The Painted Bridge (27 page)

Without her corsets, her hair loose on her shoulders, Louisa looked different. Her body had grown wide and round; damp patches seeped through from her breasts on each side of her wrap. There were lines at the sides of her eyes and shadows underneath them. The new baby was the fourth. Once, Louisa had been bony and brown as a Gypsy girl. It was the despair of their governesses, the way her skin absorbed the sun. Anna had an image of a pair of bare feet flashing up the path in front of her, the heels white with chalk, calves narrow as daisy stems.

“Can’t you persuade him to take pity on me, Lou? I need a few days to work things out and I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

Louisa put down her cup and stared into the tea leaves.

“I’m sorry, Anastasia. He said he’d be obliged to inform Vincent tonight in person if you’re still here. Vincent has a case, he says. It was an eccentric thing to do—running off to a shipwreck.”

Anna took a deep breath. She would have to explain more clearly to Louisa what had taken her on the mission. Get her to understand.

“I know it might appear odd,” she said. “But I had to go, Lou. I saw something. I had a vision of a boy.”

Louisa appeared not to have heard.

“This tea’s cold,” she said and jangled the bell in the air between them. “I’ll get some more brought up. Where’s Catherine?”

Anna paused.

“Still asleep.”

Louisa had never wanted to hear about the visions. Once, Anna
saw a tree full of angels. The tree was growing on the shore, out of the sand, and the angels were male, naked apart from feathery wings, their legs curved behind them like fishtails. It was the first time she understood that angels could swim, could breathe underwater. Anna ran all the way up the path to the house to tell Louisa and when she did Louisa slapped her in the face, even though Anna was past the age for slapping.

She’d stood in their bedroom doorway with one hand clutched stupidly to her cheek while Louisa went back to her book. She had the same sense now, that her sister could not or would not hear her. Anna shifted the plate in front of her, prodded at the egg. The yolk was congealed and her appetite gone. She put down her fork. She would tell Louisa about the other side of things. That at least she might be willing to understand.

“I believe that Vincent has betrayed me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I found a letter, from a woman. And last night …”

Louisa interrupted her.

“He has a mistress, you mean? Most men do.”

Children’s running feet thumped overhead and a wail went up.

“Louisa, listen. I can’t trust him. When I spoke to him about the letter, he denied it. And taking me to Lake House, even if he meant it for the best—he tricked me. I have to stay away from the Vicarage at least until I can see some proper doctors and get the certificate to say that I’m well. Otherwise he could take me back there.”

The maid came in and put a pot down on the table. Louisa got up and closed the door behind her, stood for a moment with her ear to the crack.

“Blundell isn’t always understanding. He’s even questioned my own state of mind. Mother’s behavior at the end—it hasn’t been forgotten, you know. He threatened last night that I’d be joining you at your asylum if I kept up the séances.”

“You still go to Mr. Hamilton’s?”

“Yes.” Louisa poured the tea and they watched as steam rose from the wide, shallow cups. “I speak to Mother often, consult her. She’s perfectly alright now. Pa came through once. Before Christmas, I heard
another voice. Not that he could say anything, of course, but I heard his voice, just like it used to be.”

“What do you mean? Whose voice?”

Louisa looked at her.

“You could come with me, Anna, when things are back to normal. It would help you.”

“Help me what?”

Louisa ran both hands up over her face, into her hair. She tightened the wrap around her waist and stood up.

“For God’s sake. Sometimes I think Blundell is right about our family.” She sat down again and leaned in toward Anna with eyes full of trouble. “I can’t go against his wishes, Anna. I don’t dare.”

*   *   *

Number 59 was the last in a new terrace, a small two-up, two-down that leaned against the public house on one side of it. The front door was narrow and sheltered by a porch. A laurel hedge sprouted behind the front wall, its broad leaves coated with soot that had been partly washed away by the morning’s shower.

Anna stood in the road, looking at the house. She was alone; Catherine had woken with a fever, her eyes glazed, forehead burning. Anna had given her weak tea and left her in Louisa’s care, promising to be back by lunchtime.

Anna made herself walk up the path. She was trembling, half expecting Vincent to lean his head out of the upper window. The knocker was in the shape of a woman’s hand and had an iron bracelet on its iron wrist, the beads picked out in green paint. She lifted it, brought it down hard. And again. Once more. She stood and waited, her back straight, head up.

There was no sign of movement inside the hall, beyond the squares of violet-and-crimson colored glass in the door. Her fright began to lessen. Of course Vincent was not inside. No one was. She sat down on the low wall that separated the little front garden from the one next door. Men were rolling wooden barrels into the cellars of the public house and the boys she’d passed on her way had resumed their game; their shouts hung on the air. Her mouth was dry, her lips sore from the cold air.

Anna had thought about Maud Sulten’s refusing to see her. She’d considered the possibility that they would quarrel or that Maud might deny all knowledge of Vincent. But she hadn’t thought of this: that the woman might not be at home. Anna found herself staring at a wooden spinning top lying capsized under the hedge. It was faded, the sides dented from being bowled along by an insistent stick. A feeling grew in her that she had been here, outside the closed door, before. That she had always known this place, with its smell of smoke and yeast and impending rain, the damp chill from the brickwork coming through her petticoats and the air, that rang with cries and echoes.

She looked again at the spinning top and the feeling passed. The moment grew unfamiliar. She left, turning up a side road to the high street, to where a butcher called out his wares, standing under a row of hanging rabbits. Scraps of paper idled down gutters in the wind and a pair of soot-covered sweeps passed by on the back of a cart, their feet swinging.

Anna felt separated from other people. They hadn’t met betrayal. If they had, they couldn’t carry a cabbage under an arm in that casual way or laugh with that head-thrown-back freedom. She must face facts, she told herself. Louisa couldn’t help. She had to think of something else. Anna wandered past an undertaker’s and a grocer’s shop and imagined herself going to Lucas St. Clair’s hospital. She knew St. Mark’s—it was not far from All Hallows and she’d often passed it, hurrying by to escape hearing the cries of the inmates from behind the high walls.

She put aside the thought. She felt certain, whatever Vincent said, that Maud Sulten did exist. That it was she whom Anna had seen with Vincent at the fair. Anna did not have a clear idea of what she’d say to Maud if she answered the door—just a feeling that they should know about each other. Even if Maud knew that Vincent had a wife, that was different from knowing that it was she. Anna. And if Anna met Maud and spoke with her, Vincent wouldn’t be able to say she was imagining things.
Mad.

She stopped outside a baker’s, drawn by the smell of caraway, then stepped into the warmth, holding open the door for a harassed-looking woman pulling a boy by the hand. The woman thanked her, tilting her
head to one side as she passed. She had a vivacious, pretty face with lips reddened by cosmetics. A silk posy was pinned on her cape.

Anna’s eyes ranged over the sloping shelves at the back of the shop. Macaroons, slightly burned. Lumps of seed cake and square slabs of gingerbread—things she had taken for granted until a few weeks ago. On the other side of a curtain of beads, the baker lifted a tray of Bath buns out of the oven, all joined to each other.

“I’ll have some of those, please. A dozen.”

“Shan’t be a minute, miss.”

She’d give them to the children and have one herself. Catherine might like a couple, and Louisa. The bakery assistant pushed through the beads; they rattled back into place behind her. As Anna waited, she saw in her mind the short cape of the woman at the fair. The inquisitive angle of her head and the trays of silk posies the hawkers had tried so insistently to sell to her and Catherine. The assistant came back with a bag of buns and Anna handed over half a crown. She leaned on the counter while the woman counted out the change, slapping coins down on the scarred wood.

“You having a turn?” the assistant said. “You look queer.”

“It’s nothing. Thank you, ma’am.”

Anna took the bag and groped her way through the door. She retraced her steps, hurrying down the side road, hugging the warmth of the buns against her chest. Turning the corner into Sebastopol Street, she was just in time to see the woman push open the gate of number 59 and walk up the path. Maud Sulten, if it was she, waved to a neighbor, unlocked the door, and let herself in, still holding the child’s hand.

Anna leaned against the wall of the pub trying to absorb what she’d seen. She had two or three hours to get back to Louisa’s house, collect Catherine and leave—with a plan. But she felt unable to think at all.

Anna and Catherine were in the nursery. Louisa had persuaded Blundell to grant them one more night, on the grounds of Catherine’s not being fit to travel. Now they had to go. Catherine sat on the rug with her legs stretched out in front of her, stroking the dog’s long ears. Anna perched on the side of a truckle bed, dangling a rag doll in her hands. The painted features had been almost rubbed away from the cotton face and the doll was floppy from use, the straight arms and legs limp inside a gingham dress. It had been Louisa’s.

Anna’s heart ached. The smocks airing on the fireguard, the smell of milk and soap and the soft hiss of a new log in the grate made the nursery seem a place of safety. But it wasn’t.

Catherine had wept earlier when Anna insisted she must go back to Lake House. “You’re the hysteric, don’t forget, Mrs. Palmer. You’re the escaped lunatic. Why should I be the one to go back?”

“You’re fifteen. You’re unwell. You have to go back to your family.”

Catherine’s face was febrile, her voice hoarse. She closed her eyes.

“I won’t go back without you. You’ll have to drag me there yourself.”

“I’m coming with you, Catherine. I can’t stay with Louisa either.”

Catherine began to cry again. “I don’t want you to come back, Mrs. Palmer, really. Why doesn’t she hide you here?”

“She can’t,” Anna said flatly. “Her husband won’t let her.”

“I hate him,” Catherine said. “I hate all husbands.”

Louisa was insistent that they must be gone from Wren Street before Blundell returned from the office that evening. She’d had a hectic, anxious look in her eyes since the morning and kept rushing down to the
kitchen on trumped-up errands. She had promised to send doctors to see Anna at Lake House. “As soon as you get the certificate, Anna,” she’d said, “everything will be alright. You can go back to Vincent and start again. Maybe a child will help. …” Her words had faded away.

Anna hadn’t been able to speak, or even to look at her. Louisa was as powerless as she, and Anna felt sad for both of them.

The spaniel whined and thumped his tail on the carpet, looking from Catherine to Anna. His mouth hung open, displaying pink-and-black gums. Catherine kissed the top of his head.

“At least I’ll see Ben again,” she said. “I miss him. You’d like my brother, Mrs. Palmer.”

Anna smiled. She must see the girl safely home, get her near the house. Once they got there, she would declare her own plans to her and hope that Catherine would understand.

*   *   *

The bus was full, the air soupy with breath and damp wool and the roof creaking from the weight of passengers on top. The team of eight horses tossed their heads and breathed vapor into the cold air, their eyes concealed behind leather blinkers. Anna found an empty seat and settled Catherine into it, wrapped in her cloak, her hands in her muff. She paid the conductor a shilling for the two of them and Catherine fell asleep almost immediately, her head bumping on Anna’s shoulder.

Anna shivered. Louisa had insisted she keep on the cast-off dress. The skirt was too short and her ankles were in a draft. Lou had insisted on dressing her hair as well before they left, had arranged it in a fussy style like her own, with a parting running over the top of her head from one ear to the other, held in place with pins, talking all the while about how everything would turn out alright. Anna had her own dress in a paper parcel on her lap, tied with string. She would change, as soon as she got the opportunity. She couldn’t do what she had to do in a dress that didn’t feel right. That wasn’t her own.

She gazed out of the window at a man in a barber’s shop, his throat lathered. A board advertised Madame Lily, clairvoyant,
guaranteed to see your future
. Anna had disliked London when she first visited—thought it dry and overcrowded, with too much brick and blackened
stone, too many hurrying people. The paved streets made her feet ache and the stench of the gutters was unrelieved by sea breezes. She hadn’t understood how people could live with a smell like that hanging over them. But she’d grown used to the city quickly, grown to like the sea of people. Now she regretted the prospect of being far from London, buried in the countryside. But if Louisa couldn’t help, she had no alternative. She couldn’t trim hats, like Miss Batt, and she wouldn’t go and stand under a gaslight, with all the other country girls who’d lost their way. She would never do that.