The Painted Bridge A Novel

TWELVE





Lunch was two thin slices of ham, served with boiled potatoes and a dollop of yellow mustard that made Anna feel as if the top of her head was on fire. There were small burrowings around the heel of the loaf where mice or worse had been feeding on it. The scrape of spoons on china, the coughing and the banging of chair legs on floorboards were louder and more discordant than usual. The pudding, stewed apples still in their bitter, green skins under a white blanket of corn flour, set her teeth on edge.

“No appetite today, Mrs. Palmer? Are the apples too sharp for you?” Talitha Batt was standing by her with a bowl of sugar and a teaspoon in her hand. Anna pushed away her dish.

“I’m not hungry, Miss Batt, thank you all the same.”

Anna was in low spirits. She had delayed writing the letter to Maud Sulten from a belief that when she did, something must happen. She’d thought that even if she provoked Vincent’s wrath she would through Miss Sulten find a way to free herself. Eleven days later, there had been no response. She felt a sharp humiliation every morning as she asked whether any letters had arrived for her and Makepeace shook her head, affecting sympathy while her eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

Most of the others had left the table for the dayroom. Only Anna and Lizzie Button remained in their places. Mrs. Button seemed oblivious to the fact that lunch was over. She rocked to and fro on her chair next to Anna, muttering about her angels, her arms folded tight over the piece of wood held against her chest. Occasionally, a moan escaped her. Anna turned to her. She’d been waiting for an opportunity to say something.

“Mrs. Button, I’m sorry for your loss. You have my deepest sympathy.”

Button put both hands in front of her face. “Leave me alone.”

“Mrs. Button, I only wanted to say that I’m so sorry you—”

Button dropped the stick, clamped her hands to her ears, and let out a wail that gave Anna goose pimples along the length of her arms.

“Let me alone, Mrs. Palmer. You know nothing about anything.”

Anna took a mouthful of water and pushed back her chair, her jaw clenched. She made her way into the dayroom and threw herself into the window seat, preparing to endure another interminable afternoon. Was it true what Button said, that she didn’t know about anything? It couldn’t be. But perhaps it was. The photographer doctor had not returned. Maud Sulten had not replied to her letter. Even her own sister made no response to her. She was completely alone.

* * *

She became aware of Makepeace standing in front of her.

“Visitor for you, Mrs. Palmer. In the office.” She jerked her eyes to indicate the door that led out of the dayroom and began leading the way toward it. “Come along, please.”

Anna followed on Makepeace’s heels down the stairs, almost tripping on the hem of the woman’s skirt. At the bottom of the stairs, in the short corridor that led to Abse’s office, she couldn’t contain her impatience. She pulled up her skirts and flew past Makepeace, almost falling through the door into the office.

“Where is she? Let me see her. Lou? Oh …” She stopped dead. “It’s you, Vincent.”

He was standing in the very spot from which he’d disappeared, dressed in the same long coat, his hat held over his chest.

“Good morning, Anna.” He took off his gloves and put his hat down on Abse’s desk, balancing it on its brim. “How are you getting along?”

She’d thought that when Vincent came she’d fly to him, kiss his hands, beg him to see reason. But she couldn’t take a single step toward him. She took in his hair, slick with bear’s grease, the fresh tone of his skin and his air of wary benevolence. He wasn’t suffering from her absence. He didn’t share her anguish.

Her head felt light and hollow. She put out her hands to steady herself and Makepeace stepped forward, propelled her onto a chair.

“Mr. Abse will be here shortly,” she said. “Try not to upset yourself, Mrs. Palmer. The visit should not be a prolonged one, Reverend, if you’ll pardon me for observing. Visits meant to comfort can result in disturbed emotions.”

Anna interrupted her.

“I am dying here, Vincent. You have to take me out of this place.”

Vincent ran his finger along the top of his moustache.

“Come, Anna, please. Don’t exaggerate. A retreat is intended to provide respite for the nerves, not to inflame them.”

“I did not need to retreat anywhere, from anything. You … you tricked me into coming here.”

“Calm yourself, Anna.”

“Don’t tell me to be calm when you’ve taken my life from me. Have you been speaking to my sister? Trying to turn her against me? I’ve written to her again and again and heard nothing.”

Vincent’s air of smugness faltered. He turned to Makepeace.

“Are you the housekeeper? I understood from Dr. Abse that guests were able to remain in seclusion here? Without, er, unwelcome contact with the world outside?”

Makepeace’s face was at war with itself—her mouth opening and closing, waves of unexpressed thoughts passing over her features. She cleared her throat, loudly and at length.

“That’s right, sir,” she said. “I’m the matron. I’ll fetch Mr. Abse.”

Her mind racing, Anna barely heard their exchange. Makepeace left and Anna and Vincent were alone in the room. Vincent walked around it, tipping back his head as he surveyed the highest shelves of ledgers. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his forehead.

“Marvelous collection the doctor has.”

“Vincent, please. Why are you doing this to me? I don’t understand.”

“Have you got out for walks much? Wonderful countryside.”

“I’m begging you.” Her voice sounded shrill. She took a deep breath. “I’ll lose my mind, any woman would. Your own mother would go mad here.”

“‘The Lord will not suffer the soul of the righteous to famish.’ Please don’t speak about Mother, Anna.”

Abse hurried in.

“Welcome, Reverend. This is an unexpected pleasure. I thought for a moment you were another party of visitors.”

“Good day, Doctor. God bless you.”

Vincent pumped Abse’s hand. Abse walked behind his desk, began shifting the papers around, leafing through piles. Vincent glanced at the door. He wasn’t staying, Anna understood. He had no intention of taking her away. She had the odd feelings in her body that had become familiar at Lake House—an ache in her lungs and a sense of her blood stopping in her veins, with the wrongness of things. She made a low, animal howl.

“You shouldn’t have come, Vincent, if you only intend to go away again and leave me here. Why have you come?”

“My wife appears emotionally excited still, Dr. Abse. I’d hoped to find her more rational.”

“She has made fair progress,” said Abse. “She hasn’t been troubled by any more visions.” He pronounced the word with a flourish, turned to her. “Have you, Mrs. Palmer? No boys jumping from rocks or anything of that nature. Eh?”

Anna turned away, feeling the words like slingshot. So Vincent had informed Abse about her visions. She had tried to explain to Vincent before they were married about what she saw. She’d thought he ought to know. Sometimes they came regularly, sometimes there were gaps of a year or more. Waking dreams that she’d had from the time she was a young girl. She’d never thought they were anything to be ashamed of. She thought of them as God speaking to her.

At first, they were always set down on the chalk shore, below the house. Sometimes she waded in the water. Picked and slithered her way over the rock pools or climbed the sheer white cliff in a way she never could in life—surefooted, supported.

Jesus had appeared in the very first one, pulling his boat up out of the waves, His bell-bottom trousers rolled to the knees. The boat was narrow, painted green, with two wooden benches across the width of it. She’d run to help Him bail the water out of the bottom but found there was none. The boat was dry. Jesus had laughed at her surprise, although not unkindly. He had told her to expect the unexpected. He said He had work for her.

Vincent said it was impossible that Jesus should have laughed.

The study door opened and Makepeace returned with a maid carrying a tea tray that the girl set down on the table, looking nervously about the room. The maid left and Makepeace poured the tea and passed round the cups, while Querios Abse read from a ledger. “Full-blown hysteria on admission. Some lesser episodes since. Emetics have contributed to a slow but steady improvement. Matron has noted a lack of cooperation. Full cure likely to take some time.” He looked up from the ledger with sharp eyes. “It might be wise to think in terms of months rather than weeks, Reverend. We can review your wife’s case in the spring.”

“I see, Doctor.” Vincent was nodding, vigorously, as though he wanted to hear that she should be detained. “Yes, I do see.”

Anna gripped the teacup in the palm of her hand as Abse closed the ledger, opened another.

“I don’t believe that I ever informed the Reverend Palmer that I was a medical doctor although I have long experience with mental affliction. I am a doctor of the school of life. Some extra monies are owing for treatments, Reverend,” she heard him say. “As well as the regular monthly fee.”

Vincent emptied his cup and dabbed at the underside of his moustache with the handkerchief. He was still sweating, the perspiration on his face catching the light. For the first time, his eyes met hers and she saw again the regret in them that she had glimpsed on the day he brought her here. Regret and guilt.

“It’s for the best, Anna. Believe me, it’s for the best.”

“Why didn’t you tell me those men were doctors?”

“The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.” He smiled at her, tight-lipped. “Proverbs. Chapter thirty-one, verses eleven. And twelve.”

She felt a desire to hurl the teacup at him.

“What are you talking about? You deceived me, Vincent.”

His eyes slid away like fishes.

“You must try to curb your passions. For your own sake.”

Abse got to his feet. “Leave your wife in our hands, Reverend. A full cure may take longer than all of us here had hoped but I am optimistic. I am always optimistic. Further treatments can be employed.”

Vincent rose too. He picked up his hat and adjusted the cords between crown and brim.

“The Bishop asked very kindly after you, Anna. I hope to find you more composed next time. God bless and keep all of you.”

“Vincent, tell me why you’re doing this to me. You have no right—”

He was gone.

Abse made a noise of satisfaction as the door closed behind him.

“Fine man, your husband, Mrs. Palmer. Knows his scripture too. Aaaah …”

He gasped as the cup hit him in the middle of the chest and bounced back onto the desk. Tea flooded over the open ledger, the dissolving ink creating a gray tide over the page. It dripped from the edges of the desk onto the rug, where it steadily darkened the pattern of chrysanthemums.

Abse stood looking down at the desk. He leaned over it and began to blot the ledger with his sleeve in small, fussy movements.

“Take her back up, Fanny,” he said. “We’ll commence further treatments straightaway.”

A Proverb of her own came to Anna as Makepeace ushered her out of the room. She repeated it silently to herself all the way up the stairs. “Therefore shall his calamity come suddenly; suddenly shall he be broken without remedy.”

She hardly knew on whose head she wished greater calamity—Vincent’s or Querios Abse’s.

* * *

Anna couldn’t sleep. She didn’t want to be in Dover. But often since she arrived at Lake House she found herself there—in the garden, on the clifftop. In her bed. In her self, as she had been as a young child.

There were things that she knew as a child without knowing how she knew them, that were never presented by a governess. All the important things were like that. What she knew was that her place was on the edge of things. On the edge of England, where the earth broke its solid promise and surrendered to the sea. On the edge of her family, not snugly bracketed between sisters.

She knew that girls were lesser beings. Her mother’s voice whispered that she had been a chance of what they longed for—a son and heir. She heard the word as air, felt the light, expansive promise of the male line. The earthy disappointment of girl children. Her parents even had a name ready for him; Antony without an h. They’d substituted Anastasia, in their disappointment. Shortened it to Anna by the time she was old enough to hear it. A fifth daughter did not merit five syllables.

She decided early that she liked to be on the edge of things. Slid into a bench seat in the kitchen, pressing her spine against the wall, with the only route out under the table. She would sit on her ankles behind the wing chair in Captain Newlove’s study, eyes smarting from tobacco smoke, looking at a book about shells. Conchology. It was a long time before she connected the drawings of shells in the book with the shells on the shore. When she did, it was with a secret passionate thrill that ran all the way through her.

More often, the air was innocent of smoke. Their father was missing. He was a word, an empty chair, an anticipation. He was one of the pelagic birds he told them about, that lived at sea, drifted on the currents for months at a time, swimming in the skies, held there by the eye of the water.

She knew him best through his study. He had charts pinned up of the waters off the coasts of England, Spain, the Cape of Good Hope. Maps in which the dry lands were sketchy, rudimentary spaces, almost blank, but the waters teemed with detail—with the reefs and wrecks that could cause vessels to founder, the buoys and lighthouses that could save them. He had a globe of the stars that he said must be looked at as if from inside it, looking at the sphere all around, from the center.

A spiked pink shell was marooned on a shelf, a red shell from the Red Sea whose inside curled in on itself, to a secret place. After he died, Anna took it out of the study. Ran down the path with it and hurled it with both hands into the sea. Her sea, that was gray and bronze and black like its shells. At ebb tide, she looked for the exiled casing. Walked over the muddy sand, her toes resisting its hungry suck. The worms left piled casts on the surface, traces of where they were not.

She knew the bay as she knew her own body, knew its soft and tough places, its sweet and rank smells. She arrived in it fast, magically, sliding down the path from the clifftop, sending flying showers of small stones, grabbing at roots of thrift and mallow. It was a path too undignified for adult use, too direct and dangerous, necessitating at some points sliding and at others a headlong rush that could be undertaken only in a spirit of faith, that the rusher would remain upright, regain her balance farther down and meanwhile half run, half plunge to the bottom of the cliff.

The adult route to the shore was through a passageway hacked down through the cliff. The descent was sinister to her, the cliff in relief unsettling. It was alarming to know that the earth was so thin, endured only inches below the turf, that it gave way to a pebbly compromise of shale before the strata of chalk began, jagged, piled on top of one another as if they fought for position, trapping the great helpless flints that jutted from them.

The passage indicated that she might keep walking, down into the earth. She could walk under the bottom of the sea, under the underneath of things, and what would she find there? Would it be the sky, again, would she fall through into nowhere, unsupported, floating or swimming? Or vanish, like a jellyfish carried home in a pail?

Walking down through the passageway alarmed her more than swimming as far as she could toward the horizon, while any of the succession of disoriented governesses who passed through the Newlove household watched from the shore, eyes shaded by their hands, calling in voices of which no trace, no echo, could be heard. The sound of the sea canceled out the sounds of the earth, rendered them futile and plaintive. Anna floated on her back with her ears under the water, the noise of the pulsing depths like shattering glass, high-pitched evidence of things exploding.

* * *

Sometimes she felt like the survivor of a wreck herself. They lived in a flint house on the clifftop; the smell of earth and salt and wind defined the meaning of home. She shared a room with Louisa. At night, Anna lay in her bed next to the wall, looking at the rose-patterned paper, considering whether the paper at night was different from the paper in the day, whether it was possible that the roses were all the same. She’d never found any two things exactly the same. Moonlight fell through the uncurtained window, threw a pillar of light over the blooms. She raised her hand, made a dog’s head or a starfish, marveled at the shadow she cast.

The window of the parlor on the first floor looked straight out to sea. In winter, they kept a vigil for blue lights, slept with the sound of the lonely raging waters in their ears, a sense that the ground of their lives was being dragged out from underneath them.

Captain Amos Newlove died within sight of home, his ship wrecked in the English Channel on the Goodwin Sands. The maps hadn’t saved him, nor the globe or the brass telescope. Her mother covered up every window in the house that looked directly out to sea. She blocked the one in the parlor with a bookcase so the room was always dark. In the garden, surrounded by glossy-leaved bushes, she burned the pea jackets and calfskin shoes, the logbooks, the foreign banknotes. The flames were orange, transparent in the sunlight; the smoke blew sideways into their faces. Anna and Louisa, girls of ten and fourteen, left behind by their older, married sisters, retrieved a few blackened treasures from the ashes, contemplated their warmth in silence. Later, they forgot where they’d hidden them.

Amelia Newlove grew old overnight. She announced that she loathed the water, hated the sight of it, the smell of it and worst of all the sound of it. She wore cork stoppers in her ears at night and never referred to the sea, to ships or to sailors. She marooned herself in the flint house, looking inland toward Canterbury and the spires of the cathedral, which even on the clearest day could not be seen, although the coast of France looked sometimes as if you could reach out an arm and stroke it. One by one, neighbors stopped visiting. The ship’s bell by the front door, Captain Newlove’s jest, fell silent.

The sea was to be feared. Anna knew that before she knew anything. The sea took its due. Swallowed whole what it would have. Must have.

* * *

The morning after Vincent’s visit was drizzly, the day as dull outside as it was inside. The fire was out when Anna woke and the stockings Lovely brought each had a different name written in the top. Neither of the names was hers. Anna flung them aside and they landed in the chamber pot. Lovely gasped.

“I do my level best, miss. To make sure yer get what yer need.”

“I need my own stockings.”

“These are the only ones that came up from the laundry.”

“I’m not putting on other people’s.”

“Go without, then.” Lovely’s face was pink.

“I will,” Anna shouted, as Lovely left the room, banging the door behind her. “I will go without.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and stretched her legs out in front of her. It had shocked her when she arrived to see the women’s naked ankles in the slippers, their cracked, spreading heels. Now she was the same as them. She was being undone, pulled apart like a piece of knitting. Personhood came down to small things. One’s own clothes. A letter in a familiar hand. The opportunity to step out of the door, rain or shine. The parts of life Anna had believed were details were turning out to be its most important elements.

Sitting at the washstand, she brushed her hair one hundred times, piled it up at the back of her head in a loose knot secured by the two tortoiseshell combs. She must keep hold of herself. She must not allow them to break her.

After breakfast, as Anna got up to move toward the dayroom, Makepeace stepped in front of her. She wore a pinafore over her costume in a drab fabric, thick and coarse. Anna shook off the hand on her arm and stepped back. She had a lingering fear of Makepeace’s touch, almost a horror of it.

“Come with me, Mrs. Palmer.”

“Why? Where to?”

“Dr. Higgins believes a shower may be beneficial.”

Talitha Batt knocked a metal dish cover off the sideboard; it landed on the floor and rolled from side to side making a mournful, dying echo.

“Not a prolonged shower, I trust, Mrs. Makepeace,” Batt said, her voice sharp. “Not in this weather.”

Makepeace, summoning Lovely with a peremptory shout, didn’t hear her.

* * *

The shower room was beyond Makepeace’s room, in a part of the house Anna hadn’t seen before. Thin wooden lathes like ribs showed through patches of fallen plaster and the floor was carpeted in old flour sacks. There was a narrow wooden box in one corner with a tin tank over the top of it, its door secured by an iron bar. It looked like an upended coffin. Anna supposed it was the shower. She wouldn’t be defeated by a shower. She’d walked into the sea in November—she wasn’t afraid of cold water.

Lovely shivered and cast her eyes to the floor. Anna looked at Makepeace as coolly as she could.

“Yes? What now?”

“Take off your things, Mrs. Palmer.”

Anna turned her back to them as she undid the bodice of her old velvet dress. She draped its skirt on the chair Lovely put by her, wordlessly. She slipped her feet out of the slippers, felt the rough texture of sacking under her feet and stood there in her petticoats.

“All of them, please,” Makepeace said.

Anna took off her petticoats, pulled her chemise over her head, then stepped out of her drawers and folded them on the chair. She had never fully undressed in front of another person before. She felt as if she was someone else, watching this Anna from a distance. As if it was she, not Makepeace, who observed the white curve of her belly, the protruding hip bones, the dark triangle below. Her hair was warm over her breasts, and her feet, even more than the rest of her, looked naked, on the dusty floor.

“Step inside, Mrs. Palmer. We should find two minutes sufficient.”

Anna glanced at Lovely for reassurance as she stepped inside, saw the stricken look on her face. The cupboard was smaller inside than it appeared and lined with tin. With the door shut, she couldn’t raise her arms. She looked up, saw a perforated roof and gasped as the first streams of water hit her face. Her mouth jerked open, icy water flooded into it, down her throat. She struggled for breath, her chest made a strange hoarse noise. The cold was violent; the sound of the crashing water confused her. The sea had been warm, by comparison. Benevolent. She craned her head, trying to remove it from the rush of the water but she couldn’t get away from it.

She closed her eyes and tried to remember which side the door had been on. She must knock on it and make them let her out. This couldn’t be how it was intended. This was torture. The water kept coming in a relentless flow, hard as metal. Anna couldn’t think clearly. Water was rising above her knees and her feet felt as if they were being beaten, as if the bones were breaking from the inside out. She lifted up one foot, trying to remove it from the pain and overbalanced against the tin wall. Clawed her way upright again.

The water rose to her thighs, reached the tops of her legs, then in between them. It seemed not to be liquid but some punishing solid thing. It continued, past her waist, her breasts. Fear overtook the physical pain. She was going to drown. It was she who would die this way. Her hair that would float on the water; her eyes that would remain open as she went under the surface.

The flow subsided. Stopped. The water had covered her shoulders, almost reached her chin. There was silence, then voices from outside that mingled with her own awful cries. A trap was opened in the bottom of the door and the level began to drop. Before the cupboard was quite empty, the door opened and Lovely hurried forward with a blanket and caught Anna as she fell through it. The outside went as dark as the inside.

* * *

Anna slept and dreamed of a letter. A letter that she pulled from the water, that she read again and again but could not understand, even though it was in her own language. When she woke she thought about another letter. The one she needed to talk to Louisa about, had been intending to discuss with her on the day Vincent brought her to Lake House.

She had found it in the drawer marked Sundries, in a pink envelope addressed to Vincent. She picked it up, felt the thin, cheap paper. It smelled of soap, a faded, floral sweetness that seemed to carry some wistful message. Anna pulled out the letter, read it, then replaced it where it was. She intended to say nothing. But the question escaped her, two days after she returned from the coast.

“Who is Maud Sulten?”

Vincent had been on his way to a service. He closed the door very precisely and gestured for her to step into the study.

“Who is who? I don’t know what you’re talking about, Anna.”

His voice was as low and cold as she’d ever heard it. He didn’t want Cook to hear, nor the curate. Anna continued to speak, her face burning. She told him that she’d understood from her mother that men had mistresses and wanted to know if Vincent had one. A woman who had come back to London from some other place. Who wanted urgently to see him. Who had a mind to come to All Hallows for a service, if she had to.

“I am surprised at you, Anna. That your mind should run along such lines as those. You are imagining things again. I want to hear nothing more of this, do you understand? I forbid you to speak of it to me or anyone else.”

She watched him from the window of the study, hurrying toward the church, his legs moving like scissors across the rough ground. After he was inside All Hallows, she went upstairs to the bedroom and looked for the letter. Sundries was empty apart from a candle snuffer and a handful of coins, light and bent, smooth around their edges. Counterfeit. She closed the drawer and sat down on the bed. She had a feeling that something had ended in her marriage even before it had begun.

* * *

Anna brought herself back to where she was, opening her eyes and seeing the bowed ceiling of the room in Lake House. Her feet were cold and felt a great distance away, as if they were no longer part of her body. The nightdress, the sheet underneath her, were clammy. She dragged herself out of the bed, took the blanket, climbed onto the chair and rested her elbows on the sill. The sheep were huddled together in a spot halfway down the slope, one down on its knees as if it prayed. There was no sign of Catherine Abse.

She pressed her forehead against the cold glass, drank in the clean, damp air blowing around the ill-fitting frame. The eye of the lake looked unblinkingly up at the sky, the surface black and inky. The white bridge stood out in the dusk, more luminous and bold than when she first saw it, as if it was made of whalebone or ivory—something that could not be destroyed.