The Painted Bridge A Novel

TWENTY-SIX





Anna and Catherine were in the nursery. Louisa had persuaded Blundell to grant them one more night, on the grounds of Catherine’s not being fit to travel. Now they had to go. Catherine sat on the rug with her legs stretched out in front of her, stroking the dog’s long ears. Anna perched on the side of a truckle bed, dangling a rag doll in her hands. The painted features had been almost rubbed away from the cotton face and the doll was floppy from use, the straight arms and legs limp inside a gingham dress. It had been Louisa’s.

Anna’s heart ached. The smocks airing on the fireguard, the smell of milk and soap and the soft hiss of a new log in the grate made the nursery seem a place of safety. But it wasn’t.

Catherine had wept earlier when Anna insisted she must go back to Lake House. “You’re the hysteric, don’t forget, Mrs. Palmer. You’re the escaped lunatic. Why should I be the one to go back?”

“You’re fifteen. You’re unwell. You have to go back to your family.”

Catherine’s face was febrile, her voice hoarse. She closed her eyes.

“I won’t go back without you. You’ll have to drag me there yourself.”

“I’m coming with you, Catherine. I can’t stay with Louisa either.”

Catherine began to cry again. “I don’t want you to come back, Mrs. Palmer, really. Why doesn’t she hide you here?”

“She can’t,” Anna said flatly. “Her husband won’t let her.”

“I hate him,” Catherine said. “I hate all husbands.”

Louisa was insistent that they must be gone from Wren Street before Blundell returned from the office that evening. She’d had a hectic, anxious look in her eyes since the morning and kept rushing down to the kitchen on trumped-up errands. She had promised to send doctors to see Anna at Lake House. “As soon as you get the certificate, Anna,” she’d said, “everything will be alright. You can go back to Vincent and start again. Maybe a child will help. …” Her words had faded away.

Anna hadn’t been able to speak, or even to look at her. Louisa was as powerless as she, and Anna felt sad for both of them.

The spaniel whined and thumped his tail on the carpet, looking from Catherine to Anna. His mouth hung open, displaying pink-and-black gums. Catherine kissed the top of his head.

“At least I’ll see Ben again,” she said. “I miss him. You’d like my brother, Mrs. Palmer.”

Anna smiled. She must see the girl safely home, get her near the house. Once they got there, she would declare her own plans to her and hope that Catherine would understand.

* * *

The bus was full, the air soupy with breath and damp wool and the roof creaking from the weight of passengers on top. The team of eight horses tossed their heads and breathed vapor into the cold air, their eyes concealed behind leather blinkers. Anna found an empty seat and settled Catherine into it, wrapped in her cloak, her hands in her muff. She paid the conductor a shilling for the two of them and Catherine fell asleep almost immediately, her head bumping on Anna’s shoulder.

Anna shivered. Louisa had insisted she keep on the cast-off dress. The skirt was too short and her ankles were in a draft. Lou had insisted on dressing her hair as well before they left, had arranged it in a fussy style like her own, with a parting running over the top of her head from one ear to the other, held in place with pins, talking all the while about how everything would turn out alright. Anna had her own dress in a paper parcel on her lap, tied with string. She would change, as soon as she got the opportunity. She couldn’t do what she had to do in a dress that didn’t feel right. That wasn’t her own.

She gazed out of the window at a man in a barber’s shop, his throat lathered. A board advertised Madame Lily, clairvoyant, guaranteed to see your future. Anna had disliked London when she first visited—thought it dry and overcrowded, with too much brick and blackened stone, too many hurrying people. The paved streets made her feet ache and the stench of the gutters was unrelieved by sea breezes. She hadn’t understood how people could live with a smell like that hanging over them. But she’d grown used to the city quickly, grown to like the sea of people. Now she regretted the prospect of being far from London, buried in the countryside. But if Louisa couldn’t help, she had no alternative. She couldn’t trim hats, like Miss Batt, and she wouldn’t go and stand under a gaslight, with all the other country girls who’d lost their way. She would never do that.

Anna had agreed with Louisa that she would go back to Lake House and wait for the doctors to come. But she had no intention of returning. She was going to deliver Catherine almost to the gates then hurry back to the village and pick up the stagecoach at the inn, traveling on along the great north road. Make her way to her eldest sister’s house, in Northumberland. Lavinia would shelter her for a little while at least, once she heard what had happened. Her husband, Jim Lillywhite, was a mild man who fell in with Lavinia’s wishes and had done ever since they married.

Far from London, Anna would be able to think clearly and decide what to do with her life. Currently, all she was certain of was that she would not return to the Vicarage. She was beginning to feel as if she had never known Vincent at all, as if she knew him better when he was a stranger, and once she married him, began to unknow him. One thing she was familiar with was his view on divorce. He told her the day before the wedding that he considered it a cardinal sin, that he would die before he would divorce.

Catherine’s head slipped forward onto her chest. Her face looked younger than ever, her high white forehead blue-veined with the blood that pulsed inside. The wheel of the bus hit a rut and she opened her eyes and looked around, her expression startled.

“Where are we?” she asked, sitting up. “I was dreaming.”

“What about?”

“The Fasting Girl.” Catherine leaned her head back on Anna’s shoulder, slipped an arm through hers. “I can’t stop thinking about her. Do you think dreams can be more real than life, Mrs. Palmer?”

“Perhaps.” Anna rested her head on the top of Catherine’s. “What would be the nicest dream you could have for your life when you’re a woman? Tell me about it.”

Catherine began to talk about pomegranates and cypress trees, high-walled houses perched on top of mountains and terraces where fountains splashed in the night air. She smiled and her face looked restored.

“Next time I escape, Mrs. Palmer, it will be forever,” she said.

* * *

They climbed down from the bus at Highgate and set off out of the village on the road that led to Lake House. The tall trees on either side of the way were black-limbed, glistening and still. The ice had thawed and the grasses and hedgerows looked subdued and ordinary, stripped of their glittering crystals, their coat of armor. They walked past the allotments, past a boy cutting the tops off Brussels sprouts, swiping at them with a sickle. Anna took Catherine’s arm.

“Ben will be happy to see you home again,” Anna said.

“I know.”

“He must have missed you.”

“Yes.”

Catherine’s voice was monotonous. Anna took hold of her hand and kissed it. They were within half a mile, she estimated, of Lake House. She would not go any nearer. She stopped in the road.

“Are you strong enough to walk alone from here?”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Palmer?”

“Catherine, I’m not coming any farther.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m going to stay with my sister. Another one of them. I can’t take you with me this time. And you know I can’t come back to Lake House.”

They heard the clip of metal striking on stones and both looked up. Makepeace was coming toward them along the lane, dressed in a black cape and felt bonnet and using a furled black umbrella as a walking stick. At the sight of her, Anna felt fear run through her like a tide.

She reached under her cloak for the St. Christopher and clenched her fingers around it, her hand pressed against her neck. St. Christopher was the patron saint of travelers. Silently, she asked him to help her. She would hand Catherine over to Makepeace and leave. She’d keep her distance, wouldn’t get close enough for Makepeace to grab her.

Catherine’s voice shook. “What’s going to happen to me?”

“Nothing will happen, Catherine. Don’t be afraid. You’re going home.”

Makepeace was approaching steadily—she had seen them now and her walk was more purposeful although still slow.

“Good-bye, Catherine,” Anna said.

“I’m glad, Mrs. Palmer,” Catherine whispered, “that you’re not coming back.”

Anna and Makepeace faced each other by the side of the road. Makepeace seemed shorter than she did in Lake House. Her eyes were swollen, their rims red, and something about her reminded Anna of another encounter, in another place.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Makepeace.”

“Miss Abse, Mrs. Palmer.” She nodded at them in turn, drew a black-edged mourning handkerchief from her reticule and shook it out.

“What’s happened?” said Catherine, in alarm. “Is it Mother?”

Makepeace shook her head.

“Mrs. Abse is prostrated. That will pass.” She turned her head away and let out a sob. “But this … this will not pass.”

The survivors from the wreck, Anna thought. Makepeace reminded her of the sailors. Their dazed faces and the sense that they inhabited a different reality. She had a growing sense of unreality herself. The white sky, the stillness and the shivering crows planted along the verges of the road, were dreamlike.

Makepeace stood as if rooted to the ground, the winter light reflecting off her stricken face. She had aged in only a couple of days and Anna felt a surprising stirring of pity for her. She wondered who had died. Hearing the rumble of cart wheels in the lane behind her, the soft clop of a single horse, she took a deep breath, still keeping her distance. She would make a dignified good-bye then run for it, all the way to the village, jump on the first coach that presented itself.

“I’ve brought Catherine back to her family, Mrs. Makepeace. I shall leave her with you.”

“Very kind, Mrs. Palmer, I’m sure.”

Makepeace’s voice was iron hard. She put away her handkerchief and looked at Anna with something of her old mix of malice and resentment. Anna’s legs were trembling. She was too close to Lake House, must leave while she still could. She kissed Catherine on both cheeks. The cart had pulled up behind them.

“I’m going now, Catherine. I’ll write to you.”

She hugged her a last time, turned, and ran headlong into the massive figure of Jethro Fludd.

“No,” she shouted. “No.”

The cart was filling the lane. She tried to dart around the other side of it but Fludd laughed, reached out one massive hand and caught hold of her arm. Leaving the cart standing, the reins of the horse hanging loose, he began to drag her along the road toward the gates as easily and carelessly as if she had been a puppy. Catherine ran along beside, weeping and kicking at his ankles, while Makepeace walked behind, looking on with an expression of dull satisfaction.

Fludd’s grip was viselike, but Anna scarcely felt it. Her head was full of her sister. Makepeace and Fludd must have known that she and Catherine would be on the road, that they would be able to capture her. Only one person could have told them. Louisa.