Read Online Afterimage by Helen Humphreys - Free Book Online

look distraught.”
    Annie obediently squats on a narrow shelf of stone by the water’s edge. She squints up at the sun, watches Isabelle arrange the camera on the bank.
    “Field darkroom today,” says Isabelle, attaching a black cloth hood to the back of the camera. “Doesn’t always work, but never mind.” She fusses around in the wooden box, laying things out beside it. She hums, seems to have forgotten about telling Annie to sit on the rocks.
    “Ma’am,” says Annie, after a while. “Is this right?”
    Isabelle looks over. “No,” she says cheerfully. “All wrong. Just a moment and I’ll be right there.” She pushes at her camera to make sure that the legs have embedded properly into the ground of the bank and that it’s stable. “Good,” she says, and stepping carefully over the paraphernalia she has laid out on the bank, makes her way to Annie. “Loosen your collar.” Annie tentatively undoes a few buttons at her neck and Isabelle impatiently reaches down and undoes a few more. She pulls one side of Annie’s dress away from her neck. “I need this line,” she says, and touches Annie’s collarbone.
    Even though Mrs. Dashell’s touch is brazen and careless, Annie shivers at it. She has not been touched by anyone in so long that she is startled by the feeling of Isabelle’s fingers trolling her collarbone. Isabelle doesn’t notice Annie’s reaction. “Those rocks are a catastrophe,” she says. “You must be lower down than that.” She scans the bank and, finding nothing to her liking, bends down and scrabbles through the dirt herself, rearranging the stones until they suit her.
    Annie takes her seat on the new rocks. She is closer to the water now, can almost feel the jump and tumble of it beside her as it shoulders through the narrow streambed, rolling from hollows, dodging rocks.
    “Your hair,” says Isabelle, and Annie reaches up and takes out the pins that hold it up in its neat bun. She shakes it briskly, like a dog that has just stepped out of the water. She remembers, from last time, how the Lady prefers her hair to be loose and unruly. She shakes her head again, and Isabelle absent-mindedly reaches down and touches it with her fingers. “Good,” she says.
    “Who am I?” asks Annie.
    Isabelle crouches down beside her. “Ophelia,” she says. “Do you know the story?”
    Annie shakes her head.
    Isabelle’s voice is soft. “You are Ophelia,” she says. “You’re in love with Hamlet, but he doesn’t love you back. Your father and brother have advised you poorly on this matter. Hamlet is preoccupied with his own demons. He doesn’t even notice you, certainly doesn’t guess that you love him.”
    Annie can feel the warmth of the summer sun on her bare throat. The whispery voice of Isabelle beside her sounds like the wind in the tops of the trees outside of her window last night. She puts a hand out and lets the cold water of thestream spool through her open fingers. She can guess the rest of the story. “I drown myself,” she says.
    “Yes. You drown yourself.”
    “Am I always to be full of sorrow, ma’am?” Annie thinks back to Guinevere, to how it felt lying on the stone floor, clutching Arthur’s ankle. After that photograph, she had been shaky most of the day, as though she’d suffered a bad fright.
    Isabelle looks carefully at Annie. She is clever, this housemaid, certainly more observant than any of the others. “I know,” Isabelle says. “I know what you mean. They are tragedies, but they are also the stories we have, the ones available to us. And I like to work with the stories that people know.” She says this, and at the same time as she says it, she stops believing that it is true, that it has to be true. “Just because these women are tragic,” says Isabelle, “doesn’t mean that they aren’t strong.”
    “But how strong am I if I drown myself?” asks Annie. “If I drown myself at the first hint of trouble?”
    “It’s more than a hint of