Awakening (13 page)

Mirrie, in this bohemian setting, seems more youthful, less burdened. You've come out into the light somehow, Anna thinks, and can be yourself. But, strangely, it's Lore who surfaces in her mind. Ahead on the steep main street a young woman in a tawny shawl, fair hair all down her back, has a look somehow of Lore. When Anna comes abreast, of course the girl's nothing like her, not really: a tanned fishergirl of thirteen or so. Before they reach their cottage, Anna has seen another phantom Lore, climbing some steps to the gentry houses on the cliff.

‘Is something troubling you, Anna?' Will asks. ‘Is it because I foisted myself on you? Are you concerned at my staying the night? I can easily go back.'

‘Why on earth shouldn't you stay? How is this different from Sarum House? You're always staying over.'

In the fisherman's cottage perched high in the village, low ceilings and doorways force you to stoop. The floor slants like a ship in a high sea: drop any object and it rolls westwards over salt-eaten floorboards. The walls are simply whitewashed and there's no clutter of ornaments or small items of furniture, none of the modern conveniences they are accustomed to – neither wringer, mangle nor copper. No servant. Miriam declined the offer of a little girl from the workhouse as a general servant.

Mirrie's appearance is distinctly odd: she adapts her clothes to serve for a life of practical activity. After all, in sultry weather, why should women be trussed up like sacks of potatoes?
She pads around the house in bare feet, her opulent form shown candidly beneath light fabric. Anna kicks off her own shoes. Why not? While Mirrie makes a feint at cooking, Baines cleans. Not much of either, when it comes to it. Either they order in a mackerel supper or rely on bread and cheese, salad and apples. To Anna everything tastes delicious, especially the conversation, and she's hungry all the time. Anything may be broached; thoughts extemporised. Nothing is censored or assumed. You have the tonic feeling of being listened to.

Getting ready for bed – the women are to share while Baines sleeps with Will – Anna watches Miriam take the brush to her thick, pale brown hair.

‘Let me.' She takes the cool weight of it in her hand. ‘Your hair is lovely.'

‘It will do,' Mirrie shrugs. ‘But it's nothing compared with yours. So dark, so shining. Darkly shining. You are fearfully beautiful, Anna, I suppose you know that. And I am … not.'

‘Don't say that. We don't know how we appear to others. People love you. You are – I can't find the words – but – properly alive, Mirrie. Very few of us are.'

There's a pause. Is Miriam looking to be told she's beautiful too? Physically she just isn't. And she's so sensitive that she'd detect and resent a fib. Mirrie meets Anna's eyes in the mirror and asks, ‘Anna, did you read
Freedom Seeks Her
?'

‘I couldn't, Mirrie. It was … lost. And I tried to replace it, along with the others, but the edition is all sold, apparently, and they're waiting for the new one.'

‘How, lost? All of them were lost?'

Anna blushes deeply. It seems treacherous to Beatrice and degrading to yourself to admit that your sister censors your reading. Anna can hardly admit that she's left her new books packaged up in the disused coal hole in the cellar. ‘All your books – went. I've replaced them of course, except
Freedom Seeks Her
. Please say nothing more about it.'

‘But I will replace the copies now. Of course.
You must know, Anna, money is the last thing I have to worry about.' Mirrie fetches a copy of
Freedom Seeks Her
from her box and places it on Anna's side of the bed. ‘Oh and by the way, Anna, I like your Mr Anwyl so very much. Such a freshness and warmth.'

Mirrie is soon asleep; Anna can't drop off. She opens Baines's novel.

Can darkness shine? You wondered when you saw the lustre of her black hair in the sun, burning in some lights blue in its depths. But you wondered more when you heard her speak. Miss Cartwright was thought by some headstrong, by others original, and by all a dangerous presence in the town.

Can darkness shine?

Is that really me, Anna asks herself, a version of me, in Baines's book? Mirrie said, ‘Your hair – darkly shining.' Was that a quotation? Anna leafs forward, skimming for the story. It's nothing like her own life but possibly something like Miriam Sala's: a wealthy and idealistic young gentlewoman has an impetuous tongue, a freethinking intellect and an impulse to ardent actions which offend her kith and kin. Miss Cartwright is a great maker of well-meaning mistakes who donates a vast sum to an ill-run orphanage and marries a philanthropist who looks like Baines Sala.
Freedom Seeks Her
is written with rueful irony, long, sinuous sentences and a godlike commentator.

Baines has fused herself and Miriam in a composite figure. Or rather he has clothed his wife in Anna's body and whether to feel flattered or queasy, Anna cannot decide.

After that there's no sleep, though Anna cannot continue to read for long. At dawn she rises before anyone else is awake; takes some bread and cheese and lets herself out. Here you can come and go as the spirit takes you and nobody asks why or where. And perhaps I'll never go home, she thinks, to the reins and halter, but find some cottage of my own and read and study and write.

Flocks of waders scurry in and out of a chalk-turquoise sea. The beach in the early light is primrose yellow. From the quay Anna climbs towards the ancient fort of Pendinas, or The Island as the Cornish call it, although an isthmus links it to the mainland. In the harbour fishermen haul in their catch, calling to one another; and a drowned fleet shifts and slides beneath the boats on the glassy water. Their voices liquefy into the shush-hush of the waves; Anna can hear her own footsteps and the rustle of her dress. She's suspended in a dream of light and space, on an edge where earth, sky and sea meet.

The turf of the promontory is pitted with puffin burrows and strewn with their droppings. From Pendinas she looks across the immense sheet of bright water. Dolphins break the surface once, twice, and are gone. Smoke rises from a steam boat. A cormorant dips down, emerging with a silvery fish. With a swift motion, he turns it in his beak and swallows it head first.

Yes, I'll start to be myself now. At long last.

Chapter 8

Yes, she has said yes.

Apparently. For he sat her squarely on his knee, as though this – in the deserted college chamber – was the most natural thing in the world. He would not allow her to rise until she agreed to marry him. The intimacy of it appalled Beatrice, the outrage. Through layers of petticoat she was aware of the man's legs, his trousers, the intimate parts of him. And if someone should come in! But he knew, Christian said, with quiet certainty, that their union was God's will. ‘
Allerliebste
Beatrice, I have loved you now for seventeen years. During all that time I've never been drawn to any woman but yourself. I have never polluted my imagination with the thought of another. To me that would have been an adultery. I asked your dear Papa's permission to marry you when you were twelve years old.

‘Ten, I was ten. Or eleven.'

‘Twelve. Nearly thirteen. And Mr Pentecost, whom I revered, readily gave it. In my heart you are already my wife, for God has predestined you to be my helpmeet in this world … and all it needs is for you to say the words.'

‘It wasn't fair,' she broke out.

‘What wasn't fair, dear heart?'

‘You took my – childhood. I was a child.' She recalled the jouncing on his knee. She was a big girl, with a blue ribbon in her hair, wearing her Sabbath silk dress. Calling out with high-pitched excitement and distress in his iron arms.

‘Not so. I was the soul of rectitude. Your dear father was ever watchful. I expressly stood back and waited. But I knew you would consent – as you have.'

And, according to Christian Beatrice has somehow spoken the words. She cannot go back on them. But when? It must have been in the strange moment when her struggle to break away from his tight arms turned into a kind of silken collapse into the safety of his lap, his breast. Dwarfed there, she settled against him, while saying that, no, this must not be; they must pray; she could not consent.

‘You are right. Of course we must pray together.'

Immediately Christian released her. Beatrice rose, hot-faced, smoothing her skirts, feeling her hair with her fingertips in case the roll with its black satin ribbon had fallen askew. Her heart thumped around in her ribcage. She tottered and he steadied her; conducted her, so it seemed, down onto her knees, next to him, facing the window. He knelt beside her. Grey light fell through the pane onto the two figures as he prayed aloud for a blessing on their partnership on earth and in heaven. Kneeling there at his side, motionless beneath the changeless light, Beatrice opened her eyes and felt that she and he had turned to stone, condemned to kneel together like alabaster funerary figures of spouses in Salisbury Cathedral.

And when they rose from prayer, it seemed that Beatrice Pentecost and Christian Ritter did so as engaged people. And
soon
, the wedding must be
soon
, the bridegroom-to-be urged, holding her hand, looking down with earnest rapture. Not only because he has waited so many years but also because he may be called upon, within a month or so, to return to New York to aid Mr Beecher.

‘But … the arrangements, Christian. Where are we to live?' Doubtless one should consider the lilies of the field which neither toil nor spin but are cared for by their Heavenly Father. Considerations of trousseau and the preparation of a house must seem unworthy in the eyes of Beatrice's husband-to-be. Often when she was a child Christian had corrected her concern for a pretty ribbon or some other frippery. He always did this in a sad, gentle way. What would Jesus think of the ribbon? he'd wonder. Did Mary and Martha wear ribbons? What was the opinion of the contrite Mary Magdalene concerning ribbons? But the fallen world is the real world, Beatrice tells herself: it's where we live. There are practicalities to be sorted out, social decencies to be observed. Wedding guests, the wedding breakfast. The matter of a settlement of her property on herself, the importance of which was always emphasised by Papa.

‘
Liebling
, cannot we do things simply? I don't expect you to accompany me on all my travels, you know that. Your home as it stands is perfect for us. Your own mission may be in Chauntsey, for women have missions as well as men. My wants, in externals, are few. And our dear Anna, of course, will remain in her father's home. How happy Lore would be, if only she could know.'

But when did I consent?

Beatrice, letting down her hair before the mirror in her dingy room at Mr Leek's lodging house, scowls at her candlelit reflection. She hardly knows herself, transitional between states. Hotel doors close; pipes gurgle; the footsteps of two clerks sharing the room above Beatrice's creak as they traipse to and fro. Fragmentary messages arrive from other and cryptic worlds. At what moment did I utter the words that will make me, in a month's time, Frau Beatrice Ritter? She speaks the name aloud, a name of dignity and worth, aristocratic-sounding. The hairbrush in her hand staggers in mid-stroke; her lips quiver. And whether excitement or dismay is uppermost, Beatrice cannot say.

Oh Anna, if only you were here. Anna would listen with sympathy, in the light of her compendious knowledge of her sister. For she knows me through and through, Beatrice thinks, both the best and worst of me, the dark corners where I hide even from myself. And Anna would mediate if necessary. There may still be a chance to retract, before the month gets underway.

But if Christian is right and this is God's will for us, what can I do but let the insignificant drop of me pour into the ocean of him? God has judged Beatrice along the way but she has sidestepped His chidings. Now is the time of reckoning. Since earliest childhood Beatrice has read providences in everyday events – but with a wanton eye, making it up as she goes along. Only Beatrice knows the grubby secrets of her own hard heart; her need to predominate; her lip-religion, her pretence of heart-religion. The Almighty has never been deceived. For a quarter of a century He has observed Miss Pentecost punishing her younger sister for being born. And now God brings the elder to heel. He has taken over. He has spoken for her. Beatrice's Master has delivered her to a kind earthly master. Isn't there some relief in that?

*

Mr Spurgeon himself takes their hands and holds them for a moment. ‘Ah,' he exclaims, looking bright-eyed from one to the other, ‘So you two dear souls are called to this high and honourable estate of marriage. I recommend it! Heartily! For
whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favour of the Lord!
For five years Susannah and I have been bone of one another's bone, have we not, Wifey? Our engagement was sealed with a gift from my wife to myself. Would you like to tell them what it was, my dear?'

‘I gave you a complete set of John Calvin's
Commentaries
, did I not, my love?' replies Susannah Spurgeon. She's a trim, upright figure, with pale, intense and rather anxious eyes, neatly and expensively clad in grey silk. The mother of twin boys. The companion of Greatness. ‘For, you see, Miss Pentecost, my darling had led me to the cross of Christ for the peace and pardon my weary soul was seeking. I trust that is well said, husband?' She appeals to her spouse with her dignified head tilted in appeal.