Esther Bligh

by Diana Powell

  She nods towards them, but the gesture is defeated by the wide brims of their hats and their rain-streaked spectacles.

  It’s easier to go back, with the breeze behind her – as if the house is where she’s meant to be, as if it’s the only place for her. And then there in front of her she sees a sign pointing to the right, showing her the way to the church.

  Why not? Some peace, perhaps; shelter from the weather, if nothing else. But the building is hewn from the mountain, with the inside a frozen cavern; an angry God and a crucified Jesus of black bog oak look down on her, so there is nothing to lift her heart. It was not so different from the church she and Mother had attended, going dutifully every week, as all their neighbours seemed to do, dressed in their Sunday best. She supposed she accepted the words of the Testament in those days, but after the death of her mother, taken by illness so suddenly, she was not so sure. Then, after John… how could she believe in such a cruel god and his religion? The coming of the voices had given her some hope, but that was nothing to do with this place. Still, she can pray, can’t she, even though she doesn’t believe, she can ask for help from… something. ‘Please!’

  And, almost at once, she is answered. Words are falling down on her from on high, echoing in the vaulted space, from wall to wall. Words cartwheel towards her, from the open bible that lies on the pulpit at the altar front; words that speak of damnation, and the devil’s torment, and the flesh’s abomination: sin – words that offer no comfort at all. She clasps her hands to her ears, and stumbles away.

  – I told you not to go.

  – Did you?

  Did she? But who is ‘she’? This one voice that stays close by, whilst all the others have retreated to the shadows. The sweet voice, only it is not always so sweet any more.

  – I told you the people here were mean and unfriendly.

  – Did you?

  – Someone said.

  – Who was that?

  – Was that you?

  Words inside her mind, outside her mind, words and sounds, muddling and confusing.

  – Are you you?

  Sugar drips through silk-lined lips, then grates and scrapes.

  And yet, somehow, she must still listen.

  Listen, as the voice still tells her to read every letter, the letters that still arrive every day.

  – Read it! Read them!

  – But they are all the same, now.

  Round, and round and round.

  Bitch. Whore. Whore, bitch, slut. Liar, thief. Murderer, slipped in, or shouted loud. Harlot, Jezebel, she-devil, slut. Whore, bitch, round and round and round. Until…

  – What…?

  Another letter. Another addressed to Mrs. Esther Bligh.

  – But the writing is different, nothing like the elegant calligraphy.

  – Child-like, almost, and written in biro, on thin, bluish-white paper. The post-mark still belongs to the local sorting-office…

  – But the date. Look at the date.

  The date is from two days ago.

  – ‘Dear Esther Bligh’ again. No signature, again.

  But between the greeting and the nothingness, there is a slap-dash scrawl, with crossings-out and arrows forcing missed letters between mis-spelt words. But the old words are still there. Bitch, whore, slut. And ‘you did this, you did that, we know’ is there.

  – Someone from the village, someone from ‘now’, knows what Esther Bligh did, or might have done. And they know about the letters from long ago, and they are copying them in their fashion. Why?

  – Why?

  – I told you. I told you what they were like, how they eavesdrop and gossip and interfere.

  – Did you?

  – Yes. And now one of them has written this.

  – I suppose…

  – Well, who else could it be?

  – Not the post-mistress. Not her.

  – But she must have repeated what you told her. Or those women outside overheard—

  – Yes, a woman, another woman. Someone who sits there hour after hour, with nothing better to do; someone who thinks she is being clever, perhaps?

  – And this, now, is directed at you, not Esther Bligh, because this woman must know that Esther is dead, that the only person who can open the letter is Grace Marlowe – you. Only you can open it, and read it. Read the cruel words.

  – Someone is mocking you. Taunting you. Hurting you. Somebody wants … what?

  And now the letters mingle present with past, fluttering or tumbling down to the mat, like so many feeding birds. Different birds, different writing, all these new words sent to her, along with those from long ago. Different, but the same.

  Words worm into the house. Watching, she sees them as they slink down the road, and creep through the letter-box, into her mind. One day, she takes a piece of cloth, and stuffs it into the brass slot. The postman will give up, surely, and take the letters away. But the next morning, the rag lies there on the mat, and the words lie there again. The letter-box is like a mouth, ever open, spewing hate. And once inside, there is no escape.

  She sees them, climbing the walls, then tumbling down all around her.

  E S

  R

  H o l

  W ag. Slutbitchshedev

  Now they scurry around her feet like rats, tripping her up as she moves from room to room. Words made flesh, dissolving into wraiths of letters again so that they slip into her head. They are not like her voices, nothing like that at all. The voices have mostly been kind to her, have spoken pleasantly, as she has spoken to them. These are only words, letters and words, letters making words, words making the letters, round and round and round.

  Sometimes, she tries to catch them, grabbing after a B, before it joins to ITC and H; reaching for a W, and an H, and an… but they are gone, further up the wall, or down along the corridor. Sometimes, she cannot read them, until she moves in closer, closer, almost touching, puzzling, mouthing each letter, like a child learning to read. K…I…L… And then she will think, ‘no, I do not want to read that. I will not…’ and she shakes her arms in front of them, and turns away.

  – And yet they are only words.

  – And words can never hurt you.

  She has heard that before… a long time ago. ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’ A rhyme chanted in childhood. A school-yard retort, when others were name-calling; or said by her mother, when she went home sad, because Emily/Joan/Mary had called her fat/stupid/ugly. If Mother said it, it must be true. And yet… a cut on her knee from a stone hurt, bruised, bled, but then it was gone, with a dab of salve and a kiss. But the words lingered. You could not forget them. They followed you everywhere, just like they are following her now, all through the house.

  – I will go out, I must go out, I need food, I will go out and forget, at least for a while. I will go out, and be free of the words.

  She dresses in her peacock hat and bright clothes. She will carry hope with her, she will hold her head high.

  She goes out of the back door, to avoid the pile of letters on the mat, and walks bravely down the road, one step, two steps, three…

  Witch. Trollop. Viper. Monster. Sinner. Bitch.

  The words are following behind her, like a dog trotting after her faithfully. She tries to walk faster, but they are still there. She slips into an alleyway, thinking she will watch them pass, but, no, they swerve in behind her, laughing.

  Another step, another, her legs growing heavier.

  – They are sapping the spring from my step. They are draining the colour from my clothes. And yes, they are there, clinging to her, turning the rainbow hues black. She cannot brush them away.

  She turns around and heads back. Home.

  The peacock must go again. She takes it to the kitchen table to pluck. One feather, two feathers. Yes, one by one, she drops them on the fire. The eye burnt last, if burning was shrivelling, and dissolving in sepia liquid. Peacock blue turned to oozing rust.

 
The purple dress must go, too. And the canary yellow. And the scarlet. Their colours are the colours of the flames. Soon, it is hard to tell the cloth and the flame apart. Soon, she has burnt all her new clothes, bought to celebrate her return to life. What can she wear instead? Black, she must go back to black.

  Black place, black house, black clothes.

  – They are there, in the box, on top of the wardrobe.

  Widows’ weeds, just like she had worn before. She pays no attention to the moth holes, and the mildew, the smell of age. And death.

  And they fit perfectly, in height and girth, as if they have been made for her. As if they are for her.

  That night she thinks the voices have returned. The darkness has called them, perhaps. They will bring her back, as they did before. They will vanquish the sly new words with their strong, vibrant tones. Except… they are not strong, they are not vibrant. They are not grown-up and reassuring. Up and down, up and down they go, trilling, and tralling. Sniggering. High-pitched whispers and giggling. The sound of children. The sound of children’s ‘fun’, another of their silly games, like the sticks and stones.

  Grace knew this from before, when she was lost in the darkness – children appearing at her windows, trying her back door. It was what they did, if they thought someone was strange. There was no harm in it… no real harm, in their na-na-na-nahing, and their rattling and knocking. There is no harm in it. But then… you bitch, you slut, spoken in the voices of angels.

  She is sure that is what they are saying.

  How can they know such things? And why are they saying them to her? As if she is Esther…

  – The women. Those harpies in the Square. Their mothers, no doubt. See what bitc… how cruel they are.

  – Are they the ones who write the letters? Do they tell their children to do this?

  – Shouting the words at you. Making them real.

  – The written word, the spoken word, which is worse? To have a word said, or to have it written to you?

  ‘Whore!’

  – Ignore them, they are only children.

  And suddenly, she is not so sure they are saying the words. Is it no more than their giggling, or the rustling of their boots in the bushes? It makes no difference. The words are with her, anyway, and won’t let her alone.

  But still, the children are in the front garden, the letters come in the front door. The wind blows from the sea, carrying rumour with it. And the windows on the front are wide, and face three ways. There is a room at the back of the house she has never been in. The door is stuck, and there has been no need.

  – The back will be warmer, the back is better protected, the back is safer.

  – Try the door again. Push harder.

  And she does, and finds herself in a room no more than an arm-span wide, with a narrow, hard bed. Bare, except for a single shell on the bedside table. A razor shell.

  – It is airless and dark. Those shutters… There is hardly room to move.

  – But you can be hidden away here. You can be safe. There will be no cruel voices. The words can’t get in. Listen!

  And there is, at that moment, nothing.

  She fetches some bedding, and shuts the door.

  Scritch-scratch, scritch-scratch. A mouse, that’s all it is, behind the skirting. The place is full of them. Or a spider, working its way through the horse-hair in the walls – such thick walls, with their wallpaper and lath-and-plaster and yard-deep stone. Nothing can get in here, can it? And I have plugged the gaps in the window-frame with the pages from the books that I did not burn, and brought more rugs in here, so that there is not a single crack visible, and every night I push the small chair against the door, and check the clasp on the shutters is tight. I am safe here from everything but mice and spiders. And words…

  Now I stay here in the day too, on the narrow bed, with the quilt and blankets pulled round me. If need be, I slip down to the kitchen for some bread and cheese, if there is any left after the mice. But I prefer to stay here.

  Strange, how I hated it so much at first. I was put in here like a servant, when I should be in my rightful place as the mistress of the house. I should be in the grand front-bedroom, in the four-poster bed, with its carpeted floor and brocade drapes, and… space, light… light from its bay-window, facing left, right and forwards, catching as much sun as there ever could be in this cowering house. A room that, on its own, was as big as any place I had lived in: a bed for two bigger than the one I had shared with four others, brothers and sisters. The marriage bed.

  And finally, I was there, walking past his mother, holding my valise that contained all my belongings, smirking inside. Well, in truth, I couldn’t stop the smirk reaching my lips, as I mimicked her own upturned mouth that she had shown me all through my early weeks there. True, it had been wiped away through the months of his recovery. She had been quiet then, thinking, perhaps, that familiarity was all that was necessary for Edmund to realise his mistake. But the opposite was true, for here he was, at the end of the summer declaring he was better still. No need for him to stay downstairs any more. At last, we could move into the master-bedroom together, at last we could live as man and wife.

  How she must have hated that moment. How it must have nagged at her, and needled her, until she was goaded into action. And more words…

  Not the ones of old, not Jezebel, harlot, Delilah, raining down on me from behind the bible. No, she could not risk that, now that he was about again. Quieter now, she littered her conversation with small gibes, challenging my intentions and abilities, questioning my authority – except there was no authority; everything in that house was still ordered by her. It must remain as it was, as it had been since her own marriage, in memory of her dead husband. Our meals were as she dictated at the start of each day, and as I was unable to communicate with the serving-woman or the trades-people, what could I do about it? What could I do about the pig-swill she called ‘cowl’, or the rabbit stew, rabbit pie, rabbit ‘joint’; rabbit, rabbit, rabbit, as if we were still bleedin’ well at war! Then there were the three-time daily prayers, the bible-reading, and church-going – all just as she wanted. The purse-strings were in her hands, so that I had no money for my own needs, for my own plans. I could do nothing without money.

  I tried. A little word to Edmund, accompanied by my saucer-eyes and fluttering lashes. But it was the one thing he was firm about.

  ‘She is old,’ he would say. ‘She is my mother.’

  ‘I am your wife,’ I could have said back. But I knew that in some things, the act was more than the word.

  Ah, yes, the act. The master-bedroom, the marriage-bed, she could have no sway there. Oh, she tried, with her little hints that ‘Edmund must not have too much… excitement.’ And ‘Dr. Pritchard has said there is still much need for caution. You must not over-exert yourself, my dear!’ And she would keep him talking downstairs, as bed-time approached, until he would doze off in his chair, and she would put a blanket around him, and say ‘better to leave him sleep.’

  But no, she could not hope to beat me there.

  Yet, it wasn’t that I wanted it. I had been glad, almost, of the peace I had been granted those first months – the peace my body had been allowed. My breasts, between my legs, that had existed only for the use and abuse of man, for… how long, now? Since that first… well, however long, those years of pawing, and clawing and mouthing and salivating over… well, they had been mine again; it was my body.

  But now I must offer it to my husband as being rightfully his, and hope to bind him to me with desire and need, so that she would become as nothing to him – a hindrance, even. And perhaps he would even banish her to another house in the village – ah, the bliss of that.

  We managed, somehow. There was fumbling, and some careful positioning on my part, because, after all, his body would always be damaged, and then there was a look on his face that out-did all those other looks of pathetic gratitude. ‘Esther, my Esther!’ Oh so many ‘Esthers’ then. ‘My love
, my darling’, ‘my darling, my love.’ Words I hated as much as harlot, bitch and slut, as they jostled inside me, furring my tongue, making me retch; seeing them as chains binding me, as well as him. And they were words I had heard before, from my father, excuses spluttered between his tears and his drool. So that I had come to prefer the men who took me in silence, and dismissed me at once, with no demands, giving me no reminder of what had gone before. But no, there could be no silence with him, there must be that incessant crooning of my name, my virtues, his devotion.

  Still, it was done.

  And then, a prayer answered. My prayer, not hers, as if God were working for me, not for his faithful bleedin’ servant! She was gone. Taken by the flu, turning to pneumonia, within a few days. Not the Spanish flu – that would have finished us all, but the usual winter variety. Another lie: ‘The coast is such a healthy place to live. The sea air keeps all the germs away.’ How I laughed at that, when I heard half the village was down with it. And Edmund caught it, too, with his lungs already weak, and for a day or two I could think ‘It will end now, and I will be free, I’ll be out of here.’ Except, somehow, he recovered – well, after a fashion. It was a step backwards, turned back to how he was before the Spring, and his grief for his mother weakened him further.

  Still, at least she was gone, carried out of there in an oak coffin, to be laid to rest behind her beloved church. An easy passing… A blameless passing.

  ‘Give her this three times a day,’ the doctor told her, handing her Lambert’s Asthmatic Balsam. ‘Or try some heated elderflower wine. It will help her breathing. And mop her brow with a cold flannel. It will keep her temperature down. And a spoon of broth to keep her strength up.’ She stood there, at the door of the sick-room, looking down at the old woman, who looked back, mouthing words. ‘Jezebel.’ Or was it ‘help me!’? She smiled and turned away. ‘I have done as you said. I have given her all she needs,’ she told him.