‘Where is he?’ Kath said, her frown gone.
Bertie wrung his cap between his hands. ‘Who do you mean?’
‘You know.’ Kath leant forward in her chair. The eyes that had threatened tears were now sharp.
‘He’s fine,’ Bertie said, after he had cleared his throat.
‘Where is he?’
‘I didn’t come to talk about him, Katy. That’s not why I’m here—’
‘Where is he, Bertie?’
‘I’m here because... well, because Mabel died.’
Kath slumped back against her chair.
‘She died in January. Heart attack.’
Iris waited nearby. She should let them have some privacy, but she could not peel herself away. She was only doing her duty, she told herself; it would be no good for Kath to be upset by a stranger.
‘It was quick.’
‘I don’t care.’ Kath turned her face to the window.
‘No.’ Bertie sniffed and pressed his cap into his lap. ‘No, I know you don’t, but I... I wanted to ask if you would like to... if you would like to get out of here and come and live with me?’
Iris dropped the teapot. The question brought Kath up short as well.
‘Live with you?’
‘That’s right.’
Iris dabbed the pool of stewed tea on the table top.
‘Leave?’ Kath craned her neck and caught Iris’s gaze. She was petrified. ‘I can’t leave here.’
‘It’s not far. I’m only in Sandhill now. I... I thought you’d want to. I thought you’d want to get out of here.’ Bertie reached for her hand. Kath tried to pull away but gave up. ‘I’m sorry, Katy. I’m so sorry.’
‘Where is he?’
Bertie dropped her hand and wiped his eyes with his fingers. ‘I’m sorry.’ He staggered to his feet, and for a moment, Iris thought she might have to save him from falling over, but he steadied himself by taking hold of the back of his chair. He stumbled out of the room without another word to anyone.
Kath continued to watch the blackbird by the oak tree, but Iris could see the hem of her cotton dress quivering. Iris was about to go to her, when Nurse Carmichael called her over.
‘Who was that?’
‘Albert Jones.’
‘And what relation did he say he was to Kath?’
‘An old friend.’
‘I’ve never seen him before. Has he upset her?’
‘I... I don’t think so, ma’am.’
‘Right.’ Miss Carmichael’s lips pursed.
‘He asked her to live with him.’
Nurse Carmichael laughed. ‘That’s absurd. And it’s not his decision to make.’
‘Have you seen him before?’
‘Kath has never had a visitor.’ Carmichael shook her head, bemused.
‘She knew him. She definitely knew him. How long has she been here?’
‘Fifteen years in Ward 13.’
Iris tried to conceal her gasp, but it was too late.
Miss Carmichael smiled wearily at her. ‘Katherine Owen has been at Smedley hospital since 1901.’
2
1956
Sunday’s church service had been unbearable. The normally cool stone walls and wooden pews had not held back the heat, and as Iris sat next to her mother, her eyelids had wilted like scorched daisies. The vicar had droned on from the pulpit, the sweat on his face glimmering in the rainbow light from the stained windows. When they had finally been released, Iris had raced into the shade of a yew tree and waited for her parents.
Her mother had tutted at her. Why did she have to be so ungainly? Why couldn’t she stand straighter? It was no wonder she hadn’t caught anyone’s eye yet. Her dad had smiled, given Iris his arm, and strolled them away as her mum chatted to the neighbours she would gossip about later.
Now, Iris’s dinner – a mountain of boiled spuds and roast lamb and thick, lumpy gravy – was only just beginning to go down. The three of them sprawled in the living room, the windows thrown as far open as they would go, listening to the wireless. Her mum’s knitting needles clicked slowly, and her dad’s mouth hung open, sucking in air, his cheeks wobbling as he napped.
What would Shirley be doing now? Iris wondered. Something infinitely more exciting, she expected.
Shirley’s date with Dr Brown had gone well; they’d kissed on the back seats at the picture-house, and he’d walked her home. Shirley had said he hadn’t even batted an eyelid when he found out she lived on the Brookside estate. Ever such a gentleman.
Iris closed her eyes. What would it be like to be in love? She’d never been in love, never even fancied any of the boys at school. There was one, Richard, who had made her giggle – over what, she can’t remember now – but she recalled how he’d touched her arm one time on the walk home from school and it had felt like a bee had stung her there. It had made her tummy turn. But then Richard had moved away to Chester, and she’d never thought about him again, until now.
What if Richard came back? Would she recognise him? They had only been eleven years old, still too round in the cheeks. What would he look like now they were twenty-one? She imagined him tall, with dark hair in the fashionable style, clean shaven, wearing denim jeans and a leather jacket. He would smell of cigarettes and would drive a motorcycle with a side-car, and he’d take her out on a Saturday night and kiss her on the back seats at the picture-house...
She opened her eyes. She didn’t want Richard, neither real Richard nor imagined Richard.
‘I might go out for a ride,’ she whispered to her mum, trying not to wake her father.
‘In this heat?’ her mother cried, and Dad jerked upright, wiping his hand over his face, and staring about himself as if the place had been bombed out.
‘What? What’s going on?’
‘Iris wants to go on the bike.’
‘Oh.’ Dad settled into his chair again.
‘It’s too hot. You’ll overheat. If you want to do something, you can make a start on that washing.’
‘But it’s Sunday,’ Iris moaned. It was rare she got a day off as it was, and how many times had Mum propped her feet on that little footstool and declared Sunday a day of rest?
‘Let her go, Pearl.’ Dad unfastened the top button of his shirt and pulled his collar away from his neck.
The knitting needles clattered together, faster and faster. ‘Fine. Go. What do I know? You go out and boil to death, see if I care. Then you can go and fetch her, Colin, because I shan’t be stepping one foot outside in this heat.’
Iris was already brushing the creases out of her skirt. She kissed her dad on his bald head, then caught her mother’s cheek as it turned away from her.
‘I’ll stay in the shade.’
‘Alan’s round at six for tea, don’t you forget. I want you back here before then.’
‘Yes, Mum.’
As it happened, there wasn’t much shade on the way to Sandhills. Iris had followed the main roads in fear of getting lost on the back lanes, and the only trees which lined the pavements had been near-on saplings. By the time the sign for Sandhills had come into view, Iris had been peddling for an hour and a half, and she did not need to see her cheeks to know they were scarlet.
Sandhills was one of the newly built estates on the outskirts of town. The persistent squeaking of her wheels echoed off the bright-red brick houses as she meandered down the road, and although it wasn’t a large estate – perhaps fifty houses at most – she hadn’t a clue which one belonged to Albert Jones. It was then, with the air catching in her parched mouth, she cursed herself for being such a fool.
It had been an impulse to find out just who the mysterious Bertie Blackbird was. For the last three days, his and Kath’s words on the ward had been repeating in her mind, and Kath had not been herself since. She had been staying in bed as much as possible, though the nurses roused her out of it eventually. She had not helped with the tea; she had simply sat beside the window, staring, her fingers plucking at her lips until they bled
. And when Iris had nudged her, it was like waking someone from a nightmare; the horror was plain in the roundness of her eyes, in the whiteness of her skin.
Iris reached the end of the estate. She could hear the giggles and screams of children as they played in their back gardens, but there was no one walking on the pavement whom she could ask. She tried peering into some of the windows, wondering what Albert’s home might look like inside, but the sun was too bright and bounced off the glass.
It was ridiculous. She should never have come. Hadn’t her training told her to remain detached? To keep a distance from her patients? It did no one any good to start interfering in business that didn’t belong to them. She started peddling for home.
Just as she was about to turn out of the estate, the very end house’s back gate opened. Albert, with a watering can weighing down his right arm, hobbled in that peculiar way of his towards the pots of roses lining the front of his house.
She stopped. She should leave. Hadn’t she just told herself what a bad idea this was?
She should not be pestering an old man on a quiet Sunday afternoon.
But...
‘Excuse me, sir?’
Albert turned towards her as she dismounted and pushed her bike up the drive. He tipped his head to the side, the way he had before, so he could see her.
‘Can I help you, dear?’
‘Yes. Sorry. I hope you can.’ Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth for a moment, making her swallow air and cough.
‘Are you lost? It’s too hot to be riding a bike in this weather. Should you like a drink? I’ve just made lemonade.’
‘Oh. Well, yes, if you don’t mind me…’
He motioned for her to step inside.
The place was blissfully cool. The tang of citrus fruit hit her nostrils. He led her into the living room, which merged with the dining room in the modern, open-plan way, but the furniture was decidedly old fashioned. China dogs lay on the windowsill, two green chairs sat beside the fireplace, and the walls were lined with cross-stitched pictures and black-and-white photographs.
She studied one photograph of a couple on their wedding day. She recognised the man as Albert; his hair had been thick and pitch-black in his youth, and his spine had been straight. Standing rigid beside him and holding a bouquet of wildflowers was a tall woman in a long-sleeved, high-collared white dress. Her frizzy brown hair was pinned up high on her head, and she had a face that could best be described as masculine.
‘Here you are.’ Albert handed her a squat glass of lemonade. He had his own on the little table beside his chair. ‘Have a seat and rest awhile.’
She did as she was told and sipped the lemonade, the sharpness tingling on her tongue. ‘It’s delicious, and very kind of you.’
‘It’s an old recipe, my wife’s. Were you lost?’
‘Actually,’ she put her glass next to his on the table, ‘I was looking for you.’
He tried to twist his head further to take her all in. ‘I’m sorry, dear, do I know you?’
‘You came to Smedley on Wednesday, to see Katherine? I was the nurse who showed you to her.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry – my eyes.’
‘Don’t worry. I didn’t expect you to remember me.’
‘Is everything all right with Katy? Is that why you’re here? Is something wrong?’
‘No, no. Well, she’s been a bit out of sorts since your visit.’
‘I didn’t want to upset her.’
‘You didn’t,’ Iris lied. She couldn’t make this little old man, who had made his own lemonade and sat on his own all day, feel bad. ‘It was just a change that she’s not used to. Change can upset them sometimes.’
‘Will she come here, do you think?’
Iris could not imagine Kath in this house at all. Bertie’s dead wife’s presence emanated from the photos, the furniture, the food, and drinks.
‘I think that probably won’t be possible.’
Albert nodded as if he had expected her response. He drank some lemonade.
‘I’m sorry, dear, I don’t wish to sound rude, but if there is nothing wrong with Katy and she can’t move in with me, why are you here?’
She took a deep breath. ‘As I said, Kath’s been a little out of sorts since you came. It’s very difficult for me to speak to her sometimes, what with the other patients needing seeing to, so I haven’t had the chance to ask her...’
‘What our conversation was about?’
Iris felt her cheeks flush. ‘I only want to understand.’
‘But is it any of your business?’
There was no malice in the way he said it, but it made Iris freeze. ‘I’m sorry, you’re right, I shouldn’t have come.’
He reached for her hand as she went to stand.
‘I didn’t mean to offend. No one has taken any interest in Katy for years – decades. Me being one of them. They put her in there, and no one thought to take her out again. Just left, forgotten.’ He shook his head as he stared at the bottom of his glass. ‘I never forgot, but I’d done what I’d done, couldn’t undo it.’
‘What happened to Kath?’
‘You not been reading your notes?’ He was teasing her; his smile told her so. ‘Delusions. Hysteria. Mania,’ he said with a shrug.
Iris thought of the sensible, caring old woman, and could not imagine it. Iris’s notes said very little about each patient.
‘Was there something that started her delusions? A trigger or something like that?’
A ghost of a smile played on his lips. ‘It’s a very long time ago. Lots of things happened, bad things, things she would have been better forgetting. I hope she has forgotten them.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know it all. I was only part of it, you see.’ He sighed and sagged back in his chair. ‘No one talked about her after it happened, not her family, not the village. Katy was never mentioned again. She was our secret, and if we didn’t think about her, we wouldn’t have to think about what we’d all done. You can trick yourself into believing anything.’ He grinned. Iris shivered. ‘But what’s the point of pretending now? We’re all dead.’ He dragged himself to his feet.
Iris was losing time; he would show her out, and her chance would be lost. She followed him into the hallway, desperately trying to think of something to say that might make him tell her what had really happened, but just as she thought he was going to reach for the door, he turned left instead and began climbing the stairs.
‘She gave the last of her personal things to me. I’ve kept them safe. If you want to find out what happened to Katy, you need to read her diary.’
It was half past six when Iris clattered into the back yard. She was dismounting before the bike had come to a halt. She stuffed the diary down her dress and ran inside.
‘Where the blooming heck have you been?’ Mum shouted. Everyone sat around the kitchen table, fanning themselves with their hands or old copies of The Mirror.
‘Got herself a fancy man, I reckon,’ Alan said. Her brother loomed over the kitchen table, his bare arms thick with muscle and slick with sweat, as he pulled her into a hug. He was such a hulk of a man; how he had ever fitted into this two-up-two-down, Iris would never know. ‘Who is it then?’
‘Don’t be daft, Alan,’ Mum said.
Alan winked at Iris, then continued his conversation. ‘You should have a look. We love ours.’
‘Too modern for us.’
‘But space, Mam. There’s so much space!’
‘Your brother’s trying to get us to move into one of them new builds.’ Dad rolled his eyes.
‘You’d love it, Iris. You could sneak your boyfriend in through the window, and Mam wouldn’t have a clue.’
Her mother swatted him with a tea towel.
Adam careered into Iris’s legs. She prised away her nephew’s hot, sticky body and saw the gaps where his milk teeth had begun to fall out as he beamed at her.
‘Come away, Adam. Give your aunty some space. She’s as r
ed as a cock,’ Janet said.
Iris smiled at her sister-in-law, whose pregnant belly pressed against the table. Chalk and cheese, Mum had described Iris and Janet, but even so, Iris got on rather well with her, despite her loudness and crass language. Her mother had still not adjusted to Janet’s ways.
Alan scooped himself a spoonful of red jelly. ‘Sit yourself down, then.’
The diary was digging into her ribs, and Iris was sure that if her parents weren’t so besotted with their first grandson, they’d have spotted the bulk under her dress by now. ‘I’ll just change.’
She ran upstairs. The leather-bound diary was wet with her sweat when she slipped it out under her skirt. She placed it on her bed and stared at it.
To read someone else’s diary was a traitorous thing to do.
She thought of her own, secured beneath her mattress, the words flying across the page of dreams to become a charge nurse, a matron, a doctor, even. Her mother had been so close to reading it once. In her tiredness, Iris had forgotten to bury it, and she’d come back from work to find Mum hovering beside her un-made bed, the diary cocooned in the duvet, just inches from her mother’s fingers. Iris had said that Dad was eating the ham on the table, and Mum had stormed downstairs, ready to bat him off the family tea. It had given Iris time to lift the mattress and hide the diary.
What would Kath say if she knew Iris was about to read her innermost thoughts? Would Kath even remember she had written a diary?
‘You died up there?’ Alan shouted from the bottom of the stairs.
Iris lifted the mattress and shoved the diary beside her own, then tore off her dress and dragged on yesterday’s which hung on the back of the door.
‘Coming,’ she called.
3
1956
Iris buttered white bread, ensuring it reached to the edges – other members of staff didn’t bother. They slapped the butter and corned beef on sloppily, getting the job done as quickly as possible, so that the patients would have to endlessly chew the dry bread, unable to swallow. They all liked Iris’s sandwiches best.
Woman on Ward 13: A haunting gothic novel of obsession and insanity (Iris Lowe Mysteries) Page 2
