The Painted Bridge A Novel

TWENTY





In a room on the first floor of a small house to the south of the river Thames, some miles from the Vicarage, Vincent Palmer sat on the end of a bed. He was dressed in dark trousers and a white shirt and the expression on his face as he dragged a gray sock over his naked left foot and secured it with a garter was one of absorbed concentration.

The room was dim and warmed by a small fire in the grate, the air he breathed imbued with a faded, female sweetness. Two sash windows were hidden behind lace hangings, further obscured by curtains that had long ago surrendered their designs to the sun. On the walls, theater posters had been stuck over wallpaper printed with exotic birds. The paper extended to the top of the walls and on over the ceiling as if the birds had long ago flown up there to roost and never left.

Vincent leaned toward the dressing table mirror and coaxed the ends of his moustache into their upward curl. Lately he had encountered white hairs in his moustache; the sight of them filled him with a disgust of a different order from that which he felt for the ones on his head.

“Why don’t you stay awhile?” came a voice from behind him. “You could see the boy, Vince. He’ll be awake soon.”

“Not possible,” he said, bringing his face in closer to the mirror, dragging down the corners of his mouth. He opened a small drawer and rummaged through its contents; hairpins, buttons, a desiccated rosebud from a bunch he had once presented her with, after a performance. “Don’t you have any tweezers?”

He peered harder, felt the strain in his eyes and gave up. He couldn’t see well enough to attempt the operation and there was no aggravation like accidentally pulling out perfectly serviceable black hairs and then seeing the silver one lurking, resistant to capture. The edge of the mirror was draped with strings of beads—carnelian, cinnabar, lapis lazuli—all of them semiprecious. Poor Maud. He had the satisfaction at least of knowing he had done the right thing by her.

He stood up, knocked his shin against the leg of the dressing table and assumed the impenetrably cheerful smile that he found himself using more and more.

“Tempus fugit. I must return to my flock. Much though I would like to stay and breakfast with you. My dearest.”

Maud didn’t answer and he felt a surge of annoyance. Really, she became more and more tiresome. Christmas might be over but still he had very little opportunity for visiting her, as he had often explained.

“Time flies,” he repeated, picking up his hat and brushing dust off the rim.

“I know what it means,” came the voice. “Better than you do.”

“Please, Maud. Not that again. Do you have everything you need?”

She sat up in the bed and reached around to plump a flattened feather pillow behind her back.

“No, I don’t.”

Vincent looked at her in the mirror. Her hair stood out from her head and her face and breast were still flushed. He disliked seeing her in a state of dishevelment. Preferred to see her costumed, made-up, in character. It barely mattered as what. The role was the thing that released his desire, fueled his excitement.

Over her head, on the wall behind the bed, was the painting of her as Cleopatra—as she had been when he first saw her, on the stage. She wore a black wig and her skin was arsenic-whitened. Milk and jet. The poster displayed her silhouette as he had seen it at the Empire, the unruly swellings above and below the waist, the shape that had branded itself on his imagination.

“I’ve given you all that I can, for now.”

“It’s not only about our keep, Vincent. You never take me anywhere or see the boy. We never have any amusement. Just … this.”

“It was your own decision to return to London. I was against it as you well know. I can hardly be blamed for your disappointment.”

He smoothed his hair down over his ears and retrieved his gloves from the dressing table, knocking over a couple of scent bottles. He could hardly be blamed for that either, she had so many of them—all dusty-shouldered and half-empty. A sweet, musk-ridden smell seeped into the air. He felt an urgent desire to get away. The room had been thrilling to him once. He’d found it almost unbearably exotic. Now it felt suffocating and, harder to bear, pathetic.

He made for the door, past the little wardrobe stuffed with Maud’s feathers and furbelows and kicked the draft excluder out of the way.

“Duty calls. God bless you both.”

“Don’t you have any natural feelings?”

“I will look in on him, Maud. I was intending to do just that.”

He was almost at the nursery door when he remembered his cane. He was forced to go back for it, stooping to retrieve it from behind the door, blowing fluff off the handle. Maud didn’t say a word, just looked at him. Her face in its natural state looked positively ugly. He wondered why it had taken him so long to notice. Women did not age as well as men, generally. In temperament as well as in the flesh. Their weaker brains deteriorated rather than strengthened with the passing of the years.

“Good-bye, Maud.”

He took the stairs briskly, swung open the front door and emerged, banging the door behind him. Hurrying down the street, he felt more harried than when he arrived. That was the effect Maud had on him these days. He felt a moment of deep compassion for himself. Of course he had natural feelings.

“Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble,” he muttered to himself, turning out of Sebastopol Street, reaching the main road. He stopped to reposition his hat in the reflection from the baker’s window. “For a whore is a deep ditch; and a strange woman is a narrow pit.” He was far enough away to risk raising his face from the ground and looking about at will. “She increaseth the transgressors among men.”

Not that Maud was a whore. She didn’t even work in the theater anymore. She said that he made her feel like a whore, coming and going, leaving the money on the dressing table the way he did. She had actually used the word. It had offended him because if she was a harlot, then what did that make him? Wives, whores, women. They were inexplicable, troublesome, and all of them lieth in wait as for a prey. He had a picture of himself as healthy red meat, butchered, his internal organs laid bare and a crowd of winged harpies screaming and circling in the air overhead.

It wasn’t until he approached Shoreditch that he remembered he had forgotten to see the boy. Next time. Gabriel was still too young to benefit from the company of a man—barely speaking and prone to dribbles and leaks of all descriptions. Certainly, he was too immature to benefit from any religious instruction. But more often than not, when Vincent picked him up or tried to entertain him with a game of peekaboo, the child wept and shrieked for his mother.

Maud should not ask so much of him. He had too many people to look after and his flock came first. They had to come first, whatever the personal cost to himself. He supposed he could take Maud out for some entertainment, to one of the pleasure grounds she liked so much or perhaps a play. He had to keep her happy—he was always afraid she might arrive unannounced at All Hallows. A chap could turn away callers from his own front door but it was a different matter to bar entry to God’s house. He felt a shudder crawl down his back under his long coat.

At Curtain Road, he slowed his step. Stiffened his features in anticipation of encountering parishioners, demanding help in forms that he had no intention of providing. It was they, in truth, who should give to him. Their respect for him was God’s due. He nodded at a man rushing toward him, wringing his hands, sidestepped him and proceeded through the lych-gate, still afflicted with a sense of unease prompted by the idea of Maud appearing under the leaking roof of All Hallows. He would take her out soon.

* * *

Rain had given way for several days to a bitter cold. The grass in front of the house was white with frost, the weeds along the edge of the path stiff with crystals. Anna’s heart was thudding. It was the first time she had been able to get out since Christmas. But now the moment had arrived, she felt unprepared, despite all the rehearsals in her mind.

Lovely lingered on the step, looking up at the pewter sky. Anna avoided her eye as she pulled on her gloves. She tried to keep her voice normal.

“Let’s go, Lovely.”

“You sure it ain’t too cold, miss?”

Anna looked at her suspiciously. “What do you mean?”

“For walking.”

“Oh. Yes. I’m sure.”

“My chilblains is terrible,” Lovely said, blowing on her fingers.

“Stay here then, if you like.”

“I’m duty bound to come with yer, miss.”

“All right. We won’t stay out long.”

Anna hugged her cloak around her and set off over the grass. The earth struck up hard against her feet and everything was hushed—the atmosphere, the light, the sounds. The birds were quiet and there was a smell like metal in the air, no shadow on the ground. She walked down over the grass, absorbing the strangeness of the morning, its peculiar deathly stillness, wondering why it made her feel afraid.

Arriving at the gate, she let herself into the field, and made her way along the narrow path, still visible even in the frost, passing a huddle of sheep with icicles dangling from their coats. Lovely followed behind, at a distance.

The lake was transformed into a white expanse of ice, solid and secretive-looking. Stilled. Anna picked her way down over the stiff tussocks of grass and onto the shore. Close up, the ice was not white but a translucent gray. The ends of the willow fronds were trapped, held in a drowning embrace.

She hesitated, standing by the side of the lake with her hands clamped under her armpits for warmth. The ice frightened her. It needn’t change anything, she told herself. There was no reason why it should. She picked up a twig and threw it out over the frozen surface, watched as it skittered to a halt in the middle. Beyond it, on the far side, the trees were still and patient, their branches jeweled. Waiting for her.

A group of ducks wandered confusedly on the lake and another flew in to join them and landed, skidding along, leaving parallel tracks. A duck skated toward her, slipping at every step, its naked feet seemingly impervious to the cold. As she watched, a piece of bread flew through the air; the duck craned its sinuous neck and caught it.

“Hello, Mrs. Palmer.”

Catherine’s nose was pink, a fur muff swung on a cord round her neck. For a moment, Anna couldn’t say a word.

“What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

“Don’t sound so indignant.” Catherine tossed half a muffin at the ducks congregated in front of them. “I could ask you the same question.”

“I’m out for a walk. Some air. Shouldn’t you be inside, in the warm?”

Before Catherine could answer, Anna began walking along the shore, toward the bridge. Catherine followed behind and their feet crunched in step on the frozen ground.

“I’m not meant to be out,” she called. “Mother says the cold is bad for the complexion. But I saw you from my bedroom window and came to wish you a happy new year.”

“How kind.”

“Please, Mrs. Palmer, don’t be nasty. I haven’t seen you for ages. Where’ve you been?”

Anna stopped and turned to face her.

“Where do you think? I’ve been in the dayroom. The dining room. The little cell called a bedroom.”

Catherine’s eyes met hers then flickered on past her.

“I’m just as much a prisoner as you are.”

Anna laughed.

“No, you’re not, Catherine.”

“‘I kept the life, thrust on me, on the outside / Of the inner life, with all its ample room,’” Catherine said. “That’s what Aurora Leigh does. It’s what I do, when I remember. You could try it too, Mrs. Palmer.”

They were at the edge of the thicket, closer to the bridge than Anna had ever been. The scarlet holly berries were magical-looking; beyond them was a clump of bare yellow stems the color of mustard powder, some beech saplings clinging to their crisp brown leaves. She couldn’t wait for another chance. She must act and it must be today while she still had the strength and the will to free herself. Anna wrapped her cloak more tightly round her body and imagined herself plunging through the tangle of branches, head lowered against the thorns.

Lovely had stayed back in the field, hopping from foot to foot, rubbing her hands together and pressing them against her cheeks, her suffering evident. Catherine was talking about an American. She waved the hands that she’d freed from her muff, eyes shining.

“She’s traveled all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, from Boston, Mrs. Palmer. I absolutely have to go and see her. I’ll never get another chance in my whole life.”

“Catherine! Listen to me for a minute. It’s not true, what I said to you about my husband. I don’t miss him at all. He won’t be coming for me.”

“What’s that got to do with me?” Catherine’s voice was flat, her breath a wisp of vapor in front of her lips.

“I have to escape. Will you help me?”

“I said I would, didn’t I?” Catherine’s tone was sulky. “Even though I don’t know why I should.”

They glanced simultaneously over the lake toward the other bank. The bridge was to their left, not more than a couple of hundred yards farther along. It was as ethereal and still as if it was carved from the ice or had bloomed from its dull surface. Anna gestured toward it.

“I’m going to run away. Over the bridge.”

Catherine blinked and her face colored.

“You can’t, I told you before.”

“I’ve got to.”

Catherine stamped her foot.

“Why doesn’t anyone ever listen to me?” she shouted. “It’s not a bridge. My grandfather had the bridge pulled down after one of the guests fell off it. They say she fell but she didn’t. She jumped with her babies, one in each arm. I saw her.”

Catherine hurled the last crust out over the ice; two ducks skated after it, their shrieks tearing the air.

“I don’t believe you. I can see it with my own eyes.” Anna felt winded.

She turned and saw Lovely, almost upon them. Lovely arrived, her face scarlet, contorted with pain.

“Good morning, Miss Catherine. Let’s go indoors now, miss,” she said to Anna.

Anna looked at her.

“In a moment, Lovely. I’m freezing too. Didn’t you hear Mrs. Makepeace shouting for you? She was blowing her whistle.”

“Were she?” Lovely looked suspicious.

“Oh, yes,” Catherine said, her voice high and clear. “Father was calling for you too. I never heard such a bellowing.”

“Gawd. They must be ’ere at long last.” Lovely began to toil up the bank. “Hurry along, miss,” she called over her shoulder.

“Coming,” Anna said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“You can still get away,” Catherine hissed, her eyes alert. “Look.”

She plunged forward through a fringe of bulrushes taller than her and lowered a foot over the frozen surface. For a moment she stood like a skater with one boot on the ice and the other lifted behind her.

“Catherine, don’t. It’s not safe.”

Catherine didn’t seem to hear. She took another step, placing the second foot down flat in front of her.

“Come on, Mrs. Palmer.” Her voice was full of pleasure as she glanced back toward Anna, then went on, slipping and rebalancing in an odd, stiff-footed dance, laughing as she wobbled and regained her balance. Her white neck was caught by the light and her arms emerged from her cloak like two stiff wings.

Catherine was so slight, not fully grown. The ice would hold her. Even the water might have held her. Anna pictured herself stepping out onto the frozen surface—walking to the halfway point and on, until she arrived at the far bank. She looked over her shoulder. Lovely had got almost to the gate into the field. It would be faster to walk straight across from here, if she could, than it would be to fight her way through to the bridge.

She pushed through the rushes and put her foot out onto the ice, felt the chill of it seeping through the sole of her boot. Leaning forward, she put more weight on it, waiting for a fearsome cracking sound. Nothing. Anna held her breath as she brought the other foot in front of her and started to make her way out over the glassy surface. Drowned leaves and branches pressed up underneath the ice as if they fought for air. The dim, blunt-nosed shape of a fish glided underneath her. She raised her eyes and took another step, holding out her arms.

Catherine was almost at the far bank. Anna followed, hardly daring to breathe, putting down her whole foot at each step, spreading her weight over the length of it. Hearing a shout, she stopped and turned around. Her shadow lay in front of her, long and faint on the ice, stretching back toward the shore.

Lovely was careering down the bank, beckoning frantically for their return. Anna spread her hands in front of her, palms upturned.

“I can’t, dear Lovely,” she said aloud. “I’ve got to go.”

Lovely reached the edge of the lake and dragged up her skirts, showing her bare legs, the ends of her drawers. She screwed up her face, eyes closed, then jumped with both clogs onto the ice and plunged forward, falling. Anna heard the cracking sound she’d dreaded. Lovely screamed as she floundered, a high scream of shock and pain. She scrambled to get one bare foot onto the ice, then capsized again into the reeds. She crawled back onto the shore, righted herself and got to her feet. With her sodden skirts clinging to her round form, Lovely began to make a different gesture—throwing both hands out from her body as if urging Anna to make haste toward the other bank.

Anna lifted her hand in a wave, turned and carried on, moving quickly now, skating on the worn leather soles of her boots, trusting the solid support of the ice underneath her, a wave of excitement coursing through her from her toes to her fingertips. She reached the far side and jumped onto a frozen, muddy shore churned by cattle hooves. There was wood smoke on the air, a dog barking in the distance.

She glanced back toward Lake House. The rise of the land obscured the lower part of it; she could see only the dayroom windows on the first floor and above that the bedrooms, lit by the sun breaking through now, tinged with pink. The shore of the lake was empty, Lovely gone. They had fifteen minutes at least before she would get back and raise the alarm. Anna lifted her skirts and scrambled up the far bank to a vista of open heathland.

Catherine was sitting on a log, blowing on her fingers. She smiled up at her.

“You took your time, Mrs. Palmer.”

Anna grabbed her hands and kissed them.

“I don’t know how to thank you. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. Go back now, Catherine, quickly. You’ll have to get on the bank in a different spot; Lovely’s broken the ice. Hurry and I’ll watch till you’re safe.”

Catherine looked straight past her to the horizon, her face lit up.

“Who’s going back? Not me.”

She jumped to her feet and set off, her hem trailing on the glittering earth.