Beth laughed at my sullen face. ‘Don’t look so vexed, Alice,’ she said. ‘Be happy. We are in Paradise after all.’ Then she threw a sprinkling of flour over my head and soon we were hooting and squealing and chasing each other around the kitchen table throwing handfuls of flour until we both looked like pale ghosts of ourselves.
It is a pleasant, early autumn morning, and I am happy to be sitting polishing boots on the front step of the cottage. I like it that I am able to take a muddied boot and with a few strokes of a brush and a few wipes of a cloth, I can buff the leather to such a shine that I can see the blur of my face. There is something pleasing about the work, and it feels good that I can do something well and that I can make a difference, even if it is only to a dozen pairs of dirty boots.
The children are playing in the gardens with Beth. It is her turn to mind them today and I smile as I watch how she chases them and catches them and then tumbles around on the grass without a care. She is good with them.
I still do not know if the children belong to the women of the Parlour or to the others. I have learned not to ask too many questions. It seems that the children belong to all of us, and I cannot decide whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. But I suppose it is better to have a dozen or more mothers to love you than to have only one who hates.
The children stop in their play to watch the horses and brougham as they are brought around from the stables. Every other day Our Beloved leaves the Abode and travels to nearby towns and villages to spread his teachings. Beth comes to sit next to me. ‘He has not asked me to go with him today,’ she says. ‘He is taking Glory and Ruth.’
Her voice is flat and when I turn to look at her I am surprised to see tears glinting in her eyes.
‘I think I have displeased him,’ she says. ‘It is weeks now since he has taken me with him.’
‘I am sure you have not done anything wrong,’ I say. ‘How can you have?’
She doesn’t answer. Instead she turns to me and grabs my wrists. ‘Look at me, Alice,’ she pleads. ‘Look at me and tell me truthfully … Am I pretty?’
It is a strange question, but before I can answer her, Our Beloved appears from the mansion. He is wearing his long black travelling cloak lined in purple silk and he looks magnificent as he sweeps along the pathway towards the carriage. I feel the familiar stirring in my stomach that happens every time I am near him. I cannot decide if it is fear, excitement, expectation or love. But I am nauseous with it, and when I stand, my legs almost betray me.
Everyone gathers to send him on his way and I am caught up in the feeling of belonging to something that is much bigger than anything I can explain. He climbs into the carriage and Glory, her face flushed and glowing, climbs in after him. Ruth climbs up to perch next to Agatha, who is holding the reins as well as any driver I have ever seen. We follow the carriage as it is pulled towards the main gates. Some of the women place their hands on the retreating rear of the brougham, needing a final touch of him. For a brief moment, I see through the open gates to the lane beyond and I am reminded how close we are to the outside. I am glad when the gates are closed and bolted. I turn back to Beth, remembering that I have not answered her question yet, but she is not behind me. I look amongst the gathered faces but I cannot see her anywhere.
I find her eventually, lying face down on our bed. ‘What is the matter?’ I ask. ‘I thought the outside world did not concern us? Why are you upset not to have gone?’ She doesn’t answer, so I try again. ‘Beth,’ I say. ‘Please tell me what is wrong.’ There is silence still, so I reach out my hand and stroke her hair. ‘You are pretty, Beth,’ I whisper. ‘You are the prettiest thing.’ But when she still does not answer me, I give her hair a final stroke and leave her to her woes.
Our Beloved does not return in time for chapel, so we sit around the kitchen table instead. The women of the Parlour seem at a loss without him and they fidget with their sewing and their darning. He must have travelled to Bristol or Bath, they guess. He will be tired when he returns. We must have something hot waiting for him.
I look around at them all. Because they never talk about a life before here, I have made up their stories in my head. There’s Lizzie with the jutting collarbones, who I decide was once a seamstress in Bristol with a brood of children who all died, one by one, of cholera. Then there is Polly who is careworn but pretty still, and I decide she was once a painted lady that Our Beloved found on the streets and taught to change her ways. Then Esther: maybe a governess who fell on hard times and was rescued from the poorhouse. May is easy. She has coarse features, pale watery eyes and meaty arms. When she talks her voice is loud and sharp. I decide she sold fish from a barrow at Bridgwater market. I think of Agatha and Ruth who are still with Our Beloved somewhere in the outside world. Agatha is pleasantly plump but has a livid scar on her face that runs from the corner of her eye to her ear lobe. She had a wicked husband, I think, and she ran from him before he could murder her in her bed. With Ruth, I cannot make up my mind. She is like me, I think, not used to hard work. She has a way about her and she holds herself upright as though she was once tight-laced.
She has her secrets, as all the others do. The air is thick with them, all those lost sorrows and joys. But I am glad the secrets are not told. For then I would have to tell my own.
I wake in the night to the sounds of carriage wheels crunching on gravel and voices muffled by darkness. Beth is standing by the window with her face pressed to the glass. ‘He is back. He is back,’ she is saying over and over again. She turns from the window and by the light of her candle, I see the tears streaming down her face.
Thirty-one
Eli Angel looked out of the study window onto a damp and chill October morning. The sky was a patchwork of sullen clouds and pale blues. Every now and then, a shy sun would inch its way out from behind a cloud, only to be smothered again almost immediately. The day looked like Eli felt inside, miserable and uncertain.
Things were not going well at the mill. The workers were unsettled and had not taken too kindly to the news that their futures were now in the hands of an eighteen-year-old boy. The mill manager, a fastidious little man called Ernest Wraith, was of the same opinion.
Although Eli had grasped the rudiments of running the business from evenings spent at his father’s side in the study, out in the real world, the day-to-day management, the bickering, the negotiations, and the finer points of it all, were just a fuddle in his brain. It didn’t help that since his father’s untimely death, his mother had taken to her room and as each day passed she was becoming more and more difficult. Whenever he was in the house, she demanded every moment of his attention. She would have him sit for hours at her bedside, holding her hand and reassuring her that she was still beautiful. She didn’t want to hear about the mill, or about Ernest Wraith, or the workers, or the stack of bills that were sitting accusingly on the desk in the study, waiting to be paid. All she cared about was the fading lustre of her hair and the lines on her face and how many calling cards had been left that day. If there were none, which was often the case, she demanded to know why, or she would weep and lament her disgrace and console herself with a draught of laudanum.
And then there was Alice. There was always Alice. She hovered on the edge of Eli’s thoughts all day and every night. She gnawed at his dreams, so he awoke bad-tempered and tired, and he couldn’t pass the door to her room without his heart contracting.
Temperance, however, seemed to have wiped Alice from her memory. Eli had learned weeks ago that it was futile to even mention Alice’s name in front of his mother. She would set her mouth in a tight thin line and turn her face to the wall, or worse, she would begin to shake and spit obscenities at him. It shamed him to his very core, but Eli had to admit to himself that he had been blind.
Alice had tried to tell him so many times. Since she had first been able to talk, she had tried to tell him. But he had never seen it. He had never seen the truth of it. He had bathed in the adoration of his mother. H
e had thought she was perfect. He had thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. But he saw her now for what she really was. As Alice had always seen her.
Eli sighed heavily and turned from the window to look at the pile of letters on the desk. The advertisement that he had placed in the Bristol Gazette had elicited a number of responses during the last few weeks. At first, it had seemed promising. A young woman answering Alice’s description had been seen in a lodging house in St Philips, Bristol. Eli had set out, full of hope and apprehension, to meet the writer of the letter. He had met the man, who gave his name as Samuel Wakefield, in a dingy inn on the outskirts of the district. He had been obliged to purchase a jar of ale and to furnish Mr Wakefield with a handful of coins before he would agree to take Eli to the lodging house.
They had set off walking through a network of courts, alleys and side streets, with Eli struggling to keep pace. He had never seen such places before. It was all so dim and filthy and the ground was thick with rotting vegetable peelings, stinking offal and ashes. The stench was unbearable and Eli had to pull his handkerchief from his pocket and hold it over his nose, just to stop himself from retching. Mr Wakefield had laughed and told him it was only the stink of the scavengers’ yards and the nearby alkali works, and he should be glad it was not a hot day.
Eli became distracted by the filth that was sticking to his shoes, and had stopped to scrape some of it off on the edge of a brick wall. When he looked up, Mr Wakefield had disappeared. Eli had not realised at that point that anything was wrong. He assumed they had just lost each other in the tangle of alleys. Eli had pressed on and had enquired of an old beggar woman as to the whereabouts of the nearest lodging house. She had pointed to a nearby doorway and Eli had taken a deep breath to ready himself for the state he might find Alice in.
The lodging house keeper made no effort to hide his scorn. After Eli had finished describing Alice, the man held out his fingers one by one. ‘We have a pedlar, a cordwainer, a laundry maid, a splint maker and a horsehair weaver, but I’m afraid I don’t recall no young lady.’ He’d winked at Eli and chuckled to himself.
It was only then that Eli realised he had been duped. He had been led on a wild goose chase and had been left with nothing but empty pockets and shit on his shoes.
After that, he’d been more careful. He’d kept his money in his pocket, refusing to hand over a single coin until he had proof of Alice’s existence. But of course, the letter writers had all been charlatans, snakesmen, vagabonds and thieves.
The worst of the lot had been the young girl with the head of tatty yellow hair who had sworn she was his long-lost sister. He had met a large-bellied man in a greasy suit on a street corner in Totterdown; a man who had written to say he had Alice. The man led Eli to a small room at the top of a crowded house in a place called Fox Court. On his way up the dark, winding stairs, Eli had to step over a least a dozen drunkards.
The girl had been sitting on the edge of an unmade bed and when Eli entered the room, she flung herself at him and begged to be taken home. ‘Brother. Dear brother,’ she kept saying. ‘You’ve come for me at last.’
Eli had to wrench her from him, and in his hurry to get away he had pushed her too hard and she had fallen backwards and hit her head on the iron bedstead. She didn’t scream or make a sound, but the man had roared at him and Eli had run, tripping and stumbling over the slumped bodies on the staircase until he was back out on the stinking streets. The sound of the girl’s head hitting the bedstead, the dull thud of bone on iron, had haunted him for days.
It had been the last time he had gone to look for Alice, and although the letters kept arriving, he couldn’t bring himself to open any more.
Eli picked up the letters from the desk and weighed them in his hands. Was Alice in there somewhere? Was he about to throw away his only chance of ever finding her? There was a knock on the door, and the maid, Sarah, came into the study and bobbed him a small curtsey. ‘Mr Wraith is here to see you, sir,’ she said. ‘And the mistress has been asking for you too.’
Eli sighed. Could he never have a moment to himself? ‘Thank you, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Please show Mr Wraith in. And I will attend to Mama shortly.’ As Sarah closed the door behind her, Eli tightened his grip on the letters until they bent and crumpled in his hands. Then he threw them onto the fire and watched for a moment as flames blackened the edges of the paper and the lies and deceits of strangers were turned to smoke and ashes.
Thirty-two
I am sitting in the cottage kitchen with a pile of mending at my side. I remember how I hated to embroider those pointless stitches on handkerchiefs and coin purses. I remember how Mama would make me unpick the stitches over and over again until the fabric was mottled with my blood and the piece was only fit for a cleaning rag. It is different now. There is a purpose to the work and Lizzie often praises the neatness of my stitches and the deftness of my fingers. Her words swell my heart with pride.
I am sliding my needle through torn linen and frayed silk, hemming and cross-stitching, when Glory comes into the kitchen. ‘Alice,’ she says, her voice breathless with the heaviness of her belly. ‘Our Beloved wishes to see you. Come quickly.’
My mouth drops open as the sewing slides from my lap. The tightness of my throat squeezes my words to a whisper. ‘Have I done something wrong?’ I ask.
Glory’s laugh tinkles like the row of teacups hanging from hooks on the dresser. ‘Why would you think that? It is an honour that he has summoned you. Come now. We must not keep him waiting.’
It is wet outside from the recent rain and a low mist hangs over the Abode like a damp dishcloth. The women of the Parlour hurry about their duties with their heads bowed low and their shawls pulled tight across their shoulders. Beth is struggling across the courtyard with two pails of water. She rests them on the ground and watches me closely as I follow Glory to the mansion. I smile as I walk by, but there is a faraway look in her eyes and she does not return my gesture.
Glory leaves me in the hall of the mansion. ‘You know your way,’ she says. ‘I must rest now.’
I wait until she has climbed the stairs and disappeared into the shadows of the upper floor before I turn to the mirror. I see a different person from when I stood here last. The girl in the mirror has a bloom to her cheeks now. Her eyes are bright as jet and her hair, which is pulled into a loose knot at the back of her head, shines like a pool of ink. I smooth my frock and check that my apron is clean, and then with my heart skipping in my throat, I open the door to the red room.
‘Ah, Alice,’ his voice greets me as soon as I enter. He is standing with his back to the window and the watery October light quivers around him like a silver lake. ‘Come and sit with me,’ he says, and he gestures towards the chairs that are pulled close to a blazing fire.
I sit opposite him and stare at the floor. I know that if I were to look him in the eye, I would blush furiously.
‘You are looking well, Alice,’ he says. ‘A far cry from when you first came to us. Life here agrees with you?’
‘It does, Beloved,’ I answer. ‘It agrees with me very well.’
‘I am glad to hear it,’ he says. He reaches out then, and takes my hands in his. His fingers are warm and soft and he moves them in small circles over my skin. ‘You have been working hard, I see?’ he says gently.
‘I am doing my best,’ I reply, trying to stop my hands from trembling
‘Your efforts for the Lord have not gone unnoticed,’ he murmurs. ‘Look at me, Alice,’ he says suddenly.
I slowly lift my eyes and can already feel a tide of crimson rising up my chest. He is wearing a fine woollen suit and I stare at the weave of it as my eyes travel the length of his pinstriped trousers and over his frock coat and black vest. He is wearing a patterned silk scarf at his throat and I stare at the intricate swirls of blues and greens and gold before I finally dare to lift my eyes to his.
‘Don’t be frightened, Alice,’ he says. He must hear the terrible thumping of my hear
t. The blues of his eyes are ringed with black. He continues to stroke my hands. His lashes are long and silky. He blinks slowly and they sweep to his brows.
He is God made flesh.
The enormity of it all fills me to the brim and I want to stay here forever, with his hands on mine and with his eyes smiling down on me. It is only when he reaches out to wipe a tear from my cheek that I realise I am crying.
‘Hush now, my child,’ he says. ‘There is just one thing you need to do, if you are ready.’
I nod, to let him know I will do anything for him.
‘Confess your sins to me,’ he says. ‘All that blackens your heart, you must tell me now. I will forgive you and you will be made fresh and clean as a newborn.’
So I tell him. I tell him all of it. It babbles out of my mouth like a fast-running stream. I tell him how I was born so bad my mother hated me, and I hated her in return. How I didn’t know it before, but I know it now that I have the power of the Devil in me and I can make wishes come true. But they are terrible wishes and my Papa died because of it. And I want the power to go away and I want my mother to love me and I want my Papa to come back from the dead.
By the time I finish telling him, I am sobbing wildly and my apron is sodden.
He takes me by the hand and pulls me to standing. ‘You have done well, my child. It is good you have unburdened your soul. And I will forgive you, as I said I would.’ He puts his hand under my chin and lifts my face to his. Then he presses his lips on mine and I taste the smoke and fire of him and the salt of my own tears.
He lets go of me and I am trembling terribly. I understand now what he meant when he said I would be made clean and fresh as a newborn. I feel like a lamb testing its legs for the very first time.
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