Affinity (37 page)

The cell that they have put her in is smaller than those on the ordinary wards, and the iron louvres at its little window, together with the mesh they put about the gas-jets, to keep the women from the flames, make it desperately gloomy. There was no table and no chair: I found her seated on the hardwood bed, hunched awkwardly over a tray of coir. She put this aside when they opened the door to me, and attempted to rise to her feet; then she swayed, and had to reach for the wall to steady herself. They have taken the star from her sleeve and given her a gown that seemed too large for her. Her cheeks were white, her temples and her lips shadowed with blue, and on her forehead there was a yellow bruise. Her fingernails are split down to the quick, from picking coir. Coir fibres dust her cap, her apron, her wrists, and all her bedding.

When Mrs Pretty had closed the door and locked it, I took a step towards her. We had said nothing yet, only gazed at one another in a kind of mutual fright; but now I think I whispered, ‘What have they done to you? What have they done?’—and at that her head gave a jerk, and she smiled and, as I watched, the smile sagged and dissolved, like a smile of wax, and she put a hand to her face and wept. I could do nothing then but go to her, and put my arm about her, and sit her back upon the bed and stroke her poor, bruised face till she was calm. She kept her head against the collar of my coat, and gripped me. When she spoke it was to say, in a whisper: ‘How weak you must think me.’

‘How weak, Selina?’

‘It is only that I have wished so much that you might come.’

She shuddered, but at last grew still. I took her hand, to exclaim over her broken fingernails, and she told me then that they must pick four pounds of coir each day, ‘or else Mrs Pretty brings us more the next day. The coir flies about—you feel you will choke with it.’ She said they have only water and dark bread to eat; and that when she is taken to chapel, she is taken in
shackles
.—I could not bear to hear it. But when I took her hand again, she stiffened, and drew her fingers away. ‘Mrs Pretty,’ she murmured. ‘Mrs Pretty comes and looks at us . . .’

I heard, then, a movement at the door, and after a moment I saw the inspection slit quiver, and it was slowly unclosed by blunt, white fingers. I called, ‘You need not watch us, Mrs Pretty!’ and the matron laughed, saying, that they must always watch, on
that
ward. But the flap did spring shut again; and I heard her move away, then call at the door of another cell.

We sat in silence. I looked at the bruise on Selina’s head—she said that she had stumbled, when they put her in the dark cell. She gave a shiver, remembering it. I said, ‘It was very terrible there’, and she nodded. She said, ‘
You
will know, how terrible it was’—and then: ‘I should not have been able to bear it, if you had not been there to take a little of the darkness to yourself.’

I stared at her. She went on, ‘
Then
I knew how good you were, to come to me, after all you had seen. The first hour they had me there, do you know what frightened me the most? Oh, it was a torment to me!—far worse than any punishment of
theirs
. It was the thought that you might stay from me; the thought that I might have driven you away, and with the very thing I meant to keep you near me!’

I knew it—but the knowledge had made me ill, I couldn’t bear to have her say it. I said, ‘You mustn’t, you mustn’t’—she answered, in a fierce kind of whisper, that
she must
! Oh, to think of that poor lady, Miss Brewer! She never meant her any harm. But to be moved—to be what they call free, to talk with other prisoners! ‘Why should I want to talk with convicts, when I couldn’t talk with
you
?’

Now I think I placed my hand upon her mouth. I said again, she
must
not say such things, she
must
not.—At last she pulled my fingers free and said, that it was to say such things that she had hurt Miss Brewer, that it was to say such things that she had suffered the jacket and the darks. Would I make her still be silent, after
that
?

Then I put my hands upon her arms and gripped her, and almost hissed. I said, And what had she gained by it? All she had done was, made them study us the closer! Didn’t she know that Miss Haxby wanted to keep me from her? That Miss Ridley would look, to see how long we were together? That Mrs Pretty would look?—that even Mr Shillitoe would look? ‘Do you know how careful we shall have to be now, how sly?’

I had drawn her to me, to say these things. Now I grew conscious of her eyes, her mouth, her breath that was warm and sour. I heard my voice, and what I had admitted.

I opened my hands, and turned from her. She said, ‘Aurora.’

I said at once, ‘Don’t say that.’

But she said it again.
Aurora
.
Aurora
.

‘You mustn’t say it.’

‘Why mustn’t I? I said it in the dark to you, and you were glad to hear it, and answered me! Why do you step from me now?’

I had risen from the bed. I said, ‘I must.’

‘Why must you?’

I said it wasn’t right that we should be so near. That it was against the rules, it was forbidden by the rules of Millbank. But now she stood and, the cell being so close, there was nowhere I could step that she could not reach me. My skirts caught her tray of coir and set the dust of it swirling, but she only stepped through it, and came close, and put her hand upon my arm. She said: ‘You want me near.’ And when I answered at once that
No, I did not
—‘Yes, you want me,’ she said. ‘Or—why do you have my name, upon the pages of your journal? Why do you have my flowers?
Why, Aurora, do you have my hair?
’

‘You sent me those things!’ I said. ‘I never asked for them!’

‘I could not have sent them,’ she answered simply, ‘if you had not longed for them to come.’

Then I could say nothing; and when she saw my face she stepped away from me and her expression changed. She said I must stand carefully, and be calm, for Mrs Pretty might look. She said I must stand, and listen to what she had to tell me. For she had been in darkness, and knew everything. And now I must know it . . .

She bowed her head a little but kept her eyes upon me, and they seemed larger than ever and dark as a magician’s. She said, Hadn’t she told me once, that there was a purpose to her time there? Hadn’t she said, that the spirits would come and reveal it to her? ‘They came, Aurora, as I lay in that cell. They came and they told me. Can’t you guess it? I think I guessed it. It was that that made me frightened.’

She passed her tongue across her lips, and swallowed. I watched her, not moving. I said, What? What was it? Why did they have her there?

She said: ‘
For you.
So that we might meet and, meeting, know—and knowing, join . . .’

She might have put a knife to me and twisted it: I felt my heart beat hard and, behind the beat, caught another, sharper movement—that
quickening
, grown fiercer than ever. I felt it, and felt an answering twisting in her . . .

It was a kind of agony.

For what she had said seemed only terrible to me. ‘You mustn’t talk like this,’ I said. ‘Why are you saying such things? What use is it, what the spirits have told you? All their wild words—we mustn’t be wild now, we must be calm, we must be sober. If I am still to come to you, until you are released—’

‘Four years,’ she said. Did I think they would go on letting me come there, for all that time? Did I think Miss Haxby would let me? Would my own mother let me? And if they did, if I could come, once every week, once every month, for half an hour a time—well, did I think that I could bear it?

I said, that I had borne it until now. I said we might appeal, against her sentence. I said, If we might only take a little care—

‘Could you bear it,’ she said flatly, ‘after to-day? Could you go on being only
careful
, only
cool
? No—’ for I had made to step towards her. ‘No, don’t move! Be steady, keep from me. Mrs Pretty might see . . .’

I put my hands together, and twisted them until the gloves made my flesh burn. What choice did we have? I cried. She was tormenting me! To say that we must
join
—that we must join,
there
, at Millbank! I said again, Why had the spirits said such things to her? Why was she saying them now, to me?

‘I am saying them,’ she answered, in a whisper so thin I had to lean into the twisting dust to catch it, ‘because there is a choice, and you must make it.
I can escape.
’

I believe I laughed. I think I placed my hand across my mouth, and laughed. She watched, and waited. Her face was grave—I thought then, for the first time, that perhaps her days in the dark cell had clouded her reason. I looked at her dead-white cheek, her brow with the bruise upon it, and I grew sober. I said, very quietly: ‘You have said too much.’

‘I can do it,’ she answered levelly.

No, I said. It would be terribly wrong.

‘It would be wrong, by their laws only.’

No. Besides, how could she do such a thing, from Millbank?—where there were gates with locks at every passage, and matrons, and warders . . . I gazed about me, at the wooden door, the iron louvres on the windows. ‘You would need keys,’ I said. ‘You would need—unimaginable things. And what would you do, even if you could escape? Where would you go?’

Still she watched me. Still her eyes seemed very dark. Then, ‘I would need no key,’ she said, ‘while I had spirit-help. And I would come to you, Aurora. And we would go away, together.’

Just like that, she said it. Just like that. Now I did not laugh. I said, Did she think that I would go with her?

She said she thought that I would have to.

Did she think that I would leave—

‘Leave what? Leave who?’

Leave Mother. Leave Helen and Stephen, and Georgy, and the children still to come. Leave my father’s grave. Leave my ticket to the reading-room at the British Museum.—‘Leave my life,’ I said at last.

She answered, that she would give me a better one.

I said, ‘We would have nothing.’

‘We would have your money.’

‘It is my mother’s money!’

‘You must have money of your own. There must be things that you might sell . . .’

This was foolish, I said. It was worse than foolish—it was idiotic, insane! How could we live, together, alone? Where would we go?

But even as I asked it, I saw her eyes, and knew . . .

‘Think of it!’ she said. ‘Think of living there, with the sun always upon us. Think of those bright places you long to visit—Reggio and Parma and Milan, and Venice. We could live in any of those places. We should be free.’

I gazed at her—and there came the sound of Mrs Pretty’s tread beyond the door, the crunch of grit beneath her heel. I said then, in a whisper, ‘We are mad, Selina. To
escape
, from Millbank! You couldn’t do it. You should be captured at once.’ She said that her spirit-friends would keep her safe; and then, when I cried that, No, I could not believe it, she said, Why not? She said I must think of all the things she had sent me. Why shouldn’t she also send
herself
?

Still I said, No, it couldn’t be true. ‘If it were true, you would have gone from here a year ago.’—She said that she was waiting, that she needed
me
, to go for. She needed me, to take her to myself.

‘And if you don’t take me,’ she said, ‘—well, when they put an end to your visits, what will you do then? Will you go on envying your sister’s life? Will you go on being a prisoner, in your own dark cell, forever?’

And I had again that dreary vision, of Mother growing querulous and aged—scolding when I read too softly or too fast. I saw myself beside her in a mud-brown dress.

But we should be found, I said. The police would take us.

‘They could not seize us, once we had left England.’

People would learn what we had done. I would be seen, and recognised. We would be cast off, by society!

She said, When had I ever cared for being a part of that sort of society? Why should I trouble over what it thinks? We would find a place, away from all that. We would find the place that we were meant for. She would have done the work that she was made to do . . .

She shook her head. ‘All through my life,’ she said, ‘all through the weeks and months and years of it, I thought I understood. But I knew nothing. I thought I was in light, when all the time, my eyes were closed! Every poor lady that came to me, that touched my hand, that drew a small part of my spirit from me to her—they were only shadows. Aurora, they were shadows of you! I was only seeking you out, as you were seeking me. You were seeking me, your own
affinity
. And if you let them keep me from you now, I think we shall die!’

My own affinity.
Have I known it? She says that I have. She said, ‘You guessed it, you felt it. Why, I think you felt it, even before I did! The very first time you saw me, I think you felt it then.’

I remembered, then, watching her in her bright cell—her face tilted to catch the sun, the violet flower in her hands. Hadn’t there been a kind of purpose to my gazing, just as she said?

I put my hand to my mouth. ‘I am not sure,’ I said. ‘I am not sure.’

‘Not sure? Look at your own fingers. Are you not sure, if they are yours? Look at any part of you—it might be me that you are looking at! We are the same, you and I. We have been cut, two halves, from the same piece of shining matter. Oh, I could say,
I love you
—that is a simple thing to say, the sort of thing your sister might say to her husband. I could say that in a prison letter, four times a year. But my spirit does not love yours—it is
entwined
with it. Our flesh does not love: our flesh is the same, and longs to leap to itself. It must do that, or wither!
You are like me.
You have felt what it’s like, to leave your life, to leave your self—to shrug it from you, like a gown. They caught you, didn’t they, before the self was quite cast off? They caught you, and they pulled you back—you didn’t want to come . . .’