The Painted Bridge A Novel

ELEVEN





The air was filled with the scent of hyacinths; the winter sun threw a slanting rectangle over the dining table. Emmeline felt a sense of pleasure that they should be all together for breakfast, gathered round the table, even if Ben’s fingers were stained with ink and Catherine’s hair uncombed. Catherine had laid her knife across her book to keep the pages open and was picking at a piece of bread, giggling occasionally, taking sips from her water glass.

“Don’t read at the table, Catty. It’s bad manners.”

Catherine looked up and scowled at her.

“Does Father know that? Why don’t you remind him?”

Querios shook the pages of his newspaper into formation and folded it into one quarter of its size, smoothing and creasing it as if he might be able to subdue its contents at the same time.

“The place at Colney Hatch is in the news again. They’ve got more patients than they know what to do with and the whole system is crumbling under the weight of numbers. They didn’t think about that, did they? When they built their monster asylums and put the little men out of business.”

Emmeline looked at him along the length of the table, willing him to respond to her meaningful glance. He slapped down the paper and turned his attention to the plaice on his plate, scraping off the flesh on the top, lifting out its spine in one supple piece.

“Benny is here, Querios.”

“I know that, Emmeline.”

“He wants to speak to you.”

Querios sighed.

“Well, Benedict? Do your tribe of scallywags need my support?”

“The boys are doing well. They’re not scallyw-w-w-ags and if you intend to ridicule my p-p-petition, I will not m-m-make it.”

Benedict’s face contorted as if every last muscle was involved in the effort to get out the words. Emmeline felt her own face stiffen in sympathy. Ben’s stammer was worst at the table. But the table was the only place they ever saw each other all together, these days, with Querios working all hours and Ben out of the house so much.

“Until I have heard the plea,” Querios said pleasantly, “I don’t know whether I shall ridicule it or not.”

“We want to start a second school for g-g—young ladies, F-f-father. We have a room, in G-g—Golden Lane. We need benefactors.”

Emmeline braced herself for the answer, resting her elbows in the soft furrows of the tablecloth. She sometimes had a feeling that the trust she placed in Querios, had always placed in him, to know better than she did, to have a surer sense of what to do, was not justified. The idea gave her the same swimming sensation as a dream she’d had recently—where they all lived in France, in a house of papier-mâché, built on ground of blancmange. She was often in France in her dreams.

“It’s a marvelous thing, persuading others to be the instruments of your charity,” Querios said to Ben. “How you can call yourself a teacher looking like that, hair all over your face, I don’t know.”

“If you still had hair, Father, how would you wear it?”

Catherine’s voice was innocent.

“Catty, darling,” Emmeline interrupted. “Pass me the marmalade, would you?”

Querios didn’t seem to have noticed Catherine’s remark. He was in full flow, his fish forgotten.

“At your age, Benedict, I was working with my father. You might have the luxury of indulging your conscience with the poor but I am obliged to labor alone to keep your brothers in school as I dimly remember I once kept you in school.”

Emmeline listened with half an ear. She took a sip of China tea and felt the bite and smokiness assuage her sinking spirits. The truth was that Querios had feared Septimus Abse. Even in middle age he used to become nauseous before an audience with the old man. But when Septimus died, Querios was lost. Grief-stricken. The ringing in his ears had begun that hard, cold spring. Could it be five years ago already?

If Benedict wanted to give his time to the ragged school movement, she had no objection. He would grow out of it soon enough. Querios had wanted to be a teacher himself when she first met him. He believed it was his vocation. Sometimes she thought that Querios felt reproached by Benedict, by his good heart and his desire to help people, and that his son reminded him of his own younger, better self.

She returned her empty cup to its saucer with a sharpness that caused the teaspoon to jump.

“You might consider my nerves,” she said. “It is distressing to see you quarreling over trivial matters.”

“We’re not quarreling, Em.”

“They’re not trivial, Ma.”

Emmeline looked down the table at Querios again.

“He’s not asking for very much, Q. Only a contribution.”

“A contribution, eh? That’s all any of us want.”

Emmeline felt a pulse in her temple begin to throb. He was getting more and more impossible lately, still refusing to talk to her about Catherine—sidestepping every conversation she tried to begin on the subject.

Catherine picked fragments of shell from the sides of a boiled egg.

“I’ll give you some books for the girls, Ben,” she said. “I think it’s an admirable idea to teach them to read and write.”

“Not r-r—read, Cath. They are going to learn to cook and s-sew.”

“Why not teach them to read? What are they meant to do in their leisure time?”

“They don’t have any l-l-l … Anyway, Cath, I’ve got a new book for you.”

“Oh, Ben, I love you. You are the best possible brother. What is it?”

Catherine jumped off her seat and ran to him as Ben finished off his third plate of mushrooms and, dropping his fork on the cloth, extracted a book from his pocket. She threw her arms round his neck, kissed him, and dashed out of the room with the volume, her feet pounding on the stairs.

Hannah stepped sideways through the door with an empty tray in her hands and began collecting plates. Querios rolled up his newspaper, stuck it into his pocket and pushed back his chair. Benedict folded another rasher of bacon into his mouth with his fingers and got up.

“Thank you, Hannah,” he said, as she took away his plate. “How are you this morning?”

Emmeline could never get used to Ben’s height. He’d outstripped her own five feet three inches when he was fourteen and now at over six feet he towered over Querios as well. He was tall and straight and handsome despite the old clothes he affected, his unkempt hair and the holes in the toes of his shoes. She felt a rush of pride and love for him. Gratitude too. It was such a simple matter to love sons. Catching hold of his hand as he passed, she pressed it against her cheek.

“Your father means well. I’ll talk to him later.”

“I know, Ma. Don’t trouble yourself.”

“Ben? Do you think it’s a good idea, bringing Catherine all these books?”

“Yes, I do. She enjoys them. I’m off to school.”

And he went. They were all gone, before the longed-for togetherness had ever quite arrived. Emmeline felt sticky even though she hadn’t touched the marmalade in the end. She sat on, alone at the table, as the golden rectangle of sun narrowed and disappeared, dabbing at her mouth again with the square of damask. The hyacinths lolled against each other in the bowl as if overpowered by their own scent. She got up and went around the table, lifted the top of Catherine’s egg. It was untouched, the yolk hardened and opaque in its soft white collar.

* * *

Emmeline climbed the stairs toward Catherine’s room. She intended to ask what she meant to do with the day and suggest that they pay some morning calls. If they wanted any society, they had to go and find it. People didn’t like to visit Lake House. They feared being seen coming through the gates—feared the whispers about confined relatives, contaminated bloodlines and unmarriageable daughters. She’d felt the same herself the first time she came to meet Abse Senior and his wife. It was hard to shake off the feeling as the carriage passed through the high gates that the air on the inside of the walls of Lake House was different air, the ground a far country. That she might not escape.

Catherine didn’t understand the handicap with which she was setting out in life. She was unaware of the prejudice she was likely to meet when she did finally decide to go out and about in society more. Perhaps it was for the best.

“Rejoice,” Emmeline muttered, approaching the closed door. “This is the day the Lord hath made.”

She prayed often, not from the staunchness of her belief but from its feebleness; she felt that faith must be like good grooming—desirable definitely and achievable possibly, through hard work.

“Catherine! Dear!”

The good humor in her voice sounded forced. Sometimes she wondered whether she feared her own daughter. She pushed open the door without waiting for an answer and walked in. The air was stuffy; dresses were strewn over the backs of chairs and silk shawls lay in puddles on the floor alongside unpaired shoes that looked as if they had been running around independently. Catherine had taken off her wrapper and was lying on the bed on her stomach, dressed in a chemise and a pair of red flannel drawers, a book propped on the pillow.

“What a mess it is in here. Hasn’t Hannah been up?”

“I told her not to.”

Emmeline stepped farther into the room and the loose board creaked under her foot—louder here than when she heard it from underneath, in her own bedroom. She stooped to pick up a stocking, considered whether she might risk sitting on the edge of the bed and decided against it. She would wait for an invitation.

“You didn’t eat your egg. Are you unwell?”

“I’m perfectly well, Mother. I’m reading Mrs. Barrett Browning. Listen to this! ‘Some people always sigh in thanking God.’ Just like Aunt Flo does.”

She laughed and for an instant something in her face looked just as it did when she was five years old. Emmeline smiled.

“I’ve told Cook to make the biscuits you like.”

Catherine repositioned her book but made no response.

“I thought we might pay some calls this morning.”

“You go, Mother. I’m busy.”

Emmeline sighed.

“You can’t let your life slip away, Catty, while you lie in the gloom reading books.”

“This isn’t my life. And don’t call me that.”

“You know your cousins wish to see you. Especially Henry.”

Catherine rolled onto her back and pulled the pillow over her face.

“Stop it, Mother,” she said, her voice stifled by down. She removed the pillow. “If I get married, it will be to a poet. An Italian poet.”

“But we don’t know any Italians.”

Her daughter burst into laughter and Emmeline stood by the glass-fronted bookcase wondering what was funny. She felt rather like crying. She steadied her voice and spoke levelly.

“Darling, I want to pay some calls. I would like you to come with me. I worry about you not seeing anyone your own age. And of course I hope you’ll marry one day but not everything I say is about finding you a husband.”

“All right, Mother,” Catherine said, quietly. “I’ll come down soon.”

Emmeline descended the stairs, one at a time. She felt more tired going down them than she had going up. She straightened her spine, trying to remember her deportment, reached the landing and stopped, leaning both elbows on the banisters. Once, Catherine had loved nothing more than to be by her side. Even at seven, eight years old she used to beg Emmeline to stay with her at night to tell her stories and sing to her. Clung to her limbs with the whole of her fierce strength if she tried to leave her bedroom before she fell asleep.

It was all happening so quickly, Catherine growing up.