Affinity (26 page)

‘So they all say,’ said Miss Ridley sourly. ‘A pity none of them do.’

I thought Miss Haxby would check her. She did not. She only walked on, past the door of the chain-room, back into the sloping passage that led upwards to the cells; and there she left us, to return to her bright office. Miss Ridley took me higher. We crossed the penal wards, and saw Mrs Pretty leaning with another matron at the gate of Jacobs’s cell, while two prisoners laboured with pails of water and brooms, wiping the slops. I was handed to Mrs Jelf. I looked at her and then, when Miss Ridley had gone, I put my hands to my eyes. She murmured, ‘You have been to the darks,’ and I nodded. I said, Could it be right, to treat the women like that? She could not answer me, she only looked away and shook her head.

I found her wards as strangely silent as the others, the women in them stiff and watchful. All spoke at once of the breaking-out when I went in to them; each wanted to know what had been smashed and who had smashed it, what had been done with her. ‘Sent to the darks, was she?’ they would ask with a shudder.

‘Has she gone to the darks, Miss Prior? Was it Morris?’

‘Was it Burns?’

‘Is she very much hurt?’

‘I should say she’s sorry for it, now!’

‘I was put in the darks one time, ma’am,’ Mary Ann Cook told me. ‘It was the fearfullest place I ever was in. Some girls only laugh at the blackness—but not me, ma’am. Not me.’

‘Not me, Cook, either,’ I said.

Even Selina seemed touched by the mood of the wards. I found her pacing her cell, her knitting lying idle. When she saw me come she blinked, and crossed her arms, and continued to move agitatedly from foot to foot, so that I wished that I might go to her and place my hands on her and make her calm.

‘There’s been a breaking-out,’ she said, while Mrs Jelf still shut the gate on us. ‘Who was it—was it Hoy? Or Francis?’

‘You know I cannot tell you,’ I said, a little dismayed. She looked away. She said that she had only asked to test me—that she knew very well, it was Phœbe Jacobs. They had taken her to the dark cell, in a jacket with a screw. Did I think that was kind?

I hesitated, then asked, Did she think it was kind, to be as troublesome as Jacobs?

‘I think that we have all forgotten kindness here,’ she answered, ‘—and wouldn’t miss it, if it weren’t for ladies like you, come to stir us all up with your manners!’

Her voice was harsh—as harsh as Jacobs’s, as harsh as Miss Ridley’s. I sat upon her chair and placed my hands upon her table, and when I straightened my fingers I saw them tremble. I said I hoped she did not mean what she had said.—She answered at once, that she did mean it! Did I know how terrible it was, to have to sit and hear a woman breaking up her cell, with the bars and bricks about one? It was like having sand cast in one’s face, and being forbidden to blink. It was like an itch, an ache—‘you must cry out, or die! But when you do cry out, you know yourself a—a beast! Miss Haxby comes, the chaplain comes,
you
come—we cannot be beasts then, we must be women. I wish you wouldn’t come at all!’

I never saw her so nervous and distracted. I said, that if she could only know herself a woman through my visits, then I would go more often to her, not less.—‘Oh!’ she cried then, gripping at the sleeves of her gown until her flaming knuckles were mottled with white. ‘Oh! That is just what
they
say!’

She had begun to pace again, back and forth from the gate to the window, the star on her sleeve showing unnaturally vivid where the gas-light struck it, like a flashing beam of warning. I remembered what Miss Haxby had said, about how the women sometimes caught the fit of breaking-out from one another. I could think of nothing more terrible than Selina being cast in that dark cell, Selina in a strait-coat with a mad and bleeding face. I made my voice very level. I said, ‘Who says that, Selina? Miss Haxby, do you mean? Miss Haxby, and the chaplain?’

‘Ha! If they would only say anything so sensible!’

I answered: ‘Hush.’—I feared Mrs Jelf might hear her. I looked at her. I knew very well who it was that she spoke of. I said, ‘You mean your spirit-friends.’—‘Yes,’ she said, ‘
them
.’

Them
. They have seemed real to me, here, at night, in the darkness. But to-day at Millbank, that had grown suddenly so violent and so hard, they seemed flimsy, a kind of nonsense. I think I put my hand before my eyes. I said, ‘I am too weary for your spirits to-day, Selina—’

‘
You
are weary!’ she cried then. ‘
You
, who never had a spirit press at you—whisper or shriek at you—pluck at you, with a pinching hand—’ Now her lashes were dark with tears. She had stopped her pacing, but still gripped herself, and still shook.

I said I had not known her friends were such a burden to her, but had thought them only a comfort. She replied miserably that they were a comfort—‘It is only that, they come, as you come; and then, like you, they leave me. And then I am more bound, more wretched, more
like them
’—she nodded towards the other cells—‘than ever.’

She let out her breath, and closed her eyes. And while she had them shut I went to her at last, and took her hands—meaning to make some ordinary gesture, that would calm her. I think it did calm her. She opened her eyes, her fingers moved in mine; and I found myself flinching, to feel them so stiff and so cold. I didn’t think any more then about what I should or should not do. I drew off my gloves and placed them on her, then held her hands again. ‘
You mustn’t
,’ she said. But she didn’t pull her hands away, and after a moment I felt her flexing her fingers a little, as if to savour the unfamiliar sensation of the gloves against her palm.

We stood like that for, perhaps, a minute. ‘I wish you might keep these,’ I said. She shook her head. ‘You must ask your spirits to bring you mittens then. Wouldn’t that be more sensible, than flowers?’

She turned away from me. She said quietly that she would be ashamed for me to know the things that she has asked the spirits to bring her. That she has asked for food, for water and soap—even for a glass, to see her own face in. She said they brought them to her, when they were able. ‘Other things, however . . .’

She said she asked once for keys, to all the locks of Millbank; and for a suit of ordinary clothes, and money.

‘Do you think that a terrible thing?’ she asked.

I said I did not think it terrible; but that I was glad her spirits had not helped her, for to escape from Millbank would certainly be very wrong.

She nodded. ‘That is what my friends said.’

‘Your friends are wise then.’

‘They are very wise. It is only hard, sometimes, when I know that they might take me, yet still keep me here, day after day.’—I must have stiffened, hearing her say that. She went on: ‘Oh yes, it is they who keep me here! They might free me, in an instant. They might take me now, as you stand holding me. They shouldn’t even have to trouble over the locks.’

She had grown too earnest. I took my hands from her. I said that she might think such things, if they made her hours there rather lighter; but that she oughtn’t to think about them so that other things—real things—grew strange to her. I said, ‘It is Miss Haxby that keeps you here, Selina. Miss Haxby, and Mr Shillitoe, and all the matrons.’

‘It is the spirits,’ she said steadily. ‘They have me here, and they will keep me here, until—’

Until what?

‘Until their purpose is fulfilled.’

I shook my head, and asked her, What purpose was that? Did she mean her punishment? and if she did, then what of Peter Quick? I thought that it was he who should be punished? She said, almost impatiently, ‘Not
that
, I don’t mean
that
reason, Miss
Haxby’s
reason! I mean—’

She meant, some
spiritual
purpose. I said, ‘You told me of this, before. I didn’t understand it then, and don’t now. And nor, I think, do you.’

She had turned away a little; now she gazed at me again, and I saw that her look had changed, and become very grave. When she spoke, it was in a whisper. And what she said was: ‘I think I do begin to understand it. And I am—afraid.’

The words, her face, the gathering gloom—I had grown stern with her, and uneasy, but now I pressed her hands again, and then I took the gloves from her and warmed her naked fingers for a moment in my own. I said, What was it? What was she frightened of? She wouldn’t answer, only turned away. And as she did so her hands twisted in mine and my gloves fell from me, and I stooped to retrieve them.

They fell upon the cold, clean flags. And when I picked them up I saw, beside them on the floor, a smear of white. The white smear glistened, and when I pressed it, it cracked. It was not lime, from the streaming walls.

It was wax.

Wax. I gazed at it and began to shake. I stood, and looked at Selina. She saw that my face was pale, but not what I had looked at. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said. ‘What’s the matter, Aurora?’ The words made me flinch, for I caught, behind them, the voice of Helen—of Helen, who had once named me for a figure in a book; and who I had said could never take a better name, since her own suited her so well . . .

‘What’s the matter?’

I put my hands upon her. I thought of Agnes Nash, the coiner, saying that she hears, from Selina’s cell, the voices of ghosts. I said, ‘What you’re afraid of—what is it? Is it
him
? Does he come to you, still? Does he come to you at night, even now, even
here
?’

I felt, beneath the sleeves of her prison gown, the slender flesh upon her arms and, beneath the flesh, her bones. She drew in her breath, as if I hurt her, and when I heard that I let my grip grow slack, and stepped from her, and was ashamed. For it was Peter Quick’s waxen hand that I had thought of. And that was shut in a cabinet, a mile from Millbank; and was only a hollow mould, and could not harm her.

And yet, and yet—oh, there was a ghastly kind of logic to it, that impressed itself upon me now and made me shudder. That hand
was
a waxen one—but I thought of the reading-room. How would it be there, at night? It would be silent, dark and very still; the shelves of moulds, however, might not lie still. The wax might ripple. The lips upon the spirit-face might twitch, and the eyelids roll; the dimple upon the baby’s arm would grow deeper as the arm unfolded—so I saw it now, in Selina’s cell, as I stepped from her and shuddered. The swollen fingers of Peter Quick’s fist—I saw them, I saw them!—were uncurling, and flexing. Now the hand was inching its way across the shelf, the fingers drawing the palm over the wood. Now they were parting the cabinet doors—they left smears upon the glass.

Now I saw all the moulds begin to creep, across the silent reading-room; and as they crept they softened, and blended, the one into the other. They formed a stream of wax, I saw it ooze into the streets, it oozed to Millbank, to the quiet prison—it oozed across the tongue of gravel, across the gaols, it seeped through the cracks in the hinges of the doors, the gaps in the gates, the wickets, the
key-holes
. The wax was pale beneath the gas-light, but no-one looked for it; and when it crept, it crept quite soundlessly. There was only Selina, in all the sleeping prison, to catch the subtle slither of the stream of wax upon the sanded passage of her ward. I saw the wax inch its way up the limewashed bricks beside her door, I saw it nudge at the flap of iron, then ooze into her shadowy cell, then collect upon the chill stone floor. I saw it grow, sharp as a stalagmite at first, and hardening.

Then it was Peter Quick, and then he embraced her.

I saw it in a second—so vividly, the force of it made me sick. Selina came close to me again, and I moved from her; and when I looked at her I laughed—the laughter sounded terrible to me. I said, ‘I’m no help to you to-day, Selina. I meant to comfort you. I’ve finished by frightening myself, with nothing.’

But it was not nothing. I knew it was not nothing.

Beside her heel the splash of wax stood out upon the stone floor, very white—how
could
it have got there? Then she took another step, and the smear was shadowed by the hem of her gown, then hidden.

I stayed with her a little longer, but was queasy and distracted; at last I began to think how it would be if a matron should come past her cell and see me there, so pale and awkward. I thought she would see some sign about me, something dishevelled or illuminated.—I remembered then fearing the same thing of Mother, when I went back to her from visiting Helen. I called for Mrs Jelf. She looked at Selina, however, rather than at me, and when we walked along the passage together, we walked in silence. Only at the gate at the end of the ward did she put her hand to her throat and speak. She said, ‘I daresay you found the women rather nervous, to-day? They always are, poor things, at a breaking-out. ’

And it seemed then a wretched thing for me to have done, after all Selina had said to me—to have left her alone, afraid, and all because of a single crust of glistening wax! But, I could not go back to her. I only stood hesitating at the bars, Mrs Jelf watching me all the time with her dark, kind, patient eyes. I said, that the women
had
been nervous; and that I thought that Dawes—Selina Dawes—might be the most nervous of them all.

I said, ‘I’m glad it’s you, Mrs Jelf, that, out of all the matrons, has the care of
her
.’

She lowered her eyes, as if in modesty, and answered that she liked to think she was a friend to all the women. ‘As for Selina Dawes, however—well, Miss Prior, you mustn’t fear that any piece of harm will come to her, while
I
am here to guard her.’

Then she put her key to the gate and I saw her large hand, pale against the shadows. I thought again of the streaming wax, and again felt queasy.

Outside, the day was dark, the street made vague by a thickening fog. The Porter’s man was slow to find a cab for me; when I climbed in one at last I seemed to take a skein of mist in with me, that settled upon the surface of my skirts and made them heavy. Now the fog still rises. It rises so high, it has begun to seep beneath the curtains. When Ellis came this evening, sent by Mother to fetch me to supper, she found me upon the floor, beside the glass, making the sashes tight with wads of paper. She said, what was I doing there?—that I would take a chill, that I would hurt my hands.