The Painted Bridge A Novel

THIRTY-TWO





From the dark garden, Emmeline saw a light burning in the study. Querios was still in there.

He was demoralized by the death of the bird. He had come back late from his appointment with the accountant and found the silver peacock lying on the ground in the run. He came indoors with it, holding it in his hands, brought it right into the bedroom as Emmeline was getting dressed for dinner, gazing at it, shaking his head and repeating that it was still warm, that he didn’t understand. There were no marks on it—nothing at all appeared to be wrong with it.

He’d cursed the fox all through dinner, reached again and again to have his tankard refilled by Hannah Smith, despite the looks Emmeline shot him from the other end of the table. She’d wanted to raise the trip with him before the meal, must inform him of her plan before speaking of it to Catherine—but she couldn’t.

Catty looked fragile at the supper table, like a creature newly born that had not yet grown its skin or fur, the layer it needed to be able to live in the world. She’d rallied after the visit from Mrs. Palmer but eating her own supper Emmeline had been certain she saw Catherine’s hand move to her sleeve. She suspected it concealed slices of ham.

Now, at close to midnight, Emmeline pulled her cloak tighter around herself and crept around the wall of the house, walking on the compromised ground where the grass met the gravel in a messy scatter, feeling the stones through the soles of her satin slippers. She’d hardly known what she pulled onto her feet but she recognized them by the narrow fit, could see their gleam in the starlight.

Until five minutes ago, she’d been in bed—listening for the creak of the floorboard, the squeak of the sash window, the muffled thump as it slid back down the runners. She was praying that she would not hear them, tonight. When they came, she got out of bed in the dark almost as if she sleepwalked and made her way down to the side door, turned the key.

Catherine’s window was on the south side of the house. Emmeline crouched down and began to feel around on the ground, moving her fingers underneath fallen leaves, tracing the sinewy roots of the magnolia. She felt something clammy and jumped with fright as it leapt out from under her hand. A frog. She wiped her fingers on her cloak, trying to rid her skin of the memory of the cold, moist contact. She resumed the search and found nothing. No ham. No biscuits or bones. Only stones.

Her knees hurt. She stood up and stooped down to rub them, glanced up at the window. She felt as if someone was watching her. It was impossible. Catty would have had to be leaning right out of the upper window in order to see her underneath. Turning to go back indoors, she heard a rustling in the shrubbery. Had Catherine thrown something over there? Emmeline stepped over the grass and parted the stiff architecture of the rhododendrons with her hands, feeling a branch catch at her hair.

She got down on all fours again and crawled underneath the canopy, reading the damp, soft earth with her fingertips. She inched onward, absorbing the chill into her hands and breathing in the smell of decay and life mixed. The shoes, her best ones, were pinching her toes. She kicked them off and sat back on her heels with a perverse satisfaction at the idea of the oyster satin smeared with leaf mold, the rosettes from the Paris atelier unraveled.

The explosion startled her—the noise so close by it seemed almost upon her. She couldn’t immediately think what it was. In the silence that followed, it came to her. Querios was out with his gun. He was drunk. Could hurt himself. She grabbed hold of a branch over her head and began to pull herself to her feet but the branch bowed under her weight, shook and bent to the ground. The gunshot came again like a series of sharp, coordinated fireworks and she lurched over on her side, sprawling on the ground. She heard her own scream, harsh as the cry of the fox. Reaching into the darkness, she put her hand to her leg and found it sticky and hot. The pain was so extraordinary, so unbounded, it brought the same awe as she’d felt in childbirth, that a human body could contain such agony.

The explosions had ceased and been replaced by the sound of feet running on gravel. Someone shouted her name and she became aware of a disturbance, close by, of the branches. A swinging lamp. Querios’s face loomed over hers, close enough to kiss. She reached up and touched him. Her fingers left a bloody mark on his cheek.

“Q,” she said as she passed out. “It’s you.”

* * *

Anna sat at the breakfast table, daydreaming about the clifftop at Dover, in spring. Covered in wildflowers, a tangle of scarlet poppies, of bee orchids, daisies, celandines, mallow. She felt the upward spring of the ground underfoot and sniffed in the strong, earthy fragrance. Heard the sea far down below, hushed and tamed by distance, mixed with the human-sounding agitation of the curlews. Saw herself, walking toward the lighthouse. With Lucas St. Clair.

She looked up. Makepeace was watching her from the far door, which led along the treatment corridor. It was late. The sounds from downstairs—china being stacked in a stone sink, brooms banging on the skirting boards, the clink of cinders in dustpans—had ceased. The voices had fallen quiet too; the others were gone, departed for the airing grounds. The two of them were alone, surrounded by silence and sunlight.

Querios Abse hadn’t been seen for three days. There had been comings and goings downstairs, raised voices and hushed ones. Anna had been worried about Catherine but Lovely shook her head when she asked. It was Mrs. Abse, she said. She’d had an accident. She was confined to the Abse quarters, being waited on by her daughter. Mr. Abse had ordered fresh beef tea made every morning. He was hanging around in the parlor, the dining room. Calling Dr. Higgins out to her every day. He hadn’t set foot in his office. None of them had been paid, come Friday. Mrs. Makepeace was in charge, as far as they knew.

Lovely had brought Anna a different dress that morning. It had a heavy black skirt and bodice that looked as if it might once have belonged to Makepeace herself. She could put it on or stay in her room, was the message that came with it. Anna was wearing it now. She shuddered again at the feeling of it, the fabric coarse and greasy against her skin.

Makepeace approached her.

“What are you doing, still here? You ought to have gone out with the others.”

Makepeace was standing so close behind her that Anna could feel the woman’s breath on the back of her neck. Her spine prickled.

“I’m just sitting here. Thinking.”

Makepeace laughed a scornful laugh.

“Well, Mrs. Palmer, I’m sure you’ve got plenty to think about.”

Anna turned around to face her.

“Why do you hate me?”

“I don’t hate you. I don’t feel anything at all about you. Guests come and go. We remain. The staff and the family.”

Anna pushed her plate away. The kidney had grown cold; it sat there, rubbery and dead-looking, on the crazed china.

“Mrs. Makepeace, I’d like to have my own dress to wear. The old velvet one that I had when I first came here. Could you send it up for me? I can launder it myself if necessary.”

“Mr. Abse doesn’t buy good food just to have it fed to the pigs, Mrs. Palmer. Eat your breakfast and forget about your pretty dresses.”

“It’s not a question of it being a pretty dress. Don’t you understand? It’s just that it’s mine, Makepeace, and I feel better when I wear my own clothes. I want it back.”

“I want it back.” Makepeace imitated her accent, exaggerating the Kentish lilt. “We all want things back, Palmer,” she said. “But we don’t always get them.”

Anna lifted her tin mug and took a mouthful of water. She felt strong again. Stronger than she ever had, she understood with a faint sense of surprise. She would not allow Makepeace to bully her.

“If you have no sympathy with the patients, you have no business working in a place like this, Makepeace. I am going to do something about it when I get out of here.”

Makepeace came toward her again.

“You’re not going to get out. You’ve let down your husband. Your family don’t want you.”

Under the coffee, the other smell leaked from the pores of her skin, strong and sweet. Anna sniffed it and glanced up at the set face, the folded arms. She understood something about Makepeace and felt an unexpected pity for her. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft.

“My family do want me, in their own way. It’s yours, isn’t it, Mrs. Makepeace? It’s your family that don’t want you. I’m sorry.”

As their eyes met, Makepeace raised one hand and slapped her face. Tears of shock sprang to Anna’s eyes. She stared straight ahead of her, willing them not to fall.

“You can’t hurt me, Makepeace. Nothing you can do can hurt me.”

Makepeace lunged forward again and swung her arm at Anna’s head—so hard and fast that Anna fell off the chair. She sprawled on the floor among the crumbs and the dust, her head spinning with the impact. Getting to her feet, she rubbed the arm that she’d fallen on, felt her face with her fingers.

“Give me my dress back.”

Makepeace had stationed herself at the sideboard and was slinging spoons one by one into the wooden cutlery box.

“Make yourself scarce,” she hissed. “Get out.”

* * *

Alone in the dayroom, her head still reeling, Anna picked up a magazine and sat down with her hand pressed over her aching jaw. She tried to re-enter her daydream of Dover in spring but the mood had gone. She sat, staring into space. She’d allowed herself to believe that Dr. St. Clair would come back, that he would pronounce her well and her mind as whole as she knew it to be. That he would call Abse into his own study and tell him there had been a mistake and that if he wanted a certificate of her sanity Dr. St. Clair would sign it himself, photograph or no photograph. Lucas St. Clair hadn’t come. Nothing she hoped for, longed for, occurred. She closed her eyes and begged for a sign of what she should do.

The others trickled back into the room, talking loudly, their voices and faces enlivened by the air. Mrs. Featherstone was joking with Violet. From across the room, Lizzie smiled at her. Anna roused herself. The sign had not come. She’d prayed in vain.

The magazine was still on her lap. It was a new one, only a month old. She found herself reading about a ship moored in a northern port called Liverpool. The ship remained at anchor at all times, a mission for sailors. There was a chapel in what had been the captain’s quarters, bunks where they could sleep. They could get food or a new pair of boots, collect their letters or find someone to write one for them. She read the article from the first word to the last and when she’d finished she sat and stared at the engraving of the chapel. “Unto Us a Child Is Born” it said, carved into the rafter over the heads of the sailors.

There would be a purpose for her in a place like that. Even if she did what Lovely did—washed floors, served meals, fetched and carried. Talked to people and treated them like human beings. I have work for you. The idea was a lodestar, a point by which to orient herself. She tore out the pages and, as she folded them into the ugly bodice, breathed in the sharp, hopeful tang of newsprint mixed with the stale pall of the fabric.

Makepeace would not triumph over her. Nor Vincent. Nor Abse. Anna got out her embroidery and began to stitch, her mind racing. By the time the bell rang for luncheon, the cambric was worked all over with a small, auburn-haired child in flight, jumping from the rocks onto floating chunks of chain stitch in white silk. She’d done the work without knowing she did it, without a picture in her mind and what had presented itself was her vision. The boy. It was almost finished. She tied a knot, bit off the thread and followed the others back into the dining room. The air was warm, sweet with the smell of baking buns rising from the kitchen.