The Ballroom

by Anna Hope

  The general nature of the gathering, from the cut of the suits to the sharp edge of the accents, bespoke a class and a dignity hard to find in Yorkshire. He tried to feel excited: he was here, in the heart of it, London, the seat of the Empire. He cast his eyes around the room. In the second row, in the centre of a lively group, was a youngish man, fair hair escaping in unruly curls. Charles leant forward. Could it be? It was. It was Churchill. Smaller than he had imagined. Smaller by far than the man who had appeared in his room. He leant further forward but had no more time to regard him since an older bewhiskered man had mounted the podium, holding up his hand for silence, and everyone’s eyes were turned towards the front.

  ‘Thank you, Mr Crackanthorpe, for such a fitting tribute to Sir Francis Galton. And now it gives me the utmost pleasure to introduce to you Major Leonard Darwin, not only, as I know you all know, the son of Charles, but a most distinguished scientist and scholar in his own right, and our new president.’

  The room erupted into applause as a man in late middle age stood and took to the stage. From his title, Charles had expected someone with a military bearing, but aside from his straight back, Leonard Darwin appeared more like a genial uncle than an army major as he stood at the lectern and smiled down at the crowded room.

  ‘Well,’ he began, his eyes twinkling with amusement, ‘I always believed myself to be the most dunce-like of the Darwin brothers. And so it has taken me a rather long time and rather a few careers to find the thing I am purposed to do.’

  There were chuckles at this, and shakings of the head.

  ‘But I feel, at the age of sixty, I may finally have found it.’

  More warm laughter, but now Darwin’s manner shifted, and as he began to move into his speech the room felt quiet.

  ‘Our task … in truth, at the Eugenics Society, is to study all possible methods of preventing the decadence of the nation, and when this is realized, it becomes obvious that not only will the struggle be long and arduous, but that our primary consideration should be to start on the right lines.’

  ‘Hear, hear!’

  ‘It is to be noted,’ carried on Darwin, ‘that those sections of the community which are least successful in earning a decent living are reproducing their kind more rapidly than are those in receipt of higher wages; and, in the second place, that a considerable proportion of this poorest stratum are sifted out of it or fall into it in consequence of some innate strength or weakness in mind or body; with the result that the members of this ill-paid class are on average inherently less capable than are the better paid.’

  Charles thought of Mulligan. His inherent capabilities. The man was a pain in his side. Why did he confuse him so?

  ‘In order to stem the decadence of the nation thus clearly foreshadowed, the question whether any steps can and should be taken in the direction of placing restrictions on the marriage of those not earning a living wage, especially when young, is likely, therefore, to be more and more forced upon our attention.’

  More agreement from the floor, and Charles saw Churchill was amongst those most vociferous in their response to this.

  ‘As to those in receipt of poor relief and charity, their condition is frequently connected with an innate want of self-control, and any increase in the burden of taxation will be likely to produce but little effect on the rate of reproduction of those thus characterized. The more the self-respecting and prudent sections of the community are hit by taxation, the greater, therefore, will be the anti-eugenic effects produced; and every increase in the burden must do harm to the race unless indeed those who are incapable of bearing the additional strain are prevented from reproducing their kind.’

  As Darwin’s speech progressed, dizziness began to wash over Charles. He leant against the wall, but still he felt unstable. When was the last time he had eaten anything? Nothing had passed his lips since the cup of coffee in Leeds. As Darwin carried on, his words began to warp and bend.

  ‘Decadence.’

  Decadence.

  He closed his eyes, felt the dizziness abating somewhat, but his mind kept returning to the moment outside the music shop, as if to the scene of a crime. Again and again he saw the young man taking off his hat, as though he were watching a moving picture, but one which had got stuck, looping at the same spot: a golden young man lifting his hat on a sun-bleached street in the early morning in Leeds, his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat.

  There was a sudden surging movement, loud applause. Stones being hurled on to a beach. He snapped open his eyes, gasping, as the crowd pressed around him, thick with the smell of bodies. He was burning now. Burning. He pushed himself through the throng, heading for the stairs.

  The crowd spilt on to the street outside, the men beginning to chatter and smoke. Shards of their conversations pierced his ears. Churchill was standing not five paces away from him. Lighting a cigar.

  Now. Now was the opportunity. When would it come again?

  Charles stepped towards him, and men made way to let him through. Everything was burning, everything was melting. Churchill cast an expectant look, and his eyes were hard and sharp, and Charles opened his mouth to speak – but nothing came out but a parched croak. He closed his mouth again, felt heat sting his face.

  Water.

  Water quenches fire.

  The river. The river was close. The river was what he needed, the river would cool him, would wash this feeling clean.

  Charles held out his hand in apology and turned, stumbling down towards the Embankment, the great roiling mass of the river below. There was a road in between, which he didn’t trust himself to cross, and so he ducked into the gardens instead. His clothes were drenched. He was desperate for shade. He pulled off his hat and clawed at his tie, opening his shirt by a few merciful buttons and sinking on to a bench. Water. A small green hut stood on the other side of the park, tables and chairs gathered in the shade. A sign for lemonade. But he seemed to have lost the strength in his legs, and it was too far for him to walk. He closed his eyes and leant back against the bench as a shadow passed before the sun.

  ‘You all right, gent?’

  A young man stood before him. The light behind him.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’

  Charles shook his head. He could hardly speak. ‘Unless – perhaps – some lemonade?’ His voice was a strange, cracked thing.

  ‘Lemonade? Course. I’ll get you some lemonade all right.’

  Charles fumbled for change.

  ‘Nah.’ The man seemed to be moving. It was hard to keep track. ‘You keep your money, mister. I know the owner. Wait here. Won’t be a tick.’

  He felt he could weep with relief.

  The man was as good as his word, returning in a moment with a cup of lemonade. ‘Here you go, gent.’

  It was warm, but it was wet. ‘Thank you. But how …’ croaked Charles, when he had taken a sip. ‘The queue?’

  ‘S’all right,’ the man said softly. ‘We do each other favours round here.’ And then, in a leisurely sort of manner, he sat down.

  Charles turned stiffly, balancing the cup on his knee. The man was not young, or not so young as the man in Leeds. He was about Charles’s age. He was smiling. His face was scarred. Red lesions clustered on the side of his cheek. Charles stared at the sores. He knew what they were. He saw them every day.

  ‘Sure you don’t want anything else?’

  The man reached out and put his hand over Charles’s knee, and Charles saw that the back of his hands too were covered in a rash.

  Syphilis.

  General paralysis of the insane.

  Far advanced.

  Everything had narrowed to this moment: to this scarred hand lying on his knee, until, as he moved it further up his thigh, Charles jumped to his feet.

  ‘What are you doing?!’

  The man held his hands up, gave a short, barking laugh. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing that you don’t want anyway.’

  And then it was upon him.

  �
��Don’t you dare tell me what I want.’ Charles lifted his cane and brought it down on to the man’s hand. It landed awkwardly but drew blood. The sensation was deeply pleasurable. He lifted it and brought it down again.

  The man was cowering now, hands held over his face. ‘Don’t!’ he bleated. ‘Don’t hit me. I’m sorry. I never meant any harm. I was just getting lemonade, wasn’t I?’

  ‘Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up shut up.’ And then the man was on the ground, and Charles was thrashing him, and he lifted his arm again, but it was as though all of the strength had gone from him, and the man had run, and he was left, clutching his cane, standing, shaking, dripping in his own sweat.

  He looked up. A young child was watching him. Standing alone in the middle of the path. A girl. A large bonnet on her head like a black flower. She began to cry.

  Somehow he found his way to the station. Somehow he found the train to Leeds. A young woman sat opposite, a baby in her arms. She sent him a quick smile, and Charles attempted to smile back, but it felt crooked.

  The young woman opened her clean red mouth. ‘Filthy,’ she said. ‘Filthy, filthy.’ She spoke in his mother’s voice.

  ‘No,’ said Charles feebly. ‘I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.’ He began to cry. ‘He came to me.’

  The woman gathered her child to her. Charles looked around the carriage. Everyone seemed to be watching.

  There was a sound beside him.

  ‘Fuller,’ a voice boomed. ‘Get a grip!’

  It was Churchill. Churchill was there. Wedged into the tiny gap between the seats. He must have followed him here.

  The train lurched. Charles got to his feet.

  ‘Fuller!’ yelled Churchill. ‘You’re making a spectacle of yourself! Sit back down!’

  Charles shook his head, stumbling out of the compartment, people everywhere, cramming the corridors, every seat full. Two carriages down was an empty WC. He locked himself inside. Leant against the sink. Had he messed himself? Was that what the woman meant? Filthy. He pulled down his trousers but could see nothing there. Faces swarmed before him: the boy from Spence’s, his face swollen; the man in the park, laughing; and then Mulligan, taking his shirt off before him, but this time, scattered over the etched shape of his torso were oozing sores, and when he looked up in fear, Mulligan’s face had changed and his nose was bulbous, horrible, his forehead distorted. GPI, Far advanced.

  Far advanced.

  Far advanced.

  Depravity was everywhere.

  Everything was spoilt.

  Get a grip, Fuller.

  Get a grip.

  Get a grip.

  Get a grip.

  It was very late when he reached the grass at the edge of the asylum. He crawled towards the wide trunk of an oak and lay on the ground. There were sounds, but they were distant. A tumbling. Water. Or rain.

  He was burning, burning. He wished to bury himself in the cool earth. Crawl beneath it. Pull it over his head. But the ground was hard as rock.

  John

  ON THE LAST day of the harvest, the sky was a still bowl of blue. In the morning, the men were silent, stunned by the heat and the fatigue that weighted their limbs, but in the late afternoon John sang: the only voice raised above those shorn fields, a song he did not even remember that he knew. One his father had sung, out on the kelp beaches when he was a boy, and when he sang it, he found he knew it so well that it was like putting on a garment worn by his father, and his father before him, and all the fathers down the line, so it fitted him better than any garment might.

  He gathered a few stalks from the last sheaf he cut and tucked them into his belt.

  The men were led to the farmyard, where a meal was laid out in the shade: long tables covered with food and jugs of ale. The farmers stood back, motioning for the men to sit.

  ‘Bona mangarie!’ Dan clapped his hands together and rubbed them. ‘About time they showed us some thanks.’

  John took his seat at the heaving table, where meat lay in the centre, not mutton in pies and stews, but a whole pig that had been killed and roasted on a spit and carved. Plates were piled high, and the men fell on them, eating with their hands, chins running greasy with the juice. The meat was sweet and tender; there was salty crackling, roast potatoes, bread. When the jugs of ale were empty, they were taken away and filled again.

  John did not eat much. His blood was too high for that. He wove the corn stalks beneath the table instead, leaving the ears long and trailing, the way he had seen his father do it for his mother: a gift at the end of the harvest – after the meitheal – which his mother would put up above the hearth. He watched as the other men grew addled with beer and food, and he thought of Ella.

  One of the farmers had a fiddle, and Dan jumped up, red and roaring with drink, hollering at him to play, clapping his hands and rousing the men to dance.

  ‘Wake up the women!’ he roared. ‘Go on. Wake the women up!’

  The farmers laughed – as merry as the men now, faces blurry, all differences dissolved by meat and drink and music.

  ‘Not dancing then?’

  John turned to see Brandt standing a little way behind his head.

  The attendant stepped up towards him. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said, waving his arm at the table, the food, the drink, the dancing men, ‘all this will be finished. They won’t need you in the fields any more. Tomorrow you’ll be back to digging graves with me.’ He lifted his pint pot, bashed it against John’s shoulder, sloshed the yellow liquid into his mouth, then wiped his hand over his lips and belched as he wandered off.

  John knew he was right. Tomorrow, when the meat and the drink were cleared away and the men’s heads were thick, when the crop was safe in the barns and the gleaning begun, things would be just as they were before. He had to take the night and stretch it, live inside it, make it his own.

  As the evening passed, the attendants grew slow and sleepy. Everyone was heavy with food and drink, but John’s own tiredness had left him. Everything was clear: the evening air, cooler now, the deep, rich smell of the meat, the hoppy ale, the ripeness of the men, all of it seasoned with the salt of anticipation on his tongue. When the fiddle was sawing and the music was at its height, Dan pulled out of the fray and came to lean over the table towards John.

  ‘Here, mio Capitane.’ His breath was dense with ale. He reached out and placed something in John’s palm. ‘You might need these tonight.’

  John opened his hand to reveal a full box of matches. He looked up to thank him, but Dan was already off, boot stamping on the ground, fingers in his mouth to whistle the music on.

  Now.

  He stood, edging his way over to the place where the cobbled yard met the fields beyond. No one watched him go.

  Now he turned and ran, keeping to the borders of the fields, making for the line of trees that was the wood, the evening air whistling around his ears, arriving, lungs raked. He climbed over the metal fence, and he was amongst the trees, where everything was quiet and cool and dim.

  Far behind him, he could hear the distant skitter of the fiddle. The whoops of the men. He walked slowly, now feeling his heart grow calm, as he threaded his way through the trunks, making for the edge where the old oak stood. There was no one visible in the small patch of open ground, and he crossed it swiftly. When he arrived at the great trunk, he was filled with the impulse to put his hand on its wood, as Dan might, and when he did so, he was glad of the feel of the warm, rough bark beneath his palm. ‘Now, lad,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re after keeping me hidden tonight.’

  Up ahead was a limb thick enough to hold him, and he pulled himself up towards it. The tree shivered and rustled around him and then grew still.

  He was hidden now, but from up here could see the asylum buildings stretching ahead, the path she would take when she came, the clock tower, the buildings almost beautiful in this hazy evening light. The men approached, on their way back to the wards, and he held his breath as they passed beneath him, their chatter lower now, punc
tured by the earthy roar of Dan’s laughter, the grey cloud of their cigarette smoke drifting lazily up to where he sat. They were drunk. All of them, ale-sodden and slow, and they would not bother to count heads tonight. He leant back against the solidity of the trunk.

  His heart was thudding. His throat was dry. He wished he had brought some water with him. There was a long time yet to wait.

  Small insects filled the air, and swallows swooped to catch them as they flew. He took out his tobacco and rolled a quick cigarette, then scraped a match against the hot bark of his seat, sending the smoke up through the leaves. The wood creaked. Small birds returned to the branches above.

  Behind him, the sun cracked and spilt itself over the moor, and the light fell in pools of gold that turned to red, then purple and dark blue, and though the covering of the leaves was thick, he had a sense of the land beneath him: the buildings ahead, and then behind him the rest of the grounds, the farms with the animals put away for the night, the train tracks that led to Leeds and beyond and all the dark hills in between.

  The dusk came, and the moon rose, golden, above the buildings ahead. Different shapes filled the sky – the whirling dance of bats – and when the edges of things were soft and the shadows began to merge he watched the path. He fingered the stalks in his pocket, his eyes on the trampled grass. The thought of her was like touching something hot.

  He smoked cigarette after cigarette, and was grateful for the gift of Dan’s matches. Now the space below seemed traitorous. Shadows flickered and blurred. He saw her twenty times and it was never her. Time passed and the night thickened and he was sure she would not come and he could hardly think above the pandemonium of his heart.

  Ella

  BREATHING OUT INTO the dark, she was sick and slippery with fear and wanting. If she twisted her head, she could see the moon, full-bellied and high. Her heart thudded at her chest, in her throat, and the beat of it was strange, fast but halting, as though it might give up altogether.

  You have to gamble to get what you want.

  She peeled back her cover and swung down her legs, bare feet touching cool tile. The light was strong enough for her to see the beds ranged around, each with its humped shape of a sleeping woman on top. If anyone were watching they would see her clearly. A moan came from the opposite side of the room, and she fell to her knees, almost knocking her chamberpot over, catching it before it rocked and spilt.