by Sarah Waters
Oh, she said then, I must not think that ‘Peter Quick’ was free! She gazed past me, at the iron gate that Mrs Jelf had fastened at my back. ‘They have their own kind of punishments,’ she said, ‘in the other world. Peter is in as dark a place as I am. He is only waiting—quite like me—to serve his term out and move on.’
Those were her words; and they seem odder to me as I write them here, than they seemed then, as she stood, gravely and earnestly, answering my questions, point for point, with her own neat logic. Even so, to hear her talk, familiarly, of ‘Peter’, of ‘Peter Quick’—again I smiled. We had moved rather near to one another. Now I stepped away a little, and when she saw that she looked knowing. She said, ‘You think me a fool, or an actress. You think me a sharp little actress, like they do—‘No,’ I answered at once. ‘No, I don’t think that of you’—for I don’t, and didn’t, even talking with her then—not quite. I shook my head. I said it was only that I was used to thinking very different sorts of things. Ordinary things. My mind, I supposed, must be ‘very uninstructed as to the limits of the marvellous’.
Now she smiled, but very faintly. Her mind, she said, had known too much of the marvellous. ‘And my reward for it was, that they put me here . . .’
And she made one small gesture with her hand as she spoke, that seemed to describe the whole hard colourless gaol, and all her sufferings in it.
‘It is very terrible for you here,’ I said, after a moment.
She nodded. ‘You think spiritualism a kind of fancy,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t it seem to you, now you are here, that anything might be real, since Millbank is?’
I looked at the bare white wall, the folded hammock—the slop-box, that had a fly upon it. I said, I was not sure. The prison might be hard—but that did not make spiritualism any truer. The prison was at least a world that I could see, and smell and hear. Her spirits, however—well, they might be real, but they meant nothing to me. I could not talk of them, did not know how.
She said I must talk of them how I pleased, because talking of them would ‘give them power’. Better still I ought to listen to them. ‘Then, Miss Prior, you might hear them talking of you.’
I laughed. Of me? Oh, I said, but it must be a very quiet day indeed in Heaven, if they had only Margaret Prior to discuss there!
She nodded, and tilted her head. She has a way about her—I have noticed it, before to-day—a way of shifting mood, of changing tone, and pose. She does it very subtly—not as an actress might, with a gesture that must be seen across a dark and crowded theatre; she does it as a piece of quiet music does it, when it falls or rises into a slightly different signature.
She did it now, as I stood smiling, still saying, how dull the spirit-world must be, if they had only me to talk of! She began to look patient. She began to look wise. And then she said, gently and quite evenly: ‘Why do you say such things? You know there are spirits to whom you are very dear. You know there is one spirit, in particular—he is with us now, he is closer to you than I am. And you are dearer to him, Miss Prior, than anyone.’
I stared at her, feeling the breath catch in my throat. This was not at all like hearing her talk of spirit-gifts and flowers: she might have cast water in my face, or pinched me. I thought stupidly of Boyd, hearing Pa’s feet upon the attic stairs. I said, ‘What do you know, of him?’—She didn’t answer. I said, ‘You have seen my dark coat, and made a guess—’
‘You are clever,’ she said. She said that what she is, that has nothing to do with cleverness. She must be what she is, as she must breathe, or dream, or swallow. She must be it—even there, even at Millbank! ‘But do you know,’ she said, ‘it is an odd thing. It is like being a sponge, or a—what are those creatures, that don’t care to be seen, and change their skins to suit their settings?’ I did not answer. ‘Well,’ she went on, ‘I used to think, in my old life, that I must be a creature just like that. People would come to me sick sometimes and, sitting with them, I would grow sick too. A woman came to me once who was with child, and I felt her baby, inside me. Another time a gentleman came, wanting to speak with his son in spirit: when the poor boy came through, I felt the breath pressed out of me, my head crushed as if it would burst! It turned out he had died in a falling building. His last sensation, you see, I felt.’
Now she put her hand upon her breast, and drew a little closer to me. She said, ‘When you come to me, Miss Prior, I feel your—sorrow. I feel your sorrow as a darkness, here. Oh, what an ache it is! I thought at first that it had emptied you, that you were hollow, quite hollow, like an egg with the meat blown out of it. I think you think that, too. But you are not empty. You are full—only shut quite tight, and fastened like a box. What do you have here that you must keep locked up like that?’ She tapped at her breast. Then she raised her other hand and touched me, lightly, where she had touched herself . . .
I gave a twitch, as if her fingers had some charge to them. Her eyes widened, and then she smiled. She had found—it was the purest chance, the purest, queerest chance—she had found, beneath my gown, my locket; and now she began to trace its outline with her fingertips. I felt the chain tighten. The gesture was so close and so insinuating, as I write it here it seems to me that she must have followed the line of links to my throat, have curled her fingers beneath my collar and drawn the locket free—but she did not do this, her hand remained at my breast, only delicately pressing. She stood very still with her head a little cocked, as if she was listening to my heart where it beat against the gold.
Then her features gave another, stranger kind of shift, and she spoke, in a whisper. ‘He is saying, She has hung her care about her neck, and will not put it aside. Tell her she must lay it aside.’ She nodded. ‘He is smiling. Was he clever, like you? He was! But he has learned many new things now, and—oh! how he longs for you to be with him and learn them too! But what is he doing?’ Her face changed again. ‘He is shaking his head, he is weeping, he is saying, Not that way! Oh! Peggy, that was not the way! You shall join me, you shall join me—but, not like that!’
I find I am trembling as I write the words here; I trembled worse, hearing her say them, with her hand upon me and her face so strange. I said quickly, ‘That’s enough!’ I knocked her fingers from me and drew away from her—I think I struck against her iron gate and made it rattle. I placed my own hand where hers had been. ‘That’s enough,’ I said again. ‘You are talking nonsense!’ Her cheek had grown pale, and when she looked at me now it was with a kind of horror, as if she saw it all—all the weeping and the shrieking, and Dr Ashe and Mother, the bitter reek of morphia, and my tongue swollen from the pressing of the tube. I had come to her, thinking only of her, and she had thrust my own weak self at me again. She looked at me, and her eyes had pity in them!
I could not bear her gaze. I turned away from her and put my face to the bars. When I called to Mrs Jelf, my voice was shrill.
As if she had been very near, the matron appeared at once and proceeded, silently, to free me. She sent a single sharp, anxious glance over my shoulder as she did so—perhaps she had caught the strangeness of my cry. Then I was in the passage-way, with the gate refastened. Dawes had picked up a length of wool, and was drawing it mechanically through her fingers. Her face was lifted to mine, and her eyes seemed full, still, of an awful knowledge. I wished I might say something, some ordinary thing. But I was terribly afraid that if I did she would begin again to speak—would speak of Pa, or for him or as him—would speak of his sorrow or his anger, or his shame.
So I only turned my head, and moved away from her.
On the ground-floor wards I found Miss Ridley, delivering the women whose reception I had witnessed earlier. I should not have known them, but for the older woman’s bruised cheek, for they all looked alike now, in their mud-coloured frocks and their bonnets. I stood and watched until the gates and doors were closed on them, then I came home. Helen was here, but I did not want to talk with her now; I only came straight here and made my own door fast. I have had B
oyd in here, only—no, not Boyd, Boyd has gone, it was Vigers, the new one—bringing me water for a bath; and lately Mother has come with the phial of chloral. Now I am so cold, the flesh is shivering upon my back. Vigers has not built my fire high enough, she doesn’t know how late I like to sit. But I mean to keep here now, until the tiredness comes. I have screwed my lamp down very low, and sometimes set my hands upon the globe of it, to warm them.
My locket hangs in my closet beside the glass, the only shining thing among so many shadows.
16 October 1874
I woke bewildered this morning, after a night of terrible dreams. I dreamt my father was alive—that I glanced from my window to see him leaning on the parapet of Albert Bridge, gazing bitterly at me. I ran out, and called to him: ‘Good God, Pa, we thought you were dead!’ ‘Dead?’ he answered. ‘I have been two years at Millbank! They put me on the treadmill and my boots are worn to the flesh beneath—look here.’ He lifted his leg, to show me his soleless shoes and his cracked and battered feet; and I thought, How strange, I don’t believe I ever saw Pa’s feet before . . .
An absurd dream—and certainly very different to the dreams that used to torment me in the weeks after his death, in which I would find myself squatting at the side of his grave, calling to him through the newly-turned earth. I would open my eyes from those and seem to feel the soil still clinging to my fingers. But I woke afraid this morning, and when Ellis brought my water I made her stay and talk with me, until at last she said she must leave me or my water would be cold. I went and dipped my hands in it then. It was not quite chill, but it had misted the looking-glass; and as I wiped that I looked, as I always looked, for my locket.—My locket was gone! and I cannot say where. I know I hung it beside the glass last night, and perhaps I later went and turned it in my fingers. I cannot say when quite it was that I at last went to my bed; but that is not a queer thing with me—it is the point, after all, of the chloral!—and I am certain that I didn’t take it with me.—Why would I have? So it could not have been broken and lost in the sheets—besides, I have searched for it among the bed-clothes, very carefully.
And now, all day, I have felt dreadfully naked and miserable. I feel the loss of it, above my heart, quite like a pain. I have asked Ellis, and Vigers—even Pris. But I have not mentioned it to Mother. She would think, first, that one of the girls had taken it; and then, when she saw the folly of that—for, as she has said herself, it is such a plain piece, and I am used to keeping it alongside so many far finer items—then she would think I had grown ill again. She would not know, they none of them could know, the strangeness of my losing it, on such a night!—after such a visit, and such a conversation, with Selina Dawes.
And now, I begin to fear I have grown ill again. Perhaps it was the chloral, working on me. Perhaps I rose and seized the locket and placed it somewhere—like Franklin Blake in The Moonstone. I remember Pa reading that scene, and smiling over it; but I remember, too, a lady who was visiting us shaking her head. She said she had had a grandmother on whom the laudanum had so worked, she had risen from her sleep and taken a kitchen knife and cut her own leg with it, then returned to her bed, and the blood had flowed into the mattress and half killed her.
I don’t believe I would do such a thing. I think, after all, one of the girls must have it. Perhaps Ellis took it up and broke its chain, and was afraid to show me? There is a prisoner at Millbank who says she broke a brooch of her mistress’s, and took it to be mended, but was caught with it upon her and charged as a thief. Perhaps Ellis fears that. Perhaps she is so afraid, she has simply thrown the broken locket away. Now I suppose a dust-man will find it, and he will give it to his wife. She will put her dirty fingernail to it and find the lock of shining hair inside it, and wonder for a second whose head it was cut from and why it was kept . . .
I do not care if Ellis broke it, or if the dust-man’s sweet-heart has it—she might keep the locket, though I had it from Pa. There are a thousand things, in this house, to remind me of my father. It is the curl of Helen’s hair I am afraid for, that she cut from her own head and said I must keep, while she still loved me. I am only afraid of losing that—for God knows! I’ve lost so much of her already.
3 November 1872
I thought no-one would come today. The weather keeps so poor, no-one has come to the house at all, not for 3 days, not even for Mr Vincy or Miss Sibree. We have kept only quietly amongst ourselves, making dark circles in the parlour. We have been trying for forms. They say a medium must try for forms now, that in America it is all the sitters ask for. We tried till 9 o’clock last night but, no spirit coming, we finally put up the lights & had Miss Sibree sing. When we tried again to-day, with again no phenomena occurring, Mr Vincy showed us how a medium might seem to make a limb come, that really was only his own. He did it like this -
I held his left wrist, & Miss Sibree seemed to hold his right. In fact however, we held the same arm, it was only that Mr Vincy had made it so dark we could not see. ‘With my free hand,’ he said ‘I may do anything, for example this’, & he put his fingers against my neck, I felt them & screamed. He said ‘You see how a person might be cheated by an unscrupulous medium, Miss Dawes. Imagine if my hand had been made first very hot or very cold, or very wet, then how much realer might it not seem?’ I said he ought to show Miss Sibree, & I went & took another seat. Still, I was glad to learn about the arm trick.
We sat until 4 or 5 &, the rain falling heavier than ever, we were all finally certain no-one would come. Miss Sibree stood at the window & said ‘O, who would envy us our vocations! We must be here for the living & the dead to call on, just as they please. Do you know I was woken at 5 this morning, by a spirit laughing in the corner of my room?’ She put her hands to her eyes & rubbed them. I thought ‘I heard that spirit, it came out of a bottle last night, you were laughing it into your chamber-pot,’ but Miss Sibree has been kind to me over Aunty, I would never think of saying such a thing aloud. Mr Vincy said ‘Our calling is indeed a hard one. Don’t you think, Miss Dawes?’ Then he got up & yawned & said that, since no-one would come now, we might as well put a cloth on the table & have a game of cards. No sooner had he brought the cards out however, than the bell did sound. Then he said ‘So much for our game, ladies! That will be for me, I daresay.’
But when Betty came to the room, it was not him she looked at, it was me. She had a lady with her, & a girl that was the lady’s own maid. When the lady saw me rise she put a hand to her heart, crying out ‘Are you Miss Dawes? O, I know that you are!’ I saw Mrs Vincy looking at me then, & Mr Vincy, & Miss Sibree & even Betty. I however, was as surprised as any of them, the only idea coming into my head being, that this was the mother of the lady I saw a month ago, whose children I said would die. I thought ‘This is what comes of being too honest. I should be like Mr Vincy after all. I was sure that the lady had done herself some injury in grief, & now her mother had come to charge me with it.’
But when I looked at the lady’s face I saw a pain in it but, behind the pain, a happiness. I said ‘Well, I suppose you had better come to my room. It is quite at the top of the house though. Shall you mind the stairs?’ She only smiled at her maid & then answered ‘Mind them? I have been searching for you for 25 years. I shall not be kept from you now, by a staircase!’
Then I thought she might be a little queer in the head. But I brought her here, & she stood & looked about her, then she looked at her maid & then looked hard at me again. I saw then that she was quite a lady, with hands that were very white & neat, & very handsome though old-fashioned rings. I thought she might be 50 or 51. Her dress was black, a better black than mine. She said ‘You do not know, do you, why I have come to you? That is strange. I thought you might have guessed.’ I said ‘You have been brought here by some sorrow.’ She answered ‘I was brought here, Miss Dawes, by a dream.’
She said a dream had made her come to me. She said she dreamed, 3 nights ago, my face & my name, & the address of Mr Vincy’s hotel. She said she dreamed
them, but never thought they might be true until she looked this morning in the Medium & Daybreak & saw the notice I put there 2 months ago. That made her come to Holborn to find me out, & now that she had seen my face she said she knew what the spirits wanted by it. I thought ‘Well, that is more than I know,’ & I looked at her & her maid, & waited. The lady said then ‘O Ruth, do you see that face? Do you see it? Shall I show her?’ & the maid said ‘I think you ought to, ma’am.’ Then the lady took something from her coat that was wrapped in a length of velvet, & she uncovered it & kissed it, then showed it to me. It was a portrait in a frame, she held it to me, almost weeping. I looked at it & she watched me, & her maid also watched me. Then the lady said ‘Now I think you see, don’t you?’
All I really saw however, was the picture’s frame, which was of gold, & the lady’s white hand, which trembled. But when she put the picture in my fingers at last I cried out ‘O!’
Then she nodded, & placed her hand again upon her breast. She said ‘There is so much work that we must do. When shall we start it?’ I said we ought to start it straight away.
So she sent her maid out to wait on the landing, & she stayed with me for an hour. Her name is Mrs Brink, & she lives at Sydenham. She came all the way to Holborn, only for me.
6 November 1872
To Islington, to Mrs Baker for her sister Jane Gough, that passed into spirit March ’68, brain-fever. 2/-
To Kings Cross, to Mr & Mrs Martin, for their boy Alec lost from the side of a yacht - Found Great Truth in the Great Seas. 2/-
Here, Mrs Brink, for her especial spirit. £1
13 November 1872
Here, Mrs Brink 2 hrs. £1