Awakening (25 page)

She nods, biting her lip.

‘So it follows that we cannot regret the giving and receiving of love. Your love for others –
listen
– your love for those who have shared your affections is not something I could ever resent. I feel your heartbreak as if it were my own. I do. But think about it – for surely it will prove a strength to you. I loved you as a child. Do you think I didn't learn everything there was to know about Beatrice Pentecost in those years? Even when you stamped your foot as a little heathen of ten years old, I smiled. You cannot disappoint me. I know it all.'

‘That's horrible – don't say that, just don't, I
hate
it.' There was something not right about it, she sees that clearly. Lawful but not right. He has taken advantage. And the child he wooed has never died because it has never grown up. Thief! You stole my childhood! The blood rushes up to her face and the child in her slams out of the room.

‘That pains me, Beatrice, it offends me. Mine was never a transgressive love. It was the purest affection a man can know. You were and are part of myself; I'm not myself without you. I love you the more for having loved the child you were. Was I not respectful, did I not consult your Papa at every turn? Did I not guide you? Did I ever coerce you?'

Beatrice says nothing; she averts her head and scowls. Why did you fix on me? I was a plump, banal child, very plain. What caused you to elect me for your angelic attention? For you did resemble an angel in those days: golden hair, willowy, lacking only wings. Why did you go for me rather than Anna the Beautiful?
Beattie hates
,
Beattie loathes.

‘I don't know what we're doing here, Christian. Or why you're lecturing me on love. Unless you're alluding to Mr Anwyl – is that it? Yes, I was fond of Mr Anwyl once – but that was calf-love. Nothing more. You can dismiss the whole subject from your mind. Don't look at me like that, Christian, just please don't.'

‘Like what, my dear? What do I look like?' He allows himself an edge of exasperation, qualifying it with a smile. ‘I'll try not to look like it.'

She does not say, ‘Like your cousin
',
like Lore Ritter with that straight gaze, playing ice-blue stare-you-out over the breakfast bacon. Viewing you ironically through thick round spectacles from her pockmarked face. The Ritters are idealists with the light of God in their eyes: what they believe, they will live out. Not only in spirit but to the letter, if it kills them. Or you.

‘Give me a clue. What face am I making?'

‘Oh leave it, for goodness' sake! – Sorry. I'm talking nonsense.'

‘Dearest, you are. You're in a thoroughly agitated state and I'm annoying you when all you need is rest. Should I send your sister up to keep you company?'

She shakes her head. Christian goes to kiss her; she pulls back. Patting his wife's shoulder, Beatrice's long-suffering husband rises from the bed and leaves, closing the door behind him considerately, as if on an invalid. Beatrice quails. He's the kind of man who always puts one in the wrong. How can he be so accepting of her love for Will? A normal man would feel pangs of jealousy but high-minded Christian Ritter could never be seen to stoop so low.

No, you'll punish me in another way altogether, won't you? A most invidious way. You are saying to yourself, My wife is hysterical; I'll have to humour her when she will not bear correction.

*

The walls that secure her are dove-grey, a peaceful colour, especially when early morning sunlight opens phantom windows of reflected light, windows that slide imperceptibly round the room. Observing this process, Beatrice's eyes become fascinated by blemishes and stains, areas where paint has flaked. The chamber, known since childhood, slept in by generations of Pentecosts, is a mass of effacements and half-obscured traces. The phantom windows reflect wind-blown branches outside; the swoop of a blackbird past the pane.

Beatrice lies in a magic box, the interior of a camera. Christian has left to instruct the students of Bristol Baptist College on the institution of slavery before travelling to Devon and Cornwall, collecting for the cause. Beatrice veils her willingness to relinquish her husband, showing and indeed feeling a proper tenderness and regret.

Time dawdles. Between bouts of fainting and nausea, Beatrice ponders the irregularities of the paintwork around the bed. Horsehairs from the painter's brush have dried into the building's fabric: you cannot tease them out with a fingernail. The forgotten workman's brush shed not only these filaments but also something of himself. His straight lines were not straight. The brush wandered as he drew it across layers of old paint and wallpaper. Somewhere between the layers there'll be traces of a mural the sisters had secured permission to execute, once it was decided that the walls must be repainted. If Beatrice's nail picks just – here – the lineaments of a family portrait will be revealed, with the overarching forms of Papa and Mama Pentecost. Mama was dead by then of course but Beatrice could draw her from memory, reinstating her mother, abolishing Mama's successor.

She longs to release that picture; to step through that door into an earlier world.

Upstairs and downstairs Amy and Anna tread on soft feet, so as not to disturb the invalid. ‘Indisposed,' they tell all and sundry. Dr Quarles has calculated a date for the happy event. He hopes he will not be away in the Forest of Marmora, that sportsman's paradise in Morocco, where one shoots the bald-headed Abyssinian ibis and also the Great Bustard – so different from the European bustard, sadly extinct in England. If he is away, Dr Quarles promises that Dr Palfrey will attend – a most able physician as Mrs Ritter is aware. And a nurse should be engaged. Milk is what he prescribes for Mrs Ritter, and especially cream. This thought makes Beatrice retch. Oh, and by the by, Quarles adds as he departs, it was a pleasure to be of professional help to Miss Anna in Mrs Ritter's absence. The doctor presents his account for Anna's treatment by himself and Dr Palfrey: two guineas. He sees no need to pay further visits, however; the patient's balance has been adjusted and marriage will do the rest.

In the mornings Beatrice works secretly to liberate the mural. She has begun to uncover the graphite likeness of Papa's wrist and hand. During the afternoons, her biliousness lifts and she's carried downstairs. A change of view will do her good, they all agree, though Beatrice is reluctant to quit her chrysalis. No choice: she has ceded authority and must recline where Anna used to lie, on the old sofa looking out of the window. Anna lays a bunch of lavender on the little table beside her.

‘Thank you, dear. That's so thoughtful.' Beatrice puts it up to her face, drinking the scent, which masks the traces of cooking smells and cat.

‘Does it smell nice?'

‘Lovely. Ethereal and clean. It smells of … the old chest, doesn't it? Mama's chest. We used to climb inside.'

It was a little world of itself, an antechamber. Light sneaked in through cracks between the mahogany boards. The chest was monumental. Nobody knew how it had been dragged into the house in the last century; nothing would budge it. You and your furiously giggling sister felt safe amongst your grandmother's gowns, taking care not to damage the christening robes and a wedding veil a century old. More than once Joss had to raise the heavy lid to let them out.

‘We did.' Anna perches on the edge of the sofa and the tension between them, despite a certain remoteness in her sister, seems to Beatrice to have slackened. ‘How delicious it was, the scent. But what can I get you? Do you have a yen for coal?'

‘For coal?'

‘To eat it. Lore wanted to eat coal, don't you remember, when she was expecting Magdalena? I could never leave her alone in the parlour with the coal scuttle without worrying.'

‘I don't remember that. No.'

There's a pause. I too may die in childbirth, Beatrice thinks. I may bear an encephalitic child. Was it sensitive to mention the monster Lore left us? Are you trying to frighten me?
She pulls herself together.

‘How's your trousseau coming along? I can easily sew for you, Anna, I'd like to. My fingers aren't ill, after all.'

‘I don't need new clothes. I don't really need anything.'

‘Well no, but you must do things properly.'

‘Oh, I'd rather
not
.'

Beatrice takes time to mull this over. Anna would prefer not to do things properly? She'd rather do them improperly? That would be Anna all over. Beatrice decides that wisdom lies in not questioning this. And besides, in her dreamy languor, she can't be bothered. Let someone else worry about household business. Beatrice spends her mornings drowsing behind closed green curtains, tasting an unfamiliar lassitude; in truth, the nausea has subsided. Christian's letters float down into her halcyon calm, daily. She savours the postman's knock; allows herself to miss Christian, deliciously. His flamboyant gothic handwriting dashes headlong across the page, full of vivid descriptions, salted with humour and expressions of affection. Single again, but without the stigma of spinsterhood, Beatrice allows Christian to enter a space of the dreaming imagination, previously inhabited by Will. After all, this is how her married life will be, for Christian will be away more often than he's present. And perhaps there's a charm in that.

No sign of Anna's betrothed. Where is he? Beatrice doesn't like to ask. Too hurt and mortified. Let him go. Presumably Anna (always second best, bear that in mind) meets him in the mornings when Beatrice is upstairs, lying becalmed alongside the other world, where another hand has come to light – Mama's left hand, reaching out towards … perhaps, myself. Loveday arrives bearing jellies; Mr Elias comes to play and sing Beethoven.
An die ferne Geliebte
. The music, so personal and confessional, as Mr Elias says, brings a rain of tears. Is God in the melting and the tears? In this supine condition, she can accept and forgive everyone, even her own unsavoury self.

After a while Beatrice comes to feel that she can accept Mr Anwyl as a brother.

‘You and Will are welcome to live here, dear, for as long as you wish,' she tells Anna. ‘That goes without saying. Perhaps I should have mentioned this before. I took it for granted, I suppose. After all, it's your home too.'

‘It's a strange word, home, isn't it, though?'

‘The least strange word in the world, I'd have thought.'

‘One takes
home
for granted. It's always there. And then suddenly it isn't.'

‘But it is! Of course it is. Whatever can you mean?'

‘Home's where you feel safe. I stopped feeling safe here some time ago, as a matter of fact. If you want to know.'

‘Of course you're safe. Whatever do you mean? Who should harm you?'

‘It's a pity I didn't take up residence in Mama's chest while you were away, that's all.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Do you remember how you used to flay my face with stinging nettles?'

‘Annie! No! I would never … you must have imagined it.'

‘Oh yes, that's right,
I
dreamed it. And how you'd run in to Papa saying Joss had done it! Joss would never hurt a fly! They
knew,
you know, all the time they
knew
it was you.'

Tears rise into Beatrice's eyes. ‘Anna, I truly don't remember anything like that. But if I did – hurt you that way – I was a child, we were children – I know I could be nasty; I've more than my share of original sin. Please forgive me.' Beatrice's chest is tight: she puts up her hand to it. Breathe now, breathe for the baby. She does remember struggles between herself and Anna, generally in the wilderness at the bottom of the garden. But Anna gave as good as she got.

Did she? For Annie was the younger. Slight and small. And sly.

‘Yes and on one occasion my cheek flared up, my eye closed, and then you were in a panic; you were running round looking for dock leaves going, Oh, Anna what have you done to yourself? Anyway, what does it matter? What's done is done and can't be undone.'

Beatrice has to swallow hard. Is her sister about to unearth some catastrophic secret that will alter life forever? Anna sits at the fireside with her hands on her knees: strong, capable hands, whereas Beatrice's hands are beginning to look pale and dainty. Anna's squirming about as if she can't get comfortable. Did something bad happen while she was away? Beatrice catches the echo of a cryptic message that has not been spoken. Something to do with betrayal.

‘Anyway,' Anna goes on, getting to her feet. ‘Will and I are discussing whether to live in Fighelbourn. After all, his congregation may object if its pastor formally takes up residence here rather than living amongst them as he's always done and ought to do.'

‘But, dear, you couldn't go and live in his present spartan lodgings and manage on £60 a year, could you?'

‘I wouldn't mind.'

‘One room, and nothing to call your own? There's no rent-free house attached to the pastorate. It's the poorest in the county. Certainly there'll not be enough to support a wife – not to mention all the calls upon a minister of the Gospel, who after all has a status to uphold and social responsibilities. And … dear, if you have children?'