Mary Reilly

Love
Set in Motion
Alexandra
A Recent Martyr
The Consolation of Nature
The Great Divorce
Italian Fever
Salvation

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.

I
t 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.

T
his 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.”