Sleep, Pale Sister (6 page)

10

I’d been following her
for nearly a week before I made my move; she was difficult game, and I had to tread carefully if I was not to frighten the girl away. As it was, she was touchingly trusting; I met her every day after that and within the week she was calling me Mose and holding my hand, just like a child. If I hadn’t known better I’d have sworn she was a virgin.

Not my usual tipple, I hear you say? Well, I couldn’t have explained it either. I suppose it was the novelty of playing the prince, after being so many times the knave…Besides, she was beautiful.

A man could fall in love. But not me.

Still, there was something about her, something at the same time cool and deeply carnal, something beyond that girlishness which sparked off some latent emotion in me. She was an entirely new experience; I felt like an alcoholic, his palate jaded with heady intoxicants, tasting for the first time one of those sugary children’s drinks. Like him, I paused to relish the newness, the unfamiliar sweetness. She was without any sense of right or wrong; she followed me wherever I wished to lead her, shivering with pleasure when I touched her, hanging on my every word. We talked far more than I ever did with any other woman; I forgot myself in her presence and told her about my poetry and art, my dreams and longings. I mostly saw her in the cemetery—it had the advantage of being huge and rambling, with plenty of enclosed places to hide. One cold, dull evening when Henry was working late we met by the Circle of Lebanon; there was no-one around, and the devil was in me. Effie smelled so good, like roses and white bread, and her face was flushed with the cool air. Her hair had been blown by the wind and little tendrils of it fell all around her face.

For a moment I was all hers.

It was the first time I had kissed her on the mouth, and I forgot everything I had planned about not alarming her. She was standing beside a vault, and I pushed her right up against the wall. Her hat fell off—I ignored it—and her hair came half unpinned around my face. I pulled the rest of it down and ran it through my hands, gasping for breath like a diver before I prepared to plunge again. I don’t suppose it was the kind of kiss she expected, because she clapped her hands to her mouth with a little cry and stared at me, her face scarlet and her eyes like saucers. I realized that my hasty impulse had probably wrecked all my careful planning and I swore, then swore again at myself for swearing.

Recovering, I pulled away from her and fell to my knees, playing the part of the Repentant Lover. I was sorry, more sorry than I could say, for having alarmed her; no punishment could be too bad for me. I had succumbed to a momentary weakness, but I loved her so much; I had so longed to kiss her, ever since I first saw her, that I had lost control. I was not made of stone; but what of that? I had frightened her, insulted her. I deserved to be horsewhipped.

Maybe I overdid it a trifle, but it was a technique which had worked well enough before with married women; I had researched it carefully in the pages of
The Keepsake
and, God help me, in this case some of it was nearly true. I peered up cautiously to see if she had taken the bait and, amazingly, she was rocking with laughter, not unkindly but uncontrollably. As she saw me looking at her she burst out again.

Little Eff rose rapidly in my estimation. I stood up and grinned ruefully.

‘Well…it was worth a try,’ I said with a shrug. Effie shook her head and laughed again.

‘Oh, Mose,’ she said. ‘You are a hypocrite! You should be on the stage.’

I tried another tack: the Unrepentant Lover.

‘I’ve often thought that,’ I said. ‘Still, it usually works, you know.’ I ventured a disarming smile. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m
not
sorry.’

‘That’s better,’ said Effie. ‘I believe that.’

‘Then believe this,’ I said. ‘I love you.’ How could she not believe it? At the time, I nearly did myself. ‘I love you, and it’s killing me to see you married to that pompous ass. He doesn’t think of you as a woman, he thinks you’re his thing, his beggar girl, his sick little fallen angel. Effie, you need me; you need to be taught how to live, how to enjoy life.’

I was almost sincere. Indeed, I practically convinced myself. I looked at her to see how she was taking it and her straight gaze fixed mine. She took a step towards me and such was the intensity of her expression that I nearly backed away. Almost abstractedly she lifted her cold hands to my face. Her kiss was soft and I tasted salt on her skin. I held back, allowing her to explore my face, my neck and hair with her fingers. Gently she pushed me towards the vault. I heard the gate open behind me and allowed myself to be manoeuvred inside. It was one of many family monuments in the cemetery, shaped like a tiny chapel, with a gate to protect it from the curious, a chair, prayer-stool and altar, and a little stained-glass window at the back. There was just enough space for two people to enter, shielded from view. I closed my eyes and stretched out my arms for her.

The gate slammed shut in my face.

I opened my eyes quickly and there she was, the minx, grinning at me through the bars. At first I laughed and tried to push the door open, but the catch was on the outside.

‘Effie!’

‘It’s frightening, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘Effie, let me out!’

‘Being locked up, unable to get free? I feel that with Henry all the time. He doesn’t
want
me to be alive. He wants me to be quiet and cold, like a corpse. You don’t know what it’s like, Mose. He makes me take laudanum to keep me quiet and good, but inside I want to scream and bite and run naked through the house like a savage!’

I could feel the passion and the hatred in her; you can’t imagine how exciting that was to my jaded taste. But I was uneasy, too. For a moment I contemplated abandoning the whole campaign, asking myself whether she wasn’t too hot for me to handle, but the appeal was too much. I growled at her like a tiger and bit at her fingers through the bars. She laughed wildly, a bird’s mad scream across the marshes.

‘You won’t betray me, Mose.’ It was a statement. I shook my head.

‘If you do, I’ll bring you back here and bury you here for ever.’ She was only half joking. I kissed her knuckles.

‘I promise.’

I heard her push the catch open in the gloom, and she stepped into the vault with me. Her cloak fell to the floor and her brown flannel dress with it. In her underclothes she was a wraith, and her touch was burning brimstone. She was all untutored, but made up for that in her enthusiasm. I tell you, I was almost afraid. She tore at me, bit me, scratched me,
devoured
me with her passion, and in the dark I was incapable of telling whether her cries were of anguish or of pleasure. She returned my careful gentleness with a violence which tore at the heart. The act was quick and brutal, like a murder, and afterwards she cried, but not, I think, with any sorrow.

There was a mystery in her which left me with a feeling of awe, of sanctity, which I never felt with any other woman. In some incomprehensible way I felt that she had purified me.

I know what
you’re thinking.

You’re thinking I fell in love with the chit. Well, I didn’t. But that evening—only that evening, mind you—I thought I felt something deeper than the brief passions I had had for other women. As if the act had opened up something inside me. I wasn’t in love with her; and yet, when I returned to my rooms that night, all aching and scratched and feeling I had been in a war, I couldn’t sleep; all night I stayed beside the fire thinking of Effie, drinking wine and looking into the flames as if they were her eyes. But however much I drank I did not manage to quench the thirst which her burning touch had begun in me, nor could a whole brothel full of whores have stilled the ache of wanting her.

11

I was lucky that
Henry was late home; it had been past seven when I arrived, and he usually came back from the studio for supper. As I came in by the back door I could hear Tabby singing to herself in the kitchen and knew that Mr Chester had not yet returned. I crept upstairs to my room to change my crumpled dress, choosing a white dimity with a blue sash which I had almost outgrown but which was a favourite of his. As I hastened to put it on I wondered whether Henry would see the difference so clearly written in my face, the rending of that veil which had kept me so long apart from the world of the living. My whole body was shaking with the violence of it, and I sat for a long time in front of my mirror before I was reassured that the marks of my lover’s touch—marks which I could
feel
scarlet over every inch of my skin—existed only in my imagination.

I looked up at the wall where
The Little Beggar Girl
hung, and could not repress my laughter. For a moment I was almost hysterical, fighting for breath, as I met the mild, sightless gaze of the child who had never been me. I was never Henry’s beggar girl; no, not even before I outgrew my childhood. My true portrait was hidden at the bottom of my work-basket, the face branded with scarlet.
Sleeping Beauty
, now awake and touched with a new kind of curse. Neither Henry, nor anyone else, would ever be able to put me to sleep again.

At the knock on the door I started violently and turned to see Henry standing there, an unreadable expression on his face. I could not suppress a shudder of apprehension. To hide my confusion I began to brush my hair with long, smooth strokes,
Low adown
,
low adown
…like the mermaid in the poem. The feel of my hair in my hands seemed to give me courage, as if some remnant of my lover’s strength and assurance still lingered there, and Henry walked right into the room and spoke to me with unusual bonhomie.

‘Effie, my dear, you’re looking very well today, very well indeed. Have you taken your medicine?’

I nodded, not trusting my voice. Henry nodded his approval.

‘I can see definite improvement. Definite roses in those cheeks. Capital!’ He patted my face in a proprietary fashion, and I had to make a real effort to stop myself from drawing away in disgust; after my lover’s burning touch, the thought of Henry’s cool caresses was unspeakable.

‘I suppose supper is almost ready?’ I asked, parting my hair and beginning to braid it.

‘Yes, Tabby has made a game pie with buttered parsnips.’ He frowned at my reflection in the mirror. ‘Don’t pin up your hair,’ he said. ‘Wear it as it is, with ribbon through it, as you used to.’ From my dressing-table he chose a blue ribbon, gently threading it through my hair and tying it in a wide bow at the back. ‘That’s my good girl.’ He smiled. ‘Stand up.’

I shook out my skirts in front of the mirror and looked at my reflection, still so like that other, unmoving reflection in the frame of
The Little Beggar Girl
.

‘Perfect,’ said Henry.

And though it was May, and there was a fire in the grate, I shivered.

Over supper I managed to regain much of my composure. I ate most of my piece of pie, some vegetables and a small dish of rhenish cream before announcing with fake good cheer that I could not possibly eat another morsel. Henry was in fine spirits. He consumed almost a whole bottle of wine over supper, although it was not his habit to drink a great deal, and he drank two glasses of port with his cigar afterwards, so that, without actually becoming
inebriated
, he was certainly in a very jolly mood.

Inexplicably this disturbed me, and I would have much preferred his indifference to the attentions he lavished upon me. He poured wine for me which I did not want to drink, complimented me a number of times on my dress and my hair, kissed my fingers as we rose from table and, as he smoked his cigar, he asked me to play the piano and sing to him.

I am not a musician; I knew maybe three or four little pieces by heart, and as many songs, but tonight Henry was charmed by my repertoire and caused me to sing ‘Come with me to the Bower’ three times before I was allowed to sit down, pleading fatigue. Suddenly Henry was all solicitude; I was to put my feet up on to his knees and to sit with my eyes closed, smelling at my lavender bottle. I insisted that I was quite well, simply a little tired, but Henry would have none of it; and presently, feeling quite oppressed at his attention, I pleaded a headache and asked permission to go to bed.

‘Poor child, of course you must,’ replied Henry with unimpaired good cheer. ‘Take your medicine, and Tabby shall bring you up some hot milk.’

I was glad to be gone, hot milk or not, and, knowing that I should not sleep otherwise, took a few drops of laudanum from the hated bottle. I took off the white dress and changed into a ruffled nightgown, and was brushing out my hair when I heard a tap on the door.

‘Come in, Tabby,’ I called without looking round, but on hearing the heavy tread on the boards, so different to Tabby’s light scuttling footsteps, I turned abruptly and saw Henry standing there for the second time that evening, holding a tray with a glass of milk and some biscuits.

‘For my darling girl,’ he said in a jocular tone, but I was quick to see something in his eyes, a shifting, shameful expression which froze me where I stood. ‘No, no,’ he said as I moved to get into bed, ‘stay a while with me. Sit on my knee as you drink your milk, just as you used to.’ He paused, and I saw the furtive expression again behind his wide smile.

‘I’ll be cold,’ I protested. ‘And I don’t want any milk, my head aches so.’

‘Don’t be peevish,’ he advised. ‘I’ll make a nice fire, and you shall have some laudanum in your milk, and very soon you’ll be better.’ He reached for the bottle on the mantelpiece.

‘No! I’ve taken some already,’ I said, but Henry did not pay any attention to my protest. He poured three drops of the laudanum into the milk and made to hand me the glass.

‘Henry—’

‘
Don’t
call me that!’ For a moment the jocular tone had disappeared; the tray with the glass and the biscuits wavered, and a dribble of milk slopped over the rim of the glass on to the tray. Henry noticed it but did not comment; I saw his mouth tighten, for he hated waste or untidiness of any kind, but his voice was still mild.

‘Clumsy girl! Come now, don’t make me lose my temper with you. Drink your milk, like a good girl, and then you shall sit on my knee.’

I tried to smile.

‘Yes, Mr Chester.’

His mouth remained narrow until I had finished the milk, then he relaxed. He put the tray carelessly down on the floor and put his arms around me. I tried not to stiffen, feeling the sickly, indigestible weight of the hot milk resting in the pit of my stomach. My head was spinning and the hundred marks of Mose’s embrace were like burning mouths on my body, each one screaming out its fury and outrage that this man should dare to lay his hands on me. My body’s reaction at last corroborated what my mind had been too afraid to admit; that I hated this man whom I had married and to whom I was bound by law and duty. I
hated
him.

‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered, his fingers tracing the pattern of my vertebrae through the linen nightdress. ‘There’s my good girl. Sweet Effie.’

And as he began with an eager and shaking hand to unfasten the buttons of my nightdress, a wave of nausea submerged me and I submitted passively to his touch, all the while praying to the wild, pagan god Mose had awakened in me that it should be over soon, that he should be gone, so that I could fall into the well of laudanum and the memory of his sickly, guilty embraces would be extinguished.

I awoke from
a kind of thick swoon to find daylight filtering through my curtains, and stumbled weakly out of bed to open the windows. The air was fresh and damp as I stretched out my arms to the sun and felt some strength return to my shaking limbs. I washed carefully and completely and, after dressing in clean linen and a grey flannel gown, I felt brave enough to go down to breakfast. It was not yet half past seven; Henry was a late riser and would not be at table; I would have some time to compose myself after what had happened the previous night—it would not do for Henry to realize how I felt, nor what power he wielded over me.

Tabby had prepared eggs and ham, but I could not eat anything. I did drink some hot chocolate, more to please Tabby than myself, for I did not want her to tell Henry that I was unwell; so I sipped my chocolate and waited by the window, scanning a book of poems and watching the sun rise. It was eight when Henry made his appearance, dressed severely in black as if he were going to church. He went past me without a word, seating himself at the breakfast-table with the
Morning Post
and serving himself lavishly with ham, eggs, toast and kidneys. He took his meal in silence except for the occasional rustle of the paper and, leaving most of it untouched, he stood up, folded the paper meticulously and glanced towards me.

‘Good morning,’ I said mildly, turning a page.

Henry did not reply except for a tightening of the mouth, a trick of his when he was angry or when someone contradicted him. Why he should be angry I did not know, except that he often had abrupt changes of mood which I had long since ceased to try to understand. He took a step towards me, glanced at the book I was reading and frowned.

‘Love poems,’ he said in a bitter tone. ‘I should have expected you, ma’am, with the education I have lavished on you, not to waste whatever sense God gave you on reading such trash!’

Hastily I closed the book, but it was too late.

‘Do I not give you anything you want? Are you lacking in anything in the way of gowns, cloaks and bonnets? Have I not stayed with you when you were ill, borne with your megrims and your hysterics and your headaches…?’ The bitter voice was rising in pitch, sharp as piano-wire.

I nodded warily.

‘Love poems!’ said Henry sourly. ‘Are all women the same, then? Is there not one female who has escaped the taint of all womankind? “One man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found.” Am I such a poor teacher, then, that the pupil I thought was the most untouched by the weaknesses of her sex should waste her time in fanciful contemplation? Give that to me!’ Reaching for the book he tossed it vengefully on to the fire.

‘Of course,’ he added spitefully, ‘your mother
is
a milliner, used to pandering to the vanities of the fashionable world. I suppose no-one thought to instruct you. A fine clergyman your father must have been to allow you to fill your brain with fanciful notions. I suppose he thought such dangerous rubbish
romantic
.’

I knew I should have remained silent to avoid a quarrel, but my disgust of the previous night still lingered and, watching my book, with Shelley and Shakespeare and Tennyson curling up among the flames, I felt a great, rushing anger.

‘My father was a
good
man,’ I said fiercely. ‘Sometimes I feel he is with me, watching. Watching us together.’

I saw Henry stiffen. ‘I wonder what he is thinking,’ I continued in a soft voice. ‘I wonder what he sees.’

Henry’s face clenched like a fist and I burst out, uncontrollably, ‘How dare
you
burn my books! How dare
you
preach to me and treat me like a child! How can you, when last night…’ I broke off, gritting my teeth with the effort of not crying my secret hatred out loud.

‘Last night…’ His voice was low.

I put up my chin defiantly. ‘Yes!’ He knew what I meant.

‘I am not a saint, Effie,’ he said in a subdued voice. ‘I know I am as weak as other men. But it’s you—
you
drive me to it. I try to keep you pure; God help me, I do try. Last night was all your doing. I saw the way you looked at me while you were combing your hair; I saw the colours in your cheeks. You set out to seduce me and, because I was weak, I succumbed. But I still love you: that’s why I try to keep you clean and innocent, as you were when I first met you that day in the park.’ He turned to me and grasped my hands. ‘You looked like an angel child. Even then I guessed you were sent to tempt me. I
know
it wasn’t your fault, Effie, it’s your nature—God made women weak and perverse and full of treachery. But you owe it to me to fight it, to deny sin and let God into your soul. Oh, I do love you, Effie! Don’t fight against the purity of my love. Accept it, and my authority as you would that of a loving father. Trust my deeper knowledge of the world, and respect me, as you would your poor dead father. Will you?’

Grasping my hands, he looked into my face most earnestly and such was the power of years of obedience that I nodded meekly.

‘That’s my good girl. Now, you must ask my forgiveness for the sin of anger, Effie.’

For a second I hesitated, trying to recapture the rebellion, the shamelessness, the certainty I had felt with Mose in the cemetery. But that had gone, along with my brief moment of defiance, and I felt weak, easy tears pricking at my eyelids.

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was rude to you, Mr Chester,’ I mumbled, the tears coursing down my cheeks.

‘Good girl,’ he said, triumphantly. ‘What, still crying? Come now. You see that I was right about those poems—they make you peevish and melancholy. Dry your eyes now, and I’ll ask Tabby to bring you your medicine.’

Half an hour later Henry had gone and I was lying on my bed, dry-eyed but heavy with a listless despair. The laudanum bottle was on the bedstand beside me and, for a moment, I contemplated the greatest sin of all, the sin against the Holy Ghost. If there had not been Mose and the knowledge of love and hatred in my heart I might have committed that blackest of murders there and then, for I saw my life stretching out in front of me like a reflection in a fairground Hall of Mirrors, saw my face in youth, in middle age, in old age, adorning the walls of Henry’s house like dim trophies as he took more and more of myself from me. I wanted to tear off my skin, to free the creature I had been when I danced naked in a shower of light…If it had not been for Mose I would have done it, and with joy.