Awakening (8 page)

Experience teaches that Anna can keep up this brooding torpor for longer than Beatrice can maintain vigil. There's too much to do when you're mistress of the house. Beatrice sighs, slides off the bed and leaves to perform her round of duties. She will find the books.

Sukey lags into prayers, in a pet, in a pout. Her foot taps annoyingly. At ‘Let us pray', the girl heaves a slouching sigh, folds her arms and has clearly kept her eyes wide open all the while, for when Beatrice chances to open hers, Sukey stares unblinking.

Immediately after prayers, the servant says, ‘Excuse me, miss, I'm going to leave.'

No, please don't say so. Nothing holds Sukey in this bond. She can desert her mistress at any time. She, the inferior, is free and I, the mistress, am dependent. You can't do this to me. I've been so good to you. However Beatrice says evenly, ‘Oh. Why is that, Sukey? Have you not been happy with us? Is there something not to your liking?'

With that, Sukey pulls off her cap. Her sandy-red hair falls in crinkled waves down her back, brazen in the soft evening light. Beatrice gasps; takes a step back.

‘It's all so dismal, miss.'

‘In what way though, Sukey? What is dismal?'

‘Everything. Except Mr Joss.
He
's a good sort. But obviously he can't keep me company all the time. And otherwise there's no one else here but me.' Once unleashed, complaints become torrential. ‘Where I was before there was plenty of servants, see, and we could have a laugh and a joke together. And another thing is, I hate going to chapel. All the praying and canting and Methody stuff … it's not what I'm used to and I don't want it stuffed down my throat.'

Beatrice, astounded, hears her voice come out in a squeaking protest: ‘But we are not Methodists, Sukey, you know that. This is unhandsome.'

‘Which it may be and I'm sorry. And more's the pity you aren't Methodists, at least there'd be a bit of singing and jollity.'

‘So – you don't wish to meet your God at chapel?'

Sukey, standing to her full five foot two, says with some dignity, ‘If I might say without offence, Miss, that's my own business – this is what I been taught anyhow – and private. I'll work out my notice, don't worry.'

Beatrice lowers her head. ‘I think you should put your cap back on, Sukey. I've no idea why you took it off.'

‘I don't know neither.' Making no move to replace it, Sukey flashes Beatrice a smirk. ‘You can be more holy-like without me,' she says. She picks up a scrubbing brush; gives it a little toss in the air and flounces off to scour the pantry before departing for the night. Does it scrupulously. All is spick and span when she departs. She bangs the door behind her.

And so the house begins to totter on its foundations. Beatrice crosses the road for the prayer meeting, her heart troubled. Not least that the girl said she was alone in the house; there was no one there. I work alongside her. I share everything she does. Am I then no one?

Chapter 4

June is wet. The butter won't churn. In the fields the shorn sheep huddle shivering in the unseasonable weather. Bread is sixpence halfpenny. The Salas have gone. Christian's departure from America is delayed. Will fails to visit. Joss is in a mortal sulk at Sukey's departure; he'd grown fond of her, he mutters when reproached for his attachment to an unsaved female servant. He won't know what to do without her jolly face to come home to. He lolls and lounges and takes too much wine: you smell it on his breath the following morning. Beatrice interviews unsuitable girls. Anna gradually sinks. Her bowels don't move. Beatrice is prey to a need to force-feed her sister like a goose.

The invalid shrieks, shrinks back, as her sister advances with a plate of lambs' tails fried in egg and breadcrumbs. ‘Don't bring that muck anywhere near me; I can't stand the smell.' She twists round to bury her face in a cushion and her book dislodges, to lie splayed on the floor.

Beatrice fishes it up. Reading the word
Species
, she thinks the word
specious.
Anna snatches it back and buries it in the blankets.

‘Yes, you can,' Beatrice says. ‘Don't be silly.'

‘Go away.'

‘I won't go away until you've eaten three teaspoonsful. If you're well enough to make such a fuss, you're well enough to at least try to eat.'

‘Take it away.'

Beatrice acquiesces. Nothing for it but to call in Dr Quarles. Placing on the table the delicacy she's taken trouble to cook, Beatrice stands at the kitchen window, draws several deep breaths and fits in a tense prayer for patience. She would be more merciful to her sister over the lambs' tails if Mr Anwyl had only been over to visit. Or if a letter had come from Christian. Back she goes, with half the quantity of food on the plate.

‘Annie,' she begins. ‘Dear Annie love – won't you try for me? Because it does hurt so to see you starve yourself.'

‘I could try a little gin in hot water, Beattie. Or some of Baines's port you've hidden somewhere.'

Beatrice hastens to prepare the gin, whisking the food away. Amy, the new servant, reheats it and Beatrice brings it back with the gin. The infidel port is no longer in the house: Miss Pentecost has given it to three deserving and abstemious villagers for medicinal use. ‘Three tiny spoonfuls first, darling.' She waits.

Anna's obstinacy sets rock-hard. ‘I'm not a child to be harangued. I'll drink the gin. If you'd let me go to St Ives with my friends … '

That childish whining tune again. Beatrice wonders, as her sister sips the gin and lemon, if Anna has made up her mind to follow their parents, brother and stepmothers to the mound in the churchyard and there abandon herself to final peace. To leave Beatrice alone in the world. Draughts gust between door and window; the sickly fire gutters. She hears Anna's unridden horse, Spirit, whinny in its stall. It will have to be sold. The books must be disposed of.

Beatrice darts the spoon forward; as Anna's mouth opens again, morsels enter her lips. She retches but swallows. Clamping her mouth, she turns her face away.

‘Now, just two more,' says Beatrice.

Silence.

‘I won't give up, Annie. I daren't give up.'

Silence.

Anna puts out her hand. At last. Beatrice brings the plate closer. Her sister, laughing and crying, grabs the rim and slings it across the room like a quoit. The plate smashes against the fireplace. ‘Ha!'

Amy, taken on just this morning, is called in to clear the mess. ‘How did that happen. Miss?' she asks.

Anna laughs again, unpleasantly. ‘Ask her.' She stares at her sister without blinking. But Beatrice can see that her whole body quivers.

Hysteria,
Beatrice thinks.

It's hysterical to talk to oneself in private, as Anna does. To hide smirking grins behind a hand when there's company. To keep books in your bed claiming they act as hot-water bottles. To hurl your lunch across the room like a child in a tantrum.

Beatrice comprehends the root of Anna's hysteria, of course she does. Its origin is her womb, whose vagrancy expresses itself in her bowels. These are unstable, contradictory even. For weeks at a time Anna will have loose motions; then everything will silt up. Dr Quarles explains that faecal matter undischarged from the belly exudes poisons which mount to the brain. Beatrice knows that the bowels could never have polluted the system if Miriam Sala hadn't introduced poison. Just as Indian sailors brought cholera to England, so Mrs Sala, that foreign body, has contaminated Anna, as Lore did before her.

Beatrice is the link between Anna and health; Anna and eternal life. But she allows her sister to win the current skirmish; backs off and marches straight over to Dr Quarles's house.

He's over in the twinkling of an eye. Quarles examines Anna thoroughly, lamenting that one cannot actually see into the intestines. Displaying none of the nervous agitation Beatrice would have predicted, the patient acts like an incredulous third party observing a South Sea islander from a distance.

The words ‘enema' and ‘blister' are spoken in private conference.

The moment Anna claps eyes on the soda-water bottle, she knows. She screams that it's violation, she won't, you mustn't, get out of her room. Beatrice shushes her, laying out the red rubber sheet on the bed. Anna, with more energy than she's shown for weeks, slips out of bed, grabs the rubber tube and flings it towards the fire. It lands on the rug; Beatrice rescues the apparatus, takes it to the wash bowl and rinses it thoroughly.

‘Come on, Annie, this is silly. Don't be childish.'

As children they accepted without complaint the weekly enema to keep them regular. They understood the reasons for it. You could not go shopping or visiting or to Sunday School if you were likely to be caught short. The Pentecost children were treated with respect and felt little indignity in submitting to harmless turpentine and green soap dissolved in hot water. Jocelyn seemed actually to welcome and enjoy it. Beatrice did feel curious about that.

Anna won't. She fights. They scuffle silently.

‘You're killing me, Beatrice.'

Beatrice sits down at the end of the sofa, places one hand on her sister's calf. She'll have to bring in a neighbour to help. ‘Do you not believe in Dr Quarles?'

‘I believe he
exists
. I
know
he's an ass.'

‘Well, sweetheart, never mind; I'll leave you in peace for now.'

‘What do you mean by
for now
?'

Anna is on to you like a shot. Beatrice prevaricates. ‘I'll look in on you later. Shall I bring you a cup of tea? Or some hot milk and water? No?'

When Mrs Bunce arrives, there's another painful scene in Anna's sick room.

‘There, there,' says Mrs Bunce, and flips Anna over onto her stomach like a fish. She's a large woman, nurse, midwife, layer-out. She wears a black hat and carries a black bag wherever she goes; the children call her a witch. There's little Mrs Bunce hasn't seen before. In goes the nozzle; Beatrice, taking a deep breath, presses it deep into Anna's anus. It has to be done, so do it efficiently, she tells herself – for Anna's sake. Her sister, who's given up struggling, lies bathed in tears and cold sweat. When it's all over, she will not look at Beatrice. She curls up in her bed, tears seeping into the pillow.

The bowel movement follows. Beatrice removes the chamber pot. As she washes her hands, she hears Quarles's man at the door, delivering the blister. She hardly has the heart to administer it; her throat chokes with unshed tears. But it must be done. She swallows some gin and feels ashamed, not at the actions she must perform but at her own rancorous absence of pity. Beatrice's goodness is tainted with something obscene – this endless assertion of predominance.

Gently, Beatrice draws back the blankets. Anna, compliant, has lost her fight; rolls onto her back, eyes shut. Beatrice raises her sister's nightgown. One – two – three. The wax blister with the hot boiled leaves is rolled onto the delicate skin of her abdomen. Swiftly, Beatrice pulls down the nightgown and kneels at Anna's bedside, holding her hand in both of hers. Tears leak from the corners of Anna's eyes at the searing pain. She seems to pass out; is whispering something, over and over.

‘I'm so sorry,' Beatrice says, weeping too, without restraint. ‘Please forgive me, Annie. I wish I could take the pain myself.'

Anna opens her eyes; nods. She understands that the treatment, by producing blisters on the outside of her body, will draw to the surface and drain the muck from the blisters whose presence Quarles suspects on her intestines. She lies trembling, bearing the biting pain that increases throughout the night.

At three she screams: ‘Lore! Oh, come back. Help me, Lore.'

She talks to the dead. She's not Anna any more. She is abject pain; pain is all Anna is. Beatrice wonders whether to send out for laudanum. But wouldn't that begin the blockage problem again? And so she'd have to hurt Anna for her own good, all over again. She'd rather chew a mouthful of stinging nettles than add a mite to her misery.

Chapter 5

How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter
.

Mr Kyffin, exchanging pulpits with Mr Anwyl, announces the text for his sermon: The Song of Solomon. Beatrice has arranged the invitation as a way of showing Mr Kyffin's persecutors at Florian Street the high regard in which Chauntsey holds its minister.

Their friend's manner is exalted. Mr Kyffin dispenses with notes, having placed his trust (so he explains) in the Spirit to speak through him, to pierce the hearts of Christ's stony-hearted people. For there will be an Awakening! A revival! It is coming! He gazes upwards. We see the signs throughout this lethargic, secular land. Who knows whence Revival will come: north, south, east or west? Perhaps from Wales? Or from Fighelbourn or Chauntsey?

There is a Boy, Mr Kyffin announces, a common boy of West Grimstead, chosen of the Lord, preaching at the Market Cross. Isaac Minety, the baker's son. Who has heard the boy speak? Not yet perhaps? You shall!