Fingersmith

by Sarah Waters

‘I wish I were dead,’ I say. ‘Oh, now,’ she answers, rising. ‘What kind of talk is that?’ ‘I wish you were dead, then.’

My gloves grow damp and stained; and I have none with which to replace them.

The needto keep them on is interesting

To Mr Richard Rivers, from Christopher Lilly, Esq.—Sir. I suppose you have taken my niece, Maud Lilly. I wish you joy of her! Her mother was a strumpet, and she has all her mother’s instincts, if not her face. The check to the progress of my work will be severe; but I take comfort in my loss, from this: that I fancy you, sir, a man who knows the proper treating of a whore.—C.L.

WHAT THE FUCK

He might say I was dead. But then, if he said that, she would ask for my body, to bury.—I thought of my funeral, and who would cry most. He might say I was drowned or lost in marshes. She would ask for the papers to prove it. Could those papers be faked? He might say I had taken my share of the money, and cut. He would say that, I knew it. But Mrs Sucksby wouldn’t believe him. She would see through him like he was glass. She would hunt me out. She had not kept me seventeen years to lose me now, like this! She would look in every house in England, until she found me!

Oh no babe

‘I am not Maud Rivers!’ He raised a finger, and almost smiled. ‘You are not ready to admit that you are Maud Rivers. Hmm? That is quite a different thing. And when you are ready to admit to it, our work shall be done. Until then—’

Girl at this point just lie??

‘Quite complete,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it? I don’t believe I ever saw a case so pure. The delusion extending even to the exercise of the motor faculties. It’s there we will break her. We must study on this, until our course of treatment is decided. Mrs Rivers, my pencil if you please. Ladies, good-day.’

This would make me lose my shit i fear

shyster

I looked, and thought of all the times that Mrs Sucksby had washed and combed and shined my hair, when I was a girl. I thought of her warming her bed before she put me in it, so I should not take chills. I thought of her putting aside, for me, the tenderest morsels of meat; and smoothing my teeth, when they cut; and passing her hands across my arms and legs, to be sure that they grew straight. I remembered how close and safe she had kept me, all the years of my life.

SHE WAS BREEDING YOU BABE

‘Don’t be frightened,’ I would always answer. ‘Oh, don’t be frightened.’—And at that moment, the dream would slip from me and I would wake. I would wake in a kind of dread, to think that, like Nurse Bacon, I might have said the words aloud—or sighed, or quivered. And then I would lie and be filled with a terrible shame. For I hated her! I hated her!—and yet I knew that, every time, I secretly wished that the dream had gone on to its end.

It was as if I were filled with gunpowder, and had just been touched with a match. I began to struggle, and to shriek.

Perhaps I never was to be quite myself, again. For when I woke, everything was changed. They put me back in my old gown and my old boots and took me back to my old room, and I went with them just like a lamb. I was covered in bruises and burns, yet hardly felt them. I did not weep. I sat and, like the other ladies, looked at nothing.

But then, I did get out. Blame Fortune. Fortune’s blind, and works in peculiar ways. Fortune sent Helen of Troy to the Greeks—didn’t it?—and a prince, to the Sleeping Beauty. Fortune kept me at Dr Christie’s nearly all that summer long; then listen to who it sent me.

If it wasn’t quite true that I knew where Gentleman was, then it wasn’t quite a lie, either; for I was pretty certain that, once I reached London and got help from Mrs Sucksby, I should find him. But I would have lied anyway, just then. I dare say you would have, too.

Now, look at my face. Am I mad?’ He looked, and blinked. ‘Well—’

Lmao

But I looked along the street, at Mr Ibbs’s door, and then at the window above it. It was the window to the room I shared with Mrs Sucksby,

Oh my god she is going to see her

It was a playing card. It was one of the playing cards from her old French deck at Briar. It was the Two of Hearts. It had got greasy, and was marked by the folds she had put in it; but it still had that crease, in the shape of her heel, across one of its painted red pips.

SHE STILL HAS THE CARD OMFG

‘Dear girl, I—Oh, I should have got you, too, in another month more!—only, you know, I kept my searching quiet from John and Dainty.’

Killherplsss

On the table beneath my hand was a heart: I had scratched it into the wood, the summer before. I had been like a child still, then. I had been like an infant—

‘Sue,’ said Maud at the same time, leaning across the table and also reaching for me. ‘You don’t suppose him anything to me? You don’t think him a husband to me, in anything but name? Don’t you know I hate him? Don’t you know I hated him, at Briar?’

Yes pls realize

‘I hated it. I didn’t smile, with him, when your back was turned.’ ‘You think I did?’ ‘Why not? You are an actress. You are acting now!’ ‘Am I?’ She said it, still with her eyes on my face, still with her hand reaching for mine but falling short of taking it. The light was all upon us, the rest of the kitchen almost dark. I looked at her fingers. They were marked with dirt, or bruised. I said,

And in that moment, I saw into my own cowardly heart and knew that I would have given up nothing for her, nothing at all; and that, sooner than be shamed by her now, I would die.

‘Dear girl,’ said Mrs Sucksby quickly, with her eyes on Gentleman’s face. ‘Dear girl, the fools were me and Mr Ibbs, to let you.’ Gentleman had taken his cigarette from his mouth to blow against its tip. Now, hearing Mrs Sucksby and meeting her gaze, he stood quite still for a second with it held before his lips. Then he looked away and laughed—a disbelieving sort of laugh—and shook his head. ‘Sweet Christ,’ he said quietly.

‘I done it,’ she said. ‘Lord knows, I’m sorry for it now; but I done it. And these girls here are innocent girls, and know nothing at all about it; and have harmed no-one.’

AMEN

‘Here’s your daughter,’ they’d say, unlocking the gate to Mrs Sucksby’s cell; and every time, she would quickly lift her head and study my face, or glance beyond my shoulder, with a troubled look—as if, I thought, not quite believing they had let me come again and meant to let me stay.

Oh babe

But what happened, was this: he took one look at her, was seen to stagger and grow white; then declared himself only overcome with emotion, to find her so perfectly cured.

Thismother fucker

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

‘Dainty,’ I said in a sort of pant, as I did. ‘Dainty, she must have known. She must have known it, all along. She must have sent me there, at Gentleman’s side, knowing he meant at last to—Oh!’ My voice grew hoarse. ‘She sent me there, so he would leave me in that place and bring her Maud. It was only ever Maud she wanted. She kept me safe, and gave me up, so Maud, so Maud—’ But then, I grew still. I was thinking of Maud, starting up with the knife. I was thinking of Maud, letting me hate her. I was thinking of Maud, making me think she’d hurt me, to save me knowing who had hurt me most . . .

‘My uncle—’ she said, looking up fearfully. ‘My uncle’s books—You thought me good. Didn’t you? I was never that. I was—’