The Painted Bridge (7 page)

The fire was out and the room felt dead too, the air still and cold
and stale. Anna sat down on the bed and looked at her feet in the pair of shapeless slippers they’d supplied in place of her boots. She felt sick with disappointment.

The feeling grew stronger. She got up and clutched at the washstand, leaned against the wall then stumbled to the bed to lie down. Waves of nausea rose from her stomach up through her chest, her head. She jumped up from the bed as Lovely rushed in and set down a tin bowl. A stream of liquid spurted out through Anna’s mouth, spattered across the bottom of the bowl. The sickness ceased and returned immediately, more strongly. Lovely stood beside her, holding her hair out of the way, wiping her mouth, as Anna vomited again and again.

“How does anyone get out of this place?” Anna said, between heaves of her stomach. Lovely held a cup of water to her lips.

“They get out sooner or later, miss, most of ’em. It depends mainly on what happens outside. Who wants them out. Who wants them in.”

Anna continued retching, violently, though nothing came. Black spots danced in front of her eyes; her stomach muscles ached.

“Damn you, Higgins,” she said, leaning on the bed frame, gripping it with both hands. “And damn you, Querios Abse. Damn you to hell.”

Lovely put the bowl outside the door, came back and squeezed out a flannel with water from the ewer, smoothed it over her lips, her ears, her neck. Anna didn’t resist, as Lovely helped her into a nightdress.

“It’ll pass, miss. Lie down a minute.”

*   *   *

It was dusk when Anna woke. The light glowed violet through the flimsy curtains; outside, sheep were complaining in long plaintive cries. Someone had laid the fire and the bedroom door had been left ajar, kept open by a wedge of wood. She could get off the bed and walk through it. She pictured herself doing that, gripped the mattress and tried to sit up. At the sound of footsteps in the passageway, she fell back on the pillow and closed her eyes.

Lovely returned and busied about the room. She struck a lucifer and the air grew sharp with the smell of sulfur. Anna heard her blowing into the sticks, then the sound of liquid splashing into a cup. The rattle of a teaspoon, followed by the double tap of it. Her mother, Amelia
Newlove, used to make the same sound. Stir, stir, stir. Tap, tap. Her own little tune.

“You feeling any better, miss?” Lovely laid a hand on her shoulder. Her touch was gentle, despite her brawn. “I brought sweet tea and Cook’s spared a dash of brandy. Sit up and take it while it’s hot.”

Tears sprang from Anna’s eyes and rolled toward her ears. She couldn’t accept pity from Lovely or from anyone else. The only strength she still had was to rely on herself and keep everyone here at a distance. Rolling over toward the wall, she stared at the reflection of the fire, the flames in the glass licking at the fisher girl’s back.

“I don’t want tea. Just leave me alone, will you.”

“As yer like.”

Lovely dragged the mattress out from under the bed and threw herself down on it. Anna lay still, waiting to hear the Lord’s Prayer in the fervent whisper that made her feel as if she’d never properly heard the words before. Nothing. Only, after a while, a creaking and rustling of the straw. An
Amen
.

When she judged Lovely was asleep, Anna sat up. The door was locked again. Lovely had left the tea on the chair, drawn up by the bed. Anna reached for the cup and took a sip. The tea was lukewarm but the brandy felt fiery in her throat, heated her from inside. She drained it and eased herself back down under the blankets, hugging them around her ears, her feet tucked up under the rough nightdress.

She thought back over recent events, trying to see them clearly. The mission to the coast had not been what she had imagined. It was the first time since her marriage that she’d traveled alone, and when she set out on the Tuesday after the great storm she’d felt sure of herself, had a sense of invulnerability that was new to her. The feeling ebbed away as the train tore past cottages with their roofs blown off, trees lying on their sides, their roots in the air, festooned with mud.

Taking coaches from Birmingham, she traveled north and west toward the Welsh coast, through mountain passes where the road was scattered with fallen boulders. Three times, all the passengers had to disembark, the women huddled in the wind by the side of the track while the men lent a hand shifting rocks. The world seemed to have been torn up, thrown around like a plaything by the storm.

By the time the coach reached the harbortown it was dark. The exhausted horses had ceased to respond to the driver’s whip. They trundled at walking pace past windows lit with rushlights, past leaning hovels with people clustered round their open doors, dogs barking and snapping at the wheels of the coach. Peering out from her seat by the window, Anna felt afraid. She gripped the handles of the carpet bag for reassurance. It was heavy, stuffed with her new clothes and Vincent’s old ones. Hidden right in the middle was his second-best watch, the silver one.

She’d rummaged in the drawers in the wardrobe before she left, pulling out shirts with signs of wear on the necks, socks in need of darning. The drawers were labeled but the contents did not match the labels. There had been socks in the Shirts drawer, shirts in the one for Cravats. They had nothing for children in the Vicarage. She had run down to the kitchen before she left, requested a pound of currants, some loaf sugar. It was all she could think of.

“Could you hurry, please? It’s urgent. Actually, it’s a matter of life or death.”

Cook had looked at her oddly but for once she hadn’t cared. The image of the boy brought from the water was so clear in Anna’s mind that it seemed to outshine ordinary life. Vincent was conducting a funeral and although she hadn’t intended to conceal the trip from him, she found she wanted to get away before he returned. She scratched a hasty note and left it for him in the study, propped against his dictionary. Slipping out through the side door, which led directly to the street, she climbed aboard an omnibus in the direction of the railway station.

*   *   *

By the time she got off the coach in the main square of the Welsh town, Anna was hungry, her hands freezing. She couldn’t put down the bag; the filth was inches deep under her feet, clinging to her boots. She felt relieved when she found a room in an inn. It bore no trace of the sea view it was named for and a salty dampness pervaded the air, the walls, the bedding—but it was a place to lay her head and make a plan.

The first morning, she woke early. It was a fine day, clear and still with not a breath of wind. She hid her bag under the bed and paid a
boy a farthing to guide her to the bay where the ship had gone down, picking her way behind him through alleys where pigs ran free and the stench from the flooded ditches made her retch. There were chimney pots lying smashed in the cottage gardens, walls and fences blown down so what had been private, a broken-doored privy, a three-legged chair balanced under a kitchen window, was exposed for all to see.

The
Katerina
lay a little distance away from the land, half submerged, sinking as the waves broke over her then rising up between the swells, water pouring out of her portholes like tea from a pot. Anna hesitated, standing at the water’s edge. The sea under the morning sun did not appear a killer. It advanced playfully, surge by small surge, retreated again. She knew what she must do. She took a deep breath and waded into the shallows, first gasping then crying out loud from the cold, sifting branches of podded seaweed and splintered lengths of driftwood through her hands, plunging her arms in deeper. She knew even as her empty hands trawled through the water, her fingers in violent pain from the cold, that she would find nothing. The sea had swallowed hundreds of adult men, without trace. And the newspaper report had said that the boy had been rescued alive. Yet she’d been compelled to search for him in the water. She couldn’t quite understand it.

A crowd of children had gathered to watch from the rocks and were throwing pebbles in the water around her. The ship’s cat bobbed on the tide—inflated, water-slicked. If she ever had to drown, please God let it not be by a black beach, she prayed, as she walked out, her skirts heavy, and her heart, asking herself what she’d imagined she might find.

The children followed Anna back to the Sea View Inn, jeering, pulling at her soaked clothes. Back in the privacy of her room, she sent down for hot water for a bath. The water was plentiful when it came and smelled of wood smoke; it left a residue of grit in the bottom of the tub like pepper in a soup bowl. She left her sodden skirts drying by the window, put on her other dress and made her way down the creaking, wooden stairs to a snug off the saloon bar and ordered a chicken sandwich, warming herself by the fire, trying to think what she should do next.

Anna felt a growing awareness of the oddness of her situation. An
awareness brought about not just by the stiff politeness of the landlord, the guarded looks of the other residents at the inn, but by the utter novelty of the experience. She had never traveled such a great distance alone before or stayed in a hotel on her own. Yet this was the response she was impelled to make to the storm, to the wrecked ships and lives it had left in its wake.

In the afternoon, she set off around the cottages with the bag, intending to give away the things she’d brought and make inquiries about the boy at the same time. Some of the survivors turned down what she offered, refusing the sober shirts and jackets as not what they would wear even if they were about to be buried six feet under. One pointed out the worn knees on the trousers. Another grabbed her from his sickbed, took her by surprise. There were better things than socks to offer a man back from the dead, he said when she escaped to the other side of the room, the skin around her mouth rising in a rash of protest, her breast throbbing.

No one knew anything of a small boy, brought from the water still breathing.

Grace Jephcote’s brow was contracted, the gaze in her large eyes fixed. The muscles on each side of her mouth appeared rigid and her hands grasped each other under her chin, the tendons taut. She had a daisy chain on her head, slipping down her dark hair.

“What d’you think?” Lucas St. Clair said.

James Maddox picked up the photograph, brought it within inches of his face, then held it at arm’s length.

“Looks nervy. Then there’s the crown, of course. Why do they all fancy themselves as queens? I don’t know, St. Clair. Hysteria?” He dropped the picture back on the table. “I find it easier when I can see ’em in front of me.”

Lucas picked up the picture again and held it to the light still filtering through the dining room window. He blew particles of dust from the face and neck. The corners of the print displayed the fragile, curling boundaries of the collodion; the whole image appeared as if it could peel up off the paper like a layer of skin. He looked at the eyes, the dilated pupils. He’d done his best to reassure her but Mrs. Jephcote had crouched on the edge of the posing chair and scarcely drawn breath during the long exposure. She’d crossed herself again and again when it was over and hurried from the room.

“She’s suffering from religious mania, Dox. Can’t you see it? The raised, curved brows. The tension in the jaw and that terrified look in her eyes. The poor woman is possessed by some fearful vision, incited by her crackpot preacher, you won’t be surprised to learn. The daisy chain is her crown of thorns.”

“How on earth am I meant to know that?”

Lucas laid down the print again.

“By careful observation. The point is, Dox, that if you can diagnose patients, you might stand a better chance of treating them effectively. I got them to take away her Bible and set her to work in the gardens, planting beans. That was back in the summer. She’s much improved. They discharged her last week. If she stays away from the parson she might do well.”

Maddox ran a finger over his front teeth. He’d had a new one wired in, Lucas saw, filling the crater at the front of his mouth.

“Purging seems to do most of ’em a power of good,” he said. “Leeches, on occasion.”

“Women hate leeches,” Lucas said.

“Even so. She might have benefited from a cooling of the blood.”

*   *   *

They walked along the passageway and into the parlor, where Lucas lit both lamps, adjusted the wicks and poured whisky into two crystal tumblers. Keeping the glass with the chipped rim, he passed over the other.

“Cheers.”

“To your experiments,” Maddox said, raising his glass.

There was a tap at the door and a head wearing a red scarf appeared around the edge of it.

“I’m off now, sir, if there’s nothing more you want.”

“Good night, Stickles.”

The basement door banged as both men sat down by the fire. A dustbin lid clattered to the ground outside in the darkness, followed by a curse. Footsteps receded down the pavement. Lucas had taken on Stickles as a plain cook, which she proved not to be. Downstairs in her kitchen empire she didn’t so much cook as conduct experiments. She concocted salve from beeswax and insisted he apply it to his hands, to counter the effects of the chemicals; produced unidentifiable jams involving petals and bits of aromatic bark, or pickled nuts and root vegetables in jars, occasionally serving one up on a plate. The lumpy defeat in their shapes reminded Lucas of the preserved hearts and kidneys in the labs at university.