Fingersmith by Sarah Waters Read Free Book Online

fire. Some had hair still clinging to them, and the flames set it hissing.
    'Can't you do anything to that girl of yours,' said Mr Ibbs to John, 'but make her cry?'
    John laughed. 'I likes to see her cry,' he said. 'It makes her sweat the less.'
    He was an evil boy, all right.
    But he was quite caught up in Gentleman's plot, despite himself. We all were. For the first time I ever knew, Mr Ibbs kept the blind pulled down on his shop door and let his brazier go cold. When people came knocking with keys to be cut, he sent them away. To the two or three thieves that brought poke, he shook his head.
    'Can't do it, my son. Not to-day. Got a little something cooking.'
    He only had Phil come, early in the morning. He sat him down and ran him through the points of a list that Gentleman had drawn up the night before; then Phil pulled his cap down over his eyes, and left. When he came back two hours later it was with a bag and a canvas-covered trunk, that he had got from a man he knew, who ran a crooked warehouse at the river.
    The trunk was for me to take to the country. In the bag was a brown stuff dress, more or less my size; and a cloak, and shoes, and black silk stockings; and on top of it all, a heap of lady's real white underthings.
    Mr Ibbs only undid the string at the neck of the bag, peeped in, and saw the linen; then he went and sat at the far side of the kitchen, where he had a Bramah lock he liked sometimes to take apart, and powder, and put back together. He made John go with him and hold the screws. Gentleman, however, took out the lady's items one by one, and placed them flat upon the table. Beside the table he set a kitchen chair.
    'Now, Sue,' he said, 'suppose this chair's Miss Lilly. How shall you dress her? Let's say you start with the stockings and drawers.'
    'The drawers?' I said. 'You don't mean, she's naked?'
    Dainty put her hand to her mouth and tittered. She was sitting at Mrs Sucksby's feet, having her hair re-curled.
    'Naked?' said Gentleman. 'Why, as a nail. What else? She must take off her clothes when they grow foul; she must take them off to bathe. It will be your job to receive them when she does. It will be your job to pass her her fresh ones.'
    I had not thought of this. I wondered how it would be to have to stand and hand a pair of drawers to a strange bare girl. A strange bare girl had once run, shrieking, down Lant Street, with a policeman and a nurse behind her. Suppose Miss Lilly took fright like that, and I had to grab her? I blushed, and Gentleman saw. 'Come now,' he said, almost smiling. 'Don't say you're squeamish?'
    I tossed my head, to show I wasn't. He nodded, then took up a pair of the stockings, and then a pair of drawers. He placed them, dangling, over the seat of the kitchen chair.
    'What next?' he asked me.
    I shrugged. 'Her shimmy, I suppose.'
    'Her chemise, you must call it,' he said. 'And you must make sure to warm it, before she puts it on.'
    He took the shimmy up and held it close to the kitchen fire. Then he put it carefully above the drawers, over the back of the chair, as if the chair was wearing it.
    'Now, her corset,' he said next. 'She will want you to tie this for her, tight as you like. Come on, let's see you do it.'
    He put the corset about the shimmy, with the laces at the back; and while he leaned upon the chair to hold it fast, he made me pull the laces and knot them in a bow. They left lines of red and white upon my palms, as if I had been whipped.
    '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.
    After the corset came a camisole, and after that a dicky; then came a nine-hoop crinoline, and then more petticoats, this time of silk. Then Gentleman had Dainty run upstairs for a bottle of Mrs Sucksby's scent, and he had me spray it where the splintered wood of the