Strange Music (2 page)

Pa says I'm a bully coming back again, he getting ready to fetch Doctor Demar and because I've come back he won't. Says I'm to serve and save white buckra. Pa says, ‘De devil widin yu.'

I'm struggling to tell what is it. ‘Eeee? Me cyaan ear yu.'

‘Don't be renk. Mek me tell yu.'

‘Yu's dawg. It mek yu too ugly.'

‘Don't ax me. Me cyaan go now, me busy. Me head a-hurt me.'

Sibyl walks in. Then I can't throw insults at Pa. ‘Sibyl. Sibyl,' I'm calling to she, because she also don't know where's we mama. Rebecca Laslie's we mama for sure. Sibyl's face answers silent. Empty. She don't understand sickness I live in.
Me was back because me was smashing an tearing, wanting to be rid of wot's in me belly
.

Pa says, ‘Yu behaving white again.'

Inside I'm warring. I'm saying to Sibyl, ‘E too hard,' running out. Running from wharf. Running back to great house.

Chapter One

My beloved father has gone away; he was obliged to go two days ago, and took away with him, I fear, almost as saddened spirits as he left with me . . . His tears fell almost as fast as mine did when we parted, but he is coming back soon – perhaps in a fortnight, so I will not think any more of
them
, but of
that
. I never told him of it, of course, but, when I was last so ill, I used to start out of fragments of dreams, broken from all parts of the universe, with the cry from my own lips ‘Oh, Papa, Papa!' . . . Well! But I do trust I shall not be ill again in his absence and that it may not last longer than a fortnight . . .

Just weeks ago I swooped down on my dear brother Bro in a storm of emotion which quite wore me out, hence my recent removal to Torquay; yet this detail need not be revealed in correspondence – it is safer to say a blood vessel burst during one of my coughs and I fell gravely ill, which is also true. To have stayed in London would, Dr. Chambers said, have been suicidal, so here I must remain.

I hang by a thread between life and death, and can feel with each morsel my weight increase. Bro says I have grown vain. But I am bloated with guilt. Any desire to eat left me in March last. Since then I have shed weight as a snake sheds skin. In but three months I shall be thirty-three yet my anxiety increases as does my weakness. My new doctor, Dr. Barry, believes blisters and leeches will remedy this. I can't see how such a miserable treatment will effect the shedding of guilt and anxiety. Doctors can be full of absurdities.

This doctor forbids me to write
anything
! Especially poetry. Which is good, for I never can write when ordered to, but when refused,
that
is when I can. And do. It is a mercy Bro is with me in this conspiracy. I would not dream of sending my verses to anyone without first passing them under his keen and critical eye.

Although this morning Dr. Barry caught me in the act – I was mid-way through ‘The Sea-Mew' – and I have sworn not to write again, already I know what I shall write next. And there is another poem I am thinking on while I sit watching over this mesmerizing sea.

Kind Papa has written permitting my sister, Henrietta, to stay permanently during my confinement to this room. Bro is to remain too –
I
shall see to
that
. Dearest Georgie travelled here with us but Papa says he must soon return to London. Weaving a tapestry of comings and goings my other brothers – Stormie, Henry, Daisy, Sette, Occy – circulate as regularly as their other engagements will allow; as will my sister Arabel. Hopefully Sam is sailing back from Jamaica – he is a constant cause for distress. Papa himself has promised to visit every two weeks.

My beloved Arabel,
do pray
write, & don't wait for me to do it . . .

Now fancy – on the occasion of my writing-case being accidentally visible – ‘Have you been writing today, Miss Barrett?' ‘No.' – ‘Did you write yesterday?' ‘Yes.' ‘You will be so good as not to do so any more!' – And again – ‘You have observed my directions & been idle lately, Miss Barrett?' ‘Yes.' ‘And within these last three weeks you have never written any poetry . . . Well then! I may as well take my leave! I have told you the consequence. You must do as you please; but if you please to do this, neither I nor anyone else can do anything for you.' And then there are flannel waistcoats up to the throat – & next to the skin – & most of the most disagreeable things you can think of besides . . . provided that you happen to be particularly imaginative
whilst
you think!

My bed is shaken with vibrations! The steam packet departs. Soon Crow, the maid, will knock with my tray, for that dreadful hour, eleven o'clock, is close at hand – as are letters to me from Papa and Arabel. Bro's rowing across the bay to the steam packet will not have been wasted.

Every morning at eleven o'clock I am made to take asses' milk and soup, and a meal in the evening at six. Oysters or macaroni. At these times I have no appetite; this surprises me not, for ever since my eyes first opened I have felt hunger only for books. Though oysters have on occasion proven reasonably palatable.

Bro's footsteps are upon the stairs.

‘No mail today?' I ask. Bro shakes his head, licks his pale dry lips and rubs his wind-chaffed cheeks with an open hand. ‘Dr. Barry left hours ago. Why did you not come to see me immediately after the examination?'

‘I was afraid of what he might have said,' Bro replies, ‘and I've been working below with water-colours.'

‘Dr. Barry said I look as though I carry the world's burdens with me and should worry less. He also gave his opinions concerning the situation on West Indian plantations, saying that although the apprenticeship system was in ruins it should never have ended early.' I feel a spirit of rebellion rising in me like flames from a burning torch. ‘Was slavery not immoral?' I ask in a tone more heated than I had intended, but even my strident pitch belies the true feelings within my heart, which are more fiery than Bro would suppose. ‘The emancipationists should have just waited, Bro, for apprenticeship to end, and done nothing?' Bro looks blankly at the sea. Has he no sense of guilt? Not one breath of sorrow? ‘People will continue to be hurt and it's no one's fault if we do nothing. Is that it?'

‘Slavery's over and they are free,' Bro says finally.

‘Many died cruelly. They needed our help.'

‘They are dead. There's nothing we can do for them.'

That West Indian planters caused such grief is incomprehensible. I long to seek forgiveness for them yet I know not how. ‘I'm not good at being alone, Bro, and I know you are here. But I
feel
wretched and miserable. I
feel
alone.'

Bro sinks heavily into the armchair opposite my bed. He takes from his pocket a small rectangular card. He emits a sort of lassitude as he turns the pale blue calling-card bearing Annie Shropshire's neat copperplated handwriting, and paints, with his eyes, her lively, determined, innocent face. He prickles with frustration. Something truly terrible happened between them.

‘Papa said you attract all the wrong women.'

Bro's blue-green eyes are ready to turn to anger. ‘Papa could not, would not, even join me in my room for tea before he left for London.'

‘He was busy with business in the study. You know what happened, Bro. Papa had re-arranged his plans and was going to catch the stagecoach a day late for the sake of wishing us all a hearty farewell. Suddenly he changed his mind and almost flew from the house when an article on increased taxes for cargo imported at the London docks appeared in
The Times
. He barely said farewell.'

Quietly Bro stands and turns for the stairs.

Each farewell I endure feels like a preparation for death. A morbid notion to be sure – one that leads to a much exaggerated response – I am prone to faintings and uncontrollable tears when anyone I love departs. Good-byes remind me of leaving dear Mama for the sake of my own poor health. To live without a mother's love is to live without hope. Is that why my family avoids involving me in good-byes? Is that why, when Bro went to join Papa on business in London four years ago, what I was told would be a two-week separation ended with him sailing to Jamaica without any farewell?

Bro had to assist our uncle on the estates before the slaves' emancipation, how well I know
that
. The ship that took Bro away to Jamaica, away from me, was the
David Lyon
, the ship in which I now have shares. That is a curse if ever there was one.

I lie on the bed in this chamber, with the shadow of my distant father – in girlhood I thought only of how to win his smile. Counting memories, I stumble across some forgotten treasure. Hand in hand, I – in a little white muslin dress and frilled pantalettes – am running with Bro; slipping, slithering in and out of the sheets of sunlight shooting down between parted leaves.

‘Ba,' Bro says, ‘let's not play hide-and-seek.' He has reneged on plans we made at luncheon, and at the last minute.

I return stubbornly, ‘Yes, now. Before the school bell rings.' We race across the cobbled yard, under the great clock tower and along shady gravelled walks, round lily ponds fringed with bullrushes, past the home farm cottages, past the dairy and gun-rooms, by haylofts and back to the lake – a fine sheet of water fed by springs and well stocked with the fish it is our pleasure to catch – past cascading streams, over the Alpine bridge, by the summer-house and ice-house, which is under construction, the walled garden, the hot-house's massive flues where peaches, figs and grapes ripen, around the cinder shed, back through the gateway to the stables and harness-rooms, past the cider-house, brew-house and cellar to the laundry, and hide in the knife-and-shoe hole. We hear the bell and the governess, Mrs. Orme, calling all the way from the south gate, and tear down the subterranean passage, through the ornamental shrubbery to the chapel and school-house. Bro gazes from the school-room window to the lawn where at the weekend he played cricket with Papa and Sam; beyond, the obelisk of Eastnor Castle peeps above treetops.

Bro was aged two and I three when Henrietta was born and the family moved to Hope End in Herefordshire. After Henrietta came Sam, Arabel, Charles – nicknamed Stormie for being born during a thunderstorm – Georgie, Henry, Alfred – who we nicknamed Daisy – Septimus (Sette), Octavius (Occy). At Hope End we lived in a world of our own.

How can life be so treacherous as to take childhood away? But since he first moved on this earth Bro has always been my sanctuary. My adytum. It is true I was jealous of him when he abandoned me at Hope End to study at Charterhouse – how the tide turns. Although Bro is wanting in his sense of direction and purpose – particularly passion – my love for him increases with each hour he spends at my bedside, with each passing day. We were jointly baptized, Bro and I. Never was there a truer love between brother and sister. The invisible sun burning within us feels as comforting as the distant lowing of cattle strolling across hills, past trees bent inland; the pale yellow sunlight streaming across moving waters reaching forever away from me.

This afternoon, vain or not, I have felt particularly anxious, though dear Bro will say unduly, about my appearance. One can put up a mirror to oneself but can one turn the image back to truly see how one is viewed? Can a woman see herself from her own reflection? I have long been displeased with the plainness of the face that peers darkly from my glass. I am small and black. (Black, I imagine, as Sappho.) A thin partition divides us; why do I regard the woman who watches me with distaste? She has a searching quizzical look, slightly remote and mischievous; the features, wasted, compared with my sister Henrietta, who sits quietly sewing by the window overlooking the bay, and certainly
is
very pretty – there is no nose to speak of; the brow, furrowed and pain-worn. I take objection to the hands for they are the fairy-fingers of an invalid. The mouth is large, obstinate, projecting – she is full-lipped – and has dark eyes, deep and calm, and long thick ringlets, again, dark brown, almost black, which Crow must brush very, very soon lest they lose their silkiness. Funny though it seems when I think on it, the droopy locks resemble Miss Mitford's dear spaniel's long floppy ears.

Darkness is lowering. The garish red sea, framed by my two bedroom windows, is shot with a jealous shock of yellow from the last light of a fast-disappearing sun.

Yesterday evening when Crow brought my opium draft I wore the silver locket inscribed with
Edward & Judith Barrett of Cinnamon Hill
, a family heirloom given to Papa by his mother and brought from Jamaica by Bro to be passed down to me. This evening the locket has vanished. We have shaken out the coverlets and the
couvre-pied
warming my feet, searched beneath the bed, under the carpet. Crow swept all four corners of the floor and emptied the small box of sharpened pencils by the oil-lamp on my bedside-table; she even scoured the stairs lest somehow the locket was transported down there.