by Sarah Moss
He pauses. ‘Look up. You can see Westminster. St Paul’s. But you have almost achieved that ambition. Surely there are more to succeed it?’
She shakes her head. She should be working, should have stayed in her room with her books. ‘It is sufficient. More than sufficient. Many would say that I already expect too much.’
He leans to his oars again. ‘And I say they are wrong. Your degree is only the beginning. Tell me then, how did you find the asylum?’
Wind comes over the water to ruffle her hair and tug her hat. ‘It was both better and worse than I expected. The inmates seem safe enough. It was not dirty. Many of those I saw are encouraged to occupy themselves, or perhaps even compelled to do so, though I am aware that there are certainly others I did not see.’ The ‘back wards,’ the places where dirty and refractory patients are kept. She clasps her hands around her knees. ‘But it was quite without hope. There is no treatment. Some cases seem to resolve with time, but for the great majority their incarceration is permanent and their condition can only worsen in the unrelieved company of the mad. The asylum exists only to pass their time. Until death. A kind of warehouse.’
He stops rowing. The boat begins to drift, sideways. Stone sidings loom above them, as if she and he are ducks or frogs, creatures on a smaller scale than the surrounding edifices. ‘But that is dreadful. An appalling thought. There is a resident doctor?’
She nods. It seems less dreadful here, floating in the sunlight. ‘He conducted me around. Although he cannot approve of women doctors. He conceives his role as being to treat the inmates’ physical disorders, where they exist and where the patients are able to give any reasonable account of their symptoms. In many cases, it is hard to distinguish delusion from sickness. He told me for example of a patient who believes that there are maggots inside her skull, feeding on her brain. She complains also of headaches and odd sensations in her ears, and it seems to me not impossible that there is some physical cause of these discomforts from which a disordered mind might deduce the presence of maggots; that in such a case the physical symptoms may precede the mental disturbance. But the doctor sees only difficult patients, constitutionally incapable of truth. And of course I had no speech with the woman herself. I am sure that if I were called upon to treat such patients I should find many difficulties not apparent in the abstract.’
‘But you would like to try?’
She would like to pass her examinations, to earn her title. ‘I cannot say. I must first qualify.’
‘We should turn around,’ he says. ‘Perhaps you would like to try rowing? It will be easier, going downstream.’
She is afraid to stand on the water, afraid of the rocking and tipping under her feet and the pull beneath the slick surface.
NOTICEBOARD
They walk through the park, although the sun has set and there is only the last stain of red in the western sky, against which the skeleton trees stand black. The leaves are gone and there is no scent of flowers but it is not cold. Her dress is damp under the arms and perspiration prickles in the small of her back. She seems to be bare-headed. Tom is talking about ceramics, about a new pigment used in a glaze that comes out deep, strong turquoise but deadly poisonous if used inside dining ware. It is for flower vases only, he says, and she is about to argue that people prefer white china or glass to display flowers when she sees May, tightly laced and wearing her violet dress that Mamma gave away, running over the bridge. And then he is behind her, his hands over her breasts, his lips and tongue on the nape of her neck, and a flock of birds, starlings, rises from the trees in the dusk and whirls over their heads in a scrabble of wing-beats and scaly feet.
She wakes, mouth dry and pulse bounding. Her hands move to her breasts. Will he, will anyone, touch her there, ungloved fingers on bare skin? Scalpels, she thinks, the surgeon’s pen, the blade working over exposed ribs. She will not have a child, will not suckle. Mothers do too much harm. Her father’s friend Aubrey once unbuttoned her dress, untied her chemise and shift, helped her to pull them down and arranged her, nubile, a nymph, on the dais in his studio, holding uncomfortably high a lily from the arrangement in his hall. He touched only to guide the pose and although she shivered at each brush of his fingers he did not offer, and she could not ask, for more. Although perhaps May—
She sits up. Grey light seeps around the curtains. Her stomach turns. Today the final results will be posted. You may look, Dr. Stratton said, on the noticeboard outside the Committee Room from noon. And I am sure that none of you have cause for anxiety. But people—men—do fail here, at the end. The results are not exactly final in that it is permitted to repeat the year, sometimes more than once, but for men this is a merely individual shame; no-one is likely to conclude that one student’s, or even several students’, low marks mean that men are unfit to practise as physicians. To betray the cause now—her throat closes. How can she walk down that corridor, approach that board, knowing that her final failure may be pinned up for all to see? To have to tell Miss Johnson, Mrs. Lewis, Mamma—She pulls up her legs, bows her head on her knees. She could be sick, unable to leave her bed, and wait for Annie to send word. Could be weak. She hears a whimper from her own chest. It is all right for Annie. Annie’s brother-in-law, she says, failed two of his qualifying exams because his mother’s final illness disrupted his preparations. A good son, who has made a good doctor and a good husband. The light is strong enough to read her wrist-watch waiting on the bedside table. Ten hours to wait.
She discovers when she goes down to breakfast that she cannot speak. Bacon, offers Uncle James, and when she opens her mouth to say no thank you, just a cup of tea this morning, no sound comes out, not even the whisper of someone with a bad cold. Her lips move, she can pass air over her vocal cords, but she cannot make a sound.
‘Aunt Ally needs to see the doctor,’ says Freddie. Scrambled egg bounces off his tie.
The sudden onset, she wants to say, is strongly indicative of a psychosomatic symptom resulting from considerable nervous strain, the kind of the phenomenon to which the strongest minds may, given sufficient anxiety, find themselves prone. She can say nothing.
‘Perhaps,’ says George, ‘Aunt Ally, unlike some people, keeps silence when she has nothing to say.’
Uncle James lowers The Times. ‘Are you quite well, my dear?’
She nods, gestures and mouths towards the teapot.
‘Tea? Perhaps a drink will help you?’
Perhaps it will, perhaps the heat will relax the cords. George passes her cup.
‘It’s Mr. Cavendish’s last lecture today,’ he says. ‘Will you go, Aunt Ally?’
She had forgotten. It is possible that by this evening she will be gathering stones of her own. I may be detained at the hospital, she wants to say, but no words emerge. This will pass, she thinks. Panic pulses under her sternum. She will speak. There is no organic trouble, no physiological reason for her muteness. A dumb doctor would be no use. Dumb and female, doubly crippled. She tries to ask for the milk jug although her tea already has milk in it. This is a hysterical complaint, a nervous ailment, the kind of trouble that her detractors expect of women. Tom, who thinks her strong, must not know of her weakness. Seven and a half hours until the results will appear.
She has no memory of turning from the board, walking across the red and black tiles, past the shiny apple-green walls, for what may be the last time. She is on the doorstep, dazzled by sunlight, damp with sweat, hearing as if for the first time the roar and pulse of the city around her; wheels, horses, trains, machines, humans. The plane trees sough below the sky, white sunshine sparkling from their leaves as if from ruffled water. Someone seizes her shoulders, a face moves in towards hers.
‘You did it, darling! I knew you would. Oh, well done. I’m so pleased.’
Annie, in a halo of jasmine scent and tendrils of hair and unsuitable tulle-trimmed hat. Cool hands take hers, as if inviting her to the dance.<
br />
‘Are you happy? You must be happy. All your work, darling, all those years. Such triumph. We must send a telegram to your parents. Lots of telegrams, to everyone! And there is a prize, did you know that? You could take a holiday or—oh, anything you like.’
Ally looks at her. She may be about to cry. Jubilant, yes, she should be jubilant. But is not. She wants to turn and run through the streets to—somewhere, to hide herself. She has indeed done it, but nothing has changed, nothing feels different. And qualifying, even at the top of her class, is only permission to move on to the next thing to do, which is to find a job, to avoid returning to Manchester.
‘Dearest Ally, are you not pleased? How can you not be happy? Come, Papa has champagne on ice in readiness.’
She must speak. ‘Congratulations, Annie. We have all done well.’
Annie shakes her head. ‘Yes, yes, of course. And thank you. I am very happy. But you—’
‘Don’t, please.’
‘You don’t wish to be congratulated?’
She twists away. Annie drops her hands.
‘I’m sorry, Annie. I can’t do this. Celebration. Best leave me. Honestly, go. Drink your champagne and dance and be happy. And I congratulate you.’
She lifts her hands to Annie’s shoulders, not, she knows, as someone accustomed to embracing, to affection, would do, misses Annie’s cheek with her lips, touches her face and turns to go, almost running, her footsteps a panicky staccato across the flagstones.
HER MOTHER’S CHARITIES
My dear Mr. Cavendish,’ Mrs. Dunne had written, ‘it would give Mr. Dunne and me much pleasure if you could spare an evening to celebrate our niece’s success on Friday. As you see, we are so confident of her talent and diligence that we venture to plan a family gathering in advance of the results, and I know I do not need to ask your kindness should it turn out that we have been precipitate in our arrangements! Perhaps you would do me the honour of taking tea with me before Miss Moberley returns from the hospital? I should so like the opportunity to further our acquaintance.’
A command, plainly. He does not have time, Penvenick awaits his return to the office in Falmouth and there are orders to complete, discussions to conduct, before he can leave London. He makes time. He returns to his lodgings early in the afternoon to bathe, to put on the last set of fresh linen his landlady will grant him this week, to try to make his hair lie flat. He reminds himself to walk slowly, to adjust the rhythm of feet and thought, because it is again a hot day and he does not want to offer Mrs. Dunne a damp hand to shake, to arrive once again mopping his brow. The heat, his mother always said, does not suit redheads. We are not born to it.
The housemaid opens the door, the pretty one who looks at him through her eyelashes. ‘Oh, Mr. Cavendish!’ she says, as if he has jumped out at her from behind the coat-stand rather than ringing the doorbell and waiting at the door. ‘Good afternoon,’ he says, knowing that he is probably supposed to call her ‘Fanny’ and unable to do so when she has just used his title. Ally, he reminds himself, is the visiting niece, in fact if not in courtesy the poor relation. She is no more accustomed to housemaids, to coat-stands and Persian carpets, than he is.
Mrs. Dunne is sitting, as always, in her armchair at the fireside, her feet, as always, resting on a footstool covered in her own embroidery. Instead of a fire, gold, orange and crimson dahlias fill the grate and lean over the hearth. The blue walls and leaf-green curtains filter an underwater light and the room feels cool and slow.
‘Mr. Cavendish. It is so kind of you to join me. We expect Ally, you know, in an hour or so, the results go up at four, but I did want a little of your company first. Please, sit down.’ She gestures towards the sofa, upholstered in pale blue silk. He hopes there are no smuts on his trousers. ‘Now, I will be ringing for tea in a moment, but perhaps first I might offer you a glass of lemonade? Or shrub?’
Shrub? Bushes?
‘Please don’t trouble, Mrs. Dunne. I will wait for your delicious tea.’
Not, of course, that the trouble would be hers, not beyond the ringing of the bell.
‘Just as you prefer.’ She picks up the embroidery always at her side and begins to stitch. ‘Has your time in London been a success, Mr. Cavendish? Beyond the lectures, of course, I have heard all about those and offer my congratulations; it is not an easy thing to expound your profession in that way. I gather you are an accomplished speaker.’
He shakes his head. ‘I like to explain what interests me. To an audience already interested. It is not much of an accomplishment.’
‘Still, it requires a certain kind of courage, to stand before a crowd and undertake to speak for an hour.’ Her fingers tug the needle through the canvas taut in its wooden ring. ‘And you have been enjoying Ally’s company. We have been so glad to see her happy. To see her allow herself occasional respite from her work.’
Of course, he is being asked his intentions. Even though Ally is rising thirty, even though she is—or will be in the next hour—a doctor.
He looks steadily at his hostess. ‘It has been a joy to me to spend time with her. I have great regard for your niece, Mrs. Dunne. Very great regard.’
She nods once. Message received. Her needle trails a brown thread. ‘I do not know if she has spoken to you of her childhood. Of her family life.’
He stops himself twisting the button on his cuff. ‘She lost her sister. A shipwreck in the Hebrides.’
She looks up, towards the sunshine filtering through the lace curtains. ‘May was dear to all of us. She should never have been on that island. Her mother, my sister, is not an easy woman. If you have serious regard for Ally you must know this.’
‘I do. Have serious regard.’
She gives him a smile. ‘I know, my dear. That is why I asked you to come and see me.’
Mrs. Dunne’s own sister Elizabeth, she says, is the elder daughter, and perhaps took the brunt of their own rather strict upbringing. Her own mother, Ally’s grandmother, was something of a Puritan, a woman who meant well—although it is Mrs. Dunne’s experience that most of those who cause harm do so while meaning well—but lived in constant, perhaps relentless, awareness of the sufferings of the poor, and since the family resided in central Manchester both suffering and poverty were ubiquitous and severe. Only a monster could not be turned towards charity by the sights that were quite ordinary in the childhoods of Mrs. Dunne and her sister. But for their mother, charity for the poor was perhaps almost equally balanced with severity for her own daughters. Despite the family’s prosperity, the girls were raised on a meagre diet, ill-clad and harshly disciplined, but perhaps worse than that, taught to consider themselves worthless and sinful beings who must strive every moment against all natural inclination. While Mrs. Dunne might say that this childhood led her to value comfort, to appreciate the small pleasures in life, to make a point of believing herself essentially deserving while doubtless also capable of improvement, her sister took on their mother’s qualities, devoting her life to the advancement of her mother’s charities and adding a particular commitment to women’s suffrage. Mrs. Dunne takes up her embroidery again. Ally and May spent their girlhoods intimately acquainted with the lives and troubles of the poorest women on the streets of Manchester, working alongside their mother in the Home for Fallen Women to which Elizabeth continues to devote most of her waking hours. There is no depravity with which the girls were not familiar from childhood, and it was their mother’s only wish for her daughters that they practice a profession that would combine the service of the poor with the furthering of women’s rights. Ally was taught from an early age that nothing but a career in medicine would be acceptable, but it is of course the case that even a career in medicine is not enough, that Elizabeth will understand any deviation from her own ideas about Ally’s life as a sign of absolute moral failure. You would think, Mrs. Dunne says, that having lost one child to her impossible demands my sister wou
ld have more care for the other, but I am afraid that despite her grief it is not so. She does a great deal of good, I don’t doubt, and she is right that women will not win their freedom by sitting at the fireside embroidering in silk, but make no mistake, Tom—Mr. Cavendish, forgive me—she is harmful to Ally.
One of the dahlias drops a petal onto the marble hearth. It is the colour of blood. The light in the room has shifted so that it points to the painting behind Mrs. Dunne’s chair. Does Ally know, he wants to ask, that you’re telling me this? Does she agree with you? He shouldn’t ask, should leave it for Ally to tell him, but nonetheless the words form.
‘And May?’ he says. ‘May I ask—what happened to May?’
She leaves her brown thread trailing, snips a green one. ‘Ally has not told you? May trained as a nurse. I believe it was at least in part her choice. She was not reluctant to be useful, you know. She did not aspire to idleness.’
He nods, as if he has been set right. As if he had considered May frivolous.
‘I never really understood why she went. It was something to do with Aubrey. Aubrey West, you know? Both girls used to model for him. Well, you’ll know the riverside painting, at least.’
He makes a noise of recognition, although he does not know the riverside painting and has never heard of Aubrey West. A friend of Ally’s father, presumably. Part of the Manchester circle.
‘Anyway, Aubrey went painting in Scotland. He somehow made friends with Lord Cassingham, who seems to own half the islands. His sister, Lord Cassingham’s sister, concerns herself with the tenants’ welfare. Well, sometimes. Not in the way that Elizabeth would. She thought the island women needed a nurse, and she told Aubrey West all about it and he told Elizabeth and May and May decided to go off and live there.’ She looks up, tugs sharply on her needle. ‘It was a ridiculous idea from the beginning, her not yet eighteen and admittedly bred to hard work and hard living but not on a windswept island in the north Atlantic. They should have got some doughty old matron who knew the lie of the land. Anyway, off she went and—well—no letters came and we all thought winter on the island, of course there’s no post, but still, you’d expect something, after a while, after months, and at last her father had a telegram. She’d tried to leave, you see.’ She stops. The embroidery sinks to her lap. She closes her eyes, bites her lower lip. ‘May had tried to leave. She had to get away, something made her—and then there was a storm.’ She takes a breath. ‘There was a storm and the boat sank. Only a little boat. She should never have been there, you see. Never have been on that island and never have taken to the water like that, she was too young to be there, it was too much, it was obvious to anyone with any sense—’
