by Diana Powell
But soon her teeth set hard together, and the chafe of her hands makes no difference, as the ice settles in her bones.
– Get up, put a coat on. You must.
So she does, stepping into the bedroom, only yards away. And at once, the silence ends.
– She is here, isn’t she?
– Yes! Here, on the back hem of the drab, dust-clogged curtains, E.B. embroidered…
– Such neat stitches, see! The skill… Perfect!
– Yes.
– Look again, go from room to room. Look carefully.
– The linen cupboard on the second landing. Go up and look there, too.
– Table clothes, antimacassars, cushion covers. Such fine work! All initialled in the corners. But no pillow-cases. Not one.
She burnt those, too. The outer slip that touched his face, pressed down onto his skin. The imprint of his pitying eyes was etched upon it, still looking at her, as she watched it burn. And the gloves. She had put gloves on, so that it was not her skin, her flesh, that touched…
E.B. E.B. E.B. Initials stand for a name. Letters, not words.
– Letters come before words, must be added together to make words; sentences, paragraphs, chapters; whole books.
– Books.
– yes, in the room at the front of the house, full of shelves, the books still mouldering in them. See!
She is there now, somehow, come down the stairs and through the door and standing in the middle of the floor.
She takes one of the books down, then another, and another. ‘Esther Bligh’, written on the inner cover, ‘Esther’ above a word crossed out. ‘Edmund’; Grace can just decipher it.
– ‘Edmund Bligh’. Is Edmund the husband, the dead husband, the husband…?
– And look, look inside. Turn the pages, one, two, four. Chapter Three, Chapter Five.
Single pages gone, carefully unpicked, stitch by stitch. Whole chapters torn away, jagged teeth, biting into the words. Exquisite illustrations scribbled over, in childish fashion, or ripped in two. Irreplaceable volumes of great value ruined.
– Shame, shame on you!
Once upon a time, between the silence and the voices, she had begun to read – a pleasure remembered from childhood, first, on Mother’s knee, with the gentle voice talking her through the pictures; then, on her own, her favourite pastime. Returned to then, in search of solace. And, yes, it was the closest she came to peace in that troubled time.
– John had a library like this. I would sit in there, and choose any book off the shelves, and lose myself in it, for a while, at least.
Sometimes, tears blurred the words in front of her, and what she read was nothing to her, no more than her eyes moving from left to right, down, over. Then they had reached her, but she had soon forgotten them. Until finally, it was right again: the words made sense, and stayed with her, becoming her friends. So, too, did the characters in the stories. She grew closer to some of them than she had ever been to real people, except Mother, and then John. For many years they had given her comfort, happiness, sympathy, an outside world brought brightly into that closed, dark house.
‘Books are our friends,’ he said. She told him what she had done to them. ‘Look,’ she said, going downstairs and returning with his Audubon. She opened it at the gouged humming-bird, the torn finch, the empty passages. ‘Look, see, look!’
– Books were my only companions, until the voices came. Such a shame… Who would do such a thing? Sacrilege…
Sacrilege… the Nazis had burnt the books of their enemies. ‘We should have known,’ people said later. ‘We should have known what was to come. Only the Evil do such a thing.’
– Sacrilege. A word from the letters…
Who had done this thing?
She knows. She knows it is Esther. She sees her, standing, perhaps, just where she stands, smiling as she works to remove a single page, before throwing it on the fire.
– Bitch.
Another of the chosen words. Only, Grace has said it, a word she has never uttered before. It tastes strange in her mouth. She runs her tongue around her lips, and the inside of her cheeks, then shakes her head and walks away.
But Esther follows her now. Or she follows Esther.
– You touched these walls, didn’t you?
… as she runs her hands along the mahogany panels in the hall.
– Your feet trod these boards
… as she moves around the kitchen…
– Opened this door, climbed these stairs, looked in this mirror.
…and…
– You slept in this bed…
The Esther of her nightmares is clearer now. Sometimes, she sits by the hearth, quietly doing her needlework; sometimes, she is tearing a book apart; sometimes, she is reading a letter, then burning it. And sometimes, the pillow beneath Grace’s head begins to thrash and writhe, as Esther hovers above her.
– Just like before.
So the winter was somehow got through. The long, bleak days endured, broken by a few walks to the town, where the women still gawped and gossiped and spoke in tongues – about me, I knew it was always about me, never to me. Not once did they smile towards me, or nod, or say ‘Good morning.’ Yes, the post-mistress uttered strangled pleasantries, spraying her words over me, but only because I was Mrs Edmund Bligh, and a customer. There was no warmth in it, I was certain. Besides, what was she but a fucking shop-owner?
And then it was Spring, he said. I hadn’t noticed it. The heavens opened almost every day, ice still feathered the windows, inside and out, except in his room. The days seemed no longer, the light no brighter. But what did I know? In London it got warm or cold or hot, but things didn’t grow and turn and bud; and rutting went on all the time. These seasons and weather and such like were another part of his vast knowledge, that must be deferred to. And he was better, he announced. Not well, of course, but better, and fit enough to go out on the milder, dry days.
‘Some exercise and the fresh air will be good for both of us, Esther. And I will be able to show you the place.’
Had I missed something, I wondered? Was there another part of town hidden behind, with proper shops, tearooms, pubs, the Hippodrome, frequented by human beings who liked such things and talked in my own tongue?
I should have known by then who this Mr Edmund Bligh was…
‘Out’ began with the beach… no, not quite the beach… First, there was the garden. ‘How I have longed to show you the garden, Esther!’
It seemed that my education was to continue in practice now, rather than the book-learning. The painted birds became flesh. ‘Look!’ He would clasp my arm as we tottered around the place, I wedged beneath his shoulder, like some kind of living crutch. ‘There! On the trunk of the tallest pine!’ And I would look, expecting to see at least one of the rare visitors he had taught me could sometimes drift even this far west. And it would be a sparrow. Or a blue tit. A magpie. And he would list their characteristics, the difference between sexes, their chosen food etc, etc., whilst I had to mm and ahh, and pretend I was interested… in a robin.
Flowers – that was another one. Before, I had seen flowers as something a man might give you. That was how I judged them, roses being the dearest and therefore the most desirable. But there we would be, walking around his ‘beds’, and suddenly, he would struggle to his knees, almost collapsing me with him in the process. ‘Look, look.’ And all I could see was some tiny, pale, cowering bud. ‘How could you wrap some tissue and a bow around that?’ I would think. ‘How could you stand it in a vase?’, while he murmured ‘beautiful, so beautiful!’
All this, in a square of grass, some earth and some trees. So much more, then, when we finally staggered from the gate, and down on the rickety beach. So much more to ‘look, look’ at, so much to learn. Pebbles, shells – seaweed, even! Yes, sodding seaweed! He thought seaweed was beautiful, as if he did not understand what the word ‘weed’ meant. ‘You can tell the weather with it,’ he said, gathering pustulating s
trands to take home. The sea itself. The sand itself, ‘millions and millions of coloured treasures; plant and animal together. Another world beneath the microscope lens!’ All these things were sources of adoration, subjects of my education, objects of my derision and despair.
A secret – there was something I almost liked about the shells. They were pretty little things, and I have always liked pretty little things, like the baubles on a street market, sparkling for the punters and the mugs. Some were like tiny cones, some so pale, so delicate, transparent, like the porcelain tea-set his mother kept behind glass-doors, locked away from light-fingered daughters-in-law. Pastel pink, and soft grey, pearly white. Others were bigger, shaped strangely. ‘Hold it to your ear,’ he said, ‘and you will hear the sea.’ I did it to please him, though the sea was no more than yards away, and I could hear it plainly. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes!’ Oyster shells, moon shells, scallop shells. ‘A razor shell, you can see why.’ Long, thin, just like the blade of a barber’s tool, and just as sharp. I ran my finger along it. ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Be careful!’ A fine line of blood rose on the surface. ‘See, see what you’ve done! Poor Esther.’ The tiniest of cuts, so little blood. He took my finger and put it in his mouth, and sucked it. ‘There!’
I liked this shell even more than the others. I put it in my pocket, and took it home, and put it on the small table in my room. He was pleased, taking it as a sign that I was interested,
‘ I will shave you,’ she said. ‘To save the nurse. And, after all, I am your wife.’ She was careful, caressing his neck with the blade. Up, down. She held the blade above the vein. One cut. There would be no faint pink line, as with the shell. Red, deep, so much blood.
liking any sign that I was interested, that I was sharing his ‘wonder of nature’, his ‘awe at the natural world’, while helping him on the path to returned strength and health. ‘There is no doubt, Esther, that your love heartens me, and the hope of our future keeps me determined to be well!’ Oh, so often did he say it – so often that I wanted to puke – reminding me always of the ‘future’, in which all I had was more of this, months, years, stretching out in front of me. ‘Look, Esther!’ ‘Yes, Edmund!’ on and on and bleedin’ on.
On and on, on the beach. Then on and on, up the mountain, when he was well enough to struggle further. New territory for him to drool over – rocks and stones and clouds were presented and explained. I could not believe that there was so much to tell about hard chunks of earth, and fluffy cotton-wool in the sky! ‘Clouds – they’re just clouds,’ I thought. ‘We had them in London!’ What could be so special about clouds? But these, too, it seemed, could be used to tell the weather. Well, yes, black clouds meant rain, even I knew that. But no, there was far more than that. And there were so many different kinds with their strange names – this ‘us’, that ‘us’. ‘Latin,’ he said, as if it was something that should excite me, as if it was another language I might like to learn! As for the rocks, that had been there for millions of years, well, so much to say… fact after fact after bleedin’ fact.
So here, there, and everywhere we went, with everything crammed into a few fine days, because, I swear, that’s all there were – a half-dozen at most.
Sometimes, as we staggered around the place, the village children would appear, or not – sometimes I would see no more than eyes, peeping through a bush or from around a boulder, or hear a rustle on the path behind. But sometimes a crowd of them would openly follow us – dirty, scruffy little things like the urchins, bare-footed, even! who pointed and laughed and shouted in their garbled tongue. And Edmund would stop, and smile at them, and say ‘bore ray dah,’ or whatever it was, and dig in his pockets for pennies. ‘Fool,’ I would think, ‘he should be yelling at them, or throwing stones, to rid us of their cackling faces. Or running after them with a big stick.’ Except he could not run.
Well, I would have done it, had I been on my own, if I had not been with Mr. Edmund Bligh, acting the part of his good lady wife.
Sticks and stones, sticks and stones. It was what the children needed. It was something else, belonging to childhood, theirs and mine. A rhyme we knew from the school-yard, from the back alleys where we played. A rhyme taught to us by our mother, to mock the pain of the names we were called, on account of our rags, and our snot noses, and our drunken father. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never ’urt me!’ So I would shout it at the chanting girls, as I slapped their faces and kicked their shins. And I would yell it at my sister, when she called me a liar or a slag. And then, to prove it, I would twist the skin on her arm, or pinch her hand. ‘See,’ I would say. ‘The red mark? See your flesh all paining? Yet there’s nuffin’ on me!’ But there was something inside that I kept hidden from her, something heavy, low in my stomach, so that I would wonder then if my mother was right.
Still, in time, I got used to the words, just as I got used to the sticks and stones – because, of course, I had those, too. The cane, my father’s hand, the slaps, kicks and pinches returned. I got used to them, and had come to believe that words were nothing but puffed air, or wriggling ink, until they were rained down on me, pummelled into me, forced down my mouth, and every other hole, until I am battered and bruised, blacker and bluer than any stick could make me. Words coming at me, from everywhere and everyone. Anyone and anybody, it could be. Man, woman, child. Yes, children, too. Even they assault me.
Is it the younger siblings of those sneaking buggers who now hide beneath the wall, or creep beneath the lower windows, then leap up to gurn at me? Or trail after me, down the street, when I have no choice but to go out, and catcall after me, nonsense names, until one, older perhaps, will slip in a word borrowed from the letters – slut, bitch – not the worst of the words, but still enough to make me turn around and scuttle back indoors, back to the darkness of the house that I once was so desperate to leave?
There was somewhere else we must go, now that we could go ‘out’. Another mind-numbing, benighted, unfriendly place, where I must put up with the stares, and the raised hands, and the threat of eternal punishment, uttered by the big, black Book, by another one robed in black. Yes, the Church, every Sunday as soon as Edmund could walk that far, with Mother on one side, and me on the other. Not the serving maid. She, it seemed, went to the Chapel, where the raggedy children and the biddies from the Square went, too. We would pass the painted front, with its big door brimming, hear the blaring of song, and then be swallowed by the other house of God, where only a few of the straight-laced gathered to listen to the endless drone of the vicar’s sermon and prayer. I saw then where Mrs Bligh received her inspiration, as sin and misery rained down on hard chairs and stone floors and starched collars. And I learnt for the first time of the division of the town, with its Welsh/English, Chapel/Church, poor/rich, and of how I was supposed to thank God that I was one of the shivering few, and pray to him to save my wicked soul, to be worthy of my blessings. My blessings… to be Mrs Edmund Bligh, stuck in this place, that house, with this husband, that woman… ‘Dear Lord,’ I would whisper, head bent towards the altar. ‘Dear Lord, grant me my salvation, take me away from here.’
But I did not believe in the Lord. Whatever I had got in life, I got for myself. Esther Thorpe. Now Esther Bligh… it was she who must find the way. And she would. I was sure. Then.
– Go out. Stop this, and get out of the house. Walk to the post-office and speak to the post-mistress.
– But the weather is still awful, and the letters are still coming.
– Stop reading them. Burn them straight away!
– But what if the next one is different? What if the next one is signed? What if—
– Stop looking for Esther about the place. Stop thinking about her!
– But—
But yes, finally, Grace finds herself walking along the front, bent against a wind that works to push her back towards the cliff, back into the house. At least, she thinks it is the wind. What else could it be? But she keeps on, clutching one o
f the envelopes in her pocket. She has not brought a letter – just an envelope.
– That is enough, isn’t it? There is no need to share all the words. Better to keep them to ourselves for now.
– I suppose.
‘Boray dah. Shoo my?’ More unfamiliar sounds for her to try on her tongue. Just a greeting, though; nothing evil, yet perhaps she shouldn’t, perhaps she will offend. She is glad to be the only customer. But Mrs Evans smiles at her, her ruddy cheeks dimpling deep in their folds, and says ‘Dah ee-ow-n, deeolth,’ or something like that.
‘These letters,’ she begins, ‘I keep on getting them. But they’re not for me. And the post-mark. More than twenty years…’
She puts the envelope on the wooden counter, its surface worn from years of leaning elbows, and smooths it out. ‘Esther Bligh’ uncreases itself for the post-mistress to see. The smile drains from the woman’s mouth, Grace is sure, but she shakes her head.
‘No… I… before my time.’
‘But I thought…’
‘No, no.’
‘I think, maybe, … was there ever a …’ Her lips falter at the word, as if she will accuse the whole town of the sin, not just Esther. But a murder would be remembered, would have become part of a place’s history. ‘… a murder here?’
She has said the wrong thing, she sees at once. She should have kept quiet, she should have kept this word hidden. But it is too late. The face of the woman behind the counter shuts down, just as she shuts the counter-window down, and the hatch, turning away and muttering ‘we are closed now,’ leaving Grace standing there, so that all she can do is turn away, too, bits and pieces of words still coming out of her mouth, lost to no-one but herself. Again.
Or do the old women gathered outside, as they always seem to be, catch something of what she is saying, catch a phrase with their outstretched ears, locking a sentence in their hearts and minds, filling in the gaps of her broken conversation?
