The Girl Who Couldn't Read

by John Harding

  But Jane seemed oblivious to it all. At the end of the first paragraph she paused and looked up at Morgan. He waved a hand at her. ‘Go on, my dear, go on.’ I wondered for a moment if he suspected the trick that was being played upon him, but Jane handled the situation perfectly, unable to prevent – or so it seemed – a little smile of triumph appearing, as if she was pleased with herself at reading for him, and then immediately stumbling on the next word, taking some time, it seemed, to work it out, which had Morgan leaning forward in his chair in anticipation of having caught her out, but then sinking back as she managed the word and went confidently on.

  After another few lines he held up a hand. ‘That’s enough of that,’ he said. ‘Now I’d like to hear you read something else, if you please.’

  My heart was in my mouth. Jane shot me an anxious glance. This is what we had hoped would not happen, that she would have to rely on the trick with the broken back of the book. For the moment I was unclear whether Morgan intended her to move to another passage of her own choosing or if he meant to take the book from her and find another piece himself. Before I could find out, there came a knock at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ said Morgan, somewhat impatiently, obviously annoyed at the interruption.

  The door opened and Eva’s head appeared around it. ‘Oh, Dr Morgan,’ she said. ‘Sorry, sir, I did not know you would be here.’

  ‘Well, I am. What do you want, girl?’ he said brusquely.

  ‘It’s Dr Shepherd I wanted, sir,’ she said.

  ‘Is there a problem?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, no, sir,’ she replied with a smile. ‘Not a problem at all. You have a visitor, sir. A young lady.’

  My mouth fell open. My legs turned to water and my head swam. I thought I was going to faint. ‘A young lady?’

  ‘Yes, sir. She’s waiting downstairs in the staff sitting room.’

  I turned to stone. I could neither speak nor move. Morgan swung round in his chair and looked up at me and said, ‘Well, go on, man. You had better go and see to her.’

  ‘B-but –’ I stammered.

  He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Don’t worry about us, man. I can take care of things here on my own. Off you go now, doesn’t do to keep a lady waiting.’ He sounded like an indulgent father.

  I managed to get my feet going and shuffled over to the door, moving like a man in leg irons. It was only as I was going out that I remembered Jane and caught the look in her eye that cried out, Please don’t abandon me! I could not even think about her now. She and her future had suddenly become the least of my problems. I summoned the weakest of smiles and turned away.

  Outside Eva was waiting for me and set off ahead of me. I was in a blind panic and my instinct when we reached the bottom of the stairs was to head out of the front door and run, but no sooner did the thought enter my mind than I dismissed it. Run where? There was no escape. I was on an island.

  As Eva turned into the corridor that led to the staff sitting room, I stopped and said, ‘Just a minute.’ I was trying to buy time, give myself breathing space in which to gather my wits, think of a way out. ‘Um, did the lady say who she was?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A Miss Adams. That was the name, I believe.’

  I nodded as though registering this. Well, who else could it have been? No other person had written to Shepherd since I’d been there and nobody besides Caroline Adams seemed to know he was there. My head was swimming. Discovery was inevitable. I thought, the woman is expecting Shepherd to walk in the room and knows I am not he and Eva thinks I am Shepherd – how do I reconcile this? It was vital to prevent them seeing me at the same time. ‘Eva, it’s all right,’ I said, ‘you can go and get on with your work. I don’t need you to announce me.’

  ‘If you’re sure, sir –’

  ‘Quite sure, thank you.’

  She turned and walked back toward the stairs. I took out my handkerchief and wiped my brow. I was in a cold sweat. At the foot of the stairs Eva paused and turned to look back at me, her expression one of concern. I put on a smile, which seemed to satisfy her and off she went back upstairs.

  20

  I looked along the corridor, one way and then the other. It was clear. In the distance I could hear the buzz of conversation from the room set aside for the patients’ visitors. Caroline Adams would have come over on the boat that brought them. I hurried along to the staff sitting room and knocked on the door. A faint feminine voice answered, ‘Come in,’ and I opened the door, slipped inside and closed it smartly after me.

  ‘Oh!’ The woman standing before me took a step back, surprised. She was tall, attractive, with auburn hair that was set off by the green of her coat and a pert little nose that somehow suggested to me that there was no nonsense about her. I saw at once that her clothes were elegant and tasteful but also not new. The nap of her coat had hints of shine about the cuffs. It was evidently not her money that Shepherd had been interested in. She had a battered fur stole about her shoulders that looked as if it had been taken from some moulting animal. She shrugged it back, as the room was warm, revealing, I was intrigued to see, a white ribbon around her neck, which was itself as smooth and pale as alabaster. I imagined it would feel cold as marble to the touch of my fingers.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I said. ‘Miss Adams, I presume. I understand you’re expecting Dr Shepherd?’

  ‘That’s right, although he will not be expecting me.’

  ‘Evidently not, I’m afraid. He’s fully occupied with patients all day. Perhaps I can help. I’m Dr Gargery.’ It was the first name that jumped into my head, straight out of Jane Dove’s reading of Great Expectations. I felt a stab in my stomach at the thought of how I’d abandoned poor Jane to endure her trial with Morgan alone. For all I knew, without me to help, she might already have been consigned back to the living death of the day room. Then I thought that it didn’t matter, not if I couldn’t find some way out of the fix I was in. Unless I could wriggle free from it, there would be no one to conduct experiments in Moral Treatment upon poor Jane. The very idea of it would be discredited along with me.

  I pushed the thought away and concentrated on playing the new role I had assumed and immediately felt a frisson of excitement. I would have relished this switch of characters, from a dead doctor to one who had never lived, were it not for the constant fear that someone – Morgan, perhaps, O’Reilly, maybe, or any other of the staff – might come into the room at any moment and call me Shepherd.

  I saw she was staring at me. ‘I beg your pardon, but what did you say your name was?’

  My mind was suddenly blank. What name had I told her? I couldn’t think. Calm down, I said to myself. Think. All that came to mind was Jane Dove reading to Morgan. Why had I thought of that? Then I remembered, Great Expectations. ‘Gargery,’ I said.

  She looked at me hard. I felt myself wilting under her scrutiny. I was hot under my collar and put a finger around the inside of it to loosen it.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ I asked at last.

  ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s just that you seem so familiar. It feels as if I have met you before somewhere. Were you ever in Ohio?’

  ‘No, never, but people are always telling me I look like someone else. I have that kind of face.’ There was a pause. She seemed satisfied by my explanation. I cleared my throat. ‘As I was saying, I’m afraid Dr Shepherd is terribly busy all day and will not be free until long after the boat takes you back.’

  At this amplification of the bad news, Caroline Adams was silent and stood chewing her bottom lip.

  ‘Perhaps I can help?’ I said. ‘Forgive me for intruding but Dr Shepherd – John – and I have become great friends and he’s confided in me about, well, your situation.’

  ‘Oh!’ Red spots blossomed on her cheeks.

  ‘Pray forgive me. Perhaps I should not have said anything.’

  She burst into tears. ‘Oh, no, no, not at all.’ She let out a half-strangled sob. Then she fiddled in the little reticule whose
handle she had looped over her wrist and pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes and blew her nose. I waited while she composed herself. She faced me bravely. ‘I should not go on so, I know. But I have no family, no one else in all the world but John. I suppose you think I am a foolish girl, chasing after him like this.’

  I made a feeble gesture with my hands, which neither dismissed the idea nor endorsed it, and she went on, ‘It is just that his last letter to me was so strange.’ She pulled an envelope from the reticule and I thought she was going to show it to me, but instead she waved it at me. I could see my scrawl on it. ‘It wasn’t at all like him. I don’t recognise him in it, not one bit.’

  I put on a grave expression. ‘Well, of course he has some difficulty writing, still, on account of the injury to his hand.’

  ‘It’s not the handwriting; I understand about that. It’s – it’s – well, the complete lack of feeling. The coldness.’ She glanced out the window at the falling snow and shivered. Her voice trembled. ‘It was not a letter I ever expected to receive from the man I loved.’

  A tear rolled down her cheek and she shook her head, unable to go on. I walked over to her and laid a hand upon her arm. ‘Please,’ I said, ‘don’t distress yourself.’

  She took out the handkerchief again and gathered herself once more. ‘I am making an idiot of myself. What must you think of me?’

  ‘I assure you I do not think anything ill of you, Miss Adams, quite the reverse, in fact. I – I have – but no, I mustn’t say anything. It’s not my place at all. Although what was said to me was not specified as being in confidence, it was perhaps so de facto, in that it was never imagined that this meeting here today, between you and me, would ever take place.’

  Her head perked up and she looked me in the eye. ‘What exactly has John told you?’

  She seemed at once both anxious to know and fearful of finding out.

  I was only half a line ahead of her in the script, only there wasn’t a script of course. I had to make it up as I went along, always tailoring my answers to the questions she fired at me. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I was trying to think where to go next. Just then I heard footsteps approaching in the corridor outside. I forgot about saying anything. Indeed, I could not have spoken; it was impossible even to get my breath. Those were a woman’s footsteps and I thought if it’s O’Reilly and she comes in then I may as well string myself up here and now and save the state the trouble. Caroline Adams and I stared at each other, the tension near unbearable for her, I realised, at the prospect of the ending of our tête-à-tête just when she was on the verge of making some discovery, the explanation for Shepherd’s behaviour she had come for.

  The footsteps reached the door and went on by without pausing. We both waited as their echo died away in the distance. I still hadn’t thought of anything to say.

  ‘Listen,’ I managed finally, taking the break in the conversation caused by the footsteps as my cue, ‘we cannot talk frankly here because the room is in constant use and we are bound to be interrupted.’

  ‘Is there somewhere else we can go to be more private?’

  I made a show of thinking hard, wrinkling my brow, a ham performance, but then what was this if not some ghastly melodrama? ‘Not really …’ I began, then gave a tentative nod toward the window, ‘except outside, and it doesn’t look too welcoming out there.’

  She tossed her head. ‘Oh, I don’t mind a bit of snow. The cold doesn’t bother me in the least. Can we find a quiet spot outside?’

  ‘Oh yes, the grounds are quite extensive and everyone else will be inside on a day like this. There’s a gazebo around the back where we can shelter a little.’

  ‘Very well, then, if you’re agreeable and kind enough to spare me a little more of your time, let’s go there.’

  I quite admired her at that moment for her bravery and determination. She would endure anything to get her man. I walked over to the door, with her behind me, opened it and peeped out. The coast was clear.

  ‘You seem rather cautious,’ she said. ‘Is there some problem?’

  ‘Well, it’s best I’m not seen with you. I wouldn’t want it to get back to Shepherd. John, I mean.’

  ‘Oh. Well, perhaps I should go along on my own and meet you somewhere outside.’

  ‘Capital idea! Here’s what you must do: follow this corridor to the main door, the one you will have come in by. Go outside and turn left around the outside of the building and keep walking until you’re at the back. I’ll go out by the back door and meet you there.’

  ‘All right.’

  I stood aside to let her pass and she began walking along the corridor. After ten yards or so she suddenly stopped and looked back and said, ‘Dr Gargery?’

  Instinctively I looked over my shoulder, thinking she must be addressing someone behind me, forgetting that Gargery was me. Luckily I remembered in time before it registered with her. Although, why should she notice? Why on earth would this woman think I was anyone other than who I said I was? I smiled. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you.’ She mouthed the words almost without uttering them, obeying the need for secrecy, and then she turned and went off along the corridor. I stepped back into the staff sitting room, shut the door behind me and stood with my back against it. My whole body was quivering. I shuddered out a sigh. So far so good. I’d gotten her into a place where it was unlikely we would be seen together. Or if we were, only from a distance, and to any observer we would simply be Dr Shepherd and his young lady visitor. Everything could yet be all right so long as she didn’t speak to anyone, because then the game would certainly be up. This meant that somehow I would have to spin out the couple of hours before the boat left, taking the visitors back to the city. It would not be easy. I could hardly expect her to wander around in the freezing weather for so long, especially now the snow was coming down thick and fast. Yet letting her back indoors would put me in peril again.

  Then I realised that even if I brought it off, kept her occupied and away from others all that time, it wouldn’t solve the problem. This was a determined woman and no matter what cock-and-bull story about Shepherd’s motives I offered her, she would not be satisfied until she had had a showdown with the man himself, and that, of course, was impossible – well, at least in this world. And then sooner or later the truth would come out and I would be exposed. Even if I avoided discovery this time – and that was still looking far from certain – I probably couldn’t survive another such episode. I had to find a permanent solution, or, if that couldn’t be managed, at least one that was longer-lasting than merely until her next visit. All this was going through my head as I opened the door, checked that everything was clear, ducked out and made quickly for the back door. If anyone happened to be looking out a window somewhere, they wouldn’t see me following in the footsteps of Miss Adams.

  The sky was a lowering threat and the snow continued to fall. I found her under a tree, like some ghost in the dim light, for the afternoon wore on and the sun was losing strength. I summoned a feeble smile.

  ‘But you haven’t a coat,’ she said. ‘You’ll catch your death.’

  ‘I don’t feel the cold,’ I lied, wondering how I would keep my teeth from chattering. Great white flakes fell upon us, settling on our heads and shoulders, threatening to turn us into snowmen. ‘Let’s walk away from the building. It will lessen any chance of bumping into someone and will help keep us warm into the bargain.’

  The grounds were naturally deserted, as I’d hoped, but at the same time the complete absence of anyone else pointed up the madness of our enterprise. Even the lunatics were not crazy enough to be abroad in such conditions. I began to trudge in the direction of a small area of woodland. It was three or four hundred yards away. I was thinking about taking her all the way to the edge of this side of the island, to the black water there, but I saw almost at once that would be no good; it would only lead to more questions.

  ‘Can we not talk as we walk?’ she said.

&n
bsp; Our feet were crunching through snow several inches deep now as the path we were on petered out. No one normally walked in this part of the grounds. They weren’t cultivated at all, there weren’t enough gardeners, and this area was left more or less to nature.

  ‘I thought you mentioned a gazebo?’ she said. ‘I don’t see any sign of one.’ She was puzzled rather than worried.

  I pressed on ahead of her, leaving her no option but to trail along in my wake. ‘Yes, I’m not too familiar with this part of the grounds but I think it’s over here somewhere.’

  ‘But Dr Gargery, must we go on? The snow is getting so deep.’

  ‘Let’s get into the wood, at least. We can’t talk here; we might still be visible from the building. We can be private under the trees and they’ll shelter us from the snow.’ I went on and a moment later heard the crunch of her feet behind me.

  After another five minutes we were battling through snow a foot deep. I ploughed on, willing her to follow, determined not to stop now.

  ‘Dr Gargery, Dr Gargery,’ came her voice from behind, ‘are you sure this is wise? The snow is getting deeper. My skirts are getting soaked.’

  ‘Only a little way now.’ I could hear the fake cheeriness in my voice. ‘The ground will be clear once we’re in the woods; you’ll see.’

  I carried on as fast as I could and she had no choice but to follow. Eventually I was in amongst the trees. She staggered in after me, panting, water dripping from her hat. The ground here was only lightly dusted with snow, protected by the trees all about us. I turned to face her.