Stolen Voice

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Little Dorrit

Copyright: Charles Dickens' estate

She did not expect her freedom to be like this.

Freedom is a small, shabby set of rooms, the blinds and curtains permanently half-drawn to make a world of shadows. Freedom is hauling firewood and buckets of water up four flights of stairs and living on day-old bread and cheap, greasy pies from the shop down the corner. And she wouldn't even mind that, as she's been through worse in the orphanage where she spent the first ten years of her life; it's not as if soft living with the Meagles has spoiled her. No, it wouldn't matter a jot how hard the work was, or how ugly her surroundings, if it weren't for the inescapable presence of the woman who set her free in the first place.

Tattycoram believed nothing could be worse than being Minnie Meagles' living toy, fetching shawls and turning sheet music, told to count to five-and-twenty like an unruly child, erased and belittled by a ridiculous nickname. Tolerated, but never loved. A charge, but never a daughter. Tattycoram convinced herself, despite all inner and outer objections, that Miss Wade – this eerie, beautiful stranger who called her Harriet but never gave out her own Christian name, who spoke to her like the echo of her own thoughts and told her she must never be afraid – was her only hope of salvation. She smothered her own fears, disdained them as a weakness bred by too-long obedience. She slammed the door in the Meagles' faces, and she ran.

Now, shaking and sweaty, listening to Miss Wade's mechanical breathing on the far side of the bed, a girl called Harriet asks herself if her escape was really worth it.

Please stop, she tried to say on that first night. But the older woman was stronger and pinned both of Harriet's arms above her head. Nothing comes without a price, my dear. You should know that by now.

The worst part is that her body enjoyed it, in the end. Something she did not want has no right to feel so good. It's as if this woman, ivory-white in the single moonbeam lancing through the curtain, has stolen her soul, drawn it up through her smiling lips and left her with the spoiled remains, like cold coffee grounds in an empty cup.

Harriet does not go out. She lets Miss Wade do the shopping, who seems well satisfied by this. She is afraid people might see it on her, or smell it, mark her out as something unnatural and wrong. She wonders if this is what Mr. Meagles meant when he predicted that she would be "lost and ruined". Surely not; it was always men that she and Pet were warned against. At least there is one consolation, she tells herself bitterly. Miss Wade can never get her with child.

On the night Miss Wade' slimy French accomplice meets them in the street and puts a black-gloved finger to Harriet's lips, she thinks, Too late. Her new mistress has achieved what her old master's "five-and-twenty" never could: unruly, ungrateful, unnatural Tattycoram is finally silenced for good.