He’d cursed the fox all through dinner, reached again and again to have his tankard refilled by Hannah Smith, despite the looks Emmeline shot him from the other end of the table. She’d wanted to raise the trip with him before the meal, must inform him of her plan before speaking of it to Catherine—but she couldn’t.
Catty looked fragile at the supper table, like a creature newly born that had not yet grown its skin or fur, the layer it needed to be able to live in the world. She’d rallied after the visit from Mrs. Palmer but eating her own supper Emmeline had been certain she saw Catherine’s hand move to her sleeve. She suspected it concealed slices of ham.
Now, at close to midnight, Emmeline pulled her cloak tighter around herself and crept around the wall of the house, walking on the compromised ground where the grass met the gravel in a messy scatter, feeling the stones through the soles of her satin slippers. She’d hardly known what she pulled onto her feet but she recognized them by the narrow fit, could see their gleam in the starlight.
Until five minutes ago, she’d been in bed—listening for the creak of the floorboard, the squeak of the sash window, the muffled thump as it slid back down the runners. She was praying that she would not hear them, tonight. When they came, she got out of bed in the dark almost as if she sleepwalked and made her way down to the side door, turned the key.
Catherine’s window was on the south side of the house. Emmeline crouched down and began to feel around on the ground, moving her fingers underneath fallen leaves, tracing the sinewy roots of the magnolia. She felt something clammy and jumped with fright as it leapt out from under her hand. A frog. She wiped her fingers on her cloak, trying to rid her skin of the memory of the cold, moist contact. She resumed the search and found nothing. No ham. No biscuits or bones. Only stones.
Her knees hurt. She stood up and stooped down to rub them, glanced up at the window. She felt as if someone was watching her. It was impossible. Catty would have had to be leaning right out of the upper window in order to see her underneath. Turning to go back indoors, she heard a rustling in the shrubbery. Had Catherine thrown something over there? Emmeline stepped over the grass and parted the stiff architecture of the rhododendrons with her hands, feeling a branch catch at her hair.
She got down on all fours again and crawled underneath the canopy, reading the damp, soft earth with her fingertips. She inched onward, absorbing the chill into her hands and breathing in the smell of decay and life mixed. The shoes, her best ones, were pinching her toes. She kicked them off and sat back on her heels with a perverse satisfaction at the idea of the oyster satin smeared with leaf mold, the rosettes from the Paris atelier unraveled.
The explosion startled her—the noise so close by it seemed almost upon her. She couldn’t immediately think what it was. In the silence that followed, it came to her. Querios was out with his gun. He was drunk. Could hurt himself. She grabbed hold of a branch over her head and began to pull herself to her feet but the branch bowed under her weight, shook and bent to the ground. The gunshot came again like a series of sharp, coordinated fireworks and she lurched over on her side, sprawling on the ground. She heard her own scream, harsh as the cry of the fox. Reaching into the darkness, she put her hand to her leg and found it sticky and hot. The pain was so extraordinary, so unbounded, it brought the same awe as she’d felt in childbirth, that a human body could contain such agony.
The explosions had ceased and been replaced by the sound of feet running on gravel. Someone shouted her name and she became aware of a disturbance, close by, of the branches. A swinging lamp. Querios’s face loomed over hers, close enough to kiss. She reached up and touched him. Her fingers left a bloody mark on his cheek.
“Q,” she said as she passed out. “It’s you.”
* * *
Anna sat at the breakfast table, daydreaming about the clifftop at Dover, in spring. Covered in wildflowers, a tangle of scarlet poppies, of bee orchids, daisies, celandines, mallow. She felt the upward spring of the ground underfoot and sniffed in the strong, earthy fragrance. Heard the sea far down below, hushed and tamed by distance, mixed with the human-sounding agitation of the curlews. Saw herself, walking toward the lighthouse. With Lucas St. Clair.
She looked up. Makepeace was watching her from the far door, which led along the treatment corridor. It was late. The sounds from downstairs—china being stacked in a stone sink, brooms banging on the skirting boards, the clink of cinders in dustpans—had ceased. The voices had fallen quiet too; the others were gone, departed for the airing grounds. The two of them were alone, surrounded by silence and sunlight.
Querios Abse hadn’t been seen for three days. There had been comings and goings downstairs, raised voices and hushed ones. Anna had been worried about Catherine but Lovely shook her head when she asked. It was Mrs. Abse, she said. She’d had an accident. She was confined to the Abse quarters, being waited on by her daughter. Mr. Abse had ordered fresh beef tea made every morning. He was hanging around in the parlor, the dining room. Calling Dr. Higgins out to her every day. He hadn’t set foot in his office. None of them had been paid, come Friday. Mrs. Makepeace was in charge, as far as they knew.
Lovely had brought Anna a different dress that morning. It had a heavy black skirt and bodice that looked as if it might once have belonged to Makepeace herself. She could put it on or stay in her room, was the message that came with it. Anna was wearing it now. She shuddered again at the feeling of it, the fabric coarse and greasy against her skin.
Makepeace approached her.
“What are you doing, still here? You ought to have gone out with the others.”
Makepeace was standing so close behind her that Anna could feel the woman’s breath on the back of her neck. Her spine prickled.
“I’m just sitting here. Thinking.”
Makepeace laughed a scornful laugh.
“Well, Mrs. Palmer, I’m sure you’ve got plenty to think about.”
Anna turned around to face her.
“Why do you hate me?”
“I don’t hate you. I don’t feel anything at all about you. Guests come and go. We remain. The staff and the family.”
Anna pushed her plate away. The kidney had grown cold; it sat there, rubbery and dead-looking, on the crazed china.
“Mrs. Makepeace, I’d like to have my own dress to wear. The old velvet one that I had when I first came here. Could you send it up for me? I can launder it myself if necessary.”
“Mr. Abse doesn’t buy good food just to have it fed to the pigs, Mrs. Palmer. Eat your breakfast and forget about your pretty dresses.”
“It’s not a question of it being a pretty dress. Don’t you understand? It’s just that it’s mine, Makepeace, and I feel better when I wear my own clothes. I want it back.”
“I want it back.” Makepeace imitated her accent, exaggerating the Kentish lilt. “We all want things back, Palmer,” she said. “But we don’t always get them.”
Anna lifted her tin mug and took a mouthful of water. She felt strong again. Stronger than she ever had, she understood with a faint sense of surprise. She would not allow Makepeace to bully her.
“If you have no sympathy with the patients, you have no business working in a place like this, Makepeace. I am going to do something about it when I get out of here.”
Makepeace came toward her again.
“You’re not going to get out. You’ve let down your husband. Your family don’t want you.”
Under the coffee, the other smell leaked from the pores of her skin, strong and sweet. Anna sniffed it and glanced up at the set face, the folded arms. She understood something about Makepeace and felt an unexpected pity for her. Her voice, when she spoke, was soft.
“My family do want me, in their own way. It’s yours, isn’t it, Mrs. Makepeace? It’s your family that don’t want you. I’m sorry.”
As their eyes met, Makepeace raised one hand and slapped her face. Tears of shock sprang to Anna’s eyes. She stared straight ahead of her, willing them no
t to fall.
“You can’t hurt me, Makepeace. Nothing you can do can hurt me.”
Makepeace lunged forward again and swung her arm at Anna’s head—so hard and fast that Anna fell off the chair. She sprawled on the floor among the crumbs and the dust, her head spinning with the impact. Getting to her feet, she rubbed the arm that she’d fallen on, felt her face with her fingers.
“Give me my dress back.”
Makepeace had stationed herself at the sideboard and was slinging spoons one by one into the wooden cutlery box.
“Make yourself scarce,” she hissed. “Get out.”
* * *
Alone in the dayroom, her head still reeling, Anna picked up a magazine and sat down with her hand pressed over her aching jaw. She tried to re-enter her daydream of Dover in spring but the mood had gone. She sat, staring into space. She’d allowed herself to believe that Dr. St. Clair would come back, that he would pronounce her well and her mind as whole as she knew it to be. That he would call Abse into his own study and tell him there had been a mistake and that if he wanted a certificate of her sanity Dr. St. Clair would sign it himself, photograph or no photograph. Lucas St. Clair hadn’t come. Nothing she hoped for, longed for, occurred. She closed her eyes and begged for a sign of what she should do.
The others trickled back into the room, talking loudly, their voices and faces enlivened by the air. Mrs. Featherstone was joking with Violet. From across the room, Lizzie smiled at her. Anna roused herself. The sign had not come. She’d prayed in vain.
The magazine was still on her lap. It was a new one, only a month old. She found herself reading about a ship moored in a northern port called Liverpool. The ship remained at anchor at all times, a mission for sailors. There was a chapel in what had been the captain’s quarters, bunks where they could sleep. They could get food or a new pair of boots, collect their letters or find someone to write one for them. She read the article from the first word to the last and when she’d finished she sat and stared at the engraving of the chapel. “Unto Us a Child Is Born” it said, carved into the rafter over the heads of the sailors.
There would be a purpose for her in a place like that. Even if she did what Lovely did—washed floors, served meals, fetched and carried. Talked to people and treated them like human beings. I have work for you. The idea was a lodestar, a point by which to orient herself. She tore out the pages and, as she folded them into the ugly bodice, breathed in the sharp, hopeful tang of newsprint mixed with the stale pall of the fabric.
Makepeace would not triumph over her. Nor Vincent. Nor Abse. Anna got out her embroidery and began to stitch, her mind racing. By the time the bell rang for luncheon, the cambric was worked all over with a small, auburn-haired child in flight, jumping from the rocks onto floating chunks of chain stitch in white silk. She’d done the work without knowing she did it, without a picture in her mind and what had presented itself was her vision. The boy. It was almost finished. She tied a knot, bit off the thread and followed the others back into the dining room. The air was warm, sweet with the smell of baking buns rising from the kitchen.
THIRTY-THREE
Lucas St. Clair cleared a bowl of walnut shells plus several piles of Medical Times and Gazette and the Photographic News off the table and dumped them on the floor. Dusting the table with a napkin, he looked at the window and contemplated cleaning the glass. It would take too long. He’d come to his dining room for the light, wanted to see what he was doing by the clear, white light of day. Filtered amber—the forgiving yellow tinge of the dark chamber—was unscientific. He set down a stack of photographs and began arranging them in lines.
When he had finished, he turned his back on them and stood at the window looking out into the small garden without seeing it. The smell of boiling citrus was coming up from the kitchen, making his eyes water. Life went on. Marmalade would appear and Stickles would hold the jar upside-down, remark on the superior setting qualities of Seville oranges. Maddox would marry. Produce small, broken-toothed versions of himself. Birthdays would roll around. The next was his thirtieth and he wanted it behind him.
Life would go on for him—would continue to race, amble and lope along. Screw your courage to the sticking point! Summon the blood! His father’s voice would continue to echo in his ears, urging his sons to feats of bravery in sailing boats, among birds’ nests, on horses. Bellowing at them as they lined up their tin soldiers to advance. Advance.
Lucas had taken the month off from St. Mark’s. He’d informed Harry Grieve that he had to have time to build up the evidence for his ideas. They’d been in a corridor at the time and there had been an incident on one of the noisy wards; shouts and screams of patients and keepers echoed off the tiled walls, bounced in the air. He’d run into Grieve by chance and known as he saw him coming toward him that he must act. He stood in front of him, blocking his progression.
“I have to take a sabbatical, Sir Harry. I need time to work on my theory. If the ideas hold good, I intend to change my practice and use photography in diagnosis with every patient.” He’d had to raise his voice to be heard but as he was halfway through, the commotion on the ward died down. His own voice was the only one ringing out along the corridor. “I’m not willing to continue working like this. I believe we are selling patients short.”
“You may be better fitted to a different kind of establishment, St. Clair,” Grieve said, frostily. He sighed and clapped him on the back. “Although I grant that you’ve done good work here, young man. Excellent work, in its way. I’ll get another chap in for a month and after that we’ll talk again. I wish you all the best with your experiments, misguided though they are. Enjoy your holiday.”
* * *
Since that morning, he had worked harder than at any time since his university finals. Every shirt he owned was stained with silvers and his fingers looked as if he wore black gloves. He had barely slept but he didn’t feel tired. He was on a campaign.
He had made photographs of his sister, Beth. Of Stickles. Of his cousins, the twins Melody and Melissa. His godmother sat for him and his next-door-but-one neighbor in Popham Street, a lawyer’s wife keen on watercolors who always expressed interest in the sun paintings, as she termed them. He didn’t quarrel with her, hadn’t time to explain that they were not paintings, that that was the whole point of photography. He’d made images of the woman’s eighty-year-old mother and the mother’s French companion. At Lake House, he photographed the most recent patient, Mrs. Jane Featherstone, followed by Mrs. Button, again, Mrs. Valentine and—at the specific request of Mrs. Abse—her daughter, Catherine. The girl couldn’t have been less like her father.
He’d made visits to the two other private asylums in which he had permission to make images and photographed women with hysteria, epilepsy, puerperal fever. Mania and habits of intemperance.
In all, there were thirty portraits. The beauty of them, their scientific significance, was that he’d made every image using the large-format plates measuring eight by ten inches and had photographed every sitter in the same way as Mrs. Palmer. Persuaded each to wear a white scarf over their hair and a plain, dark gown. Free of props, against a blank background, only their faces spoke from inside the oval frames. No recent coiffure or flash of diamonds or intrusion of potted palms contributed to the statement of the mind of each individual.
Once he’d made all the images, he’d set about printing them. He’d had to buy the albumen paper ready-made. It was expensive and not as good as the paper he prepared himself but it was adequate. The cost of materials had cleared him out. He’d told Stickles there was no money for meat this month or coffee. Only whisky, bread and cheese and whatever she needed for herself downstairs.
* * *
He was allowing himself an early drink. He took a mouthful and picked up the first picture. It was his sister, Beth. Her pointed, doubtful face, as large as life, gave him a sense of looking more closely at her than she had intended or allowed. He could see in her downcast eyes the signs of inc
ipient melancholy. He replaced the picture and picked up the next one.
Violet Valentine. He brought her closer to the window. Her skin blurred at its edges as if the wrinkles reached into the atmosphere around her, as if her face was not flesh but time. Her bird had died at New Year and despite the acquisition of a replacement, Violet had not been the same since. Next on the pile was one of the patients from The Laurels, the asylum south of the river. Her name was Sunday. There was a rueful, resigned understanding in her eyes that Lucas might have construed as wisdom. Yet this was a woman who’d taken the life of her own child.
The restrictions he’d imposed—the close perspective, the white scarf over the hair and dark gown below—had the opposite effect from what he’d expected. Instead of making the women look more similar, the restricted palette accentuated the differences between them. His neighbor, the artist Mrs. Mallinson, had presented herself as a beatific, eyes raised to a far horizon—looking at God himself, if the fervor of the expression was to be believed. Stickles looked out with dancing eyes; her expression, vivid and mischievous, mimicked mania. Stickles had started to cook. She’d taken to bringing up soups on trays, dishes of roast potatoes, bread and butter pudding, homely fare that she said cost next to nothing and claimed would do him good.
He’d brought the picture of Talitha Batt downstairs although he was undecided over whether it belonged in the set or not. Looking at it took him back to that day at Lake House. He’d wanted to leave the whole sorry business behind but had made himself stay. Waited while Lovely cleaned her, scrubbed the walls and the floor. She didn’t wail or weep, just got on with the job. He had the feeling she was more sorry than any of them. Lovely had wanted to dress Talitha Batt in her usual high pleated collar but he insisted on a chemise for the picture. Photography was the art of truth, not of advertisement.
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