Affinity (47 page)

But when the 2 gentlemen had left, we laughed. Miss Noakes said ‘O Miss Dawes, how jealous Peter is of you! I think he would kill a man for your sake!’ Then while I stood & took a glass of wine, the other lady came to me & made me stand aside. She said she was sorry the gentlemen had turned out so nasty. She said she had seen other young lady media who would have let men like that turn them into coquettes, & she was glad that I had not done that. Then she said ‘I wonder Miss Dawes, if you might take a look at my little girl?’ I said ‘What is the matter with her?’ & she said ‘She will not stop crying. She is 15 years old, & I should say she has been crying just about every day since she was 12. I tell her she will cry her own eyes clean out of her head.’ I said I must look closely at her, & she said ‘Madeleine, come here.’ When the girl came to me I took her hand, saying ‘What did you think of what Peter did tonight?’ She said she thought it was marvellous. He had given her a fig. She is not from London but rather from Boston, in America. She said she has seen many Spiritualists there, but none that were so clever as me. I thought her very young. Her mother said ‘Can you do anything with her?’ I said I was not sure. But as I stood wondering, Ruth came to take my glass, & when she saw the little girl she put a hand to her head, saying ‘O, but look at your pretty red hair! Peter Quick would like another look at that,
I
know.’

She says she thinks she will do very well, if she might only be got for a little time away from the mother. Her name is Madeleine Angela Rose Silvester. She is to come back to us tomorrow, at half past 2.

I cannot say what time it is. The clocks have stopped, there is no-one here to wind them. But the city is so still, I think it must be three or four—the silent hour, between the running of the late cabs and the rattling of the carts to market. There is no breath of wind, no drop of rain, upon the street. There is frost upon the window but—though I have waited, with my eyes upon it, for an hour and more!—its waxing is too secret and too soft, I cannot catch it.

Where is Selina now? How does she lie? I send my thoughts into the night, I reach for the cord of darkness that once seemed to bind her to me, quivering tight. But the night is too thick, my thoughts falter and are lost, and the cord of darkness—

There never was a cord of darkness, never a space in which our spirits touched. There was only my longing—and hers, which so resembled it, it seemed my own. There is no longing in me, now; there is no quickening—she has taken all that and left me nothing. The nothing is very still and light. It is only rather hard to keep the pen upon the page, with my flesh filled with nothing. Look at my hand!—it is the hand of a child.

This is the last page I shall write. All my book is burned now, I have built a fire in the grate and set the pages on it, and when this sheet is filled with staggering lines it shall be added to the others. How queer, to write for chimney smoke! But I must write, while I still breathe. I only cannot bear to read again what I set down
before
. When I tried that, I seemed to see the smears of Vigers’ gaze upon the pages, sticky and white.

I have thought of her, to-day. I thought of when she came to us, and Priscilla laughed and called her plain. I thought of the last girl, Boyd, and how she wept, saying the house had ghosts in it. I suppose she never heard those things. I suppose that Vigers came to her, and threatened her, or gave her money . . .

I thought of Vigers, lumpish Vigers, standing blinking while I asked her who brought orange-blossoms to my room; or sitting in the chair beyond my open door, hearing me sigh and weep and write my book—she seemed kind to me, then. I think of her bringing my water and lighting my lamps, carrying food from the kitchen. No food comes now, and my clumsy fire smokes and spits, and falls to ashes. My slop-pot sits unemptied, turning the dark air sour.

I think of her dressing me, brushing my hair. I think of her great servant’s limbs. Now I know whose hand it was that had the wax about it that made that spirit-mould; and when I remember her fingers I see them bulging, yellow at the joints. I imagine her placing her finger upon me and the finger growing warm, and softening, staining my flesh.

I think of all the ladies she has placed her waxen hands upon and stained—and of Selina, who must have kissed her fingers as they dripped—and I am filled with horror, and with envy and with grief, because I know myself untouched, unlooked-for and alone. I saw the policeman return to the house this evening. Again he rang upon the bell, and stood gazing into the hall—perhaps at last he thinks me gone to Warwickshire, to join Mother. But perhaps he does not, perhaps he will come back again tomorrow. He will find Cook here then, and make her come and tap upon my door. She will find me strange. She will fetch Dr Ashe, and perhaps a neighbour—Mrs Wallace; and they will send for Mother. And then—what? Then tears or staring grief, and then more laudanum, or chloral again, or morphine, or paregoric—I never tried that. Then the couch for half a year, just like before, and visitors walking tip-toe to my door . . . And then the gradual re-absorption into Mother’s habits—cards with the Wallaces, and the creeping hand upon the clock, and invitations to the christenings of Prissy’s babies. And meanwhile, the inquiry at Millbank; and I might not be brave enough, now Selina has gone, to lie on her behalf, and on my own . . .

No.

I have returned my scattered books to their old places on the shelves. I have closed my dressing-room door, and turned the latch upon my window. Upstairs, I have made all tidy. The broken jug and bowl I hid away, the sheet and the rug and the gowns I burned in my own grate. I have burned the Crivelli portrait, and the Millbank plan, and the piece of orange-blossom I kept in this book. I have burned the velvet collar, too, and the handkerchief, spotted with blood, which Mrs Jelf let fall upon the carpet. Pa’s cigar-knife I put carefully back upon his desk. The desk has a film of dust upon it, already.

I wonder which new maid will come, to wipe that dust away? I could not have a servant stand and curtsey to me now, I think, without shuddering.

I have taken a bowl of cold water and washed my face in it. I have cleaned the wound at my throat. I have brushed my hair. There is nothing else, I think, to tidy or to take away. I am leaving nothing out of place, here or anywhere.

Nothing, that is, except the letter I wrote Helen; but that must remain, now, in the rack at the hall at Garden Court. For when I thought I might go there, and have their maid return it to me, I remembered how carefully Vigers had carried it to the post—and then I thought of all the letters she must have taken from the house, and all the packets that must have come here; and all the times she must have sat, in her dim room above my own, writing of her passion as I wrote of mine.

How did that passion seem, upon the page? I cannot imagine it. I am too weary.

For oh, I am so terribly weary at last! I think, in all of London, there is no-one and nothing so weary as I—unless perhaps the river, which flows on beneath the frigid sky, through its accustomed courses, to the sea. How deep, how black, how thick the water seems to-night! How soft its surface seems to lie. How chill its depths must be.

Selina, you will be in sunlight soon. Your twisting is done—you have the last thread of my heart. I wonder: when the thread grows slack, will you feel it?

1 August 1873

It is very late, & quiet. Mrs Brink is in her room, her hair all down about her shoulders & a ribbon tied in it. She is waiting for me. Let her wait a little longer.

Ruth is lying on my bed with her shoes kicked off. She is smoking one of Peter’s cigarettes. She is saying ‘Why are you writing?’ & I tell her I am writing for my Guardian’s eyes, as I do everything. ‘
Him
’ she says, & now she is laughing, her dark brows coming together over her eyes & her shoulders shaking. Mrs Brink must not hear us.

Now she is silent, gazing at the ceiling. I say ‘What are you thinking of?’ She says she is thinking of Madeleine Silvester. She has been to us 4 times in the past 2 weeks, but she is still very nervous &, after all, I think she might be too young for Peter to develop. But Ruth says ‘Only let him put his mark upon her once, she would come to us for ever. And do you know how rich she is?’

Now I think I hear Mrs Brink weeping. Outside, the moon is very high - it is the new moon, with the old moon in her arms. They still have the lamps on at the Crystal Palace, & the dark sky makes them shine very clear. Ruth is still smiling. What is she thinking of now? She says she is thinking of Little Silvester’s money, & what we might do with a share of money like that. She says ‘Did you suppose I wanted to keep you at Sydenham for ever, when the world has so many bright places in it? I am thinking how handsome you will look, say in France or Italy. I am thinking of all the ladies that will like to gaze at you there. I am thinking of all the pale English ladies that have gone to those places, in high hopes that the sun will make them well again.’

She has put her cigarette out. Now I shall go in to Mrs Brink.

‘Remember,’ Ruth is saying, ‘whose girl you are.’

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Laura Gowing, Judith Murray, Hanya Yanagihara, Julie Grau, Sally Abbey, Sally O-J, Judith Skinner, Simeon Shoul, Kathy Watson, Leon Feinstein, Desa Philippi, Carol Swain, Judy Easter, Bernard Golfier, Joy Toperoff, Alan Melzak and Ceri Williams.

The writing of
Affinity
was partly funded by a London Arts Board New London Writers Award, for which I am also extremely grateful.

Sarah Waters
was born in Wales in 1966 and now lives in London. Her first novel,
Tipping the Velvet
, was also published by Riverhead.