervous. We sat together before the spluttering fire, and talked in a weak kind of way—I forget what of—and then it grew dark, and a maid brought lights; and then the wind picked up and the windows began to rattle worse than ever. I said to myself, 'Dear God, let Gentleman come soon! I think a week of this will kill me'; and I yawned. Maud caught my eye. Then she also yawned. That made me yawn harder. At last she put her work aside and tucked up her feet and laid her head upon the arm of the sofa, and seemed to sleep.

That's all there was to do there, until the clock struck seven. When she heard that she gave a bigger yawn than ever, put her fingers to her eyes, and rose. Seven o'clock was when she must change her dress again—and change her gloves, for ones of silk—to have supper with her uncle.

She was two hours with him. I saw nothing of that of course, but took my dinner in the kitchen, with the servants. They told me that, when he had eaten, Mr Lilly liked his niece to sit and read to him in the drawing-room. That was his idea of fun, I suppose, for they said he hardly ever had guests, and if he did then they were always other bookish gentlemen, from Oxford and London; and it was his pleasure, then, to have Maud read books to them all.

'Does she do nothing, poor girl, but read?' I asked.

'Her uncle won't let her,' said a parlourmaid. 'That's how much he prizes her. Won't hardly let her out—fears she'll break in two. It's him, you know, that keeps her all the time in gloves.'

'That's enough!' said Mrs Stiles. 'What would Miss Maud say?'

Then the parlourmaid fell silent. I sat and thought about Mr Lilly, with his red cap and his gold repeater, his green eye-glasses, his black finger and tongue; and then about Maud, frowning over her eggs, rubbing hard at her mother's grave. It seemed a queer kind of prizing, that would make a girl like her, like that.

I thought I knew all about her. Of course, I knew nothing. I had my dinner, listening to the servants talk, not saying much; and then Mrs Stiles asked me, Should I like to come and take my pudding with her and Mr Way, in her own pantry? I supposed I ought to. I sat gazing at the picture made all of hair. Mr Way read us pieces from the Maidenhead paper, and at every story—that were all about bulls breaking fences, or parsons making interesting sermons in church—Mrs Stiles shook her head, saying, 'Well, did you ever hear the like?' and Mr Way would chuckle and say, 'You'll see, Miss Smith, that we are quite a match for London, news-wise!'

Above his voice came the faint sound of laughter and scraping chairs, that was Cook and the scullery-maids and William Inker and the knife-boy, enjoying themselves in the kitchen.

Then the great house clock struck, and immediately after it the servants' bell sounded; and that meant that Mr Lilly was ready to be seen by Mr Way into his bed, and that Maud was ready to be put by me into hers.

I almost lost my way again, on my way back up; but even so, when she saw me she said,

'Is that you, Susan? You are quicker than Agnes.' She smiled. 'I think you are handsomer, too. I don't think a girl can be handsome—do you?—with red hair. But nor with fair hair, either. I should like to be dark, Susan!'

She had had wine with her supper, and I had had beer. I should say we were both, in our own ways, rather tipsy. She had me stand beside her at the great silvery glass above her fireplace, and drew my head to hers, to compare the colours of our hair. 'Yours is the darker,' she said.

Then she moved away from the fire, for me to put her into her nightgown.

It was not much like undressing the chair in our old kitchen, after all. She stood shivering, saying, 'Quick! I shall freeze! Oh, heavens!'—for her bedroom was as draughty as everywhere else there, and my fingers were cold and made her jump. They grew warm, though, after a minute. Stripping a lady is heavy work. Her corset was long, with a busk of steel; her waist, as I think I have said, was narrow: the kind of waist the doctors speak against, that gives a girl an illness. Her crinoline was made of watchspring. Her hair, inside its net, was fixed with half a pound of pins, and a comb of silver. Her petticoats and shimmy were calico. Underneath it all, however, she was soft and smooth as butter. Too soft, I thought her. I imagined her bruising. She was like a lobster without its shell. She stood in her stockings while I fetched her nightgown, her arms above her head, her eyes shut tight; and for a second I turned, and looked at her. My gaze was nothing to her. I saw her bosom, her bottom, her feather and everything and—apart from the feather, which was brown as a duck's—she was as pale as a statue on a pillar in a park. So pale she was, she seemed to shine.

But again, it was a troubling kind of paleness, and I was glad to cover her up. I tidied her gown back into the press and jammed closed the door. She sat and waited, yawning, for me to come and brush her hair.

Her hair was good, and very long let down. I brushed it, and held it, and thought what it might fetch.

'What are you thinking of?' she said, her eyes on mine in the glass. 'Of your old mistress? Was her hair handsomer?'

'Her hair was very poor,' I said. And then, feeling sorry for Lady Alice: 'But she walked well.'

'Do I walk well?'

'You do, miss.'

She did. Her feet were small, her ankles slender like her waist. She smiled. As she had with our heads, she made me put my foot beside hers, to compare them.

'Yours is almost as neat,' she said kindly.

She got into her bed. She said she didn't care to lie in darkness. She had a rush-light in a tin shade kept beside her pillow, the kind old misers use, and she made me light it from the flame of my candle; and she wouldn't let me tie the curtains of her bed, but had me pull them only a little way shut, so that she might see into the room beyond.

'And you will not, will you, quite close your door?' she said. 'Agnes never used to. I didn't like it, before you came, having Margaret in a chair. I was afraid I would dream and have to call her. When Margaret touches, she pinches. Your hands, Susan, are hard as hers; and yet your touch is gentle.'

She reached and put her fingers quickly upon mine, as she said this; and I rather shuddered to feel the kid-skin on them—for she had changed out of her silk gloves, only to button another white pair back on. Then she took her hands away and tucked her arms beneath the blanket. I pulled the blanket perfectly smooth. I said,

'Shall that be all, miss?'

'Yes, Susan,' she answered. She moved her cheek upon her pillow. She didn't like the prickling of her hair against her neck: she had put it back, and it snaked away into shadow, straight and dark and slender as a rope.

When I took my candle off, the shadow spread across her like a wave. Her room was dimly lit by the lamp, but her bed was in darkness. I half-closed my door, and heard her lift her head. 'A little wider,' she called softly, so I opened it further. Then I stood and rubbed my face. I had been at Briar only a day; but it was the longest day of my life. My hands were sore from pulling laces. When I closed my eyes, I saw hooks. Undressing myself had no fun in it, now I had undressed her.

At last I sat and blew out my candle; and heard her move. There wasn't a sound in the house: I heard her, very clearly, rise from her pillow and twist in her bed. I heard her reach and draw out her key, then put it to the little wooden box. At the click of the lock, I got up. I thought, 'Well, I can be silent, if you can't. I am softer than you or your uncle know'; and I made my way to the crack of the door and peeped through. She had leaned out of the curtained bed, and had the portrait of the handsome lady—her mother—in her hand. As I watched, she raised the portrait to her mouth, kissed it, and spoke soft, sad words to it. Then she put it from her with a sigh. She kept the key in a book beside her bed. I hadn't thought to look in there. She locked the box back up, set it neatly on the table—touched it once, touched it twice—and then moved back behind the curtain and was still.

I grew too tired to watch her, then. I moved back, too. My room was dark as ink. I reached with my hands and found the blanket and sheets, and pulled them down. I got beneath them; and lay cold as a frog in my own narrow lady's maid's bed.

I cannot say how long I slept for then. I could not say, when I woke up, what awful sound it was that had woken me. I did not know, for a minute or two, whether my eyes were open or closed—for the darkness was so deep, there was no difference—it was only when I gazed at the open door to Maud's room and saw the faint light there, that I knew I was awake and not dreaming. What I had heard, I thought, was some great crash or thud, and then perhaps a cry. Now, in the instant of my opening my eyes, there was a silence; but as I lifted my head and felt my heart beat hard, the cry came again. It was Maud, calling out in a high, frightened voice. She was calling on her old maid: 'Agnes! Oh! Oh! Agnes!'

I didn't know what I would see when I went in to her—perhaps, a busted window and a burglar, pulling at her head, cutting the hair off. But the window, though it still rattled, was quite unbroken; and there was no-one there with her, she had come to the gap in her bed-curtains with the blankets all bunched beneath her chin and her hair flung about, half covering her face. Her face was pale and strange. Her eyes, that I knew were only brown, seemed black. Black, like Polly Perkins's, as the pips in a pear.

She said again, 'Agnes!'

I said, 'It's Sue, miss.'

She said, 'Agnes, did you hear that sound? Is the door shut?'

'The door?' The door was closed. 'Is someone there?'

'A man?' she said.

'A man? A burglar?'

'At the door? Don't go, Agnes! I'm afraid he'll harm you!'

She
was
afraid. She was so frightened, she began to frighten me. I said, 'I don't think there's a man, miss.' I said, 'Let me try and light a candle.'

But have you ever tried to light a candle from a rush-light in a tin shade? I could not get the wick to catch; and she kept on, weeping and calling me Agnes, until my hand shook so much I could not hold the candle steady.

I said, 'You must be quiet, miss. There's no man; and if there is, then I shall call for Mr Way to come and catch him.'

I took up the rush-light. 'Don't take the light!' she cried at once. 'I beg you, don't!'

I said I would only take it to the door, to show her there was no-one there; and while she wept and clutched at the bed-clothes I went with the light to the door to her parlour and—all in a flinching, winking kind of way—I pulled it open.

The room beyond was very dark. The few great bits of furniture sat humped about, like the baskets with the thieves in, in the play of
Ali Baba
. I thought now dismal it would be if I had come all the way to Briar, from the Borough, to be murdered by burglars. And what if the burglar proved to be a man I knew— say, one of Mr Ibbs's nephews? Queer things like that do happen.