The Painted Bridge A Novel

SEVEN





A fox emerged from the trees on the edge of the lake, made its way up the side of the field and broke cover, heading across the grass for the house. It reached the gravel path that led to the airing grounds and stopped, its tail a flag of intent.

Querios Abse watched from the study window, stroking the quill of his pen against his chin, enjoying its sharp, soft edge. He’d been too busy to get out again with the gun, occupied as he was with readying Lake House for the next visit from the inspectors. He’d had the whirling chair dismantled at last. Jethro Fludd carried it up through the servants’ quarters into the roof space between the attic rooms and laid it piece by piece across the rafters. Querios had ordered dried lavender from Baldwin’s and supplies of chloroform in fluted bottles that couldn’t be mistaken. He’d permitted the introduction of ham, once a week, to be served with English mustard. The photographic portraits were now up in the dayroom as well as the dining room. The magistrates were sure to be impressed by Dr. St. Clair’s techniques, even if the art critics found such pictures offensive.

He’d rehearsed with Fanny Makepeace the code of whistle blasts by which, the instant that the magistrates’ carriage reached the gates, every member of the staff at Lake House could be alerted. On hearing the signal, the groundsman was to release the peacock, the attendants were to throw the lavender on the fires and Makepeace was to take the agreed measures to subdue any patient who threatened to embarrass the visitors.

The birds were the only part of the preparations that gave him personal satisfaction. He liked peacocks and when the magistrates had complained last time of too few diversions for patients, amongst other things, he’d had an idea. He’d ordered a silver one, with two hens, from a man in Suffolk. They arrived in a wooden crate and the cock began immediately to molt. A week later, one of the females was found dead in the run, her head detached from her body. Querios had been out then with the .12-bore and an oil lamp, taken potshots in the direction of movement in the shrubs. The noise disturbed the patients, Makepeace reported; in particular, Talitha Batt.

The fox was raising its leg against the old oak. He banged on the glass and it took off in a leisurely canter up toward the walled garden, the groundsman’s cottage, the coop. His father, Septimus Abse, had shot a whole family of foxes. The dog prowled forever in a case in the study, stuffed fuller than he had ever been in life; the vixen was made into a stole, for his mother. The ineffable softness of the tips of fur flicking against his cheek, the feel of the lifeless paws and claws in the palms of his hands, had been a motif of his childhood, a symbol of all that was inexplicable about the adult state.

Returning to his desk, Querios put down the pen and picked up the new brochure. It featured Lake House on the cover, looking solid and dignified as a country hotel. In the engraving, the windows were bigger and the walls lower. Three women walked together toward the lake, their skirts and bonnets a deep rose pink. The edges of the picture were soft, as if the house was shrouded in fog or floated, unanchored, above the city it surveyed.

The paragraphs inside described a comfortable, well-situated retreat in the district favored by poets and philosophers, near enough to London to be accessible for visitors but far enough away to be removed from cares, smogs and the din of construction. The notion that they were interested in poets flattered the families. Relatives liked to think they could visit patients, if time allowed. They were less keen on the idea that patients could take it into their heads to visit them. He hadn’t included the rates in the brochure. The accountant’s plan was to raise them but so far Querios hadn’t dared. Losing existing guests could be disastrous.

A log fell in the fire and he put aside the brochure, opened up a series of ledgers and once again began to go over columns of numbers that denoted reasons for admission, conditions, modes of treatment, cures, lengths of stay. The figures were an attempt to explain something that Querios Abse increasingly believed was not subject to explanation: the female mind.

* * *

The dayroom was the gloomiest Anna had ever seen. The high ceiling, the length of the room and the doors at each end gave it the air of a grand and static corridor. Brocade curtains soaked up the light from three long windows. A line of gas lamps suspended from the ceiling gave off more noise than illumination, the mantles hissing overhead, spent fumes souring the air.

Fifteen or twenty women sat at intervals around the room. Mrs. Violet Valentine and the other old ones clustered by the fire. The rest were stationed either alone or in groups of two or three on chairs and sofas. Lizzie Button paced about most of the time. Two of the women, Miss Todd and Miss Little, were inseparable except after one of their frequent quarrels. Then they made sure to sit at opposite ends of the salon.

“Are you feeling stronger, Mrs. Palmer?”

Talitha Batt’s face was composed under a mask of powder that to Anna looked suspiciously like flour; her hands unspooled a length of vermilion silk in rapid, efficient movements.

“I’m perfectly well, thank you.”

Anna answered without thinking, despite her resolution not to talk to anyone. Batt bit off a length of thread and smoothed out the fabric on her lap. The embroidered piece was large and densely worked, a complex, deep-colored tableau of exotic-looking flowers and insects. It was almost finished. She brought the tip of a needle up through a half-completed petal.

“Generally, one is out of sorts after an emetic. The muscles ache. One feels fatigued. Low in spirits and without appetite.”

She glanced at Anna again, her darkened brows raised. The ruff standing up under her chin gave her an old-fashioned look; a Queen Elizabeth with a pointed chin and small ears. She could have been carved on a cameo, she was definite and distinct.

Batt had described so precisely how Anna felt that she might have been inside her body.

“You needn’t bother about how I am, thank you. In fact, I would rather you didn’t.”

“Why is that, Mrs. Palmer? We are thrown together in this place, after all.”

“I won’t be staying long. I shouldn’t be here but my husband has misunderstood my state of mind.”

“Husbands so often do.”

Her voice was mild. Anna flushed.

“He’s a clergyman. He’ll be coming soon to take me …” She thought she would say home but her lips refused. “Out.”

“I do hope so. This is no place for a young woman. For any woman.”

Lizzie Button was walking up and down, singing a lullaby, patting the piece of wood cradled against her chest. She moved like a mother in a nursery, her hand rhythmic, her voice soft. Anna made a long, low intake of breath. Poor thing had lost a child. It was obvious. She threw her a look of sympathy. Button glared at her.

More photographs had appeared in this room, arranged in two long lines on the wall opposite the windows. Anna got up to look at them. Like the others, they were of women alone, against blank backgrounds. Some looked into the eyes of the viewer, others gazed at something or someone unseen, or gave the impression they saw nothing at all. All had names or initials written on them; some were also labeled by their illnesses. “Hysteria.” “Epileptic mania.” “Habits of intemperance.”

Anna stopped at a picture in the middle of the top row. The woman’s face was grave, her eyes amused. She was sitting in a chair, her arms contained within its arms, a book open on her lap. Her hair, beginning to show the signs of age, was undressed. The photograph had the initials LM in ink, written in a fine italic hand and followed by “Melancholia.”

Hanging next to it was a photograph of a different woman. Her hair was piled on each side of her head in stiff ringlets. She wore a shiny, checked dress with mandarin sleeves slit to the elbow, white lace undersleeves. She stood at an angle, her face half turned, eyes raised to some far horizon. The picture was titled “Convalescence.” It was labeled with the same initials, LM. Anna looked back at the other picture; saw the duplicate almond shape of the eyes.

She turned away from the photographs, went back to the window seat and sat down. Picking up a magazine, she looked without interest at the advertisements for eiderdown petticoats, juniper hair tonic and skin creams that filled the back pages. She disagreed with the diagnosis. In the first picture, LM looked human. As if she might step off the wall and sit down for a proper talk such as women could find themselves having sometimes, one where something true or funny was said, some sorrow eased or laughter shared. In her convalescence, LM looked as stiff as the carved prow of a sailing ship. There was a dishonesty in her expression that hadn’t been there before.

The door opened and a stout woman with white stripes like a badger’s in the front of her hair bustled through the room, nodding at Batt as she passed. The room came briefly to life, a current of interest running through the occupants; it subsided into torpor in her wake. Anna looked at the old grandfather clock again. It was eleven-forty. She dropped the magazine and covered her face with her hands. Someone must be ill. One of the children had whooping cough. Or Louisa had gone away for a few days, summoned by her mother-in-law. She would return to London at the weekend, come for her on Monday or Tuesday.

Anna’s sense of expectancy was becoming weary. She could barely call it hope anymore. She loved her sister but Louisa wasn’t altogether reliable. Anna had always felt more like the older one, despite the four years between them. She must write to her again.

Had Vincent been to see Louisa? Was it possible that he had persuaded her that Anna was ill? Had lost her reason? Anna had once told Lou, after their father died, that she believed God wanted her to go to the aid of seafarers.

“Are you mad?” Louisa had said, screwing up her face. “Are you out of your mind, Anastasia?”

* * *

The drizzle outside thickened to rain, coming down with a dreary insistence. Anna stretched her arms in the air and reached down to retrieve the magazine from the floor. She avoided being indoors for long stretches, disliked closed windows and the lingering odor of past meals. Her father used to say she suffered from cabin fever. She wouldn’t spend another day waiting for the creak of the door on its hinges. If the door opened, she intended to take no notice at all. Louisa would have to squash up next to her on the seat, throw her arms around her, pinch her, scream her name, before she even knew she was there. Anna stared down at the magazine, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as a tear fell and formed a wrinkled circle on the print.

“I find it is easier to escape Lake House by accepting one’s situation than by struggling against it,” she heard Batt say, quietly. “Enjoying what companionship one may find.”

Anna looked up.

“I will never accept it. I need to see a doctor. Not Higgins, a proper physician, Mrs. Batt.”

“It is Miss Batt. I am unmarried. You could make an appeal to the other doctor. Present your case to him.”

“Which other doctor?”

“He visits occasionally.” Batt inclined her head toward the wall. “Those are his photographs. I notice that you found them of interest.”

“I won’t be photographed as a specimen, Miss Batt. Labeled like a butterfly and put on display.”

The door squeaked open and despite herself, Anna’s head flew up. It was a man. He stood in the doorway looking around with an air of purpose and interest. He was dressed in an old tweed coat, its collar turned up around a carelessly tied bow at his neck. His long hair was beaded with rain and his whiskers reached to his chin in the style that Vincent said denoted bad character, which he called Piccadilly weepers.

“Good afternoon to you all,” he said.

Makepeace was behind him.

“She’s over there, Doctor,” she said, pointing at Anna.

He brushed rain off his shoulders and pulled off his gloves, looking at her curiously. For a minute, Anna couldn’t think who he was or where she knew him from. Then she understood. Louisa had sent him. Louisa had sent her a proper doctor. How could she have doubted her? She clapped her hands as he crossed the room toward her, laughed with relief as she jumped up from the window seat.

“Thank God you’ve come. Isn’t it strange, that a week or two can take forever?”

“Yes,” he said. “Isn’t it? You must be the new patient.”

His eyes rested on her for a long moment and traveled on. She became aware of Lizzie Button, leaning against the wall next to the window seat, her bundle in her arms.

“Greetings, Mrs. Button. I am Lucas St. Clair, come to see you again.”

“I know very well who you are,” Button said, laying one hand on his forearm. “What do you take me for, a cupboard head?”

“Not at all, I …”

“I am teasing you, Dr. St. Clair. Did you have a comfortable journey?”

They left, the man closing the door behind them with a last glance in Anna’s direction.

Anna sat down. She felt sick with disappointment. Foolish too. The silence in the room was deeper than it had been, punctured by the uneven tick of the clock. Something had caused Miss Batt to smile. Her teeth emerged, small and white and straight-edged, between parted lips, as she held up the cloth to the light and examined it, a silver thimble stuck on the tip of one finger. She seemed in no mood for further conversation.

Anna decided to make an exception to her rule.

“Who was that?” she said.

Batt glanced around, her eyebrows lifted so high it appeared they might depart her face altogether.

“Are you speaking to me?”

“Yes. Who was that man?”

“He announced himself to Lizzie. You can hardly have failed to hear his name.”

“I heard his name. But who is he?”

“He is a doctor, Mrs. Palmer. The one you decline to see. The photographer. He may also be a miracle worker.”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems Dr. St. Clair has induced you to speak.”

“I am perfectly able to speak, Miss Batt. It’s just that I … Well, I …”

“You don’t wish to associate yourself with the insane. Quite understandable, Mrs. Palmer. I felt the same myself once.”

Her voice was dry and Anna felt the beginnings of a blush creeping onto her face.

She changed her mind about not talking to anyone; she was longing for some company. Asking Miss Batt about herself she learned to her surprise that Batt was the oldest in a family of eight, born in India in a bungalow among mountains whose tops disappeared in the mist. She’d grown up listening to the roars of tigers and being cooled by servants fanning her with banana leaves bigger than she was. In England, she worked as a milliner. Had her own little place in Fulham and spent her days plaiting straw and gluing feathers.

“I’m a practical woman, Mrs. Palmer,” she said. “I do what needs to be done.”

They lapsed for a while into silence. Mrs. Button had not returned. Anna glanced at the images on the wall.

“I may agree to be photographed after all. Do you think it might help me prove my rationality?”

Miss Batt stitched on for some time without speaking.

“Dr. St. Clair is a well-intentioned young man,” she said, eventually. “Whether he holds any sway with Mr. Abse is another matter. And then of course there is the question of his techniques.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that they may be misguided,” said Miss Batt. “That there is always the possibility of their doing more harm than good.”