‘How long have you been in the asylum?’ he asked.
‘I don’t exactly know. I lost count of time. I’ve seen two Christmases here. We do it up nice at Christmas, all the wards. Nothing you can do with that corridor, though.’
They were walking through the grounds, up towards the workshops. ‘And where were you before that?’
‘I was in service, but they didn’t need me so I was chucked out. I went to work in a pub, which is what I done when I was a little girl. My ma used to take me round and I did tricks for the customers, turn cartwheels, sing songs and suchlike. Then they’d give us a few pennies at closing time. This time I was seventeen and I was arrested for . . . For something I didn’t understand what he was on about. Moral something. I got a fine from the magistrate but I didn’t have no money. And my ma was dead so I was in the workhouse then, and it sort of drives you mad that place.’ Daisy’s contralto was more animated than on the previous day; there was something in her voice and manner that Thomas found charming.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘Have you been to the farm here? Or the laundry?’
‘No. Never been out of Ward Four, except the airing court. They wouldn’t let me go because they said I was . . . I don’t know.’
‘I have not been able to find your notes,’ said Thomas. ‘I expect it is in there. Do you have a surname?’
‘My ma never told me because she wasn’t married, so I don’t know. Her name was Wilkins. But no one ever called me that, just Daisy.’
The redbrick outbuildings of the asylum were at the top of the gentle slope, most of them ranged about a rectangular yard; the layout reminded Thomas a little of the boarding school he had attended in Yorkshire.
‘All right, Daisy. We shall find out together what lies behind these walls. You can tell me more about yourself while we look round. You decide which place you might like to work and I shall see if I can arrange it.’
The metal and carpentry workshops were staffed entirely by men, who looked bewildered to be interrupted at their work by a doctor and a girl. The tailoring, upholstering and shoemaking was also done by men; so, of the buildings on the hillside, only the laundry was left. The atmosphere inside was shrill and tense. A few weeks earlier, a patient had drowned herself in the cold rinsing tank, and the number of attendants was higher here than in the other workrooms – large, muscular women in uniform black who kept watch over the steaming vats and the red-faced lunatics who struggled back and forth with tubs of washing balanced on their heads. Thomas felt Daisy’s fingers grip his arm; she let out a small whinny of fear. Attached to the washing, drying and ironing rooms was a needlework studio, which, despite its vast size and the number of women employed in it, had a calmer atmosphere. The farm and the brewery were also reserved to male patients, so Daisy’s choice, Thomas explained when they had finished their tour, was needlework, kitchens or helping on the ward.
‘I must get out of that place,’ she said. ‘Anyway, that Miss Whitman, she don’t like me, she wouldn’t let me help. Can I work for you, doctor, like what that girl does for Dr Faverill?’
‘I could do with a secretary, or a clerk, someone to help me with the books.’
‘I can’t read, can I? What’s the bloody use? You must have known, you . . .’
‘It’s all right, Daisy. Be calm. Perhaps someone can teach you to read and write. Calm yourself. Don’t cry.’
The storm of anger passed quickly through Daisy’s face, which then resumed its natural look of bovine hopefulness. ‘Will you teach me?’
‘No,’ said Thomas. ‘I do not have time. My hours must be passed in medical research – in doing something to understand the people here. But I shall find someone who will.’
They were walking down the slope, back towards the great building. ‘We shall make a deal, Daisy. I shall find you a teacher. You learn to read and write well, then you can come and help me with my books. Until then, it is kitchens or needlework.’
Thomas knew there was no chance that Daisy would ever be skilled enough to work for him, but the deal still offered her a better life. He turned with some trepidation to see how she would respond. To his surprise, he saw her smile.
‘Yes, doctor. Here’s a bargain too. Take me out of here one evening. I know all the pubs. I would, wouldn’t I? Take me out of this place one night, just for an evening out, and I’ll tell you what you need to know for your . . . Whatever you call them, medical researches.’
Thomas laughed. ‘My dear Daisy, that would defeat my purpose. I should be dismissed and very likely prosecuted under some by-law and you would be sent into a refractory ward.’
‘Me and you, we could do it clever, though, so we didn’t get found out.’
‘Put the idea out of your mind and just tell me one thing. Sewing or kitchen.’
‘Sewing. It gets me out of this building.’
‘I shall instruct the attendants that you start tomorrow. Good luck, Daisy. I shall come and see how you are getting on.’
It was one o’clock in the morning before Thomas finally sat down at the table in his cubicle. He pulled the writing paper towards him with the intention of telling Jacques of his experiences, but he felt somehow not ready yet; he needed to be less tired, perhaps, or to have formed a clearer picture of his work. Instead, he wrote:
Dear Sonia,
How I miss you. How welcome you would be in this extraordinary place. Across the downs you see this building, like an Italian palace, the site of some Great Exhibition, but what it exhibits is chaos and pity. Grand without; but inside, no thought or money has been spent. A group of patients has painted the ceiling in one of the men’s wards, sky blue, and even that is some relief to their eyes. Some of the women have pinned up small pictures brought to them by visitors, sentimental scenes of cottages or posies of flowers; it is most affecting to see them look at these or at pictures of children, thinking of what was theirs.
How all this would benefit from a Sonia’s eye or touch, when instead they are tended by lumpish women (on the ladies’ side; men on the men’s), some patients themselves, some former patients, none qualified or with an interest in the mentally unwell, many of the type washerwoman, fishwife or what Mama would call ‘sulky shopgirl’. The ordinary attendants are paid £22 a year, so even with board, lodging and washing it is not hard to see why such a poor class of person is all that can be employed.
My colleagues here are good men, I think. Dr Faverill, the superintendent, is a man of science and learning, rather grandiloquent, filled with the optimism of our time. He is a believer in our ability to cure, to enlighten, to discover how the mind works.
But, goodness, there is a great deal for me to do. This morning I supervised the bathing treatment of some male melancholics. This consisted of their being kept in a bath at a temperature between 92 and 96 degrees while cold water was intermittently poured upon their heads from a watering-can. Some great French alienists recommend cold shower baths of three minutes or more, but a man in a London asylum recently died from the weight of icy water pouring down on him. We have a Turkish bath here also, though it appears to be out of order.
I am writing to you from the cubicle in which I am temporarily lodged until the rooms, to which by virtue of my great rank here I am entitled, are redecorated or prepared (Dr Faverill is unclear on this point) or perhaps just rid of their present occupant. It is past one in the morning and there is utter darkness all round. The governing body has only lately granted the expense of gaslight, and that only partially; so that the corridors (oh, the corridors . . .) are thus intermittently lit, and some of the wards, but not all; so here, for instance, the attendants are obliged to carry lamps with which to investigate the most outlandish of the night-time noises (the merely bestial are ignored), while elsewhere many with suicidal thoughts or epileptic convulsion are not watched by light at all. I wonder what this enormous building must look like from the outside, as I write; often passers-by do stop on the top road and peer down between the railings, though those
going by now must be night-workers, or revellers. They could just make out this vast folly, if you will forgive the word, the million delusions of its inhabitants contained in utter darkness.
I am not allowed a holiday until the summer, when I shall return to Torrington. Perhaps you can manage to be there as well. Shall I send you my dates? In the meantime I am allowed one day of rest a week, which is hardly time enough to make the journey.
I am anxious to know how things are with you in your fashionable London house and whether you have managed to get to the theatre at all. I send my regards to Richard and my love always to you, dear Sonia; forgive me if I write no more now, I am tired as a dog.
From yr affectionate brother, Thomas
Sonia read the letter as she walked upstairs to the drawing room of her house. She had not been to the theatre for a year; she had not been out in the evening for almost three months since the economy measures imposed by her husband now forbade all such frivolities. Richard Prendergast did himself venture out at night sometimes, but, as he explained to Sonia, his time was spent in cultivating his business acquaintance, so that even the occasional game of baccarat at a Pall Mall club might pay dividends. Sonia had the impression that victory at such games was, in fact, almost their last hope.
Five years had passed since her visit to Sir James Bannerman, the expensive gynaecologist, and still there was no sign of an heir. In Richard’s mind this was proof that Sonia had failed him; in Sonia’s there lingered a doubt, because the act by which children were conceived had become so infrequent. Very occasionally, Richard returned late, flushed and breathing heavily, and made his way into her bedroom. Sonia did not mind these rare and abrupt intrusions; it was part of her duty, seriously undertaken and fully understood at the time (she had not been a particularly naïve girl, after all). Men needed certain things and were entitled to them; that was the arrangement; and even to be held roughly, for a short time, and then, when her function was performed, left to sleep alone, sometimes seemed better than not being held at all.
Thomas’s letter amused but also worried her a little, which, she thought, was typical of her perpetually mingled feeling towards him. Her anxiety was over whether he had the strength for what sounded like life-sapping work; she felt certain that in addition to long hours, the circumstances in which he worked would tax his resilience. It was not necessary for him to describe the plight of the insane or the conditions in which they were kept: as a member of the local Dorcas Society, she had once visited Bethlem hospital to take flowers and fruits to the most mildly afflicted of the patients (and only those with a hope of cure were admitted to Bethlem, it had been explained), and even that solitary hour had marked her soul, she felt, with a profound unease about God’s love and purpose.
Sonia’s other anxiety for Thomas was less severe, and was to some extent contradictory. Suppose he was not worn down or exhausted by the work, but, on the contrary, overtaken by impatience, by that reckless side of him. Was he sufficiently serious for labour that showed no dividend? Was he by temperament really a scientist?
She had followed his life since the summer in Deauville with deep amusement and vicarious pleasure, but also with a thudding heart. After a short rustication from his college and two more contretemps with the university proctors, he had succeeded in obtaining his medical degrees; but before completing his qualification as a physician in London, he insisted on the need to improve his German because it was, according to him, the ‘language of the new psychological sciences’. The self-tuition had taken him to the obvious centres of Munich andVienna, but also to Heidelberg, where he had fallen in love with a nurse at the hospital.
He explained in a letter to Sonia that it was necessary for him to travel further to put this young woman out of his mind, and to that end he went on to Italy, guiding himself on a miniature grand tour, which he subsidised by teaching English, French and – his latest acquisition – German to the children of wealthy families he met at the Italian seaside. He assured Sonia that he read painstakingly in German at night and by the time he returned to England he could even manage to make his way in Italian. Still, Sonia thought, for all this admirable self-improvement, there was something unpredictable about him; something in the way those dark brown eyes lingered on your face that made you forever unsure which way he was going to leap.
That evening, after dinner, Richard Prendergast summoned Sonia to his study.
‘There is something important I want to ask you,’ he said, packing the meerschaum pipe Thomas had brought him as a present from Vienna.
‘Yes, of course.’ Sonia sat with her hands in her lap, pleased to be consulted.
‘When we were married,’ said Richard, ‘your father passed over to me a sum of money by way of a gift or settlement.’
‘So I understand.’
‘There were some conditions attached to this sum of money.’ Richard looked down to the rug on the floorboards and Sonia noticed how there was no hair on the crown of his head; the curls that were left made an approximate half-circle from one ear to the other, giving him the look of a bald angel.
‘If you say so,’ said Sonia, who knew nothing of conditions.
‘I was not to invest the money in any business venture of my own, but to keep it in some sound scheme that would provide for you and our children.’
Richard’s manner was showing the defensive edge that always made Sonia uneasy. ‘I suppose he saw it as a family gift rather than an investment in your company,’ she said.
‘Indeed. However, since the condition of the gift did not apply, I saw no reason to adhere to the detail of the understanding.’
‘I do not quite follow.’
Richard coughed. ‘I mean that since you were barren, there was no need for me to put the money aside for the wellbeing or education of our children. I have therefore drawn substantially on the sum.’
‘How substantially?’
‘To the extent that I need to seek further finance.’
‘From whom?’
‘From your father.’
‘But surely, the bank—’
‘The bank has disappointed me. Their outlook is short-sighted and they are unwilling to continue. Indeed, they are pressing me with quite unreasonable demands for interest on loans already made.’
‘There must be other sources of money, Richard. Your father, for instance.’
‘I have investigated every possibility, believe me. What do you imagine I do when I leave here at seven each morning? I have worked myself into the ground. And as for my father, he has not put a penny in the way of my business. From the day of our marriage he has dealt with me as though I were a burden of which he is pleased to be free.’
‘What will happen to the house?’
‘I shall relinquish it at the end of the next quarter. There are rooms.’
‘Rooms?’
‘Jackman has found me rooms somewhere in Clerkenwell.’
‘And me?’
‘What?’
‘You said, “Jackman has found me rooms”, as though it was lodging for just one person.’
‘Well, of course you can come if you like.’
Sonia said nothing. She wanted to be quite certain that she had heard correctly. Richard pushed at a loose thread on the rug with the toe of his shoe, and, in the silence, she could hear the ticking of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. She did not wish to catch his eye; she wanted him to have time to consider.
She breathed in, but still did not speak. What Richard had indicated to her was that she was no longer essential to him, no longer required, except as a short-term financial intermediary between him and her father. Sonia knew that if her father could be persuaded to lend or give Richard more money it would be on this one occasion only; so that by the end of – what, tomorrow, next week? – her usefulness even in this limited role would have expired.
Eventually, she did meet her husband’s gaze: he thrust his chin out for a moment, then looked sheepishly away, but his face mad
e it clear that he did not retreat from the implications of what he had said. Sonia was grateful for the clarification; it seemed to her, in fact, that Richard had not only made his position clear but had done so in terms as delicate as could really be managed.
Why, then, did she feel this childish rage and indignation? Why was she convinced that she was entitled to better treatment; that she had, as it were, a right to love and respect? What ‘right’ was this, and by whom granted? She had bound herself to this man for life, and what sort of person reneged on such a vow? Richard’s wife was who she was, who she had freely chosen to be – and that partly, she admitted, from an unruly impatience for her own life to begin.
The choice was simple. There was her petulance and her desire for self-fulfilment on the one hand; and on the other, her honour, fidelity and devotion to a common venture on which she had entered gaily, of her own volition. The choice between the two imperatives was an easy one; the decisions that you made between such conflicting claims was the measure of your human worth.
She needed only to assure herself that her motives were pure. She said, ‘I suppose you have done well to last this long when the business has always struggled.’
‘We had our good times.’
‘Yes, but as long ago as Deauville, you were—’
‘Yes. I know.’
His crestfallen tone allayed her small doubt, and her eyes filled with compassion for him. She stood up and wrapped her arms round him, her heart burning with a sense of their shared failure.
‘It’s all right, dear Richard,’ she said, stroking his back. ‘We have lived too closely, been through too much. I will not leave you. I cannot, any more than I can leave myself. Being your wife is what I am. We will manage together.’
She drew determination from her own words and squeezed Richard more tightly, as though the resolve might flow from her fingers, through the thick cloth of his jacket and into his spine.
Human Traces Page 12
