The Painted Bridge Read online

  “Good-bye, Anna.”

  He made a stiff little bow, walked backward to the door and disappeared through it. He was there and then not there, like one of Louisa’s phantoms. She began to follow but the man called Querios Abse stepped in front of her, holding out both arms as if he herded an unwilling sheep.

  “One minute, Mrs. Palmer. I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

  “Where’s my husband gone?”

  Another door opened at the far end of the room and a woman crossed the floor, the clip of her heels on the boards deadened as she reached the rug.

  “This is Fanny Makepeace,” said Abse. “Our matron.”

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Makepeace. I’m leaving now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Your bonnet, Mrs. Palmer,” the woman said, holding out a hand crowded with rings. “Your cloak.”

  Everything about Makepeace appeared ordinary. She was in middle age and of medium height, her brownish hair drawn tightly back to display a pair of deep-set eyes that looked at Anna without expression. Yet Anna’s skin prickled with unease at the woman’s proximity; she was unable to meet her cool stare.

  “I’m going,” she repeated. “I’m not staying.”

  TWO

  Anna barely knew how, afterward, but without laying a hand on her, Abse and Makepeace had seemed to carry her along, to sweep her up a grand staircase, through a huge and faded salon where a fire smoldered in the grate. More stairs, steeper now, the handrail narrow and plain; she felt herself moving down a corridor, propelled by the force of their combined will. There were windows on the right-hand side—glimpses of a courtyard far below, crossed with narrow paths. On the left were numbered doors, all closed, each with its own letterbox, curiously situated at eye level.

  Querios Abse stopped at number 9 and pushed open the door with his outstretched arm. The last of the afternoon light filtered dim and gray into a small room; some ill-matched pieces of furniture huddled around the walls. Despite the open window, the smell of mold hit Anna like a blow and she stepped back, covered her nose with her hand.

  “The chamber has been uninhabited,” Abse said, “which accounts for any mustiness in the atmosphere.” He gestured again for her to enter. “Many ladies have found solace within these walls, Mrs. Palmer. Peace of mind.”

  “I don’t need solace.”

  He was still talking. Lake House was a retreat and there was no shame in a period of necessary seclusion. Moral management was suitable for most guests although regrettably not all. The antiphlogistic diet was efficacious in soothing feminine emotions.

  The words rushed by her, impossible to grasp. Anna felt as if she’d already been in the house too long and needed urgently to escape it. Her legs had grown weak. She breathed in to the bottom of her lungs, clenched her nails into her palms. She’d never been a fainter. She and Louisa, all of the Newlove girls, had been brought up to be strong as boys. Stronger, if necessary.

  She braced her back against the wall of the passage and spread her hands on the soft undulation of the plaster. She was almost as tall as he, could look straight into his sharp gray eyes before they darted away.

  “I’m not going in there, Mr. Abse.”

  “Step inside, Mrs. Palmer.”

  Anna turned to Makepeace for help. The woman put an arm round her waist, took hold of her wrist and thrust her forward so fast and hard that she stumbled and fell on her hands and knees into the room. The door shut behind her. Anna got to her feet, felt blindly up and down the wood for the handle. There was no handle. Only a keyhole that as she stooped and looked through it was covered over from the outside.

  “Let me out,” she shouted, standing up. “How dare you?”

  She flung herself against the door, felt it slam into the side of her face and began to beat on it with her fists. In the moments that followed, anger gave way to fear, to a feeling that she was drowning, that something fluid and dark was rising inside and choking the breath out of her. She heard her own voice calling Vincent’s name. Calling for help. Asking if anyone was there. After some time, the screaming gave way to silence.

  * * *

  Her throat was raw, her cheek throbbing. She got off the floor and straightened her skirts, felt her face with the palm of her hand. She kicked the door again, more to vent her feelings than from any hope of its giving way, and stood on one foot rubbing her toe with her hand and looking around her.

  The room was taller than it was wide, the walls covered in green patterned paper up to a picture rail. The iron bed was as low as a child’s, not more than a foot off the floor. On the wall opposite the bed was a chest, its oak veneer peeling up from the deal wood underneath, and at the end of the bed stood a washstand with a marble top; a chair was pulled up to it. There was a writing case on the mantelpiece and just one picture, a watercolor of a fisher girl, on the wall over the bed. Anna peered at it, hugging her arms over her chest. It was a back view. The girl stood on the sands looking out over a flat, gray sea, her hair in a plait on her shoulders, her shrimp net empty beside her.

  It was growing dark. She pulled the chair to the sash window, lifted an inch at the bottom and prevented from further opening by two rusty nails driven into the frame higher up. Kneeling on the chair, she looked out at a pearl and mauve sky, the long, low clouds lit from below like the shining bellies of fish, a crescent moon floating above one bright star. The ground underneath the window sloped away to a pale shape, a lake or a river. The wind had dropped.

  Anna stayed at the window for some time and as she gazed out, the picture in front of her changed. She saw not the night sky but the image that had come to her so often throughout that year—of a boy, a bright-haired boy, standing on top of a rock. He was still for a moment and then he jumped, leapt off the rock to what appeared to be a solid surface below. For an instant, it held him. But as she watched, it cracked and broke up beneath his feet. What had been solid land turned into the sea and the boy disappeared into the water. He slid from view, slowly, an expression of surprise visible on his face until the moment he vanished, leaving only a circle of hair floating on the water.

  Noises began outside in the corridor. Keys turning, footsteps, an instruction to be quick. Anna got off the chair. She felt in her pocket for her handkerchief and found she was carrying her penknife. It was a childhood present, from her father. She wrapped it in the handkerchief, wondering if they would try to take it away from her. Anna and her sisters had had iron beds in the flint house, had always used the legs as hiding places. She lifted one leg of the bed and finding it hollow, slid the knife inside. As she set the bed back down, there was a tap on the door. A key turned in the lock and a woman with a blanket over her shoulders marched in. The woman banged down the window, dragged out a straw mattress from under the bed and thrust a chamber pot in its place as the door slammed behind her.

  “Night air, miss,” she said, flinging down the blanket. “I don’t agree with it. I’m Martha Lovely. I’ll be yer companion tonight and most likely fer a good few nights to come.”

  “I don’t need a companion. I’m not staying here.”

  “You’re here now, miss, far as I can see. And I’m here with yer. Best get into bed fer some shut-eye.”

  The woman spread the blanket on the mattress. She lit two candles then kneeled down, pressing her hands together in front of her nose. Anna studied her as Lovely rushed through the Lord’s Prayer, eyes closed. She wore a plain, calico nightdress; a whistle and a key hung on separate strings around her neck. Her face was pitted with pale, shallow scars from her hairline to the neck of her nightdress. Martha Lovely opened her eyes.

  “Time you laid yer head on the piller.”

  “I am not getting into that bed.”

  “As you like. Good night, miss. God bless.”

  “It’s not ‘miss.’ I’m a married woman.”

  Too late. Lovely had disappeared under the blanket.

  People always took Anna for unmarried, despite her twenty-four years. She had a r
ing that she’d chosen herself in a jewelers in Holborn, hadn’t taken it off since the day of the wedding, but it made no difference. Everywhere she went, she was “miss.”

  Lifting the chair to the hearth, she pulled her cloak around her and stretched her feet almost into the grate. She had refused Makepeace’s request to hand over her cloak, although the woman had seized her bonnet from her head. The fire was small and the flames blue and cold-looking. She peered into the scuttle, empty except for a thin heap of dust. Flexing her toes inside her boots, she pushed her icy fingers up the sleeves of her dress and tried to think what to do.

  Write to Vincent, that much was obvious. But she didn’t know what to say to him. He’d barely spoken to her since she got back from the coast. Hadn’t laughed when she unintentionally said something funny or reached for her in the dusty four poster. Her husband was implacable.

  Anna didn’t understand his anger. They had first met at a Missions to Seamen Society meeting; he knew of her concern for sailors. She’d thought that Vincent would approve of what she’d done, that he would see it as an act of charity, a proper response to the devastation all around the coast that the great storm had brought about. She imagined that he’d be glad to part with a few items of clothing that he hardly wore, a stopped watch that lay in the drawer, unconsulted from one month to the next. A little money. It was little compared to the need of the survivors, anyway.

  It was rash of her, she realized now, not to have sought his permission before she left. But caught up in the awful drama, she had behaved as her every instinct urged. She’d been gone five days. When she arrived back in London, her dress stained to the waist with white rings of salt, hair smelling of pipe smoke, fingers red and raw, it was Sunday. She went directly to the church, slipping as quietly as she could through the Gothic door, dipping her fingers in the font as she passed. She hurried along the aisle to her place in the front pew, breathing in the familiar scent of stone and frankincense and nodding at a few familiar faces.

  Vincent stopped his sermon in midsentence and gazed down from the pulpit as she rose from her knees and settled herself on the seat. He was silent so long, regarded her with such fierce intention, the thought entered Anna’s mind that he was going to greet her, commend her action publicly. But as she smiled up at him she began to feel his fury, so large and present it seemed to fill the church. The congregation had been craning their necks to get a better look at her. One by one, their heads turned. They began to stare up at Vincent as if they’d never seen him before and to whisper to each other. There was laughter. The organist struck up and the most stalwart members of the congregation embarked on a hymn, one elderly female voice striking out ahead of the rest. Vincent descended from the pulpit, straight and stiff as a waxwork.

  Anna had been mortified. As the service limped to a halt, she hurried out through the robing room, ignoring the curate’s solicitous inquiries as to her well-being, the eager curiosity on the faces of some of the women. Cook was off-duty and she let herself into the Vicarage. By the time Vincent returned from evensong, hours later, Anna was undressed and in bed. She woke from a doze as he kicked open the bedroom door, ducked under its low frame and flung his hat on the chair with a carelessness quite unlike him.

  Anna sat up, rubbing her eyes, unsure of what to say.

  “Hello, Vincent. Were there many at the service?”

  “More than usual. Anticipating a further spectacle, no doubt.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never meant to embarrass you.”

  He gave a bark of laughter.

  “I can’t think what you did mean, then. Where the hell do you think you’ve been?”

  She had never heard him curse.

  “You surely saw the note? I went to offer assistance to shipwrecked sailors. Was it wrong?”

  Vincent pulled his crucifix over his head, trickled the chain into a puddle on the dressing table.

  “Was it wrong?” he repeated.

  He turned toward her with a sudden movement and she flinched and pressed her body back into the pillow. Vincent looked at her for a moment then seized his dose of chloral from the nightstand.

  “I am not a wife-beater, Anna. I shall retire to the study.”

  She lay awake after he was gone, listening to the drunks outside in the street. The mattress was full of pebbles and the pillow as unforgiving as the pew. The birds started early, their calls in the first glimmers of dawn singular and intimate, the way she had imagined marriage would be.

  * * *

  In the gloom of the little bedroom, Anna stepped over Lovely’s feet and assembled the writing case and candlesticks on the washstand, drew up the chair. The pen was worn, the few sheets of paper dog-eared. But there were envelopes. A stub of red wax. She tested the nib on the back of her hand, felt its cold, light scratch on her skin and dipped it in the ink.

  My dear Vincent,

  I am writing to implore you most urgently to remove me from this place.

  Please forgive my hastiness in departing for the coast before seeking your blessing. In future, I will be sure to obtain your consent for any such missions.

  You intended this retreat for the best, of that I am sure. But you know that there is nothing at all wrong with my nerves.

  I wish only to be back at the Vicarage with you and will do my utmost to avoid embarrassing you in any way again.

  Until that time, I remain your loving and obedient …

  Anna paused for so long that the ink dried on the nib. After nearly seven months, she still didn’t feel like Vincent’s wife. She signed herself his loving and obedient Anna, read the letter over and folded it into an envelope, resisting the impulse to throw it on the embers.

  Picking up the pen again, she warmed the underside of the nib over the candle, loaded it with the remains of the ink and began an account to Louisa of everything that had happened since she read in a newspaper of the ship wrecked off the Welsh coast, the boy who had been pulled from the water still breathing. How she’d felt impelled to travel there, see if she could help.

  She explained how Vincent had misunderstood her actions, and expressed her pressing need of rescue from this gloomy and godforsaken madhouse. As best she could reckon it, Lake House was some three miles north of the brickworks at the top of the Hollow Way, could be reached in a couple of hours by carriage from Louisa’s house at Wren Street.

  She sat for a moment resting her head in her hands. A madhouse was what it was, however Mr. Abse tried to dress it up. Her husband had put her in a place meant for lunatics and hysterics. The thought prompted a stab of pain in Anna’s chest. She’d never set foot in any place like this, had only hurried past the walls of the large asylum near the Vicarage on occasion, hearing the awful cries that came from inside the place and feeling a mixture of relief that she wasn’t in there and horror that others were. Wondered what afflicted them. Back in Dover, where she grew up, such people tended to remain at large. There was a simpleton who wandered the cliffs, a woman who lived in a hut in the woods, feeding the birds better than she fed herself, and whom some of the local lads tormented as a witch.

  Anna rubbed her eyes and grasped the pen. She’d run out of space. She needed to keep one sheet of paper for the other letter. She sent her love to her sister, her nephews. Remembered her brother-in-law and added him too. “Please, Lou, come quickly, I beg you,” she wrote up the margin. The you was squeezed, almost illegible. She would have to trust in Louisa to grasp the seriousness of the situation. Sometimes, Louisa saw gravity only in things that related to herself. Still, she was the closest of Anna’s sisters. The others were so much older, all so far away. Anna couldn’t think how she would even begin to explain her predicament to them.

  She got up and stretched, put her finger to the pane and slid it back and forth in squeaky lines. Drops of moisture were running down the inside of the window, joining and separating. It was pitch dark outside; she could see nothing, only feel the night pressing in on her, adding its weight to the wall
s, to the pervasive odor of damp. She had to get out.

  Both candles were guttering, sending up curls of black smoke. Martha Lovely was a woollen mountain, her breathing steady. Anna stood and watched her, followed the rise and fall of the blanket, then crept to the end of the bed and eased the leg off the floor. The little knife fell out of the handkerchief into her hand, its pearl handle cool and smooth in her palm.

  “Are you awake?”

  The rhythm didn’t falter. Anna kneeled down by Lovely’s head and lifted the edge of the blanket. The woman’s cheek rested on the palm of one hand, her mouth open. Anna pulled the blanket down farther. The string that held the key was clearly visible above the neck of her nightdress. Anna sat back on her heels and pulled out the blade, silently. Her heart raced as she leaned forward and felt in the candlelight for the string.

  She started and jumped back as Lovely sat bolt upright, one hand clamped around the key and the other holding the whistle to her lips.

  “One blast o’ this and they’ll all come running. You lie down, miss. Go to sleep now.”

  Lovely’s voice was calm, her tone determined. She didn’t sound like someone waking from sleep. Anna wondered if she’d been tricked for a second time that day as she scrambled to her feet and slid the knife up her sleeve.

  “I’m still writing letters.”

  She was shaking as she sat down again at the washstand. The blade had come within an inch of the woman’s neck; it could have hurt her. Anna hugged her arms around herself trying to get warm, to slow her thumping heart.

  There was another letter she must write but she would not do it tonight.

  * * *

  Querios Abse climbed the back stairs and trudged along the corridor to his own parlor, flung himself into his chair. In her smaller, matching, armless chair on the other side of the hearth, Emmeline tinkled the bell in a long, uninterrupted note that he took to mean she was annoyed.