The Painted Bridge Read Online Free PDF Page A

was dark-haired, with a pleated white ruff around the neck of her dress, pushing up under her chin. Her face was dusted white, with black arched brows high over her eyes and reddened lips. She looked like an elderly doll.
    The woman picked up a small brush and pan and began sweeping the table, flicking shards of eggshell, fish bones, and cake crumbs into the pan, the bristles making light, stroking sounds on the oilcloth.
    “You’ll grow accustomed to the routine, Mrs. Palmer,” she said, in a gentle, cultivated voice. “Mr. Abse leads prayers in the dayroom after breakfast. Some of us take the air at ten-thirty in what they call the airing grounds. It’s a courtyard, behind the house. After that, we occupy ourselves with handwork till luncheon. Mrs. Makepeace will provide you with silks. It’s the same every day, except Sunday. Then there’s no sewing. The time passes somehow. If I can help you with anything, let me know. My name is Talitha Batt.”
    Anna wanted to ask the woman how she knew to address her as Mrs. Palmer, how long she had been here, who Abse really was. She opened her mouth to speak then again quelled the impulse to respond to a lunatic. Turning her head away, she surveyed the room, the oversize sideboard running along the wall opposite the windows, the mismatched chairs around the table.
    Anna found herself looking again at the pictures on the wall and got up to examine them more closely. They were photographs, she discovered to her surprise, oddly modern in this old place. Each one was six or seven inches tall and four or five wide, cut into an oval shape and pasted on card. Photographs of women. Every one of them was alone, pictured against a plain background that made them seem as if they might have been anywhere or nowhere. Some looked afraid, others angry. Amused. Some seemed to have retreated inside themselves and their expressions gave away nothing at all.
    An old country woman caught her attention. She had a spotted scarf tied around her neck and was clasping a pigeon against her breast; bird and woman looked out with the same brightness of eye. Studying the face, the white hair springing out from under the edges of a man’s cap, she recognized the woman who’d been sitting opposite her at the table. She could see her more clearly in the photograph than she had with her own eyes.
    “Mrs. Valentine. Violet Valentine. A good likeness, don’t you think?”
    Anna felt a hand on her arm and turned to see Makepeace beside her. Her gaze was neutral, unyielding, and she wore the same darkdress as on the previous day but with the addition of a small cameo hanging from a ribbon around her neck. Anna shrugged off her hand and stepped back. Makepeace had shoved her into the room with the strength of a kicking horse; she intended from now on to stay out of her reach.
    “Did you want something, Mrs. Makepeace?”
    “If you’d care to follow me, Mrs. Palmer.”
    Anna glanced around the room, empty now. She had no option but to walk behind Makepeace, past the staircase to the bedrooms, past a room where a maid on her knees sorted through a heap of dresses all made from the same sprigged cotton as Mrs. Button’s. The sound of rain pounding on a tin roof was coming from farther along the corridor. It was peculiar, that rain should fall indoors. It wasn’t raining outside. She strained her ears and clearly heard the echoing splash of water hitting tin.
    “What’s that?”
    “What is what, Mrs. Palmer?”
    “That sound.”
    Makepeace stopped in front of a door and selected a key from a silver contraption at her waist.
    “I don’t hear anything. Come in and sit down.”
    Makepeace held open the door, then closed it behind them so that only the crackling of a fire could be heard.
    The room smelled of something familiar. Anna breathed in deeply, inhaled a bitter aroma that cheered her before she knew what it was. Coffee. Just to smell it made her feel hopeful. The situation was about to be resolved.