The Painted Bridge A Novel

TWENTY-EIGHT





Emmeline reached for the salt cellar and shook it over her soup. Nothing came out but she felt a solid lump flying up and down inside. Hannah should have taken it back to the kitchen for drying out. She looked up to frown at her and caught her leaning on the sideboard with her eyes drooping as if she was half asleep. At a look from Emmeline, the girl straightened up and began to fill the water glasses.

Catherine had been home for three days. She seemed farther away than ever, sitting next to Emmeline with her elbows propped on the table, a book open on her side plate. Emmeline didn’t have the heart to correct her. Querios was eating methodically, lifting regular quantities of soup to his lips. She wished he was nearer to her. She needed him beside her, not at the opposite end of the table. They needed to stand together.

“The days are getting longer, don’t you think?” she called down the length of the table, over the cruet and the candelabra.

He looked up balefully, not at her but at Catherine. He’d begun to take notice of her since she came back although not in the way Emmeline had longed for. He was treating Catherine with a wary, wounded vigilance, as if their daughter was a dog that had bitten once and might bite again. And he spent longer hours than ever before shut up in the study with the paperwork, worrying himself about the magistrates.

“Did you hear me, Q?”

“Hmm? Fox has been at it again,” he said.

“At what?”

“Bold as brass. The second female. There’s only the cock left now.”

Catherine kept quiet. Since she’d returned she’d said almost nothing about what she did or whom she saw while she was away from home. Emmeline found her silence more alarming than her rudeness had been. The fever had lifted but she was eating less than ever. Like a bird, as far as Emmeline could see.

“You’ve hardly touched your soup, Catty. I thought you liked soup.”

“I don’t, Mother. Not anymore.”

“Well eat it anyway, darling. For my sake.”

“What good will it do you?”

She’d come home changed. Not in the way Emmeline had feared—mangled, dead. Defiled. Not even wearing bloomers or smoking cigarettes or speaking in slang. It wasn’t any of those things. She was filled with something private, as if she had a secret. Emmeline swallowed another mouthful of the soup. Without salt, it lacked flavor. The tepid temperature didn’t help. She laid down her spoon. Catherine was back at home. Safe. That was all that mattered. Everything would be alright now.

God had fulfilled his side of the bargain, although He hadn’t offered any indication of what He expected in return. Emmeline had started by attending Miss Batt’s burial. She had an uneasy sense that her attitude toward the patients had been un-Christian and anyway she had always liked Miss Batt. The manner of her death was shocking, of course, but the way they rushed the poor woman into the earth had offended Emmeline. More as if they were disposing of the evidence than laying her to rest in eternal peace. It was a scrubby patch near the road encroached on by sycamore saplings—not anyone’s idea of sacred ground. Fludd had dug the grave earlier in the day and had left the clods heaped messily on one side of the trench, a hefty spade stuck in the top.

The other woman had been buried there too. The bird woman, who fell to earth. And the one with the little twins. Emmeline had almost forgotten about her. That was a terrible, terrible tragedy, the way she leapt from the old bridge. Taking the babies with her. There ought to be something to mark the burial ground. A stone cross or a shaped yew—some somber, lovely thing. It was disrespectful, burying people like stillborn lambs.

Querios expected a scandal. There hadn’t been one. The newspapers missed the story beforehand and the coroner returned a verdict of state of mind unknown. Miss Batt could have been buried in a churchyard, by daylight. But the brother insisted on committal in the grounds, after dark, just as if she’d been found guilty of suicide, as they’d feared she must be. The coroner had showed mercy. Emmeline saw Mr. Batt in the hallway afterward, swiping soil off his trouser cuffs, slapping at them with his gloves by the light of the sconces in the hall.

“As far as the family is concerned, my sister passed away a long time ago.”

He boomed it out as if he was making an announcement to a great, invisible audience, even though it was only Querios standing there in front of him, in the shabby black jacket that he refused to replace. She’d been on the landing, on her way downstairs to bid the brother good-bye. She found she couldn’t breathe easily all of a sudden. She’d turned around and gone back upstairs, slowly.

* * *

Emmeline reached for her glass and took a sip of water as Hannah reappeared, carrying the large willow-pattern dish; the room filled with the smell of mutton and sherry. Hannah served the meat from the sideboard and put down the first plate in front of Benedict, the chop plump and pale on a bed of creamed spinach.

“Thank you, Hannah,” he said, smiling up at her, tucking his napkin in under his chin.

He took his philanthropy too far, thanking the servants, inquiring after their families, their health. Not that Hannah Smith had a family. Emmeline had taken her on from the workhouse, impressed by her serious, quiet demeanor. She’d wanted to give her a chance in life. Hannah was still standing next to Ben, ladling gravy. She had a flattened bulkiness about her at the front that was becoming impossible to mistake for weight gain or cumbersome clothing. Emmeline hadn’t yet spoken to her about it. The right moment hadn’t presented itself.

Catherine was holding her napkin over her nose. Querios glared at her. Emmeline had begged Querios not to punish her, persuaded him to overlook the incident and put it behind them. They had been in the study earlier in the day, the three of them, for his formal rebuke to their daughter. Emmeline had had the feeling Catherine was barely listening to Querios’s admonishments and advice.

“D’you think it’s right, Father?” she’d said, when he appeared to have finished. “Locking up women who are perfectly well? Depriving them of their liberty, for money?”

Emmeline had hurried Catherine out of the room, almost before the words were out of her mouth. She’d hoped that Querios hadn’t been listening, but seeing his bloodshot eyes and air of scarcely suppressed rage this evening, she realized he probably had.

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye. Catherine had pushed aside her plate, was putting something to her mouth. Emmeline raised her water glass and stole a look at her. Catherine looked like an angel; so narrow and white. So self-contained. In her right hand, held lightly to her nose, was a rosebud. The silence in the room thickened to something ominous.

Querios banged his fist down on the table and the cutlery, the mustard pots and napkin rings and toothpick holders all jumped and rattled as if they were in a buffet car on a train.

“What do you think you’re playing at, Catherine?”

Catherine opened her eyes.

“I’m not playing, Father. I am taking sustenance from a flower.”

Her tone of voice was so sure, Emmeline felt a sudden ache in her heart. Catty was still a child. Still innocent.

“If you don’t eat, Catherine, you’ll d … become ill.”

“I won’t die, Father. Do we have any grapes?”

Querios was scarlet, his mouth open.

“Grapes! Why not pomegranates? Mangos? Why not …” He got out of his chair, grabbed the rose from Catherine’s hand and flung it on the cloth. “I’ll have you fed, if you don’t stop this nonsense. In the treatment room. You’ll soon get your appetite back then.”

Benedict was on his feet at Querios’s side, towering over him.

“You can’t f-force her to eat, Father. It’s wr-wr-wrong.”

Catherine folded her arms over her chest and sat very straight, her face on fire. Before Querios could respond, there was a knock at the open door. Fludd stood there, dressed in a filthy old waistcoat made from moleskins, and grinning. Querios sat down. He lifted his tankard and took a long draft of beer before he spoke.

“Fludd. I wanted to see you.”

“Yes, Mr. Abse? What were it concerning?”

Fludd had left Cornwall when he was a boy but his accent was so strong Emmeline could barely understand him, even though he must be forty now. He’d been taken on by old Mr. Abse and Querios refused to get rid of him even though just seeing him gave Emmeline the shudders. She took another sip of water, reached for Catherine’s hand under the table and squeezed it.

“Fetch down the chair, Fludd. Put it back together, in the cellar. Just as it was.”

Fludd nodded and left, his cap in his hands. Emmeline gripped the edge of the table, felt the immovability of the mahogany through the soft white linen. She waited until Fludd’s heavy tread died away. She needed to compose herself, would ration her determination, not spend it all immediately. She spoke quietly.

“Querios, you cannot do that to our daughter. I am her mother and I will not allow it.”

“What chair? What are you talking about?” Catherine said. She looked confused.

Querios ignored her.

“Not Catherine, Em. It’s for the Palmer woman. She’s a maniac.”

“She’s not!” Catherine shouted. “She’s my friend.”

Catherine leapt up and ran out of the room. Her feet pounded on the stairs and a door banged. Querios threw down his napkin and left without a word, heading for the study. Emmeline felt relieved that Querios was not intending to use the chair on Catherine. Nauseous, at the idea of its being brought back into service in the asylum.

Ben threw her a concerned glance, got up and patted Emmeline’s shoulder. He didn’t know what the chair was, she thought dully. Even he hadn’t eaten his pudding. A dish of apple Charlotte lay untouched at his place.

“Catty’ll be alright, Ma,” he said on his way out of the room. “Why don’t you take her away? It would do you both good.”

Hannah cleared away the plates, the silver, the napkins, brushed off the bread crumbs; only the withered pink bud still lay on the white cloth.

* * *

The sound of hammering had been going on all morning, sending shudders through the floorboards, the walls, the soles of Anna’s feet. It was unsettling. In the dayroom, Anna pulled her legs up under her on the window seat, feeling her toe through a hole in the end of her stocking. Talitha’s green velvet chair remained empty, her embroidered shawl draped over its back. Featherstone was shouting that her husband was hiding outside in the shrubs, would shoot her if he caught a glimpse of her. She got down on her hands and knees, crawled from one end of the room to the other. Violet walked behind, clapping her hands and laughing.

“Cuckoo,” she called. “Cuckoo.”

Anna rested her forehead on her knees. She’d expected to be called in to see Abse before now, had wanted to ask Abse if she might attend Miss Batt’s funeral, but they’d buried her already, Lovely said. At night. Anna had never heard of a burial taking place at night.

Catherine was on her mind. Anna wanted to know how the girl was. She held on to a slim hope that Abse would find it more difficult to call her a hysteric after she’d brought his daughter back to him. He might acknowledge her rationality, her moral sense. Might even want to repay his debt to her, for caring for Catherine. It was possible, she insisted to herself.

Anna felt underneath the cushion of the window seat for her workbag. She had resisted picking it up, it would confirm that she was back, that time stretched ahead of her with nothing to fill it except stitches, but there was nothing else to do. The inactivity was torment and the routine—breakfast, prayers, turns around the airing grounds, luncheon—had collapsed with Talitha’s death. Anna had barely seen Makepeace since the interview in her room.

She pulled apart the long looped handles and took out the fabric. The silks lay curled and helpless in leggy skeins in the bottom of the bag. Cerulean and navy, rust, silver, and sage. Rethreading the needle, she began to push it through the cloth. The stitching soothed her, numbed her mind. It was a consolation, however clumsy her fingers. An image began to form itself over the hours that followed. It was not a letter V that was taking shape beneath her fingers. It was an outline of rocks. With a stiff cross-stitch, she began work on the sea that surrounded them.

She hadn’t known she’d made choices from the bag of colors Makepeace had thrust in front of her. She had reached in blindly, taken the first that came to hand. But she must have selected them more carefully than she knew. They were the right shades for the picture she found herself making.

* * *

The summons came late that afternoon. Makepeace appeared in front of her, heavy-eyed, and nodded toward the door that led down the stairs to the office.

“He wants you in the study.”

Anna thrust the sewing back in the bag and left the room. On the landing, she paused and looked out the window at the old oak. Its steady, rooted presence reassured her. She took a deep breath and continued down the stairs.

She knocked confidently and opened the door. Abse was on his feet, looking out the window toward the lake.

“Mr. Abse?”

Certain that they met on new terms, as if for the first time, she held out her hand to shake his. He continued to gaze out over the lawn with his own hands clasped behind his back. She couldn’t be sure if he had noticed her gesture.

“I wanted to see you, Mrs. Palmer,” he said. “And for the purposes of this interview, I am speaking to you not as a guest but as a fellow human being.”

She felt heady with relief.

“I’m so glad, Mr. Abse. I feel the same. Everything has changed.”

“Indeed it has.”

“How is Catherine? I’d hoped to see her before now. We spent so much time together.”

At last he turned toward her. His face was gray, his chin above the line of whiskers sprinkled with white stubble. All the cheer and confidence, all the bombast, had departed.

“I suppose we must be grateful that you deigned to return her to us.”

Anna felt herself falter inside at his sarcasm.

“I don’t require gratitude.”

“You don’t? How very gracious.” He paused, looked up at the ceiling. “Mrs. Palmer, you lured my daughter across the ice. Walked her for hours in the bitter cold—a tender, delicate girl, not an insensible lunatic who feels no pain. You imprisoned her in some unknown household before dragging her to an unsavory fairground.”

Anna struggled to take in what she heard.

“Did she say that?”

“Catherine is young and impressionable. I was able to see beyond her account of events.”

“I didn’t drag her anywhere. She … I brought her back to you, Mr. Abse. That’s what matters. She is safely back.”

His face creased suddenly and he put his hands over his ears, began to rub them.

“When your husband first brought you here, Mrs. Palmer, I believed that you might have fared better in your own home.” He laughed. “That you did not need a full retreat. How wrong I was. How utterly mistaken.”

She opened her mouth to explain. Closed it again. She didn’t want to make things worse for Catherine. But she must defend herself.

“Mr. Abse, that is not what happened.”

“You believed that by abducting my daughter you could avenge yourself on me. It is as simple as that.” He turned his back on her once more. “She has come home changed. Her head is full of ideas. Do you know, Mrs. Palmer, that she believes she can live on the scent of flowers?”

The lamps on the desk were still unlit. In the gloom, the towers of yellowing ledgers behind the desk resembled the chalk stacks out in the sea off the south coast.

“May I see her, Mr. Abse? Perhaps I can talk to her, persuade …”

“Enough,” he bellowed, shouting right into her face, blasting her with sour breath and rage. “My own daughter thinks her father a common jailer. My most esteemed and reliable patient is dead. And you dare to tell me you don’t want gratitude.”

Anna took a step back. She felt more frightened than she had at any moment so far in Lake House.

Abse picked up a pen from the desk and smoothed the trimmed feather between his fingers. His voice when he spoke again was controlled and he did not look at her.

“I have written to your husband to request your transfer to another asylum. Until then, you will be treated for mania. We shall try every means at our disposal to help you. But moral insanity such as yours is most often beyond cure.”