Contents
Title Page
Also By Alison Rattle
Dedication
[Epigraph]
Bridgwater, 1848
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
Chapter Fifty-Two
Four Years Later …
Historical Notes
Alison Rattle
Copyright
ALSO BY ALISON RATTLE
The Quietness
The Madness
For my Beloved Mum
Wild was the wish, intense the gaze
I fixed upon the murky air,
Expecting, half, a kindling blaze
Would strike my raptured vision there …
Anne Brontë, ‘Severed and Gone’
I am Alice Angel. I am sixteen years old. I am not mad. But I am a bad person.
I have done some terrible things lately. I want to be forgiven.
I want to be a good person, the person they all expect me to be.
I have seen you and I have heard you talk. I think you understand.
Can you help me?
You are my only chance to make things right.
Bridgwater, 1848
One
‘Alice? Are you asleep?’ Papa’s voice is like soft, warm feathers tickling my ear. I smell the familiar weight of brandy and tobacco on his breath – rich and hot – and I am reminded as always of steamed fruit puddings and the scent of polished wood. I open my eyes and the closeness of his face startles me a little. I can see the stiff white hairs protruding from his nostrils and the yellowed edges of his moustache.
‘No Papa, I am not asleep,’ I say. ‘I cannot get comfortable. Please can you talk to Mama?’
‘Oh Alice,’ he says, standing back up. ‘If I thought it would do any good I would go down to the drawing room this instant.’ He sighs. ‘But you know what she is like. When her mind is set, there is no one in this world who can persuade her to change it.’
Papa strokes my wrist where the leather strap chafes at my skin. ‘Besides,’ he says, ‘I am certain it is all for the greater good. Your mother may have her strange ways, but she loves you very much.’
‘Does she?’ I whisper. I think of how Mama looks at Eli, how her eyes shine and how her voice grows soft. She has never looked at me that way.
Papa smiles down at me. ‘My darling girl. I am glad you have your own mind, but you must never question your mother’s motives. She loves you and Eli more than anything. You must always remember that.’
I try to roll and stretch my arms to relieve the ache. ‘But it hurts so much! Does she mean me to be in such pain?’
‘Alice,’ Papa warns.
I relax my arms and I wince as the leather straps bite into my wrists. ‘Be brave, my dear Alice,’ says Papa. ‘It will not be for much longer.’ He leans in to kiss my forehead and his bristles catch at my skin and set off an itch that I know I shan’t be able to scratch.
‘Now Alice, I have to travel to Bristol tomorrow and will be away for most of the week. Please be good while I am gone. Can you promise me that? It will make my life a lot easier if I know I can trust you to behave in my absence.’
My heart sinks. I hate it when Papa is not in the house. ‘Please, Papa!’ I try again. ‘Please speak to Mama before you go!’ I blink hard and it is not difficult to summon tears. I look straight at Papa as they roll from the corners of my eyes. I see how his face softens. I see how his hands are itching to unbuckle the straps around my wrists. ‘Please, Papa,’ I murmur.
But then the fear comes into his eyes and shrouds his face like a dark cloak and I know I’ve lost him. He will never stand up to Mama. He will never go against her wishes. I love Papa so much, but his weakness spoils everything. Why can he not see Mama for what she really is? Why does he have to love her so much?
He looks at me tenderly and sighs deeply. ‘Goodnight, my darling girl. Sleep well,’ he says. Then he blows out my candle.
I do not reply. I turn away from him and stare into the darkness of my room. Papa walks out and closes the door gently behind him. I lie still for a moment, frozen by the anger that sits heavy and cold in my belly. I want to scream out loud and shatter the windows with my fury, but instead I begin to beat my feet and legs on the mattress, harder and harder, faster and faster, until the bedlinen falls to the floor. I pull and wrench and turn my wrists inside the leather straps. But Mama is never careless or inattentive. She has done the buckles up tight as usual. I groan and spit harsh whispers into the night air. ‘I hate you!’ I scream silently at Mama. I twist my head from side to side, trying to rub my forehead against the top of my arms. The itch that Papa’s kiss set off is infuriating me now.
Suddenly, I stop. Tiredness washes through me and I feel empty and numb. I know none of this flailing around is of any use. I lie still and catch my breath. My nightgown has ridden up my legs and the night air is cold against my skin. The steel bones of my stays crush my insides as cruelly as Mama tries to crush my spirit. I start to shiver and I know I have no choice now but to call Lillie.
Lillie is my lady’s maid, but in reality she is Mama’s little lapdog. She is thin and spiteful and carries with her a sickly sweetness that is only surface deep. And like the ruinous pollen of the flower she is named after, Lillie will drip her own poison wherever she can. Mama will not hear a word against her. She came highly recommended by Lady Egerton, you see, and as Mama is impressed beyond reason by true gentry, Lillie can do no wrong.
Lillie sleeps in the bedchamber next to mine and thinks herself very fine. Behind her back the other servants call her ‘the toffee-nosed tart’. I am glad it is not only me who dislikes her.
‘Lillie!’ I call. ‘Lillie!’ She will make me wait, I know it.
Lillie is a constant annoyance to me, like an unpleasant clump of horse manure that I cannot wipe from my shoe. She wakes me in the mornings, she helps me to dress, she brings me fresh water to wash with and she lights my fire. She is always in my room, fiddling and neatening and tidying. She is supposed to take good care of my gowns, but I know she deliberately tears the lace of my cuffs, then reports it to Mama who sees it as another example of my careless disposition.
‘Lillie!’ I shout again. I am sure the whole household will have heard me by now.
At last, the door opens and Lillie greets me with a reluctant ‘Yes, miss?’ She stands over me and the light of her candle accentuates the dark hollows under her eyes. Her black hair hangs loose and lank around her shoulders. I remind myself she is only a servant and not some ghoul just risen from its coffin. ‘Yes, miss?’ she says again. Her eyes glide over the leather straps that hold my wrists to the bed and a smirk plays around the corner of her mouth. She is as ugly as a turnip.
‘I am cold, Lillie. You can cover me up.’ Lillie walks around my bed, her bare feet slapping hard on the wooden floors. I remember the first time Mama strapped me to the bed, and how I foolishly thought I might be able to appeal to some soft part of Lillie’s nature. I soon learned there was no soft part to Lillie’s nature.
She heaves my bedlinen from the floor and flings it roughly over me. I am too tired to ask her to do it tidily. I just want to sleep now and for morning to come. ‘Anything else, miss?’ she asks.
I ignore her and close my eyes. Lillie huffs loudly and slams the door on her way out.
The creak of Lillie’s bed springs settles, and the small sounds of the night echo inside my head. The servants are closing up downstairs. I can hear doors being softly shut and the air stirs as the last of the maids creep up the back stairs to their rooms at the top of the house. Wooden floorboards scrape overhead. The plane tree outside my window taps a bare branch against the shutters and I think of its yellow-scabbed trunk and the small hole at the base that I made by digging out the crumbling wood with my fingers one long, boring afternoon in the spring when I was supposed to be stitching my sampler. The long-case clock down in the hall chimes eleven. I have eight more hours to pass before my hands are released.
I have learned in recent weeks that if I try hard enough I can go to a place that is outside of my body and this bed and this room and this house. It is a place where I can no longer feel the pain in my wrists or the stiffness in my sides and back. I wish for this place and sometimes it comes to me easily. Sometimes it does not come at all and the night is long and hard and cold as stone. Tonight I am lucky. Tonight my place is there ready and waiting for me behind my eyes. It is a meadow of the brightest green and I am alone in the centre of it with not another soul to be seen. I am wearing a loose shift and my hair is flying about my face as I move and stretch and run through grass that smells as sweet as freshly made butterscotch. No matter how far I run, the meadow never ends. I run faster, and the grass swipes at my bare ankles, and then I run faster still and faster and faster until my feet leave the ground and I am flying towards the morning.
Two
Temperance Angel ran her hands down the sides of her bodice and looked herself over in the full-length mirror that stood to one end of her dressing room. She was satisfied with what she saw. Jane, her lady’s maid, had done well this morning. Temperance’s hair was parted neatly down the centre and drawn back over her ears into a most pleasing arrangement. She would have the girl add some flowers later on, before Lady Egerton paid her long-awaited call, but for now it would suffice. Temperance’s skirts fell flatteringly over her new crinoline cage; a French one that she had ordered especially on the advice of Lady Egerton. It was wider than any she had worn before and she knew she would have to take great care not to cause herself any embarrassment. She had heard terrible stories of women exposing themselves when they sat down too carelessly and the cage flew up in their faces. Worse still, she had heard tell of a fashionable young woman in Paris who had burned to death after a lighted cigar had rolled under her voluminous skirts. Temperance shuddered. She would never allow anything like that to happen to her.
Temperance was a beautiful woman and she was well aware of the fact. But she never took it for granted. She knew it was only her pale, almost translucent skin, her fierce green, almond-shaped eyes and her rich auburn hair that had got her where she was today. She turned heads. Arthur Angel would never have looked twice at her if she had been ordinary-looking. He certainly would never have married her. Temperance was not born stupid, only poor. She knew that no matter how beautiful she was, she would never have enticed a titled gentleman into marriage. There were limits to what the daughter of a lowly clerk could achieve. So Temperance had set her sights on the next best thing. A man of ambition.
Charles Angel was a man to be reckoned with in the small town of Bridgwater. He owned the local flour mill and had amassed a small fortune for his troubles. He was one of the new breed of industrialists who had gained respect in the town, not from his breeding, but from his wealth. He had a troupe of plain daughters who, despite the richness and fine cut of their gowns, could not hide from the world their unfortunate resemblance to a herd of farmyard pigs. But Charles Angel also had a son. Arthur was the youngest of the family and, although not a handsome man, he wore his plainness with a determination that somehow managed to organise his muddled features into a pleasing order. He was set to inherit the mill from his father and throughout the whole of her seventeenth year, Temperance had contrived to cross paths with him at every opportunity. In a town as small as Bridgwater, this wasn’t a difficult thing to arrange.
Temperance timed her daily errands so that she was passing the Angel household (a magnificent red and yellow brick house known locally as Lions House, due to the lion-topped gateposts that flanked the front steps) at the exact time Arthur was leaving on his way to the mill in the mornings. She discovered that Arthur and his family attended the church of St Mary’s on the other side of town to the church she and her father usually attended. So, much to her father’s consternation, she insisted on making the extra twenty-minute journey there every Sunday morning, even though it meant her father had to go without his customary Sunday lie-in. But as Temperance had been running the household since the death of her mother five years earlier, her father had little choice in the matter.
It wasn’t long before Arthur Angel began to tip his hat at Temperance. She wasn’t at all surprised. She blushed at him prettily and lowered her eyes. But that was all. She didn’t encourage him. She wanted to reel him in slowly. She wanted to be certain that when she finally caught him, there would be no chance of him slipping from her grip.
The months passed. Temperance made the best of her limited wardrobe by trimming her gowns with fresh pieces of lace she bought cheaply at the market and by pinning artfully arranged flowers in her hair. Arthur Angel, along with tipping his hat, began to greet Temperance with a polite Good morning or Good afternoon. She did not reply of course; decorum dictated that a young woman out on her own must never acknowledge the attentions of a man. Even so, she began to let a comely smile pass across her lips. A smile that would not fail to set Arthur Angel’s heart beating fast.
Eventually, on a stark Sunday morning in the autumn of that year, when the sun shone weakly on the mulch of fallen leaves in the churchyard, Arthur Angel approached Temperance’s father and introduced himself. Temperance stood to one side and was relieved that she had shined her father’s only good shoes and mended the hole in the elbow of his ancient Sunday suit. She could not remember exactly what was said that day. She was distracted by the way her father kept pulling nervously at his collar and at the way his face flushed a ridiculous red. But whatever he said cannot have been too awful, because the next thing Temperance knew, Arthur Angel had taken her gloved hand and brought it to his lips.
After that, they met every Sunday in the churchyard once the service had finished. But now it was Temperance’s father who stood to one side while Temperance was wooed by Arthur Angel. As was only right and fitting, Arthur left it a good few weeks before asking permission to call upon Temperance at home. This was the moment Temperance had feared the most. This was the real test. Could she entrance Arthur Angel so much that he would fail to notice the shabbiness of the tiny terraced house she shared with her father? Temperance spent the days before Arthur’s visit scrubbing the house from top
to bottom. She washed threadbare curtains, swept the floors until there was not a speck of dust to be seen, polished the windows to a shine and begged and borrowed from neighbours until she had a decent choice of plates and teacups, and a teapot that poured without dribbling.
On the morning of the day Arthur was due to call (it was raining, much to Temperance’s annoyance. Wet weather always made the house look bleaker), Temperance was up before dawn. She dragged the old tin bath in front of the kitchen fire and poured in kettle after kettle full of steaming water. The water was hot enough to turn Temperance’s skin a bright pink as she sat in the bath and methodically rubbed the washcloth between every toe, around her feet, up her legs, across her hips and onwards, not missing an inch of flesh. Then she dried herself carefully and put on the second- or third-hand brocade gown she had found after rummaging around in the back of the pawn shop on Corn Street. It fitted her perfectly and its green velvet bodice complemented her eyes much better than she could have hoped for. She disguised the musty smell of the old velvet by sprinkling it with the last few drops of lavender water from her dead mother’s only perfume bottle.
The Beloved Page 1