~ The Silent Companions, by Laura Purcell ~
Having read Purcell’s The Corset, perhaps my expectations for the same fine read in The Silent Companions were to set me up for a little disappointment.
The novel takes place in three temporal and geographical locations. The first is in St Joseph’s hospital, in the protagonist’s present, in 1866 or shortly after. Elsie Bainbridge née Livingstone is our protagonist, the daughter and sister of match factory owners, who married an aristocrat, Rupert Bainbridge, who was investing in the factory. Rupert dies shortly after their marriage, leaving a vast fortune to Elsie.
Much of the action takes place in the second location, The Bridge in 1865, which is the ancestral house of the Bainbridges. After Rupert’s sudden death there, Elsie, Sarah Bainbridge (Rupert’s poor cousin), and Jolyon Livingstone, Elsie’s much younger brother, travel to The Bridge for Rupert’s funeral.
Elsie and Sarah find The Bridge a spooky place, and are discomfited not only by the rather rudimentary conditions and the poor service (the long-time house keeper, Mrs Holt, finds her maids in the workhouses because the village people refuse to serve in the house), but due to the wooden, life-like figures who are called the companions, which are so well made that they seem almost real. As the novel unfolds, it appears that these companions date back to 1635, bought by their then mistress, Anne, to amuse the King and Queen who were staying in The Bridge for a night.
Anne is supposedly a witch, though she sees herself as just skilled in herbs and white arts, who married Josiah Bainbridge, a nobleman trying to make his way through the hierarchy of power by pleasing his sovereigns. Although they have fine sons, Josiah and Anne have a daughter called Henrietta Maria or Hetta, whose was born with a stump for a tongue and so unable to speak. Hetta is regarded by her father as simple, or lacking, or just wrong. Anne carries a burden of guilt because she feels she has conjured Hetta into being by using potions to enable this pregnancy, which apparently should not have been possible after her last one. Anne yearned for a daughter to replace her late and dearly missed sister, and Hetta was the result.
Hetta’s birthday. In accordance with my custom, I went to All Souls Church to give thanks for the daughter they told me would never come. […] But even as I dropped to my knees, the voice came again. How dare you? My gaze flew to the front of the church, to the cross, soaring up before the altar. Who are you to create a life where I have refused it? […] But I had wanted a girl, another Mary to sit with me, and walk with me, a mirror of my own childhood springing up at my feet. And wrong as it may be, I want her still.
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The reader is kept wondering whether Hetta is a force for good, or a malign influence. She is depicted almost as a sprite, her muteness part of her mystery. She has a special connection with the wooden companions, whose power she feeds off, or perhaps whom she infuses with her magic.
The link between 1635 and the present day of the novel, 1860s, is provided through the useful literary device, the diary that Anne kept. From there, Sarah and Elsie learn that Anne bought these wooden companions from a shop run by a traveller, who claims he obtained the companions from Amsterdam. The shop mysteriously disappears, completely, premises and all, after the disaster which befell the Queen’s horse at The Bridge during the royal visit.
The companions, as well as much else in and about the house spooks Elsie considerably. She miscarries, falls ill, and for a short time, has a respite when her brother takes her back to London. However, when first one maid then another dies in The Bridge, Elsie has to return, and her fate is sealed. The terrible events at The Bridge drive her to the brink of insanity, which is how Elsie ends up in St Joseph’s, an asylum/prison, having lost all powers of speech and even memory, awaiting trial for the murder of her brother.
Although the narrative is quite engaging, and the chapters set in 1635 particularly well executed, this gothic mystery just falls short of delivering satisfaction. The reveal at the end is predictable, and somehow the explanation makes the rich tapestry of suspense rather tawdry, like a nightclub by daylight. Having read all three of Laura Purcell’s novels (The Corset, Bone China and The Silent Companions), only one was a very well conceived novel. Purcell undoubtedly has some ability as a gothic writer, but her plots need to deliver better if she is to tempt me to read a fourth of her novels.
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