'Still keeping up the old, sad fiction?' he said to Gentleman.
Gentleman nodded and said nothing, as if he were too unhappy to speak. I hope he was! He turned and took down one of the bags— one of Maud's mother's bags. Dr Christie held me tighter. 'Now,' he said, 'how can you be Susan Smith, late of Whelk Street, Mayfair? Don't you know there's no such place? Come, you do know it. And we shall have you admitting it, though it take us a year. Now, don't twist so, Mrs Rivers! You are spoiling your handsome dress.'
I had struggled against his grip. At his words, I grew slack. I gazed at my sleeve of silk, and at my own arm, that had got plump and smooth with careful feeding; and then at the bag at my feet, with its letters of brass— the M, and the L.
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It was in that second that I guessed, at last, the filthy trick that Gentleman had played on me.
I howled.
'You bloody swine!' I cried, twisting again, and pulling towards him. 'You fuckster!
Oh!'
He stood in the doorway of the coach, making it tilt. The doctor gripped me harder and his face grew stern.
'There's no place for words like those in my house, Mrs Rivers,' he said.
'You sod,' I said to him. 'Can't you see what he's done? Can't you see the dodge of it?
It ain't me you want, it's— '
I still pulled, and he still held me; but now I looked past him, to the swaying coach.
Gentleman had moved back, his hand before his face. Beyond him, the light in bars upon her from the louvred blinds, sat Maud. Her face was thin, her hair was dull. Her dress was worn with use, like a servant's dress. Her eyes were wild, with tears starting in them; but beyond the tears, her gaze was hard. Hard as marble, hard as brass.
Hard as a pearl, and the grit that lies inside it.
Dr Christie saw me looking.
'Now, why do you stare?' he said. 'You know your own maid, I think?'
I could not speak. She could, however. She said, in a trembling voice, not her own:
'My own poor mistress. Oh! My heart is breaking!'
You thought her a pigeon. Pigeon, my arse. That bitch knew everything. She had been in on it from the start.
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Part II
C h a p t e r S e v e n
The start, I think I know too well. It is the first of my mistakes.
I imagine a table, slick with blood. The blood is my mother's. There is too much of it.
There is so much of it, I think it runs, like ink. I think, to save the boards beneath, the women have set down china bowls; and so the silences between my mother's cries are filled— drip drop! drip drop!— with what might be the staggered beating of clocks.
Beyond the beat come other, fainter cries: the shrieks of lunatics, the shouts and scolds of nurses. For this is a madhouse. My mother is mad. The table has straps upon it to keep her from plunging to the floor; another strap separates her jaws, to prevent the biting of her tongue; another keeps apart her legs, so that I might emerge from between them. When I am born, the straps remain: the women fear she will tear me in two! They put me upon her bosom and my mouth finds out her breast. I suck, and the house falls silent about me. There is only, still, that falling blood— drip drop! drip, drop!— the beat telling off the first few minutes of my life, the last of hers. For soon, the clocks run slow. My mother's bosom rises, falls, rises again; then sinks for ever.
I feel it, and suck harder. Then the women pluck me from her. And when I weep, they hit me.
I pass my first ten years a daughter to the nurses of the house. I believe they love me.
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There is a tabby cat upon the wards, and I think they keep me, rather as they keep that cat, a thing to pet and dress with ribbons. I wear a slate- grey gown cut like their own, an apron and a cap; they give me a belt with a ring of miniature keys upon it, and call me 'little nurse'. I sleep with each of them in turn, in their own beds, and follow them in their duties upon the madhouse wards. The house is a large one— seems larger to me, I suppose— and divided in two: one side for female lunatics, one side for male. I see only the female. I never mind them. Some of them kiss and pet me, as the nurses do. Some of them touch my hair and weep. I remind them of their daughters. Others are troublesome, and these I am encouraged to stand before and strike with a wooden wand, cut to my hand, until the nurses laugh and say they never saw anything so droll.
Thus I learn the rudiments of discipline and order; and incidentally apprehend the attitudes of insanity. This will all prove useful, later.
When I am old enough to reason I am given a gold ring said to be my father's, the portrait of a lady called my mother, and understand I am an orphan; but, never having known a parent's love— or rather, having known the favours of a score of mothers— I am not greatly troubled by the news. I think the nurses clothe and feed me, for my own sake. I am a plain- faced child but, in that childless world, pass for a beauty. I have a sweet singing voice and an eye for letters. I I suppose I shall live out all my days a nurse, contentedly teasing lunatics until I die.
So we believe, at nine and ten. Some time in my eleventh year, I am summoned to the nurses' parlour by the matron of the house. I imagine she means to make me some treat. I am wrong. Instead, she
greets me strangely, and will not meet my eye. There is a person with her— a gentleman, she says— but then, the word means little to me. It will mean more, in time.
'Step closer,' the matron says. The gentleman watches. He wears a suit of black, and a pair of black silk gloves. He holds a cane with an ivory knob, upon which he leans, the better to study me. His hair is black tending to white, his cheek cadaverous, his eyes imperfectly hidden by a pair of coloured glasses. An ordinary child might shrink from gazing at him; but I know nothing of ordinary children, and am afraid of no-one.
I walk until I stand before him. He parts his lips, to pass his tongue across them. His tongue is dark at the tip.
'She's undersize,' he says; 'but makes enough noise with her feet, for all that. How's her voice?'
His own voice is low, tremulous, complaining, like the shadow of a shivering man.
'Say a word to the gentleman,' says the matron quietly. 'Say how you are.'
'I am very well,' I say. Perhaps I speak stoutly. The gentleman winces.
'That will do,' he says, raising his hand. Then: 'I hope you can whisper? I hope you can nod?'
I nod. 'Oh yes.'
'I hope you can be silent?'
'I can.'
'Be silent, then.— That's better.' He turns to the matron. 'I see she wears her mother's likeness. Very good. It will remind her of her mother's fate, and may serve to keep her from sharing it. I don't care at all for her lip, however. It is too plump. It has a bad 114
promise. Likewise her back, which is soft, and slouches. And what of her leg? I shan't want a thick- legged girl. Why do you hide her leg behind so long a skirt? Did I ask for that?'
The matron colours. 'It has been a harmless sport of the women, sir, to keep her dressed in the costume of the house.'
'Have I paid you, to provide sport for nurses?'