by Kate Forsyth
‘It’s not alive,’ one of his daughters said loftily. ‘It’s been dead for centuries.’
Margot tried not to shudder.
‘But it’s really a mummy?’ Jack asked, drawing closer.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Mr Tadema said.
‘But why is it to be ground down? Into paint, you said?’ Jack was puzzled.
‘Well, yes. It’s the key ingredient in Mummy Brown.’
Now Papa’s attention had been caught. ‘You mean, the paint? Mummy Brown paint?’ As his guest nodded, Papa shrank back. His face was filled with horror. ‘Are you telling me that my favourite shade of brown is made from ground corpses?’
Mr Tadema began to look troubled. ‘Well. Yes.’
Papa got up and went at once to his studio at the end of the garden. When he came back, he carried a bent half-squeezed tube of Mummy Brown oil paint. ‘We must bury the poor thing,’ he said.
Margot at once jumped up. She was used to the funerals of small things. Birds. Hedgehogs. Frogs. ‘I will get the spade.’
A solemn procession formed. The two Tadema girls were inappropriately amused. Jack, to his credit, was grave. A hole was dug. The paint tube was buried. Papa recited a poem by Christina Rossetti, Uncle Gabriel’s melancholic and reclusive sister: ‘When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me. Plant thou no roses at my head nor shady cypress tree …’
Margot dug up a daisy root and it was ceremoniously planted above the Mummy Brown, with a little cross made of sticks.
‘When I came here to tea, I was not expecting to attend the funeral of a mummy,’ Jack said in Margot’s ear.
‘Do not mock. My father takes the death of small things very seriously.’
‘I did not think an Egyptian mummy was such a small thing.’
‘It is now,’ Margot said sadly.
‘It is indeed. An ignominious end for one who might once have been a Pharaoh.’
Margot looked up at him in amazement. He had spoken her very thought. He was smiling at her, and she felt her colour rise. She ducked her head and moved away. They did not speak again that afternoon, though every time she looked at him it seemed as if he was looking at her. When it came time to leave, he took her hand. ‘Thank you, Miss Jones, for a most … interesting afternoon. What will happen next time I come?’
She raised her eyes to his. ‘Why, anything might happen.’
He smiled. ‘I hope so.’
That night, when she snuffed out her candle before going to bed, her mind was full of him.
She hardly thought of death at all.
2
Prick
Winter 1881
Margot could not speak of Jack to her parents.
They still thought her a child. If her father thought Jack had any interest in her, he would ban him from the house forever. Yet she longed to talk him over with someone, to confess these strange new feelings that fevered her blood.
At last, in early November, Margot went to London with her father, telling him she was going to meet May Morris for tea. Papa was silent in the hansom cab, his eyes fixed on the view outside the window. Margot knew he did not see the sandwich-board men, shouting out their advertisements, or the women with sacks tied over their clean white aprons plodding home from the market, carrying heavy baskets on their head. Cabs and carriages jostled for space on the road, their iron wheels clattering on the cobblestones, and a policeman was blowing his whistle.
Papa saw or heard none of it. He was within some other enchanted landscape, and dreaming of the strokes of paint that would bring it to glowing life.
Margot dropped her father at Little Campden House – the studio was in its garden – then went on to Kensington Gardens, where she poured out her heart to May as they walked the paths beside the lake, which gleamed under the pale cloud-spun sky. Little boys were trundling guys in wheelbarrows and begging for pennies, accompanied by excited girls with scarves wrapped crosswise over their bodies. It was Guy Fawkes Night, Margot remembered.
‘I don’t see what the trouble is,’ May said. ‘Of course, you’re only fifteen but I remember Mammy saying that your mother was not much older when she became engaged to your father. And my mother was only seventeen when she met Papa and Uncle Gabriel.’
‘My father would never allow me to get engaged! You know what he’s like. He wants me to stay a little girl forever.’
‘Well, yes … but you can’t, can you?’
Margot sighed. ‘He won’t let me put my hair up.’
‘Then cut it all off.’
‘Oh, but I couldn’t! Papa …’
‘Stop being such a milksop,’ May said sternly. ‘Just because Uncle Ned loves the Middle Ages doesn’t mean he has to act like a medieval father. It’s the modern day, for heaven’s sake. Cut your hair, or put it up if you like, and tell your papa that you plan to come into town every week to attend a lecture, or something. Then let this Jack of yours know …’
‘But how am I supposed to do that?’
May was exasperated. ‘Write him a note and ask him to join you. Or find out what he likes and just turn up there, pretending it’s a coincidence.’
Margot stared at her friend in consternation. ‘Is that what you do?’
A faint colour tinged May’s skin. ‘Well, no, of course not, because I never make a cake of myself over some stupid fellow. I’ve better things to do. Like go to lectures myself.’ She gave Margot a quick, stiff-armed hug. ‘Got to go! Good luck with it.’
Margot had been a fool to think May might understand. May had never been overcome with shyness in her whole life. She said just what she thought, without ever considering other people’s feelings, or the rules of polite society. Margot thought it must be the result of having a radical as a father.
Her stomach was cramping, and she felt sick with anxiety. Slowly Margot walked back through the park, her boots crunching on the frosted grass. The trees were all black with soot, their bare branches rattling in the wind. The gilded weathervane on top of Kensington Palace gleamed brightly against the leaden sky, lit up by the last vivid streaks of light.
Margot was cold. Her mother had told her to put on her red flannel petticoats before she left the house, but Margot could not bear the thought of being seen in London in such fusty old-fashioned wear. She had worn only her usual white linen petticoats under her pale dress, and now she regretted her decision. The wind blew up her skirt, biting at her skin through her thin combinations. She looked at the other girls her age, in cuirass bodices and velveteen half-bustles, feathered hats held aloft by high coils of hair, hands tucked inside fur muffs. She must look such a child beside them, her hair hanging down her back, her dress cut plain as a Puritan’s. Her mother disapproved of corsets mightily, being a dress reformer. She would never understand that Margot just wanted to be like the other girls.
The cramps worsened. Margot stopped, bending over, pressing one hand to her side. She noticed a stain on the lap of her dress. Red as a poppy. She stared at it uncomprehendingly. Had she cut herself? She did not remember being caught by anything sharp, and her dress was not torn. Then she felt something wet trickle down the inside of her leg.
Terror gripped her. Margot did not know what to do. Was she bleeding internally? Margot had heard about girls coughing blood into handkerchiefs before they died. Perhaps this was some peculiar manifestation of the dreaded consumption. Perhaps she had pierced herself somehow, touching herself in the dark of the night. Shame flamed through her.
Margot needed to find a water-closet. The Queen had built a public lavatory in Kensington Gardens to commemorate her husband’s death, but Margot could not go there. She had a horror of such places.
She began to hurry to her father’s studio.
The streets were filled with people, laughing and pushing, dressed in costume, their faces smeared with soot. Some hoisted chairs between them, or pushed barrows, filled with effigies made of old clothes stuffed with straw. Men carried flaming torches, their smoke trailing in the wi
nd. Children threw down firecrackers. The bang and starburst of their explosions made Margot flinch. The air stank of gunpowder. A bonfire had been built in the churchyard. Black figures danced around it, throwing on old rubbish and broken chairs. An effigy was tied to a pole at the top of the bonfire, fiery sparks hissing about him. His lopsided face was drawn with a wide grin that seemed to leer at her through the darkness. The children pranced about, carrying smoking sticks and chanting:
Pray remember
The Fifth of November
Gunpowder Treason and Plot
For I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.
Holla, boys! Holla, boys! Huzza!
Margot knew she should have been safe at home. Her mother would be anxiously watching for her. But she could not bear the thought of stepping into the firelit street where anyone might see the bloom of blood on her skirt, or sitting in a hansom cab, feeling her life fluid soak into the seat beneath her. All she could think of was reaching the safety of her father’s arms.
A dark street. Creeping fingers of fog.
Margot stole down the pavement, listening for any footfall behind her. The last smears of sunset were gone, though she could see a flare of orange above the wall.
The gleam of light through high Gothic windows. Black twigs silhouetted.
She opened the gate and slipped inside. The garden was winter-bare, brittle with frost. Her steps made no sound on the path, deadened by the carpet of fallen rotting leaves.
The studio was a Gothic-style folly built in the garden of a seventeenth-century manor house that had once housed the servants of a German princess. Its most remarkable feature was the huge arched windows all along the southern wall that allowed light to flood inside during the day. Margot’s heart had lifted at the sight of those windows glowing golden through the dusk. Her father had not yet left for the day. He must be painting by lamplight.
She let herself in the door and climbed the shadowy stairs to the upper floor. Papa was using one of two studios, set side by side on the southern side of the house. On the other side of the corridor were dressing rooms for the models, a water-closet, and a little kitchen where water could be boiled for tea. Margot rushed to the water-closet, cleaning herself up as best she could with the sheets of soft paper kept there. The seat of her combinations was badly stained, and her petticoats too, back and front. Margot was so afraid she found it hard to catch her breath. She washed herself, and tried to blot away the stains. Her hands were shaking and she feared her father would leave without knowing she was here. She could not hide in here all night. So she took a deep breath, gathered up her damp, discoloured skirts and went back along the corridor and into her father’s studio.
So many canvases were stacked against the wall, they made a little ante-chamber just inside the door, hiding the rest of the studio from her sight. Margot could only see their colour-daubed linen sides, which together made up two short walls of smeared colour, like paintings seen through tear-filled eyes.
Mid-step, Margot halted.
‘Why do you torment me so?’ her father was saying in tones of anguish. ‘You know I cannot run away with you.’
‘Oh yes, I know,’ a woman’s voice said mockingly. ‘The faithful little wife, the beloved little daughter.’
‘I cannot ruin their lives.’
‘And so you choose to ruin mine?’
‘Maria, you know I don’t want to hurt you. But it’s been so long … so much has happened … can’t this be enough for us?’
‘An hour here, an hour there, always afraid we shall be caught? No, it’s not enough for me. I want more, Ned. I want all of you.’
Margot crept forward, and peeped about the edge of the canvases.
A naked woman stood in the centre of the room. Her mahogany-red hair tumbled down her pale, slender form. Her arms were stretched out as if to embrace someone. Her breasts were small, the nipples hard and pebbled.
Margot’s father was standing in front of a tall canvas, a paintbrush in one hand, a wooden palette in the other. His smock was daubed with paint of all colours, and his grey hair was rumpled. On the canvas was the painted shape of the naked woman, her body rising from the cleft of an almond tree, a froth of delicate blossoms lightly sketched in above her head and around her body. In her arms, the woman was clutching the naked form of a young man, turned away from her as if trying to wrest himself free. The man was only lightly sketched too, with chalk, but every line of his body spoke of frenzied emotion.
Margot recognised the story her father was painting. Phyllis, daughter of the King of Thrace, had fallen in love with Demophoön, son of Theseus. He had to leave her but promised he would return. When he failed to keep his promise, Phyllis hanged herself. The gods transformed her into an almond tree. When at last he did return, and realised the cost of his faithlessness, Demophoön was overcome with remorse and embraced the tree, which burst into bloom. Her father called the painting The Tree of Forgiveness.
She recognised the woman too. Her melancholy face and great dark eyes looked out from dozens of her father’s paintings. Her name was Madame Zambaco. She and her cousins had once been the toast of London, called the Three Graces.
Margot had never seen her in the flesh before.
Nor had she ever seen anyone naked. She could not imagine standing like that, posed so suggestively, her hair flung back, every secret of her body exposed to another’s gaze. She knew, of course, about life painting. Her father must have seen many nudes before. But somehow Margot had never expected to see it herself. Her throat was dry, her heart pounding, and the snarled feeling in the pit of her stomach had returned, worse than ever.
‘Do you not find me beautiful anymore?’
‘You know that I do.’
‘I’m not a fresh-faced girl any longer.’
‘You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.’
‘More beautiful even than your sweet little wife? What about that daughter of yours? She must be almost a woman now.’
Her father put down his paintbrush and turned away.
‘I’m sorry,’ Madame Zambaco cried. ‘I do not know why I keep picking away at the scab. It’s just that I love you so, and want to be with you.’ She went across the room to him, and wound her arms about his neck, and pressed her lithe naked body against his, kissing him on the mouth.
Papa kissed her back. Madame Zambaco put her hand to the fork of his trousers. He groaned.
Margot jerked back. Pain pierced her finger. Her hand had been resting on the linen-bound edge of a painting. A flax splinter had driven into her skin, sharp as a thorn. She could not dig it all out. Then she heard her father grunt. It sounded like he was in pain. Margot looked to see what was happening, and could not look away.
Madame Zambaco was sitting in the cradle of her father’s legs. His mouth was on her bare breast. Her head was flung back, her dark-red hair swaying. She cried out. Margot realised they were gasps of pleasure, realised what her father and that woman were doing.
Margot jerked away. Somehow she managed to open the door and stumble out. She ran through the garden, branches catching her pale skirt and tearing it. The streets outside were filled with people, laughing and singing. Their soot-streaked faces seemed to jeer at her. She pushed her way through, choking with tears. At last she reached the high street, and hailed a cab. As the horse clopped along, Margot tried to calm herself. She could not catch her breath.
At last she got home. Her mother was white with worry. Margot fell into her arms. ‘Oh, Mammy, I’m dying,’ she wept, spreading out her stained skirt.
Her mother drew her close. ‘You’re not dying, my darling. It’s just the curse. It means you are becoming a woman.’
‘I don’t want to, I don’t want to.’
Her mother tucked her up in bed with a hot-water bottle. ‘I’m so sorry,’ Mammy whispered. ‘I should have told you. Prepared you. I thought there was time … but you are growing up so
fast.’
Margot turned her face away. Her mother kissed her gently, and tiptoed out. Firelight gleamed on the frost-starred windows. Her counterpane was stuffed with goose feathers, her room smelt of roses. Margot was warm and safe at last.
She shut her eyes. She wanted to stay like this forever.
3
The Coffin in the Attic
Winter 1881
Outside the air was thick with mist, so that the world seemed mantled and asleep. The fire in her room had sunk low. Margot kept her head tucked down under her coverlet, making for herself a little warm shelter where no-one could see her face.
Margot was thinking of the very first Christmas she could remember. She had been six and her brother Phil had been eleven. Her cousins Rudyard and Ambrose and the two Morris girls had come for tea. They had played together in the snow all afternoon. When dusk had fallen, they had been called in, their hands stinging, their faces bright with the cold, stamping the snow from their boots. The big hall was dark, lit only by firelight and the little candles glinting on the Christmas tree. The mothers had taken off their coats and hung them up, and the children sat on the hearth before the fire, toasting chestnuts in a big pan. Aunty Janey was lying on a sofa, looking thin and pale and sad. Mammy and her sister Agnes sat nearby, making chains from golden paper to hang on the tree. The men were drinking hot punch and smoking cigars, blowing the smoke out through the cracked-open window. Papa came to play a magic-lantern show for them, and Margot was utterly thrilled to see a brightly coloured story unfolding for them in mid-air.
Then all the candles were doused, and the guard set before the fire, making the room as dark as a cave. Papa poured brandy into a big bowl, and flung handfuls of raisins in, then he lit a long wooden taper and set it to the liquid in the bowl. With a great whoosh, an eerie blue light sprang up. Margot cried out in fear, and her brother shushed her.
Then the men all gathered around, and tried to snatch raisins out of the burning bowl and throw them into their mouths to extinguish the dancing flames. Their faces were all lit up from below with blue fire. As they laughed and grimaced with pain and threw the blue-burning raisins into their mouths, their fingertips blazed blue too, and their cheeks glowed for a moment like corpse-lanterns. They looked like demons. Margot was frightened and began to cry. Her father turned to her and held out his arms. But the strange blue light still played over his hollow cheeks and shadowed eyes. For the first time ever, Margot did not run to him, but shrank back and fled to her mother, burying her face in her skirts.
