Hostage to fortune

A young woman trapped in a house, neglected and abused, receives a strange visitor in this extract from Wasp, by Ian Garbutt

Bethany Harris sits perfectly still on the soiled mattress, her legs drawn up, both hands loose on the dirty folds of her gown. She faces the room’s only window, the frame lidded on either side with damask curtains hung with tassels. Beautiful curtains that catch the sun.

No draught ever disturbs them. The window is nailed shut and the glass panes are as thick as her finger. Outside, in the neat garden, rosebeds throw up a hundred pink faces.

A fly settles on her cheek. She tries not to blink and keeps her breath to a whisper. For hours she practises clearing her mind of thoughts. Every day is a struggle to diminish herself, to vanish. Then she might be forgotten, ignored, left alone. It’s the only trick she has.

On her right is the door leading into the passage. She is attuned to it. The scrape of the key, the turn of the knob, a whisper as it swings inwards on greased hinges. She has learned footsteps as she had her letters. Friend’s heavy tread, the scurryings of the younger girls, the ragged steps of the ill or crippled.

Parts of Bethany are missing. The satin bows from her stained dress. The heels from both slippers. Her ivory bracelet – stolen and likely sold. A hard slap loosened a tooth, and the nail is missing from her ring finger.

Her gaze shifts from the window. A chorus of dust motes are caught in a sunbeam and lifted on warm eddies of air. She focuses, bringing them into sharp relief. For a moment the room seems filled with twirling bits and pieces, forming patterns then breaking apart to shape others.

A noise in the passage. Bethany folds more tightly in on herself. A step, a break, then two steps in quick succession. The girl who brings water and eat-it-now things raided from larder scraps. She scuttles from room to room, performing all the dirty tasks Friend will not consider. Perhaps she lacks the wit to run away. Or maybe what awaits her outside the garden walls is worse than the things she has to deal with inside.

She always enters the room breathless and pink-cheeked, as if late for some tryst of critical importance. Today her hands are empty. She is on the bed in a breeze, stroking Bethany’s hair, fingers like warm brook water trickling over her scalp. ‘Don’t know why Friend picks on you so. Before, he never paid much mind to one of us over another, ’less it came down to poking his pink stick. Even then it can’t be said he was o’er fussy.’

Her eyes go egg-wide when she speaks, as if using some Godendowed talent to form the words. When Bethany chooses to consider the matter, she wonders what had prompted this young woman’s mind to break, or whether she had indeed been mad when first brought here. It won’t happen to me. Disconnected thoughts butterfly through Beth’s head, collide, form images. She feels lice biting her scalp. Dust motes fade back into nothingness as a cloud covers the sun.

A frown splits the brow above the water girl’s hazel, gone-away eyes. ‘Friend’s coming for you later,’ she says. ‘That’s what he sent me to tell you.’ ‘What does he want?’ The water girl starts humming a melody that loops around and in on itself as her mind cycles through its seasons of lucidity and witlessness. Beth catches her wrist. ‘I asked you what he wants.’

‘Not likely to tell me, is he? Remember what I said last time. Don’t be afraid to run away,’ water girl taps her temple, ‘in here. Friend can’t get you when you’ve jumped that wall. I have my place. You’ll find yours. Not bad places, though. I know you have some.’ She leans forward on the mattress. A storm wouldn’t knock a strand of her greasy, matted hair from its place. ‘If there were no bad places you wouldn’t be here.’ Dusk sees Bethany still folded on her mattress. She hears Friend’s irregular tread. The door swings open. He slips inside, quiet despite his bulk, and pauses beside the bed. ‘Not a sound,’ he says. ‘I’m taking you to my office. Mustn’t wake anyone.’

Bethany obliges with silence. After a moment she unfolds her limbs, slowly, so cramp won’t bite. Out in the hall, a smoky candle gutters in its holder on the wall. Upstairs, someone coughs in her sleep, mumbles and turns over. Bethany sucks in a breath and follows Friend along the low-ceilinged passage. The air is only a little fresher. Ahead is an open door with a fire flickering in a grate beyond. She can sense the warmth of it.

An oak-panelled room. A desk, a stool, a shelf bristling with quills. Bethany has been here before, on her first night, waiting while her name was entered in a leatherbound book. Now she stands with her back to the fire, eyes watchful. Whatever Friend has planned she will make sure to get some heat into her bones first. He regards her, lips thinning. ‘That’s right. Warm your arse. While you’re at it slap your cheeks to put a bit of colour back into ’em. Won’t hurt to have you looking fresh.’ ‘Are you going to kill me?’ Friend leans forward. ‘What’s that?’

Beth knots her hands behind her back. ‘It’s what you’ve wanted from the start.’

A laugh splits his florid face.