Sleep, Pale Sister

4

I was ill for several weeks; the wintry weather hindered my convalescence, for I caught a chill which confined me to my bed for some time after the premature birth of my child. I remember faces coming and going over me, with fixed grimaces of sympathy, but my heart was frozen inside me and, although I wanted to thank them for their concern, I could find no meaning in words. Tabby, who had been with me in Cranbourn Alley since I was a little girl, nursed me and shook her head over me and fed me thin broth as I lay in bed; my little maid, Em, brushed my hair and dressed me in pretty lace nightdresses and gossiped about her family and sisters in distant Yorkshire; Edwin the gardener sometimes sent a handful of early crocuses or daffodils from his precious beds with a gruff assurance that ‘they’d bring a bit of colour to the young lady’s cheeks’. But, in spite of their kindness, I could not bring myself to stir from my lethargy. I would sit by the fire with a thick shawl around my shoulders, sometimes working at my needlepoint, but more often simply staring into the fire.

William, who might have roused me, had returned to Oxford where a junior fellowship awaited him, torn between pleasure at this acknowledgement of his years of study, and unease at leaving me in so low a state.

Henry was all solicitude: for nearly a month I was permitted no visitors-no-one was to be allowed to distress me, he said-and he did not go to his studio once. Instead, he worked at home, making dozens of sketches of me, but I, who had once been enchanted by his work, cared nothing for it now. Once, I had loved the way he drew me, always emphasizing my eyes and the purity of my features, but now his art left me indifferent and I wondered that I had ever thought him talented.

The pictures sickened me, spread out like trophies over every available surface of wall in every room; and worst of all, in the bedroom, The Little Beggar Girl, painted when I was only thirteen, haunted me like the ghost of myself. A London slum, reproduced in minutest detail, from the sweat on the pavements to the ‘blacks’ drifting down from the muddy sky. A scrawny cat sits sniffing a dead bird in a gutter. Next to it sits a dying child, barefoot and clad only in a shift, her long hair touching the stones around her. Her broken begging-bowl lies on the street, and a stray shaft of light plays on her uplifted face. The frame, designed by the artist, bears a stanza from his poem of the same title:

Thou Innocent, untouch’d by worldly care,

Defil’d not by the fleshly taint of Love,

Surrender now these mortal limbs so fair

Yet feeble; clad in radiance soar above.

Among the lowliest of all wert thou

And yet, to thee the hosts of Heaven bow

Their humble heads; as by th’ Almighty’s side,

Enthron’d in ecstasy, thou art His bride.

Once I had been filled with admiration for the Mr Chester who could write real verses with so little effort. I had borne no criticism of him, had wept with frustration at the unkind words of Mr Ruskin on the occasion of his first exhibition. I could still vaguely remember the time when I had worshipped him, treasured every word he wrote to me, every sketch he discarded. I remembered my awed gratitude when he had offered to pay for my tutors, the leap of joy in my heart as I overheard my mother and Henry as they spoke together in the library. Aunt May had mistrusted the idea of my marriage to a man so much older than I. But my mother had been blinded by the thought of all the opportunities Mr Chester could give her daughter-and I, I was blinded by Mr Chester himself. At seventeen I had married him.

Married him!

I dug furiously at my needlepoint, tent-stitch one, cross-stitch two, suddenly bloated with hate and fury. The embroidery was half finished, the design an invention of Henry’s in rich, glowing colours: the Sleeping Beauty on her couch, all twined round with climbing roses. Even in its unfinished state, the face of the sleeping girl looked like mine.

Cross-stitch one, tent-stitch two…I stabbed at the needlework, making no effort to stitch now, simply digging at the fabric in mounting rage, tearing at the delicate stitchery, the gold thread. All unaware, I was crying aloud, without tears, a hoarse, primitive sound which, at any other time, would have terrified me.

‘Why, Miss Effie!’ It was Tabby’s voice, shocked into improper address.

Jolted out of my furious trance, I started and looked up. Tabby’s plump, good-natured face was twisted with distress.

‘Oh, what have you done? Your poor hands…and all your pretty ’broidery, too. Oh, ma’am!’

I looked down in surprise and saw my hands bleeding from a dozen stab wounds. A bloody handprint branded the needlework, obliterating half of the sleeping girl’s face. I surrendered the spoiled tapestry and tried to smile.

‘Oh dear,’ I said mildly, ‘how clumsy of me.’ Then, as Tabby began to say something, tears springing to her eyes, ‘No, Tabby, I am quite well, thank you. I will go to wash my hands.’

‘But ma’am, you’ll take a drop of laudanum, surely! The doctor-’

‘Tabby, if you would be so kind as to put away my sewing-things? I will not be needing them again today.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ said Tabby woodenly, but she did not move to obey the order until she had watched me stumble vaguely out of the room, fumbling at the doorknob with my bloody hands like a murdering sleepwalker.

I was poorly for almost two months before the doctor at last pronounced me fit enough to receive visitors. Not that I saw many people; Mother came once to talk about her toilettes and to reassure me that I still had plenty of time to start a family, and Aunt May came twice to sit quietly with me, discussing commonplaces with a gentleness very far from her usual style. Dear Aunt May! If only she had known how much I longed to talk to her, but I knew that once I opened the floodgates I would have to tell her everything-things I was not even prepared to admit to myself-so I remained silent, pretending that I was happy and that this cold, meticulous house was home. Not that Aunt May was deceived for a moment, but for my sake she tried to hide her dislike for Henry, conversing in stiff, brittle phrases, her back very straight against the chair.

Henry liked her as little as she did him, sourly commenting that her visits always seemed to leave me looking exhausted. She made a tart rejoinder to that comment. Triumphantly, Henry suggested that she should perhaps refrain from frequenting the house until she learned a more genteel conversational style; he would not have his wife subjected to this kind of talk. Aunt May was drawn into unguarded utterances and left beneath a cloud of recriminations. From my window I watched her leave, very small and grey beneath the cold sky, and I knew that Henry had his wish. I was his alone, for ever.

It was March, and, although the weather was still very chill, the sun was shining and there was a hint of approaching spring in the air. The parlour enjoys a fine view of the garden with its pond and meticulous flowerbeds, and that morning I was sitting for Henry in front of the wide bay window. I was still very wan, but with the bright sunlight warming my cheeks and my loose hair, I was conscious of a feeling of satisfaction and well-being.

I wished I were in the garden now, with the cool air against my skin and the damp of the grass against my ankles. I wanted to smell the earth, to lie down and bite it, to roll in the greenery like a cat at play…

‘Effie, do keep still!’ Henry’s voice jerked me back to reality. ‘Three-quarter profile, please, and don’t let the dulcimer slip. I paid enough for it, you know. That’s better. Remember, if at all possible, I want the picture ready for the exhibition, and there isn’t much time.’

I corrected my position, shifting the instrument in my lap. Henry’s latest idea, A Damsel with a Dulcimer, was already four weeks under way and was to feature myself as the mysterious lady in Coleridge’s poem. Henry envisaged her as ‘An adolescent girl, all dressed in white, sitting upon a rustic bench with one foot curled up under her body, charmingly intent upon her musical study. Behind her lies an arboreal landscape, with, in the distance, the mythical mountain.’

I, who knew the poem by heart, and had often dreamed about it myself, had ventured to say that I felt ‘an Abyssinian maid’ should be someone rather more colourful and exotic than the insipid damsel I was to portray, but Mr Chester’s reply had left me in no doubt as to his own poor opinion of my taste, graphic, literary or otherwise. My own efforts at painting and poetry were proof enough of that. And yet, I remembered certain moments, before Henry had forbidden me to waste my time in areas in which I had no talent; I remembered looking into a canvas like an angry vortex of stars and feeling joy-joy and something like the beginnings of passion.

Passion?

The first night of our marriage, when Mr Chester had come to me with guilt and excitement in his eyes, had taught me all I needed to know about passion. My own innocent ardour had cooled his at once; the sight of my body had sent him to his knees, not with joy but with repentance. Thereafter his act of love was an act of contrition for both of us; a cold, comfortless joining, like that of two locomotives. After the baby was conceived, even this ceased.

I never understood it. Father had always told me that there was no harm in the physical act between a man and a woman in love; it was God’s reward, he said, for procreation. We are feeling beings, he used to tell me, innocent until evil thoughts take our innocence away. Our original sin was not the search for knowledge, but the shame that Adam and Eve had of their nakedness. It was that shame which sent them from the garden, and keeps us from the garden now.

Poor Father! He could never have understood the icy contempt in Henry’s face as he pulled away from my arms.

‘Is there no shame in you, woman?’ he had demanded.

Shame? I never knew it before I knew Henry.

And yet, there was a fire in me which neither the death of my child nor the coldness of my marriage could entirely quell; and sometimes, through the chill, clinging veils of my life, I felt the stirring of something more, something almost frightening. Watching Henry’s face as he sketched me I was seized by a sudden sharp revulsion. I wanted to throw the dulcimer to the ground, to leap up, to dance naked and without shame in the spring sunlight. The desire overwhelmed me, and before I knew it I was on my feet, crying aloud in a harsh and desperate voice…But Henry never heard me. He continued to frown contentedly over his paper, looking up for a second at an object just behind me, then returning to his sketch. I turned abruptly and saw myself, my position unchanged, holding the dulcimer in my lap.

I was conscious of a feeling of intense relief and elation. I had spoken to no-one of the episode in the church, although I had thought of it often, with a mounting conviction that it must have been the effect of the laudanum and would likely not be repeated. But this time it had been a whole day since I had last taken my drops, I was not ill, and there had been none of the sickening, spiralling sensation of the last occasion. Warily I looked down at myself; my new ‘body’ was a white, naked replica of the one I had temporarily vacated. A faint, silvery light seemed to emanate from it and I could feel the pile of the carpet beneath my feet and the freshness of the air against my skin. I was vibrant with energy and excitement, all my senses enhanced and given new dimension outside the clutter of my body.

Carefully I approached my physical body, wondering whether, when I touched it, I would be forced back inside; my hand passed through clothes and flesh without resistance. For an instant I was aware of the peculiar sensation of being in neither state, my body like a half-discarded nightdress around my real, living self; then I forced myself back. The world readjusted itself listlessly around me for a moment, then I leaped out again, overwhelmed with elation at the thought that now I could seemingly perform this feat at will. Rapidly gaining in confidence, I moved lightly across the room. Impelled by a new sense of mischief I lighted on the crown of Henry’s head and pirouetted, but he was in no way distracted from his sketching. Leaping down, I ran to the window and looked out, halfminded to jump through the glass but wary of leaving my body too far behind. A quick glance behind me told me that all was well and, throwing caution aside with the rest of my earthly burdens, I passed through the glass and into the garden.

So may the caterpillar dream of flight, or the chrysalis dream in her dark silken cradle.

And I? Into what frail murderous being will my chrysalis hatch?

Will I fly?

Or sting?

5

She’s lying, you know. I was never unkind to her, never. I loved her more than any woman has the right to be loved: I worshipped her, gave my soul for her. I gave her everything she wanted: the white wedding, my fine house, my art, my poetry. The day she married me I was the happiest man alive.

She was the one who spoiled it, like Eve before her in Eden. The seed was in her, in spite of my careful nurturing. I might have known.

What has she told you? That I rejected her? That I was cold? I remember her waiting for me in our room after the wedding celebrations were over: all in white, with her hair loose and spread over the pillows and the bedstead, brushing the floor. For a moment I thought she was asleep. I crept to the bed, afraid to wake her, a terrible tenderness spilling over into every part of my body. Above all else I wanted to lie down next to her, to breathe her scent, the lilac of her hair. At that moment I was blessed: there was no lust in me but for sleep, for the sweetness and innocence of her, and it was with tears in my eyes that I laid my face on the pillow beside hers.

For a second, there was a quiescence, then her eyes opened. I saw my face as in a witch’s crystal, a tiny pinprick against the fascia of her pupils. Her cold, pale hands crept around my neck. I felt my own responding in spite of myself. I had never so much as kissed her before and, as her lips met mine, I was submerged in her, my hands full of her hair and the softness of her breasts…

I should have died then: no man was made to endure the bliss and the torment of her as I was. I could feel her heat through the thin fabric of her nightdress; the awakened response in myself-and suddenly I was transported back to that day in my mother’s room, the scent of jasmine in my nostrils, felt again the hot, sulphurous excitement which had possessed me, which possesses me still. I could not move. I did not trust myself even to turn away. Maybe I cried aloud in despair and self-loathing. Effie clung to me like a Fury: when I tried to shake her from me she twisted on top of me and pinned me to the pillow, her long legs entwined around me, her mouth pressed against mine.

I tasted salt on her lips and I was drowning in her, with her hair in my mouth and in my eyes and all around me like the web of some fiendish spider-goddess. She had shed her nightdress as a snake sheds its skin, and was straddling me like a terrible centaur-woman, head thrown back in defiance of all decency and modesty. For a moment I could not help but respond: there was no thought in me but lust.

When I could think again I was pinned to the mattress in horror: where was my beggar girl, my sleeping beauty, my pale sister? Where was the child I had nurtured? She was all adult now in the dark heat of her desire. As she closed her eyes I managed to escape her mesmerism and I pushed her away with as much violence as my weak limbs could muster. Her eyes snapped open and it was all I could do to prevent myself being lost in their depths again, but I held on to the last of my sanity and turned my face away.

There was no shame in her. The last hope of salvation had been denied me in this girl, and the realization was bitter in me. Her kiss still salted my mouth, the memory of her touch beguiling against my skin, and I cursed my weak, sinful flesh. I cursed her too, this Eve of my downfall: cursed her white skin and her cavernous eyes and her hair which had made me mad with longing for her. With tears streaming down my face, I went down on my knees and prayed for forgiveness. But God was not there for me and, in the darkness, the demons of my lust pranced all around. Effie did not understand why I had withdrawn from her, and for a time she tried to drag me from my penance with tears and caresses.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked softly, and if I had not known that she, too, was tainted to the core by the same demon which possessed me, I could have sworn she was pure. Her voice was unsteady, like that of a little girl, and her hands around my neck were as soft and loving as they had been when she was ten years old.

I dared not answer, but pushed her away, my hands clenched furiously.

‘Please…Henry…’ It was the first time she had called me by my first name, and the intimacy that it implied froze me with remorse.

‘Don’t call me that!’

She was confused, and her hand crept into mine, whether to comfort herself or me I was unsure.

‘But-’

‘Be quiet! Haven’t you done enough harm already?’

Perhaps she really didn’t know what irreparable damage she had already caused: I sensed her confusion and, in her troubled, tainted innocence, I hated her. She began to cry, and I hated her even more. Better that she should be dead than this carnal wrestling in the hot night! Better that she should be dead, I repeated fiercely. Her shamelessness had killed my little girl on the very night she was to have been mine. She had damned us both, and now she would be with me for the rest of her life, a living reminder of the death of all my illusions.

‘I don’t understand. What have I done wrong?’ Effie’s voice was so sincere, so vulnerable in the dark.

I laughed bitterly.

‘I thought you were so pure. I thought that even though all other women-even my own mother-might be whores, you at least had been spared the taint.’

‘I don’t-’

‘Listen!’ I snapped furiously. ‘I watched you grow. I kept you from the other children. I protected you. Where did you learn it? Who taught you? When I was painting you as Mary and Juliet and the Convent Flower, were you already twisting on your bed at night, dreaming of your lover? Did you look into your glass on May Eve and see him there, watching you?’ I took her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Tell me!’

She pulled away from my grasp, trembling. Even then the sight of her body aroused me, and I threw a blanket at her.

‘Cover yourself, for God’s sake!’ I shouted, biting down on my lips to stop the hysteria.

She drew the blanket tightly around her shoulders, her eyes huge and unreadable. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said at last. ‘I thought you loved me. Why are you afraid to make me your wife?’

‘I’m not afraid!’ I snapped angrily. ‘We could share so many things together. Why demean it, for the sake of this one act? My love for you is pure, pure as the love of a child for his mother. You make it something shameful.’

‘But something which gives pleasure-’ began Effie.

‘No!’ I interrupted. ‘Not the true unsullied joy of a pure marriage. That can only exist in God. The flesh is the Devil’s domain, and all his pleasures are filth and corruption. Trust me, Effie. We are above this. I want to keep you innocent. I want to keep you beautiful.’

But she had turned her face to the wall, the blanket tight around her.