Fingersmith

by Sarah Waters

It is not the prospect of a whipping that makes me meek. It is what I know of the cruelty of patience. There is no patience so terrible as that of the deranged. I have seen lunatics labour at endless tasks—conveying sand from one leaking cup into another; counting the stitches in a fraying gown, or the motes in a sunbeam; filling invisible ledgers with the resulting sums. Had they been gentlemen, and rich—instead of women—then perhaps they would have passed as scholars and commanded staffs.—I cannot say.

Is this desire? How queer that I, of all people, should not know! But I thought desire smaller, neater; I supposed it bound to its own organs as taste is bound to the mouth, vision to the eye. This feeling haunts and inhabits me, like a sickness. It covers me, like skin.

That week was a terrible one. I had got my own mind back, the house seemed crueller than ever, and I saw how far I had sunk before in growing used to it.

Everybody in my world knew that regular work was only another name for being robbed and dying of boredom.