Free Fingersmith by Sarah Waters Page A

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 lifted up a lantern, to look at my face.
    'You'll be Susan Smith,' he said, 'come down from London. Miss Maud've been fretting after you all day.'
    He was an oldish man and his name was William Inker. He was Mr Lilly's groom. He took my trunk and helped me into the seat beside his own, and geed up the horse; and when—being struck by the breeze as we drove—he felt me shiver, he reached for a tartan blanket for me to put about my legs.
    It was six or seven miles to Briar, and he took it at an easy sort of trot, smoking a pipe. I told him about the fog—there was still something of a mist, even now, even there—and the slow trains.
    He said, That's London. Known for its fogs, ain't it? Been much down to the country before?'
    'Not much,' I said.
    'Been maiding in the city, have you? Good place, your last one?'
    'Pretty good,' I said.
    'Rum way of speaking you've got, for a lady's maid,' he said then. 'Been to France ever?'
    I took a second, smoothing the blanket out over my lap.
    'Once or twice,' I said.
    'Short kind of chaps, the French chaps, I expect? In the leg, I mean.'
    Now, I only knew one Frenchman—a housebreaker, they called him Jack the German, I don't know why. He was tall enough; but I said, to please William Inker,
    'Shortish, I suppose.'
    'I expect so,' he said.
    The road was perfectly quiet and perfectly dark, and I imagined the sound of the horse, and the wheels, and our voices, carrying far across the fields. Then I heard, from rather near, the slow tolling of a bell—a very mournful sound, it seemed to me at that moment, not like the cheerful bells of London. It tolled nine times.
    'That's the Briar bell, sounding the hour,' said William Inker.
    We sat in silence after that, and in a little time we reached a high stone wall and took a road that ran beside it. Soon the wall became a great arch, and then I saw behind it the roof and the pointed windows of a greyish house, half-covered with ivy. I thought it a grand enough crib, but not so grand nor so grim perhaps as Gentleman had painted it. But when William Inker slowed the horse and I put the blanket from me and reached for my trunk, he said,
    'Wait up, sweetheart, we've half a mile yet!' And then, to a man who had appeared with a lantern at the door of the house, he called: 'Good night, Mr Mack. You may shut the gate