Sleep, Pale Sister

29

Five days.

For five days I waited. I could hardly eat; I was afraid to sleep in case I screamed my thoughts aloud in the night, and laudanum was the only rest I dared allow my disordered brain. I could see Henry was suspicious: sometimes I caught him staring at me and sometimes his eyes met mine with an air of calculation. Even a month ago I could not have borne the pressure of his questioning gaze; but there was a new strength in me, a sensation of change, a new darkness in my heart which filled me with terror and rejoicing. I felt protected by it as the formless butterfly gropes in the darkness of its hard chrysalis, as the wasp shifts in its silk cocoon and dreams uneasy vengeful dreams of flight.

And I? Would I fly? Or would I sting?

In my dreams I flew, floating among endless, shifting skies with my hair dragging behind me like a comet’s tail. And in my dreams I saw Henry Chester in a child’s room filled with balloons and the uneasy half-memories which had assailed me as I slept in Fanny’s house came back to me with a startling clarity. Voices spoke to me from the dark and I saw faces, heard names and welcomed them like old friends; there was Yolande, hair cropped short and figure straight as a boy’s, smoking her endless black cigars; there was Lily, the sleeves of her man’s shirt pushed up to reveal her thick red forearms; there was Izzy and Violet and Gabriel Chau…and, clearer than all the rest, I remembered Marta, floating through the dim air with balloons in her hands, floating closer and closer as Fanny stroked my hair and sang…I had been there that night as Henry came to me with black and guilty lust in his eyes…I knew I had been there and I welcomed the subtle change which was coming over me with a fierce joy.

There were times I was afraid of losing my mind. But I always held firm: when laudanum was not enough to combat the onset of hysteria and when I ached with loneliness for Mose and Fanny and when my fingers trembled to shred the almost-finished Sleeping Beauty tapestry to bloody rags, then I crept to my room where, at the bottom of one of my drawers, I had hidden the letter from Mose and the note from Fanny. Reading them again and again I knew that I was safe, that I was sane: that soon I would be free of Henry’s influence and his threats…I would be with friends who loved me.

On Thursday, I pleaded a headache in order to go to bed early and, at half past ten, I crept out of the house. At a reasonable distance from the house I hailed a cab to Crook Street, arriving there at about eleven as instructed. As soon as I passed the threshold I began to feel that spiralling, floating sensation again, the elated terror of my laudanum-dreams, the naked formlessness of my nocturnal flights. A girl opened the door, gaping, her face oddly distorted in the greenish gaslight; another girl’s face appeared behind hers, and behind hers another, until there were a multitude of disconnected features fanning out down the passage…I stumbled against the step, keeping my balance by leaning on the door-jamb; a dozen hands reached for me and, as they drew me into the passage, I caught sight of my face in the mirrors bracketed to the wall on either side of the doorway: a line of images receding into infinity; white face, white hair, cronelike among the pretty faces, painted lips and bright ribbons of the other girls. A door opened abruptly to my left and Fanny was at my side.

‘Hello, my dear,’ she said, taking my arm to lead me into the parlour. ‘And how are you?’

I grasped the stiff green satin sleeve of her gown to steady myself. ‘Oh, Fanny,’ I whispered. ‘Just hold me for a moment. I’m so frightened. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.’

‘Shhh…’ She pulled me towards her in a rough, one-handed embrace, and I could smell tobacco and amber and Pears’ soap on her skin, a strangely reassuring combination which somehow reminded me of Mose. ‘Trust me, my dear,’ she said softly. ‘Do as I say and you’ll be safe. Trust no-one else. You may not understand yet what we are doing but, believe me, I do. Henry Chester has done enough-I’ll not let him hurt you again. I’ll give you your vengeance.’

I was hardly listening: it was enough to feel her strong arm around my shoulder and her hand smoothing my hair. I closed my eyes and for the first time in many days I felt I might be able to sleep without fear of my dreams.

‘Where’s Mose?’ I asked sleepily. ‘He said he’d come. Where is he?’

‘Later,’ promised Fanny. ‘He’ll be there, I promise. Here. Sit down for a while.’ I opened my eyes as she pushed me gently but firmly towards a small couch in front of the fire. Gratefully, I leaned back against the cushions.

‘Thank you, Fanny,’ I said. ‘I’m so…tired.’

‘Drink this,’ she suggested, handing me a small goblet filled with a warm, sweet liquid fragrant with vanilla and blackberry, and I drank, feeling a pleasant relaxation spread through my shaking body.

‘Good girl. Now you can rest awhile.’

I smiled and allowed my gaze to wander lazily around the little parlour. It was a tiny room, furnished all in shades of red, with the same Oriental opulence as the rest of Fanny’s house. There was a fine Persian rug on the floor, fans and masks hanging on the wall and a Chinese fire-screen half shielding the glow from the chimney. The furniture was of cedar and rosewood, upholstered in damask and scarlet. Megaera and Alecto were sitting in front of the screen on a mat, and on the table stood a tinted glass vase of red roses. For a moment, as I raised my hands to my face, I saw that, miraculously, I too had become a part of the change: my skin was tinted a glorious shade of flame, my hair a scarlet sunrise in the lamplight. I was filled with warmth and well-being. Almost unconsciously I reached for another drink of Fanny’s punch, feeling new energy trail thin fire down my throat. A sense of sudden, intense clarity came over me.

‘I do feel much better now, Fanny,’ I said in a stronger voice. ‘Please, tell me what we are going to do.’

She nodded, sitting down on the sofa beside me in a rustle of skirts. The two cats immediately came to her, pressing their soft faces into her hands and purring. She clucked and chirrupped at them, calling them by name.

‘How is Tizzy?’ she asked suddenly. ‘Is she treating you well?’

‘Yes,’ I replied with a smile. ‘She sleeps on my bed at night and sits with me when I’m alone. Henry hates her, but I don’t care.’

‘Good.’ For a second Fanny’s generous mouth seemed to tighten, almost cruelly, and she watched the cats on her lap with a fierce, hard intensity. I felt that she had completely forgotten my existence.

‘Fanny!’

‘My dear!’ The smile was back, her expression as serene as ever. I began to doubt I had ever seen it change.

‘What am I to do when Henry comes? Will I hide, as Mose said?’

She shook her head. ‘No, my dear, you will not hide. For the moment you will trust me, knowing that I care for you and would not allow you to be hurt. But you will have to be brave and you will have to do exactly as I say. Will you?’

I nodded.

‘Good. No questions, then. Promise?’

‘I promise.’

For an instant my eyes strayed from hers and were caught by something at the back of the room, something which from the corner of my eye seemed to be a bunch of balloons. I started, glancing involuntarily at the spot, and I felt Fanny’s grip tighten, just a little, on my arm.

‘What’s that?’

There were no balloons. Simply a circular stain in the top far corner of the room, next to the door.

‘Shh, my dear,’ said Fanny coaxingly. ‘Don’t fret. You’re quite safe here.’

‘I thought I saw…’ My words were heavy, each syllable a formless shape pushing its way through the decaying fabric of my exhaustion. ‘I saw balloons. What…what do balloons…?’

‘Shh. Close your eyes. That’s right. Shh…That’s right. Sleep, my dear. Sleep. It’s your birthday, and there will be balloons. I promise.’

30

The clock on the mantelpiece said a quarter past eleven. I looked at her, asleep on the sofa, and it was as if the bones beneath Effie’s face had shifted to become less pronounced, blurred, like an unfinished child’s face.

‘Marta!’

She shifted slightly as I called her, raising her fingers to her mouth in that peculiarly childish habit she had always had.

‘Marta, time to wake up.’

Her eyes opened, puzzled at first, then fixing my own with a sweet trust which tore at the heart.

‘Have I been asleep?’ she queried, rubbing her eyes.

‘Yes, Marta; you’ve been asleep for a long time…’ I felt my heart leap in elation; it was Marta’s childishly deep voice, blurred now with sleep and gently accented with a nostalgic echo of my mother.

‘Is he here yet?’

‘No, but he will be soon. We have to get you ready for him. Come with me.’

She was docile, following me without a sound, her hand in mine. I prayed I was doing the right thing.

‘First we have to make sure he doesn’t recognize you,’ I told her, leading her up the stairs to my own room. ‘I’m going to lend you one of my dresses, then we’ll change your face and your hair.’

‘All right.’ Her sweet smile did not waver. ‘And I won’t be afraid?’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘you won’t be afraid. You’ll be strong and brave, as I told you.’

‘Yes…’

‘He won’t even recognize you. And when he asks your name, what will you say?’

‘I’m Marta.’

‘Good.’

‘This is called henna, Marta,’ I said as we rinsed her hair. ‘It will darken your hair so that Henry won’t recognize you. When Henry has gone we’ll wash it out with something which will make it go clean again. All right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Now I’ll help you put on this dress of mine: I haven’t worn it for a long time, and I was younger and slimmer then. It’s pretty, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And after that we’ll put some powder and rouge on your face to make you look different.’

‘He won’t recognize me.’

‘Not now you’re older.’

Imagine the image from a photographic plate as it transfers the picture to paper, growing darker and darker from white to palest gold, from amber to sepia. Imagine the moon as she turns her thin profile slowly to full-face, pulling the tides with her. Imagine the chrysalis as it cracks open the larva’s hard coffin and shows its wings to the sun. Does the imago mourn for the caterpillar it once was? Does it even remember?

31

It’s a lie: I don’t dream. There are people who don’t dream, you know; my nights here in Highgate are slices of oblivion where even God may not intrude. If God is unable to reach me, tell me, why should she pace my dreams, smelling of lilac and deceit, soft and murderous as a poison shirt? I don’t see her: I don’t feel her hair brush my face in the small hours of the night; I don’t hear the sounds of her skin touching the silk of her dress; I don’t glimpse her from the corner of my eye, standing at the foot of my bed.

I don’t lie awake, wanting her.

I thought I was past the age of searching for Scheherazade: I had ploughed a thousand furrows in a thousand girls…young girls fair and dark and red-headed, plain and beautiful, willing and unwilling. I opened their secret flesh, fed them and fed from them; but still the Mystery eludes me. Every time I arose from their fetid couches, sated and raped by their arid hunger, I knew it: there was a Mystery, but the more I delved the less I uncovered of its essential self. They watched me with their flat, stupid eyes, hungrily, knowingly…the Mystery gone like the mythical castle in the fairy tale, never in the same place for longer than an hour. I begin to understand King Shahriyar, who married his brides in the evening to execute them the next morning: perhaps, like me, he thought to perceive a part of the Mystery in the eviscerated remains of the night’s orgy; perhaps like me he crawled home too pale in the pitiless light of day with nothing but blood and semen on his hands. But he and I, brothers in disillusion, had this in common: we never lost hope.

Maybe if by magic I had been able to shrink back to the size of a foetus, to swim back into the red darkness of my mother: then, maybe, I might have understood the Mystery without the need to bludgeon and destroy…but I have no magic. My last impossible dream was Scheherazade, renewed each morning like the Phoenix from the embers of my lust, to deliver a new message of hope and acceptance, every night a new texture, a different face: a thousand and one unbroken vials containing an elixir of awesome, Biblical potency…the Mystery of eternal life.

Do I dream of her?

Perhaps.

I took nine grains of chloral before I left the house: I was strangely apprehensive, my hands straying constantly to my mouth, like a child taken in some misdemeanour. Strange thoughts crossed my mind like ill omens: as I passed the cemetery I thought I saw the figure of a child all in white, standing barefoot at the gate, watching me. I cried to the coachman to stop: looking again I realized that there was no child, merely a white gravestone just within the walls, reflecting the moon. As I watched, a cat leaped up on to the stone and stared at me with a glittering, feral gaze over the dark spaces. Magnified into an unreal intensity by the clear night, it seemed to flex its jaws at me in fear or warning as I drove past. In my fanciful state I almost turned back, but a hunger which was far from purely carnal drew me: I could not turn back. The house was calling me.

Fanny showed me into the hall, as usual managing to disconcert me with the sheer scale of her vivid green gown, her tall plumes, her scent. As always her house was a hive of odours and for a moment I was drowned in perfumes. Then Fanny led me gently down the passage to one of the little side-parlours, a room which, in nearly ten years, I did not remember ever seeing.

‘I have someone here I think you might like to meet,’ she said with a little smile.

I felt my jaw tense: there was something in her expression which disturbed me, a kind of quiet assurance. I shook my arm free from her surprisingly strong grip, losing balance as I did and striking the door-frame with my shoulder. Fanny smiled again, her face in the lamplight distorted into an expression of vengeful glee.

‘Mr Chester…’ Her voice was solicitous and the expression-if it had been there at all-was gone. ‘You don’t seem well today. I do hope you’re not sickening?’

Sickening. In her accent the word gained a twist of eerie sibilances which insinuated themselves into my mind like snakes. I took her arm again to steady myself.

Ssssickening.

‘Yes, thank you, Fanny,’ I said randomly. ‘I’m very well. Very well indeed,’ I added, feeling the world stabilize. I forced a jovial smile. ‘So, who am I to meet?’ I enquired in a bantering tone. ‘Some new protégée of yours?’

Fanny nodded. ‘In a way, yes,’ she agreed. ‘But first I suggest a taste of my special punch to lift your spirits. Do come in.’ And lifting the latch of the parlour door, she opened it and drew me in after her.

The light was reddish. It was almost as difficult to adjust my eyes to as total darkness. Incense was burning, an erotic scent like patchouli, and as Fanny guided me to a sofa and poured the drink-she seemed to have no trouble finding her bearings-I glimpsed gilt hangings studded with fake gems on the walls, brass ornaments on the furniture and one statue in particular, a huge bronze circle in which a four-armed god seemed to dance. In the flickering red light I saw him move.

Fanny held out a glass of warm punch to me and I took it without taking my eyes off the statue.

‘What’s that?’

‘Shiva, god of the moon,’ replied Fanny. ‘And of death.’ I drank to hide the abrupt return of my unease. The liquid was sharp, cramping my tastebuds; and beneath the sharpness was something almost bitter.

‘Idolatrous nonsense,’ I said more loudly than I intended. ‘It looks…quite savage.’

‘The world is savage,’ said Fanny lightly. ‘I find him a most appropriate god. But if he disturbs you…’ her voice trailed off, questioningly and with a touch of mockery.

Stiffly I said: ‘Of course not. It’s only a statue.’

‘Then I’ll leave you for the time, Mr Chester.’ She cleared her throat politely, and I remembered to pay her, fumbling guineas out of my pocket. Ever-ladylike, she palmed the coins as deftly as a conjuror, seeming hardly to notice them. Then she turned to the door.

‘I’ll allow Marta to introduce herself,’ she said, and left.

For a moment I watched the door in bewilderment, expecting the girl to come in, then a tiny noise behind me alerted me and I spun round, half spilling the drink in a glittering arc around me. At that moment I was certain, with a superstitious conviction, that the statue of Shiva had come to life and was reaching for me with his four arms, his eyes alive with malicious intent. I almost screamed.

Then I saw her sitting in the shadows, hardly visible against the heavy folds of an Indian tapestry. I regained my composure as best I could, trying to restrain my anger at being caught unawares. I finished the drink Fanny had given me and put the glass on the mantelpiece; by the time I turned again I was calmer, able to smile reassuringly at the girl, squinting to make out her features in the troubling light.

I saw that she was young, maybe fifteen or so, and very slim and slight. Her long, loose hair looked black, but her eyes might have been any colour, for they reflected the red lamps like rubies. Her eyelids and eyebrows were heavily painted with kohl and gilt, and her skin had a kind of golden warmth which I associated with gypsies. She was wearing a silken kimono of some dull red material which accentuated her slim, childish figure, and around her neck and arms and in her ears heavy crimson stones smouldered and sparkled.

For a second I caught my breath at her beauty.

‘M…Marta?’ I faltered. ‘Is that your name?’

‘I’m Marta,’ she said. Her voice was a whisper, slightly hoarse but with a soft country accent tempered with a touch of aloof mockery, rather like Fanny’s own.

‘But I…’ Realizing: ‘I met you before. I went into your room by accident.’

No answer.

‘I hope you’re feeling better.’ The innuendo I hoped to put into the phrase fell sadly flat.

‘Are you…’ Again I was lost for words. ‘Are you new to…I mean…Are you…?’ I could sense her mockery again, heady and bewildering.

‘I am here for you,’ she murmured, and for a moment I imagined that she had come to take my soul, like the Angel of Death. ‘Just for you.’

‘Ah.’ Absurdly, I felt diminished, inarticulate as a schoolboy with a whore many years older than himself. Almost…almost as if this girl were not a fifteen-year-old slut but the virgin keeper of some immortal mystery. I shifted uneasily in my chair, wanting her but unable to speak. She was in control.

‘Come closer, Mr Chester,’ she whispered, ‘and I’ll tell you a story.’

‘The young man set off in search of the Witch, and from afar the Witch saw him in her glass and smiled. She had waited so long for him to come, and for three days now she had felt his presence everywhere, in the milky winter sky, in the misty moor, in the chestnuts roasting by the hearth and, this morning, in the eye of the Hanged Man. It was hardly anything: a glance, no more, a semblance of a knowing wink, but for the Witch it was enough, and she waited, throwing another brick of peat on to the fire, scanning the cards for the first glimpse of his face.

‘Others saw him come and shook their heads: they did not know his story, though it would have made a fine tale for a winter’s evening, and they did not want to know it-only the blameless or the mad go in search of witches, and the gifts they offer are not always easy to bear. But the young man was rash and confident, striding out over the moor with the eagerness of one who has never strayed from the path. There was anger in his heart, and revenge, for beneath his handsome face there was a monster: a monster which came shambling out of the darkness every night to feed upon human flesh. The Witch’s enchantments had created the monster, and the young man knew that only by slaying the Witch could he ever break the curse.’

She paused for a moment, laying her small, cool hand on my face. I felt her arms creep around me so that she was whispering into the hair at the back of my neck, making the hackles want to rise. The feeling was both erotic and disturbing.

‘So…’ I could hear the smile in her voice as she continued: ‘The young man travelled across the moor until he came to the spot where the Witch lived; and when he saw her red caravan in a hollow of the hills he felt a thrill of joy and terror. It was almost night and, under cover of the bloody sunset, he crept to her caravan and looked in.

‘The Witch was waiting. She saw him at the door and could not suppress her laughter as he raised his sword.

“‘Prepare to meet your end, Witch!” he cried.

‘The Witch stepped out into the light, and the young man saw that she was beautiful. She parted her robe…like this.’

With a superb gesture she dropped the kimono to the floor. For a moment she stood before me like a pagan goddess, her skin red copper in the rosy light, her hair loose, brushing her waist. Behind her Shiva stretched out his arms in graceful, savage desire. In a single, fluid movement she reached for my shirt and unbuttoned it: I, like a victim of bewitchment, found myself unable to move, assailed from all sides by the vibrant sensuality which clung to her, almost visibly, like St Elmo’s fire. As she turned her face towards the light I saw her through the red veil of her hair: it reached into my entrails and dragged me screaming towards her…And yet there was no love, no tenderness in her eyes: only a kind of hunger, a fathomless elation which might have been lust or vengeance or even hate. I found I didn’t care.

She sat atop me like a scarlet Centaur, face turned towards the ceiling, every muscle straining towards completion. I felt her devouring me; the pleasure was huge, annihilating, agonizing…

‘…And when they had finished the young man drew out his dagger and cut the Witch’s throat so that no-one would ever know how she had fed the monster within him, nor how eagerly it had fed.’

She was behind my back once more, the fall of her hair streaming over my left shoulder, the fragrance of her sweet, warm skin overwhelming me. I hardly heard what she was saying, but was content simply to be in her presence.

‘Then the young man slept for many hours, and when he awoke he found that it was daylight and the caravan was empty. He turned to go, but suddenly he caught sight of the Witch’s card-case lying open on the table. An inexplicable compulsion seized him to open up the case and see the cards. They were beautiful, each one smooth as ivory and painted in exquisite detail.’

At any moment I expected the usual rush of self-loathing to break upon me: all my lust was spent and I never dallied with whores after I had used them…I rarely even wanted to see them again. But this was different. For the first time in my life I felt a tenderness for this woman-this girl-something I had not experienced even with Effie. Especially not with Effie. Something in me wanted to taste her, to know her: as if the mere act we had performed had been nothing…nothing revealed, nothing spoiled. I realized with sudden, exhilarating clarity, that this was the Mystery. This girl; this tenderness.

‘On an impulse the young man spread the cards on the table in the pattern he knew as the Tree of Life. The Hermit, the Star, the Lovers, the Knave of Coins, Love, Lust, the High Priestess, Change…Suddenly the young man felt uneasy. He did not want to see the last card, the Fate card. His hand trembled as he reached out towards the card and turned it over, gingerly, afraid to see it.

‘Le Pendu: the Hanged Man…He looked away, chilled. It meant nothing! The cards had no power over him.

‘And yet, his eyes turned once again towards the card on the table, slyly, fearfully.’

I touched her neck, her arm, the taut curve of her thigh.

‘Marta…’

‘The face on the card seemed familiar. He looked again. Dark hair, clear brow, even features…He stepped back a pace.

‘No! No. His imagination was playing tricks on him. And yet, looking at the card from a distance, he could almost believe that he recognized the face of the Hanged Man…was almost sure he did…’

‘Marta.’

‘Yes?’

‘I love you.’

In the dark, her kiss was sweet.

32

At first I was furious.

At myself, for supposing that Fanny would give me any real help, at Effie for allowing herself to be dragged into such a dangerous, idiotic masquerade, but most especially with Fanny. I damned her to six kinds of hell when she told me that Effie was in the room with Henry and demanded to know what game she was playing.

She was maddeningly aloof.

‘But your game, my dear Mose,’ she replied sweetly. ‘We’re fabricating a scandal so that you can discredit Henry and lay hands on his money. Isn’t that right?’

It was, but I didn’t want the whole thing exposed before I got any profit out of it, and I said as much.

‘It won’t be exposed,’ she said with a smile. ‘Henry won’t recognize her.’

That was ridiculous. Henry was married to her, for God’s sake!

‘To tell you the truth,’ continued Fanny, ‘I don’t think you’d recognize her. She’s a very good…actress.’

I uttered an expletive which only made her smile.

‘Just watch,’ she urged, with gentle mockery. ‘I assure you that your precious money is quite safe.’

There was nothing else but to do as she asked. There was a peep-hole set into the wall behind a hanging tapestry and from it I could see into the parlour without any danger of being seen. As I set my eye against the hole I recall wondering uneasily how many other peep-holes existed in the house, and how often they were put into use.

Not that I expected anything more than a ridiculous confrontation between Effie and Henry: the girl would break down or go into hysterics as soon as he recognized her. I’d be lucky if I escaped arrest and, if Henry wanted it, here was the finest possible excuse to put his wife away in an asylum for ever. What was more, if she was goose enough to think that he might not recognize her, she belonged in one.

I was so engrossed in my bitter thoughts that for some time I did not really notice details of the actors in the little shadow-play Fanny had staged for my benefit. After some time had elasped, however, I was able to observe with a dispassionate, acrid curiosity, and I was even able to feel a small resurgence of my sense of humour. When I came to think of it, the whole situation did seem blackly comic. I might be in prison within the week for either bankruptcy or fraud, but I was able to feel the beginnings of a sour grin somewhere in the region of my stomach.

I could not hear what was being spoken, but my eyes had adjusted to the red light, and I could distinguish the features of both Henry and the girl.

Effie?

I squinted through the tiny hole, frowning. ‘That’s not Effie.’ I had spoken aloud without meaning to, and I heard Fanny chuckle to herself by my side. I looked again, trying to see the resemblance.

It definitely wasn’t Effie. Oh, there was a superficial resemblance, something in the figure and the shape of the face, but this girl was younger, her hair darker. In the deceitful light it might have been any shade between black and auburn, but it looked thicker than Effie’s. The eyes were darker, too, and heavy with make-up, the brows were thick and black. But the real difference was in the way the girl moved: she had the fluid, snakelike grace of an exotic dancer, the teasing manner of the born courtesan. Effie was awkward, questing, passionate; this girl was cool, elegant in every movement but remote, perfectly, almost painfully in control.

But just as angry relief threatened to burst out in further imprecations against Fanny I saw that after all it was Effie, but a facet of Effie I had never suspected. For a second I was overcome with admiration-and something a little more primitive. I wanted this girl, this burnished gypsy. At that moment, perhaps, I wanted her even more than I wanted Henry’s money…at least, it’s the only explanation I can offer for the fact that I did not put an end to the dangerous charade that very night.

When Henry finally left the house, Fanny collected Effie from the little parlour and took her up to her own dressing-room to help her change. There I saw the cunning array of devices with which they had created the person they called ‘Marta’: the paints, powders, dyes and ointments which Fanny removed using a variety of creams and lotions. Then I watched as Fanny washed Effie’s hair in a sharp-scented, clear distillation so that the dye they had used could be rinsed out with clear water.

Effie was passive throughout, uninterested in my observations or even my praise for her spectacular performance; and, when all traces of her disguise had been removed she fell into a heavy, somnolent state as if she had been drugged, hardly responding when I spoke to her. With a sharp glance at Fanny I wondered whether ‘Marta’ was not in fact a creation born of Fanny’s strong aphrodisiacs. I wondered, not for the first time, what Fanny’s game really was.

It was three o’clock when I was able to take Effie home. She spent some time drying her hair in front of the fire before Fanny declared her ready to leave, and I remember watching them both: Effie with her head in Fanny’s lap; combing out her drying hair in long, sweeping strokes; Effie in her turn stroking the cats at her feet in unconscious imitation. The thought struck me that they looked alike in the symmetry of their posture and the quietude of their expressions, like sisters, like lovers. I was excluded, unconsciously, to be sure, but excluded; and although I was not in love with Effie I felt a kind of troubled anger. I was so deep in my thoughts that when Fanny eventually spoke I started guiltily.

‘Now, my dear,’ she said softly, ‘it’s time to wake up. Come now.’

Effie, who as far as I could see had not been asleep, stirred and lifted her head a little.

‘Shhh, yes, I know you’re tired, but you have to go home now. Remember?’

Effie made a small sound of acquiescence or protest.

‘Come now, Effie. You’ll be back soon.’

Effie looked up and, as she saw me, the confused expression dropped from her face and she smiled with more vivacity than I had seen all night.

‘Mose!’ she exclaimed, as if I had not been sitting there beside her half the night. ‘Oh, Mose!’ And I’ll be damned if she didn’t leap up there and then and fling her arms around my neck.

I was inclined to give her a sarcastic reply, but at that moment I saw the expression of complex satisfaction on Fanny’s face and decided against it. Something was brewing in that witch’s head of hers, and I wasn’t going to be fool enough to ignore it. A dangerous woman, Fanny Miller: remember that, if you ever meet her.

So, as I said, I had to take Effie back home before the servants woke up: her hair was nearly dry by now and she put on her old dress and cloak. She seemed almost exhilarated, though she was evasive about the events I had witnessed in the parlour. In the cab I ventured to ask her a direct question and she looked at me with an odd expression of blankness.

‘Ask Marta,’ she said simply, and would say no more.

I forbore to tease her. I expect she knew I had been watching and felt a certain embarrassment to talk about it. It was natural enough, I suppose. No, it was Fanny I needed to talk to: she was the one who had engineered this situation. Effie was simply a tool. It was late, but as soon as I had delivered Effie to her door I turned and made my way back towards Crook Street.

33

I knew he’d come back. I’d seen him watching us with six kinds of hell in his eyes and I knew he wasn’t at all satisfied. He liked to be in control, did Mose. He didn’t like to be kept in the dark and he hated being used-he was bright enough to see that in a way he had been used, and it was important for me to keep him sweet until I didn’t need him any more.

I was careful to show more warmth than at our previous meeting: to tell the truth, it wasn’t difficult. My plan had succeeded even better than I had expected, and when Mose arrived I was feeling elated and suffused with energy. He, on the other hand, was cool and wary, suspecting a conspiracy but not certain where to begin looking. He walked into the parlour, hands in his pockets, his brows winged in a slight frown.

‘Mose, what a pleas-’

‘That was a dangerous game to play with my future, Fanny,’ he interrupted drily. ‘Perhaps you’d like to explain what in hell’s name you were trying to do?’

I gave him my sweetest smile.

‘Temper, Mose,’ I chided laughingly. ‘What are you complaining about? You were never in any danger, and you know it.’

‘That’s hardly the point,’ he snapped. ‘We had an agreement, and I expected you to keep it. In any case, you took a gamble and I was the stake: what if Chester had recognized Effie? I would have had the devil to pay. Chester’s an influential bastard-do you think he’d let me go with a rap on the knuckles? He’d do his utmost-’

‘Oh, stop whining,’ I interrupted cheerfully, ‘and do sit down. I can’t bear to crane my neck to talk to you. I took no gamble. In that light, in that disguise, no-one could have recognized Effie. Especially not Henry. The idea of finding his wife in such a situation is beyond him.’

‘Maybe. But why take the risk?’

‘Sit down!’ I repeated.

Sullenly he obeyed, and I suppressed a smile of triumph. I had him!

‘Do you remember when we planned this?’ I asked. Mose nodded. ‘You asked me my reason for being involved in this.’

I could tell he was watching me intently.

‘Years ago,’ I explained, ‘Henry Chester…well, I shan’t tell you what he did, but it was the worst thing anyone has ever done to me, and ever since I have ached for revenge. I could have killed him, I know that; but I’m getting old. I don’t want to finish on the scaffold. And I want my vengeance to be complete. I want the man to be utterly destroyed. Do you understand?’

His eyes were bright with curiosity and he nodded.

‘I don’t want his life. I want his position, his career, his marriage, his sanity. Everything.’

Mose grinned reluctantly. ‘You don’t do things by halves, do you, Fan?’

I laughed. ‘Indeed I don’t! And our interests do coincide in this, Moses. Do what I ask and you’ll get your money, plenty of it. But…’ I paused to make sure he was listening. ‘If you decide to try to work on your own, or if you do anything to overset my plan, I’ll hurt you. I don’t want to, but this is far more important than you. If I have to, I’ll kill you. I warned you once before. Do you remember?’

Mose grinned his engaging, rueful grin, and I knew he was lying. ‘Do I? I’d know better than to cross you, Fan.’

A half-promise. His innocent expression rang as true as a lead sixpence, but it was better than nothing. Believe me, I was telling the truth. I quite liked Mose in spite of his patently two-faced nature-but I hoped he did know better.

‘I want Henry to meet Marta again. Next week.’

‘Oh?’ His voice was smooth and non-committal.

‘In fact, I want Henry to see a great deal of Marta.’

His sense of humour was beginning to reassert itself, and I saw him grin. ‘I see.’ He sighed. ‘At least, I see the entertainment value of the situation, but not how it will help either of us, especially as it will mean that I can’t touch Henry for any money.’

‘Be patient,’ I told him. ‘You’ll get the money soon enough. You see, Mose, my dear, thanks to a little forward planning and some simple chemistry, Henry is already half in love with Marta.’

He laughed at that. ‘That would be a joke,’ he said mischievously.

‘And one which, in a little time, you could turn to your own advantage,’ I prompted.

The sullen look was quite gone now: I could tell that Mose’s keen sense of the ridiculous appreciated the irony of the situation, and for that reason, at least, I knew he would go along with me. For a while, anyway. And as long as I had Mose I had Effie.

Effie, who was to be my Ace of Swords.

I once read-it must have been in a fairy tale-that every man is secretly in love with his own death, hunting it with the desperation of a thwarted lover; if Effie had not told me, in Marta’s voice, that Henry Chester was the Hermit, I should have known it as he stumbled home that night with that look of dark radiance in his eyes. Because I knew then that in some part of his guilty soul he had recognized her-no, not Effie, not the poor little blank thing waiting for a stronger mind to possess her, but Marta, my Marta, fluttering into life behind his Effie’s eyes…Yes, he recognized her, the old Hermit and he was drawn as a man is drawn to the grave’s cold seduction. I had ways of seeing in those days-I still do when I feel inclined to use them-and I felt his bleak longing and fed it. Oh, there are herbs to dim the mind and roots to waken it, potions to open the eye of the soul and others to fold reality into delicate shapes like paper birds…and there are spirits, yes, and ghosts, whether you believe in them or not, pacing the corridors of a guilty man’s heart waiting for a chance to be reborn.

I could tell you a tale of how I watched my mother breathe life into a clay man, whispering strange memories into his brainless head, and of the real man who went mad; or of the root the pretty girl ate to speak to her dead lover; or of the sick child who left his body and flew to where his father lay dying to whisper a prayer into the old man’s ear…all that and more I’ve seen. Shake your head and talk of science if you like; fifty years ago they’d have called your science magic. It shifts, you see, the uneasy tide of change. It carries us on its dark and secret waters. The tide gives up its dead, given faith and time. All we needed, the both of us, was a little time. For myself, to bring her closer. For Marta, time to grow strong.

We waited.

34

Strange, how time can fold in upon itself like linen sheets in a cupboard, bringing the past close enough to the present for events to touch, even to overlap. As I walked back from Crook Street to Cromwell Square I was suddenly smitten by a memory so intense that I could hardly imagine having put it out of my mind for so long: it was as if the red-haired girl had unlocked the sleeping half of my mind and freed the monsters of my past.

My exhilaration was a bitter thing, loaded with dreamlike images of damnation: the guilt I could bear-it was as familiar as the lines on my palms-but guilt was not all I felt. I felt a capering, Gothic joy. For the first time I revelled in my guilt, displaying myself as shamelessly as a penny whore before the stern image of my father in my soul. In the ochre light of the waning moon I ran, that hot, twisted nugget of joy burning my guts. In the silence I called her name, sacrilegiously: ‘Marta!’

I seemed still to feel her touch on my skin; her scent was still in my nostrils, the scent of mystery and sulphurous delight…I laughed for no reason, like a madman-indeed, I felt my sanity begin to elude me, as a shy virgin may hide beneath her veils.

And I remembered.

My first Communion, only four weeks after that secret, shameful act in my mother’s room…Summer had faded into a decadent, overripe autumn: fat brown wasps lurked treacherously around the apple trees and even the air had a yellowish, misty cast and a sickly, sweetish smell which told of heavy rains after the harvest and fruit left to rot on the branch.

There were six of us taking Communion that day, four boys and two girls: we had to form a procession from the village to the church while the choir followed, singing hymns, and the families brought up the rear holding candles. It was a proud day for my father-though my mother, who disliked the heat, would not be present-and I knew better than to complain; but I hated the white robe, so like a girl’s nightdress, and the surplice which went over it. I hated the hair-oil which Nurse had plastered over my head: the smell of it was as overripe and sweet as the rotten apples, and I was afraid wasps would come to hover around my head, silent and bloated. The day was hot and I felt sweat rolling from my hair and face into my surplice, prickling and trickling from my underarms, my stomach, my groin. I tried to ignore it; to listen to the sweet, slightly off-key voices of the choirboys (my own voice had broken only a week before: there would be no more choir for me) and the deeper, sterner notes of my father’s singing. I tried to remember that today was a special day for me; that today I would be accepted as a full member of the church, that next Sunday, when the adults stood to take Communion, to sip the wine from the jewelled chalice and to hold out their mouths for the mysterious white discs of the Host, I would be among them; I would taste the Blood and the Flesh of the Redeemer.

Suddenly I began to shiver. I had read about transubstantiation in my father’s books, about the miracle of the Blood and the Flesh. But only now did the terrible image return to me. What would happen when I bit into the clean white wafer and felt it turn to raw flesh in my mouth? Would the wine change to the thick consistency of blood as the goblet touched my lips? If so, then how could I stop myself from fainting cold on the steps of the altar?

I had a momentary, nightmarish image of myself, white as a corpse, spraying blood and vomit out in great, rasping gulps as the congregation watched in horror and amazement and my father stood in shocked silence with the plate of wafers in his hand.

I almost fainted there and then. Maybe I was being punished, I thought, with desperate, guilty logic. I thought no-one had seen me in my mother’s bedroom; I had not confessed it-could not confess it to my father, not even at the confessional-and I had thought in my wicked stupidity that I had escaped punishment. But God had been there all the time, God had seen it all and now He was going to make me drink blood, and I knew I was going to faint, really faint, because I could almost taste the dull slick of blood in my throat and if I defiled the Host I’d be damned for ever and ever…

With a tremendous effort I swallowed my terror. I had to go on. I had to go through with the ceremony. If I didn’t my father would find out what I had done because I would have to tell him-and the thought of what he would do to me then goaded me out of my paralysis and set me half running towards the church. It wasn’t blood, I told myself furiously. It was just cheap wine. And it wasn’t the dead flesh of some old, crucified corpse. It was wafers, wafers because bread went stale too fast; I’d seen them in the casket Father kept in his special vestry. I looked up and saw the church’s maw ready to engulf the six of us, dressed in white for all the world like six little white Hosts, and I suppressed a blasphemous urge to giggle. Mentally I thumbed my nose at it:

(I don’t care…I’m not scared…

You can put your stupid wafers you-know-whe-ere)

Then I really did giggle, so loudly that my father glanced sharply at me and I immediately turned the giggle into a cough. I was feeling much better already.

We waited for what seemed like hours as the service droned on and on, my father’s words like the heavy, sugar-soaked wasps in the apple orchard. I fixed my eyes on the two girls sitting opposite me to the left of the aisle: there was Liz Bashforth, plain and red-faced in a white dress several sizes too small, and Prissy Mahoney, whose mother had ‘lost’ her husband ten years earlier. Rumour had it that there hadn’t been any husband, only a fine-talking Irish good-for-nothing who had run away to London, leaving his ‘wife’ and daughter to fend for themselves. Either way, Prissy’s mother seemed to have fended for herself all right, because Priss was dressed in a brand-new Communion robe with lace and white ribbons, white gloves and little white shoes. As I looked shyly at her over my hymn-book I could see the way her hair fell loose in two neat sheaves over her breasts. The word made me blush a little, but I was at an age where my curiosity about girls by far exceeded the little real knowledge I had and I found myself looking at her again, my eyes creeping relentlessly towards the little swellings at her beribboned bodice. She looked back at me almost smiling, and I turned away hastily, blushing deeper. But I always looked again.

I was hardly paying attention when at last my father gave the signal for the Communion. I stood up hastily, taking my place in the line without taking my eyes off Prissy. As we made our way towards the altar I noticed that she was still aware of my looking at her, flicking her auburn hair over her shoulder with careless precision, her hips rolling in a childish parody of seduction.

I was so enthralled that for a moment I hardly noticed that the other boys were watching her too, with audible sniggers. For a moment I was genuinely bewildered; then I froze in shock. There was blood on the back of Prissy’s white communion dress, seeping through the shiny silk just at the point where her legs met her body: a small irregular keyhole where blood had trickled slowly through the fabric during the hours she sat on the bench. I felt a sour panic cramp my stomach and the whole of my body was suddenly coated in slick ropes of sweat. It was as if my blasphemous thoughts about the Host had taken shape; I stumbled in the aisle, fascinated and horrified at the bloody keyhole in the back of Prissy’s dress, unable to take my eyes from it. I was reminded in that nightmarish instant of my father’s musical toys and I imagined Prissy Mahoney as the dancing Columbine in her blue-and-white dress, set into perpetual motion by my own sacrilegious thoughts. I saw her begin to move, at first jerky and graceless, then with the inhuman fluidity of her awakened mechanism, her hair flying, her bare legs kicking obscenely at the air, her breasts jiggling loosely at the lacing of her bodice while all the time she smiled her parodic, gruesome smile and the blood flowed down her legs as if it might never stop…

Much later I learned about menstruation and, although I never lost my disgust of the thought, I came to understand that poor Prissy was not the monster my twelve-year-old self thought her. But then I was totally ignorant and I simply knew that God was watching me with an eye as huge and pitiless as the sky; knew I was damned for mocking the Host and for daring to come unshriven to Communion. The sign was blood, like the blood of the chalice and the blood in the heart of the wafer, blood which was the legacy of the Original Sin, blood, blood…

They told me later that I collapsed screaming to the floor of the aisle. My father was as icily composed as ever, ordering me to be removed to the vestry while the others took Communion and then carrying me home to bed without a single comment. I lay in bed for twenty-four hours while rumours chased from one end of the village to the other: I was possessed by devils (why else would I have fallen into a fit at the sight of the Host?); I was insane; I was dead.

No doctor came to see me, although my father sat by my side all the time with his Bible and his rosary, praying through my fever and delirium. I do not know whether I spoke in my sleep-if I did, I cannot remember, and my father never spoke of it-but when I awoke the next day he hauled me out of bed without a word, washed and scrubbed me and dragged on my Communion clothes. In silence we went to the church and, in front of a good-sized crowd of onlookers, I took the wafer and the wine without the slightest incident. Thus the rumours were-not silenced, for in a village community no scandal is ever really dead-muted, at least when my father was within earshot. The official story was that I had suffered a slight epileptic seizure, and this was judged an adequate excuse to keep me away from school and the influence of other boys. My father’s eye, like God’s, was on me all the time; but he never mentioned the episode in the church, and for the second time I felt an uneasy, contemptuous elation at my narrow escape. As I grew older I forgot the incident altogether.

Until now.

Prissy Mahoney had been dead for twenty years; my father was dead and I would never again set foot in the village of my birth…so why should I feel the events of that long-forgotten summer so close, so immediate? I was a fool, I told myself savagely; that was all. There was no-one to judge me now. No-one.

But my mood had changed, and although I tried to recapture my earlier feeling of carefree, shameless joy I could not, reaching Cromwell Square just before dawn with a sour stomach and heavy eyes.

I looked into Effie’s room as I came in and was shaken by the bitter depth of my reaction as I saw her, white and peaceful among her tumbled sheets, innocent as a child. What right had she to look innocent? I knew her, and that narrow, talismanic keyhole of flesh between her legs; knew her sickening impurity. The hypocrite! If she had been a real wife I should not have had to make my bed with a Haymarket whore tonight or walk home in the cold dawn pursued by the Furies of my remembrance…

But here my rage struck an obstacle: Marta was no Haymarket whore. I knew that, even as my mind tried to lash my temper into a greater frenzy. I remembered her touch, her voice, the taste of her skin with a lover’s intensity…

‘Marta…’ The sound of my voice made me flinch; I did not know I had spoken aloud. Anxiously I glanced at Effie. Alerted by my voice, she seemed to stir beneath the coverlet, turning restlessly on the pillow with a little childish sound. I held my breath at the door, willing her to sleep. For a minute or two I stayed there motionless, afraid to disturb her; then I pushed the door open, very gently, and stepped out into the passage.

Suddenly I felt something touch my leg and, in an absurd twist of near-panic, I thought of the Columbine doll with Prissy Mahoney’s face, reaching for me in the dark. I almost screamed. Then I saw the eldritch gleam of its eyes in the shadows and swore softly. Effie’s damned cat again!

I hissed at it, and it hissed back, then it returned to its element, the darkness, and I crept into the safety of my own room.

35

When I awoke, the sunlight was streaming through the open window and Tabby was sitting at my bedside with a tray of chocolate and biscuits. I reached within my memory for the dreams of the past night, but found nothing but a few intense, fragmented images: Fanny sitting by the fire with Meg and Alecto, my head in her lap; Mose’s face, ochre in the firelight; and Henry’s mouth smiling with a tenderness he never showed after our marriage…Bright images, disassociated as the pictures in a pack of scattered cards…and yet I felt a sensation of release and well-being I had not felt since the baby died.

I sat up abruptly, feeling suddenly ravenous. I drank the chocolate and ate all the biscuits, then I asked Tabby to bring me some toast.

‘I’ll swear, I’m feeling quite recovered this morning,’ I said gaily.

‘I’m very glad to hear it, ma’am, I’m sure,’ answered Tabby carefully, ‘but I hope you won’t go tiring yourself out before you’re well again. Mr Chester did say…’

‘Mr Chester? Where is he today?’

‘He said he’d go to his studio to work, and wouldn’t be back till tonight.’

I hoped my relief was not too apparent. ‘I see,’ I said, with a fair assumption of carelessness. ‘Well, I think today I’ll be well enough for a short walk. The fresh air will do me good, and it’s a lovely day, don’t you think?’

‘Mr Chester did say, ma’am…’

‘He said I wasn’t to tire myself so soon after my illness. I think I am wise enough to judge for myself whether a short walk will do any harm.’

‘Very good, ma’am.’

I hugged myself in secret delight, feeling as if I had scored a small victory.

I allowed Em to dress me in a smart gold-coloured walking-dress and matching bonnet. Looking at myself in the mirror I noticed how pale I had become in the past few weeks, how shadowed my eyes seemed under the brim of the bonnet, and I smiled bravely at my reflection to brighten the haunted expression which even now seemed to lurk behind the bones of my face. Enough, I told myself. I had been ill, but that was over now: Mose had put it right, and soon, we could…I passed my hand over my eyes, feeling suddenly confused. What had we done, Mose and I? Had I gone to Crook Street the night before? If so, what had I done there?

A wave of dizziness washed over me and I held on to the dressing-table to stop myself from falling. A rogue memory emerged from the confusion of my thoughts: Fanny washing my hair in a basin and drying it with her fingers…watching red ochre wash from the pale strands of my hair…No, that must have been a dream. Why should Fanny want to dye my hair? I frowned at my reflection, trying to remember, but as I looked I seemed to see my eyes change colour, my hair darken, my skin warm to the pale gold of China tea…I felt my fingers grow numb, my jaw drop, my soul slip out of my body like a leaf out of a book…and I knew I should remember…But it was so much easier to drift like a balloon at the mercy of every wind, to hear Fanny’s gentle voice telling me to sleep, that it was all right, that I could forget, that it was all right…

I felt the nervous double-jerk which drew me back into my body, and I forced the memory back into the dark. I didn’t want to remember.

(Shh it’s all right you don’t have to you don’t need to it’s all shhh…)

I didn’t need to remember. Fanny had it all under control.

It was mid-morning by the time I left the house; I reached Mose’s rooms at noon. He was just getting up, his eyes reddened from lack of sleep and his fair hair falling messily over his pallid face. Even in that condition I was struck, as always, by the purity of his features, his almost feminine beauty-feminine that is, if you were to discount the perverse lines around his mouth, the narrowed, troubling eyes and the perpetual mockery. Through the gap in the doorway he flashed his smile at me-half a smile, at least, for half of his face was all I could see through the narrow opening. A breath of stale air and cigar-smoke drifted from the doorway.

‘Effie! Wait a minute.’

The door closed again, reopening a few minutes later to reveal Mose’s untidy room. He had obviously tried to create some semblance of order, and the windows were open. He gave me a careless kiss on the mouth and sprawled across a chair, grinning.

‘A drink of brandy, Effie?’

I shook my head, watching Mose splash a generous dose of dark liquid into a glass, downing it in one easy, practised gesture.

‘To celebrate,’ he explained, pouring another glassful. ‘You did magnificently last night, my dear.’

Last night?

He must have seen my puzzled expression, because he grinned even more broadly and raised his glass to me in a mock salute.

‘I understand your modesty, my dear,’ he said teasingly. ‘Most inelegant of me even to mention it. Still, it’s thanks to your spectacular performance that we have dear Henry in our pockets. All you have to do is to show a little patience and he’ll be ours. Yours,’ he amended emphatically, finishing the little which remained in his glass. ‘All yours.’

Some instinct warned me not to reveal my loss of memory. I needed time to think.

‘Are you saying that your idea worked?’

‘Better than that,’ said Mose, ‘Henry swallowed the whole thing, hook, line and sinker. What’s more, Fanny says he fell for Marta like a ton of bricks.’ (A troubling, intimate wink in my direction.) ‘A couple of weeks and we’ll be able to make dear Henry pay whatever we like.’

‘Oh!’ I was beginning to understand that, at least. ‘But what about me? You said…’

‘Patience, my dear.’ Somehow I found his smile too knowing. ‘Give me a couple of weeks to work on him. Then, with the money…How would you like to live in France, my dear?’

I stared at him, confused, ‘France?’

‘Or Germany, or Italy if you prefer. They say there’s a good market for painters in Italy.’

‘I don’t understand.’ I was almost in tears: his grin now seemed monstrously gleeful, that of a troll.

‘Of course, Henry might not allow you a divorce,’ he continued relentlessly, ‘so you might never be able to come home. But what would you miss? Who would miss you? I’m asking you to be Mrs Moses Harper, you goose,’ he explained, as I stared blankly at him. ‘With Henry’s money we could establish ourselves comfortably enough, and with my paintings we could make a decent living. Of course, there’d be a scandal, but by that time you’d be long gone-and would you care?’

I continued to stare. I felt like a clockwork toy with a faulty mechanism, filled with the potential for movement but frozen into stupid silence.

‘Well,’ said Mose, after a long silence, ‘that will teach me to be so arrogant. I rather thought I had charisma. Now I see that you’d rather elope with the muffin-man.’

‘No!’ My words tasted coppery and unfamiliar in my mouth, but the syllable forced itself between my teeth with desperate vehemence. ‘I…I never thought…I never imagined I’d escape from Henry, especially after you said…’

‘Never mind what I said, Effie. I said I loved you, do you remember that?’

I nodded dumbly.

‘I also knew that with the state of my finances at the moment there was no possibility of my being able to marry you. I could have been clapped up in a debtor’s prison at any time. What sort of a marriage would that be for you?’

‘So you-’

‘So I lied to you. I told you I didn’t want to marry you. It hurt-but not as much as it would have hurt you if I’d told you the truth.’ He smiled reassuringly at me and put his arm around my waist. ‘But now, if I can persuade Henry to share just a little of his wealth, we’re set for life. Besides, Henry owes you something for all the misery he’s put you through.’

Mose was persuasive and I allowed myself to be drawn into a delightful double fantasy, sketched by Mose’s cunning hand, in which we lived in Paris or Rome or Vienna and Mose made a fortune from his paintings and Henry Chester was a dim memory.

Still the thought of the previous night (‘your spectacular performance’) continued to flutter uneasily at the edge of my consciousness, distracting me. I felt oddly remote, and for a moment I felt dizzy, grabbing hold of a chair-back to steady myself. Then an image struck me, an image which was also a memory, potent as neat gin, and I reeled with the impact of that image upon my mind-

I was in my room again, ready for bed, with my favourite doll tucked under my arm. In the corner I could see the balloons Mother had bought for my birthday bobbing against the window in the slight draught. I was excited and happy, but I felt an undercurrent of uneasy guilt, because the Man had seen me on the stairs; and although the Man had seemed friendly enough I knew that Mother would not have wanted me to ask him into my room.

I shook the memory away with a violent toss of the head, and for an instant the world stabilized again, locking into sharp, clear focus. Then everything tilted and I was-back in the room with (the hermit) the Bad Man, but this time I was not afraid. Instead there was a salty, coppery taste in my mouth which I took a moment to recognize as hate. But (Henry) the Bad Man was watching me, and I narrowed my eyes into languorous Egyptian cat’s-eyes and tilted my smile at him like a Chinese doll. The Bad Man didn’t recognize me (Henry didn’t recognize me) and soon I would grow strong…

Suddenly the scene dissolved into a jangled, incoherent kaleidoscope of fragmented scenes: I felt my memories explode outwards in every direction and there rose a sound, murmurous at first but rising in pitch and intensity until it became a maniac wail, ululating on the very brink of sanity. And in the voice I found that I could hear words, thoughts, desperate questions and formless answers. It was a barbed wall of sound against which my sanity hurled itself meaninglessly, trying not to hear, trying not to remember.

(will i fly or will i)

(oh mummy the bad man don’t let the bad man oh)

(sting sting sting stingstingstingstingst…)

(it was henry henry killed her henry killed)

(marta)

(me it was me but i’m back i’m back and now)

(oh we’ll have fun now we’ll learn to sting little sister we’ll)

(fly?)

(because henry killed my…)

(marta)

(marta)

(marta)

My scream was high and despairing, a volley of wasps in flames, a razor slash in the eyes of sanity. I was dimly aware of hands clawing my face and a voice-my own-screaming from a whistling eyrie of madness:

‘No! Get out! Get out! Get out! It’s Effie! Effie! Effie! Eff…’ screaming my name over and over again.

Then I heard Fanny’s voice in my mind, the voice of my mother, my anchor, my friend. A cottony, delirious sensation of relief fell over me as all sound in my mind was stilled. I could almost feel her hands moving gently through my hair, soothing the terrors away.

(shh it’s all right little girl it’s all right you don’t have to remember anything)

(but fanny there was someone else in my mind and i was)

(shh not for long now just until we deal with henry)

(but i)

(shh besides you like it you want it)(…?)

(he hurt you too frightened you too now you have a friend who understands)

(marta?)

(don’t be afraid we understand we can help you we love)

(love?)

(oh yes let me in i do love)

Imagine a snowflake floating down a deep well. Imagine a flake of soot falling from the dim London sky.

(i love)

(i…)

Then nothing.

36

Poor Mose! And poor Effie. I suppose I should have expected something of the sort. I did try to make Effie forget everything she had done while she was in her trance-I didn’t think it would do her any good to remember, but I found that I had much less control over her than I thought. Many people believe that a person can be forced to do almost anything under the influence of a powerful mesmerist: that isn’t true. Marta was Effie in every real sense, or, if you like, Effie had become Marta. I like to think that she and my Marta were linked in some way, perhaps because of their shared experiences with Henry. I like to think that Effie was a natural clairvoyant, and that my Marta was able to speak to me, to touch me through her…but I am aware that the voice of reason says otherwise. This spiteful, frosty little voice says that Marta was born only from my own suggestions and Effie’s dependence on laudanum, that she saw only what I wanted her to see and acted only on my orders. Maybe so.

To me the voice of reason sounds a little like that of Henry Chester, weak and petulant. I say that today’s science is yesterday’s magic, and today’s magic may be tomorrow’s science. Love is the only constant in this uneasy rational world, love and its dark half, hate. Disbelieve me if you like, but we called Marta, Effie and I, out of love and hate; we gave her a home for a while and she allowed us a glimpse of a mystery. You may think I used Effie for my own ends: rest assured I did not. I love her as much as I love my own daughter, knowing them to be the two faces of the same complex woman. Together we make the Three-in-One, the Erinyes, inseparable and invincible, bound by love. It was love which prompted me to make Effie forget what I had shown her; love, too, brought her back to us when she needed her mother and sister. I knew it would happen sooner or later. It just happened sooner than I thought.

It was late afternoon on Friday when Mose arrived at Crook Street looking unkempt and rather agitated. Effie had come to visit him and had apparently suffered a kind of fit which disturbed Mose greatly. I gave him a simple explanation I thought he would understand; the voice of reason was eloquent enough to stall any of his qualms for a time at least, and he left, somewhat dissatisfied, but docile enough. Effie, he told me, was back in Cromwell Square with instructions not to leave the house before the following Thursday, and I had enough trust in her to be certain she would not give Henry any cause for suspicion. All we needed was a little time.

37

I saw less of my wife that week than ever before. I couldn’t help it: suddenly I could not bear her presence, her scent, her voice. I had tasted stronger flesh now and Effie’s sick pallor appalled me. She smelt of laudanum all the time now-she was taking the drug in frequent doses, unprompted by me, and I noticed that she tended to become increasingly nervous as the day progressed and her medicine lost its potency. She ate little and spoke less, accusing me with her smoky eyes. The cat was always on her lap like a malignant familiar, fixing me with its narrow yellow stare. In spite of myself I became infected with the delusion that somehow they were judging me, that they could see into the very channels of my brain.

I could not bear it, and I began a further correspondence with Dr Russell, expressing concern at my wife’s mental condition. Even now I am not certain why I did so. Perhaps I realized even then that life with Effie would be unbearable once I had fallen under Marta’s spell. I saw Russell several times and told him that his new drug, chloral, was exactly what I needed to combat my insomnia-his boast that it had no side effects was not idle-and I discussed Effie’s seeming addiction.

Russell showed polite, respectful interest at all times, his keen grey eyes gleaming with absorption as he enumerated the various manias to which the female of the species is commonly prone, citing cases of hysterical catalepsy, schizophrenia and nymphomania. The weaker intellect of women, he told me, renders them more susceptible to diseases of the mind and the thought seemed to fill him with the abstract delight of the true academic. It occurred to me that in Russell I had a potentially invaluable ally. A pilgrim in search of more and more exotic cases of insanity, a collector of shrunken heads. One day-and the thought was barely formulated but stored away, delicately, for future use-he might be persuaded to add Effie to his collection. I put his letters to one side in a locked drawer of my desk, with the deliberate nonchalance of a poisoner laying aside the murderous vial for later use.

I spent whole days in my studio, trying to finish The Card Players, and for the first time in my life I painted without a model. Instead, I reached into my memory for her half-remembered features, sketching directly on to my canvas in oils and crayon. I found that she took form magically beneath my fingertips as I recalled the texture of her hair, the warmth of her skin, the careless turn of her head. I made no studies but painted directly, with a lover’s delicacy: the reddish light glowed on her cheekbones, emphasizing the vulnerable, arrogant set of her jaw, the pale quivering bow of her mouth; a stray flicker from the fire reflected coals from her eyes. Her mouth was slightly tensed as she looked over the table at the other player, but there was a sardonic arch to her dark brows which spoke of laughter or triumph. I painted her figure in dark colours in order to emphasize her face-perhaps the most expressive features I have ever painted-and I highlighted her cascading hair with a nimbus of red which gave her a dangerous, ambiguous radiance, like a burning city. For five days I worked feverishly at my Queen of Spades, darkening the finished areas of the canvas so that the viewer was led to her face, only her face.

Once, very fleetingly, I fancied I saw that certain resemblance to Effie in her mobile, shifting features: but no sooner had I formulated the thought than I knew that I was wrong. Marta was so vibrantly alive that she could not be compared with my poor little Beggar Girl-as well compare a flame to a sheet of paper. I knew instinctively that if they were to meet, Effie would be as utterly consumed by Marta’s voracious energy.

During that week I burned for her and at night I cramped and clawed under my heavy bedclothes with the Eye of God fixed like a nail into the top of my head. My sheets burned with the sulphurous dank of my body and my stench appalled me, but still I longed for her.

For six nights I borrowed my sleep from the chloral bottle-I still remember the midnight-blue glass, cool antidote to all scarlet dreams. Wasted by the potency of my fever and my lust, I met Thursday’s dawn with a sense of doomed anticlimax. It was a mistake to go to her twice; I knew it now. There was no Scheherazade, no faery-footed damozel with eyes like garnets. Today she would be a penny whore, cunningly lit and robed, but a whore nevertheless, all her tender alchemy gone. Today I knew it.

I arrived at midnight: I saw the clock in the hall tick over the crucial minute and I shivered in foreboding as the hour began to strike. As the notes sank into the silence a door opened at my back and Fanny emerged, vibrant in yellow brocade, her hair like vines. Two of her familiars were coiled around her ankles, and I tried to avoid their silent, contemptuous gaze as Fanny led me, not to the red parlour as before, but up the stairs to a room on the first floor which I had never seen before.

She tapped on the door, then, wordlessly, opened it. It was almost dark, the light from the passageway momentarily destroying the subtle lighting inside the room. I heard the door shut firmly at my back and for an instant I looked around, disorientated. The room was large and almost bare, lit by several gas-jets shielded by blue glass globes. I was reminded for a moment of the chloral bottle, promising cool oblivion, and I shivered. It was not the thought, I realized: the room was cold, the dead fire screened by a dark Chinese lacquer panel. Rugs partly covered the floor, but the walls were bare and the room seemed dead, with none of the opulence of the red parlour. The only furniture I could see was a small table upon which stood a blue decanter and a glass.

‘Please pour yourself a drink,’ hissed a voice behind me, and suddenly she was there-strange how inconspicuous she could be when she chose. Her black hair (how could I have thought it was red? It was crow-black, black as the Queen of Spades) fell straight as rain between her spread hands. She was pale as smoke in the deathly light, her mouth a blur, her eyes a startling cobalt in the Gothic pallor of her face. Her dress was made of some stiff, panelled fabric which stood out against her vulnerable flesh, and its opulence was somehow disturbing in the bleak surrounding, as if she were a forgotten Coppélia in a deserted workshop, just waiting to be set into motion.

Mechanically I poured myself a glassful of the liquor in the cornflower-blue decanter-it was tinselly and sharp, with the stinging taste of juniper-and struggled once again to overcome my sense of unreality. For a moment I wondered if there were chloral in the drink, for I felt myself sink in watery abandon, the figure of Marta a swaying ghost in that undersea light, a drowned mermaid with the smell of weed and decay in her floating hair. Then her cold arms folded around me and I felt her mouth fleetingly against mine, her voice whispering inaudible obscenities in my ear, and I collapsed against her, clutching her dress, pulling her down with me on to the floor, on to the dim sea-bed, her blood a rushing in my ears, her flesh a welcome suffocation of my sense of sin.

When at last I was spent we lay together on the soft blue rugs and she whispered a long, dreamlike tale to me of a woman who changed with the moon, growing from young girl to beautiful woman to hideous crone as the month went by…then I wanted her again and I plunged into her like a dolphin into a wave.

‘I have to see you again. I have to see you again soon.’

‘Next Thursday.’ Her whispering voice is matter-of-fact, passionless, almost coarse: the voice of a penny whore planning business.

‘No! I want to see you sooner than that.’

She shakes her head abstractedly. The dull brocade of her dress clings to her knees and ankles and above that she is naked as the moon, her nipples the most delicate azure against her powdery skin.

‘I can only see you once a week,’ she says patiently. ‘Only on Thursdays. Only here.’

‘Why?’ Anger spills out from me like acid. ‘I pay you, don’t I? Where do you go for the rest of the week? Who do you go with?’

Flawed Columbine smiles gently among her damp ringlets.

‘But I love you!’ Hapless now, clinging to her thin arm tight enough to raise bruises, and hungry, so hungry. ‘I lo-ove…’ (Revelation.) ‘I love you!’

A shift in the light; chloral eyes reflecting my pleading face. Her head tilts slightly, like a child listening.

Flatly she says: ‘No. You don’t love me. Not enough. Not yet.’

She cuts off my anguished negative with a gesture, beginning to pull on her discarded dress with graceless grace, like a spoilt child dressing up in Mother’s clothes. ‘You will, Henry,’ she says softly. ‘Soon you will.’

For a long time I am alone in this blue room, coiled tightly around my longing. She has left a silk scarf lying on the floor at my feet; I crush it and twist it in my hands as some primitive in me would like to crush and twist her pale throat…but Scheherazade has gone with her wolves at heel.

Marta. Marta. Marta! I could drive myself mad with that name. Marta, my penny succubus; my waxing, waning moonchild. Where do you go, my darling? To some dim underwater crypt where undines drift? Some stone circle, to dance till dawn with the other witches? Or do you go to the riverside with your mouth painted red and your dress cut low? Do you roll in filthy alleys with the dregs and the cripples? What do you want of me, Marta? Tell me what it is and I’ll give it to you. Whatever it is.

Whatever.

38

We were alone together, quite alone as Henry rattled about the house like a grain in a gourd, knowing only his own wan dreams…We were alone together.

She followed me like a flawed reflection in a cat’s eye, pale retinal imprint of myself, whispering to me in the dark. Marta, my sister, my shadow, my love. At night we talked softly underneath the blankets, like children full of secrets; by day she followed me invisibly, taking my hand under the dinner-table, murmuring reassuring words into my ears. I did not see Mose-he thought that our meeting might be dangerous to his plans-but I was not lonely. Nor was I afraid: we had accepted each other, she and I. For the first time in my life I had a friend.

I faked illness so that we could be together, taking laudanum and pretending to sleep. My dreams were magical ships with sails like wings high in the clear air. For the first time in years I felt free of that hateful, anguished edifice of guilt Henry had constructed around me, free of Henry, free of myself. I was clear as glass, pure as spring water. I opened the windows of my chamber and felt the wind whistle through me as if I were a flute…

‘Why, ma’am!’

Tabby’s voice jolted me from my euphoric reverie and I turned, feeling suddenly dizzy and shaken. She put down the tray she was carrying and ran towards me; in the abrupt doubling of my vision I could see she was shocked and concerned. Her arms locked around me, and for a moment I thought she was Fanny, come to take me home, and I began to cry again.

‘Oh, ma’am!’ Supporting me with one arm around my waist she half carried me towards the bed. ‘Just you lie down here for a minute, ma’am. I’ll have you right in no time.’ Clucking to herself in tones of dismay she had the window closed in an instant and was heaping blankets over me before I could say a word. ‘Fancy standing there in the cold, with hardly a stitch on-you’ll catch your death, ma’am, your death! Just think what Mr Chester would say if he knew-and you’re so light, just like a feather; you don’t eat enough, not half enough, ma’am, why, just-’

‘Please, Tabby!’ I interrupted with a little laugh. ‘Don’t worry so much. I feel quite recovered now. And I like the fresh air.’

Tabby shook her head vehemently. ‘Not that nasty blustery air, you don’t, ma’am, begging your pardon. It’s fatal to the lungs, just fatal. What you need is a nice cup of chocolate and some food, not what that Dr Russell of Mr Chester’s says, but some real old-fashioned country food-’

‘Dr Russell?’ I tried to keep the edge from my voice, but I heard my words rising shrilly, helplessly: ‘He said he wouldn’t send for a doctor! I’m quite well, Tabby. Quite well.’

‘Don’t take on so, ma’am,’ said Tabby comfortably. ‘I dare say Mr Chester was anxious about you, and called for the doctor for advice. Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you.’

‘Oh yes, Tabby, you should. You were quite right to tell me. Please, what did the doctor say? When did he come?’

‘Oh, yesterday, ma’am, when you were asleep. I don’t rightly know what he said, seeing as Mr Chester talked to him alone in the library, but he just told me to make sure you kept taking your drops, and to give you plenty of hot drinks and light food. Chicken broth and jelly and the like. But to my mind’-here her face darkened again-‘it’s good nourishing food you need, nice puddings and red meat and maybe a glass of stout with it. That’s what you need, not broth and jelly. That’s what I told Mr Chester.’

‘Henry…’ I murmured, trying to quell my agitation. What did it matter that he had spoken to the doctor? Soon it would be too late for him to do anything. All I had to do was to stay calm, not to give him any excuse for dissatisfaction. Soon Mose would be ready to put his plan into action. Till then…

(Shhh…sleep. Shhh…)

Tabby was holding out a cup of chocolate. ‘Shhh, ma’am. You drink this and lie down. It’ll do you a power of good.’

I forced myself to take the cup.

‘And your drops? Have you taken them yet, ma’am?’

In spite of myself I smiled. The thought of not taking them was, suddenly, hilariously funny. I nodded, still smiling. ‘You’ll have to go to the chemist’s soon, Tabby, to buy some more. I’ve almost finished the bottle.’

‘Of course I will, ma’am,’ replied Tabby reassuringly. ‘I’ll go this very morning, don’t you fret. Now you drink that chocolate and I’ll bring you up some breakfast.’ With mock severity: ‘And see that you try to eat some of it this time!’ I nodded again, closing my eyes as a sudden wave of weariness broke over my aching head. I heard the door close after her and in a moment I opened my eyes again. Tizzy jumped lightly on to the coverlet beside my hand and I reached out mechanically to stroke her. Purring, she came to curl up on the pillow as close to me as she could manage and for a time we both slept.

I awoke to find my cup of cold chocolate and Tabby’s promised breakfast tray beside me on the bedstand. Tea-long since gone cold-and toast with bacon and scrambled eggs. I must have slept for at least an hour. I poured the tea out of the window and gave the eggs and bacon to Tizzy, who ate them with delicate relish-at least poor Tabby would be pleased that for once my plate would not be sent back untouched. I dressed myself in an old grey housedress, pushing back my hair under a white cap; then I washed my face, noting in the mirror how pale and worn I looked. Even my eyes seemed colourless, and the bones in my face seemed to stand out with unaccustomed sharpness beneath the severe cap. I didn’t care. I never thought of myself as beautiful, even in the days when I was Mr Chester’s Little Stunner. Marta was always the pretty one. Not me.

Henry was at his studio as usual: he was spending almost all his time there nowadays. The Card Players was finished and had already received praise from Ruskin-he had recommended that Henry exhibit the painting at the Royal Academy, and had promised to write a glowing article on Henry for the newspapers-but Henry seemed distant, almost uninterested in the whole thing. He told me he was working on a different project now, a large canvas entitled Scheherazade, but he was oddly reticent about it. In fact I noticed that he was reticent about everything: our meals were eaten mostly in silence, the sounds of cutlery against china horribly amplified in the echoing dining-room. Several times I pleaded indisposition to avoid these terrifying meals, Henry chewing, my nervous fingers tapping my glass, my voice scratching at the silence in a desperate attempt to break it. A few times Henry emerged from his blank contemplation to launch into a violent, unsolicited tirade and for the first time I actually understood Henry Chester: I knew that he hated me with a bleak, hatefully intimate passion beyond reason or logic, something as elemental and unconscious as a swarm of wasps mindful only of the overpowering urge to sting…And in my new-found understanding I realized something else: Henry didn’t know that he hated me. It was latent in him, something which grew in darkness, biding its time…I hoped Mose would act soon.

I spent the next four weeks in the drugged, dislocated half-sleep of a caterpillar in its chrysalis. I found that my body had acquired strange new tastes: I ate quantities of sweets and cakes, much to Tabby’s uncritical delight, although I had never been fond of such things before, and instead of tea I began to drink lemonade. I was not allowed out of the garden-the servants saw to it that if I wanted fresh air there was always someone to keep me company as I sat by the pond or on the terrace, Em with her light-hearted babble or Tabby, inarticulate but unfailingly kind, the sleeves of her flowered smock turned up to reveal her thick red arms, her chapped, agile fingers busy with sewing or crochet. As the weather turned grim I spent hours at the window watching the rain and working at my embroidery: for the first time I actually enjoyed the tedious task of setting stitches. Sometimes the whole day passed without my noticing it and without my having formulated a single coherent thought. There were vast spaces in my mind where I remembered nothing at all, and between these spaces spun fragmented images which sometimes caught me unawares, blinding me with their sudden intensity.

One morning when Henry was out Aunt May called with Mother; my senses were so confused that day that for a while I hardly recognized them. Mother was resplendent in a pink coat and bonnet of ostrich-feathers, talking animatedly about a Mr Zellini who had taken her for a ride in his gig. Aunt May looked older and, as I kissed her, I found myself half crying for no real reason, remembering with a sudden nostalgia the old days in Cranbourn Alley.

She looked at me shrewdly from bright black eyes, holding me tightly against her hard, flat chest and murmured, so low that I could hardly hear her: ‘Oh, Effie, come home. You know you’ll always have a home with me, whatever happens. Come home with me now, before it’s too late.’

And a part of my tears was the knowledge that it was already too late. I had a new home now, a new family. At that moment a terrible sensation swept over me, of drowning in alien memories…perhaps if we had been alone I might have tried to tell Aunt May what was happening to me; but Mother was there, happily cataloguing the virtues of her Mr Zellini, Tabby was polishing in the hall, her voice raised in a lusty rendition of a music-hall song…it was so far away from Crook Street that I could not find the words to begin.

One night, as I was preparing for sleep, I thought of Mose with an abrupt, hurt longing: stunned to realize that fully two weeks had passed since I had thought of him at all. My head began to spin and I sank helplessly on to the bed, filled with a tremendous confusion, loneliness and guilt. How could I have forgotten the man I loved, the man I would have died for? What was happening to me? If I had forgotten Mose, my mother, Aunt May, what else might I have forgotten? Perhaps I was losing my mind. What happened to me at night, when I seemed to sleep so deeply? Why had I found my cloak hanging in my wardrobe dripping wet one morning, as if I had been out in the rain? Why did the level of laudanum in the bottle diminish regularly, although I never remembered taking any? And why the growing knowledge that very soon something was going to happen, something momentous?

I began to keep a diary to remind myself of things, but when I reread the written pages I found that I could not remember having written half of what I saw there. Scraps of poetry, names and scribbled drawings punctuated the rest; in some placees the writing was so different to my own that I doubted I had written it at all. My own hand was neat and rounded; this stranger’s hand was a shapeless scrawl, as if she had only recently learned her letters.

Once I opened my diary and read my name, euphemia madeleine chester written over and over again. Another time it was the names of Fanny’s cats: tisiphone, megaera, alecto, tisiphone, megaera, alecto, tisiphone…covering nearly half a page. But at other times my mind was a diamond-point of precision and clarity and it was at one of these times that I realized that Henry hated me. In the panic which followed the revelation I was able to accept, with something like joy, that I had to fight him, with all the cunning I possessed, using his own contempt for me against him. I waited, watching, and began to see what he was planning.

Tabby had warned me without meaning to, of course: as soon as she mentioned Dr Russell I knew; but the fear which had flooded me then had long since subsided. I would not let Henry win. I wrote it in my diary in blood-red capitals, so that if I suffered one of my memory-lapses I would be reminded: I was going to escape from Henry; I was going to run away with Mose; Fanny would see to that. When Henry was there I always pretended to be especially vague and somnolent…but my eyes were razor-sharp beneath my drowsy eyelids and I waited.

I knew what I was looking for.

39

Four weeks passed with the aching slowness of those summer afternoons when I was twelve and all Nature’s treasury lay flung outside the schoolroom’s dusty green windows. I waited, deliberately working myself to exhaustion in the studio so that when I eventually had to come home I would be able to present at least the semblance of sanity. The studio walls were covered with studies: profiles, full-faces, three-quarters, hands, details of hair, eyes, lips. I worked at a pace bordering upon mania; I littered the floor with sketches in watercolours, chalks and inks, every one perfect, infused with the clarity of my lover’s memory.

On Saturday I went to my Bond Street supplier and bought a superb canvas, stretched and treated, the largest canvas I had ever thought to use. It was fully eight feet high and five feet across, and because it was already pinned to its frame I had to pay two men to transport it from the shop to my studio. But it was worth every penny of the twenty pounds I paid for it, for as soon as I had it set up against my easel I began to sketch feverishly, directly on to the beautiful creamy surface the monstrous, sublime figures of my fantasy.

I suppose you have seen my Scheherazade: she hangs at the Academy even today, queening it over the Rossettis and the Millaises and the Hunts with all the colours of the spectrum in her cryptic eyes. She is rather taller than life; almost naked against a background of blurred Oriental drapery. Her body is barely mature, hard and slim and graceful; her skin is the colour of weak tea, her hands long and expressive with raking, green-painted fingernails. Her hair falls nearly to her feet (I have bent the truth a very little, but the rest is real, believe me) and there is a suggestion of a strut in her posture as she stands watching the watcher, defiant in her nakedness, mocking his guilty desire. She is gloriously immodest, reaching out to include the spectator in some exotic tale of perilous adventure; her face is flushed with the excitement of the tale and there is mockery and a wild humour around her mouth. At her feet lies an open book, the leaves fluttering randomly, and in the shadows two wolves lie waiting, teeth bared and eyes like sulphur. If you look at the frame you will find a fragment from a poem inscribed there:

Who goes to find Scheherazade

By land or air or sail?

Who dares to kiss her crimson lips

And lives to tell the tale?

I dare to seek Scheherazade

A thousand nights and one.

I seek her in the waning moon

And in the sinking sun.

O who can keep Scheherazade

Beyond the rising sun?

I’ll seek her in the waning moon

A thousand nights and one.

On Thursday I came home earlier than usual: the vision of my half-completed Scheherazade was too powerful for me that day. I had left the studio in haste, omitting to change, my head suddenly filled with an ache which surged monstrously into the bloodshot orbits of my eyes. I had left my chloral at home and, as soon as I reached Cromwell Square, I ran directly to my room and the midnight-blue vial. I was halfway to the medicine closet, the bedroom door ajar behind me, when I saw her, frozen beside my writing-desk, as if by keeping quite still she thought she might pass unnoticed.

For a moment I thought she was Marta. Then a giant anger bloomed inside my head, obliterating even the pain. Maybe it was the fact that she had seen me in my unguarded, vulnerable state, scrabbling among the medicine jars for the chloral; maybe because I almost cried Marta’s name aloud; or maybe it was her face, her doughy, idiot’s face, her blank colourless eyes and crone’s hair…or the letters she was holding in her hand.

Russell’s letters! I had almost forgotten.

For an instant I remained silent, staring at her, my only thought a distant: ‘How dare she; how dare she?’ Effie might as well have been stone: she met my eyes with her dull grey gaze and her voice was low but accusing.

‘You wrote to Dr Russell. You asked him to come.’

I was rendered temporarily speechless by her impertinence. Could she possibly be accusing me, when she had taken my letters?

‘Why didn’t you tell me you had written to Dr Russell?’ Her voice was flat and steady and she held the letters out to me like a weapon. There was such viciousness in her face that I almost stepped back towards the door. Rage ebbed from her in waves.

‘You read my letters.’ I tried to make my voice commanding, but my words were a formless shuffle of sounds, like a handful of spilled cards. My thoughts seemed suddenly very remote and slow, anger obstructing their growth. I tried again. ‘You have no right to look into my papers,’ I said, licking my lips. ‘My private papers.’

For the first time I could recall she did not wince at the sharp note in my voice. Her eyes were like stone and verdigris; cat’s eyes.

‘Tabby told me Dr Russell had called. You never told me. Why didn’t you tell me you’d sent for him, Henry? Why didn’t you want me to know?’

A slow, cottony fear began to chill through me. I felt small, somehow, before her scorching wrath, shrinking before her, becoming someone else, someone younger…the image of the dancing Columbine leaped abruptly into my mind like memory’s hateful Jack-in-the-box; and I realized that I was beginning to sweat. I forced myself not to look at the chloral bottle inches from my hand.

‘Now listen to me, Effie!’ I snapped. Yes, that was better, much better. ‘You are being foolish beyond permission. I am your husband and I have every right to take any measure I wish to ensure your good health. I know your nerves are bad, but that does not give you an excuse to pry into my personal papers I-’

‘There’s nothing the matter with my nerves!’ Her voice rose furiously, but with none of the hysteria I would have expected from such an outburst. Instead there was a bitter sarcasm in her tone as she read aloud from the letter, mimicking the doctor’s ponderous accents with the accuracy of an impudent child.

‘Dear Mr Chester, Following our recent conversation I am in whole-hearted agreement with your own diagnosis of your dear wife’s nervous condition. While the mania seems not to be acute at present there does seem to be evidence of some degeneration; I would continue to recommend the frequent use of laudanum to prevent further fits of hysteria, as well as a light diet and a good deal of rest. I agree that it would be most unwise for the lady to walk abroad until I have made further verifications as to her mental state; in the meantime, I suggest that you keep her under close watch, reporting any instances of convulsion, fainting, hysteria or catalepsy-’ ‘Effie!’ I interrupted. ‘You don’t understand!’ Even to myself the words sounded weakly conciliatory and I was again overwhelmed by that unsettling sensation of diminishment. My head was pounding and I did not dare take the chloral bottle while she was watching. Once I darted my shaking hand towards it, knocking it to the back of the cabinet among the other potions and powders…impossible to reach it now unless I actually turned my back on her, exposing the vulnerable nape of my neck to the evil potency of her eyes. ‘I only want to help you,’ I blurted. ‘I want to see you well again; I know you’ve been ill and I…you were so ill after you lost the baby…it was only normal that your nerves should be a little unsettled. That’s all it was, I promise, Effie. I promise!’ Stonily: ‘There’s nothing the matter with my nerves.’ ‘I’m glad to hear it, my dear,’ I replied, finding my balance, ‘and if you are right, I’ll be the first one to be thankful. But you mustn’t be foolish. This…this silly fancy of yours…This silly fancy that the doctor and I are somehow…conspiring against you: can’t you see that is what I was afraid of? You are my wife, Effie. What wife suspects her husband as you seem to suspect me?’ She frowned, but I could see that I had shaken her. The pounding in my skull abated a little and I smiled and stepped forwards to put my arms around her. She stiffened, but did not pull away. Her skin was burning. ‘Poor darling. Perhaps you’d better lie down for a while,’ I recommended. ‘I’ll send Tabby with a cup of tea.’ I felt her rigid body jerk convulsively in my arms. ‘I don’t want tea!’ Her voice was muffled by her hair, but I guessed at the helpless petulance in her cry and allowed myself to smile. For a while there I had been worried by her icy, furious composure but, as I knew she would, she had reverted to type. I should have known that obedience was so deeply ingrained in her that she would not defy me for long. And yet I had seen something in her eyes…something which for a short time had dismissed me as if I didn’t matter, as if I didn’t even exist… Long after she left the room the memory of that moment persisted. Even the midnight-blue bottle was powerless against the jangling of my discordant thoughts, and when I finally subsided into a sleep I dreamed of winding up Father’s dancing Columbine. I was a twelve-year-old again, watching in awe as she danced faster and faster, writhing now in demoniac frenzy, arms, legs and bloodstained skirt a blur. And now in my dream I was possessed by the cold certainty that I had set some evil into motion, which was even now winging its way towards me through the years of my childhood, waiting to be given the chance to pierce through the veil of memory and strike… I reached through the churning air towards the blur of silk and knives that was Columbine-I felt my hand slashed as if by a razor but I managed to grasp her. She writhed in my hand like a snake, but I held firm and, taking my aim carefully, I flung her at the wall as hard as I could. There was a crash, a sizzle of gears and wheels, a final shiver of music…and when I dared look again she was lying broken at the foot of the wall, her china head smashed and her skirts drawn up around her waist. I felt a vast, hot wave of relief. And, as I began to move uneasily out of the dream towards wakefulness, I heard my own voice speaking, with eerie, dislocated clarity: ‘Should have stayed asleep, little girl.’