Havisham: A Novel (34 page)

Then a second turn of the room.

A circus track. No – no, a coliseum.

I had to turn myself away from the sight of his face, so deeply etched with pain was it. His voice bore all his desolation.

A third time.

The sombre tread of our feet. The tremor of my silk. His squeaky boot-leather.

A perpetually uncompleted son et lumière.

Alas,

What good are shrines and vows to maddened lovers?

The inward fire eats the soft marrow away,

And the internal wound bleeds on in silence.

*   *   *

A letter came one morning. I opened it at the dressing table.

To Dear Nana,

How long is it since I called you that?

And now you must learn to think of me not as Estella Havisham but as …

This is the first time I’ve written my new name.

MRS BENTLEY DRUMMLE.

There!

It is not exactly a Secret, that we were married, but we chose not to advertise it in the Newspapers, & in truth my Husband’s Parents think he has been a little – underhand, sh. I say. His Sister attempted to dissuade me, wh. provoked B.’s anger with her. I had Mrs Bradley swear not to speak of it.

So, we are not quite under-a-cloud, but nor are we in high-favour.

Yet this may not be News to surprise YOU, I wonder? You have always had a Skill for seeing thru my Dissembling.

For the nonce we remain here in Richmond.

And remain yours truly, both of us, in the hope of yr. Approval & Esteem.

Estella

I crumpled up the note and tossed it into the fire.

It missed the grate.

Later I fetched it out, and unrolled it again.

Over the succeeding days I memorised the words. Phrase by phrase, sentence by sentence.

As if I had to convince myself, only this way, that it could possibly be true.

*   *   *

The next year. One noon-time. A carriage was waiting in Crow Lane.

A young woman in a cloak and feathered hat was shown in.

‘Mother –’

Or did I imagine that was the word she spoke, those two syllable-movements of her lips?

She stood removing first one glove, but she hesitated before she peeled off the other.

I saw the fine ring she wore: a cluster of rubies inside diamonds.

‘How – how are you?’ she asked.

‘Oh … I’m alive – just. And you?’

‘Quite well, thank –’

‘Come closer, Estella.’

‘What for?’

‘So that I can see you better, of course. You won’t begrudge me this little? When you have denied me so much else.’

‘Oh, that. My wedding.’

‘As if it were nothing.’

She looked away. She adjusted the rake of her fashionable hat, straightening the plumes.

‘If it didn’t signify –
that’s
why you didn’t want to tell me?’

‘I haven’t come to quarrel with you.’

‘But you
have
come.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then let me see you. Come closer.’

But still she resisted. I had just the fragrance of her rich woman’s perfume, too much of it perhaps.

I leaned forward and grabbed at her arm. She squealed, and tried twisting it away. But I held on tight.

‘You’re hurting me!’

‘I would never hurt you, my darling.’

‘Please leave me alone –’

I let go of her. She rubbed at her forearm through her satin sleeve, where I’d been holding her.

‘
Assieds-toi, mon enfant.
’

She shot me a glance. She forgot about her arm, it dropped by her side.

She averted her eyes to the window.

‘…
mon enfant
.’

She knew that I knew: she was carrying a child,
his
child.

‘I’ve a way to go,’ she said. ‘I just wanted to see you for myself.’

To have the proof for yourself, that what they’d told you was true, I was still alive?

‘And now you have,’ I said.

‘Yes.’

(While I should be worrying about myself, Estella Drummle, that expression of determined pity was really saying. I can forget about
her
, she’ll survive.)

*   *   *

After we’d said our goodbyes I prised back a shutter and, shading both eyes against daylight, I watched her leave.

She stopped at the gate and looked round, fastened her gaze on the window and raised her hand. She didn’t wave; it was a gesture of recognition – of all that I had done, sometimes harming her when I had meant the very opposite.

The greys stamped their hooves. Fine beasts they were too. He had provided her with them in anticipation of a legacy which he could be as profligate with as he liked, being answerable to no one. All he was waiting for was my demise.

*   *   *

‘I’ve been to Richmond,’ Pip said. ‘You didn’t tell me she was there.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘What good would it have done?’

‘Good? You can use that word?’

‘Did you speak to her?’

‘How could I? When he had her on his arm. I watched them. That was enough.’

‘How – how do they look together?’

‘Not ecstatically happy.’

I leaped on the remark.

‘
Not
happy?’

Relief vied in me with grief.

‘Scarcely filled with the joys of married life,’ he said.

He stood for a while in silence, recalling what he’d seen. His hands were clenched by his sides, knuckles flaring white.

*   *   *

My relief passed. I was ashamed of it. I waited for Estella to write, but I heard nothing. I learned only – from Mrs Bradley – that they’d moved away.

Estella would have written, I felt, if she’d had the confidence. But now she couldn’t even pretend. She might still wear fashionable hats, but they were a disguise, they deflected people’s scrutinising eyes. She dressed for a masquerade.

I couldn’t sleep. I spoke to her instead, under my breath; I tried to calm her, to bring her just a little cheer, I tried to offer my darling the only gift she needed now – hope.

*   *   *

Pip wrote to me. He had heard about the birth. He had heard other stories too, that Estella was quickly losing the man’s affection, if she’d ever truly had it. There were rumours of drinking sprees, and women up in London.

‘
His neglect is bad enough, but they say it’s done with violence, and behind closed and locked doors. There he takes out his disgust of himself on his wife, the mother of his child.
’

What kind of devil was she closeted with? To what depravities would this blackguard not stoop in order to impose his will?

Only one certitude awaited her: it was my abominable bequest to her.

Everything was revealed to me in a freak instant, and left me wringing my hands, pulling the combs from my hair.

There was no future beyond the future. Estella’s fate would be this. To suffer, and to know nothing else.

To suffer; and, when she thought she’d reached the limits of endurance, to suffer some more.

*   *   *

‘It’s Mr Pirrip here to see you, miss –’

He didn’t wait to be shown up, but strode into the room.

I had been anticipating a visit. I hadn’t envisaged so much anger.

His anger had turned to rage. I asked the girl to leave us.

‘Miss, are you quite sure –?’

A storm whirled around him. Here was my nemesis, come to me in my own drawing room: my reckoning, and my doom.

He had found out more; he wouldn’t tell me what, except to say he judged Drummle bestial.

‘If there’s justice in an afterlife – unless justice really can be brought upon him here on this earth…’

‘Try to calm yourself,’ I said.

‘Not while Estella is in that villain’s clutches.’

There was no consoling him. I couldn’t say anything to him.

‘What can she be going through? What’s going on inside her mind –?’

I shook my head.

‘Have you seen her?’ he asked me.

‘No.’

‘Or heard from her? Tell me truthfully.’

‘Since the birth, not a word.’

‘Why doesn’t she want to say?’

Because I trained her not to speak. Because I taught her to keep her unhappiness a secret to herself. Because I equipped her only with the knowledge of how to suffer.

‘Oh, Pip…’

‘It’s too late. Much too late.’

‘What have I done?’

She was supping on horrors, I sensed it.

‘Everything that’s happened –’

‘This damned house!’ he called out.

‘I only meant…’

It was useless, I couldn’t justify myself.

‘This infernal house!’

I watched him walk over to one of the windows. He started to unbolt the shutters.

I cried out to him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He pulled back one shutter, which rasped on its hinges. Daylight broke into the room, like a dam burst. I covered my face with my arms.

I heard him flinging open the other shutter, as I was begging him not to. I buried my face in my hands. I couldn’t bear to see the damage being done, the grey English light reclaiming the room.

The light seeped between my fingers. My eyes stung with it, even tight shut, through the pink of the lids.

‘Close the shutters! Close the shutters!’

The shutters on the other window screeched as they were unloosed.

Daylight continued to pour in. I felt it swilling into every corner. It was drowning the room.

‘Please! What are you trying to –?’

‘It should never have been like this.’

Closing my eyes even tighter, I jammed my hands to my ears, so I wouldn’t have to hear any more. But he only raised his voice, to
make
me hear.

‘It couldn’t change anything. What difference was it going to make, living walled up here?’

His good manners of the past were all forgotten.

‘Incarcerating Estella in this dungeon!’

I couldn’t muffle his fury.

I got up, and my stick clattered to the floor. I left it there.

I dragged myself across the room, risking all that light. His voice followed me. I held on to the furniture, with my eyes screwed up in my face, every movement an agony to me.

I opened the door, lurching for the familiar gloom of the corridor. I crossed to the other side of the passage, turned the handle of the dining-room door, and pushed as hard as I could with my shoulder. I stumbled forward; I just stopped myself from falling by clutching on to the back of a chair.

‘Leave me in peace.’

‘Why did you go on inviting me here? Why did you let me come?’

‘You repay me like this? This is brutal persecution of –’

‘It’s your conscience that torments you, Miss Havisham, not I.
That’s
why you have me here, isn’t it? So I’ll help reprieve you from just a little of your guilt –’

‘Keep the room dark!’

‘It
is
too late for that.’

My Sisyphus boulder of guilt – how right you are – and the pain searing in my shoulder from the burden of it.

‘Just leave me!’

‘Not like this, Miss Havisham.’

‘Please!’

‘I’m concerned.’

I heard laughter from somewhere. Then I realised it had come from myself. A wild yelp that only sounded like laughter, which had no mirth in it.

‘Are you unwell, Miss Hav—’

‘Why should
you
be concerned?’

‘Because I think you might do yourself an injury.’

‘The injury is all done,’ I said. ‘All done.’

Guilt was ravaging me. He understood that. Everything was collapsing in on me again. Guilt was punishing me with a vengeance, sparing me nothing. I was dying of it.

I stared into the flames of the fire.

‘Forgive me.’

‘Miss Havisham –’

‘Say you forgive me, Pip. Tell me, please, pl—’

I reached out for him. He was behind me. I turned round. Somehow, though – I lost my bearings, or I was distracted – something else was happening –

‘The fire! The log! Miss Havish—’

Great wings were flapping at me, like a bird’s, an eagle’s, then they became wings of flame, a phoenix’s, and I heard that ragged laugh rising again.

As he snatched at the table cloth, the wedding breakfast flew into the air, the top layer was sliding off the cake, I saw mice and moths escaping, worms and maggots, the cake caved in on itself.

‘Dear Jesus!’

He was dancing round me with the remnants of the cloth, trying to cover me.

Flames passed along my arms, I saw them and felt just a gentle warmth. Flames were sprouting from my head.

He was shouting at me.

‘Christ Jesus!’

I’m watching it happen, the fire’s consuming greed, its ardour and passion. I dip my hands in the liquid gold of the flames – scarlet and orange and gold, with flickers of blue – I clasp them against my cheeks, my tinder-dry hair.

A tunnel of draught spirits me high, and the next second my dress roars into a ball of fire.

Now I shall go soaring above rooftops and steeples, into the ether. My lungs are melting. A long tongue of flame darts out of my mouth, uncurls, it’ll lick a way through …

I want to laugh again, but he’s spinning me round.

I’m aware just briefly of a numbing heat, which might be ice. Suddenly I have no feeling in any part of me.

He envelops me. Blackness. I lose my balance. I’m on the floor, he’s rolling on top of me, I can’t breathe.

This blackness.

The heat no longer hurts. Or it cauterises me so intensely, so icily, that I’m submerged in it.

I
am
the fire.

F
ORTY
-
SIX

My fatal course is finished; and I go,

A glorious name, among the ghosts below.

But wait …

*   *   *

‘She has damaged her heart.’

(It’s always the heart.)

‘If she were a younger woman –’

(Instead of this old hag. But
inside
, gentlemen –)

‘Her burns can be treated, they’re only disfigurements. Skin-deep, that is. But the harm done to her heart, that weakens everything.’