‘Honestly, Anna. What will you say next? Do you ever know what you are going to say before you say it?’
‘No. Not always. Do you always?’
‘Yes, Anna, on the whole yes, I think I do.’
‘Poor you, Beattie, you are deprived of the spice of novelty.’
Beatrice, not for the first time, flinches from her sister’s thinking-aloud; pretends to laugh it off. Anna is an odd mind out and really can’t help it. Since you cannot gain complete control of her, you need to veil her anomalies from other people’s sight. Sitting back, Beatrice contemplates her sister’s melancholy but beautiful eyes, looking into the distance; she admires the lustrous darkness of Anna’s hair, just washed, all brought forward over one shoulder. Her face is gaunt but Anna has rallied significantly since the medical treatment, indicating to Beatrice that Dr Quarles knew what he was talking about.
There’s a pile of books sticking out from under the bed. Aha, you forgot to hide them! ‘Fissiparous’: Anna could not have dreamed that up on her own: Miriam Sala is somewhere behind that. ‘Christianity is fissiparous! Worms in a garden!’ Is that a sample of Anna’s reflections when she’s lying prostrate in her room all those tedious hours?
‘But perhaps an Awakening would bring all the churches back together again, Annie. That, I am sure, is the idea. General Baptists would reunite with Strict and Particular Baptists, Congregationalists, all the different Wesleyans, Unitarians, Brethren, even the Anglicans, High and Low and High-low. All of us would be one. So perhaps there is something in it and we should pray earnestly about it? This may be the moment.’
While Anna dozes on the couch after tea, Beatrice runs lightly upstairs and removes the offensive books. Without examining the titles or investigating their soiled contents, she conceals them in the cupboard under the stairs until evening. In the wilderness at the end of the garden, Beatrice lights the pyre. She tears out pages quire by quire. The fire licks, then rages. Kindling’s all they’re good for. Flakes of charred paper float up into the air but on a windless evening they don’t travel far. The fire burns low and Beatrice stirs the ashes with a stick until every trace is extinguished. And she’ll be watchful and do it again and again, should the need arise. Her heart is choking her throat with its drumming.
*
Turdus philomelos, Anna records in her diary, the speckled song thrush has had her nest smashed. Five eggs, powder blue, 9 days old & near to hatching, stolen. This whole nesting arrangement was a mistake on her part. She should build nearer heaven for we down here are raptors. Never trust us. We do not trust one another or ourselves – & how wise we are in this regard. But our thrush too is an engine of death: an empty litter of snail shells marks her presence. She beats them against the post to extract the meat. & this she must do until the Almighty calls a halt to the slaughter.
Anna will get up today. She’s sick of sickness. Meeting her own sallow face in the mirror, she’s shaken. ‘Emaciated; not long for this world’ are the words she reads in the sympathetic faces of visitors: they conceal what Lore would have called their Schadenfreude. Hens peck the runty chicken to death, after which deed they run about squawking with five minutes’ relief. The healthy feed on the ill: that’s a fact. It ensures that the mad and bad survive. And then, generation by generation, they select and breed for madness. Outwit the mob or be devoured. Outwit Beatrice. But Anna was sad through and through to see her observations confirmed by Mr Darwin in one of the snatched books. The zoologists sorrow over the bloodbath of nature and are reluctant to acknowledge it. It has made Mr Darwin ill. But tell it he must. Tell it and be vilified. Speak and be mobbed by the beaks of the cognoscenti.
Mrs Bunce brought trout from the Avon for the invalid. The creatures lay on a slab, a mortuary company, their yellow eyes glazed. The fish cried out with Job: Why did you create me, O my Maker, to be the food of vermin? Their creaturely life spoke to Anna and harrowed her. All life is kin to all life. This would sound insane. ‘But Anna, the creatures were given to us for our use.’ And the smell. Even in her romping days, Anna Pentecost was never more than a light eater, a slight child. Too much to do, trees to climb, cartwheels waiting to be turned in the morning garden. ‘You’re a fairy,’ said Papa. ‘You eat the dew on the leaf. But I’m an elf, my lamb, a porridge-elf, so let me feed you this teaspoon of magic porridge made of oats soaked in rainbows.’ Yes, she opened her beak then and accepted the delicacy. And throve.
Anna accepts a portion of fish, poached in milk, her sister hanging over her, staring at the fork as it travels to and from her mouth. Afterwards, seized with a violent headache, Anna suppresses the pain and agrees with Beatrice that Dr Quarles’ remedy has done her good after all. Yes, she was wrong to object to the quacks and to make such a fuss about being violated. Anna smiles at Beatrice none too pleasantly, a sardonic rictus which Beatrice apparently chooses to accept as the real thing.
Anna manages to creep downstairs under her own steam and settles herself on the sofa. She considers her plan. It’s to take up her bed and walk. But not too soon, so as to avoid a trip to London with Beatrice, who’ll be meeting Christian Ritter at Regent’s Park College. He’s to lecture on slavery in America and about new horizons for the world ministry. The great Mr Spurgeon will attend.
Yesterday a long letter arrived from Christian, which Beatrice has not shared with Anna. Beatrice’s colour is high and she spends a disproportionate amount of time trying on her best dresses and selecting hats for London.
‘Oh I wish you could come with me, Annie. I dislike leaving you.’
‘I’ll be perfectly comfortable. And getting stronger every day, you can see that. Mrs Elias and Mrs Montagu will keep me company.’
‘I don’t like going without you, I don’t like it.’
A little-girl look crosses the elder sister’s face. What self-respecting woman wouldn’t comprehend Beatrice’s apprehension? Solitary in a railway coach, you’re prey for any rogue who chooses to insult you. Together the Pentecosts are a match for anyone.
‘You’ll be well cared for,’ Anna reassures her. For what if Beatrice becomes so nervous that she cancels her trip? ‘I’ll write every day. Joss will take you to the station.’
‘Yes, but it’s you I worry about.’
‘Well, don’t.’
‘I’ve been unkind to you, Annie. Dearest, I’m just – so sorry.’
Anna stares. Her sister is rarely known to apologise; can only with difficulty concede that she may have been mistaken. A caress, a vase of anemones, a cake baked with cinnamon constitute her usual language of contrition. And, look, the penitent is already beginning to regret it. Beatrice has to be forgiven on her own terms.
What she mustn’t know, for fear of reprisals, is that, no, Anna will never forgive her sister on any terms, ever. You’re a one-woman Inquisition, thinks Anna. If there’s an hysteric in the house, we know what her name is.
That evening, when the precious books were filched, Anna watched a plume of smoke rise in the wilderness. Next day she had Joss push her there in the wheeled chair. She examined the blackened circle of grass and plucked a few charred scraps of paper from a broom bush. They are now between the pages of her journal, like pressed black flowers of mourning. In that hour Beatrice passed beyond Anna’s trust.
She’d only skimmed the first page of Baines’s book. Well-written. A touch bombastic. A woman looking not wholly unlike Anna herself was sitting in a window. The townsfolk were all peering in the window and gossiping about her. But, Beatrice, books are immortal, she thinks. Publications can’t be extinguished. How on earth can you have ignored the fact that replacements are always available? When you’re away, she thinks, I can order the books. I have money of my own, you simpleton. The small allowance from her aunt Anna never spends: it mounts up, not enough to emancipate her but a nest egg. If you destroy the copies, I’ll replace those. Obviously. But where to hide them?
‘Annie, I’ve said I’m sorry,’ Beatrice repeats, with slightly less convictio
n.
Anna smiles. ‘Oh, well, never mind. I expect I provoked you. It’s all in the past. Shall you not say goodbye to Mr Anwyl?’
Beatrice shrugs and flushes. ‘Why should I?’
Mr Anwyl comes and goes, taking little notice of Beatrice, chatting instead with Anna, annoying Joss by bestowing attention on the Rubenesque servant, Amy Light, and any other female visitors to Sarum House below the age of forty. Anna watches Will winding tendrils round women’s hearts; observes Beatrice ignoring him; catches a sour whiff of mutual mortification, high as hung game on a hook.
*
On the verge of sleep you occasionally startle: you’re falling. Suddenly you’re wide awake. You’ve seen something dreadful. But what was it?
In the darkening garden after supper, Beatrice informs Will, ‘I am going to London to see Christian Ritter.’
‘Then I am done for,’ Will says. ‘You’ll come back engaged. I shall have to turn to Anna.’
They stand in the shadow of the chestnut. Unseen lives settle in the branches above. Beatrice teeters off-balance and Will reaches out to steady her. He understands me, she thinks; in some way he intuits me: why is this not enough? His hand slides slowly across her breast, just above the stays. Through every layer of fabric, she feels the warmth of his palm nakedly; ripples spread, out and out.
Everything melts inside Beatrice. How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter. Those troublesome disguises which we wear?
A cobweb stretches between twigs in the shrubbery; by day you’re blind to its filaments but moonlight picks out the web’s complications. Will opens his arms to Beatrice; then with his fingertips on her shoulders, he draws her closer. He lets out a faltering sigh. She cannot allow it; does allow it. A tear sparks in Beatrice’s eye for she has no one, her parents are dead, it’s dark, they’re buried over the road, her father died cursing, her sister is mentally and mortally ill, she herself is going away, faith burns low.
Beatrice observes Will Anwyl’s mouth come down, come close … receives it, no, not on her mouth but the corner of her eye which at the last moment closes. A planet swims towards another planet, horizon-filling. She discerns each lash and the crook of his eyebrow as he kisses the tear away; feels the soft push of lips on her eyelid, a sensation that persists like eucalyptus oil when he has drawn back.
She runs. A barn owl’s out hunting and she catches his territorial call. Reaching the candlelit interior, Beatrice glances back and sees no one, for the dark beneath the chestnut is impenetrable. Amy lollops about the kitchen, a lump of a girl, heavy-footed. Joss is sitting with his feet raised against the fender, chair balanced on its back legs, eating a scone loaded with blackcurrant jam. She rushes past them.
I am compromised, Beatrice thinks. This phrase chimes throughout the evening, as she superintends this, arranges that, says good night to Jocelyn and Mr Elias smoking a pipe in the stinking snuggery. On the stairs she pauses and covers her left breast with her hand; it remembers.
But nobody saw. Pleasure licks out from her hardened nipple along a network of nerves. Shakily, Beatrice undresses, turning from the mirror, catching a side view of a woman’s face like a cat’s, sleek, well-fed, slyly knowing. She lets down her hair and takes the brush to it till it crackles. In her imagination, Will has wound her hair around his fist and is drawing her head back on the pillow. But if they cannot contain, let them marry. Will’s wide open eye is approaching her eye, forcing it to blink and close. For it is better to marry than to burn. Picking up the candle, Beatrice bends forward; the hair singes; a whiff of burning is on the air. She pinches the charred tress and some falls away into her hand; she hurries to her bed and blows out the flame.
Nobody saw. It can be denied. The intimate touch. The kiss. But either Beatrice cannot now marry Mr Anwyl, ever, or, having permitted indelicacy, she must marry him. And if she does not, surely Anna will.
Chapter 6
‘It has all come to a climax at Florian Street,’ Mrs Elias, bonnet strings hardly loosened, loses no time in informing Anna. Clearly she’d rather have told Miss Pentecost but in her absence the younger sister will have to do. ‘Mr Kyffin has resigned. Prynne and the Prynneites were accuser, judge and jury. Odious fellow! At the best of times he seems to have a bad smell under his nose. Rising in a prayer meeting to beg the Almighty to forgive Mr Kyffin’s heinous offences! Mind you, Mr Kyffin does seem to be behaving strangely. The young Kyffins are distraught. I am distraught, come to that. Do you happen to have any port wine, Anna?’
‘No, we did have some. But it was unholy apparently. Beatrice gave it away. A little brandy and sugar?’
‘Oh, thank you. What are you reading, Anna?’
‘A book of sermons, Loveday.’ Anna locks the volume away in her portable desk. The parcel has just arrived, with the new copy of Adam Bede.
The poor Kyffins: the disgrace will mark them for life. Mean tongues will wag through every church and chapel in Wiltshire. Anna promises herself to visit tomorrow to offer Antigone what comfort she can. She’s now mistress of Sarum House, and how it invigorates her. The costiveness in her bowels has eased. Anna has been eating peaches till the juice runs down her chin. And what one feels for books is also appetite. A good book, said Milton, is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit. Yes, Anna thinks, but to me it’s a peach, succulent and delicious. She has written to her friends in St Ives.
‘But what worries me,’ says Loveday Elias, sipping the hot brandy gratefully, ‘is where is all this going? What can be done when a minister of the Baptist Church turns Methodist?’
‘Turns Methodist?’
‘So I hear. Though whether Wesleyan, Free Methodist, Primitive Methodist or whatever else, is not known. Mr Kyffin is not himself. Quite frankly, his sermon here was – indelicate – don’t you agree? Naked bodies! In front of ladies and children.’
‘Well, in all fairness, naked feet only,’ Anna puts in. ‘And not even naked: wearing sandals. From what my sister told me. I was not present.’
‘Oh neither was I, dear; I accompanied Mr Elias to Salisbury to hear Mr Anwyl, as you know.’
‘So neither of us is in a position to judge.’
‘But from what I’m reliably informed … well. Especially when we consider our young people, who face numerous temptations in this day and age. Mr Elias has remonstrated with Mr Kyffin, in a tactful way of course. He has put to him that our true enemy is the spirit of secularism. We worry that all ministry will be tarred with the same brush.’
‘Oh, I don’t honestly think Mr Elias need worry, Loveday.’
Such an insipid speaker as Mr Elias leaves only the faintest impression upon listeners’ minds. You know you’ve sat through a sermon but what it was all about, who can say? Mild tosh, like tasteless soup. No pepper. Anna wonders at Loveday’s indignation. Generally the soul of tolerance, Loveday has struck up against the outermost limits of her blandness. ‘About the nakedness, Loveday. I don’t think Mr Kyffin was saying what you’ve heard. It was all allegorical.’
‘Allegory, fiddle-de-dee. As Mr Spurgeon says, go to the Gospels. Call a spade a spade. Allegory is Popery.’
*
The boy-preacher of West Grimstead is a puny, tow-haired lad, his skin ingrained with the flour of his parents’ trade, lending him an albino appearance. The heckling schoolboys and apprentices massing outside the public house seem to trouble neither him nor the village lads he has gathered as disciples. The youngest, scarcely more than an infant, is dressed in the girlish skirts of infancy. This dribbling child, whose name is Harry, is much invoked by the young prophet as one of the helpless babes in whose welfare Jesus is supremely interested. Isaiah Minety has trained his followers to shout ‘Halleluia!’ and ‘Selah!’ at a gesture from himself.
Anna, accompanying Mr Anwyl to West Grimstead to examine the callow revivalist, is surprised at her companion’s enthusiasm. Will wonders if placid Wiltshire might be roused to the mass conversions seen in his homeland. Not since John Wesley’s f
ield meetings, camps and love feasts has the county seen a spiritual kindling, and if an Awakening could be harnessed to the Baptist denomination, they could be harvesting souls by the hundred.
‘Harry here will be first in Heaven,’ Isaiah Minety proclaims during a pause in the apprentices’ braying.
‘Not too soon, we hope,’ Anna can’t help exclaiming.
‘No, Miss, but if our Saviour decides to take Harry unto himself, he’ll be sitting in Jesus’s lap or standing between his kindly knees. Won’t you, Harry?’
‘Yuss,’ the cherub agrees, taking his thumb from his mouth and slipping it straight back in. Mucous hangs from his nose and he coughs round his thumb. Looking at the sea of faces, Harry takes refuge behind Isaiah.
‘Praise the Lord!’ call the disciples.
‘Kindly Knees! Kindly Knees!’ bellow the apprentices.
‘I call upon you all,’ cries the boy-preacher. ‘To become as little children …’
‘How come it’s allowed?’ asks an onlooker, who’s told that the constable has on several previous occasions dispersed the rabble. The vicar has remonstrated with Mr and Mrs Minety; the boy has been taken before the magistrate and warned. He is incorrigible.
‘For unless ye become as little Harry, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’
‘Sheer blasphemy. And look at the urchin, crossing his legs, he’ll wet himself in a minute.’
‘Wet yerself! Wet yerself!’ bawl the apprentices. ‘Go on, Holy Moses, wet yerself!’
It’s now that the young prophet makes a tactical error. ‘Yes, my friends. But I shall wet myself. I acknowledge it! I shall wet myself before the Mercy Seat!’
Pandemonium. Ironic apprentices are holding themselves between their legs and hopping in circles.
‘Baptism by total immersion is what I mean – dipping!’
‘Duck him! Duck the rat!’ The apprentices bolt with their victim toward the Avon as the heavy-footed constable arrives from Mill Street. Mr Anwyl follows the crowd, to return with a saturated and shivering Isaiah. Anna hears Will telling the child that, whereas he himself is a minister of the Baptist church, Isaiah is just a lad.
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