Birdcage Walk

by Helen Dunmore

  There is a fine grit of ice in the air which thickens in the distance. Diner pulls hard and I find myself moving with him, as if I too am urging the boat onward with my body. I look back. There are the slopes of Clifton, marked here and there with trails of half-built houses. Diner says that they will never be finished now that the war has come with France. They will fall into ruin and sheep will graze over them as they did before. All the life we have had there will be as nothing.

  All I have in my pockets is a little sugar. Diner has taken my money and now I must depend upon him entirely. Mammie taught me that a woman must not be weak, but instead learn to fend for herself. Her pen was enough to feed us in all the years before she married Augustus. I have the clothes I stand in, and my bundle. I can work and earn my bread, if I have to go as a servant. The snow-thick pasture is gliding nearer, and the forest. Diner glances behind him, judging the distance between us and the shore.

  ‘Where shall we land?’ I ask him.

  ‘You will see when we come close.’

  I look back again at the city. Scribbles of smoke lift from the houses huddled at the Hot Well, and below them steam coils from the surface of the river in the places where the hot springs rise. Everything is distinct, intense, as if I were seeing all through a reading glass. But I only want to look backwards. I want to see myself hurrying up the slopes to where Mammie’s lodgings lie. There she sits up in bed with her writing-board propped against her knees. She’s wrapped in her shawl and her spectacles are slipping down the bridge of her nose. She does not look up. She does not know that I am coming.

  No, Lizzie. You cannot keep telling yourself the same story. Mammie has folded up her work. It’s done, and she has gone. She has put down her pen, blotted her pages, shuffled them together as I have seen her do so many times, and then riffled the edges with her fingers as if to satisfy herself that she has done enough. She has risen and taken off her spectacles. There is a red groove cut into the bridge of her nose. She walks away, because her work is finished.

  There is a bump. We have reached the other side. He has not brought me to the forest: the trees begin two fields away.

  Diner has no rope to attach the boat to the landing-stage.

  ‘Get out, Lizzie. Quickly.’ I balance myself and jump on to the hard ground. ‘Take hold of the bow, as I do. Pull, Lizzie, pull hard.’

  I heave and struggle, as he does, until we have hauled the boat up on to the frozen bank. He says it will not shift now, for the tide is starting to fall and the boat will soon be ten feet above water.

  It is lush here in summer, and the cows wade knee-deep in grass. It would be boggy now if the frost had not set in so hard.

  ‘This way,’ says Diner, as if he sees a high road before us instead of a cattle-track through sallow, frozen grass. The track leads to a stile, and beyond it fields stretch to the dark edge of the wood. ‘We cut through this way, and if I have the direction right, it will bring us through the forest and out on to the road through Failand and then south.’

  I am comforted a little. It seems that we have a journey ahead of us, and a purpose. He strides out surely, as if he does indeed know where we are going. My bundle is not heavy but my skirts slow me. I stop to kilt them up, for there is no one here to see me. Diner turns instantly.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I cannot walk freely.’

  ‘Take my hand.’

  There is scarcely room for us to walk abreast but he folds my hand in his and holds it so firmly that it would pain me if I did not keep up with him. I stumble once or twice on the frozen ruts and each time he pulls me upright before I have time to fall. I scramble over the stile and we follow the track across the second field. The trees are close. They are so thick that even now when the leaves have fallen, I cannot see the way ahead.

  27

  There are tracks everywhere in the snow. Rabbits, I think, and deer, and birds’ triangular claw prints set lightly and then frozen. Rooks fly up, cawing. My wrist burns where Diner grasps it. The snow is deep here and untrodden by human feet. It comes over the top of my boots. It clogs the hem of my skirts as I wade through it.

  ‘Come, Lizzie! You are dawdling again.’

  Suddenly I am angry. It’s well for him in his breeches and high boots.

  ‘Stop,’ I say, and he does stop, I think from pure surprise at hearing me order him. He turns round, still holding my left wrist, and takes my right hand too, causing me to drop my bundle. A spasm of something almost like laughter seizes me. We look as if we are about to dance away over the forest floor; only he is holding me too tightly. With a sudden movement, I chop my hands down and outwards. He lets go. We stand face-to-face, breathing hard.

  ‘Do not drag me like a child,’ I say. It was he who released me, not I who freed myself. But I will speak as if I did not know it. He is uncertain now – I see it. There is sweat on his forehead.

  ‘I have not hurt you,’ he says.

  I strip off my gloves and hold out my wrists to show him the red marks where he has grasped me. They are deep on my left wrist: they will bruise. He says nothing. He bows his head; then he stoops down, picks up a handful of snow and rubs my wrist with it. The skin tingles.

  ‘Is that better?’ he asks.

  I shake my head. He fetches up a sigh and a muscle jumps on his cheek.

  ‘Let us go slowly,’ he says.

  ‘I will follow you.’

  ‘Will you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I would not dare to turn and run. He would overtake me in a moment and then he would have no trust in me and would not care what he did. He has my wrist in his hand still. Slowly, tenderly, he rubs in the snow.

  ‘Put on your gloves,’ he says. ‘You will be cold.’

  ‘I am very cold.’

  ‘Follow me closely.’

  We twist and turn and I keep my eyes on the ground so as not to stumble. We plough through a bewilderment of stumps, trees, snow, grabbing branches. We pass the ruin of an oak and plunge into a scrub of whitebeam. Branches join above our heads like ribs. Diner says, ‘We will stop here, Lizzie.’

  The path widens. Here is a little glade which must be pleasant enough in the summer. Now it is full of snow and blue shadows. High above us the rooks sail, still cawing.

  ‘Why here?’

  But Diner does not answer. He treads around the circumference of the glade, as if he is walking to some measure that is invisible to me. He glances up at the sky, at the trees and then he moves inward a little, clearing away snow with the sides of his boots.

  ‘It is here,’ he says.

  ‘What is here? Diner, you said we must hurry. We have come no distance.’ I hear the chatter of alarm in my voice, as I heard it from the birds that we disturbed.

  ‘She is here.’

  ‘Who?’ I ask. The question leaves my mouth but I know the answer. Like a bat it unfolds its wings and blots out all other thought.

  ‘My Lucie,’ he says. He kneels down and feels along the half-cleared earth. ‘This is the place, I am sure of it. She lies with her head to the east.’

  I take a step back. Instantly he springs up from his crouch like a hare and I am within his grasp. He does not touch me.

  ‘You are not well,’ I say. ‘Lucie does not lie here, but in St Andrew’s churchyard.’

  He stares at me in what looks like the purest amazement. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘You told the Frenchwoman she was buried there. Madame Bisset.’

  ‘How do you know her name?’

  ‘I heard it.’

  ‘I had to tell her something,’ says Diner, almost lightly, as if the whole thing were of no significance. ‘But I must take you to task, Lizzie. It seems that you have been following in my footsteps all this while, spying on me as if you were my enemy and not my wife. Come here. Kneel down. Feel the earth here – No, you cannot feel it through those gloves. Do you not feel the contour, there, where the earth has sunk? I thought it should have risen, but now it
falls away. This is the place. I am no grave-digger, Lizzie; it is not my trade.’

  My scalp crawls as if ice is parting my hair. ‘What are you telling me?’

  ‘You know what I am telling you. This is the place. I cannot keep away from it. If you only knew how many times I have come here – But it makes no difference. Nothing changes. It is always the same.’

  The earth is rough and cold. ‘Tell me what happened,’ I ask him, as I should have asked him long ago.

  ‘You will not believe me, Lizzie. You will only pretend to do so. You will humbug me.’

  ‘You must try me then,’ I say. I know that I must keep him talking. He must remember that I am Lizzie and have done him no harm.

  ‘Stand up. You must not kneel there in the snow. You are shivering.’

  He reaches for me and I cannot stop myself flinching. His hands grip, pulling me up. He beats the snow off my cloak.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say.

  ‘It is true that I was angry with her. I had reason, Lizzie. She thought I did not know her tricks but I had her followed. She would smile at me when I left her, and say that she was going to her dressmaker. It is commonplace to praise a smiling woman for her amiable disposition. You do not smile, Lizzie. I like your grave face. I watched her dance with him in her bronze slippers that she thanked me for with a kiss. I watched her feet tap and turn, so fleet you would think she was not tied to the earth as we are. She smiled too much. There was to be another dance, and she intended to expose herself with him again.’

  My chin aches, as it does when I am about to vomit. Another dance: the dress. There is a vile taste in my mouth. I breathe in deeply through my nose, and swallow.

  ‘But this is no ballroom,’ I say. ‘How did she come here?’

  ‘It was a fine evening and she wanted to hear the nightingales. She needed no more than her light wrap. She said that she had something to tell me but I knew what it was. I asked her about Hibbert. She pretended to know nothing. She thought she could humbug me as she had done before. God knows how many times she had deceived me. I took her by the shoulders. It was only to get the truth out of her – I would not have hurt her – but she twisted herself from me and ran.’ He frowns, and puts out a hand as if to stop me. ‘No. That was not it. I will tell you exactly. She twisted herself from me. I would not have thought she could run so fast, but she picked up her skirts and dodged through the trees until I thought I should have lost her.’ He draws me to the edge of the glade, and points through the trees. ‘There. Look there, Lizzie. That is where she fell.’

  ‘Is there a drop?’

  ‘I caught her there. I had hold of her skirts but I lost my balance and went down. She fell under me and struck her head. I did not see anything. I only felt that she did not move beneath me. I struggled to my feet but still she lay there. I did not dare to touch her. I was afraid to turn her over. I think she was not in her right mind to run so.’ He stops, and heaves a breath before continuing. ‘She had struck her head as she fell. Just here, at the temple. You see how the ground is full of stones. It was my weight coming down on her that made the blow harder. I did not understand. When I turned her at last her eyes were open, but they did not see me. I thought there was a spark in them when I lifted her and carried her into the light. I thought she would have spoken. There was no blood, Lizzie. Only a little from her nose. I took leaves and fanned her face.’

  I see that he believes his story. It moves before his eyes and he follows it, this way and that. There is Lucie, dancing. There is the glade, full of sun. My skin crawls, no longer with terror but with a revulsion stronger than any feeling I have felt before. He believes it and there is no one living who can contradict him. Lucie is here beneath our feet, her mouth stopped with earth.

  I have never wanted so much to remain alive. My flesh, my tongue, my lips all know what they must do.

  ‘An accident of the most terrible nature,’ I say. ‘You must not blame yourself.’

  He has steadied himself. He is seeing me now, not Lucie. His eyes search me with the old quickness, to discover if I am lying. I look back. I do not see him: I will not see him or Lucie or any of it. I look inward to where Thomas stretches out his arms for me, and Philo laughs, showing her gappy teeth. I feel the cold of the earth coming up through the soles of my boots.

  ‘I cannot help feeling some blame,’ he says. ‘It is a heavy burden, Lizzie.’

  I moisten my lips. ‘And so you buried her here.’

  ‘I had no choice.’

  My thoughts burst within me, but I hold them down. There is a hazel bush at the edge of the glade and I go over to it. Diner does not stop me. I break off two twigs and shake away the snow. They are frail but hardy too, with some sap in them yet. I take out my handkerchief and bind the twigs into a cross, and then I push it deep into the snow where Diner says that Lucie lies. I did not think that Diner would let it stand, and he does not. He plucks it out of the snow and tucks it inside his coat. Then another thought comes to him. He unties the cross, shakes out the handkerchief and folds it into a bandage. Before I can guess his thought he is on me.

  ‘Don’t move, Lizzie.’ I feel his breath on my cheek as he binds my eyes. I do not dare raise my hands to loosen it. ‘Now,’ he says, and he takes my shoulders and spins me around, once, twice, three times, until I stagger. I make a sound in my throat but I do not cry out. He takes my arm and leads me away.

  28

  We are on the river again before Diner unties my blindfold. The sudden light dazzles me and I shut my eyes. When I open them there is Diner opposite me, unshipping his oars. The current has already pushed us sideways, but he rights us quickly and begins to row. The high cliffs of the Gorge press in on either side. We are moving downriver. But why the boat, if we are going into Somerset? We should have kept on walking.

  ‘Are we crossing back to the Hot Well?’

  ‘We may have too warm a welcome there. A band of my creditors gathered to meet me, ready to throw me into Newgate. We must press on, Lizzie.’

  I stretch my cold fingers inside my gloves. I wish that I were rowing too, for it would keep me warm. Something is missing and I can’t think what it is, until I remember my bundle. It is gone, and I have not noticed until this moment. It must have been lost after I put it down to make my cross for Lucie. I did not think of it then because once Diner bandaged my eyes I had no room for anything but fear. My bladder hurt and he let me squat down to relieve myself. I heard the sound of him doing the same. I thought he had blindfolded me because he meant to lead me to one of the drops which would kill me if I fell. Now I think he only did it so that I would not remember where Lucie lay.

  Snow has a smell; I know that now. I have never smelled it before. And there was the sour, dry smell of the forest, too, before it changed when we went out into the meadow. He helped me over the stile. I did not realise at first what it was. All I knew was the climb and the fear of falling on the other side. I did not know how far down the drop might be. When my boot touched the earth, tears rushed to my eyes under the blindfold.

  He made me help him haul the boat down to the water. The keel grated on the frozen edge of the bank, and then the angle of the boat tipped and I could hardly hold it. The tide had fallen. I pushed and the boat came to life as it felt water under it. For a second I thought of shoving it out as far as I could so that the current would take it away from us, but Diner held my arm fast. He turned me to him, lifted me by the elbows and set me down inside the boat. I thought that he meant to row me out and drown me and I shrank away from him, clutching at the seat. I did not dare to strip off my blindfold although my hands were free. I felt us push off from the bank and then the current came at us side-on, rocking us roughly until Diner turned the boat and we steadied.

  Now I see that we are not the only boat on the river. There is none close enough for me to hail, and anyway I would not take the risk. In an instant Diner could wrestle me over the edge into the water. He would say that I was insane and determined to dest
roy myself no matter how hard he struggled to hold me back. Women do throw themselves into the river. They fill their pockets with stones and plunge into the water to hide their shame. They leap from the Sea Walls. Sometimes their bodies are discovered on the slime of the mudbanks when the tide is out. Many are never found. I suppose that the tide takes them and hides them in the sea.

  Diner ships his oars again and strips off his coat. He leans forward, rocking the boat, and places it around my shoulders. ‘It will keep you warm, Lizzie.’

  I cling to the hope his words give. If I am to be kept warm, then perhaps I am to live. He means us to moor downriver, and walk again until we find the road south.

  He rows well, with long, smooth strokes that push us fast within the flow of the tide. We go past the Gunpowder House, where a ship is moored, canted sideways on the mud, waiting for the next tide. Suddenly I see a fox, more gold than red, padding in and out of the reeds. It lifts its head and gazes at me insouciantly. I have never seen a fox in such a light, as if it were my equal, looking at me over the water out of the business of its own life. I wish I were that fox.

  Diner whistles through his teeth as he rows, and his hair ruffles in the wind of our passage. Behind him the river widens. I know this stretch well enough, from long walks along the towpath, but I never knew how the river changes when you are on it and part of it. It is wider. There is more light. We are more separate from the land than I have ever imagined.

  A man on the towpath lifts his hand in greeting, and then plods on with his collar drawn up over his ears.

  ‘Do you know that man, Lizzie?’ asks Diner sharply.

  ‘Of course not. He was merely wishing us good-day.’

  ‘He may keep his wishes to himself. What is that?’

  There are two men on horseback, riding out from the city. They have fine strong horses: their flanks steam in the winter air. It puzzles me that gentlemen should have taken out such splendid animals when the earth is hard as iron. If they should stumble on the frozen ruts they will be ruined.