Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits - Donoghue [59]
Elizabeth backs against a pillar, light-headed. She pulls her handkerchief from her straw hat to wipe her cheeks. She sinks deeper into the water, and fiery fingers lay hold of her stiff shoulders; for a moment she is relieved to the point of tears. She shuts her eyes and tells herself to trust in the waters. So many, of all ranks of life, have been cured, even some three times her age; there is a marble cross in the corner, hung with discarded crutches. Why can she not believe?
It seems to her now that these are the waters of death in which disease leaks from one frail body to another. The ghostly smell of bad eggs fills up her nostrils, and a stained plaster floats by. Flakes of snow drift down from the sky, then turn to rain; the whole world is made of vapour.
"My dearest?"
That smile that sustains her, like daily bread.
When Elizabeth climbs up the steps to join Frances, her costume weighs on her so she cannot breathe. But then again, she cannot remember when she last drew breath without a struggle. When she was a girl? A child? At home, there was an oak tree; surely she climbed it?
The Guides are stained brown from the waters. They tell her how well she looks today. Such a lie is worth half a crown each.
The leather of the sedan chair is still wet from the last customer. "Home now, and quick about it, before Miss Pennington takes cold!" orders Mrs. Sheridan. Her voice is sharp with borrowed authority. But she has omitted to tip the chair-man in advance; she finds it hard to persuade herself to make free with her young friend's fortune. Out of spite the man leaves the curtains open, so the rain drifts in on Elizabeth's eyelids. The streets are clogged with barrows.
Back in bed, the ladies keep the blankets over their heads to make themselves sweat out the poisons. Outside the muddy window, the pattens strapped to strangers' feet clink like blackbirds. To distract her friend from the cough that doubles her up, Frances recites some new phrases she overheard in the Bath. "My dear girl is vastly embellished, she is a perfect progeny of learning," she squeaks. "La, my dear, you put me in a terrible agility!"
Lying there, chuckling and wheezing, Elizabeth should be perfectly happy. She is happier, at least, than she has ever been in her short and narrow life. Is she not here, in Bath, with Frances, the two of them curtained in their bed, forgetting fathers and husbands and children and all, shedding the ordinary world?
By eight in the morning the ladies are at the Pump Room, listening to the violins and forcing down the water.
Words fill the air around them like feathers, moving too fast to catch. "Your lordship's immensely good." "I'm laced so tight my stomach's sore." "Nay, I grant you, the fellow dresses prodigiously." "Oh, Iud!" "Oh, monstrous!" "Miss Pennington? La, she'll not last till Easter."
Elizabeth lowers her eyes and sips her glass of warm metallic water. For a moment she has the impression she is drinking blood. Frances must have overheard that remark too; she gets two red spots high on her cheeks, and tells her young friend how becoming her lavender pelisse is, and her little muff of rabbit skin.
Elizabeth knows better, knows what Frances cannot know, must never find out. She knows she wants to die.
The doctors think a young lady of fortune must have everything to live for. Each doctor who visits assures her that he knows where to fix the blame: frailty in the family, damp in the bones, tight-lacing and spiced food, an excess of exercise or education, too many baths. One recommends enemas; another, marriage. Miss Pennington thanks them all and pays their fees without a murmur. She is coming to realise how very rich she is. If she was only a pauper, this dying would have been over with long ago.
At Mr. Leake's booksellers, Elizabeth and Frances browse through the latest poems about the antiquities of Bath and the pleasures of melancholy. But they like the old books best. Sometimes they spend the