Awakening (42 page)

Oh yes, she thought, God's circus in a big top.

How thankful Beatrice feels to be resident in a backwater where, after that unprecedented convulsion, talk centres on church redecoration and the next bazaar. Can it really be eight years since Anna went? And Mrs Sala insisted, against all protocol and decency, not only on attending the funeral but on speaking too. Well, don't think of that.

What she said, of course, was beautiful. Allegedly. There was no gainsaying that. Apparently. Mrs Sala – who had no business there on any grounds, as being a female, a notorious adulteress, an infidel and hardly a true friend to Anna – arose and insisted on speaking. She described Anna Pentecost, so Beatrice was told. She'd prepared a text from which she had the effrontery to read. But what did she say, Christian? Beatrice asked, dry-mouthed. What exactly? He couldn't reproduce the message, he said, for the effect depended not only on the words but on that exquisite contralto voice. It seemed to them all that Anna rose up there in the midst of them, to the life, in all her loveliness. At first Christian had been taken aback; he could not approve of Mrs Sala's behaviour, what he knew of it. But when she spoke … it was necessary to listen. It was not long, he said. Or it did not seem so. When she had spoken, Mrs Sala left. And when Beatrice asked Will, he said more or less the same.

I'll never forgive her, Beatrice thought. The harpy. Snatching my sister from me at the last moment. The bitterness of it, the fury. And, even worse, Mrs Sala seems to be outliving her shame. Her writings soar above it. Crowds of worshippers, so Mrs Elias has reported, gather at her At-Homes, where the authoress gives readings from her works, dressed in black evening dress hung with diamonds. That great ugly horse-face. That almost-not-a-woman at all.

Forget all that. With time the fury settles; only at night Mrs Sala will keep appearing in Beatrice's dreams, veiled sometimes; when the veil's removed the pockmarked face of Lore Ritter is disclosed.

When Will left Chauntsey for a church in Manchester, he seized the chance to change his reputation. Will has charmed his way into powerful circles; he speaks a different language. Beatrice shelters his child in her garden and puts off the day when Magdalena must be yielded up to her father and her evangelising stepmother. Perhaps that day will not come. At least do not let it come soon. Annie's daughter with her harum-scarum ways and her ravishing smile tugs at Beatrice's heartstrings more than any of her own brood, nearly as much as Luke did in that other world when her wound was fresh.

God has chastised Mrs Ritter. She has bent, chastened, to the lash. But then, it appeared, He withdrew his wrath. The torture became less. Beatrice lay where she had fallen until the sense came that the angel of death might have passed over. For now. She ventured into the garden, bareheaded, under the fine rain and found calm. Anna's pony was led riderless from the stable, hooves clopping in the quiet. Anna's robust daughter slept soundly in her cot, her face flushed in sleep.

One by one her own children arrived, and lived. Then Beatrice knew that God's wrath was appeased.

Gradually she began to flag under the endless childbearing. I am a broodmare, Beatrice sometimes thinks: my body is not my own.

Amy Pentecost comes rushing out, calling that Mr and Mrs Anwyl are here. No change has been as strange as the embarrassed adjustment forced on Beatrice by the transformation of a servant into a sister-in-law. Mr and Mrs Jocelyn Pentecost had been secretly married, it appeared, for a year. Married, not even in a church but in a London register office, their union witnessed by Mr and Mrs Munby. Good that Mama and Papa never lived to see their one son descend to this breach of protocol.

Not that Amy isn't one's spiritual equal – of course she is. Equality before God is at the foundation of Christian belief and Beatrice scorns anyone who questions it. Oh, but our social equal? – no, never. Joss is not without wry enjoyment of the general consternation. Sometimes, he confesses, to a burst of hilarity from his wife, it was a near thing. For instance, when you came into my room to clear or clean, many a time my Amy was hiding
under the bed!
– ha! – with her lord and master perched on it in case you decided to look for dust and smoke her out. Yes! Really! What a joke! He couldn't bring himself to look particularly shamefaced. Rather the reverse. Beatrice, stunned, senses that Joss positively relished the conspiracy and will hanker after his secret and forbidden world now that things are out in the open.

What does he see in Amy? Plump and waddling in gait. Hair rather thin and mousy brown. No sense of how to drink a cup of tea, though you'd think she'd have learned in the years of studying Pentecost manners. Her Wiltshire burr, raucous, snorting laughter, muscular arms and broad hands. And worst of all is Amy's indifference to the things of the spirit. Will Joss ever be baptised? Probably not now. To treat Amy as an equal is out of the question and Joss sees and resents the slight. ‘My wife has more reality in her little finger than some of us have in our whole bodies – and a jolly sight less pretension,' he has rebuked his sister.
Did Anna have any inkling? Or perhaps she was party to the secret? Joss has never said. The one fly in his ointment is Amy's growing jealousy of the two servants who've replaced her, Tabitha and Jenny.

The children harbour no such prejudice. They flock around Amy for the barley sugar she carries in her pocket. Her solid, comfortable body is as pleasing to them as it is to her husband.

Magdalena hugs Beatrice. ‘Is it my Papa, Auntie Amy? Oh lovely, lovely! Is
she
with him though?'

‘Try to be courteous to Jane, dear,' Beatrice advises. ‘And call her Mama without being asked. Your father wishes it. She is a good woman and fond of you.'

Magdalena's face is expressive on that subject but she says nothing, allowing Beatrice to tidy her hair and stoop to pull off the sticky catchweed from her skirts.

‘Smile nicely at Jane when you see her, dear, and let her kiss you and don't scowl.'

Magdalena gives a wriggle and a squirm. She pouts, scuffing the toe of her shoe against the paving stone. Florence does the same, without knowing why, her underlip over her upper one, tears coming to her eyes although she has no idea of feeling sad. Harry, coming into this scene of woe in the nurse's arms, howls, arches his back and hurls his body backwards. Beatrice removes him from the nurse and pacifies him.

She understands. Magdalena is worried that, if her behaviour is too accommodating, Jane will want to take her back with them. Magdalena is bright and intuitive. Beatrice will not remonstrate with her. You know I'm on your side, heart's darling, don't you? she says silently to her niece. You are mine. I shall never willingly give you up but one must be canny and proceed by indirection: you understand that. With you I shall not fail, I never shall. She straightens the ribbon in Magdalena's hair and, with Harry morose and snivelling against her shoulder, takes her niece's hand.

Amy is entertaining the Anwyls in the parlour. You can hear it from the kitchen door, her loud, crude patois. Better relieve them.

What a shock: Will's hair has gone completely white. The face still young beneath the abundant silver curls is piquant and arresting. He has put on weight and has a small paunch. He affects dandy clothes, doubtless selected for him by the second Mrs Anwyl. Bounding in, Magdalena flings herself into her father's arms. He scoops her up and spins her round. Begins to romp. Throws her in the air. Catches and clasps her tight against him. ‘My, how you've grown! Are you sure it's really you? Are you Maggie Anwyl or a very tall fairy?'

One can read on Jane's face, through the mask of propriety, how little she wishes to be at Sarum House. But you knew what you were getting, Beatrice thinks, when you married Will. She shakes the resolute smiler's mauve-gloved hand and asks the usual questions. You've netted a widower nineteen years your junior, with a daughter and old ties you will never break – so of course you're bound to think of me as a rival. Jane is one of the lady evangelists who've sprung up in the wake of Mrs Palmer and have no hesitation in preaching alongside the menfolk on public platforms.

Jane pats the sofa beside her; Will sets Magdalena down. He cannot take his eyes off his child; is mesmerised and saddened, at once famished and fed. No doubt it's the mirror of the beloved face he sees – and wants to see – and can't bear to see, which may be one reason why he visits rather rarely.

‘Come and greet your dear stepmama, Maggie,' he encourages her. ‘She has brought you something nice, haven't you, dear?'

Jane's smile pleads. It says to the child, ‘You are strong and I am weak. Give me a chance to please you.'

Magdalena's composed, sharp features reply, ‘I'm sorry to have to disappoint you but you're wasting your time and money. I do not like you. I cannot be bought.'

Jane takes from her bag a parcel wrapped in a piece of lace. ‘Just a little something for you, dear. And how are your lessons going, Magdalena? Does the dear one attend church and Sunday school regularly, Beatrice? I always did at your age, you know, three times a day on the Sabbath … Ah, the little angel! Has the angel hurt its wing? Do come to Auntie Jane!'

Florence, all pale curls and smiles, reaches out with her unbandaged hand for Jane's parcel.

‘You have it, Flossie.' Magdalena is altogether too eager to relinquish the gift. ‘I don't want it. Go on, take it.'

‘Magdalena!' says Beatrice.

‘It's all right.' Jane is still smiling. ‘I understand. I'm not offended, Magdalena, not in the least; I expect you're a teeny bit nervous. And you don't like to have nice gifts when your cousin has nothing.'

Florence has the parcel torn open in a trice. ‘Oh, it's, what is it? Some sewing? Handkerchiefs to embroider?' she says. ‘That's nice, Auntie Jane. You have them, Maggie.'

‘I've got plenty. Nice
plain
ones. Big proper ones for the snot.'

Jane feigns deafness; Beatrice gives up; Florence perches on a low stool with her doll; Will stifles his amusement. Magdalena goes up to her father, leans forward so that he can see nothing but her face and gazes into his eyes. Soon she's seated on Will's lap, sharing toasted teacake with him, butter running down her chin. I shall not let you take her, thinks Beatrice, staring at her sister-in-law through viper eyes. She includes the father in her pledge.

When Annie went, she and Will could not go near one another. Every time he entered a room, Beatrice departed, carrying the baby. She'd leave the house altogether if possible. The pain each carried was a knife in the other's heart.

They had to stop this senseless dance because the baby, against all expectations, appeared determined to thrive. It was robust. Magdalena soon smiled, made jolly spitty, chortling noises, waved chubby arms and legs and generally insisted that the world take notice, for she was here to stay. Maggie was not to know that she had killed her mother.

After a difficult birth, Anna's fever climbed. She was scalding hot to the touch. Beatrice ordered in ice to bring down her temperature. She sat with her sister day and night. You are not leaving me. I will not permit it. By and by, Anna perceived through bouts of delirium that she was unlikely to survive. Her sister and husband stayed at either side of the bed.

‘Yes,
cariad
,' Will said. ‘Your mother and father will be there. And our Magdalena will come to you. And Lore will be there, tenderly waiting. All the people you've loved. Shining. And Beatrice and I will come to you.'

‘Love is God,' said Anna.

Strictly speaking she'd got it the wrong way round but Beatrice didn't wrangle. She accepted what Anna was able to offer. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘That's right, Love is God.'

Anna agreed to take communion from Will's hands, more perhaps for her husband's sake than her own. She begged pardon of all those she had offended.

‘You'll look after Magdalena for me?'

‘I will.'

‘You'll be a true mother to her?'

‘Annie, I will. She will be as my own child. Are you in pain, darling?'

‘I can't honestly say I am,' replied Anna, and slept.

Mrs Sala was detected mooning under the windows at dusk. I let her down, she moaned. Did she mention me? Had she no message for me? Nothing at all? Please do not turn me away. I loved her. I let her down. Will went out to speak to the woman. Beatrice watched her walk away on Mr Sala's arm, into her fame and notoriety. Good. Go and be damned.

And then, a couple of years later, Mrs Sala returned. It was a chilly, misty morning, the red beads of rosehips suddenly gleaming at you as beams of sun pierced the mist. She appeared at the front door in a rust-coloured fur-trimmed cloak. By her side was a boy of perhaps nine or ten years of age – her son, very obviously, though in him all that made his mother unattractive produced a harmonious impression. The son had been restored to his mother at the death of her legitimate husband.

Now that she'd legally married Baines Sala, their relatives clamoured to receive and visit her and to bask in her celebrity. Miriam Sala had been rehabilitated; the intelligentsia of Europe were at her feet. Mrs Sala's works had been translated into sundry languages. A collection of her
Wise, Witty and Tender Sayings
had been selected and published by a Miss Jackson, one of her disciples. Mrs Sala's fictions were works with a high moral tone, apparently; their heroines made mistakes for noble reasons, in a world unfitted to value or understand them. Beatrice knew this, though she'd never read a word. The change in Mrs Sala's circumstances and status made no difference to her feeling. It was sheer hypocrisy to allow a sinner to profit from the death of the man she had wronged.