‘There is so much flesh on show in that painting that Mr Benham will not allow it in any other room of this house,’ she said.
We were lying across her bed, looking up at the woman in red. It was a painting by her mother, she’d said, and it had been done after they came to England, one of the two things Madame had brought with her when she married Benham, the other being the little egg chest that her father had brought from France, which she’d had carved with her once-upon-a-time initials – MD, for Marguerite Delacroix. The violin, like her father, was long gone.
‘The only thing I have left of Maman,’ she said, nodding towards the portrait. ‘Don’t you think she looks like a lewd saint?’
I cocked my head, to see her. I was thinking about that other portrait. The little black boy. Thinking how she’d fought to keep him on the walls, too, although she’d lost.
Later I answered a knock at the door to discover Linux on the threshold. She screwed her face, of course, at discovering me on the other side of it. But there was a needle of happiness in my chest, such a pain I thought it would kill me, my mind still aflame with what Madame and I had been doing, moments before. Linux could do me no harm. Nothing could. A brothy scent of onions and vinegar followed her in, and she looked around at the tea tray, at the papers scattered on the desk, Madame in her kimono, outstretched on the bed. She took a step forward, stopped. Blinked as if it was the sight of Madame herself that had stopped her. ‘Pardon me, Madame, you are . . . working?’ She clasped her hands together. ‘I’m sure you should be resting.’
‘Oh, Linux.’ She tilted her head. ‘First you want me up and about, then you want me resting. There is no pleasing you, is there?’
‘Did Frances sleep here? Pru says she never came up last night.’
‘Frances is to be my own abigail, now, Mrs Linux. And I will thank you to leave her alone.’
‘It’s irregular ‒’
She waved a hand. ‘Frances will sleep here from now on. It is decided. And do stop turning and turning like a lighthouse beacon! You are making me dizzy.’
Linux had come to a stop at the writing desk. Her hand crept towards the pile of pages. For a time, she said nothing, just went on stroking the wood. ‘Well. You must stir yourself, for the time being. You must stir yourself. Mr Benham expects you in the breakfast room.’
Madame sat up. ‘I had no intention of being expected.’
‘Nevertheless.’ Her smile darted out. ‘You are. There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.’ Then she lowered her head, bent to touch a finger to the skirting board. ‘Dust. Pru must do better.’
She had to go down, of course. When Benham called, everyone in that house went running.
After they left, I went through to the dressing room, which was little more than a closet, with a copper tub in the middle, racks for gowns and hooks for towels. Silence stoppered my ears. I sat on the rim of the tub and dipped my hand into the water, cooled to a scum. That needs emptying, I thought, but then remembered Pru would see to it.
The sum of all my duties was to see to her.
Hours before, I’d poured water over her hair from the little china ewer she kept beside the tub, watched it make waves down her spine. Like all white women’s hair, hers obeyed the known laws of beauty and gravity. Water smoothed it into dark, slippery threads.
What does he want with her? The thought swelled thick in my throat.
I lifted the soap out of its china dish, stepped out of my own skirts. Welcomed the slap of water against my thighs. My shift lay slick and dark just as her hair had done, and I leaned forward, looked down the waking-up length of myself. And then ‒ I’ll confess it ‒ I brought the soap under my nose, between my legs, where it felt small and sharp as a fingernail.
I think that was when it came upon me. The madness that has lain upon me since. I lifted her towel from the floor, went back into her bedchamber, sat on her bed, and waited.