The Ballroom

by Anna Hope

  The next time the woman was close, she would grab her head and bray it against a wall. She didn’t need a reason – although she had reason enough. It would better, in fact, if there were no reason at all, since that was more often the way of the women in here. Then the dog men could come and take her off, but they wouldn’t have to carry her. She would walk between them with her head held high, knowing that what she wanted had come to pass. She clenched her fists around her thumbs.

  But the afternoon passed and the Irish nurse was called away, and Ella sat, twined tight.

  Tomorrow, she would do it. Tomorrow she would be gone.

  But early the next morning, she was called to see the doctor.

  Perhaps this was it, she thought, as she was marched down the corridors to his room. Perhaps it was already done. Perhaps it was him had read the letter. He was going to be surprised when she nodded her head and agreed that the chronic ward was the best place for her.

  He was already there when she entered the room, standing behind his desk, hands clasped behind his back. He looked thinner than before. ‘Miss Fay! Please,’ he nodded to a chair, ‘sit down.’

  The large book was open in front of him, and she could see her page, the one with her picture on it, the wrong way up.

  ‘I’ve been reading your file.’ He drummed his fingers on the dark wood of the desk. ‘And the more I read of these pages the more they tell me how well you’ve been doing here. Entry after entry acknowledges that you are a good, hard worker.’ He threaded his fingers before him and looked her up and down. ‘And now I have you before me I can see it for myself. Our food’s obviously suiting you too; you look as though you’ve put on weight.’

  He pulled out his chair and sat before her, turning the pages back.

  ‘Not last week, there was a report by one of my colleagues that suggested that you should be set at liberty, pending a little further observation. Indeed, had this incident with Miss Church not occurred, you would have been sitting here around about now, visiting me for a review. And if you had passed that review, then we would have recommended you for release.’

  His words hung in the air like strange dark fruit waiting to be plucked. Ella put her hands in her lap, making herself still, watching his pawky, cunning face. He was playing a game. He had read the letter and was playing a game. She needed to work out the rules of this game, and quickly, before it was over and she was beaten. Think. Think.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like that?’ he was saying. ‘Isn’t that what you want? I seem to remember a day, not so very long ago, when we faced each other in this room, and it seemed to be what you wanted very much indeed.’

  A coldness was creeping up her legs, as though it were coming from the cells beneath. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, I would.’

  Was it the right thing to say? She couldn’t tell, but it was something, thrown into his path, something to slow this down. So she could think. Why couldn’t she think?

  His chin rose, his eyes narrow for a moment, and then that smile was back. ‘Good,’ he said.

  Do you ever think that people are wearing masks?

  ‘Witnesses report it was not you but Miss Church who started the incident in the day room. We are going to treat this as a misdemeanour. Providing all goes well over the next week, we will arrange for your release. Stand up, please, Miss Fay.’

  She did so. He stared at her for a long moment, then shook his head and gave a quick, barking laugh. ‘Goodness. Do close your mouth, Miss Fay. The door does not only go one way.’

  Whatever the game was, she knew he thought he had won.

  ‘What about Clem?’ she said.

  ‘Miss Church? What of her?’

  ‘Is she on the chronic ward?’

  Fuller closed the casebook, his mouth turning down at the corners. ‘I’m afraid not, Miss Fay. Miss Church is far too ill for that. She is in the infirmary, where we are feeding her to save her life.’

  ‘Her life?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘But … you …’

  ‘Yes?’

  She wanted to rip his mask off, rip it so she could see the animal beneath. She was ready. She wasn’t afraid. But she did nothing. As much as it was his fault, she knew it was also hers. She should have given Clem more. They were both of them to blame.

  John

  HE WOKE TO find three boxes of matches on his pillow, and before he was fully awake they were tucked in his sleeve and he knew: Dan was gone.

  Seconds later, the ward was in uproar. Confusion daubed on the faces of the attendants. No trace of him, no broken window. No open door. John, along with everyone else, had no idea how he had done it; Dan had simply disappeared.

  The men were locked into the day room and extra attendants were placed at the doors, and as men gathered in those close and foetid quarters, wild rumour spread. Dan had had the help of giants. He had been carried off by fairies. Had stolen a horse from the stables and ridden across the moor in the night. He had become a horse himself.

  ‘It is true, John?’ Joe Sutcliffe was in front of him. ‘Is it true he turned into a horse?’

  ‘I don’t know, lad. I don’t know about that.’

  He might have done. He wouldn’t have put it past him, somehow.

  After several hours, the doctor arrived in the day room. It was weeks since they had been face to face, not since the incident on the cricket pitch, and John watched as Fuller moved his slow way around the room, speaking to each of the men in turn. He did not look to John, but it seemed to him he left him purposely till last.

  ‘Mr Mulligan.’ Fuller drew up a chair, brushed it with his sleeve and then sat down beside him. ‘It appears your friend Mr Riley has disappeared.’ The man looked thin. A restlessness to him. His cheeks hollowed out, a new, gleaming cast to his eye.

  ‘Aye, so it does.’

  ‘And you’re going to tell me you have no idea where he is.’

  ‘That’s right.’ John was sweating. He was not used to being inside.

  Fuller smiled. ‘I thought you might say that.’ He stretched his legs out, letting his gaze roam around the room. ‘It’s a grand old life you chaps have in here, isn’t it? I often wonder what you think up to amuse yourselves. You must have such an awful lot of time on your hands.’ He turned back to John. ‘I suppose I’m a little envious, to tell you the truth. I’m not sure what I’d do if I had as much time as you. Write, I think. More letters perhaps.’

  John was silent.

  Fuller frowned. ‘You’ll be lonely, no doubt, Mr Mulligan, if Mr Riley does not make it back?’

  John said nothing.

  ‘Well,’ Fuller shook out his trousers as he stood, ‘I should be getting on.’ He smiled again, and, as though he had just remembered something, lifted his finger. ‘One day, Mr Mulligan, or one night, we will meet again. I know it. I know it as I know that my name is Charles or that I have five fingers on my right hand and I come from Yorkshire. And these are things I know well.’

  His words. His words in the fucker’s mouth.

  Fuller gave a jaunty salute. ‘Till soon, Mr Mulligan, till soon.’

  Charles

  THE MONTH TURNED. September came. But though sunrise was noticeably later and sunset noticeably earlier, the thermometer refused to register the change of season and the mercury stayed stubborn at ninety degrees. The only tolerable time was first thing in the morning, and so Charles woke as early as he could, lifting his weights in the pink-hued cool before dawn.

  Every day he fed Miss Church with the tube, but each day it grew easier; the patient was still recalcitrant, still chafed violently against her restraints, and the same vile invective poured when the muslin was taken from her mouth, but she was growing steadily weaker, and Charles no longer sweated when he carried out the feeding.

  By the end of the second week the patient was different. When he took away the muslin, there were no words, and the head flopped awkwardly to the side. The face was covered in bruises, the gums tattered and bleeding. T
he lips chapped, as though the patient had spent time in a strong wind. A small line of spittle swung from the corner of the mouth.

  Broken.

  ‘No words today, Miss Church?’

  With what seemed like a great effort, the patient turned her face to his. She opened her mouth and spoke in a low, rasping voice that he had to lean in to hear. ‘What does it matter to you if I live or die?’

  He might have laughed, so melodramatic was the question, but there was something in the girl’s face – something so direct it demanded an answer.

  ‘I’m afraid it does not matter to me at all, Miss Church, other than as your doctor. It matters a great deal to your family though, to your father and your brother. And it is for their sake as well as yours that I am doing this.’

  He saw a small tear rise in the base of her eye. She blinked and it fell. Then she shuddered and closed her lids.

  Good news, though, had come from the world beyond the asylum walls: the strikes appeared to have been broken; Lloyd George had brokered the peace. The Times reported that Churchill had left London for a holiday. This last was good and bad. Good, because the Home Secretary would now, presumably, have a little time for his personal correspondence, and bad, because if Charles’s letter had not arrived at Westminster in time before he left, he might have to wait weeks for a reply.

  Each morning he checked his pigeonhole, and each afternoon after lunch, even though it was out of his way to do so, he walked back to the administration block and checked again. After a few days of this, the porter raised his eyebrows. ‘Waiting for something, Dr Fuller?’

  ‘Evidently.’

  But no word came, and as the days passed Charles began to wonder at what juncture it might be appropriate to write once more.

  He had not been idle though; far from it. He had seized the initiative and written to Major Darwin and to Professor Pearson, making sure to take care with his wording but implying nonetheless that he had the tacit support of the medical superintendent in his plan to turn the asylum into a hospital: a teaching establishment that might lead the way in sterilization once the Feeble-Minded Bill had been passed. He had been surprised and delighted to receive replies from them both, urging caution but encouraging him in his plan. It wanted only a reply from the Home Secretary and he would be ready to present his case.

  Then, on the eleventh of September, a day when the temperature had dropped by a blessed fifteen degrees, when the sky was thick with cloud and the mercury in the morning read sixty-nine, the letter arrived. A thick cream envelope with the stamp of the Houses of Parliament on its top-right corner. For a moment Charles simply weighed it in his hands, before tucking it into his jacket pocket, where it remained all day, close to his heart as he carried out his rounds.

  As soon as the last patient had been seen, he hurried to his room. In his excitement he could not find his letter knife and so ripped it open, tearing it a little at the edges. The letter was short, and Churchill’s handwriting was neat, with large spaces in between the words.

  Dear Dr Fuller,

  Forgive this tardy reply.

  I thank you for your letter and for your proposal. I believe your scheme to be a fine one. Once the Act is passed, we shall need hospitals ready and able to specialize in such operations, and doctors who are willing to oversee them.

  While I cannot, of course, condone any action that is still beyond the bounds of the law, your proposal to put yourself at the forefront of such a revolution is commendable, and I support it wholeheartedly.

  I look forward to making your acquaintance at next summer’s congress.

  Yours,

  Winston Churchill, Home Secretary

  Charles sat, trembling on the bed. The future, here – in his very hands. He lifted the letter to his mouth and kissed the page.

  He lost no time in requesting an audience with the superintendent. When it came, he hardly spoke a word, simply laying the letter out on the desk, placing it beside those from Pearson and from Major Darwin, lighting the touchpaper and stepping well back.

  The superintendent adjusted his spectacles and read each in turn. At first he seemed confused, and then his expression gradually darkened. By the end of Churchill’s letter a high colour had entered his cheeks.

  ‘My God, Fuller. What made you think that you could go over my head in this way?’ His left cheek twitched with an odd syncopated rhythm.

  Charles did not flinch; he had expected this. ‘I am sorry.’ He spoke smoothly, as though soothing a truculent child. ‘I did not mean to go over your head. I simply meant to use my influence and contacts in the field of Eugenics to steal a march for our institution. The future is coming, and we can choose to be its pawns or its kings.’

  He had rehearsed the speech in his mirror, imagining the superintendent’s face as he delivered it. He watched the words land now. Saw the ripples they created in the wrinkled, puckered flesh.

  ‘Go on.’ The superintendent spoke quietly.

  A quickening. The time was now. Charles laid out his plan in the plainest possible terms:

  An inoculation for the body of the Empire

  The Feeble-Minded Bill

  Likelihood of law being passed next year

  Following the American example

  Dr Sharp, Indiana Reformatory

  Parliament broadly in support

  Leading the pack

  Eugenics Society

  Pearson

  Teacher

  Galton

  Inspiration

  Home Secretary Churchill

  Ally

  Friend

  Charles paused at the end of his recitation – reminding himself to breathe. It did not do to show strong feelings in the matter. He was at all times, as he had hoped he would be, collected and calm. Perhaps he had embellished his relationship with the Home Secretary somewhat, alluding to a friendship and closeness that did not, as yet, exist, but nothing comes of nothing as a wise man once said. He counted one … two … three, as Soames gathered the letters towards him.

  ‘Let me consider,’ the superintendent said.

  Charles managed to contain himself whilst he was inside the room but once outside on the lawn let out a small sound of jubilation. A passing nurse looked quizzically over towards him. ‘Are you feeling well, Dr Fuller?’

  ‘Oh yes! Yes! Quite well, thank you, nurse.’

  The clouds built up over the course of the day, great swollen cumuli massing over the moor, bruised-looking in the changing light, rank after rank of them, queuing to drop their cargo of water. At his window that evening, glad of his jacket for the first time in months, hands thrust in his pockets, Charles believed he felt as an Indian must at the start of monsoon, scanning the pregnant sky for the first drops of rain.

  There was a knock at the door, the porter, calling him downstairs. As Charles followed him through empty, echoing corridors, the asylum felt strangely deserted, the light appeared to have failed outside. Once inside the superintendent’s room, however, on the western side of the building, the light was spectacular, compressed, almost phosphorescent.

  The superintendent did not sit, and so Charles stayed standing himself, as Soames handed him back the letters with a curt nod. ‘I assent,’ he said quietly.

  Charles nodded. Comportment. Control. At all times control. ‘I believe posterity will thank you, sir. Once embarked upon this course, there will be no going back.’

  The superintendent grimaced. ‘In part, that is what I am afraid of, but you have convinced me to take the risk.’

  ‘And I am extremely glad that you have done so.’ He paused a moment, then: ‘I had thought to carry out an operation soon,’ he said, as lightly as he was able. ‘A test case, if you like.’

  ‘Oh?’ The superintendent seemed listless suddenly, as though the matter had ceased to concern him. ‘Have you any idea whom?’

  ‘John Mulligan.’

  Soames shook his head. ‘I do not know the man.’

  ‘An Irish melancholic,
sir. He has been with us for over two years.’

  ‘And why him?’

  ‘He has no dependants. He is in the chronic ward. It is highly unlikely that he will need his reproductive capacities again.’

  ‘I understand, but there are plenty of others who might—’

  ‘No.’ Charles shook his head. ‘Mulligan. It must be him. It must begin with him.’ His voice tightened. He stopped, made himself breathe.

  Soames shot him a quick, severe look before seeming to crumple, as though he did not have the strength for what was to come. He took off his glasses and rubbed at his old, pouched eyes. And Charles saw, in an instant, that he was a man whose time was past.

  ‘And you will write to the Home Secretary?’ said Soames. ‘Tell Churchill exactly what you are to do?’

  Charles tucked the letters in his pocket. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘I most certainly will.’

  John

  HE WAS OUT by Mantle Lane when the weather changed, thigh deep in a grave.

  The sky had thickened all day, and the temperature had dropped, but still the rain held off. Towards the end of the afternoon a low, insistent wind picked up and the first drops of water mottled the ground. John put down his spade and watched the sky, watched the wind tumbling the last few swallows that were left. Why had they waited? They should have flown earlier. Now their way lay through storms.

  The rain came in earnest then, great shawls of water, drenching the parched ground, falling on the unmarked rows of the people who were buried six deep, pounding the raw hole he stood in, puddling around his feet.

  He lifted his face to the sky, opened his mouth and drank. He felt how alive he was, and he thought of her.

  After a moment, standing like that, he became cold, and the coldness struck him as a sort of brightness, as a strange, new thing.

  Ella

  THE DAY SEEMED to crouch, ready to pounce. Ella stood by the window, staring out at the massed grey clouds, and spread her hands over her belly, feeling the warmth, the tightness there. She was becoming something new. At first, the thought had been a faint, distant thing, but now it filled her, the knowledge as present as the queasy, dizzy feeling that accompanied her all day. How long would it be before anyone else noticed? Two weeks? Three? Four? Her bulky skirts would hide it well. But nothing would hide her in the washrooms on a Friday afternoon. The staff saw everything then if they cared to look.