Beyond the Veil of Tears

by Rita Bradshaw

  Angeline stared at the other girl. She had thought her eyes had been opened to the ways of the world since marrying Oswald, but over the last four weeks she had come to realize she hadn’t known the half of it. She’d also come to realize that there was far more of her father in her than she had imagined. What had happened to her, and stories like May’s and Verity’s, was stirring an anger that was gradually overtaking the fear and hopelessness. She had wanted to die after losing her daughter. Left to her own devices, she would have used the bottle of sleeping draught that she’d secreted from Nurse Ramshaw’s bag. But now . . . Now she wanted to fight.

  ‘Perhaps you don’t believe what May has alleged?’

  Angeline’s reply was quick and sharp. ‘Of course I believe it.’

  Verity made a small movement with her head. ‘Good. Can I tell her about you and the circumstances under which you were admitted? You having lost your baby too would make her feel someone understands.’

  Angeline nodded. She had found a friend, maybe two, and it made a difference. Verity had said it was society that was in the wrong for its treatment of women, the poor, the vulnerable, and she was right. And she could either lie down under the injustice of it all, as she had been thinking of doing, ending her life and taking the easy way out, or she could be her father’s daughter and do battle. She had been thinking of him a lot lately, ever since she had repeated his beliefs and principles at Lord Gray’s estate in the autumn. He had been a good man, a fine man, the very antithesis of Oswald. Her lip curled slightly at the thought of her husband.

  Angeline drew herself up in the chair. Leaning forward, she said softly, ‘Tell me more about the Socialist Party and what you believe, Verity.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Over the next days Angeline was conscious of a change taking root in her that had begun when she had talked to Verity. She and Verity conversed whenever they could, and as Angeline’s eyes were opened to real social inequality and discrimination, to the oppression of women and children and the prejudices of the law, she felt as though she had been walking through life enclosed in a bubble up until now. Verity was passionate about the cause, and when Angeline spoke to May and heard her story at first hand, the divide between upper class and working class melted away.

  Taking her circumstances into account, it was strange that the metamorphosis should happen in such dismal and frightening surroundings, Angeline thought one morning at the beginning of March. The patients had been allowed to walk in the airing courts for the last day or two, because although the air was bitterly cold and the nights were ones of heavy frosts, in the daylight hours the sun shone through and turned the frost and snow to glittering diamond dust. She stood now and breathed in the fresh clean air, taking it deep into her lungs to expel the cloying smell of the asylum, which seeped into clothes, skin, hair and even the books she read.

  It was a beautiful morning. She stood watching a little robin as it hopped along the top of the airing-court wall, its red breast a vivid splash of colour. The world was beautiful. It was only humans who made it ugly.

  Returning to her thoughts, she decided it perhaps wasn’t so strange that it had taken incarceration in the asylum to wake her up. She had listened to her father and imbibed far more of his views and ideals than she had been aware of at the time, but although she had understood that the world was far from fair outside her own privileged circle, it hadn’t stirred her as it should have done. There had always been too much going on and, once she had married Oswald, too much of a social whirl to contend with. Here, remarkably, she could think and meditate and decide for herself what she thought. If nothing else, she had time. Endless hours of it.

  She had been waiting in a pre-arranged spot for Verity, and now, as she heard footsteps behind her, she turned.

  May was holding a tray of warm, mid-morning drinks for the upper-class patients who were taking the air, and as she reached Angeline she said under her breath, ‘Do you know about Verity?’

  ‘Verity? No. What do you mean?’

  ‘Her parents came yesterday and authorized her being put in seclusion because she hasn’t improved since being here. In other words, she won’t do as they say.’

  Angeline paled. ‘What does seclusion entail?’

  ‘Restraint, if the patient gets agitated. Injections of drugs. Purgatives. Hot and cold shower baths.’

  ‘A padded cell?’

  ‘You don’t need a padded cell with seclusion patients, not when they’ve given them the drugs. They’re mostly as quiet as mice.’

  ‘Oh, May. How could they do that to their own daughter?’

  ‘Quite easily.’ Seeing a granite-faced nurse approaching, May said loudly, ‘I can see if I can get you a cup of tea instead of the cocoa, ma’am’ and quickly moved on before the nurse reached them.

  ‘I trust you were not conversing with that particular pauper patient, Mrs Golding?’ Nurse Clark stood staring after May, her thin mouth pulled tight with disapproval.

  ‘No. I simply didn’t want cocoa this morning.’

  ‘I see.’ The nurse stood with Angeline, watching May as she distributed the enamel mugs to the ladies, none of whom acknowledged May beyond the slight inclination of the head of a superior to an inferior. As May made her way back towards them, Nurse Clark reached out her hand and took one of the mugs that was left on the tray. ‘It is not for you to decide what beverage Mrs Golding drinks or does not drink,’ she said icily to May; and to Angeline, handing her the mug, she added, ‘Tea is for the afternoon, Mrs Golding. Drink this up now and let us hear no more about it.’

  May made a face behind the nurse’s back as she continued on with the tray, but as the nurse walked away, Angeline stared after her. Nurse Clark had spoken to May as though she was less than nothing, and the nurses took that tone with all the pauper patients, but particularly with May and the other girl who wore the blue-striped frocks. May had told her that the paupers slept on straw mattresses with one blanket each, and the straw pillows smelt of cows, but they were fed well and extra rations of meat were provided for those working or those who were in the asylum infirmary. Many of the paupers had been starving in the outside world and therefore expressed something approaching contentment at their surroundings, but then after all, May said, most of them were as barmy as a monkey on a griddle.

  It was later in the day before May managed to whisper anything more to Angeline. As they were lining up for the dining room, May and another pauper helper walked by, carrying bowls of freshly baked rolls to go with the soup they were having. May stopped by Angeline and fiddled with the back of one of her ugly hobnailed boots. ‘Verity’s definitely in one of the seclusion rooms,’ she murmured softly. ‘Nelly, me friend who’s on cleaning there, said she’s drugged up to the eyeballs and can’t even talk. Wicked it is, what they’re doing. I can understand it with someone like Lady Lindsay, who has voices in her head that talk to her, but not Verity. Here, I’d better go. Sharkey’s on the lookout for an excuse to have me locked up again.’

  Sharkey was May’s nickname for Nurse Clark, and only the week before the nurse had had May taken to the outhouse at the bottom of the paupers’ exercise yard and chained there for twenty-four hours for some minor infringement of the rules. May hated the nurse with a passion, which Angeline could understand. What the nurse would do if she suspected Verity, and now Angeline, had so far forgotten their station in life as to befriend someone like May, let alone commit the heinous crime of being on first-name terms with her, Angeline dreaded to think, but she knew it would be May who suffered for it.

  Angeline approached the dining room on leaden feet. She was desperately worried about Verity and missed her more than she could have imagined, considering that Verity had only been gone that day. The oppressive and often terrifying atmosphere of the asylum had been easier to take with Verity around, and she hated to think of the other girl’s bright, intelligent mind being dulled and interfered with by the drugs the staff were administering.

  S
he slept very badly that night and felt tired and anxious the next morning, but directly after breakfast one of the nurses told Angeline that she was wanted in the superintendent’s office. Dr Rupert Craggs was at the top of the asylum hierarchy and was an esteemed doctor, and with his wife, the matron, he ran the asylum exactly as he wanted to. Although he reported to his Visiting Committee, which included prominent men such as magistrates, gentry and aristocrats who had supervised the funding and building of the asylum years before, his word was law. His annual report provided a wealth of statistics, ranging from the causes of illness to the number of patients working in various parts of the asylum, and the value of asylum farm and garden produce, but no one would have dreamed of challenging one word of it.

  A dedicated but cold man, he and his wife had no friends among the senior staff of the asylum, by choice. The chaplain who took services in the asylum chapel, the assistant medical officer, the farm manager and the rest of the top team knew better than to allow even a suggestion of familiarity to colour their dealings with the superintendent and his wife, and everyone did exactly what was expected of them. Whilst many of the staff lived in the main building, Dr Craggs and his wife had a substantial house in the grounds of the asylum and it was to this that they retired while any staff get-togethers went on.

  Angeline had met the superintendent only once some days after her admission, as by and large the matron looked after the female patients. He had marched into the infirmary and stood looking down at her for some time, without saying a word. Then he had cleared his throat. ‘I am Superintendent Craggs, Mrs Golding, and I have been an acquaintance of your husband for some time, so rest assured that you are in good hands. Mr Golding’s father and my father were on a number of committees together, and could even have been said to be friends.’

  She had detected an element of pride in this last statement and wondered if there was anywhere or anyone that wasn’t impressed by the Golding name or the flimsiest connection to it. She had made no comment, however, and after another moment or two he had cleared his throat again and turned on his heel with a brisk ‘Good afternoon’.

  Now Angeline wondered what the superintendent wanted with her, as she followed the nurse out of the dining room. The superintendent’s office was off the main entrance hall and close to his wife’s room and, as in the matron’s office, a good fire was burning in the black-leaded grate. It was this – the warmth, after the chill of the asylum – that Angeline noticed first when the nurse knocked once on the brown-painted door and stood aside for her to enter.

  Dr Craggs was sitting behind a large walnut desk in a big leather chair facing the door, a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled with books behind him, and his wife was sitting at an angle to the desk in another big comfy chair. In the bay of the window stood a two-seater leather sofa and it was there that Oswald sat, his long legs stretched out in front of him and a cup of coffee in his hands. None of them stood up when Angeline entered, and as the nurse closed the door behind her Dr Craggs pointed to a straight-backed wooden chair in front of the desk. ‘Please be seated, Mrs Golding.’

  Angeline didn’t accede to what was clearly an order, but she did hold onto the back of the chair, because seeing Oswald had made her feel faint. One of the nurses had told her in the early days that it had been decided she was to have no visitors until she had ‘stabilized’ – whatever that meant – but she hadn’t queried this because no visitors meant she was spared Oswald’s presence. Visitors to the asylum were only admitted on certain days and times, but as the asylum was in the countryside and difficult to reach on foot, it meant many patients, especially the paupers, could go weeks without seeing anyone from the outside world, and this was exacerbated during the winter months.

  Nevertheless, for the last little while, visiting days had become something of a subtle torture for Angeline. She had feared Oswald would arrive at the asylum and they would deem her well enough to see him, but today her concern for Verity had occupied her mind to the exclusion of everything else. But now he was here. Hatred rose up as bile at the back of her throat, but she fought from showing any emotion, knowing that to do so would be misconstrued by the superintendent and his wife. Oswald held all the cards.

  ‘Hello, Angeline.’ Oswald’s voice was soft and soothing, the sort of patronizing tone one would use with a fractious child. When she didn’t answer him, but continued to stare coldly, he said gently, ‘Do sit down, my dear.’

  ‘Why am I here?’ Angeline addressed Dr Craggs, ignoring Oswald.

  ‘Why, to see your husband, of course. You do recognize your husband?’ he added, as though he doubted her mental state in that regard.

  ‘Yes, I recognize him, but I have no wish to see him.’

  ‘Now, now, Mrs Golding,’ Matron Craggs put in sharply. ‘Mr Golding has come a long way to see you, because he has some distressing news he thought it better to break himself.’

  ‘It’s all right, Matron. I understand. It’s the illness, not Angeline.’ Oswald’s voice was so forgiving that Angeline wanted to kick him, but she was more concerned about this distressing news of which the matron had spoken.

  ‘What news?’ She forced herself to look at Oswald as she spoke directly to him. His thick, fair hair gleamed in the light from the windows behind him, and he was dressed as immaculately as always. His leather boots shone, the collar of his dark frock coat was edged with satin and his trousers were perfectly creased. He looked every inch the handsome young gentleman Angeline had fallen in love with, what seemed like an age ago. Matron Craggs hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him.

  ‘It’s your uncle,’ Oswald said gently. ‘You remember your uncle, my dear?’

  Not dignifying this with a reply, she said crisply, ‘What is wrong with my uncle?’

  ‘I’m afraid he has passed from us.’ Oswald was watching her closely, his eyes glittering. ‘It happened some time ago, but the matron has only recently decided you were fit to be told. I am so sorry, my dear. He was a fine man, and I know you were fond of him.’

  Gripping the back of the chair harder, she made herself say, ‘How? I mean, what happened? He wasn’t ill.’

  Oswald’s gaze went to the matron and then back to her, as though asking how much to say. ‘It appears to have been an accident.’

  ‘An accident? What kind of accident?’

  ‘It appears, although one cannot be certain, that your uncle drowned, Angeline. He came to visit you here, just after you were admitted, but of course you were too ill at that point for visitors. On the way home he stopped at an inn and then took a walk down to the river and . . . ’ Oswald shrugged his shoulders. ‘He was found the next morning more or less where he must have fallen in. The edges of the river were frozen hard, but the middle was still running and very deep, I understand. He had become wedged against a large rock, or he would have been carried downstream. There were no signs of foul play, and his watch and money were still intact, so the police have ruled out an attack of any kind.’

  There was something here she couldn’t understand. ‘My uncle doesn’t like the water, be it a river or the sea. He couldn’t swim. My father often used to tease him about it. Why would he take a walk to the river, on what was clearly a cold winter’s night? It doesn’t make sense.’

  Again Oswald glanced at the matron. ‘I said it appears to be an accident, my dear. There’s always another possibility.’

  ‘What? What is the other possibility, if not that he was attacked?’

  ‘It was discovered after your uncle died that he was bankrupt. In fact he had massive debts and owed money to a considerable number of people. Gambling debts.’

  Her head was swimming. Uncle Hector dead, and she hadn’t known. A shaft of pain pierced her. He was her last link with her parents and she had always imagined that in time the rift between them, which had sprung up so suddenly and was beyond her comprehension, would be healed. And he had died on his way home from coming to see her here. Had he wanted to see her one last time before
he took his own life? But no, she couldn’t believe that. Not Uncle Hector. It had to be an accident. ‘Perhaps he wanted a walk to clear his head after visiting the inn,’ she said, speaking her thoughts out loud. ‘You said there was ice, and ice can be treacherous. He could have slipped and slid in and been unable to save himself. The water would have been very cold and the shock of it . . . ’ Her voice trailed away. She felt bereft, far more so than she would have imagined at losing her uncle. He was part of her father – it had been a tangible bond.

  Looking Oswald straight in the eye, she said, ‘Did you know he had money worries, before he died?’

  Her directness threw Oswald. He hadn’t been expecting the question. Completely taken aback, he muttered, ‘I . . . yes. No. I mean, not exactly.’

  ‘Did he come to you for help?’ Like a mist clearing when the bright morning sun cast its light and warmth on it, the reason for the rift between her uncle and Oswald suddenly made sense. ‘He did, didn’t he, and you refused him?’

  Oswald had recovered himself. Keeping his voice gentle, he murmured, ‘Angeline, Angeline, how many crimes will you lay at my feet? I have no idea if Hector’s death was an accident or if he took his own life, but I had nothing to do with it. You must try and get better, my dear, and then you will see things clearly. See me clearly.’

  ‘I see you clearly now, Oswald.’

  ‘Mrs Golding, please. Now calm yourself. This will help no one. Your husband loves you, and he is trying his best in what is a very difficult situation.’

  ‘Difficult for whom?’ she shot back at the matron. ‘Not for him. He is not the one imprisoned against his will. He is free to do exactly as he pleases.’