The Sacred River (32 page)

“I shall not return,” she said gently.

“I am sorry to hear it. We shall feel your departure.”

Louisa nodded. “You have made us very comfortable here, monsieur.”

He shook his head, rocked back and forth in his dusty black shoes, the soles creaking lightly as they made contact with the wooden floor. It occurred to her for the first time to wonder where he lived; in the hotel, she supposed, in a room tucked away somewhere. A permanent guest. He’d said once that his family came from Alexandria. She had never seen him go beyond the arch at the front of the hotel.

Louisa wound a loose coil of hair back into its pin as she rose from the chair, leaving her napkin in a heap on the table. Outside, the Italians roared with laughter.

•  •  •

Upstairs, in the simple room, Louisa emptied the chest of drawers and the wardrobe. She heaped her chemises, stockings, and the green veil in a pile on the bed, set about brushing and folding and pairing. One day years from now, a day that she would not see herself, this time would be the past, could be folded away flat in a trunk. Locked and consigned to an attic. Rendered harmless, its colors faded, passions spent. Harriet was an adult and would survive without a mother. Everyone had to, if they lived.

She retrieved the gun from the dressing-table drawer. Its nozzle was blackened but the barrel had grown cold, the discharged shot forgotten. Rewrapping it in the old blouse, she wondered whether Blundell had noticed its absence and felt a twinge of regret. She ought to have told him she was taking it. He might have been disturbed by a burglar; gone to get the gun and found it missing. She hoped Rosina hadn’t been careless about locking the doors.

The packing complete, Louisa moved to the stool at the dressing table and looked at herself in the mirror. She was perspiring, too warm in her stays and stockings and the bustle petticoat under her dress. A fallen hank of hair lay heavy on her neck again; she’d lost more pins and had never succeeded in obtaining any in Egypt. Her chignon had become a makeshift affair.

She lifted the fallen lock and secured it with a pin. It fell out immediately, lolled again on her shoulder. On impulse, she took up her nail scissors and snipped it off, close to the root. Holding the tress between two fingers, she felt its silky length and weight. Blundell had loved her hair. She would tie the dark hank in a ribbon for Harriet to give to him.

Her head felt lighter without it, her neck cooler. Another of the coils of the chignon, from the right side of her head, was undone and about to fall. She picked up the scissors again and sheared that off too. Intoxicated by what she had done, by the sense of release it brought, Louisa pulled out another pin, released another coil of hair, and continued. It took only minutes to divest herself of the hair she had worried over and cared for her entire life.

She looked in the mirror again. The Louisa Heron who had set sail from London had died already. Some other creature had been born in her place, an old woman, thin-faced and wary-looking, her skin darkened by the sun despite all the care she had taken to try and avoid it. The woman’s eyes looked haunted.

She reached into the back of the dressing-table drawer, groping among rolling buttons, a couple of worn silver piastres, for the note from Mr. Hamilton and read it again.
Death is coming for sure
. The words seemed to dance before her eyes. If only she knew when. Was it to be today? In a month’s time? Two months’? It was the not knowing that was difficult.

Sweat was darkening the armpits of her dress; her ankles were swollen and her fingers puffy. Louisa eased off her shoes, undid the hooks and eyes at the back of her dress, stepped out of it, and left it where it lay. Releasing the bow at the waist of her petticoat, she loosened her stays and lay down on the bed, wondering how her life might have been different if she had lived it without corsets.

The bed was soft underneath her; the cotton mattress seemed to hold her in its embrace. She missed Blundell with a sharp, incurable ache, and at the thought that she would never see him again, the pain increased. She considered her sons, one by one, feeling the same awe for each as when they had been newly born. They had seemed miracles, from another realm. They still did seem that.

Closing her eyes, Louisa saw an English orchard, its hardy, bent-limbed trees laden with white blossom. She did not resist; she allowed the memories to come, starting as a feeling in her body of being heavy. A sense of time standing still.

•  •  •

It was April and Louisa had not left the house on the cliff top since Christmas. Her mother, Amelia Newlove, had put it about in Dover that she was ill, with a wasting disease. Only her older sisters knew the truth. That she was not wasting but expanding, her belly a hard, tight fruit, her breasts doubled in size. Mother even insisted on keeping it from Anna, eleven years old at the time and a strange, half-wild girl who spent her days on the beach, watching, waiting for Jesus.

So that Anna should not see her undressed, Louisa had moved into Hepzibah’s bedroom. Hepzibah hadn’t visited since the last, fateful, summer. Her boater still hung from its elastic on the nail on the back of the door; her sampler was framed on the wall—
And now abideth Faith, Hope, Charity, these three; but the greatest of these is
Charity—
spelled out in uneven scarlet cross-stitch, fading in the beam of sun that fell into the room in the early morning, then moved on, left it in shadow for the rest of the day.

It was a cold spring but no one called it that. They all termed it
bitter
. Everything coming late, said the old midwife who trudged up from the village to look Louisa over every week or two, feel her belly. Amelia Newlove, determined that no one at all should know, was keeping the doctor away. She would die, she said, if they did know; the shame would kill her. Louisa felt as if she had died already. Augustus, who’d told her that he loved her, was gone. She, who had declared that she loved him too, remained.

She stood in the kitchen at the low stone sink, peeling potatoes, gouging out black spots of rot from the white flesh. Burnt umber. Flake white. Ivory black. The words ran around her mind, her mind that had been dull and slow since the autumn, like her movements. As if she, huge and lumbering as she was, was reduced; as if the painting had stolen the life from her.

“Her time’s near,” Mrs. Ditch said to Amelia Newlove.

“I don’t believe so,” Amelia said, her lips tight. “Not yet.”

Louisa felt restless. She went into the garden after Mrs. Ditch had left and wandered around the inside of the hawthorn hedge, her cloak thrown over her nightgown. The forget-me-nots were out, their little blue heads scattering the earth like beads. The grass was soft and tender, a bright emerald green, and the frogs splashing in the gully. At the sound of hooves approaching in the lane, she hurried back inside and stood behind the kitchen door, listening. Hoping, for the thousandth time, to smell cigar smoke on the air. Hear a deep voice pronouncing her name. A cart rolled on past the flint house, two girls laughing on the back of it.

She’d taken the broom from the scullery and swept the bedroom, banged the rugs out of the window, cleaned the glass with vinegar. She polished the old brass candlestick on the mantelpiece and blackened the grate, then stood on a chair and explored the corners of the ceiling with a feather duster, half hoping she would fall. While her hands were busy, her mind was numbed. It was almost as good as sleep. She was waiting. There was nothing to do but wait for what was going to happen.

Anna had been sent away to an aunt. All the others had gone to a wedding in the town. Her elder sister Lavinia squeezed her shoulders before they set off, then put her hands on her belly, shyly, one on each side.

“I hate to leave you here alone, Izzy. I wish you could come with us.”

“You can tell me all about it when you get back.”

Louisa’s voice was brusque. Sympathy from anyone threatened to prize the lid off some great reservoir inside, of anguish. It was easier to face her mother’s fury, Mrs. Ditch’s avoidance of her eyes, except when she rolled forward the lower lids to check her blood.

She felt easier once they’d left. She had bread and milk for supper, standing up, looking out at the plum blossom strewn over the grass, sodden confetti, turning brown. Brewed a cup of the raspberry leaf tea that Mrs. Ditch said could bring things on, and went to bed early, before the others returned, lying on her side with her head flat on the mattress, the pillow under her belly.

Louisa woke at three in the morning with a sense of urgency. It was pitch dark, no moonlight and not a hint of dawn either. As dark as dark could be. For a long minute, nothing happened. Then a sharp, rippling pain ran through her belly like a knife slicing at her from inside. With both hands, she felt the contours of her stomach through the sheet, felt the taut intention from within. It was a fortnight before her sixteenth birthday and the waiting was over.

She got out of the bed and knelt by it, praying to God to let her die, resting her elbows on the mattress, the weight of her stomach pulling her forward. Amelia Newlove found her at dawn, still on her knees. She helped her up, sent Lavinia down the lane for Mrs. Ditch, and put on a kettle. In the lull that followed, she stroked Louisa’s forehead, bent, and kissed her hair.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all my fault.”

Lying on the bed at the Luxor Hotel, Louisa woke to darkness, feeling drugged, staring at the roughly plastered wall, unable to reconcile it with anything she knew. Turning over, she slept again, deeply and dreamlessly.

•  •  •

The baby was red-faced, old, and ugly. It looked like its father. A girl, said Mrs. Ditch with what sounded like pleasure. Louisa heard the words with disgust. Another girl. The creature screamed more loudly than she would have thought possible, writhed in her arms, would only be pacified by the production of her nipple.

Amelia Newlove stood in the doorway, looking at them both. “I’m not having it,” she said. “I won’t stand for it, Louisa. Him getting away scot-free and you ruined. I won’t have it.”

The baby altered over the weeks. She wasn’t ugly, Louisa saw. She was watchful and calm, pale as chalk. Looked like no one but herself. The little stump at her center dried and shriveled to nothing. Her hair came through black and silky, covering a strawberry mark on the back of her head. Louisa couldn’t name her. They called her Baby.

The two of them stayed in the house, living in what had been Hepzibah’s room, Baby sleeping in a drawer lined with blankets, under the sampler.
And now abideth Faith, Hope, Charity, these three; but the greatest of these is
Charity
.

It was Whitsun. Baby was two months old. Amelia Newlove came into the room and Louisa scrambled to her feet, feeling guilty. She had been playing with her. Kissing her tummy, making funny noises with her lips, which the baby watched with eyes that were serious, as if they had already done a lifetime of seeing, several lifetimes.

“Oh, Baby,” Louisa had said. “How I love you.”

“None of that, Izzy,” Amelia Newlove said. “We can’t have any of that. And anyway, it’s time.”

“Time for what?”

“This can’t go on, Louisa.”

They were outside, cloaks on. Louisa had not been out; the world had altered. It was vast, the grass noisy under their feet and gulls screeching from the cliffs. The scent of life was overpowering, could have choked her. She had Baby under her cloak, wrapped in her arms, asleep.

Louisa followed her mother in the direction of the dower house. Heart thumping, in case Augustus should be in residence, she watched her mother lift the great iron knocker and let it come crashing down, as if the door would split in two, as if it were a tree struck by lightning.

He wasn’t there. His wife answered the door. Louisa knew it was she, although she had never seen her before. Dignified, was what she thought. The woman had fair hair, smooth and thick. A kind face, with lips that made you want to look at them and listen to the words that spilled from them.

“Can I help you?” she said.

“I hope so, ma’am,” Amelia Newlove said, gesturing to Louisa to step forward, reaching in under Louisa’s cloak. “Because no one else can.”

Louisa didn’t remember what happened next. Only the feeling of emptiness in her arms, the warmth and the small weight gone. Gone, as they walked back along the cliff top, the gulls fallen silent, and the grass, the sky so low over their heads Louisa felt it would smother her.

“This time is finished,” Amelia Newlove said. “As if it never happened. Anna’s coming home next week.”

They passed a line of little girls, dressed in white. They fell silent as they passed Louisa, staring at her with round blue eyes.

FIFTY-ONE

Harriet moved backward, away from the sarcophagus, until her hands encountered a wall, a limit to the darkness. Leaning against it, still holding the lamp in one hand, she tried to think. Dr. Woolfe wasn’t here. She should have known it. He’d told her himself that he was going away. She called his name again, her voice high and fearful, and was answered only by an echo.