Awakening (17 page)

*

Beatrice didn't push her sister or strike her; she knows she didn't. Anna caught the toe of her boot in the roots and crashed into the nettles. I didn't hurt her. I went to help her up and she refused to let me touch her. I crouched down; she rolled over and sat up, her cheek and her left hand and wrist red with nettle stings. She shoved my hand away as I offered dock leaves to cool the smart, saying that there was one thing I could do for her: disappear. Stop
violating
her.

The same old tune. Every time Anna doesn't get what she wants, she's being bullied and hectored and picked on. Beatrice makes her way, shaking, past the chestnut tree, the ewes, the topiary garden and the midden. Smoke from neighbours' bonfires drifts in the air. She pulls down her cuffs, straightens her bodice, breathes deep. The piano sounds from the parlour and singing voices murmur.

Nearer my God to thee, nearer to thee.

In the parlour they're grouped round the piano. Mr Elias nods and smiles as Beatrice slips in to join her fiancé. Reading signs of trouble in her face, Christian raises his arm. She slides in under her future husband's wing, as she'll be able to do all her life. Anna is beyond all reason. At last the wilful younger sister has crossed the line. That is clear.

The hymn concludes. Anna is heard to let herself in at the back door and to climb the stairs to her room. Later Beatrice taps on her sister's door. No response. Afraid to enter, Beatrice stands irresolute, her knuckles raised ready to knock again.

Violate
was the word that stung, an arrow in her heart.

It's hard to bear the particle of truth in her sister's wild reproaches.
Not your house.
Of course it's Anna's house, just as surely as it's Beatrice's. The shadow of their father darkens over the elder daughter, there in the dim corridor. Papa would never have sanctioned a threat to thrust the beloved younger from her home. Gently he would have remonstrated with Anna, expressed his chagrin and disappointment. He'd have padded off to his study to pray for her. Subdued to Papa's love, Anna would presently have followed him in and freely laid her contrition before him. The door would have closed behind the two. Nothing was unforgivable.

So I will pray, Beatrice thinks. Right here and now. Down on her knees she drops, outside Anna's room, skirts belling around her.

Joss scarcely turns a hair at finding her there. Pulling a humorous face, he steps round his sister, fondling her head. When he knocks, clearing his throat, he's asked to come in. The door's unlatched and through the gap Beatrice can see Anna, lounging on the bed, hold out her hand to her brother, asking in a perfectly normal voice whether Joss made sure to put his linen in the laundry basket. Have he and Mr Elias taken round the petition against tithes? How many signatures has he obtained? Beatrice thinks: she's punishing me. Well, let her.

‘Goodness, Annie what have you done to your face?' she hears.

‘Fell in some nettles.'

‘How on earth did you do that? The rash must itch like crazy. Let me put some Calamine on it for you. Have you got some? Do you want Old Quarlie?'

‘Dear God, no. On the shelf – yes, there.'

Shifting position, prior to rising to her feet, Beatrice gets a different view of her sister: Anna has chopped off her long, lustrous hair. It hangs in clumps round her face. Joss anoints Anna with lotion so that half her face is white.

‘What a clown you look. Poor old Annie. Always in the wars. Shall I do the other half of your face so that your two halves match?'

Anna laughs. ‘No, I shan't come down tonight, Joss. Can you ask Amy to bring me up a tray of tea? I'm not ill, I'm tired; I just want to rest.'

Joss bends and whispers to Anna, who shakes her head, categorically.

That was about me, Beatrice thinks. He's asking if she wants to see me. Or if I hurt her. Since when did they discuss me? Perhaps the two of them have always whispered behind her back, blamed the elder sister, humoured her, down all the years. Two of them against one of her. Beatrice rises, removes herself. You never know people, even or especially your kith and kin. Descending the stairs, she wonders how it came about that her half-brother and her sister understand one another so well, in that commonplace, low-key way. The two of them have rarely argued in their lives, accepting one another's vagaries.

Later, as Amy prepares lamb chops for frying and Beatrice slices carrots, Beatrice considers Miriam Sala, wondering about the identity of her legal husband. What is her real surname?

Has the woman abandoned children along the way?

The Montagus will know. Or be in a position to find out. She stands looking down at her cold hand with the knife in it. The joints are reddened, the pads of the fingers callused; a scatter of brown flecks, the seeds of age-marks that will bloom within a decade, defaces the backs of her hands. They're the hands of a menial. Leaving the vegetables to Amy, she finds a lemon to squeeze over her skin, to whiten it for her wedding day. This must be repeated daily. So much to do. A trousseau to be assembled – and Christian hasn't the least idea of the scope of the work to be done in preparation. Men don't. Chemises, nightgowns and drawers; petticoats, combinations. The bridal gown, a travelling dress, a walking dress, silk dress … drugget, bedlinen. Beatrice's mind is packed to the rafters with objects that must be purchased. An immense outlay: can't be helped.

One is, lacking either a father or a serviceable brother, one's own daughter, holding the purse strings to defray the cost of giving oneself away. These are the last moments of an era. The natural order will reassert itself and what a relief it will be to hand over responsibilities to her husband. Certainly it will. Though I do have an appetite for mastery, she reminds herself. No doubt about that. Anna's hysterical remarks about marriage appal her. Chattel? Never. A Christian husband guarantees his wife's rights under God.

And anyway, Joss must make a settlement on her.

Now, for the wedding dress, violet grenadine perhaps, fine silk and cotton weave, that can be adapted and worn for best on future occasions. Last month there was a beautiful swatch in Miss Eliot's haberdashery: but will it still be there in sufficient quantity? White with faint violet stripes. Everything must be bought to last. And what else? Flowers of course, chrysanthemums, love-in-a-mist: the garden will furnish those. The wedding breakfast.

Then (she almost forgot) there is the question of the bridesmaid's dress.

And, oh, the bridesmaid with her cropped, scandalous hair.

Chapter 10

Anna sits where she has lapsed, listless in the tedious mayhem. Sarum House is in uproar, with two strong West Grimstead lasses helping to clean from top to bottom. Joss whistles, self-elected inspector of their work, urging them to take a little break for they must be tired, while Amy stamps around the house in a filthy temper. Doors slam. One brawny girl beats carpets in the garden as if whipping malefactors. If Beatrice had her way, Anna herself would be grasped by the scruff of the neck and scrubbed with a hog's bristle brush until she'd shed her dirty epidermis. Then they could dispose of her skin and hang her laundered bones out to dry.

Though the sickness has abated, its aftermath leaves her feeble. Anna consents to be measured for a dress. Agrees with everything Beatrice says; her sister is her usual brightly practical self except that she never looks Anna in the eye.

Anna awoke this morning, thinking: Beatrice is death.

How could she have allowed herself to slump into the old angry torpor? No word comes from Mirrie, presumably lingering in Tenby. Or Beatrice has intercepted the letters. Anna imagines the Salas, freed from visitors, walking barefoot over ribbed sand, all in all to one another, enjoying the intimacy of one another's company by the fireside or bent over rock pools. Far away. What is the truth about the charge Mr Montagu has brought against her friend? How could one stoop to ask her? I never can, Anna thinks. Mirrie will flinch back into herself like a sea anemone. That will be it.

Better by far, in any case, to continue to believe in your friend. What right has Anna to judge, whatever Miriam has done? Her friend will be a pariah, pointed at in the streets. Respectable folk will avert their heads. A patch of soreness remains at the knowledge that Mirrie may not have trusted Anna with the truth.

And Lore has dwindled to the dimensions of that wasp on the sill waving feeble feet as it perishes. Perhaps, Anna thinks, it's healthier to release Lore. Maybe her grieving ghost is detained here by my calls and cannot die. Can't you die, darling? How can I help you die? I'll look away, occupying my mind by studying the place in the wallpaper where the sheets are out of true and the rosebuds misalign with their stalks. When the wallpaperers introduce a tiny error, it multiplies to infinity. But beneath that paper lie layer upon layer of old paint, old wallpaper, plaster, lime wash, timber and at the centre the unseen irregularities of the mediaeval wattle and daub, a lattice of hazel glued together with clay and dung and straw.

Where is Lore now? Nowhere; she's layered into the wall. She's nobody: a name without a body. It's impossible to grasp; the whole matter of her death comes apart in your hands. But Lore believed in the god of the imagination, to create and unify and integrate. How disappointed in Anna she'd be, if she could see her abjection.

If only I could have one conversation with her, Anna thinks: just half an hour. Not for the first time, Anna considers the Spiritualists.

‘I hope you'll be recovered for the wedding, dear,' says Mrs Elias. Her daughter lolls on a stool at Anna's dressing table, opening bottles without a by-your-leave, sniffing the contents, trying out Anna's comb and brush. Loveday sits Anna up and plumps her pillows, mentioning Dr Quarles, who previously did Anna such good with his regime.

Anna replies stonily, ‘He will come in here over my dead body, Loveday, and I mean that literally. And no other quack either.'

‘Oh well, you know best,' Loveday says comfortably. ‘You can always change your mind. It's such a pity, dear, that you cannot enjoy the
bustle
of preparations. It's so jolly and exciting – everyone is charmed with Mr Ritter, even those of us who might have preferred dear Beatrice to marry elsewhere.'

Christian has departed on a fortnight's speaking tour, shepherding Miss Randolph through the south-western shires. He has trained her to tell her story to congregations in her own voice. Some Dissenters have vehemently objected to Mr Beecher's ‘slave auctions', with which Christian is associated. ‘Vulgar American showmanship' is repudiated by critics as ‘yet another form of mass entertainment demeaning causes dear to the Nonconformist heart'. Letters arrive daily for Beatrice, sometimes twice daily; the Epistles, Anna thinks, of St Christian. Will keeps away from Sarum House.

‘May I try on your dress, Miss Anna?' Patience asks, as soon as her mother's out of the door.

‘No, you may not.'

‘Why not?'

‘It's not public property.'

Anna shoots the little rat a poisonous look. Two shrewd hazel eyes return it. Patience wears an air of malign irony, altogether beyond her eleven years. Intelligent, Anna thinks, but warped. Two apple-breasts are just forcing Patience's pinafore out and soon she'll be encased in stays. Not long left for
you
to scamper around like a hoyden climbing trees and swimming in the river with your brothers. You'll soon be hobbled, Anna thinks, like the rest of us. Gelded, even, for women are gelded. Give us all the runaround while you can. Indeed this may be Patience's final summer of freedom – and already it's September.

The girl has the skirt of Anna's dress between finger and thumb. ‘Oh go
on
. Why not?'

‘The dress has to be kept nice, Patience. And, in case you hadn't noticed, you're too small. And anyway, because I say so.'

‘So?'

‘Go and give your mother a hand.'

‘What with?'

‘Whatever she's doing. Quite honestly, I don't want you.'

Patience perches on Anna's bed. ‘You are
putting it on
. Everyone knows.'

‘Putting what on?'

‘There's nothing wrong with you. You're just pretending to
languish.
That's what everyone says. Because you're in
disgrace
, you're trying to avoid trouble. Me and Jack saw you coming back from wherever you went with Mr Anwyl. You were skipping down the path! Your legs work perfectly well. And anyway you're
hysterical.
Your sister says so.
It's a mental malady
. Dr Quarles is going to come and see if they should put you away. When you least expect it.'

Anna keeps her composure; she grins and folds her arms. At last someone's playing into her hands. She says to the little rat, ‘Oh, that's very interesting, Patience. Yes, do try on the dress. Why not? You can fold up the hem.'

The adversary is wrong-footed. After all, Patience is just a child and has no arsenal to match Anna's. She'd meant to give Miss Anna Pentecost a vicious poke in the ribs; to make her flesh creep. Anna's amusement wrong-foots her and, pausing for thought, she elects to seize her advantage while it's offered.