Havisham: A Novel (8 page)

‘No, of course not. We never recognise ourselves.’

We ended up laughing.

‘This is silliness, Sally.’

‘
You
started it.’

I reached out for her wrists. As I held them, her arms stiffened.

‘But you’ll take more dresses?’

‘Any dress you want to give me.’

‘Let me think.’

I continued to hold her wrists. She smiled again, but over her shoulder at the window, out into the yard. My captive.

T
EN

The Cam River had frozen over.

The life beneath was trapped under frosted glass: a wintry half-life. Slow-motion fish and the solidified tendrils of riverweed. A pike, caught by its iced tail, fitfully thrashing; other pike gnawing at it.

A punt was boxed in beside a wall. The funnel of a green bottle stood upright, in magical suspension.

*   *   *

We sat on by the fire. The men talked. Or rather, they
debated
, symposium fashion.

On one side, by the fire-irons, W’m was arguing for rational, scientific thought: pure reason, the Greeks’ crystalline
dianoia
. Everything in the universe could be explained.

‘Except people’s behaviour,’ another student said.

‘That too. Cause and effect.’

Moses, perched on the fender, was warming to the subject. He took the opposite tack, claiming that the world was quite unreasonable. Think of what lies beyond where the stars end;
do
they end? (I felt light-headed suddenly, just trying to imagine.) Life is an enigma. We have to approach it not scientifically but poetically.

‘Piffle!’ W’m said.

‘Why have we been given souls? To elevate us above substance.’

I sat between the two of them. I inclined first one way and then the other, and back again. To and fro.

Outside, dusk drew on. A red blush rose in the sky, outlining towers and spires and cupolas. A red glow fell on to one wall of the room, and we all seemed to turn instinctively towards it.

‘There’s a perfectly cogent explanation’, W’m said, ‘for what we see.’

‘We’re not looking to understand
why
,’ Moses responded. ‘We’re thinking of God. Or of a memory of some other time, a place. Or it’s like life before we were born; swimming in the womb.’

W’m shook his head.

‘Light and how it falls is a sequence of connected circumstances. Nothing more.’

‘There’s always something behind what we see,’ retorted Moses. ‘An image. A renaissance, or an ideal. Reality has a fourth dimension.’

W’m tapped his head. Sheba, who had said little, gave vent to some good-humoured laughter. Mouse sighed at the conundrum.

And for myself, I jumped when a coal in the hearth split, and sparks went whistling up the chimney into the dark.

*   *   *

Wine, heated and honeyed, was served to us from a silver chafing-dish embossed with the college’s coat of arms.

Sitting there I had a sense of completeness, even though the argument hadn’t been won by either party. There was a fitness, an appropriateness, about everything: whether conspiring to this end, or accidentally achieved. I felt I belonged here, in this set of rooms at the top of a flight of old worn wooden stairs, with these people, on this particular evening with the redness in the sky flaring to indigo and the sweet marsala wine in my old fluted glass sparkling against the firelight.

*   *   *

A door was unlocked, a bolt drawn back, and then we were admitted to a long colonnaded gallery furnished with stone heads, torsos, dislodged limbs. There were several dozen fragments of Greek and Roman statues, each of them many times larger than life. Our footsteps echoed in the skylit gloom – as did our exclamations of astonishment.

Muscular shoulders. The spine’s runnel on a goddess’s back. Smooth buttocks, inviting a hand’s touch. Assorted
parties intimes
, with or without sculpted vegetation for cover.

I didn’t want to catch anyone’s eye, so I stood behind the others to glean their reactions. Mouse contriving to be studious; Sheba, slowing by the goddesses and naiads to take note of the classical dimensions of beauty; W’m, with a reminiscent air, fascinated by first a hand and then a foot; and Moses, poor Moses, so horribly embarrassed, and making one believe – because he looked the opposite way – that the intimate parts on display were far below his high-minded regard.

It was Moses who later rounded up the other four of us and our two companions, older women friends of Sheba, and urged us to leave.

‘Aren’t you cold? I feel I’m turning to marble myself –’

I waited a while longer, to prove that I wouldn’t be rushed, but I felt my eyes were out of my control, either swivelling about or waterily staring.

It
was
cold in here. More than that, though, it was airless, quite airless. I fanned myself with a pamphlet, as I might have done in the heat of high summer, and when I became a little dizzy I had to lean against a pillar. I closed my eyes. I felt a strong grip on my arm, my elbow, someone was holding me up. My eyes, still closed, saw W’m’s face, but when I opened them he was at the door, and protecting me was Moses. I took back my arm.

‘Thank you. I – I’ll be fine.’

That long face of angles, with all its sensibleness intact, the redoubtable decency.

I hurried away. I didn’t know why he had this effect on me, or why I was making so light of his kindness, even punishing him for it.

E
LEVEN

Lady Elizabeth Gray was a favourite subject for tableaux. We took our inspiration from a couple of engravings. Valentine Green’s for ‘Lady Elizabeth Gray at the Feet of Edward the Fourth, Soliciting the Restoration of her late Husband’s forfeited lands, 1465’. John Downman’s later work caused us to enact ‘Edward the Fourth on a visit to the Duchess of Bedford is Enamoured of Lady Elizabeth Gray’.

We portrayed the death of Lady Jane Grey, as Green devised it in our essential text,
Acta Historica Reginarum Anglia
. There was the Marriage of King Henry VIII with Ann Bullen. And – marking my preferment to the centre of stage, where I had expected to be a grieving lady-in-waiting – Mary Queen of Scots, about to be executed.

Look at me!

I’m dressed in black satin and velvet, with a high white ruff. I wear two crucifixes and a rosary. I have walked, quite composed, into the great hall of Fotheringhay Castle. I have instructed my trusty servant, Melville, to take word to my son James, the King of Scotland, that I have always sought the unification of the two kingdoms, Scotland and England. I have listened as the execution warrant was read aloud to me, telling me I am about to be put to death like some ordinary felon. I have prayed in a voice that might carry to the nearly two hundred spectators gathered here, for blessings on the English Church, for my son James and for the agent of my doom, Elizabeth of England. I have given solace to my sorrowing attendants, I have – strangely – spoken with no little wit to the men who will put me to death, my killers. I have stretched out on the floor and laid my neck on the block, placing myself in the hands of God. My ladies weep. The axe is raised. I am on the point of speaking those words which will be my last. ‘Sweet Jesus.’ Secreted beneath my gown but visible is the little Skye terrier, true now as ever to his mistress, offering me my final comfort.

The tableau has been given the motto Mary embroidered herself on her cloth of state, which is placed beside the block. ‘In my end is my beginning.’

Look at me!

Awaiting the death blow.

I have laid my head sideways, so that the audience can see my face and I can see theirs. Just out of my sight – I’m thankful about it – is the executioner’s blade, which has to be held quite still for the two minutes it takes as the commentary is delivered from the side of the stage.

Only the wee terrier moves, but even he might be conscious of the solemnity of the grand event being depicted.

Some in the audience take handkerchiefs to their eyes. There’s a good deal of troubled wriggling in chairs. I feel chastened myself, and sad.

But this is Catherine Havisham’s dignification, even though I’m wearing a red wig – hair as red as Sally’s – and have my face heavily powdered. (There’s a little drift of the stuff on the block, on the black velvet of my gown.)

I feel I’m at the centre of everyone’s attention: or at any rate, the figure I represent is the focus of every pair of eyes in the room (the dog’s apart). I shall never feel more essential to the Chadwycks and their friends and their friends’ friends than I do at this supreme moment – actually two, extending to nearly three minutes – until the blade starts to wobble, and the dog (snuffling) wanders off, and the most pious in the audience need to excuse themselves for air, and one of my genteel ladies threatens to faint, and the dog barks.

Curtains are drawn across our stage. The actors all relax, and make for the side tormentors. For some reason no one thinks of assisting me to my feet. But what of it, I am only a pretend queen, and a queen done to death, as if the ritual of human sacrifice was still being practised in the year of grace,
anno domini
1587.

*   *   *

We were also attending Assemblies, in the towns of fashion in the South. We accompanied Lady Charlotte to Cheltenham. And thence to Bath, where we bathed with her in our caps and shifts. There too we were drawn to the lights and music, like moths.

*   *   *

A personable stranger’s face meeting mine. The same pair of hands crossing with mine several dances apart, then for a couple in succession.

‘You don’t recall?’

‘“Recall” … Should I?’

‘The theatricals. At Chartridge. I saw your Mary Stuart. Splendid. I shed a tear or two.’

I was carrying my fan and a woollen shawl Mouse had lent me, since she knew about the Bath draughts.

In my embarrassment I let go of the fan. My interlocutor picked it up for me.

‘A famous trick, that one.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘A lady dropping her fan.’

He laughed. I was puzzling how to respond when I felt a hand on the small of my back and I was very swiftly propelled from the spot. I hadn’t time to do more than look over my shoulder, not even apologetically.

‘It was someone who…’

‘What, Catherine? Did I interrupt you?’

Sheba turned and looked back, in the wrong direction.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Over there.’

But he had gone: and perhaps – quite possibly – Sheba hadn’t even meant to look towards where he had been standing.

*   *   *

We repeated our success with the Queen of Scots. As I lay with my head on the block, I could see him. My fan-recoverer. I hadn’t meant to notice anyone, but …

He was in one of the front seats, not at all secretive about his presence. I tried not to notice him after that. I concentrated on Mary instead, on her struggle to see nothing of what was happening to her, not to feel, not to think back or to think forward either, in case she screamed out with terror, but to give up her Catholic soul gladly to her Maker.

*   *   *

He found me.

He left the people he was talking to. Someone called after him, ‘Mr Compeyson!’, but he ignored the request. He congratulated me. The voices were so loud, he had to lean closer.

‘Didn’t they let you go on wearing your show-clothes, your friends?’

‘Our costumes?’

‘Not that I’m objecting to what you’ve got on, you understand. You could teach most of them here a thing or two.’

‘I think not.’

‘I beg to differ. Why so little confidence, Miss Havisham?’

‘You know my name?’

He held out his programme. He had marked a red cross against my name.

Lady Charlotte was approaching, and I backed away from him. She was raising her glass to her eye. I swept past him, muttering an apology. I fixed my gaze on Lady Charlotte, and smiled boldly, feeling … feeling that an aviary of tiny panicking birds was suddenly let loose inside my head.

*   *   *

‘It’s always been understood,’ Mouse said, ‘that’s all. We’ve always known.’

‘And W’m knows too?’

‘Yes. He will make a good match, and assure the future of Durley.’

Why was I being told this?

‘When?’ I asked.

‘When he finds whoever she is.’

Mouse smiled, looking out the window, across the small park to where our neighbours’ began.

Why did she smile?

‘“She”?’

‘The one who’s destined to be the mistress of the Chase one day.’

*   *   *

I waited.

What else was I supposed to think? W’m was honour bound to act, wasn’t he? But I was aware that now there often wasn’t a vacant seat next to mine which he could fill. Or a fourth was required for cards at the next table, and would I
or
W’m care to oblige?

He had caught a cold somewhere, and wasn’t able to sing, although I didn’t see why that should prevent him from turning my pages as I played the Broadwood. He was lent some gun dogs, and when we all went walking it was necessary for him to keep them in order, going off to whistle after them. Even in the dining room: Lady Chadwyck had had draughts on the brain since Bath, and her son exchanged places with her, while experiments continued with rolled sausages of felt under the doors and putty in the window frames. All, so far as I could tell, quite legitimate, but no less frustrating, because no apology was ever offered to me.

My mind wandered off. I found myself thinking of someone else: the stranger. The mysterious Mr Compeyson. (Christian name unknown.)

His ready attention. His unsubscribing spirit as he’d mocked our dancing partners with his eyes. His amusing contrariness as he exchanged politesse with people he knew no better than I but pretended he did.

The sense that we were engaged, just briefly, in some mutual conspiracy.

The way his voice had dropped, warmly, into my ear.

The aviary birds inside my head, and the muffled commotion he’d set up in the pit of my stomach, another little whorl of excitation.

*   *   *

I had to lay the canvas on my lap, set out my colours on the little folding table, and paint the view.