The Ballroom

by Anna Hope

  Let x equal the state of mind of the patients on a Friday evening.

  Let y equal the delight they feel in the music and dancing, and the escape from the humdrum routine.

  Let z equal the combined good of a weekly dance.

  But there was no such equation. All he could say was he believed it to be a good thing. And that was not enough. He was a scientist, was he not? He must be able to prove its worth.

  This spiky thought was in danger of puncturing his mood when in the distance he saw a figure he recognized as Mulligan, standing in a nearby paddock with one of the shire horses, walking it slowly around the perimeter of the field. Charles veered from his path and came to stand before the low, three-barred wooden fence.

  The animal appeared to be limping. Every so often Mulligan would step back to watch its gait. Only one attendant was close by – busy with another animal at the top of the field. Otherwise the Irishman was alone. He had not seen Charles; indeed, seemed to see little but the horse itself. After a while, he called with a low whistle and the beast turned its head and came directly towards him, whereupon he caught at its bridle, leant in and put his hand flat against the side of the animal’s head. Now man and horse were facing each other nose to nose. Mulligan appeared to be whispering something in its ear. With his other hand he began to softly stroke the animal’s neck.

  Charles leant forwards – stupid, really, since it was impossible to hear anything from where he stood. The Irish had an affinity for horses: this was common knowledge, particularly the lower of their race, but there was something else at play here – a rare absorption, tenderness even. It was the same absorption Charles had noticed the man brought to his dancing. There was a quality to it that perplexed him. Where did Mulligan fit?

  ‘Hello there!’

  Mulligan raised his head.

  Charles lifted his gloved hand, beckoning him over. Mulligan turned, tying the horse to a nearby post before walking over the field towards him. The Irishman had discarded his jacket and stood in shirtsleeves and waistcoat, shirt open at the neck. He seemed larger out here amongst the elements; he seemed almost elemental himself.

  ‘So.’ Charles felt suddenly, unaccountably shy. ‘It’s a lovely morning, is it not?’

  Mulligan reached up and wiped his forehead with his cuff. The man’s pulse beat amongst a small tangle of hair at his neck.

  Charles lifted his hat, felt the sun warming the crown of his head. ‘Summer appears to have arrived.’ As he smiled, he was aware of the tightness of his cheeks. Somewhere in the distance, the final movement of the Pastoral was reaching its crescendo, the strings sawing away.

  The Irishman’s gaze slid back over towards the horse, and Charles felt a pang of irritation: the man’s part of the bargain was not being kept up somehow.

  ‘Tell me, Mulligan, how have you found the dances?’

  The man’s expression hardly shifted. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Honestly now.’ Charles dropped his voice, leaning over the gate again and speaking in a conspiratorial tone. ‘What do you think of the music?’

  Mulligan crossed his arms over his chest. His flint-coloured eyes levelled with Charles’s. ‘Oh, good enough, I’d say.’

  Charles gave a small laugh, pointing his finger at the man. ‘I can see you’re being polite, but I don’t believe you are being honest. I only ask, you see, because I’ve been feeling a little … frustrated with it myself. I keep feeling a sense of … constriction.’ He touched his fingers to his throat. ‘No space to breathe.’

  Mulligan planted his feet wide on the ground, looked down between them and back up again, hands grasped in his armpits now. ‘Honestly?’

  Charles smiled. It appeared he had the man’s full attention at last. ‘That’s what I asked.’

  ‘Well, I’d say it’s … very English music.’

  ‘I see,’ said Charles. ‘Well, it’s not, I can assure you. It’s mostly German, in fact. But …’ He gave a barking laugh. ‘Would you have us dance like Irishmen, Mr Mulligan? Would you have us playing jigs?!’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far, now.’

  Was that the glimmer of a smile on the man’s face? Whatever it had been, it had already gone, but Charles felt a small surge of victory.

  In the distance, the bell of the clock tower was chiming the half-hour.

  ‘Well, Mr Mulligan.’ He lifted his hat again, gave a slight bow. ‘I can see you have work to be getting on with, as do I. So I bid you good day.’

  The smile may have been infinitesimal, but it was the most he had ever managed to eke from the stony Irishman, and, as he walked back to the asylum buildings, Charles found it had lodged in his chest like a small shard of May sun.

  Ella

  THAT FRIDAY IN the ballroom she sat in the second row, just beside Clem.

  Everything was closer here, louder, and the bulky presence of the men was just a few yards away across the floor. Their looks stuck to her like flecks of hot lint. She brought her hands up to touch her hair. She licked her finger, rubbing at a stain on her ill-fitting skirt.

  Up on the stage the orchestra were readying themselves to play. She searched for him and found him in his usual position at the back, head down, as though he wanted to be anywhere else but here, and a strange disappointment filled her.

  The first dance came and went, and she remained where she was. John stayed in the corner, not looking up. But when the second dance was called, she saw him rise, weaving through benches of men, and as he reached the front of the male lines he looked up and caught her eye.

  She felt herself colour. She stood up, hesitantly, but someone had slipped in front of her – Old Germany, plucking John by the sleeve and asking him to dance with her instead.

  ‘All right, girl?’

  She turned. The tattooed man had his heavy hand on her arm. ‘Will you dance with me? I’m a poor second, I know.’

  As she moved around the floor with the big man, she looked for John from the edge of her eye. Old Germany had her eyes shut. He held the old woman close.

  ‘You like him then?’ said her partner.

  She jerked her head up.

  ‘Him,’ he said, tipping his head towards John. ‘Mio Capitane.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. Heat scalded her cheeks.

  The big man bent to her ear. ‘You know you have to gamble, don’t you, to get what you want? So what are you prepared to lose?’

  She gave him no answer but as soon as the music was finished, pulled herself away, moving as fast as she could to the benches at the back of the room, where she caught sight of herself in the mirror above the fire: cheeks flushed, hair askew. She had been seen. Seen in her wanting. And if this man had seen her, then who knew who else had too? Stupid. Stupid to think that she was worth dancing with. Stupid to think she was worth touching. Stupid to have put her hair like this. She undid it and yanked it tight, so tight it stung her scalp, then brought her arms around herself and did not look up again, staring at the patch of floor beneath her feet until she knew each whorl and knot in the wood, until the whorls and knots turned into spiders, dancing to the music, until, at the end of the evening, with a clattering of benches, everyone was made to stand, and she stood with them, desperate to get back to the ward, where no one could see her or believe that they had.

  But the patients were being corralled into lines for a last dance, one in which they all moved together, and there was no way to sit it out. When she took her place, she saw him standing, his dark presence further down on the opposite line of men. He caught her eye and her stomach flipped, and she knew in the way of these dances that he would soon be dancing with her. It was too late to move to another set, the music already beginning, the doctor’s fiddle high and giddy, skittering over the thick, hot air.

  First came the old man with a blue cravat tied at his chin, who led her gently around the clapping crowds, and now John was four dancers away. Then, a young man, who smelt of sour milk and shook as he took her arm, and did not stop shakin
g as they completed their circle, and he was three dancers away. Next, a man who held too tight and pinched her waist, so she stood on his foot and he cursed her for it, and he was two dancers away, and her skin was so hot she thought it would blister, and the last man was a brown dank-smelling blur, and then it was him, and he was leading her in a circle around the other dancers, with his hand held low on her back, and he was speaking, but that was not like him, not like him to say things, and everyone was clapping, and she couldn’t hear, and perhaps she was imagining it, but then, as they parted, he bent to her ear. ‘You’re too pale,’ he said. ‘It’s not fair.’

  He let go of her and she span, breathless, back into her line: she with the women and he with the men, and the dance still continuing, another partner to the right, and the next man coming towards her as though in a dream.

  She flicked her head this way and that, trying to see him amongst the other dancers. She was near the end of the line now. The dance would be over soon, and she could recover herself. But there was a whooping, clapping, a rising from the floor, and up on the stage the doctor was grinning, lifting his bow, signalling, the music would go on. Her stomach tumbled. There would be another set; she would dance with him again.

  This time, when he took her, he was quick, leaning down and speaking close to her ear. ‘What can you see?’ His voice travelled through her, lifting her skin like wind on water.

  ‘When you look from your window. Tell me, quickly, which window is yours? What can you see?’

  Her tongue was thick, her mind slow. ‘I … don’t know.’

  ‘Close your eyes.’

  His gaze was fierce.

  ‘Close your eyes.’

  She did as he said, and he held her closer, his hand shifting and lowering against her back. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘you are in your day room. Looking out. Tell me what you see.’

  ‘Two big trees.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Side by side at the bottom of the hill.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Their branches grow together.’

  ‘In front of your window?’

  His heart was beating against her back, against her own heart, which felt swollen, too big for her now. ‘Yes, yes, but quite far away.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, when she opened her eyes. ‘I’ll find it. I will write a letter and bring it to you. Look for me. And I will come.’

  He released her. Her dress was damp where his hand had pressed against it. She was dizzy, drenched, as she stumbled to the right.

  Later, in the ward, when the gas had been turned out, she thought of the thing he had said, took it out and turned it around as though it were a lighted thing in the dark.

  There was kindness in him. She had seen it in the ballroom. It was there in the way he danced with the other women, with the old ones, like Old Germany; he touched things gently, as if he knew they might break. So what if he was kind to her? Did it mean anything at all?

  And then the other man – the big man, with the tattoos on his arms. You have to gamble to win. What had he meant by that?

  She had nothing in this world to lose.

  Two beds over there was a soft moaning. A bed rattling against the wall. The matchbook scratch of fingers in hair, until the rattling stopped with a sigh.

  ‘Jesus will punish you,’ came Old Germany’s wavering voice. ‘He’ll punish you for that.’

  ‘Fuck off.’ The other woman’s voice was clotted and heavy, already halfway to sleep.

  Ella turned the other way in her bed, a queasiness rising in her. Who did that woman think of when she touched herself like that? One of the men? John? It could be; it could be him. Her skin felt itchy. Her blood hot. The air had been breathed by one hundred women already.

  As dawn began to break and still she had not slept, she turned to the window, where the dark blue of night was lightening, and small birds dipped and rose across a pink-streaked sky.

  She should be out there. Not waiting in here. There was no use, anyway, for a letter from him.

  He didn’t know that she could not read.

  The day was close and sticky. Behind the iron bars, the window of the day room was open a tiny way, but no breeze seemed to come through it. The heat played tricks, rising from the ground in wavy lines, which danced as though they might be people.

  The only truly moving things were two small birds, who had their nest up above the window: a rounded cone of mud with an opening like a surprised mouth. The weather didn’t seem to bother them at all; they were tireless, making journey after journey, each time coming back with something new: a piece of twig, a beak full of earth.

  Once, in the middle of the afternoon, a figure of a man did walk across the edge of the fields, wobbly in the distance, and Ella rose from her seat, hands pressed against the glass. But the man did not turn or come close to the buildings, and she saw he pushed a roller before him and was there to press the grass flat.

  She put her thumbs in her palms to grip them. Behind her, the women’s chorus was louder than ever:

  ‘Setmeonfire! Setmeonfire! Fireiscoming. It’scomingcoming.’

  ‘Andthedevil’shere.’

  ‘That’swhattheysaid. Burn out the devil. Burn him burn him.’

  ‘Oh! Oh please! Oh please help me!’

  ‘Why will you not? Will you not?’

  She put her hands over her ears and pressed them so all she could hear was the whoosh of her blood.

  She was like them. She had made it all up: his touch on her back, his mouth. The words he had spoken. She had been in here too long and now she was mad. She made things up to make things better, and no one was coming to find her at all.

  You are too pale. It’s not fair.

  He only said that because he pitied her, because she was trapped.

  The close afternoon wore on, sagged and stretched to snapping all at once. Eventually, she leant her head against the hot glass and dozed.

  She woke to a scratching at the window. He was there – pushed almost flat against the wall, holding a folded piece of paper towards her. Her breath caught in her throat. Their fingers grazed as she took it from him. She said nothing, and nor did he speak but touched his hand once to his forehead and then was gone, running in a low crouch along the buildings until he disappeared from view.

  She pushed the letter down the front of her dress, heart hammering. Behind her, everything in the room was as it was before: Clem reading her book, most of the other women sackless, slumped in their chairs, mouths open, asleep. When she stood, her legs felt full of a strange, sluggish liquid, heavier than blood. Somehow she managed to reach the nurse on duty. ‘Can I go to the toilet, please?’ Her words seemed to hang, heavy and dangerous in the air, but the nurse just waved them away with a lazy hand.

  The toilet block was empty. The thin paper of the letter was already damp from her body when she pulled it out. Something dropped into her palm as she opened it: a yellow flower, the colour of it startling, like a messenger from another world. She brought it to her nose. Brushed its petals back and forth with her fingertip, then placed it in her lap and opened the letter properly, blood pounding as she searched the page. There was her name, Ella, written at the top, and the letters that made up his name at the bottom, but she could make out nothing of the jumble in between. She put her head in her hands, felt the dull throb of her heart.

  There had been one hundred of them in a class, and she was always so tired, working in the mornings and school in the afternoons, or school in the mornings and working in the afternoons. She sat at the back and her eyes were bad and all she ever wanted to do was to close them and sleep.

  No one had noticed her much.

  She knuckled her eyes with her fists. When she lifted her head, she knew what she had to do.

  She went back into the day room and wove her way over to Clem.

  ‘Clem?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Will you read something to me?’

  ‘From this?’ Clem flicked the
page of her book.

  ‘No, from a letter.’

  Clem looked up from the edge of her eye. ‘Your letter?’

  Ella nodded.

  ‘From whom? One of your family?’

  ‘No … from someone else.’

  ‘Well … why don’t you read it yourself?’

  ‘I can’t.’

  Clem looked up properly then. ‘Ah,’ she said, closing her book and tucking it under her arm. ‘I see.’ She tilted her head to one side, as though Ella looked different somehow. ‘Can you not read at all, or only a bit?’

  ‘Not much.’ Ella shrugged. ‘My name. A few other words. Hardly anything really.’

  Clem’s face contracted, as though in some sort of pain. ‘You poor thing,’ she said. Then, ‘Of course. Hand it over then.’

  Ella pulled the tightly folded square from where she’d hid it in her sleeve. ‘Thank you.’ She passed it to Clem’s palm. ‘But … please.’ Her eyes scanned the attendants on duty. ‘Please just … put it in your book. Quick, so as no one sees.’

  Clem nodded and did so, smoothing it with her hands and closing the book a little to hide it as she read.

  Ella took the place beside her, seated forward, watching Clem’s eyes, the way they moved from one side of the page to the other, her bottom lip, held between her teeth, which she rolled back and forth as she read.

  She wanted it to be her, taking her time as Clem was doing, letting her eyes roam where they pleased over the page.

  When Clem had finished reading, she didn’t look up straight away; instead, she stared at the bottom of the letter for a long while as though trying to understand what was there.

  ‘What?’ She couldn’t wait any longer. ‘What does it say? Is it bad?’

  ‘It’s from a John.’ Clem looked up, her eyes narrowed. ‘Which John is it?’

  ‘Why? Tell me. Is it bad?’

  Clem shook her head. ‘No, it’s not bad. It’s just …’ she gave a quick smile, ‘… surprising, that’s all.’

  ‘Please.’ Ella could hardly catch her breath. ‘Will you just … read it to me?’