Havisham: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

being beaten and then hung up on a line to air.
    We had lain telling each other stories, as if we were five years old instead of ten (me) and eleven (Sally). I didn’t even feel sleepy, not at first, because of my excitement at having her there. Later, however, I followed her example and dozed off, with my arm covering her waist. Whatever was the harm in that?
    My father told me afterwards that he had ordered Sally not to come back.
    Her first exile from Satis House was beginning.
    *   *   *
    I managed to meet her a few times, down by the river and away from prying eyes. We arranged that she should be in this or that location on a Sunday morning, so that we could have a sight of each other on my way to and from the cathedral service.
    But it wasn’t the same as before: it couldn’t be, no matter how much I wished it.
    *   *   *
    ‘It’s what my father says.’
    ‘What do you say, though?’
    I stared at her, wrong-footed by her question.
    ‘Catherine Havisham sings her father’s song, I think.’
    It sounded like a remark she must have overheard adults making.
    ‘I do no such thing,’ I told her.
    ‘But you have no time for me now.’
    ‘It’s different now.’
    ‘How is it different now?’
    Because. Because, because, because.
    I turned away.
    ‘Why –?’
    ‘We’re growing up,’ I answered. ‘That’s all.’
    ‘No. That’s not it.’
    Then I felt impatient with her. Why couldn’t she just accept that these things are visited on us? We don’t have a choice, we truly don’t. I was a Havisham; she was Limping Johnnie’s daughter, never mind what airs her mother gave herself.
    *   *   *
    I felt watching eyes were following me down to the river. My flesh crept on the back of my neck.
    It was Sally who said we should stop. Must stop.
    I reluctantly, very sadly, agreed.
    *   *   *
    I saw how she grew after that. I saw how the coppery colour of her hair deepened, and the hair itself – with ribbons wound through – lost none of its thickness but was restrained still more tightly.
    I saw small but significant things: the bruises on her ankles from the distances she walked every day, a red mark on her arm like a kitchen burn which her other arm tried to cover, a downward turn to her mouth on one side when she thought no one was looking.
    But I saw.

S IX
    There’s blood on the rug where I’ve been standing. It has run down my legs from the place I know to keep hidden.
    There’s blood on the sheets when I go back to examine the bed. And on my nightdress.
    How have I wounded myself? I don’t feel hurt : just a little light-headed, a little muzzy.
    A skivvy brings me what I call for from the scullery.
    I get down on my knees, gingerly, and try washing the rug.
    With water, cold and hot. Then with vinegar. Then with the juice of a lemon.
    The stains won’t wash out of the wool; or from the sheets either, or my nightdress.
    I rub frantically, but the stains are defiant – they seem to have settled there, where I’ve bled them.
    *   *   *
    Afterwards it was explained to me by Mrs Venn.
    I didn’t doubt my father had been informed, if cryptically. He asked me how I was feeling: as if I should be indisposed, ailing.
    ‘This warm weather,’ he said, ‘very unseasonal; it’s best not to tax yourself.’
    He didn’t let his eyes rest on me, as he normally did when he lent advice. He was embarrassed, as I was. We weren’t talking, he and I, about the same Catherine Havisham of two days ago.
    *   *   *
    Left in my room by myself I sat in front of the fire, preferring to watch the pictures in the flames to what I could see through my window, that view of the yard and rooftops and the drab riverland beyond.
    When the flames died down and the pictures faded, I looked instead at the fireplace tiles – tiles from Delft, blue and white – and my imagination wandered among the scenes there.
    By the banks of the canals, over the bridges, past the windmills, stopping as people