The Painted Bridge (29 page)

“Shall we go for a picnic?” Amelia Newlove said, in her social voice. “Is the pony ready?”

After the shouting came the screaming.

“Where is my Antony? My baby boy? What have you done with him?” Incomprehensible reproaches and laments that disturbed and distressed Anna.

“It’s the morphine,” the doctor said. “Takes folk different ways. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

In death, her body was soft. Silent. Anna washed her hair and sponged her, sprinkled her with rosewater. She was tiny. Harmless. Anna could love her again as she once had. She took the St. Christopher from her neck and fastened it around her own throat. Arranged her mother lying on her side, one cheek resting on her clasped hands.

The funeral was as slight as the coffin. A handful of mourners, friends of Captain Newlove’s, mainly. A spot in the overcrowded graveyard, the earth heaped high on each side of the path, the white void narrow, barely wide enough for the box. The wind colder than she ever felt it before. Afterward, without her mother in it, the flint house seemed becalmed—neither sinking nor floating. Anna didn’t know what to do with possessions. With minutes. She didn’t know how to live.

Hepzibah came, from Gloucester. Beatrice, from Portsmouth. Lavinia was confined and couldn’t travel from Northumberland; she dispatched her eldest daughter, with her governess. Louisa came from London. Vincent sent condolences. He wasn’t able to get away for the funeral.

Hunched around the drop-leaf table, quarreling, her sisters didn’t seem like married women. Anna talked with her niece, took her down to the beach to collect shells. Her elder sisters had always seemed more like aunts.

No sooner was she buried than her mother arrived in Anna’s dreams like an uninvited guest, refusing to leave. She was as big as the wind, filled every room she entered. She heaped her own coffin with soft black earth and planted it with bulbs; they grew tall and blue, turned into children. She came after Anna demanding to know what she had done with Antony.

That night, in her room at Lake House, Anna fell asleep and dreamed of her mother—alive again and asking her a question. In the morning, waking in the same position as she’d fallen asleep, she felt confused as she opened her eyes to the texture of the green wallpaper, the repeated pattern of thistles. Lovely had gone and she was alone.

“Who is Antony?” she said aloud.

*   *   *

Makepeace was at her table, twisting a length of black ribbon between her fingers.

“You wanted to see me, Mrs. Makepeace?”

“You owe us all an explanation. Mr. Abse is much disturbed. Mrs. Abse has come close to nervous collapse.”

“I couldn’t have brought Catherine back any quicker than I did.”

“It seems you feel no gratitude toward your friends here. You’ve evidently made no progress in your state of mind.”

As Makepeace’s eyes bored into her, Anna pinched her own wrists on her lap. She thought of London, and imagined Madame Lily—gazing into a ball of cloudy crystal, perceiving the outline of things to come. The man getting up from the barber’s chair, rubbing a hand over a newly shaven cheek and walking out into a shaft of winter sun. Of the woman in the baker’s, helping herself to a bun and eating it absentmindedly
as she stood behind a counter. Life had a place for her. She would return to it.

Anna lifted her own eyes and stared back at Makepeace.

“Being an escaped lunatic is hardly better than being a confined one. I intend to free myself properly.”

“How’ll you do that, Mrs. Palmer?”

“Not by writing letters. My sister did not receive a single one, of all those I entrusted to you.”

Makepeace’s lips twitched as her eyes shifted to the fireplace.

“Relatives are embarrassed when their lunatics write begging letters or arrive on their doorsteps. Most often, like your sister, they’re able to persuade them to return. Mrs. Heron was anxious that you should believe that you came back of your own free will. That you shouldn’t know that Mr. Fludd was waiting downstairs in the kitchen in case you changed your mind. He followed behind the bus all the way with the pony, Mrs. Palmer. Her husband insisted on it.”

“You’re lying, Mrs. Makepeace,” Anna said, without conviction. She stood up and walked to the door. “I need to see Mr. Abse. I need to see him as soon as possible.”

The cup and saucer sat unchanged on the mantelpiece; the arrangement of everlasting flowers was layered with cobwebs. Her eye fell on a piece of embroidery pinned to the wall behind Makepeace, unframed. It was a vibrant tableau of tropical flowers and insects. It glowed and shone as if it were the only living thing in the room. Miss Batt’s work was complete—every last petal and stem finished.

Anna lingered on the threshold, overcome by weariness and rested her head on the doorframe.

“It is a tragic loss, the death of Miss Batt. We will all grieve her. But what about you, Mrs. Makepeace? You’re not certified or imprisoned by your family. Will you remain now she is gone?”

Makepeace tightened the ribbon round her finger; the tip of it was purple, suffused with blood.

“This is my home. I shall never leave Lake House.”

*   *   *

Alone in the room, Frances Makepeace sat motionless. The tears she had suppressed while Mrs. Palmer was there ran down her face. She wished she could feel something so simple as grief for her only friend. She felt more rage than sadness, rage at Talitha for leaving her without a good-bye. For taking her own life and abandoning her, Fanny, here in the barren world. Rage at Querios Abse, for being more concerned about what the newspapers would say if the story got out than he was about dear Talitha. And at Lucas St. Clair—for having made a photograph of the corpse. No living soul ought ever to see another person the way she had seen Talitha Batt, with her throat gaping open. To record it was nothing short of blasphemous.

Most of all—although she had an inkling that it was unjust—she felt enraged by Mrs. Palmer. All of this was her fault. Palmer had unsettled everything and everyone since she arrived and yet what was she? Nothing. Nothing but a naive young woman who’d never faced any trouble and who relied on a pair of striking eyes and a slender figure to get her through life. Frances hated her.

She opened the drawer under her table, extracted an envelope slit open along its top and pulled out a single sheet of paper. She read the letter again.

Dear Miss Sulten,

You do not know me. You may not even know my name. But I am writing to plead for your help.

I barely trust my own mind as I write this letter. I must know whether or not you are acquainted with Vincent Palmer, the man I married seven months ago. He swears on the Holy Bible there is no such person as Maud Sulten.

I don’t inquire about the nature of the relationship but I need urgently to know—do you exist?

Yours truly,
    

Anna Palmer

Makepeace laid the letter on the table in front of her. She was back again where she could not tolerate to be, in the past. When Jack Makepeace first left her, she simply hadn’t believed it. She stayed indoors,
waiting for Jack to come home. Emptied a sherry bottle one morning, for the first time in her life, and another the following morning. She played the piano for hours on end. It would have been better for her if she had remained that way—sipping fortified wines and soothing herself with tunes.
Julia’s a-weeping, On a summer’s afternoon …

How could Jack, a clerk, a man who gave his eyesight and his days to setting out the profits and losses of three spice traders, a man dedicated to the rendering of the world in precise quantities and values—behave as he did? He’d eaten the breakfast she’d risen to make him. Swallowed it down with the tea kept hot under the cosy she’d knitted. She saw him off, was still standing on the step when he reached the corner. He didn’t look around. Frances went indoors again, feeling cheated. He’d owed her a wave, a backward look. That made her laugh, later. Laugh and cry.

It had been a year before she could step outside the house. As if it was not Jack who’d disappeared, but herself. She was ashamed to show her face in her own street, where she’d lived all her born days, even though it was his empty suitcase on the top of the wardrobe, his spare pair of trousers on the hanger. He who had sauntered off without so much as a good-bye.

After a year, she had a letter from the girl. Her name was Lillah and she hadn’t known anything about Frances. “You don’t know me,” the letter began. “You may not even know my name.” Lillah wrote to say she was sorry. Maybe it was a blessing, she said, that Fanny’d had no children. If she wanted to come and see Jack’s child, she would welcome her. Perhaps, she said, they could be kin of sorts.

One July day, Frances opened her door and stepped out into the street as if nothing had happened, as if she’d never been married to Jack Makepeace but had remained Fanny Fitzgerald, as surely and blithely as when she was five years old. She made her way to the address on Lillah’s letter, her reticule stuffed full, bobbing against her hip with each step. She walked up the tiled path and past a greengage tree laden with unripe fruit as if she was delivering a visiting card, which, in a way, she was. She pushed the rags soaked in oil through the letterbox. Struck a lucifer and made sure the last shred caught properly before she dropped it through the slot, the tips of her fingers stinging and blistering.

She crossed the road to watch. She’d meant to stay just long enough to be sure it had worked but she couldn’t leave. An hour later, maybe more, she was still there, entranced by the leaping, scorching grandeur of the flames, their disregard for window frames, curtains, privet leaves. She couldn’t contain the shouts that rose in her, the jubilation. The ringing bell of the fire cart finally made itself heard, in the distance. A crowd had gathered, staring sometimes at the house and sometimes at Frances.

It began to rain, a heavy summer rain; the first drops splattered like pancakes on the ground. The fire quietened and began to smolder and as the rain grew heavier a veil of steam went up over what remained of the little house. Some of the people raised umbrellas over their heads at the same time as the roof beam caved in. The window glass had melted and the greengages shriveled where they hung.

Fire setting, they called it in court. Arson. It didn’t seem like that to her. It seemed to her she was returning to Jack the anger he’d ignited in her—that had scorched her from the inside, that was properly his. The sentence had been unjust. No one died. Only the dog. Jack hadn’t even been there. Jack always got away, from everything. After prison came Lake House. It was worse than prison, being jailed by her own family.

*   *   *

It was time Maud Sulten knew the truth. Probably poor Maud had been the Reverend Palmer’s common-law wife. Then Anna had come along and spirited him away, just as Lillah had stolen Jack away from her. Fanny had seen Lillah in the courtroom, two children clinging to her skirts. It hadn’t seemed possible, that such a young girl could be the mother of Jack’s children. A slender, pretty, foolish girl.

Frances Makepeace refolded the letter and copied the address onto a new envelope in her own backward-sloping copperplate that had never varied since she was a child. She folded Mrs. Palmer’s letter into it and sealed it then crumpled up the original envelope and tossed it on the fire. The acrid smell of burning wax filled the air as the envelope caught and flared; a pink trickle dripped through the grate, slowing and hardening as it rolled out across the hearth tiles.

Emmeline reached for the salt cellar and shook it over her soup. Nothing came out but she felt a solid lump flying up and down inside. Hannah should have taken it back to the kitchen for drying out. She looked up to frown at her and caught her leaning on the sideboard with her eyes drooping as if she was half asleep. At a look from Emmeline, the girl straightened up and began to fill the water glasses.

Catherine had been home for three days. She seemed farther away than ever, sitting next to Emmeline with her elbows propped on the table, a book open on her side plate. Emmeline didn’t have the heart to correct her. Querios was eating methodically, lifting regular quantities of soup to his lips. She wished he was nearer to her. She needed him beside her, not at the opposite end of the table. They needed to stand together.

“The days are getting longer, don’t you think?” she called down the length of the table, over the cruet and the candelabra.

He looked up balefully, not at her but at Catherine. He’d begun to take notice of her since she came back although not in the way Emmeline had longed for. He was treating Catherine with a wary, wounded vigilance, as if their daughter was a dog that had bitten once and might bite again. And he spent longer hours than ever before shut up in the study with the paperwork, worrying himself about the magistrates.

“Did you hear me, Q?”

“Hmm? Fox has been at it again,” he said.

“At what?”

“Bold as brass. The second female. There’s only the cock left now.”