Woman on Ward 13: A haunting gothic novel of obsession and insanity (Iris Lowe Mysteries)

by Delphine Woods

  ‘He hasn’t telephoned me.’

  Shirley hacked the sandwiches into four butchered pieces.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘John! Who else do you think I mean?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you today?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Iris held in her sigh. It was too hot for arguments, too hot to be as uptight as Shirley. And anyway, she hadn’t been listening to Shirley. She’d been watching Kath, who sat by the window, unmoving.

  ‘He said he’d call me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When he walked me home.’

  ‘No, I mean, when will he call, did he say?’

  Shirley’s knife stopped. ‘No.’

  ‘There you go then.’ Iris placed a slice of bread on the final sandwich and wiped her hands on a tea towel. ‘He could still call. Stop worrying.’

  ‘I’m not worrying,’ Shirley muttered to herself as Iris walked away from the tea trolley to get the patients to their tables.

  She waited at the side of Kath’s chair and looked at the view. The blackbird, with its yellow beak opening into song, jumped about amidst the roots of the oak tree.

  ‘Bertie Blackbird,’ Iris whispered.

  Kath turned, her eyes wide and straining to see past Iris. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘No. Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  ‘I wanted to speak to him.’

  ‘He’s well.’ Iris hesitated. ‘I visited him yesterday, at his home.’

  Kath eyed her suspiciously. ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘Nothing, but he has your diary.’

  The edges of Kath’s lips flicked upwards. ‘He kept it.’

  ‘He said I could have it, but I don’t think it’s right for him to give me your personal things.’

  ‘Why would you want it?’

  Because she was nosey, that was the truth, no matter how much she hated to admit it.

  ‘I want to understand what happened to you, Kath. Why you’re here. I know I shouldn’t, but—’

  ‘I’m not mad.’

  The frankness in Kath’s face, the set of her lips, the brightness of her eyes; Iris had known it for months. She swallowed the feeling of nausea.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  Kath looked to the blackbird. ‘I don’t want to live with Bertie. I can’t leave.’

  ‘I could try to get you reassessed. Smedley is improving its recovery rates all the time. Lots of patients are now living in the community—’

  ‘I don’t want to leave,’ Kath said. ‘This is my home.’

  How could anyone call this ward home? All around them, the other patients were moaning, banging against the chairs in protest as Shirley tried to force them to the table. Every day was the same, life on a cycle until death came.

  Kath coughed, dragging up something from her lungs and swallowing it. ‘I shan’t be here for long. I can feel it.’ She patted her chest. ‘I want to see him. Before I die, I want to see him.’

  ‘Bertie?’

  Kath shook her head.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nurse Lowe,’ Shirley’s nasal voice rammed into their conversation. ‘A little help, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you?’

  Kath grinned and let Iris help her to her feet. ‘Read the diary.’

  Iris ran home. Tea was on the table, a cold plate of stew and dumplings. The last thing she wanted to eat, but she couldn’t leave it. Her mum made sure nothing went to waste. Remember rationing?

  Iris shovelled it in her mouth until her stomach ached. She washed the dishes, splashing water everywhere in her haste, leaving crusted food on the saucepan, which she hoped her mother’s failing eyesight wouldn’t notice.

  Then she was free. She bounded up the stairs, lifted the mattress, and began.

  1900

  Monday, September 24th

  I’ve started a new book for this job. I thought it best. A new book and a new start.

  My eyelids are falling already, and it’s still light out, but I’ll write what I can before I drop off.

  This morning seems like ten years ago. How can it be that I was still in the village when the sun rose today? I feel a hundred miles away from home.

  Bertie saw me off, like he said he would. I said he didn’t need to, for it made the leaving all the harder to have spent the hour together, hand in hand, blissfully alone, but he insisted.

  ‘Here’s halfway,’ he said.

  It was a dense patch of woodland beside the stream. The sun was low and warm, like it has been this whole month. By his pocket watch, it was just after eight o’clock, and I’d no need to be there until ten, so we sat on a tree stump.

  It was quiet for a while, nothing but the birds chirping around us, and I suddenly thought how I shouldn’t be able to hear his voice for days. I thought how much I was going to miss that lovely voice of his, soft, as if he could be a choir boy.

  ‘Say something,’ I said.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘Anything.’

  He smiled at me from the side, like he does when he thinks I’m being daft. I stroked his cheek.

  ‘I just hope it’s not catching,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  He tapped the side of his head and pulled a face. I slapped him on the leg, and he laughed and put his arm around me.

  ‘I’ll miss you, Katy.’

  I rested my forehead against his, and I thought, as I closed my eyes, that I could have stayed like that for all of time.

  But he knows why I’m going, and I said again to him that I won’t be away long. A year, maybe, just something to do until we’ve got the money to get wed. He kissed me then. He tasted of bacon and strong tea, no milk, just how he likes it. I thought, stop crying, you daft fool, you’ll be making his tea and burning his bacon soon enough, but I couldn’t help myself.

  ‘I’ll wait for you here every time you have an afternoon free, just write to me.’

  ‘Your da won’t let you go.’

  ‘I don’t care about Da.’ His soft, cool hand rested on the back of my neck. ‘I have to see you, Katy.’

  I kissed him again, wishing that our time wasn’t running out. When I was at the reverend’s, I saw him almost every day, what with him delivering the meat. A whole week without him just seemed impossible. It still seems impossible. If I close my eyes now and think really hard, I’m sure I can taste the bacon on my tongue, feel the cold patch on my neck from his hand.

  He waved me goodbye. I kept turning, and he was still standing there by the trees, twisting his hat out of shape as he watched me, but then the stream bent, and he disappeared.

  I felt ever so alone then. The cows in the fields made me jumpy, not like they did when Bertie was with me. I kept to the side of the stream until the track climbed out of the valley. Even with the cool breeze I got sticky. I thought what a terrible impression I’ll make, turning up all red in the face, my dress wet under my pits, so I slowed down a bit and steadied my breathing, but it’s a whopping great hill up to here. I thought, whoever built a house on top of such a hill should be hanged, but when I got through the gates, once I was out from between the high hedgerows, I could see why.

  Shropshire swept into the distance; great big fields of green and yellow, the cattle and sheep and horses all tiny dots. I couldn’t even see the stream I’d followed, just the dark line of trees that clung to its banks.

  And the sky! I’ve never seen the sky so big before. It was like I was in the heavens rather than on the earth, and then a buzzard crossed the blueness and reminded me of home.

  I followed the drive up towards the house. The lawns are all neat and green, not a plant or weed out of place, and I remembered Reverend Cotton’s wife always moaning about the state of their modest little patch, how whenever she turned her back another daisy would sprout up.

  The drive is hidden behind a border of trees, so it wasn’t until I got closer to the house that I saw it, and then it was so big that it startl
ed me. It’s huge and clean white, with three pillars in the middle and lots of tall windows. So many windows! And they all glitter with the sunshine. Even the metal bars on them gleam.

  The drive stops at the foot of a great many stone steps which lead to the main door. It was so quiet that I could hear my shoes on the stone as loud as if someone was pelting it with rocks, and I’m sure if the sun hadn’t been bouncing off the glass, I would have seen faces staring at me from the windows.

  Mrs Thorpe – the matron, so I quickly discovered – showed me around when I arrived. She’s a sharp woman, as I’d expect from a matron, but much thinner than what I’d had in mind, and she’s a nose like a beak. She asked me if I’d found the place without problem and that Dr Basildon wanted to see me when we’d finished the tour.

  The house is divided into three, she told me. The main bit is where Dr and Mrs Basildon live and where the patients take their evening meals and where concerts and dances are held.

  To the left is the male wing. I’m not to go in there. It’s identical to the female wing, which is on the right as you look at the house. There’s a great big day room and a library on the ground floor. The bedrooms, closets, bathing rooms, and desk for the night attendant are upstairs. There are no dormitories like in a county asylum, Mrs Thorpe said. The ladies here are all of high breeding and require privacy and quiet. I’m to call them all Miss or Ma’am and curtsey to them, as if they weren’t at all mad.

  I had to curtsey for one old woman we met in the day room. Mrs Thorpe introduced her as Mrs Leverton and said we’d soon be getting to know each other, but before I could speak, Mrs Thorpe had me by the arm and was taking me to the main part of the house again. She led me up the carpeted stairs and had me sit on a chair outside one of the many polished wooden doors. She knocked and, before it opened, strode off downstairs. A few minutes later, it opened.

  I know it’s not right to comment on our employers for the way they look, but Dr Basildon is a very striking man.

  He ushered me inside what must be his study and asked me to sit opposite him across his desk. It’s a fairly small room for the size of the house, and the walls are all dark with grand books whose titles I couldn’t make out. There’s one very large window at the end of the room, which Dr Basildon sat in front of in his big chair, so that, until my eyes adjusted, he was just a black outline. And whilst in that outline, it was hard not to notice his ears, which stick out from his head in an unfortunate manner.

  He has a nice voice though, and I thought that the patients must find it soothing to be talked to by him. He says everything very slowly and clearly, and his accent is much posher than any I’ve heard round here before.

  He asked me if I’d found the place all right, and I said, again, that it had been no trouble. He asked what experience I had of working with the mentally unsound, and I said I had very little. I thought, then, that he might send me home, that I was not experienced enough, and I thought, if that was the case, why agree to employ me in the first place? Surely Reverend Cotton had told him I had only ever worked as a maid? And as I was thinking all this, he rummaged in a desk drawer and took out a small, red book which said Handbook for Attendants of the Insane.

  ‘You shall have to study this very carefully.’ He leaned forward to hand it to me. In that moment, he came into the light, and I could see the fine lines around his eyes and at the sides of his mouth. Mostly, I was struck by the blueness of his eyes, as bright and sharp as lightning.

  ‘You will have a week’s trial, after which we will discuss your progress and if you are suitable for this kind of work. You will follow Matron’s orders completely. You will not give any medicine for the time being. You must be observant, learn quickly, but, most importantly, you must set an example.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, and stopped looking at his face, which is not really handsome but somehow fascinating. I looked instead at the fat book in my hands and wondered whether I should leave. I have never been a fast learner. Da would always sigh and shake his head at the times I’d stumbled over my reading and writing when he’d tried to teach me better than they did at school.

  ‘You worked for Reverend Cotton.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘How long did you work for him?’

  ‘Just over three years, sir, as a maid-of-all-work. Before that I was at Eastley Manor, as a scullery maid.’

  ‘Why did you leave Reverend Cotton?’ He was leaning forward again, and I could have sworn he was smirking at me, though his lips were straight.

  ‘They found another girl.’

  ‘You were sacked?’

  I stared at the book in my hands.

  ‘Reverend Cotton spoke very favourably of you.’ He leant back in his chair and disappeared into the darkness. ‘I trust a clergyman.’

  I smiled as best as I could, hoping that the meeting was over, but he continued.

  ‘We run a small establishment here. We pride ourselves on the quality of care, the quality of life that our patients can expect. There are no padded cells or ball and chains here, Miss Owen. It is all very civilised. There are six attendants to five patients, plus Matron. You shall have the privilege of attending almost exclusively to Mrs Leverton. You shall only be required to keep an eye on the other patients if or when their own attendants are away, and you shall be in charge of the night duty one night per month. You shall have three afternoons per month to do as you please.’

  My head had been nodding all the way through his speech and I wished I’d had a piece of paper on which to write these things down, for I didn’t know how I would remember it all.

  ‘Mrs Leverton’s previous attendant had been with her since she first came here. She sadly passed away two weeks ago, leaving Mrs Leverton rather bereft. It was all very sudden and could not be expected. Mrs Leverton is now suffering from a bout of melancholia, which requires constant supervision. You should read about this affliction tonight at the latest. It is in the book.’

  I nodded again.

  He reached for the bell to summon a maid.

  ‘You must introduce yourself to Mrs Leverton once you have changed. It is important that you form a relationship with her, so that she can trust you and try to emulate your habits, but you must not become too close to her. It does them no good to form such attachments to those who can leave so quickly.’

  The maid came in then, and she was holding a folded, grey uniform. She dipped a curtsey to the doctor, and I rose from my seat. I curtseyed again and thanked him, then left to change.

  Mrs Leverton said very little to me. She’s a short woman, no taller than me, but the straightness of her back and the way she holds herself makes me feel very small indeed. She has a little Jack Russell bitch called Annie, which sits by her feet at all times. Her hair has not a single grey strand, despite her age, which I discovered is fifty-five. Her eyes are just as dark as her hair and very hard. She doesn’t look mad in the slightest, just old and posh.

  As it happens, I only sat in the day room with her for half an hour. After that, I followed Matron round as she showed me the cleaning cupboards and where the medicines are kept. She has a huge ring of keys attached to a string about her waist, and they smash into each other when she walks.

  There is a key for everything! For each bedroom, for the bathing room, for the medicine cabinet, for the cleaning cupboard, even for the cupboard which holds the fire guards and pokers. Everything must be locked and secured, for the safety of the patients.

  ‘There is a lake in the grounds,’ Mrs Thorpe said, as we stood under the veranda and stared at the view before us as the sun simmered low in the sky. ‘It is a distance away and we do not normally walk past it, but if you happen to go for a longer walk, you must keep the patients away from it.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, my ignorance earning me a tut of disapproval.

  ‘A few patients have drowned themselves as a result of a lazy attendant. I can assure you that the attendant was soon dismissed and prosecuted.’

  I h
eld my tongue from then on.

  Soon after that, it was time for dinner. All the patients take their meals with the Basildons, as a group, Mrs Thorpe told me, which I find most bizarre. They change their dress to formal wear and go down for dinner at six o’clock each evening and enjoy wine and meat and puddings, as long as it doesn’t upset their balances, in which case they are served plainer meals without alcohol. Mrs Thorpe explained that the attendants are present in case of any trouble and sit at the sides of the room while the servants serve the patients their food.

  I didn’t go to dinner, though, as I was excused for the evening. I was sent, with a cold plate of supper, to my bedroom, which is housed in an extension from the female wing. Below me is the laundry and ironing room. I share this room in the eves with two other attendants, Miss Marion Rowley, who is only two years my senior and has already smiled at me, and the night nurse, Miss York, who is sleeping behind a separating curtain right now, as I write this.

  I have read almost half of the handbook already, which I must say I am rather pleased about. It is not quite as difficult or as complicated as I thought. I have to be up at six o’clock tomorrow morning, when I shall begin my first day properly. I pray it is a success.

  Monday, 1st October

  I am sorry for my lack of writing – this last week has been never-ending. I have woken at six each morning and gone to bed at ten. There is very little time in which for me to pen my thoughts, but I have a candle now beside me that is still high, and I do not wish to waste the light. Marion says she doesn’t mind the scratching either; she says she could fall asleep standing up.

  Where to begin?

  This week has become somewhat of a blur.

  I shall begin with my patient, Mrs Leverton.

  It seems the death of her previous attendant has been hard for her. For the first few days, she would not meet my eye. Nothing was ever right, and she spoke harshly to me. My strides were too small when we walked Annie. I did not fasten her corset tight enough. The water in her bath was too cold, though I had the thermometer in it, like Mrs Thorpe told me I must, and I made sure she was removed as soon as the temperature dipped.