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

28

I spent my entire day at the studio working on The Card Players. I was very satisfied with the canvas; it was a powerful piece, with Harper sitting slouched against the wall with his elbows on the table and his face half tilted into the light, watching his hand with that expression of clever nonchalance which so typified him. A greenish oil-lamp guttered uncleanly above him, highlighting the greasy walls and the unvarnished table and throwing into sharp relief the thick glasses filled with milky absinthe.

I had sketched in the figure of the woman in charcoal, using a town model for the posture only: I wanted her to be in half-profile, one hand on the table in front of her, the other holding the Queen of Spades playfully to her lips…Soon I would need finer material, some dark-haired unknown. Not Effie, I decided; definitely not Effie. First, I hated to see her sitting so intimately with Harper, even in my own painting, and secondly…It was a vague, nebulous refusal, a sensation of unease as I envisaged her in my studio. Why should I be uneasy? I asked myself. She had sat there for me a thousand times. Why not this time? I could not answer. Instead my memory threw me a brief image, cold and intense as a brush with a ghost…a thin face staring at me in the dark, a voice like lace and frost whispering together, a scent of chocolate…

From where had that rogue memory surfaced? And that face, unformed and yet familiar, the white blur of little Persephone’s face in the gloom of the underworld? I clenched my fists in frustration: I had seen her before, my Queen of Spades. Who was she?

Who?

When I arrived home, Effie was working at her embroidery, demure as a good child. The silks were spread about on the ottoman, on the footstool, on the grey flannel of her dress, and the threads and the long panel of tapestry were the only colour about her. She might have been a nun with her hair loose like a coif around her shoulders and, for a moment, her seeming purity was spectral, terrifying, like a vision of the Holy Virgin. Then she looked up, and in that instant I saw her face like that of a vengeful crone, grimacing in hate and fury, a white-haired Norn older than time with my life held by a thread in her knotted fingers. I almost screamed.

Then the light shifted again and she was Effie, her expression as meek and innocent as that of the Sleeping Beauty in her tapestry. I wondered what spiteful thoughts had been playing in her head and, seeing her smile, I determined to take care. There was something knowing about her smile, something which belied her timid voice when she greeted me. Had she been out? Had she been reading the forbidden books? Had she searched my room?

I forced a smile in return. ‘Are you feeling better now, Effie?’ I asked.

‘Yes, thank you, much better. My headache is quite gone now, and I have been working at my embroidery all afternoon.’ As if to underline that, she put the tapestry aside and began to wind the silks into a tidy plait.

‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘However, bearing in mind your condition this morning I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to go out for a few days at least.’ I expected her to protest at this, knowing from Tabby how she liked to go for walks, but Effie did not flinch.

‘Yes,’ she agreed, ‘I think it best to stay in the house while I am unwell: I should not like to catch a chill in the cemetery.’

‘And no reading,’ I added, thinking that if anything was going to shake her composure it would be a reference to her precious books. ‘I’m certain that for a girl of your fanciful temperament, novels and poetry can only do incalculable harm. I have several improving books, as well as a store of tracts for you to read if you wish, but I have taken the rest of your books from the library and would ask you not to purchase any more.’ I fully expected an outburst at that, but she merely nodded-and was that the tiniest smile on her pale lips?-and began to lay away her embroidery in her work-basket.

‘I want to try and finish this tapestry this year, if I can,’ she said. ‘I think it might be pretty as a fire-screen, or maybe the centrepiece for a bedspread. What do you think?’

‘As you wish,’ I said coolly. ‘I’m no judge of such things.’

I was surprised and rather disturbed. She had been helpless and hysterical that morning, wailing and crying like a spoilt child; now she was cool and self-possessed, her politeness almost a form of contempt. What secret was she keeping from me?

I watched her carefully over supper. As usual she ate little, but consented to take some bread and butter when I commented upon her loss of appetite. She was docile, sweet, and charming-why then did my stomach clench at the thought of her docility, her sweetness? My unease and dissatisfaction grew and eventually I retired to the smoking-room and left her alone.

I told myself that I was simply nervous: I had hardly slept the previous night, I had worked all day in the studio and I was tired. That was all. But somehow that was not all. While I was away something had happened to Effie, something secret, perhaps even something dangerous. In a strange, undisclosed way, I felt that Effie was no longer alone, no longer mine. I stayed awake late into that night, smoking and drinking, racking my brain to discover what had finally awoken my pale little sister.