by Sarah Moss
She stops. Her shoulders rise in a deep shuddering sigh. ‘Anyway, Mr. Cavendish, that, I am sorry to say, is May’s story. And since then, my sister has apparently cared less for Ally than she did before, which is probably a blessing to the dear child. You must excuse my frankness, but there are things you should know.’
The boat. He should not have taken her rowing. Would not have done, had he known, had she trusted him with her sister’s story.
‘I thank you,’ he says. ‘I thank you for your candour. It is what few people would offer me.’
She nods again. ‘I overstep, I know. Perhaps I meddle. But—well, if you and my niece are to develop your acquaintance, I should be sorry to feel that you might later discover complications that could lead to difficulties. I hope we have been able to make Ally comfortable here, Mr. Cavendish, but however our establishment may appear to you, she has not had an easy life. I should very much like to see her happy.’ She picks up her sewing again. ‘I should like her to be cherished.’
I will cherish her, he wants to say, I will make her happy, I will take her far away from her mother to Cornwall where I will love her for richer, for poorer, for better, for worse, in sickness and health. But it is more complicated than that, where there are two professional lives at stake. Where there are two vocations, and two adults carrying two stories.
HER NEW NAME
She finds herself in the Park, her hair sticking to her damp face and itchy under her hat. There are children paddling barefoot, little girls with their skirts tucked high into their knickers. She could unfasten the boots that press her stocking seams into her toes and leave the imprints of their bindings on her hot feet, lift her skirts to unbutton her suspenders and roll down her black wool stockings. She remembers May in the river with Aubrey, and Papa balanced before his easel under the willow, a painting bought by a railway magnate and now somewhere in the warren of Bowden Park Hall. Does the magnate know what happened to the girl in his picture? There are no girls in pictures, of course, only arrangements of light and line, colour and shape. If she sits on this bench, she will be taken for a prostitute. She walks on, slow as a lady. Her feet ache. She is thirsty. She leans on the parapet, the stone flesh-warm in the sun and abrasive on her forearms. Doctor Moberley. Dr. Alethea Moberley. She has done it. And she is not going to telegraph anyone, nor take someone else’s champagne, but stand here by the water in the sun, hot and thirsty, and call herself by her new name.
THE SILVER ICE-BUCKET
Darling! We were worried about you.’ Aunt Mary, in a swirl of kingfisher silk. ‘And congratulations, my dear girl. Such a triumph. James says it will be in the newspapers! Such a splendid return for all your work. We are all so proud and pleased for you.’
She accepts Aunt Mary’s kiss. ‘Thank you. And thank you for all your help, Aunt Mary. It would have been a very different thing if I had had to live in lodgings and pay my board.’
‘Nonsense, darling, you would prevail over any adversity. And we love having you here. Come, we have made a little party for you. It is not every day someone makes history in the house!’
We are all making history, Ally thinks, future becoming present becoming past moment by moment as the planet spins.
Tom is there, holding a sandwich on a plate and standing in the bay with George, and Uncle James poised like a bird beside the silver ice-bucket usually saved for dinner parties but now beaded with condensation at five in the afternoon, and the boys washed and brushed since school.
‘Hurray!’ shouts Freddie. ‘Three cheers for Aunt Al. Hip hip!’
The men cheer foolishly, self-conscious as someone singing to a child before other adults, and Aunt Mary, a tear sliding down her cheek, holds Ally’s gaze, beaming. Uncle James passes the champagne to Tom and comes to kiss Ally.
‘Congratulations, my dear. We are all very proud of you.’
Ally swallows, fights down the urge to run again.
‘Thank you, Uncle James. It would have been so much harder without your patronage.’
Tom, who has been struggling, vanquishes the champagne. It runs over his fingers, across the coppery hairs on the backs of his hands.
He hands her a glass. ‘Champagne, Dr. Moberley?’
VACANT SITUATIONS
I will see you to the door,’ she says. It feels as if the champagne’s bubbles are drifting and bursting in her head, and she doesn’t care that the others exchange glances.
The hall is dark and she almost stumbles over the umbrella-stand as she reaches for his coat. He steadies her, a hand on her arm.
‘Careful, Miss Moberley.’
‘Dr. Moberley,’ she says. ‘Ally. Call me Ally.’
He is still touching her. He reaches up the other hand and strokes her cheek. ‘Ally. Listen, Ally, I need to speak to you before I leave for Cornwall.’
She looks up. Really? Will he really, now?
He shakes his head. ‘Not now. You are—this conversation requires the cold light of day. Things are complicated.’
She clings to his arm. ‘I have taken champagne. I am unaccustomed.’
‘I know. So we will say good night now, and if I may, I will call in the morning?’
She rubs her cheek on his shoulder. ‘Of course you may, Mr. Cavendish. Tom. Whenever you choose.’
‘Look for me at ten.’
She leans on him. She could go to sleep here and now, his jacket smooth under her cheek in the darkened hall. Except that she has to keep standing up.
‘Ally? I need to go now. And you should perhaps go to bed.’
‘I like it here.’
‘Good.’ He takes her hands from his arm, guides her head back to the vertical. ‘Good night, Ally. Sleep well.’
The stairs tilt as she climbs them and the bedroom floor does not seem to be at quite the customary level. Undressing would be much too complicated. Despite her corset, despite the knobbly seams in her stockings and the suspender-buttons pressing into her thighs, she sleeps dreamlessly until Fanny opens the curtains and another bright day stabs her eyes.
Aunt Mary has sent breakfast in bed, and there is a parcel on the tray, something oddly shaped and heavy with a Manchester postmark.
‘She said you would need a tray, Miss Ally. She said to tell you not to stir until you’ve eaten it. And congratulations, Miss Ally.’
She sits up. A headache, naturally, and the smell of bacon is not appetising.
Fanny brushes something from Ally’s skirt, tangled around her legs. ‘Shall I help with your clothes? Perhaps something more comfortable for you?’
‘I will undress in a moment, thank you Fanny. I was somewhat indisposed last night.’
Fanny smiles. ‘Yes, Miss Ally. Your coffee.’
She always drinks tea, but Fanny is right, coffee will help. What did she say to Tom? She remembers holding him. When he was trying to leave. Fanny has just put the tray in her lap so she cannot curl back under the blankets. Were they all laughing at her?
‘Thank you, Fanny.’
The breakfast-tray is a good preventative for hysteria; one cannot writhe in embarrassment with a tray across one’s lap. At least he is going away. She will not have to see him again. And they have no acquaintance in common. Did he say that he would call before or after she disgraced herself? She can apologise, of course, but he will not forget. He is not, surely, a man to mock a woman’s affections, but even if he is not laughing at her, astonished by her forwardness, he may be dismayed that she has misunderstood his intentions. How could she think any man would want to marry a professional woman? She made her choice a long time ago. Drink your coffee, she thinks, and as she takes a sip she remembers Elizabeth Garrett Anderson’s marriage, Dr. Mary Scharlieb who is a wife and a mother as well as an excellent surgeon. But Elizabeth Garrett Anderson does not take too much champagne and embrace reluctant gentlemen. Dr. Scharlieb’s husband, for that matter, i
s either dead or in India, she cannot remember which. What has she done? She must not expect him this morning. Whatever would have happened will not now. She must devote herself to finding work. She cannot expect to stay here indefinitely, contributing nothing. She is as much relieved as ashamed to find that it is already past nine o’ clock, three hours beyond her usual rising time. By the time she has eaten what she can, washed and dressed there will be no more than a few minutes to wait until she can be sure that he is not coming and concentrate on the pages of the British Medical Journal listing vacant situations, or perhaps visit Dr. Stratton who suggested that there might be a position of the sort that she seeks under Dr. Alan Haigh at the Birmingham Asylum. She would be the first woman mad-doctor, the first to take a special interest in nervous cases. She dresses in her old grey skirt and blouse, as if she is not expecting him, and bundles her hair into a lopsided knot, as if she believed that behaving as if he were coming would make him less likely to do so.
In the dining room, Aunt Mary is talking to the new cook, making lists of what is to be bought, cooked and eaten for the next seven days. Green peas, Aunt Mary says, so look out for a pair of nice plump ducks. She favours the butcher on Parthenon Street. And she will send out for Friday’s dessert; Stone and Son sell such excellent candied fruits that there is really little point in making them at home.
‘As long as you are sure he doesn’t colour them with copper and lead,’ says Ally. ‘Some of those grocers were very high-class.’
‘I’ve known Stone these twenty years, my dear. He would do nothing of the sort. And anyway, I am sure James would know if he did.’
Uncle James claims to be able to tell what plants the cows ate before producing the milk that made his butter.
‘Thank you for sending up my breakfast, Aunt Mary. I am sorry—I regret any impropriety yesterday evening.’
Aunt Mary glances at the new cook, as if every detail has not already been discussed in the kitchen. ‘Thank you, Mrs. Bridge. I will come down and finish this later.’ They wait; Mrs. Bridge crosses the rug, the bow of her white apron swinging over a firmly upholstered navy behind. ‘Nonsense, my dear. It was a pleasure to see you at ease for once. And I should say you are due months of breakfasts in bed after these last three years, but I daresay you will not take them.’
Ally shakes her head. ‘I must earn my bread, you know, now that I am qualified. I should betray all my friends if I adopted a life of ease.’
But that sounds like begging, or like a reproach to Aunt Mary’s own ease. ‘I beg your pardon, Aunt Mary, I did not mean anything. I am a little dazed still.’
Aunt Mary puts down her pen. ‘You must not fancy that you owe your friends any particular course of life. They did not, and did not intend to, buy your future in supporting your present. You have made all of us very proud, Ally. And now you must do what will make you happy and healthy and keep you that way. You have proved everything already. And I hope it goes without saying that you are warmly welcome to make your home here for as long as you like.’
The sky behind the lace curtains is grey, one of those days when the tentative progress of the English summer falters. ‘Has there been any telegram for me, Aunt Mary? Any letter?’
‘No, my dear. Perhaps your parents are away from home.’
She nods. She was foolish to hope. She believes she has ceased to look for approbation and is yet repeatedly surprised, hurt, by Mamma’s lack of interest. But Aubrey would like to know, and she must write this morning to Mrs. Lewis and Miss Johnson. And then call on Dr. Stratton to discuss her future.
The doorbell rings.
SALE OR RETURN
At first he had thought of taking her to choose a ring. She is not, after all, a young girl before whom he will kneel, and nor has he asked her uncle’s consent. She will not pretend to be surprised, and she is not to be bought with shiny stones. But then it occurred to him that the infliction of awkwardness is no gift, that he would not enjoy the experience if she were take him to a shop and ask him to choose a present for her to buy. Perhaps she will not want to wear a ring at all, perhaps she would see it as a badge of ownership. Perhaps this is all too soon, too fast. But he is returning to Falmouth next week, and soon after that he is to leave the country. It is six months since they met. He does not want to leave her unpromised, unclaimed, nor even, really, in the no-man’s-land of an engagement, adrift between her aunt and uncle in London and her parents in Manchester, perhaps taking a job in a place he has never seen. Marry me, he wants to say, live with me, not be engaged to me. They are both old enough to know what they are about. It is not the time for half-measures; if she says no, well, he is leaving anyway, will take his bruises off to wherever it is that Penvenick wants to send him. He is no boy to die of a broken heart. He had one of the merchants with whom he has business escort him around the jewellers of Hatton Gardens. A emerald to match her hazel eyes, small to match his limited means. Sale or return. He will offer it, that’s all. He fingers the box in his pocket as he approaches the house.
PRETTY LITTLE WEAPONS
She returns to the asylum.
The woman with the maggots in her head is not here. She has been moved to the back ward, Dr. Camberwell explains, after attempting to remove the maggots via her ear with a crochet hook. There is a new young doctor, someone Ally might like to meet, who is keen to provide occupation even for the private female patients. He believes that they would be less intent on self-destruction had they other ways of passing the time, but of course—as Dr. Camberwell himself predicted—providing further pastimes only provides more opportunities for ingenious self-harm. It is all very well for the pauper patients, who are accustomed to labour and would doubtless be quite unmanageable if they were not allowed to wash and scrub. It is strangely difficult, is it not, to conceive of a ladies’ occupation that does not entail the use of some sharp or pointed implement? Almost inclines one to see the drawing room in quite a new light, what, all those pretty little weapons in fine white hands? No, it is quite impossible for Miss Moberley—oh, but she is far too pretty to be called Dr.—to see the back wards. A distressing sight, most unfit for fair eyes, and in any case the presence of strangers only upsets patients who are already in extremis. Allow him instead to conduct her through the women’s parlour, and then perhaps into the gardens? The roses, if he does say so himself, are really rather delightful at the moment.
Most of the patients stand as Dr. Camberwell and Dr. Moberley enter the room. It reminds Ally more of school than of the hospital, with a dulled parquet floor, wooden chairs set against the walls and an occasional table before each of the two windows, although there are no plants here, no pictures or bookshelves. There is an odour as the patients gather around, as how indeed, she thinks, in this weather should there not be, from those denied clean linen and a daily bath? Their clothes are ill-fitting, in some cases so much so that dresses cannot be fastened and feet shuffle, and she wonders how much more sane these women might feel and appear to be were they allowed their own clothes and shoes.
‘Dr. Camberwell—’
‘Excuse me, doctor—’
‘Please, sir, when am I to be released?’
‘Doctor, I must speak to you. I cannot sleep.’
Dr. Camberwell steps back. ‘Now, now, ladies. See, I have brought you a visitor. Are you not lucky? This is Miss Moberley. She is taking an interest in establishments such as this.’
A tall woman, standing behind the others and wearing a skirt made for a short one, laughs. ‘Lunatic asylums, Dr. Camberwell. Establishments such as this are lunatic asylums.’
‘Monomania,’ murmurs Dr. Camberwell to Ally. ‘Seems as sane as you or me until she starts to think she’s shedding her skin like a snake.’
And does it harm her, Ally wants to ask, to think that she is shedding her skin like a snake? Does her delusion threaten anyone? An older woman in a stained jersey, too hot for the time of year, plucks his
sleeve with a grimy hand. There is a crescent of dirt under each fingernail. ‘Please, doctor. Please.’
Please what? He pushes her hand off. ‘This way, Miss Moberley, this way. A sad case, episodes of terrible profanity and the most violent rages.’
She has been devoting herself to the literature of insanity these last weeks. She knows there are other doctors in Britain at this moment also wondering about the relationships between madness and incarceration. There are those, writes Professor Matthews, who, despite appearing sane while within the asylum, are quite unable to function when returned to the world outside, but there are almost certainly also some whose temporary madness is made permanent by confinement to a madhouse. It is a problem for physicians that the risks of testing this hypothesis are intolerable.
A DROWNED FAN
Mamma does not come to the wedding. She writes: she cannot leave the Home, the Hospital, and if Ally will insist on marrying in London instead of from her own home, she must accept that her friends and family may decline the inconvenience of attending. And Ally deludes herself if she imagines that any hospital will employ a married woman, if she has really convinced herself that she is not throwing away all the gifts and opportunities that others have laboured to offer her. Mamma is ashamed to have to tell Miss Johnson that Ally has chosen, after all those years of work, to marry. Perhaps, Ally says, the letter in her hands, they should after all postpone the wedding, rearrange so it can take place in Mamma’s church when Tom returns from his journey. A few months, after all, taken from a lifetime together? Aunt Mary takes the letter from her; no, she says, Ally, your loyalty will belong to Tom now. Elizabeth has always been hard to please and you must not sacrifice your marriage, your husband’s interests, to your mother’s urging. You are not a child, in whom obedience is in principle laudable, but an adult who must, and does, take the most serious decisions on a daily basis. Begin as you mean to go on; if you have real doubts about your marriage, address them with the utmost attention. If not, do not allow the concerns of a person who has never met Tom to trifle with his and your happiness. Of course you will find work; I am sure that many women would much rather be attended by a married woman than a virgin, and certainly male patients are more likely to find your attendance acceptable. Is there not a crying need for a female nervous doctor, when so many of women’s mental troubles begin with experiences unique to our sex? There is, after all, a modesty of the mind as well as the body. There are many things it will be perfectly proper for you to know as a married woman. It is not, she adds, in the least unnatural that you should marry from the establishment that has been your home these four years. And I believe that Alfred will come, whatever Elizabeth does.
