Free Fingersmith by Sarah Waters Page A

nose, I turned a handkerchief black. A man saw me do it. ‘Don’t cry,’ he said, smiling.
    ‘I ain’t crying!’ I said.
    He winked, then asked me my name.
    It was one thing to flirt in town, however. But I wasn’t in town now. I wouldn’t answer. When the train came for Marlow I sat at the back of a coach, and he sat at the front, but with his face my way—he tried for an hour to catch my eye. I remembered Dainty saying that she had sat on a train once, with a gentleman near, and he had opened his trousers and showed her his cock, and asked her to hold it; and she had held it, and he had given her a pound. I wondered what I would do, if this man asked me to touch his cock—whether I would scream, or look the other way, or touch it, or what.
    But then, I hardly needed the pound, where I was headed!
    Anyway, money like that was hard to move on. Dainty had never been able to spend hers for fear her father should see it and know she’d been gay. She hid it behind a loose brick in the wall of the starch works, and put a special mark on the brick, that only she would know. She said she would tell it on her death-bed, and we could use the pound to bury her.
    Well, the man on my train watched me very hard, but if he had his trousers open I never saw; and at last he tilted his hat to me and got off. There were more stops after that, and at every one someone else got off, from further down along the train; and no-one got on. The stations grew smaller and darker, until finally there was nothing at them but a tree—there was nothing to see anywhere, but trees, and beyond them bushes, and beyond them fog—grey fog, not brown—with the black night sky above it. And when the trees and the bushes seemed just about at their thickest, and the sky was blacker than I should have thought a sky naturally could be, the train stopped a final time; and that was Marlow.
    Here no-one got off save me. I was the last passenger of all. The guard called the stop, and came to lift down my trunk. He said,
    ‘You’ll want that carrying. Is there no-one come to meet you?’
    I told him there was supposed to be a man with a trap, to take me up to Briar. He said, Did I mean the trap that came to fetch the post? That would have been and gone, three hours before. He looked me over.
    ‘Come down from London, have you?’ he said. Then he called to the driver, who was looking from his cab. ‘She’ve come down from London, meant for Briar. I told her, the Briar trap will have come and gone.’
    ‘That’ll have come and gone, that will,’ called the driver. ‘That’ll have come and gone, I should say three hours back.’
    I stood and shivered. It was colder here than at home. It was colder and darker and the air smelt queer, and the people—didn’t I say it?—the people were howling simpletons.
    I said, ‘Ain’t there a cab-man could take me?’
    ‘A cab-man?’ said the guard. He shouted it to the driver. ‘Wants a cab-man!’
    ‘A cab-man!’
    They laughed until they coughed. The guard took out a handkerchief and wiped his mouth, saying, ‘Dearie me, oh! dearie, dearie me. A cab-man, at Marlow!’
    ‘Oh, fuck off,’ I said. ‘Fuck off, the pair of you.’
    And I caught up my trunk and walked with it to where I could see one or two lights shining, that I thought must be the houses of the village. The guard said, ‘Why, you hussy—! I shall let Mr Way know about you. See what he thinks—you bringing your London tongue down here—!’
    I can’t say what I meant to do next. I did not know how far it was to Briar. I did not even know which road I ought to take. London was forty miles away, and I was afraid of cows and bulls.
    But after all, country roads aren’t like city ones. There are only about four of them, and they all go to the same place in the end. I started to walk, and had walked a minute when there came, behind me, the sound of hooves and creaking wheels. And then a cart drew alongside me, and the driver pulled up and