by Robert Edric
26
‘Will you tell me something about her, about you and her?’ I said.
‘Something specific?’
‘No, something of your past, of her illness.’
I had encountered Mary Latimer as I approached one of my rain gauges. She stood beside the contraption and raised her hand to me when I was still a great distance off.
I have three of the instruments, one on either side of the valley and one on the old, diminishing flood plain. The latter is frequently tampered with – filled on dry days, emptied after storms – and I do nothing to deprive my opponents of their small victories. I am a feeble wader in an ocean of rain.
‘She was first committed, not to any asylum, but to a succession of nursing homes, when she was twenty-six. She was neither married nor engaged to be.’
‘No suitors?’
‘I was always considered the more valuable catch. No sons in the family. Our father owned land. In addition to being a doctor, he was also the local magistrate. No one could say for certain what caused her illness. All we knew – all I knew, for both our parents were dead before she finally stumbled and fell – was that she was happy and healthy and to all outward appearance fulfilled in her life before it happened.’
‘Was nothing prescribed?’
‘Rest, isolation, peace, quiet, diets, cures of water and air and inflated ideas.’
‘So were you responsible for her, for her treatment?’
‘Not entirely. I was married by then. My husband’s business was in London. I visited her, of course, but, as you might imagine, her turmoil estranged us. Does it not seem callous to you for me to talk of events which took place over the course of twenty-five or thirty years as though they were the actions of an hour?’
‘Did nothing help her?’
‘It occurs to me now that we sought too hard, that there was never any ‘cure’, and that all we should ever have hoped for from the very beginning was for some inner calm or ease within her. When she was young she fought against the loss and the restraint of her life ahead.’
‘And now?’
‘Now you might say she is bound to the rock of acceptance. Perhaps I should have insisted on taking her to live with us.’
‘Would that have been possible?’
‘I’m afraid not. Neither my husband nor I had any true understanding of what was happening to her. How could we? All I knew was that I had lost my childhood companion and confidante to distant figures with their leeches and laudanum and blood-letting.’
‘Were you concerned also that you too might become afflicted?’
‘My honest answer, then, would have been yes. Or if not afflicted as such, then tainted by her madness.’ She turned her attention to the contraption between us, hidden by the bracken. ‘Our father was a man for the sciences in his own way. He knew Usher before he became a bishop and said he was the biggest fool he had ever met.’
‘He was a firm believer in floods,’ I said. I showed her the journal in which I kept all my recordings and observations regarding the rain.
‘It is a thing he would have taken pleasure in doing,’ she said. The simple association gratified her.
‘Are your parents buried here?’
‘In the chapel ground? No. There is a family plot thirty miles away. They were Quakers, or my mother was, and my father afterwards by conversion. He used to say that he was only truly woken to the love of God after his marriage.’
‘Was it any comfort to you that they saw so little of what happened to their daughter?’
‘None. After my departure, and for the short time left to them, they saw her frequently. They moved her from one place to another chasing her elusive cure. I visited her whenever I could, but I became a stranger to her. We retreated, I suppose, one from the other, and whereas I made a new life for myself amid everything I had ever wanted, all she found for herself was the unimaginable emptiness and darkness of her tortured soul. I make no apology for myself; I would be lying if I told you I did not understand all this as well – albeit imperfectly – then as now.’
She was distracted briefly and indicated to me far down the slope where a group of women had appeared, all carrying bundles of fuel on their heads, and giving themselves the appearance from that distance of giant mushrooms.
‘Gathering dead stems,’ she said. ‘Kindling.’
‘Most of them will soon be gone.’
‘I doubt that has any bearing on how they will go on living here until the time comes.’
‘Where was your sister prior to her return here?’
‘Lancaster asylum. First Colne, then there. Have you heard of Samuel Morrison? An enlightened man. He was the first, it seemed to me – what little real interest I still showed – who understood what she needed. I was able to send money for her care. My husband was never less than generous where Martha was concerned. When the money was available to us, it was always forthcoming to pay for her special treatments and other comforts. A cynic might say it was sent out of conscience.’
For the whole four months of my own mother’s stay in the sanatorium – I did not know then and I do not know now where it was located – she was visited by no one except my father on four separate occasions.
‘And then, after a hitherto successful life in commerce, my husband suffered a succession of failures and unwise investments. Our small fortune evaporated. When he died I was forced to sell our home.’
‘And return here?’
‘Not immediately, no. I lived elsewhere, mostly on the charity of friends. It was never my intention to return. Upon our departure, our home here and the land attached to it was let to a succession of tenants. I always anticipated that it would simply crumble to dust if left empty long enough. But I was still its owner, and when your masters made their offer it was suggested to me by my parents’ solicitor that I ought to return, that by again taking up residence here their offer might be increased. The solicitor was convinced that they had no knowledge of who did or didn’t live in the house, of how worthless the land had become. Was it a criminal or fraudulent thing to have done?’
‘Their offers started low and went down.’
‘I know. I made the mistake of employing the man to approach them and make an appeal on my behalf.’
The women beneath us were still within sight, but far beyond our hearing.
‘Did you think bringing your sister home would help her?’
‘No. I had known for some years that the situation – they call it a ‘regime’ – at Lancaster had changed. Samuel Morrison was replaced; his ideas were too revolutionary for some. I learned how Martha was being treated there, how she was being forced to live. I could no longer provide for her. I went to visit her after an interval of almost a year. She had changed so much, I could scarcely believe the difference.’
‘In what way?’
‘I saw in her so little of what she had once been. Her periods of clarity and understanding, which only a few years earlier had lasted for days and weeks, were now counted in hours, minutes even. But when I went to see her she recognized me – spoke of countless remembered things – and before I left she begged me not to leave her there. You can see how circumstance conspired against me, from all directions, from above and below, and from inside as well as out. I might just as easily have gone to see her on a day when she would not have known me from a thousand others; I might have gone on a month of days when that was the case. But instead she knew me, and I knew her again, and I knew that regardless of my own circumstances, regardless of the countless other pleas I had thus far been able to ignore, it was beyond me to deny her now. She became very ill – influenza – after my visit and there was talk that she might not survive. Perhaps I imagined I was bringing her home to die. At best she might have survived a few weeks or months.’
‘And be beyond all her suffering before the time came for you to leave.’
‘It was always an imperfect plan. I make no excuses now for its failure.’
; ‘Why? Because you cared for her and she recovered?’
‘Because if I had thought about things properly I would not now be in the position of having to abandon her again.’
‘Why must you?’
‘Because someone here informed your masters that I was cheating them by having returned with her so recently, and that I had removed her from the asylum for that sole purpose.’
‘They withdrew their offer of compensation?’
‘Who would be so heartless? No, they merely reduced it and let me know that they would go on reducing it the longer I argued with them.’
‘Can you not fight them?’
‘You saw her, how she is. What am I doing but assuaging my own conscience by fooling myself into believing I can care for her? In addition to which …’ She hesitated.
‘Tell me.’
‘In addition to which, my receipt of even the reduced compensation is conditional upon her removal. The relevant authorities, it seems, have been informed.’
I could not understand why she had not told me all this before.
‘You must feel nothing but contempt for me,’ I said.
‘Why should I? You are to them and their water what I am to her and her treatment or care. We are watchers, you and I, Mr Weightman, observers, nothing more; we understand all the rules of engagement, but we are not participants.’
I could not accept the painful truth of what she was saying. I returned the phials I still held to their stand and let the lid of the gauge fall with a clap.
‘If she were your sister, what would you do?’ she said. ‘I know it is an unfair question, but I am so alone in all of this that even its true injustice has no power to hurt me.’
‘Where will she go?’
‘Leeds.’
‘And you?’
She shook her head. ‘It is something I prefer not to think about until she has gone and I have convinced myself that there was nothing I could have done to prevent her going.’
‘Have arrangements already been made?’
‘Arrangements are always made. You of all people should know that.’
‘Soon?’
‘Soon enough.’
‘Will you let me know if there is anything I can do?’
‘You only say that because you understand your help-lessness in the situation as well as I understand my own.’
‘I mean it,’ I said.
She stood beside me for several minutes longer before holding out her hand to me and saying, ‘And now, knowing all I have just told you, you will be left wondering which one of us to pity the most.’
27
Several days later, I was passing a group of resting miners on the mine road when I heard mentioned the name of the man Ellis, supposedly employed by the Board as bailiff, but who had still not yet made himself known to me.
Unlike most of the others, the miners had thus far kept themselves apart from me, and it occurred to me as soon as the name was mentioned that its purpose was to attract my attention.
There were seven men in all, and three boys, and the remains of a small fire smoked beside them.
I apologized for my intrusion, but even as I spoke they made way for me to sit among them. A piece of cloth as black as their clothes was laid down for me. Their skin, too, was picked out in its every crease and fold with dark lines, as though the men were plates etched with ink. Their teeth and eyes shone wet amid the darkness of their faces.
‘I couldn’t help overhearing …’ I began.
‘Ellis,’ one of them said. ‘Arrested in York.’
‘Arrested?’
‘Took all your employers’ money and spent it.’
‘He was paid to help me here.’
‘We know he was.’
‘Known him for ten years,’ another added, his tone making clear to me their dislike of the man.
‘What do you mean when you say “took”?’
‘What I say. He was paid in advance to do a job. Took the money and threw it all away in York.’
‘Why there?’ I said.
‘Perhaps he thought it was far enough away.’
The city was barely forty miles distant.
‘There is a branch of the Board in York. They have several schemes connected with the place.’
‘Bad luck on Ellis, then.’ They all laughed at this.
‘Is he in gaol?’
‘Where he’ll stay for six months until he’s tried.’
‘And in the meantime I am to go on without him.’
‘Better off,’ one of the older men said. He spat heavily into the cone of ash.
‘I appreciate you letting me know,’ I said.
I asked them their names. Most of the people here shared the same ten or a dozen Christian and surnames. As in all other things, there was no superfluity here, no exotic flowering amid the grasses and reeds. There were Riggs and Cloughs, Lumbs and Cleggs and Scales, all of which might just as likely have been the names of the features around them; thus were the two – people and place – bred into each other.
I was grateful for having been allowed so easily into their company and conversation. The rule here was to avoid whole sentences where a single word would serve, to avoid as many definite and indefinite articles as possible, and to eschew even words themselves where a grunt or a nod or a shake of the head was sufficient to impart the necessary meaning.
One of them handed me an enamel mug. I took it and drank from it, but what I had taken for water was a raw spirit and I choked at the sudden heat of it. The laughter of the men around me outlasted my coughing. I regained my breath and immediately the mug was refilled and handed back to me. I cannot deny that, though it was of the roughest sort, there was something satisfying about the numbing burn of that spirit, sitting on the cold hillside with only the prospect of another empty day and evening ahead of me.
I had heard it said of the miners that they drank copiously while they worked, and that working in a state of intoxication was the only way they managed to endure the extremes of their labour.
I asked them about the mines. A pipe was lit and handed round, coming to me in turn. They said the mines were played out and that they were excavating thinner and thinner seams. Only three small pits remained in operation. A decade ago there had been four times that number. The sale of the land alone had closed six mines. Some of the men had found work elsewhere; those who remained had taken over the workings from the old landowners. I could not begin to understand how they made them pay; nor even how they transported their ore to the smelters so far away. I had some idea that this went over the valley head to the west, but I knew no more.
The mug was refilled several times over. I drank my share and we stayed like that for an hour.
When I finally came to stand I affected a greater sobriety than I felt. I had indulged myself in the ease of their company, and I took several deep breaths to clear my head. They themselves seemed little altered by the spirit; even the boys, who had taken their own lesser share, walked and talked without any obvious sign of it.
Our farewells were loud and prolonged.
28
I woke the next day still suffering from the drink, and I walked into the wind to clear my head. On the open land to the far north the heather was being burned in great swathes, filling the air with sheets of smoke.
I encountered an old woman following the course of the new shore. She came to where her path ran into the water and looked out over the unbroken surface.
‘I wanted to see if the bridge was still there,’ she said.
‘Covered over,’ I told her. ‘Ten days ago was the last time any part of it showed. The water was at its foundations for a week before that.’
It had been the most substantial of the structures this far up the valley.
I looked around me. It was a rare, bright day, chilled but with the illusion of warmth. Twelve years ago I had travelled in Greece, and I could not deny that there were similarities between this stony upland and some of t
he places I had visited then, and I was lost for a moment in my memories of the distant excursion. It had lasted almost three months, after which I was to set out and make my mark on the world.
There was a small but noisy rock-slide on the far side of the river and we both turned to watch as the loosened stones and turf slid into the water.
‘We lived up at the head of the valley,’ she said.
‘Up here?’ There was neither dwelling nor ruin to show where anyone might once have lived.
It was calm where we stood, but the wind could still be heard high above us. Tatters of cloud swept over the high tops, snagging and tearing where they touched.
Eventually she turned to me and put her hand on my arm.
‘I saw that bridge being built as a child,’ she said. ‘My father and his brothers built it in a single day. There was never much water this far up, and many said there was no sense in building it. My mother was loudest of all in her complaints. They gathered the stones from these hills. He said the bridge would help him with his animals.’
‘Then I’m sorry for its loss,’ I said.
She went on as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘He carved his name, and the names of his wife and seven children in the stones.’ She paused briefly. ‘Shall I tell you why my mother was so against it being built? It was because she believed that malign spirits would not cross running water. Our house was on the far side. In her eyes, by building the bridge my father was doing nothing more than building a causeway for those dark spirits. Everyone else might have thought her stupid, but it was what she believed.’
‘And she instilled that belief in you and her other children?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. We live in the modern age. Look around you, the world is turning faster and faster. But I tell you this,’ she went on, ‘there are still those here who will spit three times before crossing the river. Even your dam won’t cure them of that. When my father’s bridge was built, people, small congregations, Rechabites and Antinomians from over the valley used to come and gather there. It became their pulpit, a place of baptisms, a gallery to stand and watch. If there are ever ghosts to come back and haunt this place, then it will be the joyless spirits of those Rechabites.’ Then, pausing, and in a softer voice, she added, ‘My mother washed the corpses of her five dead babies in this river, my brothers and sisters.’
