Havisham: A Novel (25 page)

What am I doing here? It’s an elderly woman who’s asking me, her voice stretched long and taut with social pretension. That clears my eyes. I stare at her with the full eviscerating steeliness I can muster from my predicament. She takes several steps back, staring at me as if I am an unnatural sight.

*   *   *

The rain has passed when the front door of the house, once a more imposing residence, opens.

A figure begins to descend the flight of steps.

There’s something familiar about her. And then I recognise just what it is.

Of course. The cape: a travelling habit. Broadcloth, donkey-brown.

It’s identical to one that I had, a few years ago.

The coincidence interrupts my train of thought. Now she’s at the foot of the steps, starting to walk on the path. She pauses, turns to look back, then sideways, down into the submerged area. Perhaps it’s to check if their maid’s at her work. She stands still for several seconds, offering a profile to me.

No. No, it can’t be. But it is, surely. How could I have forgotten? Her nose, brow, chin. The thickness, the copperiness of her hair. More than that, though. The walk. The clothes: the cloak I gave her. The air of aloofness, even a disdain for the ordinary. Everything that I taught her. My apprentice, only – now – more convincing than the original.

T
HIRTY
-
FOUR

I followed her along the drying street. She walked straight-backed, with her head set square on her neck, gaze directed in front of her. Her heels pecked busily at the paving stones. From that street, round the corner, on to the next.

Suddenly she stepped off the pavement and crossed over on a diagonal, negotiating the cobbles, to the other side. I did exactly likewise. She rounded another corner, with me in pursuit. She started to walk more quickly, and so did I.

She wasn’t carrying herself with such confidence. She had lost a little height; her head craned forward – she might have had a stoop. Her heels were scraping now. She was proceeding at an untidy scuttle. She was less and less myself.

‘Sally!’

I didn’t mean to call out. But the word flew out of my mouth before I could stop myself. Hearing her name she slowed, stopped. She hesitated before turning round. Her eyes widened. Her mouth opened, but she didn’t speak.

We stood staring at each other.

‘It
is
you, Sally?’

She shook her head, as if she would deny me. Then she must have thought better of it.

‘Why, Sally?’

I couldn’t think what else to say. It was the only question I had in mind to ask her, because the answer would have to explain everything. I took a few steps closer.

‘Why?’ I said more softly, to tease the truth from her.

She stood in silence, coiled, sprung. She was holding her ground. Apprehensive she might be, but she wasn’t afraid. I couldn’t match her. It was I who was faltering. I had to reach out my hand to the wall, to steady myself.

She still hadn’t answered me. I was none the wiser. On the edge of my vision, a cart passed along the street. A hawker cried out somewhere; a dog barked. Other lives were being lived: workaday, unsuspecting, uncaring.

I took my hand away from the wall, and wobbled slightly. I was so weary now – exhausted. I would have sat down if I could, on the pavement’s edge. Only the dim consciousness of who I was kept me from doing so. (‘Imagine! Old Havisham’s daughter, slumped over a gutter!’) I stayed up on my two legs, but barely upright. She was no more stooped than I was. I was curling like a leaf.

I tried to read her expression. Disdain? No. Pity? No. Fear? Embarrassment? No. Had I taught her this too – to give nothing of herself away? If I had, then the teacher had forgotten the lesson. Disdain or pity I would have tolerated. What I couldn’t suffer was her silence, and her refusal to show me any feelings at all.

A leaf. A husk.

‘
Why, Sally?
’ My voice cracked on the words.

Her voice when she spoke was quiet, collected, to the point.

‘No reason. Things just happened as they did. I wasn’t meaning anything.’

She spoke without any emotion.

‘There was no scheme, no plan. That’s just how it is sometimes. One thing led to another.’

My eyes began to lose their focus on her face.

‘Believe me,’ she said, in the same flat tone.

It didn’t matter to her, I knew, if I believed her or not. This was what
she
had come to believe. She might tell me there was no malice aforethought, but surely there must have been some guilt, some remorse, even some shame?

She was able to speak to me in the unimpassioned tones of one who is the victor. Her life was settled, so she could spare me her condescension.

It was I who turned away first: I wouldn’t have her see my tears. I didn’t wipe my eyes until I had turned the corner. What had possessed me to go after her? I had gained no satisfactory explanation, no knowledge of what had really taken place between the two of them.

I saw her in my mind’s eye as I continued walking, with the street liquid in front of me. I’d had this last sight of her: turned into a very passable imitation of myself. An imitation or a parody? Cruel and heartless as she seemed to me, she would have considered herself without blame.

I returned by the river.

She would have told me that she had merely followed the current, gone with its flow. That was no excuse. I had the prerogative, surely, to feel betrayed.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the river. My feet were being drawn towards it, across the bank’s sward of green. The water ahead ran fast and dark and deep.

Who would not sing for Lycidas?

I was held, transfixed.

The lines, memorised in the schoolroom at Durley Chase, recurred as my own epitaph.

He must not float upon his wat’ry bier

Unwept.

I could even pity Sally now, not envy her, for feeling so little. At interludes I had dwelt among legends, in the knowledge of mythical beings. They are the archetypes, the bearers of their own fates and larger than life. In her complacency, safe and snug for the moment until that man grew tired of her one day, Sally would experience none of the surfeits. To taste the absolute joys, you also have to suffer absolutely for them.

I took a step forward.

So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high

Through the dear might of him that walk’d the waves.

Another step and the bank would start to crumble beneath my feet, one further step and I would tip forward through crumbling air –

‘Catherine!’

A hand had grabbed hold of my arm. It was drawing me back.

Two hands, one clamped on each elbow, guiding me gently but firmly up the grass banking.

I was shaking. I turned and looked into Sally’s face. She didn’t speak, and neither did I.

This was us even, she was letting me know; we were quits.

She waited, as quietly and dutifully as she used to be with me, until I had composed myself. I felt again the hardness of paving stones through my soles.

We parted.

‘Goodbye,’ Sally said.

‘Goodbye,’ I replied.

One simple word apiece, and then we turned in our different directions.

I didn’t look back. (Is she watching
me
, I wondered.) I carried on walking, getting my strength back slowly. Already I knew that we should never meet again. I went on my way with gathering determination, trying not to think about what had nearly happened at the river’s edge – how it was that, for once, my pride had failed me. Later I passed a building topped by a pediment. There carved figures, classical deities too high to distinguish, lolled and disported. No one noticed them on that busy street except myself. They were beyond time and the earthly, beyond chance and the accidental.

The Immortals. The Hesperides, the Furies –

I smiled with recognition. I matched my fate to theirs. By the triumph of the will, I should become just like them.

T
HIRTY
-
FIVE

Goose & Cabbage, Blade Bone, Noah’s Ark, Bull & Butcher, King Lud.

(‘Things could always be better.’)

Lion & Adder, Plow & Sail, Half Penny House, Cocoa Tree, Bombay Grab.

(‘These are hard times.’)

Swan & Maidenhead, Swan with Two Necks, Swan & Sugarloaf, Swan & Hoop.

(‘Sixty-odd hundredweight on, was it, ten acres, profit five pounds something.’)

Whistling Oyster, Three Nuns & Hare, Copenhagen, Two Chairmen, Mother Redcap.

(‘You’ve come over all pale, miss –’

‘Still? Not still pale?’

What about my mastery of my untidy emotions, my self-command? My pride?)

Foul Anchor, Ship Aground. World Upside Down, World’s End.

*   *   *

I knew what they wanted, which was to have a man in charge, however they could effect it. Either I should appoint a man to manage Havisham’s, or – their alternative wish – I should sell the business. (Did I detect the hand of Snee behind one of the hostile bids?) They all misjudged me gravely.

I defied the brewhouse, which was where all the trouble had begun. They could go hang. I accepted no new orders. When we had exhausted the stock, I ordered the brewing to be halted. I dismissed the workmen.

I heard the rappings at the front door, and then the door being opened a crack from inside and the person sent away. Another worker’s wife thinking she could appeal to my humanity, my womanliness.

But I waited. I held my nerve.

I had the gates to the yard chained.

No capitulation.

I had been paying for the upkeep of the horses, and the services of an ostler or two, but I sold the horses and told the stablemen to search elsewhere for work.

I boarded up every window in the brewery that could be broken from the street.

‘So…’

I watched from the room which had been my father’s office and then my own. The ledgers were piled up on shelves behind me, gathering dust.

‘… so, they haven’t the courage of this poor paltry woman?’

I smiled at that.

They had forgotten the stock I came from: that I wasn’t just any woman, but a Kent Havisham: proof and tempered, through and through.

*   *   *

Intrepid Fox. Fetterlock. Marrowbone & Cleaver. Tom o’ Bedlam.

*   *   *

That scream.

Mr Calvert’s wife lying beneath, and those thrusting buttocks as her lover drives up into her.

The woman was transported beyond her pain, enthralled into a fourth dimension.

Run aground, stuck fast as I was, how could I not be riven by envy of that outrageous metaphysical adventure?

*   *   *

They burned me on Iden Meadow.

My effigy was hoisted on top of a bonfire they’d built. A straw woman, wearing a wedding dress made of newspaper.

Put together from dry kindling, I went up – so I heard – magnificently.

Cheers, catcalls. Flames ten feet high. I exploded in a reveille of sparks.

Wild through the woods I’ll fly,

Robes, locks shall thus be tore.

A thousand deaths I’ll die,

Ere thus in vain adore.

*   *   *

I shall defy you again.

I shall hold out against you all.

*   *   *

He isn’t coming now.

He will never come.

*   *   *

I can do whatever I like.

I might put on a wedding dress if I choose to, just to laugh at all those innocent virgins. Hear how I’m laughing at them, cruelly and without pity. How it
matters
to them, much too much, and yet they see nothing of how the world contrives to delude them.

Giving yourself in love, you give yourself as a hostage to fate. The less you think to think of yourself, the more easily you’ll be betrayed.

Wearing white silk and a veil and satin slippers for a day will change nothing, and couldn’t make a false man true.

You break a superstition only by challenging it.

There
is
no sorcerer’s charm for happiness. You won’t find it in the Book of Common Prayer. It’s only a dress, and they’re only slippers, sweated over in some dingy workshop.

Look at me, in my train and veil. Tell me what magic you see. This is the awful damage that men do. And still the foolish, forlorn virgins go on believing.

*   *   *

Look at me. Let your blood run cold at the sight.

Take heed. Beware.

Or you will suffer just as I have suffered.

*   *   *

Love, devotion, married bliss.

They’re dizzards’ dreams, that vanish with the dawn.

*   *   *

I returned to the bedroom and dressing room that used to be mine: I reclaimed them.

‘Fetch me my wedding dress.’

The veil disguised my hair. From a distance, seen from across the room, no one would have known my age; they would have presumed me young.

‘Fetch my slippers. The spare pair.’

They hadn’t been worn. When I put them on, they took the shape of my feet.

‘Leave me now, will you. Go.’

I seated myself before the glass. I pulled back the veil. With my face scrubbed clean, the true ravages were revealed. I had to conceal them again. It was the face that held everything together.

So …

Paint it white.

Powder it, and sweeten it with perfume.

A slash of colour on my lips, a rim of black kohl round each eye, and a tiny upturned hook etched on the outer corners.

I did this twice over, to make sure, applying a second layer of everything.

From this point forward, Satis House would be a memorial to the real Catherine Havisham; a repository of holy relics.

*   *   *

Fresh air invades and destroys.

Keep it out.

Keep it out; then everything can be preserved. The contents will be encased exactly as they are. We shall be impervious to change.

*   *   *

I issued my instructions.

Doors should remain closed, except for immediate ingress and egress. When leaving or entering the house, the doors must not – must
not
– stand open for a moment longer than required.