Joanne Harris - Sleep, Pale Sister

I tasted salt on her lips and I was drowning in her, with her hair in my mouth and in my eyes and all around me like the web of some fiendish spider-goddess. She had shed her nightdress as a snake sheds its skin, and was straddling me like a terrible centaur-woman, head thrown back in defiance of all decency and modesty. For a moment I could not help but respond: there was no thought in me but lust.

When I could think again I was pinned to the mattress in horror: where was my beggar girl, my sleeping beauty, my pale sister? Where was the child I had nurtured? She was all adult now in the dark heat of her desire. As she closed her eyes I managed to escape her mesmerism and I pushed her away with as much violence as my weak limbs could muster. Her eyes snapped open and it was all I could do to prevent myself being lost in their depths again, but I held on to the last of my sanity and turned my face away.

There was no shame in her. The last hope of salvation had been denied me in this girl, and the realization was bitter in me. Her kiss still salted my mouth, the memory of her touch beguiling against my skin, and I cursed my weak, sinful flesh. I cursed her too, this Eve of my downfall: cursed her white skin and her cavernous eyes and her hair which had made me mad with longing for her. With tears streaming down my face, I went down on my knees and prayed for forgiveness. But God was not there for me and, in the darkness, the demons of my lust pranced all around. Effie did not understand why I had withdrawn from her, and for a time she tried to drag me from my penance with tears and caresses.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked softly, and if I had not known that she, too, was tainted to the core by the same demon which possessed me, I could have sworn she was pure. Her voice was unsteady, like that of a little girl, and her hands around my neck were as soft and loving as they had been when she was ten years old.

I dared not answer, but pushed her away, my hands clenched furiously.

‘Please…Henry…’ It was the first time she had called me by my first name, and the intimacy that it implied froze me with remorse.

‘Don’t call me that!’

She was confused, and her hand crept into mine, whether to comfort herself or me I was unsure.

‘But-’

‘Be quiet! Haven’t you done enough harm already?’

Perhaps she really didn’t know what irreparable damage she had already caused: I sensed her confusion and, in her troubled, tainted innocence, I hated her. She began to cry, and I hated her even more. Better that she should be dead than this carnal wrestling in the hot night! Better that she should be dead, I repeated fiercely. Her shamelessness had killed my little girl on the very night she was to have been mine. She had damned us both, and now she would be with me for the rest of her life, a living reminder of the death of all my illusions.

‘I don’t understand. What have I done wrong?’ Effie’s voice was so sincere, so vulnerable in the dark.

I laughed bitterly.

‘I thought you were so pure. I thought that even though all other women-even my own mother-might be whores, you at least had been spared the taint.’

‘I don’t-’

‘Listen!’ I snapped furiously. ‘I watched you grow. I kept you from the other children. I protected you. Where did you learn it? Who taught you? When I was painting you as Mary and Juliet and the Convent Flower, were you already twisting on your bed at night, dreaming of your lover? Did you look into your glass on May Eve and see him there, watching you?’ I took her by the shoulders and shook her. ‘Tell me!’

She pulled away from my grasp, trembling. Even then the sight of her body aroused me, and I threw a blanket at her.

‘Cover yourself, for God’s sake!’ I shouted, biting down on my lips to stop the hysteria.

She drew the blanket tightly around her shoulders, her eyes huge and unreadable. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said at last. ‘I thought you loved me. Why are you afraid to make me your wife?’

‘I’m not afraid!’ I snapped angrily. ‘We could share so many things together. Why demean it, for the sake of this one act? My love for you is pure, pure as the love of a child for his mother. You make it something shameful.’

‘But something which gives pleasure-’ began Effie.

‘No!’ I interrupted. ‘Not the true unsullied joy of a pure marriage. That can only exist in God. The flesh is the Devil’s domain, and all his pleasures are filth and corruption. Trust me, Effie. We are above this. I want to keep you innocent. I want to keep you beautiful.’

But she had turned her face to the wall, the blanket tight around her.

Knave of Hearts, dear fellow, of Hearts . Kindly give me my proper title. Even a knave has his pride, you know. And I have so many hearts! I gave one to the mistress and one to the dame, and one to the beggar girl who cries in the lane-only to stop her crying, mark you. But what did they give me in return? A few sighs, a quick tumble, and enough tears to fill my bathtub. Women! They’ve been the death of me and still I can’t do without them; in hell I’ll swear I’ll ogle the little diablesses-I like ’em hot.

What’s that?

Ah, the story, the story. I see you find me distasteful. Well, you’ve given me the limelight for a time, and I’m not about to give it back yet. So smoke your pipe, old man, and move over. Let me introduce myself.

Moses Zachary Harper, poet, sometime painter, sinner, philanderer, hedonist, Knave of Hearts and Ace of Rods, erstwhile lover and loser of Mrs Euphemia Chester.

What of the good Henry?

Let’s say there was a contretemps; maybe a woman (who knows?)…maybe a true word spoken in jest at the expense of the pious Mr Chester. Suffice it to say there was a coldness, but a professional coldness. Mr Ruskin had taken a fancy to my Sodom and Gomorrah and had written favourably of me. There was a canvas! Three hundred bodies in rapturous, tortuous embrace! And every inch of female flesh conquered territory! The parsonic Mr Chester despised me cordially, but envied me my connections. To tell the truth, I had none-on the right side of the bed, that is-but I had managed to eke a few poor favours along the petticoat-line.

Imagine the conversations between us at the tea-tray; poor Henry, Friday-faced as a maiden aunt. ‘Won’t you have a cup of tea, Mr Harper? I hear your exhibition met with some success…’ Yours truly négligé to a point with no hat, and shirt undone, uttering calculated insults (‘I think I see the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds in that last canvas, dear fellow…’). I confess, I was a thorn in his flesh. Poor Henry was never made to be an artist; he had none of the artistic temperament, exhibiting instead a distressing inclination for clean living, churchgoing and the like, which never failed to set my teeth on edge.

Imagine my surprise when, on returning from a long trip abroad, I heard he was married! My first reaction was hilarity, then disbelief. Oh, he’s good-looking in his way, but any woman with an ounce of sense can see he’s no more passion in him than a piece of ham. Which just goes to prove that most women don’t have an ounce of sense.

My second reaction was an intense curiosity. I wanted to see the specimen of misguided womanhood the man had snared. A plain girl, I imagined, no doubt a pillar of the local church, proficient in watercolours. I asked around the artistic circles and learned that Henry had been married for just under a year; that his wife was of frail constitution, and had given birth to a dead child in January. Opinion had it that she was rather lovely, in an unusual style. As it happened Henry, I was told, had planned an exhibition to coincide with the anniversary of their marriage, and, knowing that this was probably the only way I could get myself received by the old bluestocking, I determined to see it.