Free Awakening by Stevie Davies

egg and breadcrumbs. ‘Don’t bring that muck anywhere near me; I can’t stand the smell.’ She twists round to bury her face in a cushion and her book dislodges, to lie splayed on the floor.
    Beatrice fishes it up. Reading the word Species , she thinks the word specious. Anna snatches it back and buries it in the blankets.
    â€˜Yes, you can,’ Beatrice says. ‘Don’t be silly.’
    â€˜Go away.’
    â€˜I won’t go away until you’ve eaten three teaspoonsful. If you’re well enough to make such a fuss, you’re well enough to at least try to eat.’
    â€˜Take it away.’
    Beatrice acquiesces. Nothing for it but to call in Dr Quarles. Placing on the table the delicacy she’s taken trouble to cook, Beatrice stands at the kitchen window, draws several deep breaths and fits in a tense prayer for patience. She would be more merciful to her sister over the lambs’ tails if Mr Anwyl had only been over to visit. Or if a letter had come from Christian. Back she goes, with half the quantity of food on the plate.
    â€˜Annie,’ she begins. ‘Dear Annie love – won’t you try for me? Because it does hurt so to see you starve yourself.’
    â€˜I could try a little gin in hot water, Beattie. Or some of Baines’s port you’ve hidden somewhere.’
    Beatrice hastens to prepare the gin, whisking the food away. Amy, the new servant, reheats it and Beatrice brings it back with the gin. The infidel port is no longer in the house: Miss Pentecost has given it to three deserving and abstemious villagers for medicinal use. ‘Three tiny spoonfuls first, darling.’ She waits.
    Anna’s obstinacy sets rock-hard. ‘I’m not a child to be harangued. I’ll drink the gin. If you’d let me go to St Ives with my friends … ’
    That childish whining tune again. Beatrice wonders, as her sister sips the gin and lemon, if Anna has made up her mind to follow their parents, brother and stepmothers to the mound in the churchyard and there abandon herself to final peace. To leave Beatrice alone in the world. Draughts gust between door and window; the sickly fire gutters. She hears Anna’s unridden horse, Spirit, whinny in its stall. It will have to be sold. The books must be disposed of.
    Beatrice darts the spoon forward; as Anna’s mouth opens again, morsels enter her lips. She retches but swallows. Clamping her mouth, she turns her face away.
    â€˜Now, just two more,’ says Beatrice.
    Silence.
    â€˜I won’t give up, Annie. I daren’t give up.’
    Silence.
    Anna puts out her hand. At last. Beatrice brings the plate closer. Her sister, laughing and crying, grabs the rim and slings it across the room like a quoit. The plate smashes against the fireplace. ‘Ha!’
    Amy, taken on just this morning, is called in to clear the mess. ‘How did that happen. Miss?’ she asks.
    Anna laughs again, unpleasantly. ‘Ask her.’ She stares at her sister without blinking. But Beatrice can see that her whole body quivers.
    Hysteria, Beatrice thinks.
    It’s hysterical to talk to oneself in private, as Anna does. To hide smirking grins behind a hand when there’s company. To keep books in your bed claiming they act as hot-water bottles. To hurl your lunch across the room like a child in a tantrum.
    Beatrice comprehends the root of Anna’s hysteria, of course she does. Its origin is her womb, whose vagrancy expresses itself in her bowels. These are unstable, contradictory even. For weeks at a time Anna will have loose motions; then everything will silt up. Dr Quarles explains that faecal matter undischarged from the belly exudes poisons which mount to the brain. Beatrice knows that the bowels could never have polluted the system if Miriam Sala hadn’t introduced poison. Just as Indian sailors brought cholera to England, so Mrs Sala, that foreign body, has contaminated Anna, as Lore did