The Painted Bridge A Novel

TWENTY-FIVE





Miniature smocks and pantaloons hung in neat lines on a clotheshorse by the side of the fire. Anna breathed in the pleasant, soapy smell of drying cotton and blinked at the light, strong against the nursery curtains. The sheet was fine and soft against her skin, the cotton pressed smooth. She reached for a flask of water on the bedside table and poured herself a glass. Catherine was still asleep, lying on her stomach in the other bed. The children and their nursemaid had gone.

She remembered the dream she’d had, drifting in and out of sleep as the nursery fire subsided. Lucas St. Clair had been making a picture of her. It was a wedding photograph; Anna had her hair piled high on her head, threaded with country flowers. As well as being the photographer, Lucas St. Clair was the bridegroom. He stood beside her, his own dark hair loose on his shoulders. The two of them were naked as Adam and Eve, without even the fig leaves, but in the dream she’d felt no shame—only a deep, insistent pleasure. She felt a stirring of it again.

The dream was so real, seemed more real than the morning she woke to. She wondered at the pictures her own mind could throw up as she got out of bed and walked in bare feet along a carpeted passageway to the bathroom. She filled the basin and washed herself all over with scented soap from a patterned dish. Letting the water run away through a brass grille at the bottom of the basin, she refilled it and splashed her face again and again with warm water. Then cleaned her teeth with clove-scented powder, combed her hair, and rubbed some of Louisa’s cold cream onto her face. Reluctantly, she put on the dress Louisa had left out for her.

When she’d finished, she sat on the edge of the bath with the door still locked and put her head in her hands. She was ready, but she didn’t know for what. She was not married to Lucas St. Clair—the thought prompted a sad, sweet pang—she was married to Vincent Palmer. Morning had come and she still lacked a clear idea of what she should do; what she could do. She might beg Louisa to conceal her here while she searched for some employment and a place to stay. Some women did live alone in rented rooms. But she would not be able to hide indefinitely from Vincent. They would still be married. She could confront him with the injustice of her incarceration, perhaps with her brother-in-law at her side to make sure she wasn’t carted back to Lake House. She might even voice her suspicions that he had a mistress, if she dared. But then the best that could happen would be that she found herself back at the Vicarage.

Blundell called out a good-bye to Louisa, somewhere down below in the house. He sounded impatient. Anna didn’t hear her sister’s reply. She wondered what it was like to be Louisa. She didn’t know, even wearing her clothes, using her toothbrush, her hairbrush, what Louisa’s life was. What she felt when she opened her eyes, what she dreamed about. She never had done. Anna opened her sister’s scent bottle, dabbed the glass rod on her wrists, and went down the stairs.

The dining room was empty. She took a poached egg from a covered dish and slid it onto a plate decorated with painted insects. They were the plates that they’d had in the flint house, brought from Germany by their father. Even when the days came when they were living on rice pudding and sago, Amelia Newlove refused to let her sell them.

Anna breathed in the smell of carnations on her wrist. It was the scent that their mother used to wear on what she called occasions—a powdery, musky smell. It reminded her of something that eluded her. Something that mattered. She had a sense that if she knew what it was, she would know what to do. She looked down at the bone handle of the knife resting on her palm and felt the familiar sensation of emptiness in her hands.

“You look miles away.” Louisa was in the doorway.

“Good morning, Lou.”

Louisa poured herself a cup of tea and pulled her chair close.

“Good morning, Anna. I only wish you were here in happier circumstances. Have you thought what you’re going to do?”

“Not yet. Did you talk to Blundell?”

“Yes.” Louisa averted her eyes. “You have to go to Vincent, Anna, and apologize. Plead with him to take you back. There’s nothing else for it.”

“I can’t go back there.”

“To bedlam?”

“To the Vicarage.”

She hadn’t told Louisa that she’d seen Vincent at the fair. Louisa wouldn’t believe it. Anna could hardly believe it herself.

“You can’t stay here,” Louisa said, bluntly. “Blundell won’t allow it.”

Without her corsets, her hair loose on her shoulders, Louisa looked different. Her body had grown wide and round; damp patches seeped through from her breasts on each side of her wrap. There were lines at the sides of her eyes and shadows underneath them. The new baby was the fourth. Once, Louisa had been bony and brown as a Gypsy girl. It was the despair of their governesses, the way her skin absorbed the sun. Anna had an image of a pair of bare feet flashing up the path in front of her, the heels white with chalk, calves narrow as daisy stems.

“Can’t you persuade him to take pity on me, Lou? I need a few days to work things out and I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

Louisa put down her cup and stared into the tea leaves.

“I’m sorry, Anastasia. He said he’d be obliged to inform Vincent tonight in person if you’re still here. Vincent has a case, he says. It was an eccentric thing to do—running off to a shipwreck.”

Anna took a deep breath. She would have to explain more clearly to Louisa what had taken her on the mission. Get her to understand.

“I know it might appear odd,” she said. “But I had to go, Lou. I saw something. I had a vision of a boy.”

Louisa appeared not to have heard.

“This tea’s cold,” she said and jangled the bell in the air between them. “I’ll get some more brought up. Where’s Catherine?”

Anna paused.

“Still asleep.”

Louisa had never wanted to hear about the visions. Once, Anna saw a tree full of angels. The tree was growing on the shore, out of the sand, and the angels were male, naked apart from feathery wings, their legs curved behind them like fishtails. It was the first time she understood that angels could swim, could breathe underwater. Anna ran all the way up the path to the house to tell Louisa and when she did Louisa slapped her in the face, even though Anna was past the age for slapping.

She’d stood in their bedroom doorway with one hand clutched stupidly to her cheek while Louisa went back to her book. She had the same sense now, that her sister could not or would not hear her. Anna shifted the plate in front of her, prodded at the egg. The yolk was congealed and her appetite gone. She put down her fork. She would tell Louisa about the other side of things. That at least she might be willing to understand.

“I believe that Vincent has betrayed me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I found a letter, from a woman. And last night …”

Louisa interrupted her.

“He has a mistress, you mean? Most men do.”

Children’s running feet thumped overhead and a wail went up.

“Louisa, listen. I can’t trust him. When I spoke to him about the letter, he denied it. And taking me to Lake House, even if he meant it for the best—he tricked me. I have to stay away from the Vicarage at least until I can see some proper doctors and get the certificate to say that I’m well. Otherwise he could take me back there.”

The maid came in and put a pot down on the table. Louisa got up and closed the door behind her, stood for a moment with her ear to the crack.

“Blundell isn’t always understanding. He’s even questioned my own state of mind. Mother’s behavior at the end—it hasn’t been forgotten, you know. He threatened last night that I’d be joining you at your asylum if I kept up the séances.”

“You still go to Mr. Hamilton’s?”

“Yes.” Louisa poured the tea and they watched as steam rose from the wide, shallow cups. “I speak to Mother often, consult her. She’s perfectly alright now. Pa came through once. Before Christmas, I heard another voice. Not that he could say anything, of course, but I heard his voice, just like it used to be.”

“What do you mean? Whose voice?”

Louisa looked at her.

“You could come with me, Anna, when things are back to normal. It would help you.”

“Help me what?”

Louisa ran both hands up over her face, into her hair. She tightened the wrap around her waist and stood up.

“For God’s sake. Sometimes I think Blundell is right about our family.” She sat down again and leaned in toward Anna with eyes full of trouble. “I can’t go against his wishes, Anna. I don’t dare.”

* * *

Number 59 was the last in a new terrace, a small two-up, two-down that leaned against the public house on one side of it. The front door was narrow and sheltered by a porch. A laurel hedge sprouted behind the front wall, its broad leaves coated with soot that had been partly washed away by the morning’s shower.

Anna stood in the road, looking at the house. She was alone; Catherine had woken with a fever, her eyes glazed, forehead burning. Anna had given her weak tea and left her in Louisa’s care, promising to be back by lunchtime.

Anna made herself walk up the path. She was trembling, half expecting Vincent to lean his head out of the upper window. The knocker was in the shape of a woman’s hand and had an iron bracelet on its iron wrist, the beads picked out in green paint. She lifted it, brought it down hard. And again. Once more. She stood and waited, her back straight, head up.

There was no sign of movement inside the hall, beyond the squares of violet-and-crimson colored glass in the door. Her fright began to lessen. Of course Vincent was not inside. No one was. She sat down on the low wall that separated the little front garden from the one next door. Men were rolling wooden barrels into the cellars of the public house and the boys she’d passed on her way had resumed their game; their shouts hung on the air. Her mouth was dry, her lips sore from the cold air.

Anna had thought about Maud Sulten’s refusing to see her. She’d considered the possibility that they would quarrel or that Maud might deny all knowledge of Vincent. But she hadn’t thought of this: that the woman might not be at home. Anna found herself staring at a wooden spinning top lying capsized under the hedge. It was faded, the sides dented from being bowled along by an insistent stick. A feeling grew in her that she had been here, outside the closed door, before. That she had always known this place, with its smell of smoke and yeast and impending rain, the damp chill from the brickwork coming through her petticoats and the air, that rang with cries and echoes.

She looked again at the spinning top and the feeling passed. The moment grew unfamiliar. She left, turning up a side road to the high street, to where a butcher called out his wares, standing under a row of hanging rabbits. Scraps of paper idled down gutters in the wind and a pair of soot-covered sweeps passed by on the back of a cart, their feet swinging.

Anna felt separated from other people. They hadn’t met betrayal. If they had, they couldn’t carry a cabbage under an arm in that casual way or laugh with that head-thrown-back freedom. She must face facts, she told herself. Louisa couldn’t help. She had to think of something else. Anna wandered past an undertaker’s and a grocer’s shop and imagined herself going to Lucas St. Clair’s hospital. She knew St. Mark’s—it was not far from All Hallows and she’d often passed it, hurrying by to escape hearing the cries of the inmates from behind the high walls.

She put aside the thought. She felt certain, whatever Vincent said, that Maud Sulten did exist. That it was she whom Anna had seen with Vincent at the fair. Anna did not have a clear idea of what she’d say to Maud if she answered the door—just a feeling that they should know about each other. Even if Maud knew that Vincent had a wife, that was different from knowing that it was she. Anna. And if Anna met Maud and spoke with her, Vincent wouldn’t be able to say she was imagining things. Mad.

She stopped outside a baker’s, drawn by the smell of caraway, then stepped into the warmth, holding open the door for a harassed-looking woman pulling a boy by the hand. The woman thanked her, tilting her head to one side as she passed. She had a vivacious, pretty face with lips reddened by cosmetics. A silk posy was pinned on her cape.

Anna’s eyes ranged over the sloping shelves at the back of the shop. Macaroons, slightly burned. Lumps of seed cake and square slabs of gingerbread—things she had taken for granted until a few weeks ago. On the other side of a curtain of beads, the baker lifted a tray of Bath buns out of the oven, all joined to each other.

“I’ll have some of those, please. A dozen.”

“Shan’t be a minute, miss.”

She’d give them to the children and have one herself. Catherine might like a couple, and Louisa. The bakery assistant pushed through the beads; they rattled back into place behind her. As Anna waited, she saw in her mind the short cape of the woman at the fair. The inquisitive angle of her head and the trays of silk posies the hawkers had tried so insistently to sell to her and Catherine. The assistant came back with a bag of buns and Anna handed over half a crown. She leaned on the counter while the woman counted out the change, slapping coins down on the scarred wood.

“You having a turn?” the assistant said. “You look queer.”

“It’s nothing. Thank you, ma’am.”

Anna took the bag and groped her way through the door. She retraced her steps, hurrying down the side road, hugging the warmth of the buns against her chest. Turning the corner into Sebastopol Street, she was just in time to see the woman push open the gate of number 59 and walk up the path. Maud Sulten, if it was she, waved to a neighbor, unlocked the door, and let herself in, still holding the child’s hand.

Anna leaned against the wall of the pub trying to absorb what she’d seen. She had two or three hours to get back to Louisa’s house, collect Catherine and leave—with a plan. But she felt unable to think at all.