Awakening (32 page)

‘I don't think we c
an
go.' Will puts out a hand; Anna doesn't take it. ‘Or rather, you know, it may be unwise for me to go – and you, well, it's
impossible
for you.'

‘Oh?' She waits. He offers no explanation. ‘Why?'

‘It would not be wise or sensible – and I am very sorry to have to say so.' Will is on his feet and pushing in the chair, patting his pockets for tobacco.

‘Don't just get up and leave, Will. Did Beatrice tell you to say that?'

‘It's just how things are, dear. I'm sorry. Let's not quarrel over this; there are just some people who are – out of our orbit.
Cariad
, don't take offence, now don't. Trust me.'

‘You liked Mirrie, Will! You were fond of her. You said she was an original. You were glad enough to accept her hospitality in Cornwall. Capering all round the cottage, playing the fool. Presumably you're the same Will Anwyl everyone said eloped with me to St Ives and spoiled my reputation. But perhaps you're a different Will Anwyl – and if so, my mistake.'

‘Perhaps I'm not quite the same, Annie.' He has the grace to look abashed. ‘As for liking! I like Miriam and Baines well enough. It's not a question of dislike.'

‘So what is it a question of?'

‘Dear heart. I am a married minister and I see that many of the things I used to do, the way I acted, left me open to criticism. I am contrite. I cannot be that person any longer. And there's the Revival coming – one must not prejudice …'

‘Prejudice?
She
has got to you. And who is
she
and who are
you
to judge?'

Anna strides out in her riding dress, with hat and crop; saddles up for herself, since her husband refuses to take her. Will follows her out. Beatrice joins him and behind her ambles Amy holding the baby. Rose and Lily Peck look on, fascinated. If Mr Anwyl had married either of them, they are sure there'd have been no tantrums. They'd never have left their beloved's side, impending baldness or not. They'd have managed him for his own good.

Anna's sister and husband stand like wren parents arguing with a cuckoo daughter; it's suffocating and ridiculous. They're threatening her now.
Social death
! Beatrice must have cautioned Will – for Will is easy-going and pliant. If Anna wanted something, he'd ensure she had it, if it were in his power, and never moved against her. Look at how he made no fuss when she said she couldn't live in Wales. He will ultimately settle for the easiest course of action. Until now. Condescending to me as if I were a child. Insulting, humiliating. ‘
Cariad
, let's talk it over together; come back in with me, dearest.' Anna won't listen. At the same time she's ashamed of herself and wishes she could go back without loss of face. I am being ridiculous. And less than intelligent.

Spirit, moody and uncooperative, makes everything worse by refusing to stand still; he circles as she tries to mount and Will won't help her as she struggles. Joss, cigar in hand, saunters out, hearing the altercation.

‘Joss! – stop loafing around; do for goodness' sake give me a hand.'

Without a thought, Joss hands the cigar to Will and makes his hands into a stirrup; she mounts. ‘There you are. What's all the to-do?'

Beatrice catches hold of the bridle. ‘Annie, Annie, dearest!' Her upturned face is pleading. Annie, think about this. Your husband is a minister. We are wives now. Everything we do reflects on our husbands. You have obligations. This person – I know you were fond of her but she's a pariah. You cannot associate with her without compromising yourself. Please, darling, it will all come back on us, on the church. None of this is said aloud but all of it is heard.

‘Come indoors, love, do, and have a cup of tea. We can discuss it.'

‘I'm just going for a ride. Nothing more.'

‘What would Papa say?'

Spirit is away. Anna waves without turning. She sees with her inner eye Beatrice, skirts spattered with mud, retreating to the house with Joss and Will, grumbling at her brother for aiding Anna's escape, certain that she could have talked her round.

Anna comes up behind Isaiah Minety in the lane. The gawky lad is whistling, one hand in his pocket, playing catch with a stone with the other. He has forgotten his high calling and impresses Anna, as she canters past, as having slipped the reins. He waves, grins, runs beside the horse for as long as he can keep up and is just a boy, acting naturally.

Chapter 18

Toplady's: the white curved facade of the Salas' villa is brilliant in the sunlight. Pampas rustles; the cedar casts a green gloom of rocking shade. A gardener pruning a line of bay trees in terracotta urns helps Anna dismount and tether Spirit. A new servant answers the door, with a foreign accent, immaculate in a dark blue uniform: Madame is busy and seeing no visitors. ‘But would you just mention to Mrs Sala that Mrs Anwyl – Anna – is here? I don't mind waiting
.
'

New portraits of Miriam and Baines dominate the dining room, majestic oils, framed in monumental gold. Hot and sticky, Anna stands to view them. I smell like a groom, she thinks, taking some deep breaths and holding her arms away from her body to let the perspiration dry. The painted Miriam, opulently dressed in jet-black silk, wears a little fur-edged cape; a diamond necklace winks and so does the bracelet at her wrist. The German artist has given the impression of catching the novelist unawares in a moment of concentration, still half-absorbed in her writing, not quite alert to the presence of an observer. At the same time it's clear that the sitter has been dressed theatrically for a public performance. She presents herself as the Author. Miriam's abundant hair falls loosely around her face, softening its ruggedness, but the chin juts in a characteristic expression, as if she were about to push her face through the frame.

The artist has made the most of her beautiful hands. Miriam's right, her writing hand, rests on the table in lamplight, holding a mother-of-pearl pen suspended above a cut-glass inkwell. A sheet of paper is half-covered with writing. Anna goes up close, and twists her head, to try and decipher it.

‘My dear Anna.' Miriam, quite composed, extends both hands. ‘I hardly imagined you would come.'

‘How could I not come? But am I interrupting your work? I'll not stay long – but I had to see you.'

‘Dear. Come through. Maria, would you bring
Kaffee und Kuchen
,
bitte
? And the delicious marzipan cakes? Have we any left? We've brought staff with us from Germany, Anna, having become so fond of them at Weimar – and we're making quite a cosmopolitan little household of it. They speak limited English, and that may be to the good.'

Though the Salas have always disdained the vulgarity of show or display, now Anna clearly sees evidence of the presence of money. Everything has been refurbished or replaced. An aura of luxury prevails, as if there were more money than Miriam and Baines knew what to do with. What should be said about the silence between herself and the Salas? She stops herself bursting out with, ‘Your letters stopped telling me anything. They were like formal essays on morality and culture. You ceased to count me amongst your friends. I was hurt. Please explain. Can we ever go back?'

‘I am very glad to see you, Anna. And you are a married woman now! You and Mr Gwilym Anwyl! Do you know, I never suspected for a moment, though it was obvious when you visited us at St Ives that you were close.'

‘To be candid, neither did I. But, yes, Miriam, I am Mrs Anwyl now.' She shows her the ring. It seems the one thing in the room that doesn't sparkle.

And clearly Miriam is struck by the cheap tin alloy; she studies it, bringing Anna's hand to her eyes. ‘What is its story, Anna? Such a precious – unique – object must surely have a history.'

Miriam has little difficulty in drawing Anna out about her bridal journey to Wales. Will the ring turn up as a pregnant detail in one of Miriam's novels on the hand of one of her friend's suffering heroines? Anna wonders disquietly whether she'll open a new novel to find a skewed version of her own face staring back at her. And yet wouldn't it be an honour, showing that she continued to have some importance to her friend?

Miriam lets go of Anna's hand. ‘Dearest – when the scandal broke – I suppose you heard – ?'

‘I didn't listen.'

‘No. You are loyal. Nevertheless. I thanked my lucky stars that you had not accompanied us to Europe. You would have been tarred with the same brush.'

‘And is that why – ?'

‘Why – ?'

‘Why you stopped writing to me.'

Miriam looks puzzled. ‘Well, I did write, dear.'

‘Yes. But not – to me as
me
, if you see what I mean. You wrote to Miss Pentecost, not to Anna. I expect you wrote in the same way to Miss Jackson and all your other' – she thinks ‘courtiers' but says ‘friends. Forgive me. It's not that I don't value any word you send me. They were wonderful letters. I treasure them. Just that – Mirrie – I missed you in them.'

Miriam sighs. She looks a little ashamed but not very. She's wearing an invisible veil. ‘Oh dear, did I go all sermonical?'

‘Please don't think I'm complaining. You will have had reasons. But in my heart – you know – I missed you. I had no idea how to reply.'

‘Unfortunately I am a preacher
manqué
,
you know. An evangelical minister without a church, without belief. And in a rather defrocked condition. On my high horse because of that. It was a painful time, Anna. Forgive me.'

‘But you must have known – I would
never
abandon you.'

There's a nervous tic under Miriam's eye; the expression of strain makes her face tensely brooding. Lugubrious. The gaiety is gone and it's possible to understand why people disparage her as ugly – and why she believes herself to be so.

‘On the Continent, of course, one is accepted on merit. Nobody turned a hair at my situation – but in England, I am an outcast. I didn't want my more vulnerable friends involved. I never thought, to be honest, that I'd ever come home – better to hunker down in Weimar or Geneva. I used to quote Milton: “My native land is wherever it is well with me”. But we grew homesick, Baines and I. Besides, Baines needed to come back to transact business. And in the end, well, I prefer to live and die in England, on whatever terms.'

‘I'm glad. It's so brave.'

Miriam's rueful look plainly says, You know nothing. You are as innocent as a child. ‘Hardly. It's the sick dog, licking his wounds, cringing back to his lair. I don't intend to bring anyone I care about down into the gutter.' Drawing her green shawl more closely round her, Miriam shivers in the warm room. How to edge closer? Anna has no idea. All she can find to say seems to land short or to hit a transparent wall. Whenever Anna threatens to breach it, Miriam rebuilds.

‘But your friends, your true friends, would want to gather round you, Miriam – Mirrie. Dear.'

‘You cannot, my dear. If you wish to live in society. I am infectious.'

‘I don't care.'

‘You have to care. You lack my armour. Notorious as I am, I'm also revered as a writer – under my other name. You enjoy no such protection. Baines shields me from reviews, of course, bless him, and manages all our business affairs. I am making a great deal of money – do you need any money?'

‘No –
no.
Don't push me away, Miriam. That's not what friends do. What about Miss Jackson? Is she also excluded? And Mrs Bodichon too?'

‘Anna, don't.'

Anna is aware of being childishly petulant in her envy of those who, it seems, are still permitted access.

‘Poor Eleanor would climb in at the window if I tried to exclude her. Or down the chimney. She has nothing to lose, being herself an outsider.'

‘Then I'll get in the window too.'

‘Well, you're here now, dear Anna, and I'm glad of it. You must realise that I never meant to offend people. I respect traditions – I genuinely do – perhaps more than you do. There's always a need for decencies and decorum. If Baines and I could legally marry, we would do so. I do not stand for women's rights, suffrage and so on, as you know. Not yet awhile, at least.' She brushes some speck of invisible dust from her lap. ‘The majority of women are not yet fit for freedom. It may take centuries for them to be capable of enfranchisement. If you come again, you know, I shall not receive you. And one day you'll thank me.'

‘No. I shall not.'

A door is closing. Anna is being nailed into the world of Dorcas meetings, sewing meetings, prayer meetings, bazaars, piffle.

‘Yes. You really will. Let me explain.'

*

Dazed, Anna rides Spirit down the drive and onto the Chauntsey road through a web of drizzle. Slackening the reins, she allows him to settle to a swaying, dreamy rhythm: sinister-dexter, sinister-dexter, the rolling, circling gait of the walk. Despite the rain there's no hurry to get home, none in the world. Only by lingering in the gaps, inhabiting private spaces, will Anna be able to live her true life from now on. There'll still be books; there'll still be writing, she reminds herself. Is it so very far from a journal to a work of greater witness?