The Asylum

by John Harwood

  “What is it?” I shouted, drawing her close and trying to sit up.

  “Ankle—can’t walk.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  I tried to stand upright, but immediately lost my balance and fell into gorse. Prickles stung my cheek. Fighting down panic, I slid one foot across the mud until it struck something soft; I heard another groan and dragged myself back to my aunt’s side.

  Slowly and painfully, I managed to get us both sitting up, with our arms around each other and our backs against the gorse. Our gloves and oilskins shielded us from the prickles, but my galoshes were full of water, and I could feel my aunt shivering. I drew her closer still and tried to arrange our oilskins to protect us as best I could. With our heads side by side, we could at least hear each other without having to shout. The gorse gave us some shelter, but the wind still swirled about us, and the rain beat down relentlessly.

  “You must go on,” said my aunt hoarsely. “Can’t be too far from the road. Crawl up the path—use the gorse to guide you.”

  “I won’t leave you, Aunt. I’d only get lost.”

  “Keep the sound of the sea behind you. When you reach the road, keep the wind on your left till you see the lights.”

  “No; you’ll freeze if I leave you.”

  “We’ll both die if you stay. Might be another collapse any minute. You get help—only chance.”

  I tried to picture the rest of the climb. Though the gorse bushes grew close, there were gaps quite large enough to deceive me; once off the path, I would get hopelessly entangled, or crawl blindly until I slipped and rolled to my death.

  “I can’t. I’ll never find the way.”

  “S’pose not,” she said after a pause. “But if the sky clears, go at once.”

  Even halfway up the path—as surely we must be?—the roar of the sea was terrifying. The time could not be much past nine o’clock; nearly ten hours until the dawn, unless the clouds parted. The moon had been full a week ago, before the rain began, but even starlight would be enough to guide us. We were both shivering now, and I could not feel my feet. I wrapped my arms still more tightly around my aunt and waited for the end, trying not to imagine the ground opening beneath us, the bone-crushing fall, being buried under tons of rock and yet still conscious—and recalled, with terrible clarity, a torrent of earth and rock plummeting down the cliff, and my being suspended in midair by a tangle of roots, with red dirt spilling over me.

  “Rosina! Help me!” I heard myself cry.

  My aunt gave a violent start and twisted in my arms.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “It was—only a sort of prayer.”

  She muttered something I did not catch, and subsided. I remembered my mother finding me at the mirror, and the fear in her voice when she asked me about Rosina. If we lived, I thought, I would make Aunt Vida tell me—whatever there was to tell, about Rosina, and Nettleford, and my father . . .

  But still the rain beat down, and the wind whipped about us in the darkness, carrying away what little warmth remained in my body. The shivering increased until I had to clench my teeth against it. It would be the worst of ironies, I thought, if we were found frozen to death with the house still standing. I had read somewhere that shivering was the body’s way of keeping itself warm, and I began hugging my aunt rhythmically, hoping to squeeze some warmth into her. Mud squelched beneath us; I kept feeling that we were toppling to one side or the other, with only the pressure of the gorse against my back to tell me it was an illusion. Pinpoints of coloured light drifted before my eyes; for a wild moment I thought they were stars, until I realised that my eyes were tightly shut; the pinpoints were still there when I opened them. I clung to my aunt, and shook, and prayed for rescue.

  Her head lolled against my cheek, lurched away, and lolled again. The rain had lessened; even the roar of the waves had receded. I realised that I was no longer shivering. My arms and legs were numb, but that did not seem to matter, as I did not feel cold anymore, only pleasantly drowsy, as if I were sinking into a warm bath . . .

  I was lying in soft grass, beside a hedgerow crowded with blossom, the colours richer and more dazzling than anything I had seen: reds and crimsons and violets and pinks and whites so breathtaking I could feel them softly vibrating. Sunlight warmed my cheek; the air quivered with the chirruping of birds and the deep, resonant hum of bees, growing louder and louder until my body shook to the sound. Then the sun vanished with a colossal roar, and I was plunged back into freezing darkness, with the long, booming echoes of another landslide reverberating in the darkness below.

  “’S the end,” my aunt mumbled. “Mus’ leave me.”

  “Aunt, you must wake up,” I said. “We’ll die if we go to sleep again.”

  I began squeezing her once more, with arms I could not feel, assuring her that we had slept most of the night away—and wishing I believed it myself—but she only stirred, and muttered something unintelligible. The rain, at least, had stopped, but the wind still swirled around us, and the sea, now that I was fully awake, sounded even louder and closer than before.

  How much more of the cliff had gone? Had it taken the house this time? As I strained my eyes toward the crashing of the waves, it seemed to me that the darkness was no longer impenetrable. Looking up, I caught a glimpse of stars, blurred by a flying skein of cloud. Faint outlines of bracken coalesced around me. To see if the house was still there, I would have to stand, but my legs refused to obey me; for all the feeling in them, they might have been amputated.

  What should I do? If the starlight held, and I could make my legs move, and climb the path, I could reach Niton in twenty minutes, and my aunt would be rescued within the hour. If I stayed, she would survive the cold longer—but not until morning, which I felt certain was still many hours away, even if a third landslide did not claim us.

  As gently as I could, I withdrew my arm from around her, took one of my lifeless legs in both numb hands, and began to work at it, pushing and pulling until a spasm of cramp seized my calf. I did the same to the other, clutched at the gorse for support, and dragged myself slowly upright.

  A pale gleam, low in the sky, appeared from behind a cloud. It was the moon, only just risen—so the time could not be much past midnight—above a seething chaos of foam. Where the silhouette of our house should have been, no more than fifty yards down the slope, there was only an uneven line of darkness, stark against the white of the sea.

  Numb with dread as much as cold, I turned to face the climb. Pain shot through an ankle; my foot, I realised, must be trapped in the mud. As I tried to free it, the moon was blotted out, and I was plunged once more into absolute darkness.

  No, not absolute. A star—a bright yellow star—shone out above me. And no, not a star but a lantern, swaying as it descended, and voices calling our names.

  Though I escaped with only a severe head cold and a lingering chill in my bones, my aunt was stricken with fever. She lay delirious for several days, hovering between life and death, and by the time the fever broke, her lungs had been gravely weakened. We had been taken to the vicarage, where we remained in adjoining rooms, tended by Amy and Mrs. Briggs, whom Mr. Allardyce had kindly allowed to join us.

  If the cottage had been spared, I think my aunt might have regained her health. I had somehow assumed, from her muttered words on the path that night, that she knew it had gone. But the first thing she said to me after the fever had subsided was “When can we go home?” and all I could bear to reply was, “Not yet, Aunt; you must get stronger first.”

  I walked round to the headland later that morning and stood for a while in pale sunlight, looking down from the top of the path. Our rescuers’ trampled footprints were still clearly visible around the place where my aunt and I had waited. Fifty yards farther down, the path ran straight over what was now the edge of the cliff. The rubble was completely hidden from view; of the house and garden, nothing remained but empty air, and the wash and slide of the sea below. Everything we possessed�
�our clothes, our books, our furniture, my mother’s jewel box, the trunk containing her own belongings—everything but my brooch and writing case lay buried under hundreds of tons of earth. I wondered how long I could put off telling my aunt, but someone must have let it slip, for when I returned from an errand a few hours later, she took my hand and said quietly, “It’s all right, my dear; I know.”

  From that day onward, she ceased to struggle. The Aunt Vida of old would have been up and dressed the minute she could stand, waving away objections and declaring that all she needed was a good walk. But now she seemed content to lie propped up on a litter of pillows and watch the last of the autumn leaves drifting to earth. Our windows faced inland, but she showed no interest in what the sea was doing; nor did she ever ask me to describe the scene where the cottage had stood.

  Her awkwardness about being touched had gone, too. She no longer withdrew her hand from mine, or held herself rigid when I put my arm around her, but simply accepted my embrace. Even Mr. Allardyce, himself now very old and frail, would hold her hand when he sat with her. We kept up the pretence that she was convalescing, but as the days passed, her breathing became more laboured, and when she slept, I could hear a faint, bubbling undertone. Fluid on the lungs, the doctor said; there was nothing to be done but keep her warm and comfortable and hope for the best.

  On a wintry afternoon, she seemed to rally. She had slept most of the day, and, on waking, asked for an infusion and had me arrange her pillows so that she was sitting upright. Her hand felt very cold in mine, as it always did now, no matter how assiduously we kept up the fire.

  “I think you should go to your uncle,” she said.

  “But you would hate London, Aunt; you’ve always said so.”

  “I meant, when I am gone.”

  “You are going to get better,” I said firmly, “and then we shall find another cottage—not so close to the cliff this time—and live as we always have.”

  “No, my dear, I’m not getting better. No tears now, child; I’ve had a good life, and I count myself lucky to have spent these last years with you.”

  “Please, Aunt, you musn’t—”

  “Pay attention, child,” she said, with a flash of her old self. “Things you need to know. I wrote it all down, but that’s at the bottom of the cliff now.”

  I dabbed at my eyes and tried to compose myself.

  “I’ve provided for the servants, of course. You’ll have about a hundred a year. Sorry it’s not more, but half our income dies with me because I never married. And there’s about two hundred capital, in trust from your mother. The cottage was to be yours, and everything in it—no use now. If you go to Josiah, you’ll be able to save a bit. Maybe find an occupation—we’ve talked of it often enough—more chance for you in London.

  “Our solicitor’s name is Wetherell—Charles Wetherell, in George Street, Plymouth. When I’m gone, write to him. I’ve named Josiah as your guardian—has to be someone—told him to let you do as you please.

  “Now—marriage. You know what I think, but you’re a handsome gel, not like I was. You’ll have offers. If you accept someone, write to Mr. Wetherell—tell him who you’re marrying. Papers to draw up—he’ll tell you what’s needed.”

  She slid back amongst the pillows, breathing hard, and closed her eyes. I could not bring myself to disturb her, and three days later she was dead.

  I arrived at Gresham’s Yard in the midst of a fog that would last another three weeks. I was used to the gentle mists that drifted about our house on the cliffs, and I had vaguely assumed that fog was the same, only denser. But this was altogether different: noxious, laden with soot, a dark, greasy yellow by day, pitch-black by night, clutching at the throat and choking the lungs. My uncle cheerfully informed me that this was nothing compared to the fog of two winters before, which had begun in November and lasted until the following March. And even when it lifted, the streets remained shrouded, either in smoke or driving rain: I woke each morning feeling as if I had inhaled a lungful of coal dust, and I was always catching cold.

  My spirits, desolate enough when I arrived, sank lower as the weeks dragged on. My uncle was interested only in bookselling, and since his specialty was obscure theological works, there was little to converse about. To any question about our family, his invariable reply was, “You know, Georgina, it was such a long time ago; I really can’t recall,” until I gave up asking. What I had taken for benign approval was really benign indifference, an absolute lack of interest in anything beyond the confines of his shop.

  As the days lengthened, and I began to venture out of doors, I discovered that everything sounded louder, and smelt worse, than I had ever imagined; my nostrils were constantly assailed by the stench of dung and drains, decaying meat and rotting fish, my ears deafened by the clatter of hooves and the cries of street vendors; yet the sheer extremity of sensation was a relief from the oppression of the house. In my wanderings through Bloomsbury, I was constantly amazed at how quickly the scene could change, from the grand houses in Bedford Square to wretched tenements a mere hundred paces away. The first time I saw a man sprawled dead drunk in the gutter, with passersby taking no more notice of him than of a sack of coals—far less, indeed, for the coals would have been carried off at once—I wondered if it was my duty to help him. But I soon learnt to avoid meeting the eyes of my fellow pedestrians, to walk briskly through the less-salubrious streets, and which streets to avoid altogether.

  Gresham’s Yard was a small, cobbled square, opening onto Duke Street, close by the Museum. A little sign above the entrance said JOSIAH RADFORD: ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS BOUGHT AND SOLD. There were other shops in the square, including a stationer, a cabinetmaker, a tailor and a haberdasher. You passed through the entrance, which was like a short tunnel of blackened stone, roofed over by the upper floors of the houses, turned left, and there was the entrance to the bookshop, where my uncle sat in the front room at a battered roll-top desk when he was not pottering with the stock.

  Despite his shortsightedness, he seemed to know where any book was in the shop, and if the price was not pencilled on the flyleaf, he would always give it without hesitation. The customers were mostly elderly men like my uncle, scholars who worked at the Museum. The whole of the ground floor, a warren of small rooms on several different levels, was crammed with books; shelves extended from floor to ceiling on every available wall. The rooms, some of them windowless, were lit by gaslights in chimneys, and heated by two stoves at the front and back. My uncle was mortally afraid of fire, and would not allow a naked flame anywhere in the house. He was also, I discovered, mortally afraid of spending money on anything other than books. I gave him fifteen shillings a week for my keep, which was certainly more than it cost him, and took over the duties of the boy who had helped him with the parcels in the mornings, but he still blanched at the smallest expense.

  Beside the entrance to the bookshop was the area, protected by iron railings, with steps going down to the kitchen and scullery. Beyond that was the house door, opening onto a flight of stairs that ran straight up to the first floor, where my uncle had his quarters overlooking Duke Street. Here also was the dining room, served by a dumbwaiter and another narrower staircase leading down to the servants’ quarters. Mrs. Eddowes, the housekeeper, was a gaunt, elderly woman with steel-grey hair who kept very aloof, in the manner of one who was doing my uncle a great favour by remaining, though she had been with him a decade or more. She had seven dishes, one for each day of the week, with which my uncle seemed entirely content. There was a washerwoman who came in, and the maid, Cora, of whom I saw very little—the latest in a series of maids, I gathered, though Uncle Josiah did not seem to notice the difference. My uncle did not like servants waiting at table, and had everything sent up in the dumbwaiter. I preferred to clear away myself and to send the dishes down to be washed, which I am sure suited Cora very well.

  On the next floor up were a bedroom and bathroom, and above that two more bedrooms on the third floor. I chose the w
estward-facing one of these for my sitting room, because of the view over the rooftops; when the air was clear enough, you could catch glimpses of the river. It was barely ten feet square, with a small grate; a Persian rug so faded you could scarcely see the pattern; a tattered old chaise longue, which I draped with velvet; a small round table; and two upright chairs. I repapered the walls myself, in a green leafy pattern, which sometimes caught the afternoon light, and placed the sofa beneath the window. There I spent much of that interminable winter, desultorily reading novels and yearning for a friend. But where was I to find one? As the weather improved, I took to visiting the Museum and various galleries, and I would sometimes smile tentatively at other women, but they were almost never unaccompanied; at best they might smile faintly in return, and then move on.

  I dreamt of Niton as a lost paradise, and thought many times of returning, but I feared that I would be just as lonely there, mourning the life I had lost. Amy wrote to me in the spring to say that she had married her sweetheart and moved with him to Portsmouth; Mrs. Briggs had retired from service and gone to her sister in Felixstowe; and when I heard that Mr. Allardyce had died—even at Niton, the winter had been exceptionally severe—that put the seal upon it.

  Depressing as I found my uncle’s shop, I decided that I might as well make myself useful instead of moping upstairs. Most of his business was done by post, but he disliked having to close when he went out to sales, or to visit other dealers, and so I offered to mind the shop whenever he did. By the time I realised what a mistake I had made, it was too late: Uncle Josiah was going out every afternoon from two o’clock until five, while I sat moping downstairs instead of up. If there had been no clients at all, I should have rebelled, but the few that called—mostly elderly clergymen—brought in just enough money for my uncle to insist that we could not possibly manage without it.