Affinity

by Sarah Waters

  She didn’t answer that. I put the knife to the book again, and cut the pages faster, and when she heard the ripping paper she blinked. She said, What would our friends all think of her, if she was to go and leave me here? I said they might think what they liked, she might tell them anything. She might tell them I was preparing Pa’s letters for publication—indeed, I might begin it, with the house so quiet.

  She shook her head. ‘You have been ill,’ she said. ‘Suppose you should fall ill again, with no-one here to nurse you?’

  I said I should not fall ill; nor would I be at all alone, for there would be Cook—Cook might bring in a boy to sleep downstairs at night, as she had in the weeks after Pa died. And there would also be Vigers. She might leave me Vigers, and take Ellis with her to Warwickshire . . .

  I said all this. I hadn’t thought of any of it before that moment, but now I might have been letting the words fly from the book in my lap with each swift, easy movement of the knife. I saw Mother grow thoughtful—still, however, she frowned. She said again, ‘If you should sicken—’

  ‘Why should I do that? Look how well I have become!’

  Then she did look at me. She looked at my eye, which I think the laudanum had made vivid; and at my cheek, which the fire, or perhaps the motion of my hand cutting the paper, had made burn. She looked at my gown, which was an old, plum-coloured gown I had had Vigers fetch from the press and make narrow—for none of my suits of grey and black are high enough at the throat to hide my velvet collar.

  The gown alone, I think, almost decided her. Then I said, ‘Do say you’ll leave me, Mother. We mustn’t always keep so close, must we? Won’t it be pleasanter for Stephen and Helen, at least, to have a holiday without me in it?’

  It seems, here, a shrewd thing for me to have said; yet I meant nothing by it, nothing at all. I should never have said, before that moment, that Mother had any opinion on the matter of my feelings for Helen. I should not have thought that she had ever watched me gaze at her, or listened when I said her name, or seen me glance away as she kissed Stephen. Now she heard the lightness and the evenness of my tone, and I saw a look upon her face—not quite relief, nor satisfaction, but something like them, something very like them—and I knew at once that she had done all those things. I knew she had been doing them for two years and a half.

  And I wonder now how differently it might have been between us if I had only kept my love more hidden; or if I had never felt it at all.

  She moved in her chair, and smoothed the skirt across her lap. It seemed not quite correct to her, she said. But she supposed that, if Vigers were to stay, and I was to travel with her, after three or four weeks . . .

  She said she must talk with Helen and Stephen about it, before she could quite give me her consent; and when we visited them next, on New Year’s Eve—well, I find I need to gaze at Helen now, hardly at all, and when Stephen kissed her at midnight, I only smiled. Mother told them my plan and they looked at me and said, How could it harm me, to be left alone in my own home, where I spend so many solitary hours already? And Mrs Wallace, who dined there with us, said it was certainly more sensible to want to stay at Cheyne Walk than to risk one’s health by making a journey on a train!

  We were home at two that night. After the house was locked I kept my cloak about me, and stood a long time at my window, raising the sash a little to feel the thin rain of the new year. At three o’clock there were still boats ringing their bells, and men’s voices from the river, and boys running fast along the Walk; but for a single moment as I watched, the clamour and the bustle died, and then the morning was perfectly still. The rain was fine—too fine to spoil the surface of the Thames, it shone like glass, and where the lamps of the bridges and the water-stairs showed there were wriggling snakes of red and yellow light. The pavements gleamed quite blue—like china plates.

  I should never have guessed that that dark night could have had so many colours in it.

  Next day, while Mother was out, I went to Millbank, to Selina. They have put her back upon the ordinary ward, and so now she has prison dinners again, and wool to work at rather than coir—and her own matron Mrs Jelf, who is so careful of her. I walked to her cell, remembering how it had once been a pleasure to me to keep back my visit to her, to call on other women first, and save the gazing on her till I might gaze freely. Now, how can I keep from her? What is it to me, what the other women think? I stopped at the gates of one or two of them and wished them ‘Happy New Year’, and shook their hands; but the ward seemed changed to me, I looked along it and saw only so many pale women in mud-coloured gowns. Two or three of the prisoners I used to call on have been moved, to Fulham; and Ellen Power, of course, is dead, and the woman in her cell now does not know me. Mary Ann Cook seemed pleased enough to have me come—and Agnes Nash, the coiner. But it was Selina I went for.

  She asked me quietly, ‘What have you done for us?’ and I told her all that Stephen had said. She thinks we cannot be sure about the income, and says I had better visit my bank and draw from it as much money as I can, and keep it safe till we are ready for it. I told her about Mother’s visit to Marishes, and she smiled. She said, ‘You are clever, Aurora.’ I said the cleverness was all hers, it was only working through me, I was its vehicle.

  ‘You are my medium,’ she said.

  Then she came a little closer to me and I saw her looking at my gown, and then at my throat. She said, ‘Have you felt me near you? Have you felt me all about you? My spirit comes to you, at night.’

  I answered: ‘I know.’

  Then she said, ‘Do you wear the collar? Let me see it.’

  I pulled at the material about my throat and showed her the strip of velvet that lay warm and tight beneath it. She nodded, and the collar grew tighter.

  ‘This is very good,’ she whispered—her voice was like a finger, stroking. ‘This will draw me to you, through the dark. No—’ for I had taken a step, to be nearer to her ‘—No. If they see us now, they may move me further from you. You must wait a little. Soon you will have me. And then—well, you may keep me close then, close as you like.’

  I gazed at her, and my thoughts gave a tilt. I said, ‘When, Selina?’

  She said that I must decide it. It must be a night when I was sure to be alone—a night after my mother had gone, when I had found the things that we would need. I said, ‘Mother is leaving on the 9th. It might be any night, I suppose, after that one . . .’

  Then I thought of something. I smiled—I think I must have laughed, for I remember her saying then: ‘Hush, or Mrs Jelf will hear you!’

  I said, ‘I am sorry. It is only that—well, there is a night we might choose, if you won’t think it foolish.’ She looked puzzled. I almost laughed again. I said, ‘The twentieth of January, Selina.—St Agnes’ Eve!’

  But she still looked blank. Then she said, after a moment, Was that my birthday . . . ?

  I shook my head, saying, St Agnes’ Eve! The Eve of St Agnes! ‘They glide,’ I said, ‘like phantoms, into the wide hall—

  ‘Like phantoms, to the iron porch they glide,

  Where lies the Porter, in uneasy sprawl.

  By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide,

  The chains lie silent on the footworn stones,

  The key turns! and the door upon its hinges groans . . .’

  I said that; and she only stood watching, not knowing—not knowing! And at last I fell silent. There came a movement at my breast—part dismay it was, part fear, part simple love. Then I thought, Why should she know? Who was there ever, to teach her things like that?

  I thought, That will come.

  14 June 1873

  Dark circle, & afterwards Miss Driver stayed. She is a friend of Miss Isherwood’s, that came last month for Peter to see privately. She said Miss Isherwood never felt so well as she did now, & it was all thanks to the spirits. She said ‘Will you see, Miss Dawes, if Peter cannot also help me? I find I keep so very restless, & am prone to such queer fits. I think I must be
rather like Miss Isherwood, & need developing.’ She stayed one and a half hours, her treatment being the same as for her friend, though taking longer. Peter said she must come back. £1.

  21 June 1873

  Development, Miss Driver 1 hour. £2.

  First sitting, Mrs Tilney & Miss Noakes. Miss Noakes pains at the joints. £1.

  25 June 1873

  Development - Miss Noakes, Peter holding her at the head while I knelt & breathed upon her. 2 hours. £3.

  3 July 1873

  Miss Mortimer, irritation of the spine. Too nervous.

  Miss Wilson, aches. Too plain for Peter’s eye.

  15 January 1875

  They have all gone to Warwickshire—gone a week ago. I stood at the door and watched their luggage put into a cab, watched them drive from me, saw their hands at the windows; and then I came up here and wept. Mother I let kiss me. Helen I took aside. ‘God bless you!’ I said to her. I could think of nothing else. But when I said it, she laughed—it was such a curious thing to hear me say. She said, ‘I shall see you in a month. Will you write to me, before then?’ We were never parted for so long before. I said I would, but now a week has passed and I have sent nothing. I will write to her, in time. But not yet.

  The house is stiller now than I ever knew it. Cook has her nephew here to sleep downstairs, but to-night they are all already in bed. There was nothing for them to do, after Vigers brought my coals and water. The door to the house was fastened at half-past nine.

  But how quiet it is! If my pen could whisper, I would make it whisper now. I have our money. I have thirteen hundred pounds. I took it from my bank, yesterday. It is my own money, and yet I felt like a thief, handling it. I gave them Stephen’s order; they were a little queer over it, I thought—the clerk stepping away from the counter for a moment to speak with a more senior man, then returning to ask me, Would I not prefer the money in the form of a cheque? I said, No, a cheque would not serve—trembling all the time—thinking they must see my purpose and might try and send for Stephen. But after all, what could they do? I am a lady, and the money is mine. They brought it to me in a paper wallet. The clerk made me a bow.

  I told him then that the money was for a charity, and would be used to purchase passages abroad for poor reformatory girls. He said—looking sour—that he thought that cause a most deserving one.

  When I left him I took a hansom to Waterloo, to purchase tickets for the tidal train; and then I went to Victoria, to the Travellers’ Office. They gave me a passport for myself, and another for my companion. I told them her name was Marian Erle, and the secretary wrote it, seeing nothing strange in it!—only querying me over the spelling. I have been imagining since then all the offices I might visit and the lies I might tell in them. I have been wondering how many gentlemen it would be possible to fool, before they caught me.

  But then, this morning, I stood at my window and saw the policeman making his patrol along the Walk. Mother has asked him to watch the house more carefully, now that I am here alone. He nodded to me, and my heart gave a jerk; when I told Selina of him to-day, however, she smiled. ‘Are you afraid?’ she said. ‘You mustn’t be afraid of that! When they find me gone, why should they think to look for me with you?’ She said it will be days and days, before they think of that.

  16 January 1875

  Mrs Wallace called to the house to-day. I told her I was busy with Pa’s letters, and that I hoped to be able to work on, undisturbed. If she comes again I will have Vigers tell her I am out. If she comes in five days’ time, of course, I shall be gone. Oh, how I long for it! I can do nothing, now, but long for it. Everything else is falling from me: I am drawing further and further away from this place, with every sweeping of the hand across the numbers on the pale face of the clock. Mother left me a little laudanum—I have taken it all, and bought more. It is very easy, after all, to walk into a druggist’s shop and buy a draught of it! I may do anything now. I may sit up all night if I care to, and sleep in the daylight. I remember a game, when we were children: What will you do, when you are grown, and have a house of your own?—I’ll have a tower on the roof, and fire a cannon from it! I’ll eat nothing but liquorice! I’ll keep dogs in butlers’ jackets—I’ll let a mouse sleep on my pillow . . . Now I have more freedom than I ever had at any time in my life, and I do only the things I always have. They were empty before, but Selina has given a meaning to them, I do them for her. I am waiting, for her—but, waiting, I think, is too poor a word for it. I am engaged with the substance of the minutes as they pass. I feel the surface of my flesh stir—it is like the surface of the sea that knows the moon is drawing near it. If I take up a book, I might as well never have seen a line of print before—books are filled, now, with messages aimed only at me. An hour ago, I found this:The blood is listening in my frame,

  And thronging shadows, fast and thick,

  Fall on my overflowing eyes . . .

  It is as if every poet who ever wrote a line to his own love wrote secretly for me, and for Selina. My blood—even as I write this—my blood, my muscle and every fibre of me, is listening, for her. When I sleep, it is to dream of her. When shadows move across my eye, I know them now for shadows of her. My room is still, but never silent—I hear her heart, beating across the night in time to my own. My room is dark, but darkness is different for me now. I know all its depths and textures—darkness like velvet, darkness like felt, darkness bristling as coir or prison wool.

  The house is changed by me, becalmed. There might be a spell upon it! Like figures on a chiming clock, the servants go about their duties: setting fires to warm the empty rooms, drawing the drapes at night, and unclosing them next morning—there is no-one to gaze from the windows, but still the curtains are pulled. Cook sends me trays of food. I have said that she need not send me all the courses, that she might only send me soup, or fish, or chicken. But she cannot break herself of her old habits. The trays come, and I must send them guiltily back, the meat concealed beneath the turnip and potato, like a child’s. I have no appetite. I suppose her nephew eats it. I suppose they are all dining very well, down in the kitchen. I should like to go to them and say Eat! Eat it all! What does it matter to me what they take now?

  Even Vigers keeps to her old hours, rising at six—as if she too could feel the clamour of the Millbank bell in wakeful veins—though I have told her that she mustn’t try to match my habits, and may stay in bed till seven. Once or twice she has come to my room and gazed strangely at me; last night she saw my untouched tray and said, ‘You must eat, miss! What would Mrs Prior say to me, if she saw how you let your meals go?’

  But when I laughed to hear it, she smiled. She has a very plain smile, and yet her eyes are almost handsome. She does not trouble me. I have seen her looking curiously at the lock upon the velvet collar, when she thinks my eyes are turned away; but only once did she go so far as to ask me, Was it a mourning-band I wore for my father’s sake?

  Sometimes I think my passion must infect her. Sometimes my dreams come so fiercely, I am sure she must catch the shape and colour of them in her own slumbers.

  Sometimes I think that I could tell her all my plans, and she would only nod and look grave. I think that, if I asked her, she might even go with us . . .

  But then, I think I will be jealous of the hands that touch Selina, even a maid’s hands. I went to-day to a great shop on Oxford Street, to walk among the rows of ready-made-up gowns, to buy her coats and hats, and shoes, and underthings. I hadn’t guessed how it would be, to do those things for her—to fashion a place for her in the ordinary world. I never saw in dyes and cuts and fabrics what Priscilla saw, and Mother, when I had to decide between them for myself; but, buying dresses for Selina, I grew light. Of course, I didn’t know her size—and yet, I found I did. I know her height, from the memory of her cheek against my jaw; and her slenderness, from the thought of our embraces. I chose, first, a plain wine-coloured travelling-gown. I thought, Well, that will do for now, and we shall buy her other things whe
n we reach France. But as I held that dress, I saw another—a gown of pearl-grey cashmere, with an under-skirt of some thick kind of greenish silk. The green, I thought, would match her eyes. The cashmere would be warm enough, for an Italian winter.

  I bought both dresses—and then another, a dress of white, with velvet trim, and a narrow, narrow waist. It is a dress to bring out all the girlishness they have subdued at Millbank.

  Then, since she will not be able to wear a dress without a petticoat, I bought her petticoats, and also stays, and also chemises, and stockings of black. And, since stockings will be useless without shoes, I bought her shoes—black shoes; and buff-coloured boots; and slippers of white velvet, to match the girlish dress. I bought her hats—large hats with veils, to cover her poor hair until it grows again. I bought her a coat, and a mantle for the cashmere dress, and a dolman with a fringe of yellow silk, that will swing as she walks beside me in the Italian sun, and flash with light.

  The clothes lie in my closet now, still in their boxes. Sometimes I go to them, and put my hand upon the card. I seem to hear the silk and cashmere breathing then. I seem to feel the slow pulse of the cloth.

  Then I know that they are waiting, like me, for Selina to assume them—to make them quick, to make them real, to make them palpitate with lustre and with life.

  19 January 1875

  I have done everything, now, for the journey we will make together; but there was one more thing that I must do, to-day, for myself. I went to the Westminster Cemetery, and stayed an hour at Pa’s grave, thinking of him. It was the coldest day of the new year. When a funeral party came I heard their voices, very clear upon the thin, still January air; and as we stood, the first few flakes of winter snow began to fall, until at last my coat, and the coats of all the mourners, were dusted white. I once meant to take flowers with Pa, to the graves of Keats and Shelley, in Rome; to-day I put a wreath of holly on his own grave. The snow settled on it and hid the crimson berries—though the points upon the leaves stayed sharp as pins. I listened to the clergyman’s speech, then they started casting earth upon the coffin in the open grave. The earth was hard, and rattled like shot, and when the mourners heard it they gave a murmur, and a woman cried out. The coffin was a small one—I suppose, a child’s.