Fingersmith

by Sarah Waters

You are waiting for me to start my story. Perhaps I was waiting, then. But my story had already started—I was only like you, and didn’t know it.

‘And her quite a peach, you say? About the figure and the face?’ Gentleman looked careless. ‘She can fill a man’s eye, I suppose,’ he said, with a shrug. John laughed. ‘I should like to fill her eye!’ ‘I should like to fill yours,’ said Gentleman, steadily. Then he blinked. ‘With my fist, I mean.’

Then again, do you suppose that when that money was first got, it was got honestly? Don’t think it! Money never is. It is got, by families like hers, from the backs of the poor—twenty backs broken for every shilling made.

‘Why don’t she wear the kind of stays that fasten at the front, like a regular girl?’ said Dainty, watching. ‘Because then,’ said Gentleman, ‘she shouldn’t need a maid. And if she didn’t need a maid, she shouldn’t know she was a lady. Hey?’ He winked.

And we shall all call you Susan.’ He frowned. ‘But, not Susan Trinder. That may lead them back to Lant Street if things go wrong. We must find you a better second name—’ ‘Valentine,’ I said, straight off. What can I tell you? I was only seventeen. I had a weakness for hearts. Gentleman heard me, and curled his lip.

suddenly I longed for the time to pass, not for its own sake, but as it would take me back to her.

They will always believe a gentleman, over someone like me.

We were thinking of secrets. Real secrets, and snide. Too many to count. When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it makes my head spin.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘can he light it? Has he a match? Oh, I don’t believe he does! And the clock struck the half, quite twenty minutes ago. He must go to Uncle soon. No, he does not have a match, in all those pockets . . .’ She looked at me and wrung her hands, as if her heart was breaking. I said, ‘It won’t kill him, miss.’ ‘But poor Mr Rivers,’ she said again. ‘Oh, Sue, if you are quick, you might take a match to him. Look, he is putting his cigarette away. How sad he looks now!’

did she plot this or ??

‘Marry him, miss. Don’t wait for your uncle’s word. Mr Rivers loves you, and love won’t harm a flea. You will learn to like him as you ought, in time. Till then go with him in secret, and do everything he says.’ For a second, she looked wretched—as if she might have been hoping I would say anything but that; but it was only for a second. Then her face grew clear. She said,

Hey so actually thus broke my heart a bit

‘Am I real? Do you see me? Am I real?’

‘Do you think me good?’ she said. She said it, as a child might.

Then I looked at Maud. She was holding her cloak about her face, but when she saw me turn to her she reached and took my hand. She took it, not to be led by me, not to be comforted; only to hold it, because it was mine. In the sky, a star moved, and we both turned to watch it. ‘That’s luck,’ I said.

She had been kinder to me than anyone save Mrs Sucksby; and she had made me love her, when I meant only to ruin her. She was about to be married, and was frightened to death. And soon no-one would love her, ever again.

‘Good day,’ he said. ‘Mr Rivers. Miss Smith. Mrs Rivers, you remember me of course?’ He held out his hand. He held it to me. There was a second, I think, of perfect stillness. I looked at him, and he nodded. ‘Mrs Rivers?’ he said again. Then Gentleman leaned and caught hold of my arm.

WHAT

You thought her a pigeon. Pigeon, my arse. That bitch knew everything. She had been in on it from the start.

OH MY GOD

The flesh inside is grey, the yolk as dry as powder. I will remember the scent of it.

‘Ha!’ cries my uncle, seeing my distress. ‘I should say you can’t! Look down, miss, at the floor. Down! Further! Do you see that hand, beside your shoe? That hand was set there at my word, after consultation with an oculist—an eye-doctor. These are uncommon books, Miss Maud, and not for ordinary gazes. Let me see you step once past that pointing finger, and I shall use you as I would a servant of the house, caught doing the same—I shall whip your eyes until they bleed. That hand marks the bounds of innocence here. Cross it you shall, in time; but at my word, and when you are ready. You understand me, hmm?’

I am telling you this so that you might appreciate the forces that work upon me, making me what I am.

Perhaps children are like horses after all, and may be broken. My uncle returns to his mess of papers, dismissing us; and I go docilely back to my sewing. 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.

The lamp smells, as it heats, of smouldering dust: a curious smell—I shall grow to hate it!—the smell of the parching of my own youth.

Then he has my knife taken away, and I must eat with my fingers. The dishes he prefers being all bloody meats, and hearts, and calves’ feet, my kid-skin gloves grow crimson—as if reverting to the substance they were made from. My appetite leaves me.

In time—so cunning am I!—I find out the name of her dead daughter; then, the kitchen cat giving birth to a litter of kittens, I take one for a pet, and name it for her. I make sure to call it loudest when Mrs Stiles is near: ‘Come, Polly! Oh, Polly! What a pretty child you are! How fine your black fur is! Come, kiss your mama.’ Do you see, what circumstances make of me?

‘Let me kiss mama good-night,’ I say one time, unlocking my box. But I do it only to torment Mrs Stiles. I raise the picture to my lips and, while she looks on, thinking me sorry—‘I hate you,’ I whisper, my breath tarnishing the gold. I do it that night, and the night which follows, and the night which follows that; at last, as a clock must tick to a regular beat, I find I must do it or lie fretful in my bed. And then, the portrait must be set down gently, with its ribbon quite uncreased. If the frame strikes the velvet lining of the wooden box too hard, I will take it out and set it down carefully again.

Ocd queen also wtf

I sit alone, and turn the cover; and understand at last the matter I have read, that has provoked applause from gentlemen.

This motber fucker

I wash my mouth, until my tongue grows cracked, and bleeds; I weep and weep; but still taste lavender. I think my lip must have poison in it, after all.

‘No meat,’ he says, laying a napkin across his lap, ‘for idle girls. Not in this house.’ Then Mr Way takes the platter away. Charles, his boy, looks sorry. I should like to strike him. Instead I must sit, twisting my hands into the fabric of my skirt, biting down my rage as I once swallowed tears, hearing the sliding of the meat upon my uncle’s ink-stained tongue, until I am dismissed. Next day at eight o’clock, I return to my work; and am careful never to yawn again.

She reminds me of myself, as I once was. She reminds me of myself as I once was and ought still to be, and will never be again. I hate her for it. When she is clumsy, when she is slow, I hit her. That makes her clumsier. Then I hit her again. That makes her weep. Her face, behind her tears, keeps still its look of mine. I beat her the harder, the more I fancy the resemblance.

I am seventeen when Richard Rivers comes to Briar with a plot and a promise and the story of a gullible girl who can be fooled into helping me do it.

The rareness of the article is relative to the desire of the heart which seeks it.’

He says he has a girl in mind, a girl of my years and colouring.

"we look like sisters" sneeeaaakyyy

This is the liberty—the rare and sinister liberty—he has come to Briar to offer. For payment he wants my trust, my promise, my future silence; and one half of my fortune.

‘You are soft on me now,’ she says, drawing back her arm, pulling down her sleeve, ‘now you’ve another to be hard to. Good luck to you trying. I’d like to see you bruise him, before he bruises you.’

I lie upon my bed and try to imagine the house that I will take, in London. I cannot do it. I see only a series of voluptuous rooms—dim rooms, close rooms, rooms-within-rooms—dungeons and cells—the rooms of Priapus and Venus.—The thought unnerves me. I give it up. The house will come clearer in time, I am sure of it.

I move away from her while she sits gathering the deck, turning the cards in her hands and frowning. She has let one fall, and has not seen it: the two of hearts. I place my heel upon it, imagining one of the painted red hearts my own; and I grind it into the carpet.

Have her come to me, today or tomorrow. Find out some way, will you? Be sly.’

I knewit!!

Presently Sue comes, and rests at my side. She is flushed from the weight of the bags. Her cloak still billows, her hair still whips, and I want more than anything to draw her to me, to touch and tidy her. I think I begin to, I think I half-reach for her; then I become conscious of Richard and his shrewd, considering gaze. I cross my arms before me and turn away.

I watch, as she sleeps. Only that. Richard sniffs again, softly curses the heat, the season. Then, as before, I suppose he grows still. I suppose he studies me. I suppose the brush in my fingers drops paint—for I find it later, black paint upon my blue gown. I do not mark it as it falls, however; and perhaps it is my not marking it, that betrays me. That, or my look. Sue frowns again. I watch, a little longer. Then I turn, and find Richard’s eyes upon me. ‘Oh, Maud,’ he says. That is all he says. But in his face I see, at last, how much I want her.

She has come to Briar to ruin me, to cheat me and do me harm. Look at her, I tell myself. See how slight she is, how brown and trifling! A thief, a little fingersmith—! I think I will swallow down my desire, as I have swallowed down grief, and rage. Shall I be thwarted, shall I be checked—held to my past, kept from my future—by her? I think, I shan’t. The day of our flight draws near. I shan’t. The month grows warmer, the nights grow close. I shan’t, I shan’t—

Tell me. Tell me a way to save you. A way to save myself.

Everything has changed. Nothing has changed, at all. She has put back my flesh; but flesh will close, will seal, will scar and harden.

And so you see it is love—not scorn, not malice; only love—that makes me harm her, in the end.

My own eyes stay open. I gaze through the lozenge of glass at the road we have travelled—a winding red road, made cloudy by dust, like a thread of blood escaping from my heart.

She keeps her eyes on mine, but speaks to Richard. Her voice is thick with the tears of age, or of emotion. ‘Good boy,’ she says.

WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT

I seize it, and shake it, and put my hand to its neck. ‘You shan’t!’ I say again. ‘Damn you, do you think I have come so far, for this?’ I look at the woman. ‘I shall kill your baby first!’—I think I would do it.—‘See, here! I shall stifle it!’ The man, the girl, the boy, look interested. The woman looks sorry. ‘My dear,’ she says, ‘I have seven babies about the place, just now. Make it six, if you want. Make it’—with a gesture to the tin box beneath the table—‘make it five. It is all the same to me. I fancy I am about to give the business up, anyway.’

WTF

‘Everything in this case.’ He says it meaningfully; and when I hesitate, not understanding, he goes on: ‘Listen to me, Maud. The scheme was hers, all of it. From start to finish, hers. And, villain that I am, I am not so great a swindler that I would swindle her of that.’

WHAT

“Is my baby a boy, or a girl?” “It’s a girl,” I say. And when she hears that she cries out with all her lungs: “Then God help her! For the world is cruel to girls. I wish she had died, and me with her!” ’

‘Susan.’

?????

“Here! Take her quick, and be kind to her! Her name’s Maud; and that’s a name for a lady after all. Remember your word.” “Remember

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—’