by Anne Fine
I couldn’t think what he was making so much fuss about. ‘My mother spilled oil once when she was trying to ease a stiff hinge on the doll’s-house door. And all she did was—’
But he was staring at me as if I were an idiot. So I looked down again.
Red oil?
Blood.
I don’t believe I’d seen blood spilled before, except on the coloured plates in my adventure books. Appalled, I let him push me into the room across the corridor. The door swung closed behind me as I heard him call, ‘Nurse! Any nurse! Come to James Harper’s cell!’
His cell? The very word had stopped my heart. I heard the bolt grind as the doctor tugged it back, and then the scurry of footsteps. There came the most almighty clang as the door shut behind him and his willing helpers, while into me crept the dread fear that he’d deceived me and the blood that I’d seen trickling across the flagstones had been my mother’s.
Even before the voices quieted, I’d hurried back into the corridor to listen.
I heard the doctor say, ‘Now, steady, Jim. Be strong. The stitching will take time. And it will hurt.’ I heard a man’s voice moan, and then the doctor spoke again. ‘Oh, Jim. Why must you constantly be trying to cheat your Maker out of a little of the time he wants to keep you on earth?’
My heart stopped banging and my breathing slowed. Filled with relief, I crept back into the room, and for the first time looked around. It seemed half office, half study. Along two of the walls stood wooden cabinets, all neatly labelled: Ab–An, An–Av, Av–Be, and on and on, drawer by drawer, around the room.
I drew near only one. Co–Cu.
There would be nothing in that cabinet to interest me, I was convinced of that. Wasn’t my mother undergoing treatment? If there was any file on her, then surely someone would be poring over it, trying to make sense of the strange events that so mistakenly had brought her here.
So, then. No harm in looking.
I pulled the neat brass handle. The drawer swung out, and there it was at the back – a file so freshly labelled it sprang up at me.
Cunningham, Liliana.
I drew it out and carried it to the desk. I knew that I was courting trouble, but desperation got the upper hand. I tried to calm myself with the idea that, when Dr Marlow came back, I would have time to shut the file and turn it face down on the desk. He was unlikely even to glance at it; and if he did, he would assume it had been lying there all along.
I sat in the big leather chair and shuffled quickly through the sheets of paper in the file. Liliana Cunningham: her age and height and weight and hair colour, and then page after page of pulse rates and temperatures. Daily accounts of what food had been offered. (The corresponding spaces for what she’d actually eaten had been left blank. Was she determined to starve?) Tucked behind these there was a written account of her distress: … frenzied and distraught … seized by the most impregnable illusion … sure she must keep her son from some old evil that is threatening him … imprisoned only for his own good … cannot be comforted, cannot be convinced …
I turned to the last loose page. And there it was: Next of kin: In disturbed sleep, the patient mutters constantly of someone the nurses understand to be a brother. And yet, once woken, she refuses to divulge his name, or say a word about her family.
So was it possible? Had my strange wisp of memory been, not a dream, but some true flash of remembrance? Had I an uncle?
I heard the door knob rattle. Slamming shut the file, I swung the chair around to try to make it look as if I’d spent the time staring out of the window.
In came the doctor, letting down his sleeves. ‘Well, thank the Lord that’s done.’ He looked me over as I swung to face him, then, mistaking my distress, he teased me gently. ‘We share the work, I see. I stitch the wounds. You do the trembling.’
The instant his words were out, he tried to snatch them back. ‘Forgive me, Daniel! In the distraction I had forgotten for a moment why you are here with me.’
At any other time I might have taken comfort in the fact that he’d gone halfway to mistaking me for some companionable son. But on that morning only my mother – ‘frenzied and distraught’ – was in my mind.
Dr Marlow stepped closer and gripped me by the shoulder. ‘Not changed your mind? No one would blame you. No one on God’s good earth!’
I shook my head. If my poor mother could not be comforted, could not be convinced, then I had even more reason to seek her out. My education may have had no order to it, but I had learned enough to believe that no one is truly threatened by ancient evils. There is foul luck and there is foul behaviour; and misery and trouble will stem from both. But neither come from inhuman, brooding sources who store it up to tip it over you. Perhaps, I thought, if I stand tall before my troubled mother, healthy and steady, I will be able to rid her of her mad ideas. She might regain her senses.
‘No, I’ve not changed my mind. I want to see her.’
So we moved on along the corridor and, rounding a corner, stopped at the first door. Dr Marlow raised a hand as if to tap on it, and then a puzzled look came on his face. He turned to Matron, who was hurrying after us, holding the frock coat he had left behind. ‘Why is the bolt drawn across?’ he asked. ‘I ordered that Mrs Cunningham should always have someone inside with her, to mind her through her anguish.’
‘Indeed she does,’ said Matron. ‘But when you called for a nurse, Sara heard first and ran to help, shooting the bolt behind her. Your Mrs Cunningham has been alone no longer than the time it took to stitch James Harper’s arm.’
Nodding, the doctor slid back the bolt. ‘Be brave,’ he whispered, then went ahead of me into the room.
But he had no idea how brave you have to be to see, over a shoulder, the stick-thin shadow of your mother with her neck awry, slung from a bar on the window by a short noose that she has fashioned with her own skilled fingers from the lace trimmings on her tattered dress.
I have no memory of being hustled out, or heaving up the breakfast that Mrs Marlow had insisted I shovel into myself before I faced the day. I have no memory of being led away down that grim, sunless corridor into another room and being begged to take a sip of spirits. I have no memory of being bundled onto a passing cart and driven home, given a sleeping draught and put to bed.
The only things that I recall are things I overheard. Sara, the nurse, wailing in horror and guilt at having given her patient the opportunity to put an end to her unhappy life. The matron tearfully explaining to Dr Marlow how very determined my mother had been that she’d not see me. ‘If you’ll no longer let me protect my son,’ she’d kept on crying to the nurses around her, ‘how can I look in his face?’
And my last recollection of that day is of the doctor himself, murmuring to his wife across my bed as he watched over me.
‘There’s a black memory for a poor boy to carry all his life – his mother hanging from the window bars, with staring eyes and no more flesh on her than a peg doll.’
I’ve just one echo in my mind from all the days that followed, and that’s of Dr Marlow murmuring to his wife, ‘There’s more than one sort of fever.’
And I was burning up, though whether from grief or guilt I couldn’t say. I had strange fancies in which each time plump, comfortable Mrs Marlow, waiting so patiently beside my bed, let her head droop towards sleep, she’d suddenly assume the thin, drained aspect of my own mother. Her neck would seem to me to snap awry, her mouth turn black, her eyes stare emptily. I’d jerk and twist in turn, only to feel a cool hand on my forehead, and Mrs Marlow would be back again in all her sturdy, full-faced tranquillity.
The nightmares gradually passed, and soon the shadows under my eyes began to vanish. ‘Aha!’ Dr Marlow teased one day when he came in to make his morning check on me. ‘I see our black-eyed panda has gone back to China at last, leaving young Daniel in his place.’
And then he asked me, ‘Would you welcome visits?’
I claimed I would, so Mary and Cecilia were allowed in my room
, bringing the trays of soup and milky puddings with which Cook hoped to tempt me.
Sophie was nowhere to be seen. ‘Why won’t she come?’ I asked Cecilia one morning. ‘Is she upset with me? Is she unwell?’
‘No, no,’ laughed Cecilia. ‘Mother insists that the last thing you need in your raw state is hearing Sophie rattle on at you.’
It seemed to me that Sophie’s merry burblings were just what any invalid would enjoy. But then I realized that Mrs Marlow was trying to protect me from something very different: talk in the town about the death; my mother’s body and the cutting down; gossip about the inquest and the verdict from the coroner; descriptions of the tiny, hurried funeral that I had missed.
But I’d been stuck in bed for far too much of my short life to choose to stay. And so next morning I threw off the bedcovers, pulled on my clothes and came downstairs. Sophie was curled in an armchair in the morning room. As I came in, she threw her book aside. ‘Daniel! You’re back!’
And it did seem as if I’d been a hundred miles away. I pulled up the embroidered stool and sat beside her. ‘So,’ I said. ‘Source of all wisdom, fount of all information in this house, tell me. What have I missed?’
A cloud ran over her face as she remembered all the things that she’d been warned I mustn’t hear. But then she started ticking off on her fingers the ones that weren’t forbidden. ‘Cook’s stepdaughter has had a baby girl. She’s to be named Kathleen as well. Old Mr Tanner’s son has gone back to sea even though, when he came home last year, he vowed he’d never again choose to look out over water. Oh, yes! And Mary is to be allowed to give up the piano, but I am not, even though I am the worse by far out of the two of us.’ She scowled and thought some more. ‘Papa declares that if we have beetroot one more time this week, he’ll pack his bags and leave us all for ever. And—’ Now her eyes shone. ‘How could I have forgotten? You are one day too late to meet the visitor who has set Cecilia blushing.’
Now that was news indeed. ‘A visitor for Cecilia? You mean he came to ask her to walk out with him?’
She flapped her hands. ‘No, no. Not quite. He came to paint the doll’s house.’
‘Paint it?’
I spun round. Had someone thought to tamper with the only keepsake from my former life? But there was the doll’s house, set in the window bay as before and looking just the same.
Sophie was laughing. ‘Not paint it. Paint it!’
‘What, like a portrait?’
‘Exactly so! A portrait of your doll’s house.’
‘But why?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Papa ordered it. Perhaps he thought that it would cheer you up.’ She fell into a fit of mirth. ‘I don’t suppose it even crossed his mind the painter might cheer Cecilia!’
And on she went, teasing about the artist’s yellow curls and pointy beard, speaking louder and louder until her mother, overhearing as she passed, poked her head round the door. ‘Now, Sophie! Be kinder to your sister. Not another word!’
Then Mrs Marlow saw that it was me perched on the stool. ‘Daniel! You’re down with us at last!’
And so we fell back into the old familiar patterns in which I felt so easy and safe. Gradually my lessons were resumed, but in the afternoons we were all free to wander as far as we chose. Cecilia and Mary preferred to walk in town, where they’d meet friends and stroll round the bandstand. But Sophie was young enough to want to come with me, the other way, into the fields and copses that still so delighted me after my long starvation of all those living creatures that sang or fluttered, or skittered through the undergrowth close to my feet, or even simply stood on hooves and stared out peaceably over country walls.
* * *
One morning Mrs Marlow came into the hall as Sophie stood before the looking glass, fretting at the ribbons on her bonnet. ‘You stupid things! Untangle yourselves so I can make a bow!’
She laid a hand on her young daughter’s shoulder. I thought for a moment that she was silently reminding Sophie that a well-bred girl tries not to quarrel with her bonnet strings. But she was steering her away from me into the drawing room.
The door closed firmly behind them, but I could still hear Sophie’s wail. ‘Why can’t I go? If Mary and Cecilia are walking out together, that leaves me with no company – or no walk!’
Clearly her mother, though she was softer-voiced, was adamant. A moment later I heard Sophie complain, ‘But if Papa insists on walking with Daniel today, why can’t I go as well?’
There must have been another quiet answer. For then I heard, ‘Oh! Poor, poor Daniel!’
The door flew open. Sophie stood staring at me as though in horror. Then she tugged off her bonnet, hurled it on the tiles and, eyes streaming tears, ran past me up the stairs without a word.
You can imagine that it was with little confidence that, shortly after, I set off with Dr Marlow down one of the narrow winding lanes that led from the town.
‘A pleasant afternoon,’ he said.
But I was filled with deep enough foreboding to answer sourly, ‘Perhaps it is. But I know Sophie fears that there’s some shadow over it for me.’
‘Ah, Sophie!’ He sighed. ‘My youngest daughter will never win a prize for her discretion. I’d hoped that we could get a little further before I have to tell you that we are going to see your mother’s grave.’
‘My mother’s grave?’ Though I’d imagined it a thousand times, still I was startled. ‘Isn’t that the other way?’
‘The other way? Why should—?’ And then he guessed. ‘You think she has been buried at the asylum? Oh, my good Lord! If Mrs Marlow and I were forced to think of you sitting in that dank place remembering someone you loved so well, we would do nothing but shudder.’
I couldn’t see how it would matter. ‘If someone you love is dead, then surely that’s the worst of it, not where their grave lies.’
‘You think that now because your heart’s so young and torn. In time you will know better.’
I had no answer to that, so we walked on in silence. He led me off the road, over a stile and down a narrow path. We picked our way between the straggling rose briars until we reached a fence. Beyond us in the field were cows who watched with interest as we clambered over and walked towards a small stone chapel on the further side.
‘Is that the place?’ As we came closer I could already see, over the chapel wall, the tops of crosses and the bowed head of a stone angel. ‘Is her grave one of those?’
He shook his head. ‘Not in the cemetery, Daniel. Closer than that.’
I stared round, mystified. The cows stared back at me. Then Dr Marlow pointed. I hadn’t noticed that, a step or two in front of us, there was a patch of grass, shorter and fresher than the rest. And set against it in the graveyard wall, embedded low, there was a headstone.
Across the bottom was a line I took to be from scripture:
I thought again about the feeling I’d so often had, that something dark pursued my mother through her sad life. Had Dr Marlow sensed the same, to choose such words for her headstone? My tears sprang, and I burst out angrily, ‘Why isn’t she inside the wall with all the others?’
‘I wish she were. And when there is more charity in the world, there she will be. But since your mother set her will against the Church’s holy laws and took her own life, no one may bury her on hallowed ground.’
‘You asked, though? Surely you asked?’
‘Daniel, I didn’t simply ask. I begged.’
‘And no one relented?’
‘No one. The rules are clear, and all the churchmen around believe that they must follow them to the letter.’ He gave me a wry smile. ‘But even the Bible tells us that we mustn’t despair. So I’ll confess that I went visiting every farmer I know whose land lies by a chapel or a church. And clearly my mission was blessed, because I found one happy to remember a kindness.’
‘A kindness?’
He shrugged. ‘Only the job that I was trained to do. A visit to his daughter late at night in
a hard time.’
‘You saved her life?’
‘Nothing so wonderful. Perhaps her sight. But, still, he let me take this tiny plot of land and fix your mother’s headstone to his side of the wall.’ The doctor laid a comforting hand on my shoulder. ‘And if the chapel truly stands on holy ground, then it is certain that the peace it offers will reach through the stone to touch your mother.’
I looked around. And certainly there was a quietness about the place: the waving elms, the sturdily grazing cattle. I glanced up. Birds were wheeling easily. The clouds were summer high. And I could tell that all year long my mother’s grave would catch the morning light. She’d be protected from the worst of winds. Away from footpaths, she’d be left in peace.
I threw my arms round Dr Marlow to thank him. I had been wrong and he was right. It mattered, oh it mattered where she lay! He held me close for a moment, then we set off for home. I don’t know what was in the doctor’s mind. But, for myself, I felt a kind of peace stealing back into my heart. And I knew, one day soon, I would be able once again to think about my mother without tears.
Early one evening Cook poked her head round the green baize door and begged me, ‘Quick, Daniel. Fetch Doctor Marlow. Tell him that Molly is in one of her faints.’
I ran to the study door. It didn’t seem the time to put good manners first, and so I flung it open. ‘Well, Sophie, what’s the panic now?’ he murmured cheerfully, his eyes still on the pages spread in front of him.
Then he looked up. As soon as he realized it was me, his face changed and he swept aside what he was reading. ‘Daniel?’
‘Kathleen says Molly has fainted!’
Oddly, I thought, he looked relieved. But he said nothing, simply lowered his hand to drop what he’d been reading to the floor on the far side of his chair, then rose to hurry past me across the hall and through the door into the kitchen passage.
