Mary Reilly

by Valerie Martin

  Acclaim for VALERIE MARTIN’s

  Mary Reilly

  “The generosity with which Mary Reilly is imagined, the elegance of Martin’s writing and the depth of her engagement with her title character make it a memorable and absorbing experience.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Valerie Martin creates memorable characters: the pompous butler … an unctuous landlord … and the utterly convincing Mary, with a housemaid’s eye, a servant’s rigorous sense of place—and a sufferer’s hard won dignity.”

  —Newsweek

  “Mary Reilly is an achievement—creativity skating exhilarating on thin ice.”

  —The New York Times

  “Mary is a remarkable character.… A marvelous performance.”

  —USA Today

  “Haunting.… Powerful.… Mary Reilly’s voice … casts a spell from the beginning: we turn the pages, furiously compelled, because we must know more about her.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  “Entrancing and elegant.… A seamless retelling of the Jekyll and Hyde story that is both a compliment and a complement to the original.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “Mary Reilly is intensely cinematic, highly dramatic, suspenseful, stirring and entirely absorbing.… Mary Reilly is magnificent.”

  —The Kansas City Star

  “Mary Reilly is a virtuoso work, a meticulously crafted, resplendently written story.… Authentic in its abundance of historical detail, it is also unbounded in Martin’s imaginative exploration of the psyche of a young girl.”

  —Daily News

  Also by VALERIE MARTIN

  Love

  Set in Motion

  Alexandra

  A Recent Martyr

  The Consolation of Nature

  The Great Divorce

  Italian Fever

  Salvation

  VALERIE MARTIN

  Mary Reilly

  Valerie Martin is the author of six novels and two collections of short fiction, including The Great Divorce, Italian Fever, and a biography of St. Francis, Salvation. She resides in upstate New York.

  FIRST VINTAGE CONTEMPORARIES EDITION, APRIL 2001

  Copyright © 1990 by Valerie Martin

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1990. Published by arrangement with The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

  Vintage is a registered trademark and Vintage Contemporaries and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Frontispiece: Servant. Ambrotype by an unidentified photographer.

  From Victorian Working Women by Michael Hiley. Reprinted by permission of David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc. Copyright © 1979 by Michael Hiley.

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:

  Martin, Valerie.

  Mary Reilly / Valerie Martin.C1st ed.

  p. cm.

  I. Title

  PS3563.A7295M37 1990

  813′.54Cdc20

  89-38313

  eISBN: 978-0-307-83387-7

  Author photograph © Jerry Bauer

  www.vintagebooks.com

  v3.1

  To the memory of two beloved seafarers

  JRM and RLS

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Book 1

  Book 2

  Book 3

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  It wasn’t the first time I’d been shut up in the closet, if closet isn’t too grand a word for the little cupboard under the stairs. I was ten and small for my age, but I had to fold myself up into a painful crouch to fit into the narrow, dirty space and that was always part of the struggle, getting me to fit, which was part of his pleasure I’ve no doubt.

  That time I didn’t struggle but tried to get in place as quick as I could. He was in a rare temper and I feared he’d have my life if I didn’t look sharp about doing as he said. I’d broken a cup, trying to wash it, and then hidden the pieces, which he’d found of course, so besides being a careless, loutish girl, I was a liar too and probably a thief. Marm was at her work so there was no hope of help there, not that she ever dared cross him but sometimes when she was about he went easier on me. He’d slapped me once and pulled me about by my hair before he lit on the cupboard. When he opened the door, shoving and shouting at me, I crawled in as best I could, eager to be out of his hand’s reach, and as I was folding myself up so that he could close the door I caught his eye and my heart sank for I saw the ease of my punishment didn’t please him and he’d had a glance of the silly figure he cut, a grown man taking on a child, and this had redoubled his anger and there would be hell to pay for me.

  Then it was dark and no air. I screamed because I couldn’t help it. I heard him pull out the chair at the table and take his seat there, guarding me. “Please,” I begged, “let me out. I won’t ever be so wicked again.”

  But he didn’t make a sound and that made me anxious as it meant he were thinking. I put my forehead against my knees and tried not to scream or beg as I knew when he was quiet like that it would do me no good.

  Then I heard him get up and leave the room. I heard the door to the alley behind open and then close. I pushed at the cupboard door but it was hopeless—there was a good lock on it, the only one in our two rooms that kept anything in or out, worse luck for me. I thought he might have gone out to the gin palace and I set myself to a good long wait, possibly until Marm came back, so long that the thought of it brought tears to my eyes.

  But after a little while I heard him come back in, pull out the chair and sit again. “Sir,” I called out, “may I please be let out now.”

  For answer I heard that low, sick laugh he had sometimes, when he’d had so much liquor he didn’t remember the next day what he’d done, and it made me tremble as I knew this meant the very worst for me. I wished I had not spoken, to remind him I was still at his ease.

  After a few minutes I heard him get up again and come to the door. Then he was standing in front of it, laughing in that way I could hardly bear to hear, and I didn’t know what to do, beg or be silent. He said, “Mary, I’m opening this door, but if you know what’s good for you, you’d best not move.” The door opened and the light from the lamp confused me so I couldn’t see. Then he leaned towards me and I saw he had a little hopsack bag with a string drawn at the top. Perhaps there was a few inches between my knees and my head, for I was looking up at him, trying to think what I had best do, but before I could make out much of anything he’d stuffed the bag in with me, saying, “Here’s summat to keep you company,” and then the door was closed again.

  There was another black moment while I tried to understand what it was I had to fear next. I knew at once that there was something in the bag, that it was meant to harm me, but what it was my childish imagination couldn’t conjure. Then I felt it moving and knew it was some animal, no doubt as frightened as I was. I’d only a thin skirt on, which I had pulled down over my knees as best I could, so it wasn’t long before the creature began to work its way through the two thin layers separating us in that narrow, breathless space. I felt a claw sink into my thigh and I pulled myself up rigid, as if I could make more
room, but there was no more room to make and I think the rat sensed that as well as I. I knew it was a rat and where he’d got it. There was plenty to be had in the alleys nearby and often enough he’d brought me to whimpering by sending me out for a pint when it was dark and I had to pick my way among them.

  So he’d put one of these rats in the bag and closed it up with me.

  I could not speak, but I tried just to breathe and then I said, “Sir, don’t do this,” but I had only a whispering voice so he mayn’t of heard me. The rat wasn’t in a panic yet, but was at gnawing the cloth and I could hear it and knew in no time the bag would give out and my own skin would be next. I threw my weight against the door so I got one arm free a little and tried to push the bag down to my feet. I cried out “Sir,” and I heard him laugh again. The cloth was giving way—I could hear it and feel the animal’s snout moving against my leg, but of course I could see nothing and scarcely move, so I was helpless.

  I screamed. I felt the first bite at my ankle and I screamed for all I was worth, but after that I felt very little and only screamed because I could not stop screaming. Once it was out of the sack the creature was everywhere at once, crazy to get at me or away from me, I couldn’t tell which, and it could move about freely as I could not. I scraped and tore my arms against the walls trying to protect myself with my hands and that is why, as you observed, many of the scars is on my hands.

  After a long time in which I screamed and begged so that you would have thought a stone would be moved to pity, the door opened and the rat leaped out, scrambled across the floor to the door and back to the safety of the alley.

  Or that is how I imagine it must have happened for I did not know at the time, nor did I know anything or anyone for some time to come, including my own marm who was so took when she come home and found me lying for dead in the corner with him asleep at the table that she did what I’d never have thought she had the courage to do—she called the constable and had me conveyed to the hospital at C__________ where I lay in a swoon for many weeks.

  This is the account I wrote for my master nearly a year ago, six months after I took up my post as underhousemaid here. I did so at his request, attending on those details which I thought would bring the incidents to life for him. I had sketched them to him the evening when he first remarked the scars on my hands.

  It was a wonder to me that Master noticed my scars, as I was on my knees blacking the grate and black to my elbows, but he is an observant gentleman and perhaps he had noticed them some earlier time. He was sitting across the room from me in his leather reading chair, not even facing me but turned to one side and absorbed, so I imagined, in perusing some scientific treatise. I was at my work, wanting to finish up quickly, as I knew he’d be wanting the fire and also I don’t like to do such work before Master, but he’d come in while I was at it and so I was obliged to finish.

  I was getting up my brushes and blacking when, completely unexpected by me he said, “Mary, I notice you have some scars on your hands, and others near your ear, just there.” (I had reached up to touch the mark on my neck, leaving it, no doubt, smeared with black.) “Would you let me examine them, please.”

  I was struck dumb, too terrified to move. I can remember now, though it seems a long time ago, even another time from what I am in now, that my first thought was to run.

  But where, I thought, do you run from such a civil request from your own master. Yet I could not, I knew, do as he requested for shame of my dirt, and of myself, to be looked at by a gentleman, though I reminded myself he was a doctor and might have only a professional curiosity which he’d a right and reason to gratify. So I stood up very slowly, thinking hard at it all the while, rubbing my hands in my apron, wringing my hands in shame, and I said, “Sir, I’m ashamed to come close to you as I’m so black and it do travel no matter how I might try to keep it from you.”

  He didn’t say a thing for a moment but closed his book and sat looking at me with such a patient, kind, thoughtful look, such as I would never expect nor even want from a gentleman, until I was fair in suspense for his next words. “Go and wash, then,” he said, “and come back when you feel you can approach me.”

  I wanted to cry out, Ah sir, that will never happen in this life, but it wasn’t my place to describe to him my place, if you see what I mean, and I told myself this sharp, that his request was not unreasonable and only my own cowardice might keep me from satisfying it. All this was crowding my head, but I did manage to say “Yes, sir,” and scurry off down the stairs to the kitchen where I boiled the kettle and washed me as vigorous as a new bride. There was no mirror but Mr. Poole had set out a bit of silver to be polished in the morning, so I took up one of the trays and scrubbed my face, making sure there was no black. Then I tucked my hair up in a fresh bonnet and changed my apron. My sleeves had a bit of black at the edges, so I rolled them back.

  Mr. Poole had gone off to his room and Annie was already up in our attic, so I had the big, quiet kitchen to myself. It was cold, as the stove was out, yet I didn’t feel anxious to return to the drawing room where Master sat waiting for me. How could I speak to him, especially on the subject he had proposed?

  So I stood for a moment, letting the cold and quiet sink in and remembering my place, as Mrs. Swit used to say we mun do when we feel uncertain, and she was right on that for I begun to be calm and, seeing I had nothing to fear, went up to Master with a good will.

  When I come in he’d lit the fire himself and was standing looking into it, nor did he turn to look at me, so I went right up until I was beside him, made a curtsy to get his attention and said, “Sir?”

  He turned to me, slow, I thought, as if he was having a conversation with someone else and must attend to it to the last, and he looked at me close, as if it were of some interest that I should be there at all. This made me shy so I stepped back one and said, “I’ve come as you asked me to, sir.” Then he come to himself and remembered all about me and again I saw that kind, tender look in his eyes as he took my hands and drew me near the little table with the lamp.

  I was timid and would have pulled away but he had such a manner about him, being a doctor I imagine, as seemed to make it all right, so I went along and stood very still while he held my hands near to the light.

  My right hand has more marks than my left, mostly on the fleshy part of my palm, then down around to my wrist. These he examined carefully, moving my thumb back and forth and tracing the thick white track there with his forefinger. While he was looking at my poor hands I took the chance to look at his, and a more refined, gentlemanly hand I think I’ve never seen. His fingers are long and delicate, almost like a lady’s, and the nails is all smooth and trimmed evenly, so I thought here are hands such as should never know work, and I wanted to hide my own rough red hands away.

  “These go very deep here,” he said, pressing near my thumb. “Yet you have full use of your fingers.”

  “I do now, sir,” I said. “For a while I could not get that thumb to working but it come back. When the weather’s changing I know it, but other than that I’m none the worse.”

  “Let me see your neck,” he said.

  I turned my head and pushed my hair up, though it wasn’t really necessary as the cap held it in place pretty well. Master bent his eye upon the marks near my ear very intent for some minutes until I was wishing this would be all over and I could go off to my bed. I knew what was coming but not why, so I was puzzled and worried, but I stood still and said nothing until Master spoke.

  “These appear to be teeth marks,” he said. “Doubtless the bites of some animal.”

  “That’s right, sir,” I replied. “And so they are.”

  He touched the four marks that is close on my ear and his fingers was that cool and soft, I closed my eyes for a second, as I felt the blood rushing to my face. But Master didn’t notice my state. He drew his hand away and stepped back so I recovered myself a little, but I could not look at him when he spoke.

  “Judging from t
he size and shape of these marks, I’d say the animal was a rodent and rather a large one.”

  “He were a big enough rat, that’s true, sir,” I said, “though I never saw him. He was heavy as a dog.”

  He made a sound I thought was a laugh so I looked up and found I was right, for he had still the traces of a smile about his mouth, though it was a quick one and gone already. Still his eyes smiled at me, but not with malice, so I felt bold to speak.

  “Have I said something funny, sir?” I asked.

  “Not what you said, Mary, but how you said it. You have a frank manner that is not without charm.”

  “I try to speak honest, sir,” I said, “as I’ve nothing to hide.”

  “That’s as it should be, Mary,” he replied. Then he turned and went back to the fire where he stood with his back to me and his hands clasped behind. I waited in fair suspense, smoothing my apron like a schoolgirl. Then, as he seemed not disposed to say more, I asked, “May I go now, sir?”

  Without turning to look at me he begun to talk, as if he was telling the fire about his concerns. “Yesterday,” he said, “as I was passing in the hall I noticed you were working in the library, Mary.”

  “I was, sir,” I said. “Only dusting it out.”

  “Well, I looked in but you didn’t see me.”

  “No, sir,” I replied, not seeing the trap I was being led into, “I did not.”

  “No,” he continued. “You didn’t because you were standing at the shelf looking into a book.”

  I could hardly speak, so shocked I was to be caught out and ashamed too. But I found my voice and said, “Oh, sir, I do apologize. It was a book that was lying open and I couldn’t help but look into it and then when I saw what it was I did stop to read a page or two.”

  “And what book was it, Mary?” he said.

  I thought this was hard as I knew he knew what book it was, as he had left it open, there being no one else in this house as would be looking into his books. “It were a history sir,” I said, “of the kings and queens.”