The Painted Bridge A Novel

NINETEEN





Emmeline heard Catherine’s light, running footsteps and followed the sound through the open door of her sewing room. The old cedar chest was pulled out from the wall, its lid thrown back on its hinges. Catherine kneeled on the rug in front of it, still in her nightdress at midmorning, the soles of her bare feet exposed.

She sat back on her heels and held up a pair of slippers, dangled them by their straps.

“Look at these, Mother.” She ran her thumbs over the unscarred leather soles. They were for an infant too young to put its foot to the ground, never worn by the look of them. “Were they mine?”

“Probably, darling.” Emmeline sat down in her sewing chair. “Catty, I need to talk to you.”

Catherine rummaged in the chest, pulled out an embroidered baby dress, held it up by the shoulders. White and translucent in the morning light, with a long fall of skirt, it looked like a child ghost.

“Did I wear this?”

“You must have done. It’s the christening dress. You all wore it. Can you imagine Benedict, dressed in that?”

Catherine laughed. “Not really. Why do you keep it, Mother?”

“It’s a memento. Anyway”—Emmeline kept her tone light—“one day there will be babies in the family again. You might want it for your own children.”

Catherine ignored her and continued digging around in the dark interior. Emmeline had had the chest since her own childhood. It was carved over its rounded top with leaves and flowers, the inside full of snipped curls and milk teeth and sailor suits. The polished coral rings on which the children had cut their teeth. She never opened it. Even to lift the lid, breathe in a scent so faint it seemed always on the point of vanishing, flooded her with a persistent, immovable melancholy. Keeping objects was useless, she’d belatedly come to understand. It only accentuated all that was lost.

Emmeline opened her workbag and took out a table napkin. She had set aside her lacework. Darning was all she could do at present, making connections where there were rents and tears. She resumed a line of small anchoring stitches along the side of the rip and tried to remember some detail of Catherine’s infancy.

“Your first curls are in there somewhere. You were born with a whole head of hair, you know, and so pretty.”

“Was I?”

“Yes. You still are.”

“You don’t really think that. You think I ought to be like Cousin Alice.” Catherine picked out a silver spoon with an ornately traced handle. “CVA. This must be mine.”

“It was a present from Granny. She used to feed you milk jelly with it.”

“How sickening.”

“You adored cold puddings. Junket. Egg custard. Tapioca. You used to beg for more. Such a plump little thing, you were.”

“Why do you always talk about what I used to be? I’m not six years old anymore, Mother.”

“I know you aren’t.”

“Why do you sigh?”

“I didn’t.”

“You did. You always do.”

Emmeline suppressed another that rose in her like a gale. Catherine had refused to come to the table for lunch. Complained of stomach cramps and requested soup on a tray in her bedroom. Emmeline had insisted that she take the consommé in the parlor. She wanted to see it slipping down Catherine’s throat, make sure it wasn’t lying in a puddle outside her window. She’d found a hedgehog out there the other night, eating steak.

She stole a glance at her daughter, took in the long sweep of her lashes, the sullen set of her mouth. It was difficult sometimes to remember that she was almost sixteen. A woman. Emmeline’s eyes flickered away. Catherine didn’t like to be observed—it was one of her refrains. Don’t stare at me, Mother. Stop looking at me.

Catherine was sitting back on her heels, tapping the spoon on the palm of her hand.

“I want to talk to you too, Mother.”

Emmeline felt her spirits lift.

“Oh, darling. I’m so glad. I haven’t known how to—”

“I want to go somewhere. Somewhere special.”

“Wonderful!” Emmeline restrained herself from jumping up to kiss her. “We can go anywhere you like, Catty. Call on Aunt Flo. Or go shopping. You need gloves. A dress for spring.”

“I don’t want to go shopping. I want to go to the fair.”

“The fair? What on earth for?”

“Other people go. Why shouldn’t I?”

Emmeline’s own mother would have been scandalized if she’d spoken like that to her. She didn’t feel scandalized. She felt helpless.

“Your father wouldn’t allow it.”

“What about you, Mother? Would you allow it?”

Catherine’s eyes were burning in her pale face. Emmeline didn’t understand Catherine’s resentment of her—where it came from. She’d never raised a hand to her, had only ever wanted what was best for her. She shook her head.

“I would not, Catherine. No.”

Catherine slammed down the lid of the chest and rushed from the room. Emmeline heard her footsteps again, fast and furious on the stairs, then her bedroom door banging. The key to the chest lay on the rug. Emmeline picked it up and put it back in the lock. She folded the dress and replaced it, paired the slippers and returned them to the disorderly cavern of the past. She locked the chest, inhaling the woody odor of cedar.

Sometimes she wished Catherine was a child again and that they could go back to the laughing years, when she had loved her without fear or any kind of reserve. Too much, Querios had said.

* * *

It rained every day after Christmas, from early in the morning and on into the afternoon. Anna was not allowed out-of-doors, even to the airing grounds—the miserable closed courtyard designated for patients’ exercise. She watched from the window as water cascaded over the rims of the gutters, dripped from the bare branches of the trees, collected in pools on the grass in front of Lake House. It made its way inside—dripping through ceilings into buckets and bowls, sending sooty splashes over the hearth tiles. It was still raining in the small hours when Anna woke with a start, a sense of urgency running through her whole body. The rain came down more quietly at night, as if it talked to itself. She lay eavesdropping on it. Thinking about her plan.

The guests came back one by one, returned by husbands, sons or fathers, clasping small bottles of cologne, lavender bags, boxes of dried fruits, but most of the scullions and housemaids stayed away. By the end of the old year, Lake House felt like an abandoned ship. The windows and doors were swollen with damp, crumbs collected around the chair legs in the dining room, and dust furred the slats of the blinds. The grates were unblackened, the water for washing in the mornings cold. Lovely went about her tasks at a run, muttering that she was expected to do the work of six.

On the first day of the new year, on Sunday morning, Talitha Batt reappeared. She sat at the head of the table in the dining room but did not take any breakfast. Miss Little and Miss Todd were on either side of her, tussling over a saucer of gooseberry jam, tugging it between them. One of them let go and the saucer flew in the air, emptied itself onto the floor. Miss Batt pushed back her chair and walked into the dayroom, her back straight and narrow as ever.

The others followed, one by one. Anna finished her tea alone at the table, feeling glad that Miss Batt was back. Talitha changed Lake House by her presence. She dignified it. And Anna could talk with her. She enjoyed her company. A yawning scullion arrived and began to drag a cloth through the jam with her foot. Anna rose from her chair and walked around the end of the table, felt the soles of her slippers stick to the floor, the stickiness pursue her into the next room.

Miss Batt was in her green velvet chair, one hand fingering the edges of a new collar. Anna shifted a chair nearer to hers and Talitha Batt looked at her dully. Anna could feel an invisible “Do not trespass” notice. She wouldn’t ask about Batt’s time with her family. She threw herself down in the chair and rubbed her hands together. Smiled.

“Welcome back, Miss Batt. And a happy new year to you.” Anna got out the square of cambric and selected a skein of gray silk. “Will it ever stop, do you think?”

“Will what ever stop?”

“The downpour, Miss Batt. The rain.”

Batt lifted her shoulders minutely and lowered them again. Her movements were stiffer than ever, as if she operated under some increasing internal constriction.

“I daresay.”

“I do hope so. I’m anxious to get out for a walk.”

Miss Batt didn’t answer.

“I can’t say we had much of a festive season here,” Anna said. “Although Mrs. Makepeace did a bit of singing on Christmas Day. Quite a bit, actually; Mr. Abse had to intervene. They served up what they claimed was a goose and Mrs. Valentine set fire to the plum pudding.”

“Singing? Who was singing?”

Miss Batt looked at Anna, a haunted expression in her eyes, and clenched her sewing on her lap as if she would wring it out.

“Mrs. Makepeace,” Anna said, wondering how she had disturbed Miss Batt, wishing she could make her feel better. She parodied Mrs. Makepeace’s singing, trilled a couple of lines, “Oh, never leave me, Oh, don’t deceive me.” Stopped. “I cannot say that I am glad you’re back, Miss Batt. But you know I am most awfully pleased to see you.”

A tear made its way out of one eye and rolled down through the white powder on Miss Batt’s face as she shook her head slowly from side to side.

“Don’t, Mrs. Palmer. Please don’t say such things.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to distress you.”

Miss Batt didn’t answer.

“We could have a game of drafts, perhaps, if you would like a little diversion. I suppose it is difficult to return. Forgive me if I was insensitive.”

“Pardon me?” said Miss Batt, her voice a whisper.

Miss Batt’s polished, navy shoes were gone; she wore the same blunt slippers on her feet as they all did, that could be worn on either foot, by anyone. Anna fixed her eyes on her sewing.

“Miss Batt, what has happened to you?”

“It is four years, Mrs. Palmer.”

Miss Batt’s voice was tremulous and Anna lowered her own.

“What do you mean?” she said, gently, looking up from the cloth and reaching for Miss Batt’s hand. “What is four years?”

“Four years since they brought me here. I decided then that I would tolerate it for four years. No less. And no more.”

“I see.”

Anna looked at Miss Batt, at the rows of photographs behind her on the wall. It was as if Miss Batt had returned as a black-and-white rendering of herself, flat and colorless, the life in her gone. Anna was close enough to her to hear her shallow breaths and catch the note of naphthalene that escaped from her clothes but she had the sense that Talitha Batt was far away, absent from all that surrounded her.