The River Sings

by Sandra Leigh Price

  The smell of tobacco wended its way up to me and I saw my father sitting on the stairs, his head in his hands, his pipe between his lips a little chimney trying to warm him. The rain pooled around him, but I’d neither heard nor seen him go in or out, my father part shadow. I stood where I was, afraid of the sounds that swirled up the staircase from Ada’s room. Makepeace burst out of the door, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, bloodied, the stairs rocked beneath my feet. My father looked up hopefully as she disappeared down to the kitchen and reappeared with a bucket of water, so full some slopped over the edge and onto the stairs, but she didn’t falter. The room swallowed her and her bucket and let out Ada’s scream into the hallway, my father’s head sinking into his hands, a stifled sob.

  I crept down the stairs and curled my arm around his, but it just made him sob all the more and he wrapped his arms around me, his tears salt on my lips. I must have fallen asleep, for next I knew my father stirred and leapt to his feet, rushing to the bedroom door and slamming it behind him, all rage. I strained to hear the sound of the baby’s cry. The doctor saw himself out and Makepeace followed not long after, unaware of me watching. She stood at the door, took off her lace cap and cried silently into it until she saw me on the stairs and ushered me up to bed.

  “I can’t hear the baby,” I said.

  Makepeace shook her head. “Both baby and Ada have gone to God, Eglantine, gone to God,” was all she said, her voice barely audible, before she tucked the blankets up around my neck and leaned down to kiss me. The weariness came off her in waves, it wouldn’t have surprised me if she just lifted up her feet and lay beside me, but she pulled herself upright and disappeared out the door, the dawn a dull light through the window, the sun not having the strength to push through the rain. How could Ada and her baby be gone? I felt the shame of my repulsion of touching her moving belly, of my jealousy of the baby having a mother. Now neither of them would have anything except the grave.

  The house was veiled in mourning and I was clearly instructed that Ada’s room was no longer a room I was permitted to enter. The house was quiet without my aunt, her ringing of the bells in the kitchen and Makepeace’s bustle to her post. When I tried to recall how long Ada had been bedridden, it felt that she’d always been in that silk-lined room, overheated and stuffy, queen of her mattress kingdom. My father was sombre; his mood took up the space of a guest, dark and brittle, something to be avoided, and Makepeace and I did our best. But all of our movements and sounds were irritations to him.

  The night before the funeral I heard my father and Makepeace shouting in the kitchen, I listened from the top banister, their words rose and fell before they overlapped again.

  Unable to make out the words, I made my way down the stairs to eavesdrop and noticed Ada’s bedroom door was open. With trepidation I pushed the door wide and saw all Ada’s clothes piled on the bed stripped of sheets. All her drawers emptied, her many pairs of slippers and shoes lined up on the floor. The window was wide open letting in a billowing gust; a pile of Ada’s chemises had flitted off the bed and onto the floor, a bonnet spun at my feet, its ribbons tangling in my toes. All of Ada’s things were cleared from the dresser, all her bottles of perfume and medicine had been smashed in the cold hearth, lending the ashes that swirled around the fireplace a sickly smell.

  Something caught my eye amid the ashes, something silvery and bright and I reached my hand in and lay hold of the lid of Ada’s jewellery box, ripped from its hinges. I spat on my finger and wiped the A of her name clear then set it down upon the floor. I thrust my hand back in the ashes and the broken glass and pulled out the husk of the box, all the lining tattered, holding on by threads. I set it on the ground too and sifted through the ashes, pulling a ruby that had hung in an earring. It rolled in my palm like a drop of blood. Why had all Ada’s things been ruined? Had my father done it? I seized on something green, but it was just a shard of glass from a smashed bottle; it lay glittering in my palm, the sharp edges of it the brightest of all. I held it up to my eye and watched as the world turned to water, everything rippled and submerged. I held my own hand up to view it, green and swirling, my fingers surrounded by bubbles suspended in the water.

  “What are you doing?” my father said. In my hurry to put the glass down I slashed the pad of my thumb, blood bubbled onto my nightgown. Makepeace appeared beside him.

  “Eglantine!” she said and rushed forward, wrapping her apron around my wound.

  “Why are all Ada’s special things in the fireplace?” I said.

  “You have no right to be in here, Eglantine,” my father said, his face stern.

  “Now she has gone, it’s best we clear her room, so her spirit doesn’t return,” Makepeace said, quietly removing the items I’d saved from the ashes.

  “You’ll not fill her head with superstition,” my father said, his anger rising in him. “Eglantine, these things were not of any value, they are worthless.”

  “But may I not keep them?” I asked, innocent as I was.

  “No, you may not keep them,” my father thundered. “And a girl soon to be a lady does not sit on the floor and paddle in the ashes of another’s fire,” he said, yanking me up by the elbow.

  “Did you not listen? You were not to come in this room,” he said and started pulling me down the stairs so that I began to cry. I tried to yank my arm away, but he held firm. I looked up at him and he was almost unrecognisable, his face transfigured by his anger. “What happens to little girls who don’t listen, do you think?”

  “Amberline,” Makepeace said, but he ignored her and continued dragging me down the stairs.

  “Stop, Father,” I said. “I’m sorry, sorry.” But he had no ears for me, he was deaf with his rage.

  He led me through to the kitchen, my thumb leaving droplets of blood on the freshly scrubbed flags, and dragged me all the way to the cellar, the dark yawning up at me, my father’s nails digging into my elbow. The smell was green, mildew and damp. He pushed me through the door and slammed the door behind me.

  I screamed.

  How long did I sit in the darkness? It rushed around me like I was at the bottom of the river, my own voice still lapping in my ears. Terror of the darkness engulfed me. What was this place, how long would they leave me here? Why had my father done this to me?

  “Mama?” I called out in the darkness, unsure whether I was awake or asleep, sure that time had stopped and that I had dreamed everything. “Mama,” I called out again, more urgently, waiting for the sound of her body rising from sleep, waiting for her feet to thud onto the floor, waiting for the swish of a curtain and the softness of my name on her lips, my face burrowing into her hair, the dream dispelled. But she didn’t come. The silence wormed into my ears and I scratched at my palm with my nail just to make sure I was still here, that I hadn’t disappeared.

  All the darkness rushed up to me and I heard a dripping sound from down below. I knew the stairs were there, but I couldn’t see them, I didn’t dare move lest I fall down them. I’d never been in here before. I kept my hand on the door handle as if it was an anchor. A strip of light appeared beneath the door and I looked to it like a moth, my horizon. There was more shouting from within the house and I held my breath to hear what was said, but all I heard was the thumping in my ears, my heart as loud as an echo in a cavern. I ran my hand over the nearest wall and felt with my feet the first step, before I braved to take another, my eyes adjusting to the darkness, the spill of light from under the door allowing the next few steps to appear out of the dark.

  Down I went, step by step by step, my hand on the wall running across moss that seemed to grow slightly raised from it, soft as velvet. The water dripped louder as I descended. Where was it coming from? It sounded like a song, a rhyme with which my breathing kept time.

  What will I be?

  Lady, baby, gypsy, queen.

  What shall I wear?

  Silk, satin, velvet, lace.

  How shall I get it?

  Given, borrowed,
bought, stolen.

  How shall I get to church?

  Coach, carriage, wheelbarrow, cart.

  Where shall I live?

  Big house, little house, pig-sty, barn.

  My foot slipped into water; the sharp chill of it bit through my ankles. Here at the bottom there seemed to be a pond, rippling with the arrival of my feet, a faint glow coming off the surface. But how had it got here? The water didn’t come through the ceiling. It must have come up from the earth, a spring. I reached down and saw my own reflection looking up at me. How could I see in the dark? Had I an owl’s eyes? Weshimulmo, the word whispered up to me in my mind.

  Light flooded through the cellar as Makepeace opened the door, a lantern burning in her hand, sending her silhouette arching up the wall. I tried to vanish into myself, to make myself smaller, to turn to darkness.

  “Eglantine,” she called and I heard the panic in her voice. I should have answered her, but I didn’t want to open my mouth, I wanted to slide into the water and be gone.

  I heard her footsteps on the stairs, the dull tinkle of her chatelaine at her waist, the light flaring closer, until she faced me, caught in the ripple of the puddle.

  “Eglantine,” Makepeace said, “come out of there, you’ll catch your death.” At her words I shuddered and clutched my hands to my sides, thinking that death was some sort of ball that I might accidentally find in my hands.

  Makepeace reached out her hand to me but I was full of my own anger, a whirlwind in the shape of a child. I struck the water with my hand and it arced all over her, sending her lantern hissing. I watched her face to see what she would do, expecting her to turn on her heel and leave me in the darkness again. She wiped the water from her face with her apron and stretched her hand to me again.

  “Your father is not himself, Eglantine,” she said, no rancour in her voice, not even a frown spreading across her features. The cold hummed up my legs, down my sleeves, the water wicked up my nightgown. It had been my anger that had kept me warm. I took her hand and she walked me up to the kitchen and wrapped me in a blanket by the fire, taking each of my feet that now felt like stone and rubbing them between her hands. The water from the cellar streaked all across the kitchen floor, like a line of footprints. She handed me my doll, Miss Poppet, lost from my pocket in the chaos, and I cradled her in my hands, seeking the familiar hewn markings on her body, my fingers running along them as if they were roads, until I fell asleep.

  FOUR

  Eglantine, 1825

  In the morning my father came, all apology, and I looked in his face and believed what he said. That it wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t know, that he was overcome with sadness for losing his wife and his new baby and I was ashamed of myself for having touched Ada’s things, for the size of his adult emotion, for having that flicker of jealousy as I had touched her belly. But I was wary of him, the scratches on my elbow still stung. I’d felt my whole world waver.

  He decided that we should take the air and I clasped his hand; with my free hand I twirled my doll in my pocket, my compass and comfort. I peered up at him, tall and dark in his mourning clothes, my head close to his pocket, so close I heard the silken rush of the lining and the click-clacking of things within it.

  The street was alive with its own commotion. A gentleman cantered past; the horse’s hooves flicked up mud, which my father, by some sense, narrowly avoided. We walked towards the riverside, the seagulls flying low to the shore, watching. A chestnut boy was selling his wares over an old flame brazier; the smell would usually have made my mouth crave their soft flesh, but today they had no sway over me. A waterman’s pole sliced through the water. The streets changed as we moved through them, but the river remained the same. The buildings became more decrepit, the people more ragged. My father paid them no attention, but I couldn’t stop staring. “Don’t hold my hand so tight,” he chided and I tried to loosen my grip, but I felt buffeted by the growing traffic and was afraid.

  We came to a shop, cast-iron tendrils swinging over the door, Sweet’s Emporium, and my father dropped my hand.

  I wanted to ask him what Emporium meant but when I glanced at his face I saw he was scowling. He pushed open the door and led me through. It took my eyes a little while to adjust to the gloom, before the light picked out the shape of a few things – a brass candlestick, a ticking clock in its wooden case like a coffin, an ornamental knife engraved with strange writing. I squeezed my doll tighter in my pocket, frightened of losing her here. From behind a curtain bustled Mr Sweet, pulling his rising waistcoat over his rotund belly.

  “So good of you to come. How long has it been?”

  “It’s hardly as if we were invited now, is it, Mr Sweet?” my father replied. I could tell from his voice that he was irritated, that Sweet was distasteful to him. I stared at Sweet and saw on his lip a smear of grease, the glint in his eyeglass, the paw-like size of his hands, and I too was wary.

  “How long has it been?” Sweet continued. “A year, three years, six years?”

  “Since what?”

  “Since you’ve gone and made yourself a gentleman, like a butterfly out of a cocoon of muck you are!”

  My father pulled himself up taller; his hands gripped the counter, his fine suit brushing up against the dust. The sleeve of my father’s jacket tightened as he flexed his arm and I watched the alarm spread across Sweet’s face like a rash.

  “Papa?” I said, but he bid me be quiet with a look.

  My father pulled the pearls from his pocket and they fell from his hand onto the counter, thudding one after another, mermaid’s dominoes.

  Sweet picked up the pearls and ran them across his teeth, the sound of ivory on ivory.

  “Careful now, Mr Sweet, don’t want you to eat them before we have set a price.”

  Mr Sweet smiled and flipped his loupe to his eye. “I’m hardly Cleopatra now, am I? The only way to be sure they are real and not Venetian glass is to rub them across one’s teeth. They may seem smooth but to the teeth they have roughness.”

  “Since when have I ever passed you anything less than quality? When have I passed you glass?”

  He proffered them up to my father’s lips, but my father closed his mouth in a grimace.

  “Why not keep them for your girl, for when she is a fullgrown lady?” Sweet said, weighing the pearls in his hand, and I remembered their weight on my chest, heavy as rope.

  “You try, child.” He smiled as he handed them to me and I was overcome with the impulse to run with them out the door just to feel them to be mine again. Instead I rubbed them across my own teeth, and found them exactly as Mr Sweet had said. Rough to the teeth though silken to the skin.

  “An expert, your girl.” The glare of his attention rested on me, my father’s hand settled protectively on my shoulder. “Here, look at them through the loupe and tell me what you see?” He swung up the hinged portion of the counter and stepped out between my father and me. “Hold it just like this,” he said. As he leaned down towards me his mustard-striped trousers let out a groan and my father smiled as if he were preparing for a tooth to be pulled. Sweet held the glass of the loupe up to my eye and put his hand over my other one and I saw the world made large. I wanted to step back. At first I was afraid of what I saw, the world was reduced and magnified like I was the eye of the Lord, seeing virtues few and faults many.

  “Look closely,” he said, his voice in my ear. If it wasn’t for my father’s reassuring feet, I would have elbowed him into his kingdom come. The pearls up close were like fish scales and I looked away, unable to believe my eyes, then squinted through the loupe again at the pearl in my palm, a tiny moon, smooth beneath my fingers.

  “Now look at this,” Sweet said as he eased off a diamond ring from his pinky finger and placed it warm and sweaty in my palm.

  Beneath the loupe all I saw was colour, a rainbow captured in stone.

  “How can it be?” My wonder grew as I turned the ring in my fingers, watching the colours flit through it, so I barely not
iced the exchange – the pearls for money – between my father and Sweet. I was captivated by nature’s telescope. The world only returned with the abrupt retrieval of the diamond and the loupe.

  “Thank you, Mr Sweet,” I said and I truly was grateful, for the earth seemed different now – the light shone through all the objects in Mr Sweet’s shop, all the colours wedged in my eye. I blinked and still they would not clear, sparkling between the open and the closed. My father gave me a sharp glance.

  “You wouldn’t care to make a purchase?” Sweet said, stepping back and sweeping the dust off the top of the counter with the palm of his hand. “Anything in there to take your fancy?”

  “We’ve done enough business with you for one day, Sweet,” my father said, and made to take my hand to lead me out. But I saw something in the counter, it glowed with my name, Eglantine. I peered down at it and rubbed at my eyes, still seeing the light blading through my vision. Was I imagining things?

  “Ah, she’s the eyes of youth, she has,” Sweet crowed and my father stopped and turned to see what it was I was looking at, having to crouch down to my level to see in.

  I pointed at the small heart cut from a coin, tarnished silver, and my father beside me began to twitch. He was up on his feet and tapping the counter, his words fleeing his mouth, and Sweet, smiling smugly, was only too happy to roll out a cloth and place the heart with my name on it on the counter for him. My father picked it up and turned it over in his hands, running his fingers around the edges of it.

  “Where did you get this from, Sweet?” my father said, his voice low. Sweet held out his hand for it, but my father held it firm.

  “Oh, I knew it would catch your fancy. How long has it been? It’s been waiting for you all this time. Tempted to sell it for scrap, but I knew you’d be back at some point, whatever games you’ve been pursuing.”