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

3

She lost our child, of course. Nursed by laudanum, she was sleeping when it was taken away by the midwife and sewn into the sheet. I never asked to see my son. I waited to learn that my wife would make a complete recovery before leaving for my studio to paint. Our house was in Highgate and I had deliberately chosen to rent a studio some miles away. It gave me the feeling of isolation I needed when I was working and the light was very clean and cold, monastery light, so that my paintings, sparsely hung against the bare white walls, shone like trapped butterflies beneath the glass. Here I was High Priest, with Effie as my handmaiden, her sweet face glancing out from bright canvasses and pale pastels and thick folders of brown vellum; my soul’s Effie, untouched by the curse of our heat and our flesh. That night-not for the first time-I slept in the studio on the little bed she had used for My Sister’s Sleep and Sleeping Beauty and, with the crisp linen sheets cool against my fevered skin, I was able at last to feel content.

I returned at ten o’clock the next morning, learning from the servants that the doctor had left in the early hours. Tabby Gaunt, our housekeeper, had kept watch over Effie for most of the night, dosing her with laudanum and warm water. She looked up as I came into the sickroom, laying down the shirt she had been hemming. She looked tired and red-eyed, but her smile was open as a child’s as she rose hastily to her feet, straightening her cap over her unruly grey hair.

‘Young lady’s sleeping now, Mr Chester, sir,’ she whispered. ‘The doctor says she’s a little weak, but it isn’t the fever, thank the Lord. A few days in bed, he said.’

I nodded. ‘Thank you, Tabby. You may bring some chocolate for Mrs Chester.’

I turned towards the bed in which Effie lay. Her pale hair was unbound, spilling over the coverlet and the pillows, and her hand was at her cheek as she slept, like that of a little girl. I found it difficult to believe that she was eighteen and had just been delivered of her first baby. In spite of myself, I shuddered at the thought. Remembering the look of her, the feel of her pregnant flesh under her clothes as I touched her made me feel unclean, uneasy. Better by far to see her like this, in bed, one thin arm flung over her eyes, the tiny curve of her breasts (the word troubled me even in thought, and I dismissed it angrily) almost invisible in the rapid rise and fall of her nightdress.

Sudden tenderness overwhelmed me and I reached to touch her hair, chastely.

‘Effie?’

She made a little sound as she began to struggle towards wakefulness. Her scent reached me, a poignant scent of talcum and fever and chocolate, like her childhood. Her eyes opened, focused sharply on mine, and she sat up abruptly, guiltily, like a schoolboy caught daydreaming in class.

‘I…Mr Chester!’

I smiled. ‘It’s all right, my dear. Don’t move. You’re still weak. Tabby will bring you a warm drink presently.’

Effie’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she faltered. ‘About fainting…in church, you know.’

‘It’s all right. Just sit back and be quiet. Here, I’ll sit beside you and hold you. Isn’t that better?’ I moved on to the bed, pushing a pillow into the small of Effie’s back. As I slipped my arm around her shoulders, I saw her face relax into a little dreamy smile. Still half-asleep, she murmured:

‘That’s nice, that’s very nice. Just like before…like before we were married.’ I stiffened involuntarily and, as the implication of what she had said penetrated her feverish thoughts, she jerked in panic.

‘The baby! Is the baby all right?’

In spite of myself I pulled away: I could not bear to think of it.

‘Please, Henry, tell me! Please, Henry!’

‘Don’t call me that!’ I snapped, leaping to my feet, then, with an effort at self-control, I forced my voice back into gentleness. ‘Try to understand, Effie. The child was sick. It couldn’t have lived. It was too small.’

Effie’s voice rose uncontrollably, a high, wordless wailing. I took her hands, half pleading, half scolding.

‘You were too young to have a child! It was all wrong. It was a mistake. It was-’

‘No-oooo!’

‘Stop that noise!’

‘Noo-oh-ooh-oooh!’

‘Stop it!’ I shook her by the shoulders, and she raised her hands instinctively to her face, eyes wild and cheeks marbled from crying. For a moment I found her tears deeply erotic, and I turned away, flushing angrily.

‘It’s for the best, Effie,’ I said more gently. ‘Now we can go back to what we used to be, my dear. Don’t cry, Effie. It’s just that you’re too delicate to bear a child, that’s all. You’re too young. Here.’ Reaching for the laudanum bottle and the glass, I poured six careful drops into the water. ‘Drink this to calm your nerves.’

Patiently, I held the glass as Effie drank, clinging to my arm and gulping tears and medicine in equal quantities. Little by little I felt her body relax against mine until she was quite subdued.

‘That’s my good girl. Isn’t that better?’

Effie nodded sleepily and turned her head towards the crook of my arm. As she drifted once more in my arms I was momentarily aware of a sudden scent of jasmine-real or imagined? The impression was too fleeting to tell.