The Painted Bridge A Novel

TWENTY-TWO





Louisa was propped on a heap of cushions at the end of a couch, holding a burnt rag to her nose. She was the beauty of the family with black hair that fell in good-tempered curls and creamy skin that she’d been at pains to protect from the sun. Her eyes were round and brown and her lashes curled upward, giving her an innocent look that verged on startled, as if everything caught her slightly by surprise.

“Catherine,” Anna said. “Meet my sister, Mrs. Heron.”

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Heron.”

“This is Catherine,” Anna said. “A friend of mine.”

Louisa looked at Catherine without curiosity, nodded a greeting.

“I thought you were dead, Anastasia.” With her small hands, the fingers sparkling with opals and marquises, the nails buffed to a shine, she folded the burnt rag into a flat, neat square. She leaned forward to where Anna sat at the other end of the couch and looked at her intently. “I’ve been through such torment, you can’t imagine. I waited for you all that afternoon. I couldn’t understand why you didn’t come, thought you must be ill. Next day, I went to the Vicarage.”

“You saw Vincent? What did he say?”

“He told me that you’d gone to stay with friends of his. That you needed rest. Peace and quiet. He was busy with a sermon so we didn’t talk for long. The next time I went, no one answered the door.” Louisa’s eyes flickered toward her belly. “I thought perhaps … well, you can imagine what I thought. You’re not, are you, darling?”

Anna shook her head.

“Lou, I …”

There was a tap at the door and the King Charles spaniel on the hearth squeaked in its sleep. A domed mirror over the fireplace reflected the parlor walls curved into a globe, a contained world like a stage set or a painting. A girl opened the door, admitting a waft of boiling fowl, and laid a baby between them on the couch. It was wrapped in a shawl with only its face showing. Louisa dabbed her eyes on the rag and looked at the infant.

“How could you?” she said to Anna. “Just disappear like that.”

“I wrote to you so many times. I expected you every day. When you didn’t come, I thought Vincent must have persuaded you … I was afraid he might have convinced you that there was something wrong with me.”

“Vincent could never convince me of anything,” Louisa said. “I begged you not … Well, it’s too late now.” She picked up the baby and adjusted the swaddling, pulling the shawl more tightly around its chest. The baby opened its eyes and began a protesting whimper. Its skin was irritated, flaky pink patches standing out on the cheeks, and a soft silken fringe of red hair escaped from the edge of a tight white cap. Louisa jiggled it impatiently.

“Shhhhh, Harriet,” she said. “Meet your auntie Anna.”

“Oh, it’s a girl. Congratulations, Lou,” Anna said. “You must be so happy.”

“Yes.”

Anna had the faint sense of oppression that she always felt with her sister, as if in her company she became a dilute version of herself. She’d rehearsed the escape again and again mentally but she hadn’t thought much about what would come afterward. She’d trusted that things would take care of themselves if she could only get outside the walls of Lake House and reach her sister. Now she was here, she felt shabby and clumsy. Out of place.

Anna pulled her sleeves down over her wrists, trying to conceal their frayed edges, and clasped her hands together in case Louisa should notice that she wore no ring. Her boots had left clods of mud on the carpet. Anna felt mired in what had happened, as if she hadn’t left it behind at all. She didn’t know how to begin to explain it to her sister, how to ask for the assistance she needed.

She smiled at her. “Louisa, I …”

Louisa reached forward and plucked a twig from Anna’s hair. Her nose twitched and a look of distaste flickered over her face. The folds of her shot silk dress shimmered from orange to gold and back again with every movement she made.

“If you have a bath, you’ll look alright. I’ll lend you something to wear. I was washing gloves when I heard your voice. It gave me such a turn. Did Vincent bring you here straight from his friends’ house? You look so bedraggled. I thought at first”—Louisa put her hand in front of her mouth and laughed a light, incredulous laugh—“I thought you might have run away from something. You looked as if you’d been tramping across the countryside like a pair of navvies.”

Catherine was sitting on a footstool fondling the dog’s ears. She jumped to her feet, overturning the stool.

“That’s exactly what we did do, Mrs. Heron. It was so romantic. We had to hide from everyone, even the milkmaids, until we got to London. Then we disappeared among the crowds. It’s the best way to disappear, you know—in full view of everyone. I’ve read about it.”

Louisa had stopped laughing.

“Anna, what is she talking about?”

Anna got up and went to the fire, leaned on the mantelpiece next to a photograph of a small, fair child, in a frame decorated with seashells. She looked into the steady, lively flames, the swept hearth contained behind a polished brass fender.

Louisa had always been unreliable. Reluctant to take responsibility. It was always Anna who’d insisted they walk all the way along to the lighthouse. Anna who’d had such a yearning for whelks that they had to stay out on the rocks past the time when they should have scrambled back to the beach. There was something else, tugging at the edge of memory. She couldn’t remember what. Only that it was important.

She cleared her throat and turned to face her sister.

“I need your help. Vincent doesn’t know I’m here, Louisa.”

She related in brief the events since November, leaving out the vision of the boy. She wouldn’t bring that up now. Louisa had always been frightened of what Anna saw.

“It’s a madhouse. Can you believe that Vincent took me to a madhouse? The only person from outside I’ve seen since I got there is a photographer. His name—”

“It’s not a madhouse,” Catherine interrupted. “It’s a country retreat. It promotes peace of mind.”

Louisa rolled her eyes in Catherine’s direction and lowered her voice.

“I suppose she’s one of the inmates?”

“This is Catherine Abse. The daughter of the proprietor.”

Louisa’s eyes widened. “And you’ve run away with her? You want me to hide the two of you? Really, Anna … People see everything in this street.” The sound of hooves colliding to a halt on the cobbles echoed up into the room and Louisa pressed the rag under her nose. “See who it is, Anna. I think I might faint again.”

Anna went to the window. Her stomach churning with fear, expecting to hear the crash of the knocker on the front door at any second, she pulled aside a lace curtain patterned with bouquets of flowers and grapes. A cab had pulled up at the house opposite. A woman climbed out with a hatbox slung by its cord over her arm. A maid stood at the open door in readiness; the light from the sconces in the hallway spilled out into the dusk and made a halo through which the woman passed. The door closed, the carriage pulled away.

“It’s nothing, Louisa,” Anna said, sitting down, feeling weak.

“My nerves, Anna,” Louisa said. “Please think of my nerves.”

Louisa’s priority was a quiet life, without interruptions from the past. Louisa had left Dover and their family behind when she married Blundell Heron, whom she’d met when he was on a holiday down there. She’d shed her past like a snake’s skin—changed her way of speaking, her way of dressing. She announced after the wedding that she didn’t want to come back to the harbortown except in her coffin and then changed her mind and said not even then—she’d be buried in London, thank you very much, with all the other people who’d come to make a decent future for themselves.

After Louisa left, things were different at home. The flint house grew dark with just Anna and her mother left in it. Amelia Newlove lit the lamps late, when it was already too dark to read or write. She said hot water was unnecessary and went to bed early, huddled under the eiderdown. She wore layers of flannel petticoats that smelled like the pawnbroker’s shop and kept her good clothes, her good self, wrapped in linen tablecloths, sprinkled with peppercorns against the moth.

Decay triumphed anyway, creeping in from the outside. Tiles slipped from the roof and flints fell from the walls as the mortar between them crumbled. Wasps took over invisible spaces in the eaves for their nests, their industry mocking the human lives inside. The gate sagged on its hinges. Approached from the windblown garden, the house with its sacking over the windows looked mutilated, as if it had had its eyes put out.

Mrs. Newlove, when Anna tried to persuade her to get out, to cheer up, to take an interest again in life—said she could not, that Captain Newlove hadn’t provided for her in life or death. Anna didn’t respond. She hated criticism of her father when he was alive and she hated it more after he was dead.

* * *

Catherine had righted the stool and was still on her feet, clutching her elbows, her knuckles white.

“We’re going to see the Fasting Girl this evening, Mrs. Heron. She has no appetites of any kind. She is one of my heroines. Can we go soon, Mrs. Palmer? It’s after five.”

The baby began to cry in earnest. Her face, the only part of her that was able to move, was scarlet, mouth stretched open, eyes squeezing out tears in rapid succession. Louisa rocked her impatiently, sighing in short, urgent breaths.

“What do you want from me, Anna?”

“I’ve agreed to take Catherine to see an amusement. Can we come back here afterward? I just need somewhere to stay for a few days.”

“I don’t dare think what Blundell will say. You know, he disapproves of …” Her face slackened then recomposed itself. “I’ll do my best, Anna. For a night or two. I’ll ask him.”