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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781554684731 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 08/04/2009 |
| Pages: | 272 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Prologue
The boy will remember it this way forever. His wings are on fire. He stands against a burning wall. The harder he moves his arms, trying to get free of the leather straps, the faster the flames shudder along the white feathers.
The boy doesn't see her until she's right beside him. It seems as if she has poured out of the smoke, her gray cloak flapping around her like waves on the sea. For a moment they stare at each other. He sees the flicker of fear in her young face, but that is something he thinks later—young face—much later, when he is a man. Now he thinks only, Save me, his throat seared shut. He cannot push the dry burst of words through his parched lips. It doesn't matter. She has grabbed him under the arms, holds him away from her body. Put your arms out, she says. He stretches his burning wings so they stay clear of her clothes and she runs with him like this, down the hallway to Isabelle's bedroom. There is smoke in the room but the window is open. She stands him by the door, rushes to the bed, and drags the mattress off. He sees the sparks sizzling along the trailing edge of her cloak as she tears off the bedding, stuffs the mattress through the window, and it somersaults to the earth below. She has hold of him again, leans with him in her arms over the sill.
I've got you, she says.
And then she lets him go.
The boy falls. He puts both his arms out and for a brief moment his fiery wings stay the air and he floats down. The air pushing against the underside of the wings is the same pressure aswhenshe held him over the sill, the same feeling. The rush of fiery air as he slows above the earth. Her strong and steady hands.
This is him, flying.
Chapter One
Guinevere
* * *
ANNIE PHELAN HURRIES along the lane to the Dashell house. The coach from Tunbridge Wells let her off on the main road and she is to walk the last half mile by herself.
It is June. The narrow lane announces its summer population with Annie's every step. A magpie! A bee! The dry clicks of insects busy in the hedgerow. The country is so different from London. There, the clatter of people and carriages is constant, though sometimes, at night, when Annie was walking home from reading classes she would hear the soft, tumbly voice of a nightingale calling in the square. In London, the horizon was stacked with buildings, the air was rheumy with coal smoke. Here, the sky is huge and blue, uncluttered.
All the long journey down from London, Annie has imagined this walk, has imagined that the lane to the house will be rutted and dusty, that the house will suddenly appear as she rounds a bend, that it will be magnificent and stately. Perhaps a little decrepit. Like Thornfield Hall, she had thought in the coach. She has recently finished Jane Eyre again and this is how she imagines a country estate.
And just as she expected, the Dashell house becomes visible as Annie rounds a bend in the rutted, dusty lane. She stops walking. There it is, looking much more decrepit than magnificent. Large and sprawling, but definitely neglected. The bushes out front are straggly and tall, blocking out some of the downstairs windows with their green, swaying bulk. The stone on the upper story is crumbly with age. A sign on the gatepost says MIDDLE ROAD FARM. The last two words are partially obscured by brambles.
Annie stands there, in the lane, looking at the distant house, feeling apprehensive, wishing that she could just keep walking, that the house would just keep appearing around every bend. She needs more time to arrive here fully. The moment she enters that house, sees the rooms, meets Mrs. Dashell, all her imaginings will stop and what is real will fill that space completely. In a few steps, in a few brief moments, this world will be exchanged for that one.
COOK HAS a crown of flowers in her hair. Eldon sees it when she leans over to serve him the vegetables.
The slick surface of the table looks watery in the weak window light, slopes away from him to Isabelle, at the other end, reading her book.
"Who are you this time?" he says to Cook.
She reddens. "Abundance, sir."
"Abundance?"
Isabelle looks up from her book. "After the bountiful harvest," she says helpfully.
Eldon bends his head over his plate of underdone turkey, which has been hacked from the bone in rough, stringy wedges. There's the whicker of the clock being wound in the hall. A bract of vines at the window. The cut heads of roses float in a crystal bowl, one turning slowly in the whispery light, bumping against the others, turning like a compass disk toward the thought of North.
ANNIE PHELAN WAITS in the drawing room. She holds in her hands the newspaper with the advertisement and the return letter from Isabelle, because she might need these to prove she should be here. In the Dashell house the red velvet curtains are drawn back and tied, fall in heavy pleated braids to the floor on either side of the window. There are oil paintings on the walls, all portraits except for one over by the piano—cows in a field, hills in the background. The sun behind the hills has swept the grasses gold. On a side table by the door is a porcelain figurine of a naked man. Annie smooths the front of her good lilac cotton morning dress, plucks at the stray threads of her plaid shawl. Her one shawl. In summers she cuts it through to a single layer. In autumn she sews it back together again.
The door to the drawing room crashes open and Isabelle swoops into the room, the flounces of her long dress brushing the porcelain figurine off the side table and onto the rug. She doesn't bother to pick it up.
Annie Phelan bows her head.
"Oh, don't do that," says Isabelle irritably. "Sit down. You've come a long way. No need to stand."
"I'm fine, ma'am." Annie is used to the measured, careful movements of her former mistress. Mrs. Gilbey would never knock anything off a table. Annie eyes the naked figurine on the floor. It is lying face down on the rug. Should she go over and pick it up? The curve of its back looks like a small white wing.
"Suit yourself." Isabelle strides across the room to the window, strides back again. Her dress makes a breeze, her tall body carves cleanly through the still air. Her quick movements unnerve Annie. She has not expected Mrs. Dashell to be as young as this—middle thirties—and so full of energy. Her dark hair is pulled back, secured untidily in a knot with what look to Annie like hatpins. It is as though Mrs. Dashell has done her own hair by grasping it with one hand and stabbing it into submission with the other. "You've come from London?" Isabelle asks, as she strides back toward the window. "Remind me."
"Yes, ma'am. Portman Square. I worked for a Mrs. Gilbey there."
"And why did you leave her employ?"
"She died."
Isabelle stops pacing, stands in front of Annie, and, for the first time, really looks at her. She sees a dark-haired, scared-looking girl of perhaps twenty, in a worn-out gray dress, her skin still milky with youth. "I'm sorry," she says. She feels exhausted by having to conduct this interview, each useless question she utters wrests precious strength from her body. "It's just that I don't like my day's work to be interrupted."
"But"—Annie waves her evidence of newspaper and letter—"you wanted me to come today. Now. After the noon meal."
"Did I?" Isabelle glances out the window, where her real life is waiting for her return. "How can I be expected to remember what I wanted?" She turns back to Annie. "What's your name?"
Annie has two names. In Mrs. Gilbey's house she was called Mary, because Mrs. Gilbey always called her maid Mary, no matter what her given name had been. Those were the rules of Mrs. Gilbey's household. Maids were called Mary. Cooks were called Jane. Annie almost forgot her other name, living with Mrs. Gilbey. Now she is trying it on again, something that used to fit but now feels strange to her.
"Annie," she says.
"Annie what?"
"Annie Phelan."
"Irish?"
Annie hesitates. In the newspaper she holds in her hand are hundreds of advertisements for servants of all types. Some of the notices ask for "No crinolines," because the popular dress style takes up too much space in a room and interferes with a maid's ability to light a fire and sweep out a hearth. Many of the ads specify "No Irish."
"Yes and no," she says finally.
"And what does that mean?" Isabelle feels impatience rising in her again. The girl doesn't sound Irish at all. In fact, she speaks surprisingly well for a servant.
This is not like Jane Eyre, Annie thinks. When Jane arrived at Thornfield Hall she was welcomed by Mrs. Fairfax in a very generous and hospitable way. Mrs. Fairfax wasn't impatient and snappy. Mrs. Fairfax sat knitting by the fire, a cat curled contentedly at her feet. Jane was treated like a visitor. Jane was offered a sandwich.
"What?" says Isabelle again, waving her hand. Annie is shocked to see that her fingers are all stained a hideous black.
Annie closes her eyes for an instant and tries to pretend that the sharp features of Mrs. Dashell are really the soft, kind features of Mrs. Fairfax. "Born Irish. Raised English," she says slowly, opening her eyes. "My family died in the hunger. My parents. My brothers. I was given to the Cullens, who were making the passage over here. They took me because I was small enough to carry, but couldn't keep me because they had children of their own. So they left me in a workhouse and Mrs. Gilbey took me from there when I was nine years old." Annie takes a deep breath. It is the most she has said in days.
Isabelle watches Annie Phelan recount her brief life. There is something in her face that opens, when she tells her story, this story that Isabelle has heard so many times before, different versions from different Irish famine victims, but the same story. But what is different is the lace of Annie Phelan as she tells her tale, how her expression shows emotion so completely. Sadness, fear, shyness—it is all right there, all that feeling at once—and this is something Isabelle has perhaps never seen before. Or only once before, long ago, in another world entirely.
"My parents raised money to help the Irish Relief," Isabelle says. "You have nothing to fear from me there." She walks back over to the window. The noon light is high and harsh. Objects outside the room seem transparent. The tin pail on the flagstone path. The apple tree. "The position is housemaid," says Isabelle. "I can pay you twenty-five pounds per annum, paid quarterly. It is what I pay the other servants. We have a cook, a laundry maid, and a gardener. You may have an afternoon off every week and a Sunday off every month. You must make your own dresses or have them made, but we will pay for the material." She pauses. The light is flattening the apple tree, she thinks. Stepping on it. "Can you read and write? I already have a cook who can't, and the new laundry maid seems stupid as a brick. Am I to be completely surrounded by imbeciles?"
"Yes, ma'am," Annie says to Isabelle's back. "No, ma'am. Yes, I can read and write." She almost mentions Jane Eyre but stops herself. Perhaps Mrs. Dashell, like Mrs. Gilbey, doesn't approve of novels.
"Oh," says Isabelle. "I really can't do this anymore. Come here." She beckons Annie over to the window. "Look," she says, tapping the glass. "There's Wilks, the gardener."
Annie sees a leg poking out from behind a potting shed.
"He doesn't do a stick of work," says Isabelle. "He's a terrible gardener. Cuts the heads off all the flowers. Hides all day down by the cabbages. Nothing but trouble." She sighs, a long-drawn-out fluttering sigh. "I hired him because he has a gorgeous back. All sinew, and broad as this county." She looks hard at Annie Phelan, the gray of her eyes, the slightly down-turned mouth. If I hire you because you are beautiful, she thinks, will I be sorry?
ANNIE CLIMBS THE narrow stairs to her room at the top of the house. She has never slept up high before. At Mrs. Gilbey's she slept in a narrow room off the kitchen, on a cot. The room was once a broom closet. In the early days, when there was a Jane, Annie would be up and in her morning dress by 6 A.M. to clean and blacken the kitchen range and grates. Later, when Mrs. Gilbey could no longer afford to keep both a Jane and Mary, Annie would be up even earlier, as she had to take on all of Cook's responsibilities in addition to her own.
Annie is to share an attic bedroom with Tess, the new laundry maid, who started work with the Dashells the week before. The room is large, has two dormer windows. Annie pats her carpetbag down on the bed by the right-hand window. The bedroom is at the back of the house, and when Annie looks out the window she can see down into the garden, all the way back to the orchard behind the old stone wall. She sees Isabelle hurrying along the path, her arms full of black cloth. She disappears into a glass henhouse near the garden wall and then Annie can see the cloudy shape of her moving about inside. From above, through the glass, Isabelle looks like the dark shift of flame in a hearth.
Annie unpacks her belongings, hangs her other morning dress and her maid's black afternoon dress in the vast wardrobe, stuffs her underthings into an empty drawer. She picks up her Bible and goes down to the kitchen. Cook is making bread. Her hands and forearms are coated with flour.
"You sort yourself out all right?" asks Cook.
Reading Group Guide
This sparse, intense, gorgeously written novel is inspired by the life and work of the Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. Though not a fictionalized biography, Afterimage is indeed a sensitive, subtly moving historical novel: a story of big ideas, strong passions, aesthetic impulses, and personal secrets. Our heroine is Annie Phelan--young, beautiful, Irish, and naturally but modestly articulate and intelligent--who is the new housemaid at the English country manor of Eldon and Isabelle Dashell. Isabelle, the Cameron figure, comes to regard the common but captivating Annie as not only a friend but a muse, the all-important inspiration for Isabelle's newly imagined photographic artworks. Indeed, Isabelle is physically and emotionally drawn to Annie-compelled to learn from the young maid and confess secrets to her-just as is Eldon, Isabelle's husband, a would-be adventurer who finds in Annie a confidante who shares his dreams of exploring the ends of the earth. Trapped between the two, Annie is in danger of losing her own identity, her own needs and goals. But when disaster suddenly strikes the Dashell estate, Annie asserts herself-and asserts her freedom and brilliance-as only she could.
Discussion Questions:
1. This novel begins with two epigraphs. Reread them, then explain how they relate to the plot and/or the meaning of Afterimage. Why do you think author Helen Humphreys selected these two particular introductory quotations?
2. Explain the book's chapter titles. Were you familiar with the photography with Julia Margaret Cameron before reading this novel? If so, how did these photographs influence your understanding of the book? If not, how do you suppose they might have? Also, at what specific point in the narrative did you realize that Annie would be not only Isabelle's ally but her muse? And what led you to realize this? Discuss how the theme of wanton creativity is presented by Humphreys. What does this author seem to consider the ultimate source(s) of inspiration?
3. When Annie first arrives at the Dashell manor, another maid abruptly informs her that "there are no prayers here." This troubles Annie; she hides her Bible under her pillow. But by the end of the story, she is posing for Isabelle as the Divine Madonna and asking herself such questions as "Do I still love the Lord?" and "What is gratitude? What is love?" Discuss Annie's religious struggles over the course of the narrative, especially as they pertain to her increasing awareness of art, literature, and so forth. How does Annie surmount these religious struggles? Or doesn't she?
4. Victorian England was, of course, an era of stifling sexual repression. How is this repression apparent in Afterimage? Point out a few telling situations. How does this repressive mood or mindset help to shape the course of the narrative? Also, identify the characters involved in this novel's love triangle-who are they, and why are they attracted to one another? How is their three-way conflict finally resolved? Or isn't it?
5. Why does Annie often dream of a road, a mysteries "road that leads nowhere"-and that she has never actually seen? Where is this road, how and why it is connected to Annie's psyche, and does it even exist? Also, how does Annie's scant knowledge of her own past affect her behavior over the course of the story?
6. During one of Eldon's earliest encounters with Annie, we read: "Eldon looks at the patrons of the public house, the workingmen. What he wishes at this moment is that he were one of them, not that Annie was well born like himself but that he was her equal." Explain both the context and broader relevance of this passage. What other thoughts and emotions about socio-economic class-or "peerage"-did you encounter in this novel? Consider certain conversations on this topic between Annie and Tess, Eldon and Robert Hill, and so forth. To what extent is Afterimage a critique of the Victorian class system, and to what extent is the novel a celebration of it?
7. As historical and intellectual as it is aesthetic and visceral, Afterimage has much to teach us about the then-emerging technologies of photography and cartography, which both combine elements of art and science for purposes of representation and preservation. But neither of these technologies is praised unanimously, of course. Explain Robert Hill's severe criticism of photography at Isabelle's dinner party, and Eldon's adamant rejection (much earlier in the book) of Dunstan's theme maps. Can you defend the negative positions being taken in these two cases, or at least summarize the logic behind them?
8. About midway through the novel, Annie and two other female servants are role-playing in the kitchen, pretending to be "real ladies" instead of maids and cooks. Later, when Isabelle is crying after a fierce quarrel with Eldon, she thus confides in Annie: "Everything would be easier if I were you." And finally, before posing as the Divine Madonna, Annie thinks: "Perhaps [I] could be the mother of the Lord. Perhaps part of faith is being able to become what you believe in." A major concept in Afterimage, then, is the idea of being or becoming someone other than oneself. Point out other scenes where this sort of self-transference is imagined, or even hoped for, and then address the relation of such scenes to this larger theme of identity.
9. Just before the fateful fire starts, Annie privately inspects Isabelle's camera, looking through the lens and thinking about the nature of photography: "It is a small enough world, thinks Annie, that is can be easily controlled. That is something to want." Shortly thereafter-during the novel's swirling, frightening climax-Annie saves the life of young Gus, and next decides to leave the Dashell residence. How does she arrive at this decision, and how (if at all) has it been foreshadowed by her other, earlier actions of heroism and independence? Discuss the manner in which the story of Afterimage equates becoming an artist with becoming a complete person.
10. After Eldon's funeral, Annie goes to his desk to fetch a written note. What is this note, who wrote it, and what does Annie amend to it at the end of the novel? Comment on Eldon and Annie's mutual fondness for tales of exploration and adventure. Why are they both so fond of such accounts, and how do they regard these tales metaphorically? What does it mean, as we read in the book's final pages, that Annie "had been a good member of the expedition?" Finally, how does this great esteem for-and belief in-Arctic expedition diaries end up changing the very lives of Annie and Eldon?
About the Author:
Helen Humphreys is the author of four collections of poetry and a previous novel, Leaving Earth, which won the Toronto Book Award and was a New York Times Notable Book. She lives in Kingston, Ontario.