by Diana Powell
What was left for me? Nothing, it seemed, as I searched the house from top to bottom, looking in every cupboard, every drawer, every box, for anything of value, again and again. Empty, all empty, except for his books! Row after row of useless words wrapped in paper, with a picture now and then. Good for nothing, like him. Fit for nothing but burning!
‘Money,’ I said to him. ‘I need money, to pay the maid, for food, for the doctor.’
He looked at me, as if he did not understand the question. ‘Mother,’ he said, as he had said in the past – his answer for everything.
‘Your mother is dead,’ I reminded him. ‘May God rest her soul,’ I added, remembering the Hell fire she had wished on me.
‘My father,’ he said, before losing his words in an outburst of coughing.
There was something, it appeared. A small allowance paid each month from his father’s estate, or some such thing, when once his mother had died. I did not understand the terms, but I understood the money. There was enough for food and clothing, if we were careful. And that was all. For richer, for poorer. I had signed up for the former, but it seemed that the latter was to be my lot. To have and to hold. Hold, keep, chain. Holding so tight that you want to scream, but you cannot scream, because your lungs have no air. So that all you want is to rid yourself of those chains. To be free again. To live again.
Thief. They called me a thief. They lied! Yes, I had been one, once, but how would they know that? How would they know that I slipped my hand in a punter’s pocket, to reach his wallet, to make more than the pathetic wage he would pay me? Yes, I would have been one still, if there was anything left to steal. Except… there was nothing there. Not a thief, at all, no matter what the words say.
It is warm here. Or warmer, at least.
It is warm, because there is so little air.
She came to this place to breathe again, to bathe in light again, and yet, here she is, smothered in brooding, cloying fug.
Still…
…Still, it is quiet, here. Sometimes. Sometimes quiet enough to hear her own breath, listening for it, as she did once before. It is clearer now, louder, because she has to open her lungs wide, her mouth wide, to reach for any air that is in the room. Only it is not air. Air purifies, opens, invigorates. What surrounds her here is thick with dust and must. Dust, the scrapings of human skin. Who is she breathing in?
She knows.
She knows other things, too. Edmund Bligh knew what it was like to struggle for breath. First, with the gas, then with the illness, and then, finally, when the pillow was brought down over his face.
Pillow. She has read that word so many times. She had laid her head, where that pillow lay. Pillow – a soft, desirable cushion to rest on, to sleep. Not a bad word, at all. Edmund would have been glad of the comfort of pillows after the trenches, glad to rest his aching body. Until…
‘Feather beds should be made of domestic birds’ feathers, such as geese, duck and fowls. Wild fowl feathers should not be mixed with these feathers, for otherwise, the sick will die hard, and thus the agony of their last moments will be prolonged.’
Where has she heard that? An old wives’ tale, nothing else. From an old wife?
But he didn’t die from the sickness, did he?
What was it like? Was the suffocation of a pillow different from the gas? Was it easier? What is it like? She holds her pillow over her face. The dark grows darker still. The dips and contours of her bones are filled in. Her hands knead the feathers deeper. She feels them beneath her fingers, sharp. Goose? Duck? Or from some distant mountain lake? Or a cormorant, or gull.
– Take it away, not yet, not yet.
– Yes.
She must get rid of the pillow. Something more to burn, something more to go up in flames and smoke, like she should have done to the letters. It always came back to the letters. The first letter, first. If only she had burnt it, but she didn’t, she hadn’t. Then the others.
No, no. That isn’t her. She has done nothing.
But how does she know about the gas? How does she know about the illness? And yet she does. She knows lots of things. She knows too much. It is there, inside her head now. She sees it all.
There is Esther standing beneath the last remaining pine, dropping feathers onto a garden bonfire. White snow dissolved around her, or escaped into the heavens, to search out the live birds and press themselves to their plumage, yearning to fly again.
Little birds, trying to escape feather by feather, trying to fly away, but falling back into the flames… burning, melting to nothing.
He taught her about the birds, thinking she might love them, but all she did was envy them, being able to fly away across the sea.
He taught her other things, too. Shells, clouds, flowers. ‘Pretty’, she thought, sometimes, liking the colours, the shapes that made her think ‘that is how a flower should be.’ But he would smother them in words, squeezing the life out of their beauty. Petals/sepals/cirrus/cumulus. Words she did not understand, that she did not want to understand. Book words.
The books burned in a different way. That is something she learned – things burned differently. Strange, she thought. The hard spine that she expected to linger flared and was gone. Animal, she remembered, glue from the flesh of a horse. The covers… yes, they took their time, thick, meshed paper on leather, that she could not tear, that she must put on whole; their titles blazoned up at her, gold through gold. The titles he had thrown at her, as if she should know them, she must know them – ‘classics/the definitive work on/never-bettered’… She liked to see them withering away. The pages would eat into themselves (the eternal damp, perhaps?) So they would hesitate before her, as if to echo his ‘look, look.’ Look at me. At the rose. At the ammonite. At the humming-bird. The humming-bird, finally rising up in the flames, indigo and scarlet together, pausing a moment, as they did against the nectar, emerald, amber, up, up…
Birds, again. Birds flying again. Escaping again.
The words never flew away, the words in the books, the words in the letters. She thought they did, she thought they turned to ash, or drifted with the smoke, high above the fire. She thought she was saying goodbye to them. But no… the smoke rose, then twisted around, coming back down towards her, so that she breathed it in. She breathed the words in. Bitch, slut, whore. Murderer. No matter how she coughed, and retched, it was still there, stuck in her throat, her gizzard, her head. Did she have a gizzard, or was that just birds…?
Gloves, that she wore as if another layer between his face, the pillow, and her hands would distance the act. Her dress, as if it had borne witness. Those, she put on the coals, too, foolishly throwing the heavy garment in one go, so that it quenched the embers beneath it, so that she must start again. She cut it into sable ribbons, that she dangled one by one, into the heat’s core. So many things to burn, for no reason.
Sometimes, for no more reason than that she loves the fire. She has always loved it… since then. She loves to stand there and watch it, and feed it, nurture it – that is what you have to do. You must treat it with love; you must feed it your hate. That is what she did before, that is what she does now, standing beneath the sole pine tree, dropping her hate into the flames with care and concern. Oh, how she despairs when the flame fails – worse, when she cannot even ignite it, watching the glowing end of the taper kiss the pages she has laid there so precisely beneath a wigwam of small sticks, only to see the puckered lips back away, like a reluctant lover.
How she loves it, when it takes hold and flares and the flames leap in front of her, so strong that she must step back, fearful for her hair, her loose sleeves. Yet still glad for what she sees. The colour, the heat, and then, the consumption of her offering. Gone. Recompense for what she had not seen… before.
Before.
Time went on, as it does. I got rid of the skivvy, who gargled vengeful words at me – what they were, I had no bleedin’ idea. I told the doctor that Edmund was much better, so there was no need for him to
call every week. I would contact him, if there was an emergency.
Or death. Death would come first. He was not better. He would surely not last much longer, I thought. He lay there, day after day, hardly moving, his breath no more than a strained wheeze. Looking at me with those eyes whenever I entered the room, whenever I sat by him. He would take my hand then and, if he had any breath for speech, would talk of the child. Of his misery, of my misery. Poor, poor Esther.
Weeks eked out into months, all the same, when all I could hope for was that he would die. Except, yet again, he didn’t. Yet again, there he was, whispering ‘I will get better for you. I will be stronger for you. Esther. My Esther.’
And he did, and he was. Not fit, not healthy, hardly able to get up from that bed, but breathing stronger every day, eating more every day. Asking for his books to be brought for him, joyful that we would soon be able to resume our studies together. Our shared minds together. Together, always together, here, in our precious home.
No. One of the shortest words. A simple word, yet so full of meaning.
No. A word so often forgone, when it should be said. ‘Will you marry me?’ No. ‘Do you take this man…?’ No. ‘Will you look after him in sickness and health?’ No.
‘No’ should have been said at the very start. No was said now to myself. No, I will not put up with this, I will not live this life, which is no life. No.
Winter came again, as bad as the first I had endured on coming here. Winter came, if winter had ever gone. How many fine days had there been since that arrival? How much rain, and cold, and wind had beaten against this place in that time?
‘Exceptional,’ he mouthed. ‘A bad few years. Sorry.’ So many fucking sorrys…
And the cold and the wet spread into his lungs again, so that his endless hawking was the accompaniment of our long days. But still he would not die.
The coughing loud, the breathing shallow; the rasping and grasping for air that was not there. I kept the fire lit. I would be warm, why should I not have warmth, when I had so little else? I had the wood from the trees for fuel, so I would keep the flames burning as long as I could, ignoring his fever, the sweat bubbling from his flesh.
I began to talk, then. I was supposed to read to him, and I did at first, but, soon, I would lay the book aside, and let my thoughts scramble pell-mell out of my mouth. I could stop it no longer.
I told him, then, about his mother, of the things she said to me, and how I hated her.
‘I burned her bible,’ I said, ‘I burned the words she called me. I watched your family go up in flames. I laughed.’
‘This place,’ I said. ‘Look! Do you remember?’ I took a framed photograph from the wall – the same view as in the postcard he showed me when we met. ‘“Beautiful,” you said. “Wonderful!”’
I smashed the picture on the hearth, then threw it on the fire. ‘Hell,’ I told him. ‘A shit-hole, like this whole bleedin’ country,’ I said, relishing the thick, joyous freedom of vulgarity on my tongue, saying it again. ‘Shit, nothing but shit, like the people who live in it.’
‘And her… this house… Home. You said it would be my home, when all it has been is my prison. My fucking prison.’
That will be enough, I thought, he will hate me now. That was what I wanted. If he hates me, all hope will be gone. The future will be gone. And he will wither away and die in despair.
If he hates me, I thought, that cringing look of pity and love will be wiped off his face. I will not have to flounder in his gushing eyes any more.
It was no good, no matter what I told him. Yes, there was puzzlement, a kind of bemusement, as if there was something wrong with… me. Me! As if, perhaps, I had caught his fever, and ranted in my delirium; or, as if my grief for the child had unhinged me; or as if someone else was speaking through me… But… there was still love! There was still pity!
‘Poor Esther,’ his eyes said, ‘how I love you and pity you.’ The same as it had always been, as if he were speaking to a child, who knew no better.
‘Do you think I love you?’ I said, as if in reply. ‘Do you think I married you for love? I married you, because I thought you were rich, I thought I could get something from you. And because I was carrying a child, someone else’s child. I despise you. I despise you, and all your nonsense that you think, somehow, is worthy. Your books, your birds, your flowers, your rocks. Your ‘learning’, your ‘knowledge’. I hate them all. Wait… See…’
I picked up one of his precious books – the most precious to him, I knew – and crossed to the fire with it.
‘This is what I’ve been doing while you lay here. Look! Look! As you were always telling me, as if that was what I wanted to do. Look at what you were showing me. Take pleasure in all those pictures of birds, animals, flowers, as if I would care about such things. Look!’
No careful unstitching then. A swift, harsh rip, tearing the humming-bird in two. Then a casual toss of my arm, to send it sailing into the flames.
‘See the pretty colours. Watch its exquisite plumage burn.’
There were tears, then. I swear there were tears for a piece of paper with a drawing on it. But still there was pity floating in their depths, pity for me. Love for me. How could anyone be so forgiving? I could not understand it, except to think he was a fool. An idiot and a fool.
‘A pathetic example of a man. That you should still love me, after all I have said and done. A snivelling, cowardly, unnatural human-being. You should have died in France.’
But he hadn’t, and still he didn’t. He hung on all through another year. Somehow, he hung on to some fine, spun-metal thread of life deep within him. Somehow, he would not die.
How? Another small word. A small question… Another way I liked to spend my time, then. If I were to kill him, how would I do it? Just idle thoughts, nothing else.
In the rooms, in the back streets of London, the girls had talked of arsenic. ‘The wife’s way,’ they called it. ‘Easy to get hold of. A little now and then,’ they said. This poison, that poison. So easy… His medicines lay on the table beside me – the Horehound Balsam, Lamplough’s Saline, the tinctures, mixtures, and extracts, bottle after bottle. His water. All I need do…
The razor. The razor so like the shell that still lay on the table of the little room. Not the neck, no pretence of shaving. No, it would be his wrists. One quick cut on each. A fine, red line, like the line on my finger. There! There! ‘I had just slipped out for a moment, Doctor Pritchard. I thought he would be all right. I thought he was better in spirit!’
Blood. There would be blood. Not the single drop that had welled from my hand, but the blood of all his arteries drained out on to the bed. Red. My favourite colour become this. I didn’t want that for red. I didn’t want him to steal that from me, too.
In truth, I knew it from the start. If I were to do it, I knew how it would be; if… if… but these were just thoughts, just a way to spend my time, as I sat there. Just something to make me feel… better; to make me feel that there may be some end to it. That was all. Still, if I were to do it… ahhh!
Yes. There was a rightness to it, in so many ways.
That the birds would take him, the birds he had loved so much would put an end to him. The birds that he had forced down my throat would be forced into his.
He would have no air! He had little enough as it was, it was something he was used to. Would it be so hard to have the last gasp taken away? A minute or two, surely no more, and then— Cleaner than the gas, softer than the bronchitis, the pneumonia. Easier, easy on him.
Yes.
Yes, till death do us part.
Yes. Maybe. Perhaps. Eeny, meeny, miny… I sat there doing nothing, unable to decide. Rock, paper, scissors – something else from childhood – changed into this.
Later, the letters, too, could not make up their minds. Some would talk of poisoning, borrowing tales from penny dreadfuls. That favourite, arsenic! One, that I had pushed him down the stairs. Stairs! By then, he could not reach
the stairs, he could barely get up to piss (oh the joy in that: truly ‘in sickness’ then!) Stairs – yes, no more than a trip, a slip would have been needed, to break his bird-bones to bits. So easy. But no, I could not use the stairs. A knife, a scarf round his neck – all these were mentioned.
Others confused the timing, saying I killed him just after I killed the baby. Or before, even. Fucking idiots! What did they know?
What do I know?
What did I do?
She sees all these things. So many things.
Now she sees Esther, pulling the pillow from beneath Edmund’s head. ‘It is better for him to lie flat,’ the doctor told her. ‘It relieves the pressure on his lungs.’ Or was it that he should sit higher? Still…
The pillow is to hide his face, that is all. To hide those eyes, and the way they look at her. To put an end to the pity and the love.
‘It will be easier for you, you will be able to rest. You will be with your mother, and the men you left in France, and your son. You will be together again. It is what you want.’
Still she does nothing. She stands there, cradling the pillow, smoothing the cotton slip. It is harder than she thought. Until he whispers, ‘Esther… Poor, poor Esther.’ So that, finally, she brings the pillow down onto his face.
Again, it is harder than she thought.
‘It will be done in a moment,’ she tells herself. ‘No more.’
‘He will feel nothing; I will feel nothing,’ she supposes, and presses harder, deeper. Deep down to beyond the cushioning feathers, so that she must feel the sockets of his eyes, the rise of his nose. His gasping lips. She must touch those, and push the pillow between them, so that the feathers are tight, tight within that mouth, the nostrils. Push, and press, with all her might. Then his body begins to buck, and thrash, and shudder beneath the thin coverlet.