The Painted Bridge (9 page)

More photographs had appeared in this room, arranged in two long lines on the wall opposite the windows. Anna got up to look at them. Like the others, they were of women alone, against blank backgrounds. Some looked into the eyes of the viewer, others gazed at something or someone unseen, or gave the impression they saw nothing at all. All had names or initials written on them; some were also labeled by their illnesses. “Hysteria.” “Epileptic mania.” “Habits of intemperance.”

Anna stopped at a picture in the middle of the top row. The woman’s face was grave, her eyes amused. She was sitting in a chair, her arms contained within its arms, a book open on her lap. Her hair, beginning to show the signs of age, was undressed. The photograph had the initials
LM
in ink, written in a fine italic hand and followed by “Melancholia.”

Hanging next to it was a photograph of a different woman. Her hair was piled on each side of her head in stiff ringlets. She wore a shiny, checked dress with mandarin sleeves slit to the elbow, white lace undersleeves. She stood at an angle, her face half turned, eyes raised to some far horizon. The picture was titled “Convalescence.” It was
labeled with the same initials,
LM.
Anna looked back at the other picture; saw the duplicate almond shape of the eyes.

She turned away from the photographs, went back to the window seat and sat down. Picking up a magazine, she looked without interest at the advertisements for eiderdown petticoats, juniper hair tonic and skin creams that filled the back pages. She disagreed with the diagnosis. In the first picture, LM looked human. As if she might step off the wall and sit down for a proper talk such as women could find themselves having sometimes, one where something true or funny was said, some sorrow eased or laughter shared. In her convalescence, LM looked as stiff as the carved prow of a sailing ship. There was a dishonesty in her expression that hadn’t been there before.

The door opened and a stout woman with white stripes like a badger’s in the front of her hair bustled through the room, nodding at Batt as she passed. The room came briefly to life, a current of interest running through the occupants; it subsided into torpor in her wake. Anna looked at the old grandfather clock again. It was eleven-forty. She dropped the magazine and covered her face with her hands. Someone must be ill. One of the children had whooping cough. Or Louisa had gone away for a few days, summoned by her mother-in-law. She would return to London at the weekend, come for her on Monday or Tuesday.

Anna’s sense of expectancy was becoming weary. She could barely call it hope anymore. She loved her sister but Louisa wasn’t altogether reliable. Anna had always felt more like the older one, despite the four years between them. She must write to her again.

Had Vincent been to see Louisa? Was it possible that he had persuaded her that Anna was ill? Had lost her reason? Anna had once told Lou, after their father died, that she believed God wanted her to go to the aid of seafarers.

“Are you mad?” Louisa had said, screwing up her face. “Are you out of your mind, Anastasia?”

*   *   *

The drizzle outside thickened to rain, coming down with a dreary insistence. Anna stretched her arms in the air and reached down
to retrieve the magazine from the floor. She avoided being indoors for long stretches, disliked closed windows and the lingering odor of past meals. Her father used to say she suffered from cabin fever. She wouldn’t spend another day waiting for the creak of the door on its hinges. If the door opened, she intended to take no notice at all. Louisa would have to squash up next to her on the seat, throw her arms around her, pinch her, scream her name, before she even knew she was there. Anna stared down at the magazine, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as a tear fell and formed a wrinkled circle on the print.

“I find it is easier to escape Lake House by accepting one’s situation than by struggling against it,” she heard Batt say, quietly. “Enjoying what companionship one may find.”

Anna looked up.

“I will never accept it. I need to see a doctor. Not Higgins, a proper physician, Mrs. Batt.”

“It is Miss Batt. I am unmarried. You could make an appeal to the other doctor. Present your case to him.”

“Which other doctor?”

“He visits occasionally.” Batt inclined her head toward the wall. “Those are his photographs. I notice that you found them of interest.”

“I won’t be photographed as a specimen, Miss Batt. Labeled like a butterfly and put on display.”

The door squeaked open and despite herself, Anna’s head flew up. It was a man. He stood in the doorway looking around with an air of purpose and interest. He was dressed in an old tweed coat, its collar turned up around a carelessly tied bow at his neck. His long hair was beaded with rain and his whiskers reached to his chin in the style that Vincent said denoted bad character, which he called Piccadilly weepers.

“Good afternoon to you all,” he said.

Makepeace was behind him.

“She’s over there, Doctor,” she said, pointing at Anna.

He brushed rain off his shoulders and pulled off his gloves, looking at her curiously. For a minute, Anna couldn’t think who he was or where she knew him from. Then she understood. Louisa had sent him. Louisa had sent her a proper doctor. How could she have doubted her?
She clapped her hands as he crossed the room toward her, laughed with relief as she jumped up from the window seat.

“Thank God you’ve come. Isn’t it strange, that a week or two can take forever?”

“Yes,” he said. “Isn’t it? You must be the new patient.”

His eyes rested on her for a long moment and traveled on. She became aware of Lizzie Button, leaning against the wall next to the window seat, her bundle in her arms.

“Greetings, Mrs. Button. I am Lucas St. Clair, come to see you again.”

“I know very well who you are,” Button said, laying one hand on his forearm. “What do you take me for, a cupboard head?”

“Not at all, I …”

“I am teasing you, Dr. St. Clair. Did you have a comfortable journey?”

They left, the man closing the door behind them with a last glance in Anna’s direction.

Anna sat down. She felt sick with disappointment. Foolish too. The silence in the room was deeper than it had been, punctured by the uneven tick of the clock. Something had caused Miss Batt to smile. Her teeth emerged, small and white and straight-edged, between parted lips, as she held up the cloth to the light and examined it, a silver thimble stuck on the tip of one finger. She seemed in no mood for further conversation.

Anna decided to make an exception to her rule.

“Who was that?” she said.

Batt glanced around, her eyebrows lifted so high it appeared they might depart her face altogether.

“Are you speaking to me?”

“Yes. Who was that man?”

“He announced himself to Lizzie. You can hardly have failed to hear his name.”

“I heard his name. But who is he?”

“He is a doctor, Mrs. Palmer. The one you decline to see. The photographer. He may also be a miracle worker.”

“What do you mean?”

“It seems Dr. St. Clair has induced you to speak.”

“I am perfectly able to speak, Miss Batt. It’s just that I … Well, I …”

“You don’t wish to associate yourself with the insane. Quite understandable, Mrs. Palmer. I felt the same myself once.”

Her voice was dry and Anna felt the beginnings of a blush creeping onto her face.

She changed her mind about not talking to anyone; she was longing for some company. Asking Miss Batt about herself she learned to her surprise that Batt was the oldest in a family of eight, born in India in a bungalow among mountains whose tops disappeared in the mist. She’d grown up listening to the roars of tigers and being cooled by servants fanning her with banana leaves bigger than she was. In England, she worked as a milliner. Had her own little place in Fulham and spent her days plaiting straw and gluing feathers.

“I’m a practical woman, Mrs. Palmer,” she said. “I do what needs to be done.”

They lapsed for a while into silence. Mrs. Button had not returned. Anna glanced at the images on the wall.

“I may agree to be photographed after all. Do you think it might help me prove my rationality?”

Miss Batt stitched on for some time without speaking.

“Dr. St. Clair is a well-intentioned young man,” she said, eventually. “Whether he holds any sway with Mr. Abse is another matter. And then of course there is the question of his techniques.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that they may be misguided,” said Miss Batt. “That there is always the possibility of their doing more harm than good.”

Anna breathed in the fog, felt it on her cheeks, her lips, her tongue. It was white and tasteless, different from London fog. It was different from sea fog too—thick and unmoving. Abse had agreed to her request for a walk in the grounds. She could go where she liked, he said, with a poor sort of laugh. Within reason. Lovely would follow behind.

She walked along the gravel path at the back of the house, felt her way past the brickwork of a walled garden and arrived in front of a cottage, a curl of blue smoke from its crooked chimney pot merging with the white blanket that pressed down on the roof. A bird was calling somewhere nearby, making a high, harsh shriek that hurt her ears. She stopped to look at the cottage, leaning on its fence of wooden palings, peering toward the latticed windows for signs of normal life being lived by someone.

“Hello?” she said, experimentally, keeping down her voice so Lovely shouldn’t hear.

At the side of the cottage, something red appeared to turn in her direction.

“Who’s that?” came a high, clear voice. Anna made her way up the path and saw the girl. She was younger than she’d realized, pale and graceful inside her cloak, her eyes large and serious under a high forehead. She was standing in front of an enclosure, a book balanced on a fence post beside her. On the other side of the woven fence was a large, grubby bird with a crest of small quills like pins on top of its head and a long ragged tail stretched out behind. The mud in its run was marked
with angular footprints and scattered with bits of what appeared to be dumpling.

“Even he hates suet,” said the girl. “Peacocks usually eat anything.”

“Is that what it is? A peacock?”

“A silver peacock. That’s what my father calls it but it’s not really silver. More of a dirty white, don’t you think? Poor creature. I don’t know why he has to be penned in like this. It’s so unfair.”

The girl held her hand over the fence, dropped another lump; the bird shifted backward on scaly feet.

“My father’s afraid he’ll be eaten.”

Anna cast a glance over her shoulder and Lovely clapped her hands, the sound muffled.

“Come along, miss. Best get going,” she called.

The girl picked up her book.

“We can walk together.” She took Anna’s arm and they passed back down the path and set off across the grass that led to the field. Anna had a sense of unreality that she should be next to the girl, feeling the light grip of her fingers.

“I’ve seen you from my window. What’s your name?”

“Catherine Abse. I’m not allowed to talk to lunatics but you look alright.”

“I’m Anna. Mrs. Anna Palmer. I’m not a lunatic. You must be Mr. Abse’s daughter?”

“Yes. I suppose I must be.” Catherine let go of Anna’s arm and peered at her out of the vapor, her white face coming nearer. “How old are you? Let me guess. Twenty-seven.”

“Twenty-four, if you must know. How old are you?”

“Nearly sixteen. At what age should a girl marry, do you think?”

“I’ve never thought it mattered much. Why? Do you intend to marry?”

Catherine let out a noisy breath.

“One day I might. Not many men would want to marry a girl from a loony house.”

They continued toward the lake under looming trees, their top branches amputated by the fog. The grass was thick and soft along the edges of the mud path, wet with dew. The hem of Anna’s dress began
to slap at her ankles, dampen her stockings. She’d wanted to use the walk to find out if the high wall went all the way around the grounds of Lake House, whether the bridge and the gates were the only ways out, but the visibility was too poor.

“Do you love birds? Is that why you come out to feed them? I’ve seen the ducks all coming to meet you.”

“Not really,” Catherine said. “I can’t eat the food we have at home so I give it to the ducks. Most things stick in my throat. I can feel them choking me, even after chewing fifty times.”

“Really? I would have thought that was impossible.”

“Mother says it’s impossible too. How many times do you chew things, Mrs. Palmer?”

Anna laughed. “I’m afraid I’ve never counted.”

They went through the gate and on in the direction of the lake. Catherine began talking about an Indian man she’d read about in the
Illustrated News,
who fell in love with an elephant. She could understand it because she had fallen in love with Italy—“The white walls, the blue hills, my Italy”—even though she’d never been there. But she supposed falling in love with a country wasn’t the same as falling in love with an elephant. Or a man. She stopped, turned her head toward Anna.