The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace Page A

not know me. You may not even know my name.”
    She read the rest in silence, reached the end and remained motionless. She was back ten years and still married to Jack Makepeace. Back in all the fresh horror of his disappearance. She felt a sudden urge to weep as she clenched her fingers around the letter and then threw itdown on the floor. It settled lightly on the wide boards, immune to the violence of her gesture.
    Makepeace permitted herself a rare moment of self-pity. She worked so hard at putting the past behind her, maintained a constant vigilance against its intrusion. It was unfair that it should ambush her like this. Picking up the poker again, she jabbed at the coals, trying to usher them toward the fireback and keep the smoke going up the chimney. Mrs. Palmer was disturbing everyone. She’d seduced Talitha with her pretended lack of guile. When she tried to warn Talitha that Palmer was a troublemaker if ever she’d seen one, Talitha just smiled.
    “I like her, Fanny,” she said. “That’s all there is to it. Anyway, people do make trouble. Everyone does sooner or later.”
    She was trying to wheedle her way into the Abse family. Makepeace had told Mrs. Abse that she’d seen Catherine talking with her. Emmeline Abse had frowned. Said she didn’t like the idea of her darling girl “tête-à-tête”—there was another one who gave herself airs and graces—with a patient.
    The clatter of clogs approaching along the corridor grew louder. Makepeace flung down the poker, picked up the letter from the floor and shoved it to the back of the drawer. She tried with a shaking hand to fit the key into the tiny lock but couldn’t see clearly. Her eyes were stinging as if they had soap in them. It was the smoke, she told herself. The smoke.
    Lovely made a spirited if unnecessary tap on the door.
    “What is it?” Makepeace shouted. “And can’t you stop your blasted singing, woman?”

ELEVEN

    The air was filled with the scent of hyacinths; the winter sun threw a slanting rectangle over the dining table. Emmeline felt a sense of pleasure that they should be all together for breakfast, gathered round the table, even if Ben’s fingers were stained with ink and Catherine’s hair uncombed. Catherine had laid her knife across her book to keep the pages open and was picking at a piece of bread, giggling occasionally, taking sips from her water glass.
    “Don’t read at the table, Catty. It’s bad manners.”
    Catherine looked up and scowled at her.
    “Does Father know that? Why don’t you remind him?”
    Querios shook the pages of his newspaper into formation and folded it into one quarter of its size, smoothing and creasing it as if he might be able to subdue its contents at the same time.
    “The place at Colney Hatch is in the news again. They’ve got more patients than they know what to do with and the whole system is crumbling under the weight of numbers. They didn’t think about that, did they? When they built their monster asylums and put the little men out of business.”
    Emmeline looked at him along the length of the table, willing him to respond to her meaningful glance. He slapped down the paper and turned his attention to the plaice on his plate, scraping off the flesh on the top, lifting out its spine in one supple piece.
    “Benny is here, Querios.”
    “I know that, Emmeline.”
    “He wants to speak to you.”
    Querios sighed.
    “Well, Benedict? Do your tribe of scallywags need my support?”
    “The boys are doing well. They’re not scallyw-w-w-ags and if you intend to ridicule my p-p-petition, I will not m-m-make it.”
    Benedict’s face contorted as if every last muscle was involved in the effort to get out the words. Emmeline felt her own face stiffen in sympathy. Ben’s stammer was worst at the table. But the table was the only place they ever saw each other all together, these days, with Querios working all hours and Ben out of the house so much.
    “Until I have heard the plea,”