Beyond the Veil of Tears

by Rita Bradshaw

  ‘I am sorry you feel this way, my love.’ Oswald shook his head sorrowfully. ‘When you are better you will remember these times and wonder how you could have been so lost, but for the moment you must concentrate on getting better. That is all we want for you, the matron, the superintendent, everyone. We thought you were strong enough to hear about your uncle, but we were clearly wrong, and I take full responsibility for that.’

  Angeline glared at him. The chaplain’s sermon the previous Sunday came to mind, and her voice ringing with contempt she said, ‘You are like one of the Pharisees Jesus spoke about. A whitewashed tomb on the outside, but inside full of filth and decay and corruption.’

  ‘Mrs Golding!’ Matron Craggs glanced at her husband as she said, ‘I’m sorry, she has been so docile over the last weeks. I thought she was ready for this.’ And to Oswald, ‘Please don’t take it to heart, Mr Golding.’

  ‘Please don’t distress yourself, Matron.’ Oswald was at his most charming. He could afford to be. Everything was going even better than he had hoped. ‘As I said, I am aware it is the illness – and not my wife – causing her to speak in this way.’

  ‘I’m not ill.’ Angeline swung to face him, spots of burning colour in her cheeks, but her voice now coming low and bitter and with terrible intent. ‘And I tell you that you’ll pay one day for what you did to our child and to me. Her blood is on your hands. Remember that. And keeping me locked away in here won’t change it. One day God will demand an account from you for the wicked things you’ve done.’

  The grey of Oswald’s eyes were almost black, but his voice was quiet and controlled as he said to the superintendent, ‘Is this part of the illness? Thinking she can speak for God Himself?’

  The matron said agitatedly, ‘She hasn’t done this before, Mr Golding, and—’

  ‘Please, Matron.’ Oswald raised his hand. ‘Might I perhaps have a word with my wife in private? I fear the presence of others could be aggravating her neurosis.’

  ‘I don’t think that is wise, Mr Golding.’ The superintendent had stood to his feet, clearly disturbed. ‘The puerperal mania that began your wife’s illness seems to have developed into more than a passing animosity against your good self. I cannot agree to you putting yourself in harm’s way, not after the last attack and the condition in which you were left.’

  Oswald nodded regretfully, sighing. ‘It is so sad, so very sad, but I will be guided by you, Dr Craggs.’ He too had stood up, and before she realized his intent he took a couple of steps to bring himself in front of Angeline and bent towards her, as though to kiss her cheek, but whispering so that she alone could hear, ‘You will be in here for the rest of your life, my sweet.’

  She sprang back, as much from the nearness of him as from what he’d said. ‘Keep away from me! Don’t you touch me.’

  ‘Please, Mr Golding.’ The matron was as edgy as her husband. ‘You can see that we can do no good here today. Perhaps in a month or two . . . ’ She took Angeline’s arm as though to lead her out of the room.

  Oswald nodded, his voice seeming to break as he said, ‘I had thought, when she became pregnant, that a baby would bring us closer together, but she doesn’t seem to understand that I am grieving, too. I have lost a daughter after all.’

  The hypocrisy was too much. Taking the matron by surprise, Angeline slapped Oswald hard around the face with her free hand, crying, ‘Do not mention her! Don’t you dare mention her. You’re not fit to speak of her.’

  In the next moment she found herself swung around by the matron’s grip on her arm and practically thrown out of the door into the corridor outside, where the nurse was waiting. ‘Help me take her back – and be careful, she’s violent.’

  ‘I’m not violent.’ Angeline ceased to struggle in their grasp, but although she didn’t protest as she was whisked back to the ground-floor ward so fast her feet hardly touched the ground, once they arrived there the matron issued orders that she be put into one of the restraint rooms.

  Terrified at the thought of being fastened into a strait-jacket again, and knowing that she had played into Oswald’s hands, Angeline tried to keep calm. ‘I’m not violent, truly. Please, Matron, please.’

  ‘Sedate her.’

  Blind instinct took over. She started to fight to get away, to get out of the ward, as more nurses came to help the matron and nurse, but as before, she was soon rendered helpless. She felt the injection, but could do nothing to prevent it, and neither could she stop them strapping her into the harness and thrusting her into the windowless cell.

  And then she was alone, and all became quiet except for the whimpers she could hear through her panic. It was only as the injection took effect, and she felt the whirling darkness begin to close in, that she realized the noises were coming from her own lips.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘It’s criminal, Albert, keeping the mistress locked away in that place. I can’t bear it, I can’t. An’ them not letting me see her. What’s that, if not downright cruelty?’

  ‘Lass, lass, don’t take on so.’ Albert put his free arm round Myrtle, who was now sobbing as he drove the horse and cart down the drive of the asylum. ‘We’ll keep trying. You know that. And, to be fair, they’re only obeying orders from Golding.’

  ‘Him!’ Myrtle rubbed at her wet face with the back of her hand. ‘He’s a wicked devil. All that’s happened to Miss Angeline is because of him, and he drove Mr Hector to his grave.’

  ‘I didn’t think you liked her uncle?’

  ‘I didn’t, but what’s that got to do with it? At least he came and tried to see her – that’s something in his favour. And I don’t care what anyone says about him being in debt and the rest of it. I think it was knowing Miss Angeline was locked away in that place that did for him. It was no accident, Albert. He topped himself, sure as eggs are eggs. His conscience saw to it.’

  ‘Aye, well, if we’re talking about consciences, mine and Olive’s are none too happy about Mr Hector. If we hadn’t said we were going, perhaps he might have come home that night. He was a funny old bird, but me an’ Olive were the nearest thing he’d got to family, especially Olive. If we’d known the load he was under, with the debts an’ all, I wouldn’t have said what I did.’

  Myrtle sniffed and scrubbed at her face again, before turning to Albert. ‘We’ve been through this, Albert. You weren’t to blame for him ending up in that river.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not, but what’s done is done, an’ it’s no use dwelling on it, not with all I’ve got now.’ His arm tightened as he hugged her close for a moment or two. ‘It’d be like spitting in the face of the Almighty not to count me blessings – you being the most important one.’

  ‘Oh, Albert.’ Myrtle reached up and kissed his stubbly chin, then gave another little ‘Oh’ as the horse and cart passed through the gates of the asylum and into the lane beyond and one of the cart wheels bumped over a particularly large pothole.

  Albert took his arm from around her, holding the reins of the big carthorse with both hands as they trundled down the lane. The cart was a heavy, open vehicle, wide and long and perfect for transporting goods and hay and farming equipment, but very different from the light, attractive conveyances with two wheels and springs that the gentry used for business or pleasure, or the smart carriages with two matching horses pulling them.

  He glanced at Myrtle sitting on the wide, long, plank-like seat beside him. She was still clearly trying to compose herself and so he gave her a minute, but he hadn’t been exaggerating when he said that she’d blessed his life. With her windfall from Miss Angeline and what he’d saved over the years, they had been able to buy the smallholding he’d dreamed of since he was a boy. Well, it was more than a smallholding, he qualified in his mind. It was a small farm, and over and above anything he’d thought he could aspire to. They’d got wed the day before he’d completed the transaction and moved in a couple of days later, at the end of March. They had invited Olive to come with them, but she’d maintained that she w
anted her independence after working for someone or other all her life, and had rented a small cottage in the nearest village, about a mile or two from the farm. She’d been canny with money and had a sizeable nest egg to see her into her old age. But the landlord of the village pub had lost his wife the previous month and, when he’d come cap in hand to ask Olive if she’d take on the cooking for his customers in the evenings, she’d found that she liked the idea. Having her days free to potter round her cottage and small garden, and the evenings occupied and providing a nice steady income, suited her down to the ground, she’d told them.

  ‘At least they promised they’d pass Miss Angeline my letter this time,’ Myrtle said in a small voice after a few minutes had passed. They had been to the asylum once before, but hadn’t got beyond the front door. This time the hall porter had taken pity on Myrtle and allowed them to come in and wait, while he found a nurse to talk to her. And after consulting the matron – who, with Myrtle’s permission, had opened the letter and read it – it had been agreed there was no reason why Angeline could not receive it. ‘She’ll know we’re thinking of her, and that she’s helped us so much. That should do her good, shouldn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it will, lass. And like I said, we’ll keep visiting, and one day soon they might let you see her. Golding can’t stop her having visitors indefinitely.’

  He probably could. Myrtle didn’t say this out loud. It had been five months now since Miss Angeline had been locked away. Five months in that prison of a place. Myrtle shuddered in spite of the warm May sunshine. What would she be like when she came out? If she came out? She had no one to speak for her, that was the thing. No family, besides that wicked devil she’d married. Myrtle had asked about a bit, and it was apparent that the longer a patient stayed in one of those places, the less likelihood there was of her or his release. Someone had told her that less than one-third were released in under a year, and a growing proportion of most asylum populations comprised chronic, long-stay patients. When she had repeated this to Albert, he had said that as Miss Angeline wasn’t a chronically ill patient, she’d be out in no time. But she didn’t believe that. Perhaps he didn’t, either.

  Myrtle glanced across the fields to where a large river was shimmering in the sunshine as they came to the top of an incline, then they were ambling down the slight hill and the river was lost to view. The afternoon was scented with the heady smell of May blossom and the wealth of wild flowers growing on the banks on either side of the road, and the sun was warm on her face. She took off her straw bonnet and let the breeze ruffle her hair, shutting her eyes as she searched her mind for a way to help the girl who had been so good to her.

  She mustn’t cry again, she warned herself as tears pricked behind her closed eyelids. It upset Albert, and really it did no good. Miss Angeline needed help, not tears, but she was at a loss as to what she could do. It wasn’t as if Miss Angeline had any siblings or close relatives; even her friends and acquaintances had been Mr Oswald’s, like the Grays. Except . . . Myrtle’s eyes snapped open as a thought occurred. The mistress had said something about Marmaduke Jefferson turning against him, because Mr Oswald had insulted his wife or something, the awful night she’d lost the bairn. She’d said Mr Oswald had blamed her for it, that he’d had a falling-out with Mrs Jefferson. Even now, Myrtle’s lip curled at the thought of the red-headed woman who had clearly been carrying on with Mr Oswald. Could she – dare she – go to Mr Jefferson and ask him for help? How would she even find out where he lived?

  She continued to mull over the matter in her mind on the way home to the farm, which was situated west of Sunderland near Castletown, and the beauty of the spring day – the wide, high blue sky, the trees swathed in blossom, the bluebells that were a thick carpet of pure cerulean in some places – added its weight to the conviction that she couldn’t leave Angeline to languish in the grim confines of the asylum.

  The sprawling, growing town of Gateshead was some six or seven miles behind them when eventually, two hours later, the road twisted and then divided. The main carriageway led on to a hamlet or two, before the bigger village of Castletown.

  Old Ned, the horse, knew exactly where he was going and was as eager to get home as his owners. He gathered pace as he clip-clopped down the narrow wooded lane, shaking his big head with its flowing mane. After 200 yards the lane widened into a broader track and stretched gently downhill, and there, nestled in a small valley with fields containing a small herd of grazing cattle feeding on lush grass, was the farmhouse, a huddle of small buildings clustered around it.

  Albert pulled Ned to a halt as he always did on returning home when they reached this point. They both gazed at the farm, the same emotion of deep thankfulness in their breasts. It was theirs. All theirs. No one could take it away from them, and here they bowed the knee to no man.

  Furthermore – and Myrtle sometimes pinched herself on waking in the morning to make sure it wasn’t just a dream – they had been able to bring her family with them, a double blessing in view of the fact that her father had died shortly after they had negotiated buying the farm. The oldest two of her four brothers – Daniel, who was eighteen, and Terry, who was fourteen and had recently joined Daniel down the pit – had been able to say goodbye to working in the bowels of the earth and were now Albert’s farm labourers, and twelve-year-old Frederick would join them in the summer when he turned thirteen and was able to leave school, a day he was longing for, having an aversion to all things academic.

  Sixteen-year-old Nell, who had been born with club feet and was a cripple, worked in the dairy on her crutches. She had been thrilled to be given an important job, after a lifetime of feeling useless. Consequently the dairy was spotless and was already proving a significant asset to the farm. Many an evening Tilly, Myrtle’s mother, had to practically manhandle her daughter out of the place. Tilly assisted with the copious amount of cooking and cleaning, and even the little ones – apart from James, who was only a few months old and still at the breast, and Lily, who was nearly two – had their jobs to do when they were home from school.

  It was still early days, and with every penny having been sunk into buying the farm and available stock, money was very tight, but all in all it was a supremely happy little family who lived at Crab Apple Farm. The lads had been content to work for bed and board until Albert could afford to pay them a wage sometime in the future, knowing full well that Myrtle and their brother-in-law had saved their mother and siblings from the horrors of the workhouse, and had taken the responsibility for the family off their shoulders. As Daniel said – frequently – who could put a price on working in the clean, fresh air after being entombed in Hades?

  Albert and the older lads had whitewashed the two farm cottages inside and out. They stood behind the pigsties and stables and hen coops. The two-up, one-down brick dwellings were soundly built, and it had been decided the first would house Tilly and baby James in one bedroom, with the three older brothers in the other. Nell and her sisters lived in the second cottage, and again Nell had taken to the role of housekeeper and governor of her small brood like a duck to water.

  The farmhouse itself was in need of some attention, particularly the roof. Albert had designated this a priority when funds were available. The building was composed of a large kitchen and a smaller sitting room, with another room off the entrance hall, which Albert was going to use as his study. Upstairs were four good-sized bedrooms, but three of them were in a very poor state. The windows were barely intact, the floorboards were rotten and more plaster had fallen off the walls than remained. The state of the ceilings provided the reason – if one had been needed – for the decay, but the fourth bedroom had escaped the ravages of the leaking roof and was habitable. Albert and Myrtle slept there, and for the moment Albert had decided to let sleeping dogs lie. One day the farmhouse would be restored to its former glory and his children would occupy the derelict rooms that the former owner – who was childless – had let slip into such disrepair. But for now every
penny, every farthing, was needed to make the farm a success.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’ Myrtle’s whisper echoed his own heart. ‘We’re so, so lucky, Albert.’

  ‘Aye, we are, lass.’

  She turned to him, catching his sleeve. ‘We couldn’t have got this without Miss Angeline. You do see that, don’t you? I have to do all I can to help her.’

  ‘Aye, lass, I know. Don’t take on.’

  ‘What she said the night she lost the baby, about Marmaduke Jefferson turning against the master an’ all – I feel that might be the answer. That he might help us.’

  ‘Golding’s not your master any more, lass.’ Albert’s voice was stolid. ‘And gentry turning against gentry and helping the likes of us is a different thing altogether to them having some sort of falling-out.’

  Myrtle said nothing when Albert tugged on the reins and the big carthorse obediently plodded towards the farm. Two of her sisters were sitting to one side of the track where it joined the farmyard, playing with one of the farm cat’s kittens, and waved at their approach. Looking at their bright little faces, she said, ‘No one should be locked away like a criminal when they haven’t done anything wrong, Albert. I don’t care what them doctors say. Miss Angeline is no more mad than you or I. It might do no good, I give you that, but I have to try to do something, and the only thing I can think of is seeing Mr Jefferson. If I don’t, all this’ – she waved her hand at the farmhouse – ‘will turn to ashes. That’s the only way I can explain it.’

  ‘You don’t have to explain it, lass. If you want to see this Mr Jefferson, that’s what we’ll do, all right? Now, now, no blubbering or they’ll think we’ve had a row or something.’

  Myrtle hugged him. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Lass, I’d give you the sun, moon and stars, if I could. Getting you to see this Mr Jefferson is nothing.’

  In the event, and to Myrtle’s dismay, it necessitated a trip to London. To Myrtle, the visit to the asylum had seemed like travelling to the end of the world, and the thought of a long train journey to the capital and then finding the Jeffersons’ town house was more than daunting. But her enquiries had yielded the fact that the Jeffersons were away in town and would remain there until the end of the season, whereupon the country-house parties would begin.