Free Fingersmith by Sarah Waters Page B

behind us. Here is Miss Smith, look, safe at last.'
    The building I had thought was Briar was only the lodge! I stared, saying nothing, and we drove on past it, between two rows of bare dark trees, that curved as the road curved, then dipped into a kind of hollow, where the air— that had seemed to clear a little, on the open country lanes—grew thick again. So thick it grew, I felt it, damp, upon my face, upon my lashes and lips; and closed my eyes. Then the dampness passed away. I looked, and stared again. The road had risen, we had broken out from between the lines of trees into a gravel clearing, and here—rising vast and straight and stark out of the woolly fog, with all its windows black or shuttered, and its walls with a dead kind of ivy clinging to them, and a couple of its chimneys sending up threads of a feeble-looking grey smoke—here was Briar, Maud Lilly's great house, that I must now call my home.
    We did not cross before the face of it, but kept well to the side, then took up a lane that swung round behind it, where there was a muddle of yards and out-houses and porches, and more dark walls and shuttered windows and the sound of barking dogs. High in one of the buildings was the round white face and great black hands of the clock I had heard striking across the fields. Beneath it, William Inker pulled the horse up, then helped me down. A door was opened in one of the walls and a woman stood gazing at us, her arms folded against the cold.
    'There's Mrs Stiles, heard the trap come,' said William. We crossed the yard to join her. Up above us, at a little window, I thought I saw a candle-flame shine, and flutter, and then go out.
    The door led to a passage, and this led to a great, bright kitchen, about five times the size of our kitchen at Lant Street, and with pots set in rows upon a whitewashed wall, and a few rabbits hanging on hooks from the beams of the ceiling. At a wide scrubbed table sat a boy, a woman and three or four girls— of course, they looked very hard at me. The girls studied my bonnet and the cut of my cloak. Their frocks and aprons being only servants' wear, I didn't trouble myself to study them.
    Mrs Stiles said, 'Well, you're about as late as you could be. Any longer and you should've had to stay at the village. We keep early hours here.'
    She was about fifty, with a white cap with frills and a way of not quite looking in your eye as she spoke to you. She carried keys about her, on a chain at her waist. Plain, old-fashioned keys, I could have copied any one of them.
    I made her half a curtsey. I did not say—which I might have—that she should be thankful I had not turned back at Paddington; that I wished I had turned back; and that for anyone to have had the time that I had had, in trying to get forty miles from London, perhaps went to prove that London wasn't meant to be left—I did not say that. What I said was:
    'I'm sure, I'm very grateful that the trap was sent at all.'
    The girls at the table tittered to hear me speak. The woman who sat with them—the cook, it turned out—got up and set about making me a supper-tray. William Inker said,
    'Miss Smith've come from a pretty fine place in London, Mrs Stiles. And she've been several times in France.'
    'Has she,' said Mrs Stiles.
    'Only one or two times,' I said. Now everyone would suppose I had been boasting.
    'She said the chaps there are very short in the leg.'
    Mrs Stiles gave a nod. The girls at the table tittered again, and one of them whispered something that made the boy grow red. But then my tray was made, and Mrs Stiles said,
    'Margaret, you can carry this through to my pantry. Miss Smith, I suppose I should take you to where you might splash your hands and face.'
    I took this to mean that she would show me to the privy, and I said I wished she would. She gave me a candle and took me down another short passage, to another yard, that had an earth closet in it with paper on a spike.
    Then she took me to her own little room.