That was certainly Lore, she thinks, and shudders as she latches the door behind her. A demon got in.
*
It was Lore, thinks Anna. To the life. Lore is over there but also in here perhaps, in the room with us now. She looks round fearfully. Lore’s death was nothing but a sham – a trick. When the dying woman turned her face to the wall, Anna thought she saw the suspicion of a smirk on her lips and has always had this odd feeling that Lore went into hiding.
What is one to make of the apparition’s claim to have a sister? Who is Lore’s sister? She had no sister.
I am Lore’s sister, Anna realises. A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
The phantom told not lies but riddles. Yes, she claimed a child was present. But Lore never named Luke. She withheld the gender. So it was not Luke then – perhaps – but Magdalena. And when she was asked if the child wished to address its mother, Lore answered, ‘Why would that be necessary?’ It wouldn’t be necessary if mother and child were already united and together. Over there, beyond the invisible wall.
Yet reason revolts against all this. Anna has so often scoffed at reports of haunting zither music from a musical box strapped to a medium’s leg; levitations out of windows; a ghostly banquet in which sugar plums were decanted from a medium’s sleeves and skirts. She gathers herself together. There’s a chill in the air of the panelled room; the gaslights burn low and Anna wraps her cloak tightly round her. She has been born into a world that believes that the dead survive. When she rose from baptism in the Avon, she did so as an immortal. She has been brought up to credit miracles – water into wine, Lazarus resurrected. It would be blasphemy to ask whether Jesus was a conjuror. Lore was always looking beyond, to some homeland across the border of death: ‘Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?’ She’d recite Goethe’s poem, haunted by the absent land of the lemon trees, so present in her mind. Turning her head to peer along Lore’s eyeline, Anna saw nothing but the heavy furniture of the material world.
It all hinges on the authenticity of the medium. Antigone’s no trickster. She is, to be frank, not intelligent enough.
‘Did anyone come through?’ Antigone asked, emerging from the trance.
Yes, Anna thought. The whistler came through. There you were, hands in your lap, eyes closed, whistling like an urchin. Without the least inhibition. Wherever could a woman as observant of proprieties as Mrs Kyffin have learned this unladylike art? It does take a lot of learning, Anna knows, for as children she and Joss would whistle to the birds imitations of their various songs. Joss could deceive the chaffinches with his flutings. Anna’s songs were more miscellaneous – owl hoots, dove coos, thrush calls, a little of everything.
So what if it all comes somehow or other through or from me? Anna wonders.
Beatrice is overtaken walking back towards Chauntsey. Drawing level, they persuade her to enter the carriage, where she sits tight-lipped, veil lowered. On arrival she makes straight for her room. Later, Anna sees her slip over to the chapel where she remains for an hour and a half.
Sitting at her desk with a candle, Anna thinks it through. Perhaps, just as we all dream, our minds can somehow re-enact what they remember. Doubtless Mrs Kyffin well remembers Lore, having found the third Mrs Pentecost distasteful. Not that Antigone ever voiced her disapproval. She didn’t have to.
So maybe all this was Antigone’s unconscious performance. The other possibility, Anna thinks disquietly, is that it was somehow staged by me? And I threw Lore’s voice like a ventriloquist?
Because I’ve never let Lore die. Not for a moment.
I’ve clung to her skirts and willed her back. Anna fingers the locket with Lore’s miniature and a curl of her hair. She slips it off. The locket sits in the palm of her hand, warmed by her skin. Her thumbnail unclasps it. The hair has changed colour. Lore in life was fair, almost flaxen. The dingy hair is now a shabby red-brown. Anna shakes it into her palm, holding it to her eyes. As dead as horsehair, she thinks. No more than a relic, like the splinters of bone or skull venerated by the Papists. It’s cheap as the trove of pilgrim artefacts dredged from the Avon – whistles and bells and a badge with a priest holding the devil in a boot.
Gazing at the tiny silhouette of Lore to try to tease out a living face, Anna sees with regret how out of date the sitter looks, with her topknot, her leg-o’-mutton sleeves – archaic even then. You do not see her face at all.
*
Beatrice is bent on drumming Lore Ritter out of Sarum House and Anna’s heart for good and all.
‘This was not of God, Anna,’ she repeats, her face stony. ‘The spirit was a demon sent from Hell. We should neither of us have gone. I have prayed and it has eased me. No blame attaches to Antigone but she’s making a mistake and I shall tell her so. Whatever is she thinking of, opening herself to demonic possession? And yet it has done me good. I went to receive a message from Luke. And … yes … in a way I did. My son is gone, Anna. That’s how it is. No, don’t say anything. He will not come back. He has nothing to say to me. He has no tongue to say it. No lips, no hands, no heart, nothing. And I can weep and I can rave and I can pray but Luke is dead and I must leave him in the earth. Anna, you won’t go again, will you?’
‘I think – if it is quackery and delusion – which it may be – but not on Mrs Kyffin’s part – she’s as innocent as a child –’
Beatrice gives her a straight look. ‘It may be?’
‘Beattie, I did really think it was Lore. At first.’
‘But, don’t you see, the likeness proves that this was an unclean spirit. Horrible. Now do not allow yourself to be sucked in, Annie, don’t. I’ve learned my lesson now. Let’s be calm and try to forget it.’
Beatrice sees Anna shaking her head at talk of demons. But surely she’s thought the same thing? The evil spirit somehow or other gained access to Anna’s memories. The spirits detect hysteria and an unmade bed. An unmade bed? Beatrice has glanced into the Anwyls’ bedroom several times to glimpse rumpled covers spilling off the bedstead. Is it possible that the living, when they allow themselves to be preyed upon by excessive grief and heretical questionings and sexual passion, even within marriage, can give space to spirits who then generate spectres? A kind of mating between the two parties, garbled and skewed. One’s sacred inner world profaned and derided.
‘Are you going to speak about it to Will?’ she asks Anna.
‘Oh yes. I tell him everything.’
*
In the night, Anna shivers under a mound of bedclothes, less with cold than with irrational fear. She hears Joss coming up to bed and velvet footsteps seem to tread in his wake. She’s convinced there’s someone with him. She catches the hint of a giggle, a rustling. Opening her door an inch, she peers into the corridor. Reassuringly, there’s nothing but a powerful waft of tobacco and Joss’s bedroom door just closing. Her brother is too solid and corporeal to attract spirits – whereas her own mind seems permeable; anyone may reach in who likes, ransacking the contents.
After a while Anna decides to knock on Joss’s door and see whether he’s awake. In his jolly, grumbling way he’ll make space for her and plump a pillow so that they can sit and chat, as they used to do. Barefoot, Anna approaches his door and listens. A streak of candlelight seeps between door and jamb. She hears small shuffling sounds, a creak of floorboards.
He’s awake. And again Anna has the peculiar sensation that he’s not alone. Don’t be silly. She taps lightly with her knuckles. Silence.
‘Joss, it’s Anna. May I come in?’
There’s the sound of someone slowly lumbering out of bed. Her brother appears in his nightshirt, peering round the door, yawning.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, did I wake you?’
‘What is it, Annie? Are you not well?’
‘No, I just wanted to chat. Sorry to wake you. I thought I heard … something in here.’
He grins and holds the door wide. Looking past him, she sees Mr Elias’s mangy old do
g on the rumpled mass of bedclothes. She kisses her brother goodnight and apologises. What could she have told Joss anyhow that wouldn’t have brought an amused smile to his lips? That’s because the easy-going fellow has some sense. More sense than herself and Beatrice put together.
When Will joins Anna in bed, she clings to him, burrowing her head down into the space below his shoulder.
‘What is it, cariad?’
He listens carefully to the account of the séance and tries to give a verdict. But Will’s mind is now fixed on the Awakening and he judges everything in relation to it. ‘Dearest, I don’t disbelieve it. The Spirit cannot be limited. We’ve seen Revival in Wales – speaking with tongues, healing – this may, just may be the Spirit coming amongst us. But if it has upset you? Let me look at you. Light the candle. I want to see your face.’
In the candlelight he holds Anna’s face between his hands, stroking it with his thumbs, reading the expression. ‘I think it has distressed you,’ he concludes. ‘Rather badly. That may be the sign we need. Did the voice have a gospel ring?’
She can hardly say it did. As they lie close and warm in one another’s arms, does the jealous spirit of Lore look down through the darkness?
No, she doesn’t, Anna thinks. It’s not Lore. She’s at peace among the lemon trees. It’s me. I’m throwing out illusions like a diorama.
Everything’s in convulsion. Papa’s Jesus is slowly perishing, his life’s being drained. It’s nearly run out. And in a hectic panic we start rushing to and fro with this extreme remedy and that. Spirit Guides, Awakenings. We deliver galvanic shocks to what remains of him and when we see the spasms and paroxysms we insist he’s still alive and with us. Look! He moved! Mirrie saw all that – and has, sadly and reluctantly, let go and walked away, taking what she can salvage with her. Which may be the wiser way.
Chapter 20
It’s a matter of what you settle for, Beatrice thinks to herself as she awakens. In earlier life there was always the longing for something beyond this mundane round, dreamy and gleaming. So I’ve been made to chew a bitter cud. On my knees, I’m inching forward like a beast of the field: the fate of Nebuchadnezzar. And I should thank God that I’ve lived to discover my place in this world and its rigid obligations. She remembers that the pig-sticker is coming this morning for Lucy. The creature, knowing nothing of what is intended, has a life less harrowing than ours. Beatrice opens the curtains on the charmless earth. It’s grey out there, a little soiled: a light has been extinguished. The pulse beats low. But this is the lacklustre universe to which she must accommodate herself.
Who sweeps a room as for thy sake
Makes that and the action fine.
The hymn enters her head with the force of a command. That’s what I must do, then. Nobody in the house is stirring. Beatrice lets herself out into the damp air. She takes a broom and begins to sweep, attempting to do this for her Maker’s sake; to make, as the poet said, drudgery divine.
I am not a servant, she once told a visitor who mistook her for a skivvy. How dare he? I am Miss Pentecost.
No. For I am nobody in particular. I never was. The only comfort will be to acknowledge my low status on the scale of things. Amy is better than I am. I must be punished. The sweepings of Beatrice’s broom disclose dust, ash, weeds and crumbling leaves, a feather, snail shells, seeds, one of the Elias children’s lost jacks, which she slips into her pocket, to return to him. Sycamore seeds are falling all around, spinning on their wings. She picks one up and holds it to the light, looking through the veined transparency of its brown wing. Wind has floated the pea-sized seed a good fifty yards from the parent tree. She fingers the feather: grey, a gull’s. The snail shell cracks between her fingers, its creature devoured. All these remains have been dropped here for me to clear, Beatrice thinks. Leavings and waste. Voidings. And this patch of paving is the boundary of my ministry. Here God has set me with this broom.
There are no tears to shed, only this tedious round of disciplined obedience.
God may grant you another child. The child may live. Once you have suffered this penance. It may take years. Not that you deserve such grace: no, but He does not torment his children beyond what they can bear. So the Bible promises. But that means I shall have another child to lose. How many will He take from me? Mrs Gartery in West Grimstead lost all but three of fifteen. And two of those three sailed to Tasmania.
In the barn a crossbar looks surprisingly like a gibbet. As she comes and goes during the day, between the chickens and geese and the kitchen, Beatrice spies it from the corner of her eye. The pig-sticker with his bulbous features arrives and does his work. Some of the blood that escaped the pail wastes itself in the soil, enriching it. The pig-sticker, aided by Amy, is dismembering Lucy.
Perhaps God will take Beatrice in her sleep. It will be an easy and acceptable journey. How grateful she’ll be to see her son again on the other side and, gathering him to her breast, gather herself in too from this great scattering. Nevertheless (she warns herself) not my will but Thine be done. For what Beatrice has understood is that no prayer of ours can make a jot of difference to what Almighty God ordains. She cannot argue with Him as she can with her sister or even with Papa when he was alive. There’s no gaining the upper hand. Occasionally she could plead with Papa sensibly enough to change his mind over a trifle and Anna could wheedle him out of this or that resolve. But no proposition or offered bargain moves the Maker to acquiescence. How could it? Everything has been decided; the book was written before time began. Everything was foreknown. All one can do is to pray for a submissive heart.
How can Christian, so highly educated, have come to dissent from the doctrine of Calvin? Even Mr Spurgeon has spoken on this subject in a lax way Papa could not have countenanced. It’s a conundrum very hard to address: Christian preaches full and free salvation for all; nothing determined in advance. Impossible to argue him out of this – she has not the intellect, and besides it is not her place. Her husband would doubtless be quick to offer chapter and verse in Greek and Hebrew for his view. Nevertheless he would be wrong. It is a slippery slope. But what a curious paradox it is that Papa, so indulgent, preached an implacable God, whereas the authoritarian Christian’s God is all-loving, all-forgiving.
‘Are you well, dearest?’ Anna seems to ask this question from a distance. Her voice has had to travel furlongs to enter Beatrice’s ears.
‘Yes, I’m quite well.’
‘You don’t look it. Does she, Will?’
‘I’m sure you’ll say if there’s anything troubling you that we can help with – won’t you, Beatrice?’
‘There’s nothing. Nothing new. I’m giving Amy the afternoon off – and doing the baking myself.’
‘Why, dear?’ Anna tries to take her sister’s hand but Beatrice shrinks from her touch. ‘May I help you? We can do it together, as we used to do with our second Mama – do you remember? Mmm, the scent. And licking cake dough off our fingers. A hoard of currants in our pockets. She knew, of course.’
‘No need. I can manage. Do you really want to help me?’
‘I do. Of course I do. Anything.’
‘The spirits. Annie, turn your mind away, don’t dabble – if not for your sake, then for mine. The practice is anathema, it will damage our souls. I shall say the same to Mrs Kyffin. You agree, don’t you, Will? You see the danger?’
His nods have a particle of ‘no’ in them; his shakes of the head leave latitude for ‘yes’.
Anna replies, ‘I do see the danger. It might not be the same danger you see, dear heart – I’ve been thinking –’
‘Don’t think,’ Beatrice comes back. ‘You think too much. Curiosity is so dangerous. Life is so short. At any moment one of us might be taken and then it would be too late.’
‘For what, dearest? I can’t promise not to think. You look so strange.’
Yes, I would look strange. But why are you surprised? I am the walking dead. You live in the world of fancy still, as if your wishes had s
ome chance of altering your destiny. I’m a soul God in His infinite wisdom has singled out to flay alive. And yet I feel no pain. And perhaps that comes of faith. The power to continue without a skin.
‘Too much thinking,’ Beatrice says. ‘Altogether too much. You can’t think against your Creator, Annie. He made the moon and stars. He made you. There’s no point in thinking.’
She stops dead. Luke comes stealing into her mind. She recalls the pulsing of his skull, where the fontanelles hadn’t fully closed – and Will said one afternoon while Luke was taking a nap, ‘What is that called? – the open part of the skull? – we see it pulse – he’s still close to Jesus, not sealed off.’ How grateful she has been for her brother-in-law’s consolation, taking his words as gold, hoarding them in her memory. Beatrice’s heart pauses between one beat and the next.
‘Doesn’t she look strange, Will? Should she sit down?’
The next throb comes after all. Beatrice’s heart will persist a while yet. For a moment it was as if the door to the other world opened a smidgeon. To let her out. Oh, may it be soon. The knife handles are made of discoloured bone. They offer themselves in a bunch, the blades buried in a wooden block.
‘She does look pale and weary. Won’t you rest now?’ Will Anwyl, the only one capable of touching her heart, comes up close and his voice is too beautiful for words; it will unstring her. Beatrice daren’t look into his dangerous eyes. ‘Why don’t Annie and I roll our sleeves up and bake the bread?’
‘You, bake bread?’ The faint gleam of a smile lightens her face but it seems to jeopardise her defence. Will is, after all, a slippery character. ‘What do you know about baking bread?’
‘Well, I know something, perhaps not much as things stand. But Annie will teach me. I’ll be her apprentice. Or yours – perhaps you’d like us to do it together, just you and me? Then Annie can carry on with her writing. I know she’s itching to.’
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