The Painted Bridge A Novel

TEN





Makepeace sat behind the same round table with her back to the window, a pince-nez perched like a small bird on the end of her nose.

“I can’t understand why my sister hasn’t replied to me,” Anna said. “Nor my husband. Did you post the second batch of letters?”

“They were dispatched immediately.”

“And the third?”

Makepeace nodded.

“And nothing arrived for me with the letter carrier this morning? No one has called for me?”

Makepeace shook her head and settled herself back on her chair, locked her fingers in an arch in front of her chin, her rings lined up in front of her knuckles. Only the wedding finger was bare.

“Sometimes relatives don’t appreciate the true nature of a retreat such as this one.”

“What do you mean?”

“In a better world than this, families would understand the value of rest for the mind. But unfortunately some are …” She smiled at Anna, without warmth. “How can I put it?”

“You mean they’re ashamed? To have a lunatic in their midst?”

“We’re very blunt, aren’t we, Mrs. Palmer.”

“Louisa would never think me a lunatic. So she could not feel embarrassed,” Anna said.

She had a feeling every time she encountered Makepeace of struggle. As if in her company it was vital not to show weakness or even to feel it. She met the woman’s soft-edged eyes. Even looking straight into them she couldn’t say exactly what color they were. Not black nor blue nor brown nor quite gray. They were the color of money—the same shade as an old bun penny. Makepeace’s stare flickered away toward a dusty arrangement of everlasting flowers on the mantelpiece.

“I daresay your sister’s letter will arrive shortly. She may even come and visit you.” Makepeace smiled again, more coldly, if it were possible, than the last time.

“I wish she would. I so long to see her.”

Anna was delaying what she had to do. She felt nervous. It was irrational, she told herself, to fear that Makepeace might inform Vincent whom she wrote to. She must hand over the letter without showing any anxiety. If Makepeace inquired, she would tell her that Maud Sulten was a former governess with whom she’d stayed friendly.

“Oh! I almost forgot, Mrs. Makepeace. I have another letter here.”

She pulled it out from her bodice and tossed it on the table. Maud Sulten’s name and address were written in a hand so careful and constrained Anna barely recognized it as her own. “I would like it posted immediately.”

“Very well.”

Makepeace’s buttons shivered and glittered as she took the envelope and unlocked the drawer on the other side of the table, placing the letter inside. She got up and went to the hearth.

“The wind is in the wrong direction,” she said, stabbing at the coals with unnecessary force, her rounded back turned to Anna. Fragments of ash fell through the grate into the cinders, floated out over the fender. She clattered the poker down on the hearth tiles and straightened up. “This Miss Sulten is a friend of yours?”

“Yes. A former governess. We correspond occasionally. Be sure to post it promptly, won’t you? I haven’t written to her for an age.”

“Indeed, Mrs. Palmer. I will deal with it immediately.”

Makepeace was looking at her again with an expression of malice that did not change as Anna thanked her and left.

* * *

Alone in the room, Frances Makepeace tipped back her head and poured the last drops of her cup of coffee down her throat. She enjoyed those final drops, thick and sweet, almost syrup, as much as she enjoyed the initial stinging sip. Makepeace made coffee every morning in her housekeeper’s room, pushing the rug up against the door to keep the smell of it from seeping into the corridor. It made patients restive if they caught a whiff of it on the way to the treatment room. It could create hysteria in the susceptible—their longing for coffee.

She rinsed out the cup, dried it and replaced it on the mantelpiece. The cup and saucer were mismatched, oddly if inescapably paired. Like a husband and wife, she thought, bitterly. Her dislike of couples was extending beyond human beings to all paired things. She could tolerate items only in ones or threes. Not twos or fours. Like the animals, trooping into the ark.

Returning to her table, she got out the letter, adjusted her pince-nez and slit open the top of the envelope with a paper knife. It was an affectation of Mr. Abse’s to keep the ramblings of patients with the same care he would apply to legal documents or his own extensive and unnecessary records and logs. The ledgers he thought so much of were infested with weevils and decomposing from within. She dealt with patients’ correspondence in her own way, keeping back any she found of interest or that made complaints about herself. As Lizzie Button was in the habit of doing.

If she passed all the letters on to Abse as he’d instructed, the shelves in the study would have fallen from the walls by now with the weight of useless paperwork. She stood for a moment by the window contemplating the image of Lake House collapsing from the inside, falling in on itself with the weight of its own history like a vast failed cake.

The wind had changed again and the fire was showing signs of life. The coal sent up a mustard-colored stream of smoke, the back draft forcing wisps of it down the chimney. She put her handkerchief over her mouth and nose as she pulled out Mrs. Palmer’s letter from the envelope. “Dear Miss Sulten,” she murmured aloud. “You do not know me. You may not even know my name.”

She read the rest in silence, reached the end and remained motionless. She was back ten years and still married to Jack Makepeace. Back in all the fresh horror of his disappearance. She felt a sudden urge to weep as she clenched her fingers around the letter and then threw it down on the floor. It settled lightly on the wide boards, immune to the violence of her gesture.

Makepeace permitted herself a rare moment of self-pity. She worked so hard at putting the past behind her, maintained a constant vigilance against its intrusion. It was unfair that it should ambush her like this. Picking up the poker again, she jabbed at the coals, trying to usher them toward the fireback and keep the smoke going up the chimney. Mrs. Palmer was disturbing everyone. She’d seduced Talitha with her pretended lack of guile. When she tried to warn Talitha that Palmer was a troublemaker if ever she’d seen one, Talitha just smiled.

“I like her, Fanny,” she said. “That’s all there is to it. Anyway, people do make trouble. Everyone does sooner or later.”

She was trying to wheedle her way into the Abse family. Makepeace had told Mrs. Abse that she’d seen Catherine talking with her. Emmeline Abse had frowned. Said she didn’t like the idea of her darling girl “tête-à-tête”—there was another one who gave herself airs and graces—with a patient.

The clatter of clogs approaching along the corridor grew louder. Makepeace flung down the poker, picked up the letter from the floor and shoved it to the back of the drawer. She tried with a shaking hand to fit the key into the tiny lock but couldn’t see clearly. Her eyes were stinging as if they had soap in them. It was the smoke, she told herself. The smoke.

Lovely made a spirited if unnecessary tap on the door.

“What is it?” Makepeace shouted. “And can’t you stop your blasted singing, woman?”