The Painted Bridge

by Wendy Wallace

  “I have devoted myself to researching the theory for the last year. And I would like to propose that you join me now for the final stage of my inquiries. I have drawn my own conclusions but I do not expect that you take my word for it. I invite you to make your own experiment this evening, in this room.

  “What you see on the walls here are photographic portraits of women. As you can see, all are devoid of the badges of wealth and beauty, even of industry. Any one of them might appear to be a patient. But not all of the sitters are patients. Some are inmates at private asylums. Others are healthy women of sound mind—members of my own family and household and of friends’ families and households.

  “I am asking you, as experienced doctors of the mind, to assess which is which. But before you start, I want to raise a further question. Is it possible that some of the women pictured here fall into both categories? I mean to say, is it possible that any are both inmates of asylums and in sound mind? Or vice versa?

  “I have numbered each one but left them otherwise unmarked. Please note which individuals you believe to be the lunatics. And which are as sane as you and I.”

  The photographs were ranged in two long lines along one wall of the stately drawing room. Anna Palmer was there, twice. Violet Valentine. Lizzie Button. Talitha Batt, in life and in death. In between were photographs of the artist, Mrs. Mallinson. Stickles. Of his mother, her face shadowed with the grief that had afflicted her since Archie was cut down. Of Beth. Sunday. Catherine Abse. The identical twins, Melissa and Melody.

  Every man in the audience took up his invitation to study the portraits more closely. They got to their feet with a prolonged shifting of chair legs, some protesting that they’d come for answers not more questions, others eager to prove their faith in the technique. The atmosphere changed as they began to look at the images. A hushed tone entered the discussions as the alienists found themselves looking at people, at individuals, and as the burden they carried—the responsibility and difficulty of making judgments about a fellow human—descended on them.

  Several clustered around the second, retouched picture of Anna Palmer from which she gazed out clear-skinned and clear-eyed. Others crowded around them, believing that they must be missing the image that was the key to the whole experiment. Few lingered in front of the first, unretouched image of Mrs. Palmer in which the dark scabs and bruises dominated her face.

  It was an hour before they were back in their seats, comparing notes, holding sheets of paper annotated with numbers and potential conditions. After an initial quarrelsome discussion, it became clear that there was no agreement among the doctors about who was suffering from mental disease and who was not. Only on two pictures had the gentlemen been unanimous. Mrs. Anna Palmer, in the unretouched image, was a lunatic. Mrs. Anna Palmer, free of scabs and bruises, was not. They disagreed only over whether she was one woman, photographed at intervals, or two different women. They similarly disagreed on the question of the twins.

  By the time Lucas took the podium again, the mood was unsettled.

  “Gentlemen. I began my inquiries with a firm belief in the potential of photography to take us farther down our path of helping the sufferers of mental distress. As some of you know, I’ve staked my professional reputation on this point—no one wished for its truth more than I. But the evidence does not bear out the theory. My research shows that although the photographic portrait can bring amusement, diversion and solace to those suffering from mental disquiet—as it can to any other member of the public—the hope that it can be used as a diagnostic tool is unproven.”

  A belligerent roar broke out among the bearded and black-jacketed audience; sounds of disapproval, mingled with disappointment, rose to the tobacco-colored ceiling. St. Clair waited until the hubbub died away. He felt anger too. No one could have tried harder than he to make the idea work. But it did not. The theory he had cherished for so long, had tried to uphold and enlarge, had perished. Perished on his own dining room table as surely as if it had never lived.

  “Our aim tonight is not to prove one man or another right or wrong, but simply to shoulder our burden of pushing on with research, with widening our small circle of understanding of the human mind—in health and in sickness. Our quest is worthwhile and wrong turnings must lead us in the end to right ones.

  “Gentlemen, I have one further point to make. I firmly believe that photography might yet prove its worth—in treatment. The discussions prompted by the images, the opportunity for patients to define themselves by them, or to contradict them, the potential for these ideas will inform my further investigations.”

  Maddox was sitting in the front row. He stood up and began to applaud; one or two others followed. The noise sounded like hammering from far away. Like demolition. Lucas gathered his notes and stepped down from the podium, began to take down the photographs from the walls, starting with Mrs. Palmer. The alienists were shrugging on their coats with the help of the cloakroom attendants, their voices lively with the fact of the evening being over, with waiting carriages. Harry Grieve was there, Lucas saw with some surprise. Two of the younger alienists argued still about whether or not Lucas’s mother was deranged, standing between the fire bowls that lit the entrance to the club. It was snowing heavily outside.

  Before leaving, Lucas stopped by the book of questions in the entrance hall. On the page where a year earlier he had posed a question—Can photographs be effective in diagnosing disorders of the mind?—he wrote his own answer, in a neat italic hand.

  Fallaces sunt rerum species. The appearances of things are deceptive.

  * * *

  Lucas walked back to Popham Street, carrying the photographs in a portfolio under his coat. He put them down on the table in the dining room. Stickles had left out a tray of ham sandwiches, some pickled cucumbers. He climbed the stairs to the dark chamber. He’d left the collodion unstoppered, he saw. The air was full of the smell of ether. The solution was exhausted, thin and dark red. He emptied the bottle down the drain. On an impulse, he lifted the yellow shade off the lamp and turned up the wick. The dark chamber, by ordinary light, was dusty and the walls marked with black fingerprints. Rectangles of zinc—where he had patched the boards to prevent light leaking in from below—shone under his feet.

  He set about rinsing and drying the measuring cylinders, empty bottles, and developing dishes. He put away the thermometer, the scales and the printing frame, swept the floor and hung on the line the last couple of prints from the wash. He spent a long time emptying and discarding and rinsing and when he’d finished, he dried his hands, sat on the stool, hooked his feet up under him and did nothing at all.

  The theory had failed. It had failed utterly. The proposition to which he had devoted a year of his life was null and void. He felt flat. Relieved, as well. He could let go of it, and have time to consider other things. He would leave St. Mark’s anyway. He could not stay. He’d find a new job—perhaps out of London. The lamp flared and died, the reservoir of oil empty.

  The moon cast a shadow of the plane tree onto the wall. For an instant, Lucas desired to set up the tripod and make a photograph of the stark, reaching limbs, the complication of embracing arms reaching into the room. He didn’t move. He watched as the moon was enveloped in cloud and the shadows softened and disappeared. Sitting in the darkness, he saw something else. It wasn’t Maddox who wanted to get married. It was he.

  Lighting a candle, he took the photograph of Mrs. Palmer, the second one, into his bedroom. He set it on the table by his bed, where he would see it for as long as his eyes remained open, would see it again when he woke. In the morning, he would go to Lake House. He would go and visit her. He owed her an apology. He might yet be able to help her.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Water dripped from the gutters and the branches. The line of snow on the ledge outside Anna’s window looked brittle, the surface lacy with holes. The fire was not quite out; a few embers glowed from under a soft blanket of ash. Lovely arrived later than usual with
a jug of cold water, her face worried.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “It’s Makepeace, miss. No one can rouse ’er. She’s not dead—Cook held a mirror to her mouth.”

  She stepped outside the door and came back in with Anna’s boots, put them down in the front of the hearth.

  “Thought you might like to have these. Make your own way downstairs, miss. Mr. Abse says we’ve got to manage the best we can. The magistrates are still ’ere, they couldn’t get away last night. He’s having breakfast with ’em, in the study.”

  Anna washed from head to toe after Lovely clumped her way off down the corridor, humming. She put on her own dress again. Laced up her boots. Someone had cleaned them—the salt stains were gone. On impulse, she unlaced them again, took the money from the bed leg and hid it inside her boot. Afterward, she sat down on the bed, looking at the open door. She felt afraid to walk through it. She pinched her hands, reminded herself that she was a Newlove girl. Could endure more than any boy and was tough, resourceful.

  She went down the stairs to the dining room and paused outside the door. Someone was singing inside. A lullaby. She pushed open the door. The breakfast table was laid as usual with tin mugs, the few spoons. Lizzie Button sat in her place at the far end of the table, in the seat where Anna had first seen her. She had a child on her lap. A long, pale infant, with thin, fair hair parted over a fragile skull. She held him stiffly as if afraid he would break.

  “Lizzie!”

  Anna sat down next to her. The piece of wood was on the table, still wrapped in its shawl.

  “I’m going home, Anna. Those doctors spoke with my husband. They told him his mother was wrong about me. That I wasn’t any danger to anyone, let alone my own children.”

  “Is this your Albert?”

  “Yes. He doesn’t know me.” Lizzie hugged him closer. She kissed the top of his head and began to cry.

  “What if my girls don’t know me either, Mrs. Palmer?”

  A fair-haired man with prominent eyes, his hair cut like a monk’s across his forehead, arrived in the doorway. He had a small girl on each side of him—both dressed in identical coats, their wrists protruding from the sleeves—and another in his arms, asleep. The smaller girl ran to Lizzie and grabbed her skirts, buried her face in them, and began to wail. The other stayed where she was, not moving, as if she was made of stone.

  The man nodded at Anna.

  “Come on, Elizabeth,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

  * * *

  Anna remained at the table. It was quiet without Makepeace’s ringing footsteps, her sawing cough. The only sound was of dripping from outside and occasionally a muffled sliding of something dislodged, slipping; melting snow fell past the window in great lumps. A little woman, dark and quick and neat, came in bearing a platter. Anna stared at her as she put it down on the sideboard and she looked back pleasantly.

  “Good morning, miss. I’m the Cook. Care for a piece of bacon?” She lifted the lid. “It’s nice and warm still.”

  The others began to arrive and Cook nodded at her and departed. The rashers were crisp and strong and salty. Anna ate slowly, helped herself to tea, poured a cup for Mrs. Featherstone and rose from the table still feeling as if she was in a dream. The dayroom was dim and disorderly, the chairs out of their usual positions and the bags of handwork scattered. The curtain lay on the floor. The residents sat singly and in pairs and the atmosphere was subdued.

  Anna pulled Talitha’s chair back to its usual spot, plumped up the green velvet seat and folded the fringed, embroidered Indian shawl over the back of it, then changed her mind and threw it over her own shoulders, breathed in the faint scent of naphthalene. “This is no place for a young woman, Mrs. Palmer. For any woman.” She heard Miss Batt as clearly as she had heard her the first time. Anna sat down on the window seat, feeling the silken tassels of the shawl, rolling them between her fingers. She didn’t read. She didn’t sew. She didn’t talk to Violet or Mrs. Featherstone or Miss Todd. She was waiting.

  She didn’t wait long. An hour later, the door was kicked open and Makepeace struggled through it. She had on two capes, one on top of the other, and dragged a carpet bag behind her. She looked disheveled, as if she had dressed in a hurry. Under her arm was a piece of tapestry in a black lacquer frame. Makepeace stopped in front of Anna and rummaged in her reticule with a ringed hand. Her hair was freshly dyed, the top of her forehead stained brown, and in her eyes was a look of triumph.

  “Letter for you,” she said, thrusting something in her lap. “You have my most sincere commiserations, Palmer.”

  She hurried on toward the other door, passed through it and Anna heard the bag thump down the stairs, step by step. Anna looked down into her lap. The scent of violets rose from the letter and the handwriting, round and loopy, was familiar. She pulled out a single sheet of paper and held it for a moment still folded in her hand. Opened it.

  “Miss, I thought I knew the gentleman you mention but I was wrong. I never did understand why everything had to be secrit. Please come to me as soon as you are able. Maud.”

  She turned it over. The envelope had been steamed open; the flap lay limply against the pink body of it. The sender had written her name across the back. Mrs. Maud Palmer. She felt dizzy at the sight of those three words but with what she didn’t know. Was it dismay? Or was it hope?

  * * *

  Violet’s new bird had gotten loose. The others were chasing it, a note of fear in their laughter. It was ten-thirty, by the grandfather clock. Anna slipped out the door of the dayroom and down the stairs, lifted her cloak from the pegs in the cloakroom. She had to breathe unbreathed air. Take in the letter alone and think her own thoughts. Even the confines of the airing ground would be preferable to the dayroom.

  The side door was unlocked. She let herself out and walked along the back of the house in slanting sunlight. The snow was melting on the path, sliding down between the gravel; it dripped from the branches of the trees, lay in shallow-edged drifts on the turf. At the window of the study, she came up close to the glass and peered through. Behind the stacks of books and papers, Abse sat at his fortress desk with his hands cupped over his ears as if he was trying to hear some faint and distant music. He looked up as she hurried away but made no sign of having seen her.

  The gate to the airing ground stood open. She paused and looked in, at the walled enclosure, the grid of narrow paths and the wall of bricked-up windows along the far side. A robin hopped toward her, expectant, its head cocked. Glancing around her, Anna walked past the gate, quickening her step, her soaked feet carrying her on—under the trees and down across the grass. She reached the field, unchallenged, her heart beating painfully in her chest. The ewes were ships, their pregnant bellies swaying over dainty feet as they regarded her. She kept on—walking swiftly until she reached the edge of the lake. The level was high and the water fresh-smelling, moving all over. The trees were broken into hundreds of pieces across the surface, an undone jigsaw puzzle.

  As she looked, a bellow thundered through the air, from behind her. It sounded like a wounded sheep. Anna turned and looked up the long snow-covered slope toward the house. In the distance, at the top, stood Fludd, legs akimbo, staring straight at her. He set off toward her, walking, not running, his stride purposeful. Anna’s mind felt hard and sharp and clear. The sheep were still gathered around a trough of hay, eating peacefully; there was no one else anywhere in sight. She ran to the bottom of the field, turned, and still running made her way along the bank until she reached the coppice of trees.

  The holly berries were gone; the red-stemmed bushes in tender, new leaf. There was no path through the thicket, no obvious entry point. She pulled her cloak up over her head, tightened it around her and launched herself into the sharp, snagging holly branches, the stems of dogwood. Snow showered down on her from the leaves, wet and heavy. Her gloves were soaked and her fingers cold. She fought her way on through the tangle of growth, panting, struggling to breathe. She dare
d not look behind her but kept going, forcing her way through beeches that were still brittle with brown leaves, though silky sheathed buds emerged underneath.

  Anna reached the other side with her wrists and fingers bleeding and stood for a moment, gasping for breath, pulling thorns and brambles out of her cloak and hair. She raised her head and looked at the white bridge, shimmering, its reflection trembling on the water below.

  There was something odd about the bridge, close up. It looked not as if it was made of white stone, as it appeared from the house, but more like wood. Painted wood. And she couldn’t see the way onto it, only the front of it. She ran toward it, still panting, reached the bridge and stopped. She looked behind it, dreading what she would see. Catherine was right. It was not a bridge. It was nothing more than a piece of scenery. A two-dimensional, painted façade, its wooden back green with mildew.

  A noise came from the undergrowth, of branches cracking and tearing, followed by a bellow of pain and a curse. Anna heard herself whimpering with fright. She stared at the bridge for a second then kicked the post at the end. It didn’t move. She took hold of the post with both hands and tried with all her strength to shake it. It didn’t shift even a fraction. It was solidly lodged in the ground. The balustrade over the top of the arches led in a smooth, undulating white line to the far bank. It was wider than it looked from the house. As wide as her own foot. It would have to serve.

  Anna hoisted her skirts above her knees, got hold of the post with both hands and pulled herself up onto the support propping the back of the bridge. She scrambled along it, got both feet onto the top of the balustrade. For an instant, she paused, crouched down, looking at the dark, opaque water. She was a strong swimmer but not in skirts and a cloak. Not in icy water.