‘And do you not think, Mrs Bainbridge, that the same unfortunate circumstance may have affected you in a similar manner? That there may have been a tendency, within your family? Don’t forget, you suffered a terrible loss too. And more followed.’
The irony was that she had not lost her mind completely. Every feeling, all that was good and pure in her world had been mangled, and she was still stronger than those wretches pissing themselves out in the corridor. She knew it.
‘Madness, as we call it, manifests itself in many ways. People do not always wail and shriek as you say your mother did. But it does seem to run in families, I have observed, particularly through the female line. Hysteria – womb to womb. Diseased blood will out. There is no hiding from it, I am afraid.’
Slowly, she let the slate and chalk drop from her hands.
She could feel the past stealing up on her, the way a river inches up its banks in the rain; gradually lapping at her chin, filling her mouth.
There is no hiding from it, I am afraid.
He was right about that. Now she had begun to tell her story, there was no hiding at all.
THE BRIDGE, 1865
Advent brought with it a decided decline in the weather. Mist prowled over the hills and steamed up the windows. Every time the front door opened, wind gusted in with the silver-grey scent of rain. But Elsie had promised Mr Underwood she would start attending services again, and you couldn’t break a promise to a vicar, especially near Christmas.
In October, at Rupert’s funeral, she had barely noticed the state of All Souls Church. Concentrating on the awful presence of the coffin and the body trapped within, Elsie had let her surroundings blur to nothing. But now she saw the structure take a solid form around her. It was wretched. Cold, damp and in dire need of repair.
The family pew was at the front. Elsie and Sarah were a little late and had to shuffle past rows of threadbare villagers to take their place. All the wretches looked, but none met Elsie’s eye; they gave furtive, sideways glances beneath their eyelashes. Perhaps they still considered a widow bad luck.
Thankfully, the Bainbridge pew was built up and screened at the back with wood. Holes pocked the structure – she had to dust down the seat before she dared to sit on it.
‘Worm,’ Sarah whispered, wrinkling up her nose.
The pew door thunked shut beside them. Elsie shuddered. Locked in a wooden enclosure with the worms – it was not much different to being buried alive.
Worms were not the only discomfort. Cobwebs laced the arches and there was a relentless drip from the leaking roof. Although holly from The Bridge gardens decorated the windowsills, the place looked dreary, far from festive. It carried a mineral smell, slick and wet.
Sarah looked queasy as she surveyed her surroundings. She still wore a bandage on her hand. The apothecary at Torbury St Jude said the cut was not infected, but Elsie had her doubts. It was nearly two months now. Surely the wound should scab, at the very least?
‘Are you a little off-colour, Sarah?’
‘Yes . . . It is this church. When I think of my poor cousin Rupert, resting forever in such a place!’
Elsie could not answer for tears.
When she was young, she’d liked going to church. It was a place where she could walk in a higher atmosphere and breathe a higher air. But at some point – it must have been around the time Pa died – her feelings had changed. Church became a giant magnifying glass focused on her face with a crowd of people peering through. Today was not much different. The Fayford poor might not meet her eye but they were alert to her presence, like hounds scenting blood.
They went through the usual routine: hymns; a gospel reading; Mr Underwood’s thoughts; the lighting of the Advent candle. By the end Sarah was trembling from cold. Elsie heard her voice shudder over the words for ‘Rock of Ages’. She stretched out her arm, meaning to put it around Sarah’s shoulders, when a twang in the pit of her stomach pulled her up short.
Sarah looked at her, pop-eyed. ‘Mrs Bainbridge?’
She placed a hand to her bodice and felt it again beneath the buttons: something within, kicking back.
‘Is it the baby?’
‘Yes. It quickens.’
Sarah beamed. Without asking for permission, she placed her palm on Elsie’s belly.
A curious sensation: Sarah’s heat on the surface of her skin; the child pushing back on the wet, slippery side within. Horrible, in fact. One Bainbridge on the outside, one locked away behind flesh, and she was no more than a thin barrier, a wall through which they could communicate.
She looked down at the black crêpe of her dress and at Sarah’s gloved hand, grey against it. She had the strangest feeling that it was not her stomach at all – not any more. It was only a shell. She was a shell, and another body, a foreign body, was growing inside.
Elsie decided to walk back to The Bridge. Movement, she thought, would get her blood flowing and dispel the peculiar sense of invasion. Helen agreed to accompany her. Sarah was half-dead with cold and Mabel’s leg could not carry her such a distance, so they took the carriage with Mrs Holt.
Rain had fallen during the service, leaving the footpaths slick, plastered pewter with dead leaves. Snails crept out from the undergrowth to stretch their necks. Once or twice Elsie had to step sharply aside onto the wet grass to avoid crushing them.
‘Dear me, ma’am, Mabel will have to change your clothes as soon as you get back,’ Helen said. ‘Won’t do for you to catch cold, not in your condition.’
‘Thank you, Helen, I will make sure she does.’ Her ankles felt cool and numb. Another ruined pair of stockings. She only prayed her crêpe did not shrivel in the damp air.
Her boots tapped in a discordant rhythm as they crossed the bridge with the stone lions. Fine, white vapour rose up from the river. It put her in mind of the match factory. If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the smell of phosphorus, haunting her. She loathed that odour, but somehow she needed it; it was bound up in home, in Jolyon.
What would Jolyon be doing now? Making the arrangements for new girls in the dipping rooms, perhaps, and getting ready to leave the place for Christmas. Once he returned to The Bridge, she was bound to feel like herself again. This interlude without him had unsettled her. It was not natural to be separated from him.
Helen cleared her throat. ‘Ma’am?’
‘Yes, Helen?’
‘May I ask something?’
Elsie ducked her head to avoid the dripping fingers of a branch. ‘Very well.’
‘What happened to your hands, ma’am?’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Your hands. I’ve never seen you take your gloves off. I thought perhaps . . . maybe you hurt them?’
They prickled and throbbed beneath her black lace gloves: echoes of Helen’s own hands; calloused, with swelling joints and stains ground into the skin. ‘You are right, Helen. There was an accident. They were burnt.’
Helen whistled between her teeth. ‘That’s bad luck. You can’t be too careful with fire, ma’am. Knew a woman in Torbury St Jude, once. Her little daughter’s dress caught light on a candle and up she goes in flames.’