A Map of Glass - Jane Urquhart [103]
Annabelle had absolutely no experience with this kind of talk. Her father had reacted to neither her mother’s presence nor her absence except with a kind of unvarying, vague irritation. Branwell had remained stubbornly silent on the subject of male affection of any kind, and Maurice … well, Maurice was, as far as she could tell, so frightened of his wife, and so in love with her, that had he an opinion on the subject it would be unreliable at best. The man’s fingers were beginning to explore her collarbones, his other hand having now come to rest on the opposite shoulder.
Annabelle rose quickly to her feet, upsetting the stool as she did so, and letting the sketchbook fall from her lap. As she began to limp away from him, Gilderson followed, caught her arm, then embraced her and pressed a quantity of whiskers and a mouth smelling of tobacco and whisky into her face. It was almost dark. Annabelle used more force than she knew she was capable of to push the man away, then walked, with as much speed as possible, back toward the house. He was calling her name and shouting sentences that she could have sworn included the word marriage, but she was determined not to pay any mind.
Once she was safely behind the locked door, she peered furtively out the window, just in time to see a silhouetted Gilderson begin to walk unsteadily back to the place where he would spend the night. There was a certain poignancy about the curve of his back and the careful determination with which he measured each step that softened Annabelle. He is getting old, she thought, and he will get older yet. Then, just as she thought this, Gilderson stumbled, lurched forward, and fell on his hands and knees, and something in Annabelle stumbled and fell with him. She brought her hand up to her mouth as if to prevent herself from crying out. It seemed to take him an extraordinary amount of time to get to his feet. He was like a bear that had been shot and had not quite realized that his wounds were fatal; Annabelle half-expected him to throw back his head and roar. It occurred to her that she should be leaving the house to see whether he had broken any bones, but she found it quite impossible to move, and eventually she perceived that he was once again stumbling through the increasing darkness toward the guest house. Would he spend the night tossing in an agony of remorse and embarrassment? she wondered. Not likely, she concluded, probably in the state he was in he would be snoring as soon as his head touched the pillow.
In the middle of the night, Annabelle sat bolt upright in her bed. Had he really used the word marriage and, if so, in what context had he used it? She wished she had listened more carefully now, in order to have caught exactly what he had said to her. Annabelle lit the lamp—there was to be no sleep for her that night—and looked first at one of her shoulders and then at the other. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him clearly. It could have been that he was simply inquiring about a carriage to meet him in Kingston the following day. But no, that was not likely because, like all shipbuilders, he would detest roads and railways and would insist on travelling, as much as possible, by water. She crossed her arms over her breasts and put her own hands on her shoulders, trying to determine how these bony protuberances would feel under the touch of another. Bony, she decided, was the only adjective one could apply to such shoulders, bony and old. Her heart, on the other hand, was behaving like a young trapped animal, restless, pacing, eager to get out.
The next morning everything in the house and outside its windows seemed just slightly unfamiliar, as if a series of minor alterations had taken place in the physical world overnight. Not since she had been young had Annabelle looked at objects with such intensity: the hairbrush on her dresser, the leather of her boots, the veins in her own hands as she laced up these boots, the cloth-covered buttons on the pale blue dress that she removed from the wardrobe, each chip and crack in the ironstone