‘Honestly…’ I stopped and threw my hands in the air. ‘I have no idea what pleases you.’
She turned around, walking backwards, laughing, ‘Come on! Let’s find somewhere to sit down, under a tree, somewhere in the open. I miss having so much space!’
The shouting disturbed the dozing birds and started a ripple of their cries. One after another they shrieked and took to the air, out from under the canopy of the trees.
‘In London you can’t move for people, and Brighton was the same. I’m disappointed. I should like to go back when I’m rich enough to pay for other people not to be there.’
‘Good luck waiting for that day,’ I mumbled and tramped along behind.
We ambled along the uneven track for an age until Aisling found a spot under a tree in an open field. There wasn’t a soul around, just cows grazing. We sat down and leaned on our elbows, squinting at the haze of the sun as the warm air was shaken off the long grass. Aisling let out a sigh and flopped down onto her back with her hands stretched out to either side.
‘Why is it when you get a telling-off it makes you sulk so?’ she said. ‘Like after you got sent out of that lesson. You must have been told off before.’
‘I’ve been told off plenty. But it means a lot more at the hospital. I only want to get it right. I’ve pinned all my hopes on being a nurse, I don’t want to ruin it. I don’t want to be average; I want to be extraordinary. I want to be perfect. To prove it was worth it.’
‘What was worth it?’
‘Oh, you know. The upheaval.’
‘No one is perfect, Susannah. No one. Have you noticed that it’s only women who curse ourselves with such a stupid ambition? You don’t catch men worrying about being perfect. They go about the world making a great hash of things and don’t think much of it. You know what my brother says? “Do what you will, and if no one catches you, it didn’t happen.”’
‘But I did get caught.’
‘You threw a bandage, it’s hardly a crime. I’m only sorry you didn’t throw a brick at Mabel’s face – she’s such a curious combination of tart and self-righteousness. You know what my brother would say?’
‘I don’t, but I’m sure you’re about to tell me,’ I said, lying down beside her, propped up on one elbow.
She slapped me on the arm. ‘Well I won’t bother imparting my dear brother’s wisdom then. He’s a wise man, my brother.’
‘I thought you told me he shot himself in the foot with his own rifle?’
‘He did, but he was drunk. Anyone might do that.’
‘That’s why I don’t drink.’
The sun was shining straight into our eyes. I was relaxed and warm. I could easily have fallen asleep right there. Aisling rolled up onto her elbow so that our faces were now only inches apart. She squinted and picked something out of my hair. I held my breath.
‘You have grass in your hair,’ she said, but didn’t roll away.
I knew she was going to kiss me and I froze. My stomach threw itself in all directions and I didn’t know what to do. I was like a frightened rabbit. Aisling didn’t look away or move. Only her lips came towards mine.
I was saved by a distant rumble coming along the tracks behind us. I leapt to my feet.
‘Come on! It’s our train. We might miss it.’
I picked up my skirts and raced towards the station. Aisling came running behind me.
We spent the train journey home in silence. Aisling sat in her seat, stiff as a board, staring out of the window as if she might cry. I didn’t know what to say to make it right again, because I wasn’t sure what had happened or how to talk about it. We jerked from side to side with the movement of the carriage. Every so often I saw tears welling up in her eyes, but she seemed angry. When we were nearly back at London Bridge, I tried.
‘Are you speaking to me?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be speaking to you?’ she snapped.
‘Have I upset you?’
‘No, of course you haven’t.’ She still wouldn’t look at me.
When the train finally pulled to a stop and we alighted, I had difficulty keeping up, she was striding towards the exit at such a pace.
‘Where are you going, Aisling?’ I had to run to catch her up.
‘For a drink,’ she said.
‘What, on your own? In the daytime?’
‘Yes, in the daytime. Shocking, isn’t it? There I am, being outrageous, doing something simply because I want to do it. I guess I must be mad, or sick.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ I said.
‘You don’t drink, remember?’
‘I don’t think you should be on your own, drinking alcohol. I’ll come with you.’
‘You don’t think I should be on my own?’ Aisling came to an abrupt stop and several people almost barged into the back of her. I cringed, but she didn’t even notice. ‘I’ll be fine. I don’t need you looking down your nose at me.’ Then she stomped off.
What on earth was she talking about? I had never judged Aisling. I hardly considered myself in a position to judge anyone.
I caught her up as she turned out of the exit and followed her down the road. Where we were going, I had no idea.
‘I’m sorry I ran away,’ I said.
She stopped walking again, sending more people almost straight into the back of her. They moved around her, grunting and complaining. I was painfully aware of the inconvenience we were causing, but she didn’t care.
‘What are you sorry for?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I was nervous.’
‘Do you think me disgusting?’
‘God, no! If anything, it’s me that’s… I… You know… I’m not sure what to say. Can’t we go for that drink?’ I asked.
‘Fine, you’re buying.’
‘I can do that,’ I said.
I don’t actually know how we got home. Afterwards, I could barely recall a thing – just vague images of me walking or being all but carried, and streaks of people blurring into one another as I glided down the street. It was like someone had run their fingers down a wet oil painting and sent all the colours into one another. The world was a smear of everybody and everything.
I’d never drunk alcohol before; my grandparents were teetotal. It tasted foul, and for a long while I didn’t feel a thing. All that talk of gin making you happy and giddy and gay – to start with, I thought it all a great swindle. But the very next moment I was a stumbling, dribbling wreck. Aisling had to drag me through the hospital and take me upstairs without anyone catching us. In the room we shared, the other nurses were already asleep. We both broke out into fits of giggles because we couldn’t see what we were doing or where we were going. I must have grabbed someone’s feet in one of the beds as I felt my way along and that set me off laughing again. There were shrieks and gasps and requests to be quiet until someone lit a candle. I remember scrunched-up faces with bedraggled hair squinting at us, like moles, as Aisling set me down on my bed. Even though the walls were made of stone and the draughts blew through without obstacle, it was still a room in the attic, and with six bodies in their beds, breathing and snoring, it was not the most fragrant.
As soon as I lay down, the room started to whirl about, so I sat bolt upright. The other girls were whining, sitting up and rubbing their eyes. Aisling was on the floor trying to pull my boots off, but then she fell back on the floor herself and started giggling. I did not feel well.
‘My Lord, you two! Where have you been? Look at you,’ said Nora, one of our roommates.
‘Oh Susannah, you are going to struggle tomorrow,’ said another.
‘We’ll all struggle tomorrow if we don’t get back to sleep.’
‘Where have you been?’
‘We went drinking.’
‘Susannah – drinking? Well now I’ve seen everything.’
Aisling pulled herself up next to me on the bed. Nora was standing over us, lecturing us in her nightgown. All I could see was her naked feet, toes wriggling, as she was telling us off, saying h
ow selfish and irresponsible we were. Aisling was holding me upright; I couldn’t control my eyes.
Then Aisling said, ‘Oh, Nora, I would not stand there if I were you.’
‘What do you mean?’ she replied.
I threw up on her toes. Nora squealed like a pig and hobbled off crying. I spent the next few hours vomiting into my own chamber pot with Aisling holding my hair back in the pitch black. Whoever had said I would struggle the next day was correct.
24
I could not stop thinking about the woman I’d seen with Dr Shivershev. She’d been so confident, so unlike me, an anxious bag of rigid fears. There’d been triumph in his expression, not to mention a distinct lack of embarrassment at being seen in the Ten Bells with such a woman. I was a little disgusted to learn that my physician, who had become the only man I had any faith in, was not above the usual male weaknesses. Thomas was right, he did like whores. He was disappointingly like the others with their rampant, indiscriminate urges, eyes bulging on account of the beast they professed to have no control over. I wanted my men to be just as I’d been taught they would be – dignified, wise and morally upright – but I no longer believed such men existed.
That night, I woke to the sound of pigs snuffling beneath my bed. I rolled over to look, but there were no pigs, only Mabel lying flat on her back, staring straight at me, a white finger drawn across her lips urging me to be quiet. She was sinking into the wet mud the pigs had turned over. Her skin and hair were wet through, as if she’d crawled out of water. She gestured for me to come and lie down beside her, so I got down on my belly on the floor and crawled to her on my elbows, slithering through the mud, my hair slick with it, dragging me down, my nightgown caked in it.
When I reached Mabel, she whispered, ‘I told you I’d write.’
‘But this isn’t writing, Mabel. Where are the pigs?’
‘They were brutes, I sent them away. Look, Susannah, it’s gone.’
She lifted her head and gazed down at her abdomen; it was completely open, with a flap to one side through which she pulled out her own intestines. Blood was everywhere, and I saw it hadn’t been mud I had crawled through but Mabel’s blood. Her dress was scarlet, but her hands were black and wet.
‘Mabel, stop it! We must close you up,’ I told her.
‘He cut it out. That’s good, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘See how it’s gone?’
A noise came from something on top of the bed, a choking sound.
‘Is that my mother?’ I asked Mabel.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s your grandmother. She still isn’t dead. Quick!’
The bed had lowered over both of us, as if its legs had shrunk. I had to slide out on my back, leaving Mabel behind, and climb up onto the bed again.
Mabel was right: there was my grandmother lying in my bed in Chelsea. Her anguished squirming had twisted the bedsheets into a sweaty knot, and she had soiled herself. How I hated looking after her. I sighed, started to pull the bedclothes from under her. I would have to scrape off her mess and wash them – again. I began to cry because I thought she was already dead, but I must have been mistaken and it didn’t feel fair. Her wiry white hair was a tangled mess from all her rolling around. She had eyes like a spooked horse, and the skin of her wrinkled face was almost purple. She was still writhing in agony, like a woman trying to birth a child too big, and clawing at her mouth. I stopped with the sheets, sat down on the corner of the bed, held onto the brass finial, closed my eyes and waited for the noise to stop.
When she was finally still, I was desperate to tell Mabel the good news. I crawled back below the bed to find her, but Mabel was facing the other way, so I pulled on her hair to get her attention. Her hair wasn’t wet any more; it was dry and the colour of dark copper. When she turned around, it was Aisling and she was smiling. The skin on her face was smooth and luminous, still peppered with freckles, and the small scar on her chin was there. I touched it and she giggled. I remembered her neck and searched for where that scar should be, but I couldn’t find it. She kept laughing, then slapped my hands away, kissed my face and pulled my head onto her bony chest.
‘How did you get yourself in such a mess?’ she asked.
‘Because you left me all alone. I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t. Are you back now?’
‘No, I came to tell you one thing: you must trust only yourself. Have you not heard me shouting? I scream and scream, but you never seem to listen.’
We lay underneath the bed together. It was the most beautiful feeling of freedom I’d had in such a long time. My nightdress was covered with mud and blood; Aisling’s was clean and stark white. I ran my lips against the skin of her cheek, to remember how soft she was, and how she smelled of violets. She loved violets.
‘I should have told you about my grandmother, then this might not have happened,’ I said.
‘I left my boy in Kildare,’ she replied. ‘I filled his mouth with peat from my father’s bog. I covered him in it like a blanket, left him there, quiet, it’s as if he fell asleep. I left him and ran away.’
A slow, drawn-out rhythm struck the floor – heel, toe, heel, toe – and a pair of man’s legs made their way around the edge of the bed. I pulled Aisling close and we both lay stiff as twigs; only our eyes moved as they followed the man’s boots. He sat down on the edge of the bed and it sagged with his weight, close to our faces. Aisling stroked my wet hair, her skinny fingers catching in the knots and tangles. Then she disappeared, and I was alone again, and now I was frightened. The man’s weight on the bed shifted. He bent down and looked underneath and saw me, and I screamed. His head was upside down, the blood in his face draining the wrong way; it was Thomas, grinning and wide-eyed, his whiskers grown out and unkempt, and there was blood on his face and in his teeth. His eyes were that bright, freezing blue; soulless.
I woke up at that point.
*
I lost the dignity of a normal routine and began to keep odd hours. It felt like my eyes were disappearing further and further into the back of my head and as if my face was a blank, wax-like ball that had been pushed in on one side. My features were bloated and puffy, my cheeks had red blotches; I was taking too many drops. The bruises faded to brown, to yellow and finally to a dull grey shadow, much like my complexion. I was possessed of a quiet dullness, as if my overworked nerves were padded with cotton wool. I could see things from a distance, form an opinion if I tried, yet I didn’t care.
It was a pleasant feeling to be dazed and indifferent when the whole of the city was living in perpetual fear. Perhaps I had less fear because I knew what a monster looked like. I opened my bedroom door only for Sarah to pass me the daily newspapers and more drops when I sent her out for them; otherwise I kept it locked. They sent up meals on a tray, but I worried they might be poisoned. I nibbled at the edges, assuming any poison would be administered in the middle, then left the tray on the floor outside my room.
I continued to devour the papers. At Annie Chapman’s inquest doubts were raised about the time of her actual murder. If it had taken place at the exact time the witnesses stated they had found her, the murderer would have been walking around in broad daylight covered in blood. The crowd burst out laughing at this. It was explained to the better classes, who remained without a clue as to what was so funny, that due to the hundreds if not thousands of small private slaughterhouses in the maze that made up the Nichol, it was not uncommon to have to leap out of the way of a stampede of sheep or oxen as they were driven through the narrow streets to their slaughter. Those who worked in such places often wandered the streets dripping in blood. The murderer would walk unnoticed.
One journalist observed that after the laughter subsided, an uneasy silence descended on the courtroom. He found himself wondering whether everyone in that room inhabited the same small island-nation or not. When men had such vastly different experiences of the same few square miles, especially when one considered the size and breadth of the empire, let alone the world, could they really ca
ll themselves countrymen?
Annie Chapman was buried on Saturday the fifteenth of September. Thomas had not come home for a week.
25
Not long after we graduated, Aisling dragged me upstairs to the oldest part of the hospital. She wouldn’t tell me why, only that it was a surprise. We came to the door of one of the smaller rooms in what used to be an attic; it was shared by two senior ward sisters.
‘Go on in, have a look.’
‘What about the sisters?’
‘Just open it, you coward,’ she said.
I pushed the door open and crept inside. It was empty. The beds had been stripped and pushed against the walls. There was nothing on the nightstand. The walls were bare brick, there was one small porthole window and a wardrobe built into the eaves. I could hear the pigeons on the roof. The place was tiny. The roof in that part of the building was very narrow and there was just a little strip in the middle where we could both stand up full height. It was a room for miniature people, barely big enough for one Aisling, let alone a gangly Susannah as well.
‘Sister Chase is transferring to a hospital in Leicester to be nearer her mother, and Sister Eccleston has been promoted and has a room in the new block, nearer Matron. It’s ours, Susannah! Just us! I arranged it with both of them weeks ago – got in there before anyone else.’
‘Did you have to fight some elves for it?’
‘I’m going to ignore that comment because I know you only said it for the craic. Yes, it’s small – but it’s all ours. What do you think?’
I was exhilarated by the prospect of having so much freedom. There would be no intrusive eyes on us, watching us too closely; there would be privacy and space. At the same time, I was petrified because now, in an altogether different way, I had nowhere to hide.
‘What is it? What’s wrong? Don’t you want to be with me?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I do want to be with you, but…’
‘Let’s simply concentrate on getting on.’
‘Agreed.’
Aisling was so untidy, it always looked as if there’d just been an explosion, as if one of those elves had managed to get into the wardrobe and throw everything about. We began to fantasise about running away – always to somewhere with pirates and jungles and, oddly, a British regiment. Aisling’s brother had been a soldier in India and had returned with the wildest tales, which she would recount to me. We didn’t want to stay within our four walls and wait for a man to come home and describe the world to us – we wanted to touch it and feel it ourselves. We would finish our contractual obligation at the hospital, then take jobs in India. I liked the sound of that.
People of Abandoned Character Page 18
