The Painted Bridge A Novel

THIRTY-THREE





Lucas St. Clair cleared a bowl of walnut shells plus several piles of Medical Times and Gazette and the Photographic News off the table and dumped them on the floor. Dusting the table with a napkin, he looked at the window and contemplated cleaning the glass. It would take too long. He’d come to his dining room for the light, wanted to see what he was doing by the clear, white light of day. Filtered amber—the forgiving yellow tinge of the dark chamber—was unscientific. He set down a stack of photographs and began arranging them in lines.

When he had finished, he turned his back on them and stood at the window looking out into the small garden without seeing it. The smell of boiling citrus was coming up from the kitchen, making his eyes water. Life went on. Marmalade would appear and Stickles would hold the jar upside-down, remark on the superior setting qualities of Seville oranges. Maddox would marry. Produce small, broken-toothed versions of himself. Birthdays would roll around. The next was his thirtieth and he wanted it behind him.

Life would go on for him—would continue to race, amble and lope along. Screw your courage to the sticking point! Summon the blood! His father’s voice would continue to echo in his ears, urging his sons to feats of bravery in sailing boats, among birds’ nests, on horses. Bellowing at them as they lined up their tin soldiers to advance. Advance.

Lucas had taken the month off from St. Mark’s. He’d informed Harry Grieve that he had to have time to build up the evidence for his ideas. They’d been in a corridor at the time and there had been an incident on one of the noisy wards; shouts and screams of patients and keepers echoed off the tiled walls, bounced in the air. He’d run into Grieve by chance and known as he saw him coming toward him that he must act. He stood in front of him, blocking his progression.

“I have to take a sabbatical, Sir Harry. I need time to work on my theory. If the ideas hold good, I intend to change my practice and use photography in diagnosis with every patient.” He’d had to raise his voice to be heard but as he was halfway through, the commotion on the ward died down. His own voice was the only one ringing out along the corridor. “I’m not willing to continue working like this. I believe we are selling patients short.”

“You may be better fitted to a different kind of establishment, St. Clair,” Grieve said, frostily. He sighed and clapped him on the back. “Although I grant that you’ve done good work here, young man. Excellent work, in its way. I’ll get another chap in for a month and after that we’ll talk again. I wish you all the best with your experiments, misguided though they are. Enjoy your holiday.”

* * *

Since that morning, he had worked harder than at any time since his university finals. Every shirt he owned was stained with silvers and his fingers looked as if he wore black gloves. He had barely slept but he didn’t feel tired. He was on a campaign.

He had made photographs of his sister, Beth. Of Stickles. Of his cousins, the twins Melody and Melissa. His godmother sat for him and his next-door-but-one neighbor in Popham Street, a lawyer’s wife keen on watercolors who always expressed interest in the sun paintings, as she termed them. He didn’t quarrel with her, hadn’t time to explain that they were not paintings, that that was the whole point of photography. He’d made images of the woman’s eighty-year-old mother and the mother’s French companion. At Lake House, he photographed the most recent patient, Mrs. Jane Featherstone, followed by Mrs. Button, again, Mrs. Valentine and—at the specific request of Mrs. Abse—her daughter, Catherine. The girl couldn’t have been less like her father.

He’d made visits to the two other private asylums in which he had permission to make images and photographed women with hysteria, epilepsy, puerperal fever. Mania and habits of intemperance.

In all, there were thirty portraits. The beauty of them, their scientific significance, was that he’d made every image using the large-format plates measuring eight by ten inches and had photographed every sitter in the same way as Mrs. Palmer. Persuaded each to wear a white scarf over their hair and a plain, dark gown. Free of props, against a blank background, only their faces spoke from inside the oval frames. No recent coiffure or flash of diamonds or intrusion of potted palms contributed to the statement of the mind of each individual.

Once he’d made all the images, he’d set about printing them. He’d had to buy the albumen paper ready-made. It was expensive and not as good as the paper he prepared himself but it was adequate. The cost of materials had cleared him out. He’d told Stickles there was no money for meat this month or coffee. Only whisky, bread and cheese and whatever she needed for herself downstairs.

* * *

He was allowing himself an early drink. He took a mouthful and picked up the first picture. It was his sister, Beth. Her pointed, doubtful face, as large as life, gave him a sense of looking more closely at her than she had intended or allowed. He could see in her downcast eyes the signs of incipient melancholy. He replaced the picture and picked up the next one.

Violet Valentine. He brought her closer to the window. Her skin blurred at its edges as if the wrinkles reached into the atmosphere around her, as if her face was not flesh but time. Her bird had died at New Year and despite the acquisition of a replacement, Violet had not been the same since. Next on the pile was one of the patients from The Laurels, the asylum south of the river. Her name was Sunday. There was a rueful, resigned understanding in her eyes that Lucas might have construed as wisdom. Yet this was a woman who’d taken the life of her own child.

The restrictions he’d imposed—the close perspective, the white scarf over the hair and dark gown below—had the opposite effect from what he’d expected. Instead of making the women look more similar, the restricted palette accentuated the differences between them. His neighbor, the artist Mrs. Mallinson, had presented herself as a beatific, eyes raised to a far horizon—looking at God himself, if the fervor of the expression was to be believed. Stickles looked out with dancing eyes; her expression, vivid and mischievous, mimicked mania. Stickles had started to cook. She’d taken to bringing up soups on trays, dishes of roast potatoes, bread and butter pudding, homely fare that she said cost next to nothing and claimed would do him good.

He’d brought the picture of Talitha Batt downstairs although he was undecided over whether it belonged in the set or not. Looking at it took him back to that day at Lake House. He’d wanted to leave the whole sorry business behind but had made himself stay. Waited while Lovely cleaned her, scrubbed the walls and the floor. She didn’t wail or weep, just got on with the job. He had the feeling she was more sorry than any of them. Lovely had wanted to dress Talitha Batt in her usual high pleated collar but he insisted on a chemise for the picture. Photography was the art of truth, not of advertisement.

The camera had looked unsentimentally at the injuries. The coating of white powder on her face ended just below the chin. Below it, framed by the lace trim of the chemise, the throat was open from one side to the other in a violent smile, the severed windpipe like an end of macaroni. The knife was still clutched in her fingers when they found her, its pearl handle flooded with blood. He put the picture on one side. Lucas had a feeling that Miss Batt would urge him to include it but he was not certain that he had her courage.

He had placed the picture of Anna Palmer in the top row. The bruises and scabs gave her the air of a textbook madwoman from the old days, a caricature. They were absences on the plate, clear spaces on the glass where there ought to have been flesh. After some consideration, he’d filled them with ochre and graphite. He’d restored her skin to what time would restore it to anyway and made another print. Lucas still did not believe Abse’s claim that the wounds were self-inflicted.

He’d had a further idea after he’d believed the whole process was finished. He had reinstated the print he made of Mrs. Palmer before correcting the plate. The same photograph, unretouched, was on the table now in the third row. It looked like a different woman.

The pictures covered the table, the faces looking up in three long rows. Grave eyes, light ones, troubled ones and intent ones, gathered together in one indiscriminate family. Lucas took a last, long look at them and went into the parlor. He threw himself into the chair, relit his pipe and clamped the slender stem between his teeth. He had one leg over the arm of the chair; the foot wagged urgently and silently in the air where it hung.