Fingersmith

uncle's side; and sometimes, if I pass her chamber door, I hear her sighing.'

'And just,' said Mr Ibbs, 'as you was getting on so nicely.'

'Just so,' said Gentleman. 'Just so.'

'Poor lady!' said Dainty. Her eyes had tears in them. She could cry at anything. '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.'

John's cheek grew dark, and he jumped to his feet. 'I should like to see you try it!'

Mr Ibbs lifted his hands. 'Boys! Boys! That's enough! I won't have it, before ladies and kids! John, sit down and stop fucking about. Gentleman, you promised us your story; what we've had so far has been so much pastry. Where's the meat, son? Where's the meat? And, more to our point, how is Susie to help cook it?'

John kicked the leg of his stool, then sat. Gentleman had taken out a packet of cigarettes. We waited, while he found a match and struck it. We watched the flare of the sulphur in his eyes. Then he leaned to the table again and touched the three cards he had laid there, putting straight their edges.

'You want the meat,' he said. 'Very well, here it is.' He tapped the Queen of Hearts. 'I aim to marry this girl and take her fortune. I aim to steal her'— he slid the card to one side— 'from under her uncle's nose. I am in a fair way to doing it already, as you have heard; but she's a queer sort of girl, and can't be trusted to herself— and should she take some clever, hard woman for her new servant, why then I'm ruined. I have come to London to collect a set of bindings for the old man's albums. I want to send Sue back before me. I want to set her up there as the lady's maid, so that she might help me woo her.'

He caught my eye. He still played idly with the card, with one pale hand. Now he lowered his voice.

'And there's something else,' he said, 'that I shall need Sue's help with. Once I have married this girl, I shan't want her about me. I know a man who will take her off my hands. He has a house, where he'll keep her. It's a madhouse. He'll keep her close. So close, perhaps ..." He did not finish, but turned the card face down, and kept his fingers on its back. 'I must only marry her,' he said, 'and— as Johnny would say— I must jiggle her, once, for the sake of the cash. Then I'll take her, unsuspecting, to the madhouse gates. Where's the harm? Haven't I said, she's half-simple already? But I want to be sure. I shall need Sue by her to keep her simple; and to persuade her, in her simpleness, into the plot.'

He drew again upon his cigarette and, as they had before, everyone turned their eyes on me. Everyone that is, save Mrs Sucksby. She had listened, saying nothing, while Gentleman spoke. I had watched her pour a little of her tea out of her cup into her 17

saucer, then swill it about the china and finally raise it to her mouth, while the story went on. She could never bear hot tea, she said it hardened the lips. And certainly, I don't believe I ever knew a grown- up woman with lips as soft as hers.

Now, in the silence, she put her cup and saucer down, then drew out her handkerchief and wiped her mouth. She looked at Gentleman, and finally spoke.

'Why Sue,' she said, 'of all the girls in England? Why my Sue?'

'Because she is yours, Mrs S,' he answered. 'Because I trust her; because she's a good girl— which is to say, a bad girl, not too nice about the fine points of the law.'

She nodded. And how do you mean,' she asked next, 'to cut the shine?'

Again he looked at me; but he still spoke to her.

'She shall have two thousand pounds,' he said, smoothing his whiskers; 'and shall take any of the little lady's bits and frocks and jewels that she likes.'

That was the deal. We thought it over. 'What do you say?' he said at last— to me, this time. And then,

when I did not answer: 'I am sorry,' he said, 'to spring this upon you; but you can see the little time I have had to act in. I must get a girl soon. I should like it to be you, Sue.

I should like it to be you, more than anyone. But if it is not to be, then tell me quickly, will you?— so I might find out another.'

'Dainty will do it,' said John, when he heard that. 'Dainty was a maid once— wasn't you, Daint?— for a lady in a great house at Peckham.'

'As I recall,' said Mr Ibbs, drinking his tea, 'Dainty lost that place through putting a hat-pin to the lady's arm.'

'She was a bitch to me,' said Dainty, 'and got my dander up. This girl don't sound like a bitch. She's a flat, you said so. I could maid for a flat.'

'It was Sue that was asked,' said Mrs Sucksby quietly. 'And she still ain't said.'

Then, again they all looked at me; and their eyes made me nervous. I turned my head.

'I don't know,' I said. 'It seems a rum sort of plot to me. Set me up, as maid to a lady?

How shall I know what to do?'

'We can teach you,' said Gentleman. 'Dainty can teach you, since she knows the business. How hard can it be? You must only sit and simper, and hold the lady's salts.'

I said, 'Suppose the lady won't want me for her maid? Why should she want me?'

But he had thought of that. He had thought of everything. He said he meant to pass me off as his old nurse's sister's child— a city girl come on hard times. He said he thought the lady would take me then, for his sake.

He said, 'We'll write you a character— sign it Lady Fanny of Bum Street, something like that— she won't know any better. She never saw Society, doesn't know London from Jerusalem. Who can she ask?'

'I don't know,' I said again. 'Suppose she don't care for you, so much as you are hoping?'

He grew modest. 'Well,' he said, 'I think I might be permitted by now, to know when a green girl likes me.'

'Suppose,' said Mrs Sucksby then, 'she don't like you quite

enough? Suppose she turns out another Miss Bamber or Miss

Finch?'

18

Miss Bamber and Miss Finch were two of the other heiresses he had almost netted.

But he heard their names, and snorted. 'She won't,' he said, 'turn out like them, I know it. Those girls had fathers— ambitious fathers, with lawyers on every side. This girl's uncle can see no further than the last page of his book. As to her not liking me enough— well, I can only say this: I think she will.'

'Enough to do a flit, from her uncle's house?'

'It's a grim house,' he answered, 'for a girl of her years.'

'But it's the years that will work against you,' said Mr Ibbs. You picked up bits and pieces of Law, of course, in a line like his. 'Till she is one-and-twenty, she shall need her uncle's say. Take her as fast and as quiet as you like: he shall come and take her back again. You being her husband won't count for buttons, then.'

'But her being my wife, will.— If you understand me,' said Gentleman slyly.

Dainty looked blank. John saw her face. 'The jiggling,' he said.

'She shall be ruined,' said Mrs Sucksby. 'No other gent will want her, then.'

Dainty gaped more than ever.

'Never mind it,' said Mr Ibbs, lifting his hand. Then, to Gentleman: 'It's tricky.

Uncommonly tricky.'

'I don't say it's not. But we must take our chances. What have we to lose? If nothing else, it will be a holiday for Sue.'

John laughed. A holiday,' he said, 'it will be. A fucking long one, if you get caught.'

I bit my lip. He was right. But it wasn't so much the risk that troubled me. You cannot be a thief and always troubling over hazards, you should go mad. It was only that I was not sure I wanted any kind of holiday. I was not sure I cared for it away from the Borough. I had once gone with Mrs Sucksby to visit her cousin in Bromley; I had come home with hives. I remembered the country as quiet and queer, and the people in it either simpletons or gipsies.