Helen Humphreys Three-Book Bundle Page 14

  They fastened their dying breath to words.

  On Annie’s first day off in the new year she wakes before anyone in the house, lies in bed looking at the scratchings of frost on her attic window. She has slept well, the cold of the room stalling her usual dream of her parents on the road. She has woken with only the faintest sliver of that story in her head. Were there mornings as cold as this one where she came from?

  Annie gets quietly out of bed and goes to the window to see if it has snowed during the night. Outside the world is still as held breath. Snow dusts the trees, the stone wall. Even the distant glasshouse looks suddenly white. And then, from the side of the house, a figure staggers down the garden path, staggers as though injured or dying.

  Eldon Dashell.

  Annie dresses quickly, careful not to wake Tess. Downstairs the house is cold. Her footsteps echo behind her as she crosses the stone floor of the kitchen, opens the door, and steps outside. Frost has sharpened the grass into small silver knives. Mist webs in the trees.

  There is nothing to indicate that Mr. Dashell walked down the path. Perhaps Annie has imagined it? Perhaps it was a trick of the window frost and the light? Angles and shadows. She knows the power that light has. What it can make you see.

  Annie hurries along the path towards the glasshouse. She thinks she sees the flash of a figure moving in the orchard, but by the time she catches up, it is gone.

  She finally sees him at the far edge of the field behind the orchard. He is stumbling down the stream bank. She has to run to catch him up. “Sir,” she cries, as she hurries after him. But that seems wrong, is a word for indoors and her life there as his maid. She is closer now. “Mr. Dashell,” she cries, and he turns around and sees her, waits for her to reach him. He sways on his feet, reaches out to steady himself on her arm.

  “Are you hurt?” asks Annie. Are you drunk? she thinks.

  “First they burn, then they tingle, then they become blocks of stone,” says Eldon slowly.

  “What do?”

  “Feet. My feet.” They both look down at his feet, at the drops of water sponging out of his leather boots.

  Annie suddenly understands what he is doing. “You froze your boots,” she says. “Just like Franklin.”

  “I soaked them at the pump and left them there all night.”

  “And what does it feel like?” asks Annie. She has imagined this so fully that she needs to know how right she has been about it.

  Eldon is freezing. His lungs burn with the cold fog of morning. His feet are completely without sensation. He thinks that he has never felt happier than now, than this moment of walking across the frozen ground towards the river. “Phelan,” he says. “I’d call you Phelan if you were a member of the expedition. You would have to have been a man, then. There were no women on Franklin’s ships.”

  “What is it like?” Annie has to know.

  Eldon sways a litde. “It is exactly,” he says, “as you would imagine.” And they both smile at this.

  They walk together down towards the stream. The world shimmers through the trees. Their footsteps fasten the grass to the ground.

  “Remember those two men in the boat,” says Eldon. “The boat McClintock found. The silver service. The tea and chocolate. If we were those men in the boat, if that was us, what would we have done?”

  Annie has thought about those two men in the boat a great deal. All through the reading of The Vicar of Wakefield she imagined them in the boat, crouched down out of the wind with a candle flickering on the thwart, reading the very page she was reading, seeing the same things in their minds as she was seeing. “At first there would have been others,” she says. “To push the boat over the ice, all loaded down like that. But they would have gone on ahead to find shelter and food, or back to the ship for help.”

  “Ahead, I think,” says Eldon. “That always seems like the action of possibility, to move ahead.”

  “The two men,” says Annie. “Were they left to guard the things? Or was one of them sick? Or were they both sick?”

  “McClintock said that judging by what was left of the clothes, one was probably an officer and one was a crew member,” says Eldon. “My guess is that the officer was sick and the other man was left there to look out for him.”

  They have reached the bank of the stream and begin their awkward stumble down the slope. Ice has made a lace on the edges of the streambed.

  “I was the officer,” says Eldon. “I was sick.” He looks down at the water, trying to make his shaky legs move towards it down the arch of stream bank. “That would have been who I was there. And you,” he says, “would have hated me because I made you stay behind.”

  “Perhaps I volunteered,” says Annie. She slides a litde down the slope, catches her foot in a root, and manages to struggle upright again. “I don’t think I would have minded at first. I would have thought that the others would be back soon enough, back with food or help of some sort.”

  “And then what?” Eldon collapses by the stream and Annie drops down beside him. Mist stands in needles above the moving water in front of them. Their breath reels out, reels in.

  “And then,” says Annie, “I would try and remain hopeful.”

  “You wouldn’t go for help?”

  “I would pray to the Lord for guidance and strength,” says Annie. It is easy now that she is so cold, that her words are sticking a litde in her head, coming out slow and slurry, it is easy to imagine this. Here they are, sheltered in this boat on the ice, this boat full of useless English things, nothing to save them, and she would fasten her breath to words, to prayer. “And we would die,” she says. Because that is what happened. God did not reward their faith, their reckless perseverance of hope. They prayed and they died and it was painful and lonely and terrifying.

  Annie lies back against the cold bolster of earth. She has prayed all her life and it has always seemed like the right thing to do, has always seemed as if it was an action in itself. But now, here, she thinks that praying is perhaps merely a form of waiting. Praying is waiting for something better to happen. Salvation means rescue. “I should have gone for help,” she says. “In the beginning when I still had some strength in my bones. I made a mistake in not doing that.”

  “It’s all right, Phelan.” Eldon’s speech is slow and sticky, too. “Perhaps I wasn’t brave enough to stay by myself, afraid of animals or something. Perhaps I begged you to stay.”

  But Annie cannot believe this. “No, sir,” she says. “I should have gone back to the ship. I should have tried to save you.”

  This early in the morning, no sounds, the thin light of day winding round the bases of the trees near the stream, it seems as though the vapour above the water, over the grass, is from the world breathing out and then in again. A living creature, near to them. Everything so still, as though the world has emptied out. No birdsong. Only the occasional crack of a branch creaking with the cold.

  “In the end,” says Annie, “we read The Vicar of Wakefield out loud.”

  “Oh, God,” says Eldon slowly. “I never liked that book. The vicar was such an idiot.”

  “Really, it’s not so bad,” says Annie. “You get used to him.”

  “Weren’t the women all stolen?”

  “By ruffians,” says Annie. The word cracks and splits in the cold air, rolls away from her. “I’m cold, too,” she says. “Even without frozen boots.” She has hurried out without her cloak, has only her thin cotton dress covering her skin.

  “Perhaps we really are freezing to death,” says Eldon. “We should walk again.” He kicks at his heavy feet, tries to launch himself upon them, but they won’t hold his weight and he slides back down again. “Phelan,” he says, in a small panic. “I can’t seem to get up.”

  Annie grabs Eldon’s cold, stiff hands and they are able, with a combined lurch, to set him on his feet.

  Eldon feels the residue of panic still in his limbs. This is real now. “We have to get inside,” he says. “We have to warm up.”


  They stumble along the side of the stream, climb on their hands and knees up the slope near the back field. Annie is half pulling Eldon along.

  It’s true, he thinks. I would have been that man in the boat. I would have been the sick one. The one who caused them both to die.

  “Leave me,” he says, suddenly both brave and reckless. “Leave me to die here.” He doesn’t mind just lying down in this field of frozen earth, letting the life ebb out of him, fall away into darkness. It is what he deserves for causing Phelan to remain behind with him.

  “But there’s the house,” says Annie, pointing ahead. It looms in front of them on the horizon.

  “Leave me,” says Eldon, throwing off her arm. “Save yourself.”

  Annie hauls him onwards by the sleeve of his coat. “Sir,” she says. “I think your brain is beginning to freeze up. I am taking charge of this expedition.” She heaves him forward again, most of his weight leaning mightily into her. Halfway up the field she props him up against a fencepost while she recovers her breath, flaps her arms around to try and get feeling back into her fingers. She looks ahead as she walks, towards the grey, misted silhouette of the distant house. The ship, she thinks.

  Eldon is draped over the fencepost, muttering something.

  “What?” says Annie.

  “I hated that book,” he says. “I wouldn’t have listened to it in the boat.”

  “Well, you did,” she says firmly. “Really, you did.”

  Stacked against the fencepost is a small pile of stones, cleared from the field and placed safely outside its perimeter. They remind Annie of something. “Sir,” she says. “Do you have paper and pen?”

  Annie makes a cairn, puts the bit of paper securely on the bottom, piles rocks on top. She has used Eldon’s back as a makeshift table, has written with frozen hand onto the envelope Eldon has in his pocket.

  January 3, 1866. Expedition under the command of Captain Eldon Dashell, and with Annie Phelan as Ship’s Company, set out to retrace the last known moments of two of John Franklin’s crew.

  By the time they get back to the house Eldon has regained some of his composure. It is now late enough that Cook will be up and so they cannot risk going through the kitchen, or through the front entrance. They walk around to Eldon’s library and he pries open the window with an iron stake from the garden. Then he dives over the sill and Annie hears the crash of him hitting the floor.

  “Careful,” she says.

  Eldon resurfaces, rubbing his head, offers her his hand, and she half jumps and he half pulls her into the room.

  They sit right at the fire, trying to warm up. Annie is so cold that her skin hurts. She is wrapped in a rug from Eldon’s divan. He has wrapped himself in a curtain. They pass the brandy decanter back and forth. Eldon had tried to pour the brandy into snifters but his cold hands couldn’t negotiate the finer points of this civilized action.

  Annie stretches out her feet into the hearth. Smoke is rising from her damp boots. She coughs as a hot knot of brandy uncurls in her stomach, passes the decanter over to Eldon.

  “Phelan,” says Eldon, “I lost control. I’m sorry. I’m glad you didn’t take me on my word and leave me to die in the field.”

  “You were just cold, sir.”

  “Well, I thank you nonetheless.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  They pass the brandy back and forth. Annie starts to shiver and then, finally, stops. Her fingers feel like her fingers again. Her boots continue to hiss and smoke.

  “It’s strange, sir,” she says. “There were those men pushing their silver over the ice in that boat at about the same time my family were dying in Ireland. Both sets of people starving to death.”

  Eldon swirls brandy around inside his mouth. He feels quite drunk and has only heard part of what Annie said. “We think we’re gods,” he says. “Going all over the world. Exploring. Discovering. And there we are, appearing to the native people, either lost or staggering down to die. What pathetic souls they must think us.” He passes the bottle back to Annie. “Gods,” he says. “Gods.”

  God, thinks Annie. I have forsaken you. Or you have forsaken me. She isn’t sure which it is any more. “I never thought to look for my family,” she says. “I believed that story of their death. But what if they didn’t all die as Mrs. Cullen said? What if there were survivors, or even people who lived where they had lived and knew more of what happened to them?” Annie puts the brandy down on the floor between them. Her head feels fiery and she wants it to stop.

  Eldon has, by accident really, heard what it is that Annie has said. “I could write some letters for you,” he says. “To the county clerk. See what’s registered under your family name in that part of Ireland.” He doesn’t reach for the brandy. He suddenly feels exhausted, tilts his head back in the chair. “I’ll do that, Phelan,” he says. And then he’s asleep.

  Annie pulls Eldon’s shroud of curtain well back out of the fire, replaces the brandy decanter on his table, and makes her way, unsteadily, back upstairs. Does she even dare to think of what he might find of her family? If she lets herself hope and then finds out that her family are all indeed dead, will this not be more painful than if she had just continued to believe the story of their death?

  Some relics brought from the boat found in Lat. 6g 08’ 43” N., Long. 99 24’ 42” N., upon the West Coast of King William Island, May 30,

  The Vicar of Wakefield;

  Two table knives with white handles—one is marked “W.R.”,

  26 pieces of silver plate—II spoons, II forks, and 4 teaspoons; fragment of a silk handkerchief piece of scented soap two small glass-stoppered bottles (full);

  a pair of silver forceps, such as a naturalist might use for holding or

  seizing small insects, etc.; a small bead purse, piece of red sealing-wax, stopper of a pocket flask Five watches.

  Some relics seen in Lat. 6g o9’N., Long. 99 24’ W, not brought away, 30th of May, 1859:—

  A large boat, measuring 28 feet in extreme length, 7 feet 3 inches in breadth, 2 feet 4 inches in depth

  4 cakes of navy chocolate, shoemaker’s box with implements complete, carpet boots, sea boots and shoes—in all seven or eight pairs; towels, sponge, tooth-brush, hair comb, a mackintosh part of a boat’s sail of No. 8 canvas, whale-line rope with yellow

  mark, and white line with red mark; a great quantity of clothing

  Madonna (mortal)

  It’s Annie’s hands that first give Isabelle the idea. The sight of them, red and cracked, split from scrubbing floors. How different they look from Annie’s sweet face, her fine features. If dressed differently, more like a Lady, Annie could pass in the world of gentility. It is her hands that would give her away, just as it’s Isabelle’s hands that she feels ashamed of when she’s out in society, that she’s made to feel ashamed of.

  Annie’s hands tell the entire history of her working life. There’s no escaping what she has done. If Isabelle wants to show the essence of Annie Phelan in her photographs, how can she ignore the hands? What is beauty without suffering?

  Isabelle holds her own black hands up to the window light. They keep the record of all the photographs she has taken. They are a logbook of the flesh, each voyage into light written onto them as darkness. They are the true negative of what she does. Who she is.

  “The Madonna?” Annie is on her hands and knees, scrubbing the front steps and walk, when Isabelle comes to tell her of her new idea. Annie rests back on her knees, pushes a stray bit of hair off her forehead with the back of her hand.

  Isabelle crouches down beside Annie, takes her hand in hers. “She was a woman much like yourself,” she says, bending over Annie’s hand to inspect each nick, each smooth rind of scar.

  “I don’t think so, ma’am.”

  Isabelle looks up at Annie. “You know the story, then?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Annie likes the feeling of her hand in Isabelle’s. Isabelle’s skin is soft, warm. “This is a story that I am
particularly familiar with.”

  “She was an ordinary, working woman,” says Isabelle, still thinking that she must explain the Madonna to her maid.

  Annie stares incredulously at Isabelle. “Ma’am,” she says. “She was the mother of the Lord.” She falls hard into the last word, a place to land, a place to push off from.

  “Not yet,” promises Isabelle. “Right now she’s just an ordinary woman who makes a living from her hands.”

  “I don’t know,” says Annie. She doesn’t feel right about this. I will not take the Lord’s name in vain. What about his image?

  Isabelle’s knees are wet from the stoop. “Please,” she says. The stone against her flesh, her bone, as unyielding as Annie. “Trust me,” she says.

  Annie sits back. She still holds her scrubbing brush in one hand, lays it down on the steps. Isabelle looks scared, she thinks. No, perhaps it’s sadness. Isabelle spends so long studying Annie’s face she must be able to read it perfectly by now, all the emotions and subtlety. Annie wishes she knew what Isabelle was feeling. She takes her hand gently away from Isabelle’s. Her skin stings from this loss. “Ma’am,” she says. “I’m not sure that you completely understand the story of the Lord.” It would help Annie if she could read Isabelle’s face, help her to know what she might and might not say. Instead of being angry, Isabelle seems relieved at Annie’s words.