The Painted Bridge

by Wendy Wallace

  SIXTEEN

  Lucas St. Clair stood by the mantelpiece in the dining room, looking at the photographs on the wall. He had on the same worn coat as on the first time she’d seen him and carried a portfolio under his arm. Anna sensed life in the air that surrounded him, felt it hanging on him like a strong, enticing scent. He looked as out of place in the utilitarian room as a banquet would have looked on the old oilcloth.

  “Hello, Doctor.”

  He turned and smiled at her.

  “Hello.”

  He put down the portfolio and they both looked at it. Anna felt dizzy, to think that the means of escape might be right there in front of her, lying flat and contained as a rail ticket, tied up by the buff-colored tapes. She held on to the back of a chair.

  “How are you, Mrs. Palmer?”

  “I’m perfectly well, Doctor. Except for being here, of course. How are you?”

  “Me? Oh, I’m all right, thank you. Overworked and underpaid.”

  His whiskers were newly shaved, the line of them precise and jaunty, contradicting tired eyes that looked past her to the window. She turned to find out what caught his attention, saw only the sheep in the field, the lake beyond, its surface ruffled and unsettled under the tossing willow fronds. In the distance, the bridge looked dull and small, its silvery promise dimmed.

  “What did you find in my picture, Dr. St. Clair? Am I fit to rejoin the world?”

  He appeared to grope for his words.

  “Mrs. Palmer … everyone who comes here does so for a reason.”

  “Of course, Doctor. My husband’s concern for me was genuine, I know. He didn’t intend to drive me mad by bringing me here.”

  He didn’t return her smile. She pulled out the chair and sat down as he untied the tapes of the folder and drew out a photograph carefully, holding it by its edges. He looked at it for a moment, frowning, then came around to where she sat and laid it on the table in front of her.

  Anna saw a woman sitting in a carved wooden chair twice as wide as she was. Her hair fell down over her shoulders to her waist in waves, crinkled from its night-time plaiting. Her complexion was chalky and her eyes pale, almost translucent. A fern lay across her chest like a skeletal, many-fingered hand and her dress looked white. The woman appeared as if her whole being was centered around the unspoken plea that signaled itself from the points of light in her troubled eyes.

  “Is it me?” Anna said, at length. “I suppose it is.”

  Lucas St. Clair cleared his throat.

  “Yes, it is. What do you think of it?”

  “I hardly recognize myself.”

  He was close behind her, looking at the picture over her shoulder. He picked up one corner and tilted it to the light.

  “The focus is sharp, the light even. The tones are better than I’d hoped and the print clear and rich. But those are technical matters.”

  Anna turned her head and looked up at him.

  “Dr. St. Clair, can’t you see that I am well? I mean, with your own eyes?”

  “Mrs. Palmer, disorders of the mind can pass. They can heal. There is no shame in mental illness despite the prejudices of the general public.”

  He thought her a lunatic. He thought she was one of them. Anna felt more undone by St. Clair’s thinking she was deranged than by her husband’s thinking the same thing. She’d thought she could trust him. That was the difference. The idea came to Anna as if a stone had hit her between the eyes. She didn’t trust Vincent. She never had.

  She made herself look again at the picture.

  “So what is your diagnosis?”

  “Do you not see the slightly fixed stare? The tension of the muscles by the jaw? The face—alight with nervous energy.” He was touching the photograph as he spoke, his finger resting on her eyes, her cheeks, her lips. He smelled of pipe smoke and something musty and sweet that reminded her of apples stored over the winter. “These are the classic signs of hysteria, Mrs. Palmer.”

  She rose from the chair.

  “I was keeping still, for the camera. If I seem to stare, that’s why. And who would not be tense, in my situation? I am a prisoner here, Dr. St. Clair. A prisoner who has committed no crime.”

  Her voice was as flat as if it had been ironed. He walked back to the fireplace and pulled a pipe out of his coat pocket.

  “You are troubled by visions, according to your notes?”

  She watched as he struck a match on the bottom of a small silver case and held the flame over the tamped tobacco, making small, regular inhalations, throwing the match into the hearth. Blue smoke rose and hazed the air, stung her eyes, transported her for a sharp instant to the study in the flint house. Anna began to pace up and down the dining room.

  “I am not troubled by visions. I see them. I have done since I was a child.”

  “Would you like to tell me about them?”

  “I don’t know.” She stopped by the window, folded her arms and stood with her back to him, looking out. The trees waved and thrashed. Strands of hay tumbled in the wind over the sheep field. Only the bridge was still. She turned around to face him again. “Lately, just one vision comes to me, Doctor. And yes, I admit that it does trouble me. I see a boy, disappearing.”

  She began to explain how all through the summer the image of the boy came to her again and again. Then, after the storm that battered the nation’s coasts, wrecked scores of ships, she read of a child rescued from the water still breathing and brought ashore in the Welsh harbortown. She explained to Dr. St. Clair her sense that she was meant to help the child. Her hurry to reach the site of the wreck and how when she got there she could not find him.

  The little town was overwhelmed by the numbers of dead, its mortuary overflowing. Anna made herself go there, searching, and found it a horror beyond words. The bodies were strapped to planks because the drowned could twitch back into life, leap up, animated by exploding gases. Some had lost the skin of their hands, slipped off like a pair of gloves after days in the water. Others had lips and eyes eaten by the fishes; skin grazed by the sand as they bumped to and fro on the tides. A few had disintegrated altogether. The boy wasn’t there.

  Anna heard her own voice, became aware of the torrent of words pouring out of her mouth and stopped.

  “Forgive me, Doctor. I know people find it distasteful to hear a woman speak of these things.”

  “Not at all. Most of us never face unnatural death on such a scale, Mrs. Palmer.” His voice was somber and gentle. She remembered Vincent’s cold tone when she had tried to tell him about her experience and the way he’d turned his head from her as if repulsed. Tears sprang to her eyes.

  “I saw terrible sights but wanting to help does not make me mad—does it?”

  “No. It does not.”

  Silence descended in the room and for a minute only the light moved, causing the shadowed outlines of the window frames on the wall to tremble in golden squares, illuminating the stretching wreaths of pipe smoke.

  “Dr. St. Clair, I’d hoped your theory was right. That you would discover from looking at the photograph that I am well. But it seems that you weren’t able to see the truth in it.” Anna picked up the print, tried to inject some hope into her voice. “Perhaps your theory is wrong. Will you make another picture? It might tell you something different.”

  “Gladly, Mrs. Palmer.”

  Their eyes met and there seemed to be an exchange between them that was different from the words that had been spoken, as if in the same room two other people had, for an instant, encountered each other. Dr. St. Clair’s eyes were as troubled as hers as they said good-bye, stiffly, with a prolonged grasp of hands but with none of the ease they had shared in the fernery.

  * * *

  Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday. Lizzie Button, in the dayroom, cradled her baby on her lap, wrapped in a new napkin. She rocked back and forth, dropping kisses on it and crooning. She wore her laced boots and had her bonnet upside-down on a footstool next to her.

  “I’m going home
,” she called out to the new patient, Mrs. Featherstone. “My husband’s coming to get me, I feel it in my bones.”

  “Lucky for you,” the woman replied. “I’d be off myself but it isn’t safe. They’re waiting for me out there behind the trees. I’m Her Majesty’s Person, you know.”

  Talitha Batt was dressed for travel in a severe, woollen dress, enlivened by her usual white ruff. She had a fringed, embroidered shawl of gold flowers on a red ground over her shoulders and polished, old-fashioned navy shoes on her feet with buckles on their sides. Her sewing was nowhere to be seen and she sat with her hands folded in her lap, in silence. She seemed distracted, did not inquire whether Anna was going home for Christmas, as Violet Valentine did, half a dozen times, her interest as fresh with each asking as it had been the first time.

  All through the morning, men strode into the dayroom, looked around with a mix of embarrassment and impatience on their faces, then claimed one or other of the women. They extended broad arms, inquired, loudly and too cheerfully, after Mother’s or Aunt’s well-being. The visitors left more slowly than they arrived, pulling their relatives through the door and out, down the stairs.

  At eleven o’clock, a man with the same dark hair as Batt’s arrived.

  “Ready?” he said, without preamble.

  Miss Batt raised her flying eyebrows in response, rose from her chair, and came over to Anna.

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Palmer. My brother is here. I cannot wish you a merry Christmas.” She smiled, one of her rare smiles, showing her neat white teeth. “But I hope it passes tolerably. I will be thinking of you.”

  “Thank you, Miss Batt,” Anna said. “I hope you do have a happy Christmas. And I suppose I must hope that you don’t return, even though I should miss you very much.”

  Batt stooped and squeezed her hand with cool, bony fingers, kissed her on the cheek.

  “Farewell, Anna.” She left with her back straight, her step as precise and light as always.

  The room looked more disorderly after she had gone. Batt’s chair appeared emptier than the other vacant seats. Anna sat without moving, her hands still around her embroidery as, at intervals, loud, cracking explosions from within the grate threw out showers of sparks that glowed on the hearth rug, and died, leaving behind a smell of burning wool.

  By midday, only Anna, Lizzie Button, Violet Valentine and five others remained. Lizzie Button had begun to cry—gulping sobs that racked her body. She kept on crying as they walked through into the dining room to face a lunch of boiled bacon and beetroot. Anna put an arm round Lizzie’s shoulder and leaned her cheek against the side of her cropped head.

  “It’s alright, Mrs. Button,” she said. “You’ll be alright. We all will.”

  By the time the food was cleared uneaten from the table, Anna felt tired. She walked through the door in small steps, her legs as weak as the day she came. She’d thought there was no doubt that they would come. If Louisa didn’t arrive, Vincent would. If Vincent didn’t, then it would be Louisa who rushed in, brimming with apologies for having taken so long. It was impossible that she would be left here over Christmas.

  Throughout the afternoon, she tried to keep up her spirits. Vincent was occupied with services, would come late and get the cab to wait. Louisa was expecting twins this time, they thought from the size of her. She’d send her husband, Blundell, in her place. By three in the afternoon, the house was still and silent; outside, nothing moved.

  The door opened and all of them in the room raised their heads at the same moment. Makepeace’s voice sawed into the air; her rings clashed as she clapped her hands together. She had an unsteady look about her, her cheeks rouged, a sprig of holly pinned to her buttoned bodice.

  “We are an intimate party, aren’t we, ladies? What a pleasant time we shall spend together. For now, we must return to our rooms.”

  * * *

  On Christmas morning, when she woke up, Anna saw the boy again.

  He was so very present as he disappeared. He was small, young enough still to have rounded limbs. He stood on a rock, a prince surveying his kingdom. A moment later, he jumped, landing on both feet on the opaque surface. He paused, as if for an imagined instant he walked as he expected he would. Then began the toppling descent. He went under quickly, the look on his face changing from delight to something that she could not describe as fear but only as incomprehension. His eyes remained wide open. Then, she saw the top of a round head, the way the hair floated out around it.

  She stood in the sea, searching it with her hands, pulling her open fingers through its widths. In the bed at Lake House, she relived the sensation of trawling her hands through the water, the water slipping through without resistance—pulling them this way and that, plunging her arms deeper. She could feel the cold and smell its sharpness, hear it sigh and suck. The water stretched around her, the broken surface becoming solid again before her eyes.

  Since her marriage the picture had come to her so clearly and often. It haunted her.

  * * *

  Anna got out of bed and kneeled on the chair at the window. Outside, the sky was pink and gold and the grass leading down to the field beaded with dew. The sheep had gathered around a pile of hay and were eating steadily. Beyond the field, the lake was still and long ribbons of white mist hung over the water. The bridge shimmered in the radiant light, tinged with rose. It felt to Anna as if every time she saw it was the first time, as if she could never grow tired of it. She gazed at it through the window until her feet became so icy that she had to get back into bed. Curling up under the covers, her arms wrapped around her legs, she held her toes in her fingers and tried to warm them.

  As she lay there, she pictured the bridge, studying the photograph of it that her mind had made. She saw its three arches, leading to the far bank. The pretty, upright pillars of the baluster and the smooth handrail that ran along their tops. The reflection the bridge cast on the water, each arch the shape of a new moon.

  Anna heard Makepeace approaching, banging along the corridor unlocking doors. She climbed out of bed again, rinsed her face in the cold water left in the jug. Combing her fingers through her hair, she swept it forward over one shoulder and twisted it into a plait, watching herself in the mirror. The bridge was her way out. As soon as Christmas was over, she would find a means to get across it.

  SEVENTEEN

  Querios Abse came up the stairs with a tin of bonbons in one hand. He could hear laughter coming from the dayroom. He listened intently to the unfamiliar sound. No doubt about it, it was female gaiety. He stopped in front of the door. The guests were much reduced in numbers; a dozen of ’em had been taken home for the festivities, he explained to an imaginary magistrate at his side. He provided as well as he could for those who were left, within the constraints of the antiphlogistic diet. Believed they had almost as much enjoyment as they might have had around their own hearths.

  The word hearth had a cheery, comforting sound about it, heart and earth put together. He would weave it into the next brochure. Offers all the comforts of the home hearth. More comforts than most of them had ever had at home, in his estimation.

  Querios opened the door with a declamatory gesture and as he stepped through it his satisfaction drained away. Violet Valentine’s bird had escaped from its cage and was in panicked flight around the ceiling, banging against the tops of the windows and the chimney breast. Some of the women were chasing after it, pursuing it with raised hands, cooing to it, shouting with laughter as they caught at the feathers that fluttered down from the ceiling. The bird landed on the gasolier and splashed its waste onto the rug below.

  The rest of the guests were grouped around the fireplace in unseemly postures, their hair stuck with ribbons and pieces of tinsel borrowed from the fir tree. Violet Valentine, seemingly unconcerned about the plight of her pet, had her legs resting on the fender, her head wreathed in mistletoe. Lizzie Button crouched next to her on a footstool with a blue tablecloth thrown around her shoulders. Makepeace occupied Talitha
Batt’s wing chair. Her head was tipped back and her mouth open, he saw, with a sickening sense of apprehension. A Madeira bottle lolled at her feet.

  Anna Palmer stood a little distance away from the others. She was wearing the dress that she’d arrived in, unsuitable for a vicar’s wife, although he couldn’t say why exactly. It was a blue-green material with some sort of sheen to it. Unfashionable, he suspected, but it flattered her, with its quaint lace collar hanging down in two points, the buttons leading like stepping-stones from her neck down to her narrow waist. Her eyes were swollen from weeping. Mrs. Palmer’s condition had worsened since she’d arrived, he informed the magistrate. Sometimes that was the trajectory. It couldn’t be helped. Illness was unpredictable, just as health was. Neither could be relied upon. Of course, they made every effort and he himself was always optimistic.

  “I trust everyone has passed a pleasant evening?”

  The laughter had ceased as he stood there, the bird catchers grown still. He gave a smile he hoped was encouraging but reproving and tucked his thumb into his watch chain, resting the weight of his hand on the blunt links. He had been called “Vicar” by his contemporaries at school. At the time, he took the nickname as a compliment to his upstanding nature. Only later did it occur to him that others saw him as self-righteous.

  He felt suddenly awkward, did not know where to put the bonbons. The lid of the tin was embossed with a picture of a tree crammed with glass trinkets, sugared fruits and candles, surrounded by rosy children in their nightgowns. It mocked what he saw in front of him. The branches of the tree he’d procured at some expense looked like the bony arms of old women. A carpet of needles sprinkled around it gave off a resinous odor that reminded him of a forest. The candles on it were lit and burning low. He saw the possibility of immolation, the locked door at the other end of the room, imagined the magistrate scratching a sharp and indelible little note.