Awakening (23 page)

Before dawn, Anna walks out into the snowy garden and suspends a rope from a joist in the shed. She tugs on it to ensure it will hold. It's dark in there and darker in the goose pen. The geese are stirring. Anna, speaking softly, stoops to gather Henrietta into her arms, making sure to capture the wings. She clasps the living creature tight to her body: the weighty, solid bulk of her. Anna talks to the creature in a friendly voice; masters the throb of her own heartbeat so that Henrietta's heart won't sense danger. The animals know; they intuit everything. She strokes the glimmering white feathers. Shush, shush, all well, Henrietta my beautiful, this won't take long. A few moments and the light will be out; you won't know; you'll have soared away with the wild geese. Or folded your wings and settled for the night.

Is there room for Henrietta in Heaven? Is there room for Anna?

The loop snares her head. Anna embraces the skull in her palm; the feathers and the oil the goose secretes to insulate her from water; the bone around the brain. We're friends, are we not, my darling? We've known one another a long while. Amy slips a smaller loop over Henrietta's legs, between the first knuckle and the web. Grasping the bird's strong body and holding it near her hip with freezing hands, Anna thrusts her own body back and down, gives at the knees, feels the rope tighten, feels Henrietta's head cleanly part from the neck; no going back; the spinal cord snaps; it is finished;, the creature is dead.

Whereupon powerful wings begin to beat, they thrash at Anna. Henrietta, garrotted, is stone dead; her wings are alive and raging.

‘Leave it hanging now, miss, I should,' Amy advises. ‘Give it a wide berth. That's the way. Just the nerves, see. Stand back now.'

The bird gyrates on the line; white wings spasm.

‘Good. That'll stop the blood from pooling in the carcase. Are you hurt, miss?'

‘A bit winded.' Anna bends double. The dead wing has caught her such a blow that she feels some vessel or organ has burst inside herself. She reels and retches but nothing comes up.

‘Go back in, miss. I can manage fine. She's a fat un for sure.'

‘No, I'm all right.'

Amy releases the body from the crossbar. She drops it, thud, on a plank and begins to yank out fistfuls of feathers. She cuts Henrietta from the base of the neck to between the feet, removing whatever internal organs she can find. The guts steam briefly where she drops them. Cheerfully whistling, Amy wipes the body cavity.

I shall never die, so Mr Kyffin proclaimed.

We are followers of Avicenna, insisted Dr Quarles.

Was Avicenna a Christian?

Animals are our kin, wrote Mr Darwin.

Our Beloved became man and died for us, taught Pastor Pentecost. On the bloody Cross.

Amy lugs the meat back into the house. Bloodspots alongside her boot-prints pit the crust of snow. Anna follows slowly, grateful for the icy air that cools her forehead, and postpones the sick ache she knows will split her skull when she enters the fug of the kitchen. The animals sheltered in the barns, body to body, are hushed. Henrietta's mate Hereward has taken refuge in sleep, standing on one leg, the other retracted against his body for warmth. If one could take him now and kill him in his sleep, he'd never encounter his own mortality.

A wing of smoke-grey cloud stretches above the dawning sun; Anna watches the wing catch fire and burn in a rapture of light. Crepuscular rays beam into the blue, fingers of a bodiless hand. The crust creaks beneath her boots. Nothing can either ripen or decay in such cold. Chill comes sneaking into coat cuffs and collars; intrudes beneath petticoats. Anna feels exposed to insult and abuse. Anyone may open her door now. Any professional gentleman is free to rifle round her intimate spaces. Beatrice has taken away with her all the locks and all the keys.

Where to turn for safety? The vast machine of the world goes throbbing on according to its own laws, darkly obscure, godforsaken.

Which leaves what? No pieties, Anna thinks, only the decencies: to live as kindly as one is able, in the expectation that there's no life beyond this life. No divine plan. No heaven or hell. No safety because we are reliant on madmen and liars for protection. Women, she has heard, can be picked up in the streets near army garrisons and inspected for venereal disease: anyone so arrested is deemed a common prostitute and kept in a Lock Hospital until cured. In case we infect our masters with our pollution and our hysteria. Who will cure our keepers? A woman had better disguise her sanity and keep her own truth hidden in her breast. Better be cunning as a serpent.

A plan begins to suggest itself. The only way out.

Anna's saturated skirt's a dead weight in her hands; her muscles burn as she wrings it out and drapes it on the fender. Outside dense snow begins again; Anna will stay close to the fire for the rest of the day. And sew; yes, she will sew. And be seasonally merry in a composed, sensible way. The skirt steams. The luscious scent of roasting goose fat percolates through the house and mingles with strong coffee.

Anna dips a cinnamon biscuit in coffee and sucks the liquid warmth into her mouth. It can be done. It's the choice of the least of evils.

*

Locked in her bedroom, Anna has excused herself from entertaining company by dedicating her energies to the construction of fancy presents for her nearest and dearest. A treat-factory: no peeking! In this way she can be secure against ambush. But Quarles is ill, Amy says as she delivers a breakfast tray: a hacking cough keeps him from his rounds and his cook reckons he's a right old gawpus of a patient, thinks he's dying and gives Mrs Quarles no end of fuss with his complaints. Oh, what a shame, Anna says, thinking:
for Mrs Quarles.
As Christmas Day nears, Anna allows herself to emerge. Keeping close to her brother, she visits the chapel poor with gifts of food and money.

Yet again there's no room at the inn. Mary undergoes her annual birth pangs and readies herself to deliver the usual promising boy. Ox and ass admire. Carol singers of five denominations tramp the slushy streets of Chauntsey and are rewarded with figs, dates and farthings. Despite herself, Anna is moved; her own trustful childhood visits her, lightly tapping on the heart's door.

Anna greets her guests on Christmas Day dressed in her grey silk gown, with a brilliant red sash around the waist; her hair, gathered into a clasp at the crown of her head, falls in a shine of dark curls down her back. Transformed from Miss Anna into Miss Pentecost, acting head of household, Anna holds herself composed and erect. On her guard. The word
hysteria
will never again occur to any observer. The table groans with good things. Anna has manufactured winter logs for the dinner table: logs containing sugared almond bonbons wrapped in twists of bright paper, on which she has drawn individual Christmas pictures. For Joss a hearty Saint Nicholas sucking a Meerschaum pipe. For Mr Elias an angel with a trumpet. For Jack and Tom Elias, a jolly Santa with the head of a plum pudding. In each log there's a fragment of verse of Anna's own composition, together with a motto and a riddle.

Grace is said. Joss carves the goose. The fire roars. Candles flicker on the mantelpiece, hung with nuts, sweets and tiny bags of fruit. Mistletoe hangs over the door. There's a hubbub of conversation. Everything is as it should be.

‘To absent friends!' Glasses clink. ‘Merry Christmas to Herr and Frau Ritter!
Fr
ö
hliche Weihnachten
to them!'

There's a lull before the plum pudding. Anna gives permission for all to open their Christmas logs.

‘Oh how charming! Anna, you have been a busy bee! What clever fingers you have!'

Anna smiles round cordially. ‘I enjoyed making them for you.'

Mr Anwyl's sermon this morning was rather fine. For one thing, it was short. His words were suffused with a searching sadness as he reflected upon the loneliness of the Christ child in his cold crib, under the shadow, even in his innocence, of the tragic Cross to come. Only thirty-three years would be granted God's son on this earth. Our joy must always be shot through with pain and loss. This is what it is to be human.

‘Whatever's this?' Will holds between finger and thumb a miniature scroll tied with a thread of yellow embroidery silk. Anna has painted the page with a margin of gold leaf.

‘Well, it's a riddle,' Anna smiles with her eyes. ‘Aren't you supposed to be rather good at riddles, Will? Anyway it's specially for you. Can you guess it? There's a prize for guessing.'

Sliding off the thread, he unrolls the message and reads the words, ‘I. WILL.' He studies them with a frowning smile; glances sidelong at Anna. Reaching for the carafe of wine, she brings the neck of the bottle to the lip of his glass, then hers.

‘Now then, what do you call a collection of Baptist ministers?' Mr Elias wonders. He's shaking his log to see if it holds any further treats. ‘A convocation of eagles. An exaltation of larks. So – a … what?…
fraternity
of Baptists?'

‘An unction? A squabble? A derision? A cackle? '

‘A
glory
of Baptists, surely,' says Mr Elias.

The plum pudding advances, burning blue and green. Amy's face, behind the platter, is visited by a fugitive blue light. Joss bounds to help her, inclines towards her and whispers. Jack Elias, pounding a spoon on the table, hurrahs. The eaters, having previously assured one another they couldn't manage one more thing, fetch deep breaths. There might just be room for a morsel. In the candlelight, Will's eyes are bright with charmed surprise. He gazes at Anna, who neither blushes nor drops her gaze. It's her only real chance of safety. Her silk gown spills liquid light in its folds as she breathes.

‘Yes, Anna, I will. I
will
. Truly I will. But –
cariad –
will you?' whispers her neighbour, head bowed close to hers, lifting her hand from her lap, turning it over between both of his, lacing his fingers with hers but gently, ready to disentangle them if he senses a rebuff. ‘Can you be serious? It's not a joke or a game?'

‘The most serious and solemn thing in the whole world. I will, Will, if you will. After all, what else is left to us? And we suit one another down to the ground for we both have feet of clay.'

Chapter 13

Why, Beatrice wonders, does the memory of a stuck pig arise in her mind? Old Bertha as a piglet was a pet to the Pentecosts, trotting round behind them – so droll – like a puppy. And she farrowed year by year, rows of blind mouths rooting at her teats. Never squeamish, Beatrice had always unsentimentally trusted the pig-sticker to despatch his duties with merciful effectiveness. Bertha was different, screaming like a baby as the blood pooled into a bowl, betrayal in her eyes.

Defloration is a performance Beatrice seems to observe from above, hovering somewhere near the ceiling. How can this coupling be thought of as creating
one flesh
?
The prodding of her husband's member against the hymen; the scramble of slick fingers that come to aid penetration and thrill her with a moment's surprising pleasure, before they force a passage and the pleasure dies. The rubbing to and fro; the rasp of the bridegroom's breathing; a stifled grunt; his uncoupling from her, letting in a chill to her hurt tissues; the trickling moisture between her legs.

She has never felt as single.

And ashamed: Christian waited all those years for
this?

But her husband is not insensitive to her wincing shock. When the work is done, Christian fends off sleep, clasping her head against his chest, lullabying her with fond words. By and by, warmth engulfs Beatrice; she dips into dreams of that other man with whom she might have shared a marriage bed, save that Herr Ritter caught her on his knee and claimed her.

When Beatrice awakens, her husband is gone. The first day of their honeymoon – a working honeymoon, beginning here in Leominster – has begun. His nightshirt's folded on his pillow; his comb bisects his brush on the dressing table. Sitting up carefully, Beatrice pushes off the heavy covers, twisting round to see that blood soils nightgown and sheet. What to do about such shameful stains, in a strange house? The place between her legs is raw; her lips and cheeks are chafed by Christian's bristles. A stuck pig. Her breasts tingle, not pleasantly. Beatrice rises, washes and dresses. Brushing her hair and tying it up with a violet ribbon, she strips the bed, folding the sheets so as to hide the stains.

‘It will get better,' he promised. ‘It will hurt less and less. Soon our relations will give you pleasure, darling, I hope. For now, yours is the sacrifice to our love.'

Beatrice hesitates on the stairs, hearing the murmur of conversation. The married ones will be knowing; the unmarried curious. Pondering the bloodied sheet, the maid will smirk. But I am Mrs Beatrice Ritter, she thinks, bracing herself. Miss Pentecost is extinct. I've put on the new woman and put off the old. For years Beatrice has been an ageing maiden in quest of a playfellow, flirting with suitors, enjoying an increasingly sterile sense of mastery, conscious of slow blight spreading through her being. Smiling with teeth that are growing discoloured.

Godly and familial love embraces Mrs Ritter as she enters the warm kitchen where her hosts sit informally round a deal table with a splendid fire. Her husband gives Beatrice his seat, brushing her hand tenderly in passing. Martha and Tabitha Jones, the servants of the house, staunch Baptists, are treated as near-equals by their employers and take their places at table with the rest. Talk is all of Awakening. Sparks are kindling the villages and market towns of mid-Wales and the Marches. Liverpool is on fire. Christian is spoken of as a leading light. Beatrice, breakfasting on kedgeree and hot spiced rolls, listens as Christian speaks of his time in Jamaica as a very young man with the great anti-slavery pastor, Mr Knibb; the present war in America; his hero and, he likes to feel, his friend, Henry Ward Beecher.