Chapter Twenty-two
Mrs Rochester
Berenice Antoinetta Rochester, lost in her
confined, silent world, was beautiful.
More beautiful than either Nicola or me, or
any of the local girls, she had long dark hair that hung to her waist in a
messy, knotted braid and wore no make-up. She stared at me accusingly… and then
at her husband. Her cheeks were flushed as though she had been crying. Her eyes
were wild as she stared frozen into space. The woman wore faded pink pyjama
pants and an old jumper – it looked like it must have been Nathanial’s since it
had the words of his former school stencilled on the front of it. She looked to
be about the same age as Nathanial.
Mrs Poole, the person I’d been told was a lodger,
was really Berenice Rochester’s “keeper”. This mystery had been hidden behind a
bolted door. The lodger was hiding, locked up all day long, seen only at night,
in shadows. From the day I’d arrived, I had been told Mrs Poole came and went
as she pleased and did not like to be disturbed. I’d been fooled. The frail,
unstable woman in the locked room had been able to look down on me in the
garden, on all of us, from her barred, rooftop window. This woman was
Nathanial’s wife. What living hell it must have been for her, in her lucid
moments, to witness her husband’s happiness and his child’s laughter.
When she looked up, she saw Nathanial and greedily
flung herself upon him, kissing him passionately, or trying to… she hung off
his chest and whimpered like a kitten as he attempted to cradle her sobs; then
in the blink of an eye she turned and merged from a docile lamb into a wild,
caged animal.
There was chafing on her wrists from where
she had obviously been restrained.
‘It’s one of her good days,’ Emma Poole yelled
above the commotion, as Berenice’s brother, the lawyer and I looked on in
stunned silence.
When Berenice had been constrained,
Nathanial spoke.
‘Emma Poole is my wife’s psychiatric nurse;
she has worked here for as long as Berenice has lived with me.’
I stared at Nathanial Rochester whilst Berenice’s
eyes bored into me. I realized I was still wearing what remained of the
wreckage of my wedding gown. The lace hem was torn and stained from the long walk
through the muddy gardens. It was a degradation the dress had never been
intended to endure. I’d already ripped off the veil.
This image of me caused the ensuing
commotion, I think.
Berenice, his wife, had managed to free her
wrist from the strap which bound her to the wall and she lunged at me and
screamed like a mad woman… because she was a mad woman.
Nathanial caught her by her fragile,
scarred wrists; she scratched and screamed into her husband’s face until she
drew blood with her blunt nails. Berenice then licked her fingertips, her
hunger for his blood seemingly insatiable. She was… a woman, a beauty and also
a monster. Nathanial’s wife kicked out as she was constrained; she spat and
screamed as she reached over to me, clutching at the hem of my dress. When she
did this, she bared her teeth, which seemed more like fangs in that moment.
His wife could not speak any audible words
but kissed Nate’s fingertips, the same hands that were holding her down. She licked
and bit his fingers. I looked away, and then looked back. Like lightening, she
shot from him to me, seemingly flying through the air. The woman (if that’s
what she was) lunged at me until a guard held her down and she cried and screeched
and kicked again as they subdued her with some sort of deep sleep medication
shot straight into her arm with a syringe.
I fled from the room feeling muddied,
beaten and almost completely broken. I was feeling blessed to have escaped that
room with my life but betrayed to the core, and so tired from this deceit that I
locked myself in the bathroom and turned on the taps.
I stood in front of the full length mirror
in the wreckage of my wedding finery. Slowly, and then quickly, I began to rip
off every layer, hardly waiting to unbutton those wretched ties. I stripped off
the layers of my wedding gown until I stood naked and crying, a pathetic shadow
of my former self. Less than an hour ago, the dress had captured the promise of
my future life but now, as I collapsed into the bath and poured in half a
bottle of bubbles, the dress had become meaningless to me. It carried the weight
of betrayal in every designer fold.
Finally, the tears began to flow. These
were tears I hadn’t shown for many years and with them my entire life, my
messed up existence. The water soothed the cuts and bruises and cleaned off the
mud from my body but my mind was in turmoil.
Eventually, there was a knock at the door,
a soft knock. I heard a woman’s voice, Mrs Fairfax’s.
‘Anne, dear? Anne? Are you alright?’
Silence.
‘Anne, I swear, I didn’t know, I suspected
something was amiss, but I didn’t know the truth. Please answer me, Anne, are
you alright?’
I could hardly speak but she kept asking.
Finally I croaked out the words even I was
unsure of, ‘… Yes.’
I heard her footsteps walking away from the
door.
I leant into my knees as the bubbles piled
around me, covering my body, hiding my skin as I hunched over my hands.
Another knock.
‘Anne… Anne?’ he whispered. It was
Rochester. Suddenly he’d become a surname to me again, a man I couldn’t trust.
‘Let me in,’ Rochester said.
‘No.’
‘Anne, please…. Let me in. I need to tell
you something.’
I got out of the bath and wrapped a towel
around me. I dried myself, partially, then dragged on the pyjamas I’d discarded
in a drawer, the old ones, not fit for my wedding night. I didn’t care. After I
wrapped my robe around me, my hair still dripping with bathwater, I opened the
door.
He started to talk but as his mouth moved,
I walked past him then collapsed.
When I woke, I was lying on my bed. My
forehead was bruised, slightly and Rochester lay slumped on the couch on the
other side of the room. His shirt was ripped and stained, his suit jacket
discarded. It was early morning, but still ink black outside.
I opened my eyes wide, wishing I’d opened
my eyes wider, earlier. How could I have let myself fall in love with a lie?
He stirred as I pulled off my blanket.
‘Anne? Are you awake?’
‘Yes.’ I said.
‘You must hate me.’
I
remained silent.
‘I am
so sorry… I couldn’t tell you, I couldn’t risk losing you. I love you.’
I sat
in silence on the end of my bed.
‘She
is the secret. Hers is the story that haunts my life…’
