Anna replies stonily, ‘He will come in here over my dead body, Loveday, and I mean that literally. And no other quack either.’
‘Oh well, you know best,’ Loveday says comfortably. ‘You can always change your mind. It’s such a pity, dear, that you cannot enjoy the bustle of preparations. It’s so jolly and exciting – everyone is charmed with Mr Ritter, even those of us who might have preferred dear Beatrice to marry elsewhere.’
Christian has departed on a fortnight’s speaking tour, shepherding Miss Randolph through the south-western shires. He has trained her to tell her story to congregations in her own voice. Some Dissenters have vehemently objected to Mr Beecher’s ‘slave auctions’, with which Christian is associated. ‘Vulgar American showmanship’ is repudiated by critics as ‘yet another form of mass entertainment demeaning causes dear to the Nonconformist heart’. Letters arrive daily for Beatrice, sometimes twice daily; the Epistles, Anna thinks, of St Christian. Will keeps away from Sarum House.
‘May I try on your dress, Miss Anna?’ Patience asks, as soon as her mother’s out of the door.
‘No, you may not.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s not public property.’
Anna shoots the little rat a poisonous look. Two shrewd hazel eyes return it. Patience wears an air of malign irony, altogether beyond her eleven years. Intelligent, Anna thinks, but warped. Two apple-breasts are just forcing Patience’s pinafore out and soon she’ll be encased in stays. Not long left for you to scamper around like a hoyden climbing trees and swimming in the river with your brothers. You’ll soon be hobbled, Anna thinks, like the rest of us. Gelded, even, for women are gelded. Give us all the runaround while you can. Indeed this may be Patience’s final summer of freedom – and already it’s September.
The girl has the skirt of Anna’s dress between finger and thumb. ‘Oh go on. Why not?’
‘The dress has to be kept nice, Patience. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, you’re too small. And anyway, because I say so.’
‘So?’
‘Go and give your mother a hand.’
‘What with?’
‘Whatever she’s doing. Quite honestly, I don’t want you.’
Patience perches on Anna’s bed. ‘You are putting it on. Everyone knows.’
‘Putting what on?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just pretending to languish. That’s what everyone says. Because you’re in disgrace, you’re trying to avoid trouble. Me and Jack saw you coming back from wherever you went with Mr Anwyl. You were skipping down the path! Your legs work perfectly well. And anyway you’re hysterical. Your sister says so. It’s a mental malady. Dr Quarles is going to come and see if they should put you away. When you least expect it.’
Anna keeps her composure; she grins and folds her arms. At last someone’s playing into her hands. She says to the little rat, ‘Oh, that’s very interesting, Patience. Yes, do try on the dress. Why not? You can fold up the hem.’
The adversary is wrong-footed. After all, Patience is just a child and has no arsenal to match Anna’s. She’d meant to give Miss Anna Pentecost a vicious poke in the ribs; to make her flesh creep. Anna’s amusement wrong-foots her and, pausing for thought, she elects to seize her advantage while it’s offered.
Off come Patience’s disreputable pinafore and frock, down to her grubby calico chemise, which hangs to her knees. There’s a smell of young sweat from unwashed armpits. She dives into the mass of material of the bridesmaid’s dress, struggling her neck into the collar. Yes, go on, split the thing, thinks Anna: I hate it anyway. What is it but a shroud?
‘Well,’ says Anna. ‘What-a-sight.’ The unsupported crinoline trails in a wide circle on the floor.
‘It looks stupid,’ pronounces the pouting wearer.
‘That’s for sure.’
They both laugh. Patience staggers round in paroxysms of giggling. Back in her own clothes, she dumps the gown back on the chest, where it lies prostrate as a jilted bride.
‘So when’s Dr Quarles coming for me, Patience?’ asks Anna.
‘After the wedding. With Mr Thimbleby and Mr Ivor from the asylum. If I was you, I’d run away. Have you got any cake though, Miss Anna? Can I go and ask for some cake for you and I eat it?’
‘Yes, all right. Just a minute though, Patience. You’re not making this up, are you?’
‘Would I?’
Probably not, Anna calculates. The whole thing has an internal logic of its own; it’s unlikely to be a child’s fancy. And the little rat has a habit of skulking at doors: Anna has seen her. But she doesn’t seriously think Beatrice would fulfil the threat to certify her: she could never live with herself. Anna’s sister has thought the unthinkable because she’s hurt; ringing with pain.
‘I saw your friend yesterday,’ adds Anna’s informant. ‘Mrs Sala. The Sinner of the Unforgivable Sin, Ma says people are calling her. She and her so-called husband came back to Toplady’s.’
‘Oh – when?’
‘On Friday. Ma says people are loitering outside their gates hoping to cut them dead. Mrs Sala will be shunned by all decent people as a godless harlot and a Jezebel. But she never comes out so nobody can ignore her.’
*
‘I really do think, Beatrice,’ says Loveday complacently, ‘that dear Patience is growing up at last in a womanly sort of way and will be a credit to us.’
And indeed when the child comes downstairs to request tea and cake for Miss Anna, she shows such considerate sweetness that both women are beguiled. Patience waits quietly for a tray to be produced, offering to carry it up herself: she and Miss Anna are having such a nice chat. She asks nothing for herself. Beatrice cuts two handsome hunks of walnut cake and pours lemonade for the prodigal.
‘Well!’ exclaims Beatrice as the door closes behind the child. ‘Is she sickening for something?’
‘Ah, but a little angel she can be, didn’t I always say? I shouldn’t be at all surprised if this were to prove the first sign of conversion, Beatrice.’
Loveday has been a staunch friend, assuring Beatrice that she has made the right choice of suitor, persuading her to censure the bad influences on Anna rather than Anna herself. Mr Anwyl is one, Mrs Sala another. Loveday has begged Mr Elias to rebuke Mr Anwyl in a spirit of brotherly correction and to preach a sermon on the moral emergency: a sermon such as Mr Elias has never delivered, that will drive transgressors from Chauntsey or bring them to their knees. Naturally Mr Elias proves slippery as a tadpole. He prevaricates until Loveday is ready to write the sermon and preach it herself.
When Beatrice taps on her sister’s door, she finds an empty bed and an open window. The tray stands on the cabinet, both plates giving the impression of having been licked clean. With a shawl over her nightgown, Anna is reclining on her sofa, her Bible open on her lap. She seems engrossed; looks up and smiles.
And Beatrice smiles.
Something so natural and simple could not be forced. It flashes between them by accident or grace.
‘Dear, won’t you catch cold with the window open?’ Beatrice asks gently.
‘I needed the fresh air. The atmosphere in here seemed so stale.’
‘But shall I close it now?’
‘By all means, do.’
Beatrice looks out at the grey day, the saturated beeches turning copper, scatterings of tarnished leaves on the lawns and shiny conkers beneath the chestnut.
‘Autumn’s upon us. Where did the year go? What are you reading, Anna?’
‘The Gospel according to St Luke. I felt it spoke to my condition.’ Anna begins to read aloud. ‘I will arise and go to my father and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned before heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.’
From memory, Beatrice continues, ‘But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.’
No call to say more. To humiliate her penitent sister would be mean and a goa
d to Anna’s contrary spirit. Beatrice remembers the conversation between the father and the prodigal’s self-righteous brother, which doesn’t reflect well on the latter. The brother stomps out in a pet, refusing to join in the celebration. I’ve always behaved myself and you never killed a fatted goat for me. No, but this brother of yours was dead and is alive; what was lost is found. Kissing her sister’s cool cheek and collecting the tray, Beatrice leaves softly. The relief is physical: a weight lifts from Beatrice’s chest. She hums her way down the stairs. Someone’s at the door, a man, she can hear the low murmur of his voice.
‘Miss,’ says Amy. ‘It’s Mr Anwyl. He won’t come in. He just wanted to leave these for you.’
It’s an armful of amaranthus, with its drooping scarlet tassels – lovelies-bleeding. ‘Throw them away,’ she begins to say but somehow the words come out in a jumble and Amy, with a questioning look, goes for a vase. And surely these horrors are meant for Anna, not for herself. But, no, the servant assures her from the scullery, he insisted on Miss Pentecost.
What kind of a minister is he? And is Mr Elias much better? Loveday is not wrong, though she spoke casually: when shallow men abandon their vocation, a woman is bound to testify. Not in the spirit of the shrill London bluestockings claiming the suffrage, degrees, property and marriage rights. A woman can only ever rank as a substitute or standin. But stand she must, where a husband, father or brother is absent or indolent. I must speak, Beatrice thinks. God forbid that my tongue should be cravenly dumb. Packing a basket of fruit, she gathers a handful of tracts. It’s time to bear witness; to demonstrate to Chauntsey not who she is but whose she is – the life’s companion of Herr Ritter who serves a Master not of this world.
All the while Beatrice hopes to bump into Will. In the most natural way possible.
Seven houses open their doors to Beatrice. Tracts are accepted meekly; pears and apples more sincerely. At other homes, curtains twitch as householders hunker out of sight of the window. At Mrs Moran’s lodging house, a red-haired ruffian opens the door, stinking of gin, and bawls, amongst other filth, ‘Holy Jaysus!’ Taking aim, he ejects a gob of spittle onto her skirt. The door slams in her face. Seizing the knocker, Beatrice raps again; jumps back. These Irish Catholics, dregs as they may be, need her more than anyone in Chauntsey. The door is opened by another fellow, toothless and lined, less pugnacious.
‘Good morning, sir. I’ve brought you some fruit – I hope you like fruit? – and some good news.’
‘Oh aye?’
Mrs Moran’s daughter, Theresa, a plump lass of sixteen, appears behind him. No shoes.
‘How would you like some pears, Theresa, from our tree at Sarum House? I wondered if you’d care to hear a very remarkable story? – and I’ve brought a message just for you.’
The girl scoops pears into her apron and sinks her teeth in the flesh of one, chewing as she speaks: ‘Ta, miss. But I only like stories about love or murder.’
‘Well, as it happens, the story I have brought you has to do with both love and murder. Both those stories meet in the Cross of Jesus Christ.’
‘Na, don’t bother. Ta, though.’
‘But accept a tract, Theresa. Do.’
‘There’s no one here as reads.’
‘I can read,’ says the Irishman. ‘Give it here. We’ll find a use for it.’ He accepts a copy of The Holy Life and Joyful Death of John Watkins, Chimney Sweep. Beatrice tries not to see him winking at the girl as the door closes.
She turns and there is Will, who has been run running wild in Beatrice’s mind ever since she last saw him. In the market square he’s feeding his chestnut mare a carrot, the palm of his hand nuzzled by the creature’s soft nose; with his free hand, he pats the mare’s neck. His expressive hands. He’s murmuring to the animal, too quietly for Beatrice to make out the words. He hasn’t seen her. She returns home.
And though she must counsel him to marry her sister, she also thinks: at heart he’s mine, he’ll always be mine, and he knows it.
*
The façade of Toplady’s curves in a pale arc, shining with glass. In the stained-glass windows you read the story of Persephone in jewel colours: the maiden gathers flowers, whose tendrils undulate with the curves of her form; the dark god of the underworld reaches to gather her; her mother Demeter tears her robe in grief, cursing the planet with barrenness.
Toplady’s, more villa than house, is amongst the most modern in Wiltshire. It stands on a gentle rise. At the back, kempt lawns slope down to the river, where Baines keeps a boat tied to the jetty. A cedar of Lebanon masks the bay windows, providing a screen from the road; its lowest branches trail like a skirt. Anna is nearer to quitting Sarum House than she has ever been. There’s no future for her there. What life will there be for Anna with Lore’s dictatorial cousin as head of the house; Beatrice forever at her heels sniffing for heresy? Trying to force her to marry Will. As good as saying, You’re tainted, you’re a disciple of the atheist Mrs Sala. Beatrice will not need to commit her to Mr Ivor’s asylum; Sarum will be madhouse enough. Would Mirrie refuse her sanctuary?
Anna pauses at the gate: there’s a carriage in the driveway, implying visitors. Her heart sinks: there’s been no word from the Salas for so long. But Miriam has always said, ‘Don’t stand on ceremony, Anna: you’re the first of my friends.’
In the dining room a visitor is already waiting. An austere lady in her late twenties, dressed for walking, she stands with a bag in her hand, gazing at a portrait of Miriam. The portrait. Mirrie has never permitted her husband to photograph her. Madame Bodichon’s oil painting is an exception and anyone who knows Mirrie sees why, although its subject is anything but graceful or pretty. The face looms at the viewer, as if plunging through the frame. Mirrie’s large mouth and heavy jaw are not softened: ah, but the eyes, the expression! As the visitor turns to address her – reluctantly, Anna feels – it’s as if there are three people in the room.
‘My goddess!’ breathes the visitor, astonishingly. Anna at first mistakes this for a greeting and chokes down a laugh. The visitor returns to the portrait. This will be one of Mirrie’s adorers: several idealistic young women, as Baines has laughingly mentioned, are moths to his wife’s flame. Anna has never bumped into one before. There’s a whole tribe of us, thinks Anna, discomfited.
‘Anna Pentecost.’ Anna extends her gloved hand to the disciple, a lean person wearing round steel spectacles which she pushes up with a forefinger.
‘Eleanor Jackson. My darling is hard-pressed today. She’s so bothered by noodles without the faintest notion of how precious her time is – how is she to do her great work if people will come and pester?’
Having flung this dart, Miss Jackson returns to the portrait, perhaps dreaming that she has said enough to send Anna creeping away.
‘I think Mrs Sala has spoken of you.’
‘Oh! Has she?’ Miss Jackson wheels round, angular features lit by hope and fear. ‘I’m glad she speaks of me.’ She cannot bring herself to ask what the Adored has said. ‘Have you read it?’ she asks.
‘Excuse me, read what?’
‘Well – of course, her great novel! Freedom Seeks Her.’
‘I knew Mr Sala had published a novel – but – ’
‘Good gracious no, it is Mrs Sala’s work – I can proclaim it now that the pseudonym has been breached. Poor Baines is a mere copyist, a dabbler in photography. He could never create.’
Anna is crestfallen: Miriam guards her secrets. But don’t we all? Most of my life is lived underground, thinks Anna. Perhaps Mirrie was trying to tell me and I was just too obtuse, when she quoted, ‘Can darkness shine?’ It flashes through Anna’s mind that she’ll have to reread the whole book in the light of a woman’s authorship; this woman who appropriated Anna’s form and face like a dress from a rail and robed herself in them. Miss Jackson is guilty of a smirk. She explains that their friend is the talk of literary London, a shock to Miriam, who’d wished to preserve her anonymity.
‘Of the novel�
��s greatness I have no doubt. I have whole passages by heart. It has been an open secret amongst her inner circle for some time.’
When Baines enters, Miss Jackson is on him like a mob at the shrine of a saint. She has brought along the cream silk nightgown, she says, from the women’s cooperative; she trusts Mrs Sala will be pleased to have it.
‘My dear Eleanor, how thoughtful – but my wife is far from well.’ Baines stands in the doorway, blocking the visitors’ path.
Miss Jackson is not to be discouraged.
‘One of her headaches? A tooth? How dreadful for the darling. Now, all I ask is to sit with her – as quietly as a church mouse. She’ll not know I’m there. My whole desire in life is to sit at her feet and kiss the hem of her garment.’
‘I’m unsure how much use that would be to her,’ Baines says mildly. He refrains from catching Anna’s incredulous eye. ‘In the normal way I’d be happy for you to kiss her slippers as much as you liked – or rather, as much as she liked, though a little of that goes a long way, I’d have thought – but this is not the time.’
Narrowing her body, Miss Jackson sidles past him. Anna stays where she is.
Mirrie’s face is swollen and blotched. She’s reclining in the curve of the bay, feet raised on a footstool. Anna, through two door frames, watches the obsequious handmaiden approach, holding out a swatch of material. Sinking to her knees, Eleanor clasps her idol’s feet, kissing them repeatedly. Aeneas the labrador rises from the hearth rug to sniff at her.
‘For heaven’s sake, Eleanor, get up, do,’ says Miriam, irritably. ‘Think of your dignity.’
‘I love you too much for dignity.’
‘I can see you only for five minutes, Eleanor,’ adds Miriam. ‘And pray do not fawn.’
Miss Jackson names conditions: she’ll accept the five-minute rule if she may sit or kneel at Mrs Sala’s feet. Why encourage this abjection, Anna wonders? Perhaps somehow or other Mirrie needs us all round her, odd people standing a bit outside the pale. At last the disciple is got out of the room, not without shooting quiverfuls of annihilating arrows from her eyes at the favoured Anna.
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