Mouse

by D. M. Mitchell

  They arrived at Blaxton, a sleepy little place tucked out of the way, populated by people who tended to tuck themselves out of the way – mainly farmers and the like. A trip from Blaxton to Langbridge was the equivalent of a trip from Langbridge to London. They took a side lane that led to a few desultory-looking cottages burdened by heavy blankets of moss-covered thatch. Edith brought Vince to a halt beside one of them.

  ‘Before we go in to see her I just wanted to warn you,’ she said.

  ‘Warn me? Of what?’

  ‘My Aunt Elizabeth – Aunt Liz – she can seem a little strange to those who don’t know her.’

  ‘Strange? In what way?’ he asked uncertainly. ‘You never told me about her being strange.’

  ‘That’s because I didn’t want to alarm you as you seem to have your mind set on wanting to see her and I didn’t want to spoil us having a day out together. There’s something you should know about her. My aunt knows about Bartholomew Place because she was in it.’

  ‘As a worker?’

  She shook her head. ‘She was admitted for a time.’

  ‘You could have told me earlier! Is she safe?’

  Edith smiled at his sudden disquiet. ‘Oh yes, perfectly harmless now. She’s been a lot better since they changed her medication. She used to hear voices – mainly God, Mary and Joseph, sometimes Marilyn Monroe, but I never knew how she fitted into the scheme of things. They told her to do various acts and she’d do them – steal things from shops, walk naked up the street, set fire to the vicarage…’

  ‘I think I’ve changed my mind. You didn’t tell me she was mad!’

  ‘She’s not mad!’ she defended. ‘Not now at least. But she’s still a bit eccentric.’ She grabbed his hand and held him firm. ‘We’re here now, aren’t we? She’s not going to attack you or anything – she might preach a bit of the gospel if she’s in the mood, but that’s no more mad than going to church and hearing it, is it?’ She led him meekly through a gate, down the weed-strewn path and to a battered old door. She took out a key and unlocked it. ‘She always locks it against Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ she explained. ‘She’s terrified of them because they tend to come in pairs, like policemen or bailiffs; no one should be trusted if they come in pairs, she always says.’ She pushed hard at the door but it hardly budged. ‘You might find this a bit of a squeeze,’ she said apologetically, easing her way through the narrowest of openings.

  Vince followed and was amazed to see the entire hallway, small as it was, stacked high with cardboard boxes, heaps of bulging carrier bags, skyscraper-like stacks of newspapers and magazines. Empty tin cans and bottles were everywhere. He noticed every last step on the stairs leading up to the bedrooms was piled high with every conceivable object; mounds of neatly-folded clothes, rows of spent light-bulbs, empty bleach bottles, blackened old pans, cracked ceramic jugs, dented metal ones, threadbare cushions and moth-eaten blankets. It would have been near impossible to get up the stairs, he thought. He heard a soft mewling, and two cats leapt from out of nowhere to scuttle over the precarious piles like agile mountain goats on a steep-sided rock-face to sit and cry plaintively at him. He saw at least two more scoot away to hide as they pushed their way down the clutter-strewn hall.

  ‘It’s like the worst junk shop I’ve ever seen!’ said Vince, half- appalled, half-fascinated. ‘Don’t tell me the entire house is like this.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is. That’s Joseph’s fault – told her to keep everything as he and Mary might need it if they had another baby and had to move to a bigger house.’

  ‘She believes that?’

  ‘It’s real to her. She can’t throw anything away. All this makes sense to her – she says she’s even got it organised. Every now and again we manage to persuade her to clear some of it but she gets upset if we go too far. It’s a case of doing what we can.’ She paused and put a hand to her mouth. ‘Aunty Liz!’ she called. ‘It’s only me, Edith. I’ve brought someone along to see you!’

  ‘Are you definitely sure this is safe?’ he asked nervously. One of the cats looked desperately thin and hungry and ready to take a bite out of him. ‘How many cats has she got? They’re all over the place.’

  ‘About ten, at one point. And five dogs. She had a time when she started to collect two of everything, you know, ready for the flood. Langbridge had a rather terrifying one in 1947 which convinced here that was a warm-up to the real thing. So we had dogs, rats, mice, budgies – you name it. Most of the twos became threes and fours and more; you know how it is when you get male and females together. The amount of kittens and puppies we’ve had to take to the RSPCA! Thing is, you turn your back and she takes another one in.’

  ‘Christ, Edith, I hope none of this runs in the family, for your sake!’

  A woman burst unexpectedly out of a doorway; her eyes were wide, and with her unruly, matted hair it gave her such a demonic appearance that it caused Vince to start. He tripped over something on the floor and fell onto a mound of cardboard boxes. His heart pumping like mad he stared up at her.

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ said the woman calmly. ‘Hello, Edith – is this the young man you were telling me about?’

  ‘Hello, Aunty Liz. Yes, this is Vince.’

  She bent down and held out a scrawny hand. ‘Good morning, Vince,’ she said. She shook her head dolefully. ‘Can you not sit all over my work? You have no idea how long it took me to organise all this, and now you’re sitting in it and messing it all up.’

  Vince scrabbled to his feet. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking down at the crushed boxes. ‘I’ll pay for any damage done.’

  Aunty Liz put a hand to her forehead. ‘That’s far too late, young man; the damage is irreparable. Right, let’s have that cup of tea, shall we?’

  Edith stifled a chuckle and Vince scowled at her.

  * * * *

  24

  Miracle Baby

  ‘She used to be married,’ Edith whispered. ‘It was her husband who had her put into Bartholomew Place when he couldn’t cope. She was there more than two years, I think. They divorced.’

  They were sat scrunched up together on a small sofa; on either side of them a pile of clothes in carrier bags. The living-room, if anything, was worse than the hall. Vince could just about see the corner of a television poking out from behind a pile of wooden tea chests that appeared to be filled with nothing but old copies of The Radio Times. You could hardly move – breathe, even – for crap, he thought.

  ‘And you say she’s better now?’ he asked incredulously. ‘I would have hated to have seen her when she was worse.’ He nodded towards a door. ‘What’s she doing? She’s been in there ages. It’s only a pot of tea she’s supposed to be making, not the pot itself.’

  ‘You’re so impatient!’ she chastised lightly. ‘Nothing’s that simple with Aunty Liz. There are all manner of rituals to get through, all in a set order, and if she misses one or screws it up, she has to begin all over again.’

  After what seemed an age Aunty Liz came in bearing a tray, which she carefully put down on the edge of a coffee table before them. Vince automatically went to move a pile of paperback books out of the way.

  ‘No!’ she cried, and his hand jerked back as if stung. ‘Leave all those just as they are; it’s important they stay that way – can’t you see, young man?’

  He nodded quickly. ‘Yes, I can. Now that you mention it.’

  She sat down on a padded chair, which was in the in the slow process of losing its padding from various rips and tears. A cat jumped up onto her lap and stared an unforgiving stare at Vince. ‘He’s a bright boy,’ she said to Edith as if Vince weren’t in the room. ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘He works at the Empire cinema, Aunty Liz, as a projectionist.’

  ‘Really? Does that kind of job pay enough to get married on?’

  ‘Aunty Liz!’ said Edith, her cheeks at once flushing the brightest pink. ‘We’re not getting married!’

  ‘What? Oh dear! You’re not going to
live in sin, are you?’ She wagged a finger at Vince. ‘That’s not the way to behave, young man. You must make an honest woman out of her. You do know she’s a miracle baby, don’t you, Vernon?’

  ‘Vince,’ he corrected.

  ‘He doesn’t want to hear that, Aunty…’ said Edith.

  ‘But you are a miracle, darling! You shouldn’t be here! And miracles deserve better treatment that this.’ She glowered at Vince. ‘My sister couldn’t have a baby, they told her, but Edith here was born against all the odds. She is a bona fide miracle.’

  ‘I’m not, Aunty, really…’ said Edith.

  ‘Don’t argue, dear, I know a miracle when I see one. Barren, she was, your mother. Unable to bear children. God smiled on her and gave us you, our little Edith!’ She turned to Vince. ‘So you will marry her.’ She began to look around the room.

  ‘What are you looking for, Aunty?’

  ‘My hat, of course!’

  ‘Which hat, Aunty?’

  ‘The one I shall be wearing at your wedding, silly! It’s here somewhere.’

  Edith passed Vince a cup of tea. She caught more than a glimmer of alarm in his eyes. ‘Don’t worry about the hat just yet, Aunty Liz, there’s plenty of time. I’d like to ask you a question or two, if I can?’

  Her attention snapped back. ‘Yes, dear, fire away.’

  Bartholomew Place,’ she said. ‘You do remember that, don’t you?’

  She smiled sweetly and forgivingly. ‘Do you think me dotty or something? Of course I remember it.’ She bent closer to them both, her voice lowered by an octave. ‘It’s where they put people who were not quite right in the head, dear.’

  ‘Where is it, Aunty Liz?’

  She sat back. ‘Oh, it’s over the border in Dorset. Not far outside Dorchester. Such a dreary old building. Some say it used to be a former workhouse and whether that was true or not it looked the part. It had high walls, like a prison, you might say, in case any of the nutters escaped. You wouldn’t want that, would you, mad people running like crazy all over the town?’ She gave a chiming little chuckle.

  ‘Do you remember being there, Aunty?’ she probed gingerly.

  ‘Yes, like it was yesterday. I was posted there in a governmental advisory capacity,’ she said with authority. ‘I was brought in to sort things out, to bring a bit of order to the place. That’s what I was doing there. It wasn’t an easy time for me, mind, being amongst all those crazy people, dribbling, moaning, screaming or wetting themselves all over the place. But one had a job to do.’

  ‘Do you remember anyone called Laura Leach being inside Bartholomew Place?’ Vince asked.

  ‘Most definitely. Laura had been in a long time before I went there, and she was in when I left.’

  Vince’s heart sank. ‘The same Laura Leach who lives out at Devereux Towers?’

  ‘The one and the same. Her father was instrumental in having her committed, they say; pushed for her to be sectioned.’

  ‘Why? What was so wrong with her?’

  ‘Ah, I don’t rightly know. Some really terrible thing had happened, that much was obvious. I mean, you wouldn’t be in Bartholomew Place all those years without something being dreadfully wrong. One minute she’d be as placid as a little lamb – never talking, mind you, all blank eyes, that kind of thing; and the next thing, well, screaming so much that you feared her lungs would pop with it, a regular banshee, tearing at her hair and arms in a most frightening way. They’d sedate her and lock her away in restraints when she was like that. Then you’d never see her for ages. They tried all sorts to cure her of whatever was wrong with her – ice-cold baths, electric shocks, all the most modern treatments, but she never got any better whilst I was there.’

  ‘That’s so sad,’ said Edith, glancing at Vince’s crestfallen face.

  ‘The screaming fits were the worst thing,’ Aunty Liz continued. ‘At those times she’d call out someone’s name over and over again.’

  Vince’s ears pricked. ‘Whose name?’

  Liz had to trawl through her fogged memories. ‘Gosh, now there’s a thing. Who was it now?’ She fell into what appeared to be a semi-trance-like state and Vince was on the edge of getting concerned for her when she said, ‘Alan! That’s who it was – Alan. Over and over and over, till they put her to sleep.’

  ‘Have you any idea who this Alan was, or why she’d be calling his name?’ Vince asked.

  ‘No, hang on…’ she said. ‘It wasn’t Alan, it was Alex, and it wasn’t just Alex she called; she used to shout, Alex, I’m sorry…’ She smiled a self-congratulatory smile. ‘That’s what she used to say.’

  ‘What was she sorry for, Aunty?’ Edith pursued.

  ‘For whatever terrible thing she’d done to Alex, what else?’ said Liz.

  Vince felt decidedly uncomfortable now. He lowered his gaze and studied his hand on his lap. ‘I’m sure she’s better now,’ he ventured. ‘She has to be, hasn’t she? I mean, they wouldn’t have let her out otherwise, would they?’

  Aunty Liz swung her head slowly. ‘No one as bad as that can ever truly get better, can they?’ she said, her eyes sombre and inward-looking. ‘It’s always there, just below the surface, like flowing water beneath a crust of ice. You never know when the ice will crack and the water will come gushing out again.’

  * * * *

  25

  Blood

  The man from the fire brigade was not very happy with the situation. The Empire was undergoing its annual fire check and, as far as he was concerned, things were not looking good. The fire officer had dragged Martin Caldwell out of his office to go through a list of possible fire hazards and things that ought to be in place that simply weren’t in place. It was an accident waiting in the wings, he’d prophesised in a deep, doom-laden voice.

  Caldwell felt like a school kid all over again, remembering his father standing with his school report in his hand and going through the shocking grades and comments one by one. The fire officer was doing the same, in the same manner – blunt, not a hint of humour.

  ‘Death by burning isn’t a nice prospect, Mr Caldwell,’ he warned, leading him through corridors, into rooms, pointing out what seemed a mountain of minor problems that needed to be addressed before the Empire would get issued with a fire certificate. They eventually reached the basement. ‘What’s behind this locked door?’ he asked, trying the handle.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Caldwell. ‘There’s a flight of stone steps leading to an empty room, and there’s a well in one corner, that’s all.’ He didn’t mention the pile of nitrate-based films Vince still hadn’t shifted. Films that might combust.

  ‘You don’t use it for storage, anything like that? Nothing combustible?’

  He was like a fucking mind reader, Caldwell thought uncomfortably. ‘Nothing in there except fresh air.’

  The officer went over to inspect a couple of rusting hooks in the wall near the door. He looked at a list on his clipboard. ‘What’s happened to the fire-axe that used to hang here, near the fire blanket?’ he asked stiffly.

  ‘No idea,’ he admitted. ‘It appears to be missing.’

  ‘Find it or provide another,’ he said shortly, making a note on his sheet. ‘It’s there for a reason.’ He handed Caldwell the sheet of paper. ‘Take care of all these things otherwise you won’t get your certificate.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Caldwell walking the officer to the rear door and bidding him goodbye. ‘I can do without this shit,’ he said under his breath. He went up to the projection booth to find Vince. He handed him the sheet of paper. ‘Here, see to this lot, will you?’

  He took the sheet. ‘This really isn’t my job, Mr Caldwell. Mrs Kimble, she always saw to the fire checks…’

  ‘Fuck Mrs Kimble. There isn’t any Mrs Kimble and I can’t get anyone to come and replace Monica, even temporarily. Just take care of it.’

  He stormed from the room leaving Vince in a daze. The man was getting too edgy, he thought, and more than that his bleary eyes was a dead giveaway to his co
nstant drinking. If head office caught him doused up like that he’d be for the chop, no mistake.

  But Vince had other, more pressing things on his mind. His meeting with Katherine for one, and what he ought to tell her. The trip to see Edith’s aunt had really unsettled him. What if it were all true about Laura? There again, could you really trust the word of a woman who had spent time in Bartholomew Place herself and took orders from Marilyn Monroe? And though he had been fighting against it, he was starting to like Edith in a way that began to conflict with his love for Laura. It was like he was being unfaithful to her by allowing the feelings room to grow.

  Vince hung back after everyone had left at the end of the day, waiting in the yard till he was certain he was completely alone. He sat there in the dark, growing tenser by the minute till he heard a car pull up outside the gates. He went out to meet Katherine who came to stand in the entrance to the yard.

  ‘Well, Vince, what have you got for me?’ she asked.

  He wasn’t certain, but some of the swagger had gone from her voice. ‘Laura was in Bartholomew Place for years,’ he said.

  ‘So? Is she crazy?’

  ‘She’s not in the institution now,’ he defended.

  ‘What put her there?’ She sensed his reluctance. ‘Tell me, you little squirt, or I’ll make it bad for you.’

  ‘It sounds like something she did. Nobody’s certain what that was but it sounded serious enough for her to be committed to Bartholomew Place.’

  ‘What else, Vince? Come on, you’re holding something back.’

  ‘She used to cry out someone’s name – someone called Alex. Alex, I’m sorry, she’d say.’

  ‘Who’s Alex?’

  ‘Dunno. Can I go now?’

  ‘Where is this Bartholomew Place?’