"Sleep, Pale Sister" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harris Joanne)

9

For two weeks I was content to watch him and wait. Mose haunted my dreams with visions of delightful abandon; waking, I saw him every day. I existed in a warm and lovely dream-state, like some sleeping princess waiting for her kiss, and I trusted in him implicitly. I had seen him watching; I knew he would come for me.

Days passed, and Henry moved back to his studio to work. He already had enough studies of Mose, and was eager to transfer his initial idea on to canvas. He was vaguely considering using me as the model for the Queen of Spades, but Mose, with a hidden wink in my direction, had said abruptly that I was ‘not his type’. Henry was not sure whether to be offended or relieved; he settled for a thin-lipped smile and promised to ‘think about it’. Mose accompanied him to the studio and for some time I did not see him, though his face never left my thoughts.

My health improved daily and I began to take fewer and fewer of the doses of laudanum Henry brought me. One night he found that I had thrown away my medicine, and was very angry. How could I expect to get better, he demanded, if I wilfully disobeyed him? I must drink my medicine three times a day, like a good girl, or I would become morbid and fanciful again, my nightmares would return and I would be good for nothing but idleness. My health was frail, he said, my mind weakened by illness. I must at least try to make an effort not to be a burden to him, especially now that his work was at last being recognized.

Meekly, I acquiesced; I promised to take a daily walk to the church and back and to take my medicine regularly. From then on I made sure that the number of drops in the bottle diminished at a steady pace-and with it I watered the araucaria on the stairs three times a day. Henry never suspected a thing. In fact, he was almost cheerful when he returned from the studio. His painting was progressing very well, if slowly, he told me, with Mose sitting for him maybe three hours a day. Henry worked till the early evening and, as the weather grew fine, I took the habit of going for a long walk to the cemetery in the afternoons. Once or twice Tabby came with me, but she had too many things to do in the house to act as a permanent chaperone to me. Besides, I told her, I was only going as far as the church; I could come to no harm, and I was feeling much better now that the winter was over. Three or four times I took the same walk from Cromwell Square, down Swain’s Lane, down the hill, into the cemetery to St Michael’s. Since the day I had my vision in that church, the day I lost the baby, I had felt an odd link with St Michael’s, a desire to go in there alone and try to recapture the sense of purpose I had felt that day, the sense of revelation. But I had not been back, except on Sundays, with Henry on one side of me. Since William had gone to Oxford I had felt even more closely watched than ever. I dared not allow my mask to slip for an instant.

But now I felt almost as if I were on holiday. I enjoyed my trips out of the house more than I dared admit, and led Henry to believe that I walked only because he had ordered me to do so. If he had known how much those outings meant to me, he would surely have cut them short. So I nursed my secret and my joy, while inside me something wild and frenzied capered and grinned. I tried the church several times, but each time there were too many people for me to dare enter: sightseers, baptisms, weddings…and once a funeral, with row upon row of black-clad mourners, intoning the dark hymns to the howling of the organ.

I drew back from the half-open door, embarrassed and somehow afraid as the wave of sound struck me. In my confusion I almost knocked over the vase of white chrysanthemums which was standing by the entrance. One woman turned at the noise and fixed her gaze on me insistently, almost threateningly. I made a helpless little gesture of apology and continued to back away, but suddenly I felt my legs begin to buckle under my weight. I looked up and saw the vault spiralling towards me uncontrollably, the face of St Sebastian suddenly very close to mine; St Sebastian smiling, showing his teeth…

Not now! I thought urgently, struggling to regain control. Looking wildly around me I caught sight of the woman, still watching me with that insistent look of recognition. From afar I thought I heard a voice calling a half-familiar name. Unreasoning panic seized me and I turned, abruptly released from my trance, and ran, slamming the heavy door. I stumbled, tried to retain my balance and cannoned headlong into a black-clad figure standing at the bottom of the steps. His arms locked tightly around me. By now I was thoroughly unnerved, and I was on the point of screaming aloud when I looked into the face of my assailant and saw that it was Mose.

‘Mrs Chester!’ He looked surprised to see me, and let go of my arms immediately with a show of apology which might have seemed genuine had it not been for the mischief in his eyes. ‘I’m terribly sorry to have alarmed you like that. Do forgive me.’

I struggled to regain my composure. ‘It’s quite all right,’ I said. ‘It…wasn’t you. I went into the church, and walked straight into a funeral service. It…I hope I didn’t hurt you,’ I finished lamely.

He laughed, but almost immediately narrowed his eyes in an expression of some concern.

‘You have had a shock, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘You look quite pale. Here, sit down for a moment.’ He eased an arm around my shoulders and began to move me towards a bench a few yards away. ‘Why, you are so cold!’ he exclaimed as his hands found mine. Before I could speak he had pulled off his own coat and thrown it over my shoulders. I protested half-heartedly, but he was cheerfully proprietary and, besides, it felt very comfortable to be sitting on the bench with his arm around me, the woolly tobacco-smell of his overcoat in my nostrils. If he had kissed me then, I would have responded with all my heart; I knew it-and felt no guilt at all.