Awakening (19 page)

When Baines enters, Miss Jackson is on him like a mob at the shrine of a saint. She has brought along the cream silk nightgown, she says, from the women's cooperative; she trusts Mrs Sala will be pleased to have it.

‘My dear Eleanor, how thoughtful – but my wife is far from well.' Baines stands in the doorway, blocking the visitors' path.

Miss Jackson is not to be discouraged.

‘One of her headaches? A tooth? How dreadful for the darling. Now, all I ask is to sit with her – as quietly as a church mouse. She'll not know I'm there. My whole desire in
life
is to sit at her feet and kiss the hem of her garment.'

‘I'm unsure how much use that would be to her,' Baines says mildly. He refrains from catching Anna's incredulous eye. ‘In the normal way I'd be happy for you to kiss her slippers as much as you liked – or rather, as much as
she
liked, though a little of that goes a long way, I'd have thought – but this is not the time.'

Narrowing her body, Miss Jackson sidles past him. Anna stays where she is.

Mirrie's face is swollen and blotched. She's reclining in the curve of the bay, feet raised on a footstool. Anna, through two door frames, watches the obsequious handmaiden approach, holding out a swatch of material. Sinking to her knees, Eleanor clasps her idol's feet, kissing them repeatedly. Aeneas the labrador rises from the hearth rug to sniff at her.

‘For heaven's sake, Eleanor, get up, do,' says Miriam, irritably. ‘Think of your dignity.'

‘I love you too much for dignity.'

‘I can see you only for five minutes, Eleanor,' adds Miriam. ‘And pray do not fawn.'

Miss Jackson names conditions: she'll accept the five-minute rule if she may sit or kneel at Mrs Sala's feet. Why encourage this abjection, Anna wonders? Perhaps somehow or other Mirrie needs us all round her, odd people standing a bit outside the pale. At last the disciple is got out of the room, not without shooting quiverfuls of annihilating arrows from her eyes at the favoured Anna.

‘There's no harm in her at all,' says Baines. ‘In fact Eleanor is a good, practical sort of person – she organises a women's cooperative. She's taken a weekend house in Salisbury. Miriam is her sole folly. We see her most weekends floating around at the gates, watching for us.'

‘Miss Jackson says she can never love a man,' says Mirrie.

That sticks at a curious angle in Anna's mind. She twists the fingers of her gloves between her hands.

‘I know what you're thinking,' Mirrie says. ‘But isn't all love a good thing, Anna?'

‘Well, no. Not really. Unrequited love is not good, or love that destroys. Or slavish love. Quite a few categories really.'
She says she can never love a man
. ‘Has something happened, Mirrie, to distress you?'

‘Come and sit with me – dear Anna. There are things I've kept from you. This I can no longer do. I am a published author, a novelist. Perhaps you had guessed this? An author rather than an authoress – that at least is what I aspired to be. But the secret is betrayed. And with it the
legal
irregularity of our marriage has become public knowledge. I shall be a pariah. You will be called upon to shun me. Only the Eleanors of this world will remain faithful.'

‘How can you say that? No, Mirrie. Truly, I never shall.'

‘You may be forced to.'

‘Not ever. How can you even think so?'

‘Bitter experience.'

‘But not of me – not bitter experience of me.'

‘I've always thought myself exceptional. But we all struggle in the same web. You cannot visit me and keep your reputation, Anna. That's just how it is. I am a woman writing under a man's name; I have been unmasked; stripped naked to public view. And in any case, Baines and I cannot continue to live in England.' She announces this briskly, with decision. ‘We've been driven from our own country.'

‘But where shall you go?'

‘What does it matter? Weimar, perhaps. Paris. I shall miss you. And yet in some ways I'm glad to leave.'

Anna seems to see her friend across a room that has expanded to a continent of space. Nothing Mirrie can do will restore her to society's acceptance. Her parents and brothers have disowned her. ‘And, Anna, I was a filial child. I meant to be a loyal wife. I was prepared for self-sacrifice but … there are limits. And I've always nourished ambition. I married a gentleman with whom, as it turned out, I had nothing in common. I met Baines. He was the first man in my life to see and value my gift.'

Miriam has no wish to allege anything against her kin. With hindsight, she sees that there were opportunities before her engagement to recognise her intended's narrow, fastidious character and its incompatibility with her own: she fooled herself. Marrying him against the judgment of her family, she went on to leave him against their judgment. Miriam has carried her family's reputation into the gutter. They have all but one aunt repudiated her. She no longer has a family.

Anna glances from Miriam to Baines, leaning forward to listen, nod, sympathise. Yes, you're devoted to her now but how will you be in ten years' time? What if you desert her? Mirrie must have asked herself this a thousand times. It occurs to Anna that, having attained celebrity as an author, even if it takes the form of notoriety, Mirrie is at least equipped to support herself, should the worst come to the worst.

And were there children of this marriage? Miriam doesn't say. It's impossible to ask. Should Anna ask to accompany the Salas to Weimar or Paris?

But I have no sufficient private means, she thinks, being dependent on my sister. If I joined them, Mirrie and her husband, all in all to one another, would welcome, then tolerate, then suffer my presence – just another hanger-on like Eleanor Jackson.
She can never love a man.
Anna would begin to bore them. And then again the thought of abandoning Wiltshire is a fearful prospect: tearing up her roots, forfeiting the only home she has ever known.

‘But, Anna dearest, let us ring for tea. I have not asked after you at all.'

As they talk, a draught crosses the room. The fire roars in the chimney, keeping its heat to itself. The cedar thrashes, rattling the panes. It will take no time at all for me to go mad, if I stay or if I go, Anna thinks. Either way I'll be alone.

If I called, who would answer?

All the while at the back of her mind, there's the recognition,
She says she can never love a man.
If this is also true of herself, Anna lives in a world of greater aberration than anything guessed by those around her. The best she can hope for is to hide her anomaly. At Sarum House she lives amongst the partially blind. Or in disguise, behind a thick veil.

‘Oh, I'm well, thank you, Miriam. No tea – really. I should be returning home.'

The bells of St Osmund's toll as Anna walks the river path. A doomy, lachrymose message. Crossing the footbridge, she views a cluster of black-clad mourners outside the Anglican church, awaiting the hearse.
Conform
,
conform
, the bell insists. The coffin is removed from the hearse. The black plumes of the horses shake in the wind; leaves are lashed from the graveyard's ancient beeches. Anna recognises the family: the Tourneys, Wiltshire gentry, High Churchmen, formerly recusants, latterly Tractarians. The aisle is paved with their ancestral tombstones; the walls boast their monuments and inscriptions. The Quarles tombs too. The minister arrives, robed in pomp of alb, stole, chasuble, whatnot – and a phalanx of blond choristers in blue cassocks. A bearer carrying a cross. They file into the church; the doors close behind them.

Circling crows call:
Conform
,
conform.
Generations ago the Pentecosts took the momentous step into nonconformity; a dissidence not subdued by persecution. It held to its Christ with heroic quietism and still demands from its daughters not less than everything. The door of the Baptist chapel stands open. Anna steps in. The plain whitewashed interior is drenched in light, as if transparent to the day. Nobody about. Nothing to distract the eye. Anna kneels in the family pew. She listens. My beloved, are you still there?

The soughing of wind in the overarching copper beech:
Come home
,
come home.

Chapter 11

When she sees him, when she does not, Will is physically present, distressing Beatrice's nerves as if he brushed against her or breathed on her face. Performing all the necessary chores and the extra tasks in readiness for the wedding, Beatrice is shiveringly aroused.

He has said, turning away, ‘You've killed me, Beatrice. You know very well I've never seriously loved any woman but you.'

And she said, ‘Seriously? Do you even know the meaning of the word? You've flirted with the whole of Chauntsey. You have compromised Anna. You're honour bound to marry my sister now. If there's any scrap of honour in you, Will.'

‘Why on earth do you say that?'

‘You know perfectly well. Running away with her. You've made her into an object of scandal.'

‘Run away! That's ridiculous. I love Anna. I love her because she's your sister. And therefore my sister.'

‘There's no point in trying to woo me back. None. Just accept it, Mr Anwyl.'

Beatrice sees him walking in the garden alone, then later arm in arm with Anna. They vanish into the wilderness. Beatrice's ribcage squeezes her heart with the most intense pain she's ever known. But I can get you back from her any moment I like. Thirteen days is a period composed of tens of thousands of such moments. At any time I can stop the clock; the whole process can be brought to a standstill.

Three days pass in the blink of an eye: Mr Anwyl calls with news of Mr Kyffin. He relates it over lunch, directing his gaze at everyone in turn excepting Beatrice. The Florian Street congregation is in turmoil: nearly half have voted against the Prynne clique to invite Mr Kyffin back as their pastor, epilepsy or no epilepsy, heresy or no heresy. Mr Prynne and the deacons have initiated the procedure to expel the rebels. Charlie Kyffin, burning with rage, felt moved to rise and testify against Mr Prynne's malice and ambition. When Mr Prynne ordered him out, Charlie sat down and gripped the rail: Prynne would have to remove him by force ‘from my father's chapel'. Mr Prynne and five irate deacons marched out themselves, leaving the chapel in uproar.

‘What does Mr Kyffin say?' asks Joss.

‘Not a word. He's understood to be awaiting a leading from the Lord.'

‘And dear Mrs Kyffin?'

‘I saw her yesterday. She is considering a hydropathic treatment.'

‘For herself or for her husband?'

‘That wasn't clear. Her Christian spirit up till now has been perfect, forgiving every persecutor.
Chwarae teg
,
I think the candle's burning rather low; she's weary of it all. I have prayed with her and I shall go again. Dear Ellen is a great support to her mother. At her tender age, she's all but running the household. And – it's rather disquieting – the child has taken on a certain authority: the mother quite defers to her.'

Beatrice allows herself to look into Will's face. His calm, thoughtful voice affects her strangely. She has always looked down on him as a second-rate Christian, accusing him in her heart of lack of spiritual calibre. How fair has she been? Will has taken Beatrice at her word and given up on her. That's clear. And perhaps she herself brought out the worst in him.

‘That's well done, Will,' says Anna, quietly.

Her sister's gentle tone pierces Beatrice. This last week Anna has spoken little. She has constantly had her head in a book. The Bible, as far as Beatrice could make out. Beatrice sees her visiting the chapel. And this is good: it should be a source of reassurance, a sign that her sister is healthily back in the fold. True, Anna eats little. But she tries everything on her plate and makes sure to thank Beatrice for her efforts on her behalf. She's sewing a hat for Beatrice's honeymoon journey; tries on her bridesmaid's dress and stands for the alterations, with a willing if rigid smile.

After luncheon, Will and Anna seat themselves at either side of the fire in the parlour. They do not talk. Yes, they do. They're speaking with their eyes.

Eight days before Beatrice's wedding: she awakens with a start, dreaming that she's giving birth. A boy-child's turnip skull rams aside the wincing tissues. It ploughs forward but then fixes fast. She cannot shift the man-child, however she strains. When Tibby died having given birth to one dead kitten, Beatrice dissected the dear body and found two further kittens, one putrescing in the birth canal, the other intact in the womb but lifeless. Opening the maternal body, she came face to face with death. This dream-birth threatens to kill her; she must expel it. In a cold sweat Beatrice begins to surface and detects her mistake. The child has grown into her own membranes and become a vital organ of her own body. It will not be ejected except by destroying the matrix of life. She'll have to live with the growth like a tumour, humping it obscenely around with her.