‘Mr Chester did say, ma’am…’
‘He said I wasn’t to tire myself so soon after my illness. I think I am wise enough to judge for myself whether a short walk will do any harm.’
‘Very good, ma’am.’
I hugged myself in secret delight, feeling as if I had scored a small victory.
I allowed Em to dress me in a smart gold-coloured walking-dress and matching bonnet. Looking at myself in the mirror I noticed how pale I had become in the past few weeks, how shadowed my eyes seemed under the brim of the bonnet, and I smiled bravely at my reflection to brighten the haunted expression which even now seemed to lurk behind the bones of my face. Enough, I told myself. I had been ill, but that was over now: Mose had put it right, and soon, we could…I passed my hand over my eyes, feeling suddenly confused. What had we done, Mose and I? Had I gone to Crook Street the night before? If so, what had I done there?
A wave of dizziness washed over me and I held on to the dressing-table to stop myself from falling. A rogue memory emerged from the confusion of my thoughts: Fanny washing my hair in a basin and drying it with her fingers…watching red ochre wash from the pale strands of my hair…No, that must have been a dream. Why should Fanny want to dye my hair? I frowned at my reflection, trying to remember, but as I looked I seemed to see my eyes change colour, my hair darken, my skin warm to the pale gold of China tea…I felt my fingers grow numb, my jaw drop, my soul slip out of my body like a leaf out of a book…and I knew I should remember…But it was so much easier to drift like a balloon at the mercy of every wind, to hear Fanny’s gentle voice telling me to sleep, that it was all right, that I could forget, that it was all right…
I felt the nervous double-jerk which drew me back into my body, and I forced the memory back into the dark. I didn’t want to remember.
(Shh it’s all right you don’t have to you don’t need to it’s all shhh…)
I didn’t need to remember. Fanny had it all under control.
It was mid-morning by the time I left the house; I reached Mose’s rooms at noon. He was just getting up, his eyes reddened from lack of sleep and his fair hair falling messily over his pallid face. Even in that condition I was struck, as always, by the purity of his features, his almost feminine beauty—feminine that is, if you were to discount the perverse lines around his mouth, the narrowed, troubling eyes and the perpetual mockery. Through the gap in the doorway he flashed his smile at me—half a smile, at least, for half of his face was all I could see through the narrow opening. A breath of stale air and cigar-smoke drifted from the doorway.
‘Effie! Wait a minute.’
The door closed again, reopening a few minutes later to reveal Mose’s untidy room. He had obviously tried to create some semblance of order, and the windows were open. He gave me a careless kiss on the mouth and sprawled across a chair, grinning.
‘A drink of brandy, Effie?’
I shook my head, watching Mose splash a generous dose of dark liquid into a glass, downing it in one easy, practised gesture.
‘To celebrate,’ he explained, pouring another glassful. ‘You did magnificently last night, my dear.’
Last night?
He must have seen my puzzled expression, because he grinned even more broadly and raised his glass to me in a mock salute.
‘I understand your modesty, my dear,’ he said teasingly. ‘Most inelegant of me even to mention it. Still, it’s thanks to your spectacular performance that we have dear Henry in our pockets. All you have to do is to show a little patience and he’ll be ours. Yours,’ he amended emphatically, finishing the little which remained in his glass. ‘All yours.’
Some instinct warned me not to reveal my loss of memory. I needed time to think.
‘Are you saying that your idea worked?’
‘Better than that,’ said Mose, ‘Henry swallowed the whole thing, hook, line and sinker. What’s more, Fanny says he fell for Marta like a ton of bricks.’ (A troubling, intimate wink in my direction.) ‘A couple of weeks and we’ll be able to make dear Henry pay whatever we like.’
‘Oh!’ I was beginning to understand that, at least. ‘But what about me? You said…’
‘Patience, my dear.’ Somehow I found his smile too knowing. ‘Give me a couple of weeks to work on him. Then, with the money…How would you like to live in France, my dear?’
I stared at him, confused, ‘France?’
‘Or Germany, or Italy if you prefer. They say there’s a good market for painters in Italy.’
‘I don’t understand.’ I was almost in tears: his grin now seemed monstrously gleeful, that of a troll.
‘Of course, Henry might not allow you a divorce,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘so you might never be able to come home. But what would you miss? Who would miss you? I’m asking you to be Mrs Moses Harper, you goose,’ he explained, as I stared blankly at him. ‘With Henry’s money we could establish ourselves comfortably enough, and with my paintings we could make a decent living. Of course, there’d be a scandal, but by that time you’d be long gone—and would you care?’
I continued to stare. I felt like a clockwork toy with a faulty mechanism, filled with the potential for movement but frozen into stupid silence.
‘Well,’ said Mose, after a long silence, ‘that will teach me to be so arrogant. I rather thought I had charisma. Now I see that you’d rather elope with the muffin-man.’
‘No!’ My words tasted coppery and unfamiliar in my mouth, but the syllable forced itself between my teeth with desperate vehemence. ‘I…I never thought…I never imagined I’d escape from Henry, especially after you said…’
‘Never mind what I said, Effie. I said I loved you, do you remember that?’
I nodded dumbly.
‘I also knew that with the state of my finances at the moment there was no possibility of my being able to marry you. I could have been clapped up in a debtor’s prison at any time. What sort of a marriage would that be for you?’
‘So you—’
‘So I lied to you. I told you I didn’t want to marry you. It hurt—but not as much as it would have hurt you if I’d told you the truth.’ He smiled reassuringly at me and put his arm around my waist. ‘But now, if I can persuade Henry to share just a little of his wealth, we’re set for life. Besides, Henry owes you something for all the misery he’s put you through.’
Mose was persuasive and I allowed myself to be drawn into a delightful double fantasy, sketched by Mose’s cunning hand, in which we lived in Paris or Rome or Vienna and Mose made a fortune from his paintings and Henry Chester was a dim memory.
Still the thought of the previous night (‘your spectacular performance’) continued to flutter uneasily at the edge of my consciousness, distracting me. I felt oddly remote, and for a moment I felt dizzy, grabbing hold of a chair-back to steady myself. Then an image struck me, an image which was also a memory, potent as neat gin, and I reeled with the impact of that image upon my mind—
I was in my room again, ready for bed, with my favourite doll tucked under my arm. In the corner I could see the balloons Mother had bought for my birthday bobbing against the window in the slight draught. I was excited and happy, but I felt an undercurrent of uneasy guilt, because the Man had seen me on the stairs; and although the Man had seemed friendly enough I knew that Mother would not have wanted me to ask him into my room.
I shook the memory away with a violent toss of the head, and for an instant the world stabilized again, locking into sharp, clear focus. Then everything tilted and I was—back in the room with (the hermit) the Bad Man, but this time I was not afraid. Instead there was a salty, coppery taste in my mouth which I took a moment to recognize as hate. But (Henry) the Bad Man was watching me, and I narrowed my eyes into languorous Egyptian cat’s-eyes and tilted my smile at him like a Chinese doll. The Bad Man didn’t recognize me (Henry didn’t recognize me) and soon I would grow strong…
Suddenly the scene dissolved into a jangled, incoherent kaleidoscope of fragmented scene
s: I felt my memories explode outwards in every direction and there rose a sound, murmurous at first but rising in pitch and intensity until it became a maniac wail, ululating on the very brink of sanity. And in the voice I found that I could hear words, thoughts, desperate questions and formless answers. It was a barbed wall of sound against which my sanity hurled itself meaninglessly, trying not to hear, trying not to remember.
(will i fly or will i)
(oh mummy the bad man don’t let the bad man oh)
(sting sting sting stingstingstingstingst…)
(it was henry henry killed her henry killed)
(marta)
(me it was me but i’m back i’m back and now)
(oh we’ll have fun now we’ll learn to sting little sister we’ll)
(fly?)
(because henry killed my…)
(marta)
(marta)
(marta)
My scream was high and despairing, a volley of wasps in flames, a razor slash in the eyes of sanity. I was dimly aware of hands clawing my face and a voice—my own—screaming from a whistling eyrie of madness:
‘No! Get out! Get out! Get out! It’s Effie! Effie! Effie! Eff…’ screaming my name over and over again.
Then I heard Fanny’s voice in my mind, the voice of my mother, my anchor, my friend. A cottony, delirious sensation of relief fell over me as all sound in my mind was stilled. I could almost feel her hands moving gently through my hair, soothing the terrors away.
(shh it’s all right little girl it’s all right you don’t have to remember anything)
(but fanny there was someone else in my mind and i was)
(shh not for long now just until we deal with henry)
(but i)
(shh besides you like it you want it)(…?)
(he hurt you too frightened you too now you have a friend who understands)
(marta?)
(don’t be afraid we understand we can help you we love)
(love?)
(oh yes let me in i do love)
Imagine a snowflake floating down a deep well. Imagine a flake of soot falling from the dim London sky.
(i love)
(i…)
Then nothing.
36
Poor Mose! And poor Effie. I suppose I should have expected something of the sort. I did try to make Effie forget everything she had done while she was in her trance—I didn’t think it would do her any good to remember, but I found that I had much less control over her than I thought. Many people believe that a person can be forced to do almost anything under the influence of a powerful mesmerist: that isn’t true. Marta was Effie in every real sense, or, if you like, Effie had become Marta. I like to think that she and my Marta were linked in some way, perhaps because of their shared experiences with Henry. I like to think that Effie was a natural clairvoyant, and that my Marta was able to speak to me, to touch me through her…but I am aware that the voice of reason says otherwise. This spiteful, frosty little voice says that Marta was born only from my own suggestions and Effie’s dependence on laudanum, that she saw only what I wanted her to see and acted only on my orders. Maybe so.
To me the voice of reason sounds a little like that of Henry Chester, weak and petulant. I say that today’s science is yesterday’s magic, and today’s magic may be tomorrow’s science. Love is the only constant in this uneasy rational world, love and its dark half, hate. Disbelieve me if you like, but we called Marta, Effie and I, out of love and hate; we gave her a home for a while and she allowed us a glimpse of a mystery. You may think I used Effie for my own ends: rest assured I did not. I love her as much as I love my own daughter, knowing them to be the two faces of the same complex woman. Together we make the Three-in-One, the Erinyes, inseparable and invincible, bound by love. It was love which prompted me to make Effie forget what I had shown her; love, too, brought her back to us when she needed her mother and sister. I knew it would happen sooner or later. It just happened sooner than I thought.
It was late afternoon on Friday when Mose arrived at Crook Street looking unkempt and rather agitated. Effie had come to visit him and had apparently suffered a kind of fit which disturbed Mose greatly. I gave him a simple explanation I thought he would understand; the voice of reason was eloquent enough to stall any of his qualms for a time at least, and he left, somewhat dissatisfied, but docile enough. Effie, he told me, was back in Cromwell Square with instructions not to leave the house before the following Thursday, and I had enough trust in her to be certain she would not give Henry any cause for suspicion. All we needed was a little time.
37
I saw less of my wife that week than ever before. I couldn’t help it: suddenly I could not bear her presence, her scent, her voice. I had tasted stronger flesh now and Effie’s sick pallor appalled me. She smelt of laudanum all the time now—she was taking the drug in frequent doses, unprompted by me, and I noticed that she tended to become increasingly nervous as the day progressed and her medicine lost its potency. She ate little and spoke less, accusing me with her smoky eyes. The cat was always on her lap like a malignant familiar, fixing me with its narrow yellow stare. In spite of myself I became infected with the delusion that somehow they were judging me, that they could see into the very channels of my brain.
I could not bear it, and I began a further correspondence with Dr Russell, expressing concern at my wife’s mental condition. Even now I am not certain why I did so. Perhaps I realized even then that life with Effie would be unbearable once I had fallen under Marta’s spell. I saw Russell several times and told him that his new drug, chloral, was exactly what I needed to combat my insomnia—his boast that it had no side effects was not idle—and I discussed Effie’s seeming addiction.
Russell showed polite, respectful interest at all times, his keen grey eyes gleaming with absorption as he enumerated the various manias to which the female of the species is commonly prone, citing cases of hysterical catalepsy, schizophrenia and nymphomania. The weaker intellect of women, he told me, renders them more susceptible to diseases of the mind and the thought seemed to fill him with the abstract delight of the true academic. It occurred to me that in Russell I had a potentially invaluable ally. A pilgrim in search of more and more exotic cases of insanity, a collector of shrunken heads. One day—and the thought was barely formulated but stored away, delicately, for future use—he might be persuaded to add Effie to his collection. I put his letters to one side in a locked drawer of my desk, with the deliberate nonchalance of a poisoner laying aside the murderous vial for later use.
I spent whole days in my studio, trying to finish The Card Players, and for the first time in my life I painted without a model. Instead, I reached into my memory for her half-remembered features, sketching directly on to my canvas in oils and crayon. I found that she took form magically beneath my fingertips as I recalled the texture of her hair, the warmth of her skin, the careless turn of her head. I made no studies but painted directly, with a lover’s delicacy: the reddish light glowed on her cheekbones, emphasizing the vulnerable, arrogant set of her jaw, the pale quivering bow of her mouth; a stray flicker from the fire reflected coals from her eyes. Her mouth was slightly tensed as she looked over the table at the other player, but there was a sardonic arch to her dark brows which spoke of laughter or triumph. I painted her figure in dark colours in order to emphasize her face—perhaps the most expressive features I have ever painted—and I highlighted her cascading hair with a nimbus of red which gave her a dangerous, ambiguous radiance, like a burning city. For five days I worked feverishly at my Queen of Spades, darkening the finished areas of the canvas so that the viewer was led to her face, only her face.
Once, very fleetingly, I fancied I saw that certain resemblance to Effie in her mobile, shifting features: but no sooner had I formulated the thought than I knew that I was wrong. Marta was so vibrantly alive that she could not be compared with my poor little Beggar Girl—as well compare a flame to a sheet of paper. I knew instinctively that if t
hey were to meet, Effie would be as utterly consumed by Marta’s voracious energy.
During that week I burned for her and at night I cramped and clawed under my heavy bedclothes with the Eye of God fixed like a nail into the top of my head. My sheets burned with the sulphurous dank of my body and my stench appalled me, but still I longed for her.
For six nights I borrowed my sleep from the chloral bottle—I still remember the midnight-blue glass, cool antidote to all scarlet dreams. Wasted by the potency of my fever and my lust, I met Thursday’s dawn with a sense of doomed anticlimax. It was a mistake to go to her twice; I knew it now. There was no Scheherazade, no faery-footed damozel with eyes like garnets. Today she would be a penny whore, cunningly lit and robed, but a whore nevertheless, all her tender alchemy gone. Today I knew it.
I arrived at midnight: I saw the clock in the hall tick over the crucial minute and I shivered in foreboding as the hour began to strike. As the notes sank into the silence a door opened at my back and Fanny emerged, vibrant in yellow brocade, her hair like vines. Two of her familiars were coiled around her ankles, and I tried to avoid their silent, contemptuous gaze as Fanny led me, not to the red parlour as before, but up the stairs to a room on the first floor which I had never seen before.
She tapped on the door, then, wordlessly, opened it. It was almost dark, the light from the passageway momentarily destroying the subtle lighting inside the room. I heard the door shut firmly at my back and for an instant I looked around, disorientated. The room was large and almost bare, lit by several gas-jets shielded by blue glass globes. I was reminded for a moment of the chloral bottle, promising cool oblivion, and I shivered. It was not the thought, I realized: the room was cold, the dead fire screened by a dark Chinese lacquer panel. Rugs partly covered the floor, but the walls were bare and the room seemed dead, with none of the opulence of the red parlour. The only furniture I could see was a small table upon which stood a blue decanter and a glass.
Sleep, Pale Sister Page 17
