by Juliet West
‘I’m glad you came,’ he says.
She edges back so that her spine is hard against the railings and her hands are low down, gripping the iron. He steps closer. His body is a fraction from hers. He lowers his head and brushes his lips against her ear. The contact with her skin is shocking, intense. She breathes in sharply, lifts her face upwards and suddenly she is kissing him, their mouths colliding, rough and frantic, until a small cry sounds in her throat. She pulls away, turns her face again towards the towering dead oak.
‘Hannah?’ He puts one hand on her shoulder.
‘We shouldn’t. Not here.’
‘Of course.’ His heart thunders, every fibre in his body burning. He looks across the park towards the river, attempts to calm himself. ‘Shall we walk?’ he asks.
He takes her arm and they wander through the flower garden and into the Wilderness, where yews and rhododendrons form a low evergreen canopy. Somehow it is enough to feel the press of her arm, the warmth of covered skin through the fabric of their winter clothes. He suggests a drink and they leave the park through the south gate, crossing Shooters Hill Road, past mournful horses and the frozen pond, until they reach Blackheath and the pub with its warm air drawing them through the open door.
They sit in a private booth. There is too much to say, so they say nothing. For the first time he is able to look at her properly, study her face and her eyes. Disbelief is what he sees, and something else: joy, is it, or fear?
‘I’d like to see you again,’ he says.
She nods but does not speak.
‘Come to my room, Hannah. You remember the address?’ She wants to come, he’s sure of it. He mustn’t give her an opportunity to say no. ‘Tell me when.’
She looks around the pub and lowers her voice. ‘Perhaps on Friday. Friday at seven?’
‘I’ll be waiting.’ He reaches into his pocket and takes out the hellebore. ‘Something for you.’
She holds the stem between her thumb and forefinger, strokes each petal and the long stamens, dusty with pollen.
‘I do love flowers.’ She tucks the bloom into the buttonhole of her coat.
‘When spring comes, I’ll buy you violets.’
She smiles and with her free hand she touches the side of his face.
Part Two
Leman Street Police Station
21st day of July 1918
Statement of George Alfred Loxwood
Rifleman
I married Hannah Louise Loxwood in February 1912 at St Gabriel’s Church, Poplar. We lived together at Alton Street, Poplar, with our two children, Alice and Edward. My wife was a respectable, sober and hard-working woman, and our married life was a very happy one.
On joining the army in 1915, my wife and our children went to live with her married sister in Sabbarton Street, Canning Town. I remained in England in training for about seven months. We corresponded regularly, and her letters to me were very affectionate. I saw her twice during that time, the last occasion being about four days before I embarked for France. We parted on the best of terms. I was afterwards removed from France to Salonika. During the whole of that period I wrote to her as often as my duties permitted, and she regularly replied. Her letters continued to be of an affectionate nature.
20
February 1917
Colney Hatch is set in green parkland with a driveway running down the middle. There are domes and bell towers and a flag flying. For a moment I’m almost proud to think my dad is living here, surrounded by green fields and fresh air, miles from the city. It’s more like a mansion than a madhouse.
A man in a top hat walks up to the gates ahead of me, silver-tipped cane in one hand and leather briefcase in the other. We reach the lodge house and he is waved through a side gate. ‘Morning, Dr Hetherington,’ says the chap on the gate, touching his cap as the doctor strides through.
I follow behind, but the gatekeeper holds up a hand to stop me.
‘Your business?’ he says.
‘Visiting.’
‘Visiting ends midday on Thursday, and the time now is –’ he takes a pocket watch from his waistcoat ‘– eight minutes to.’
‘Oh.’ I look down at the bunch of catkins I bought from a flower-seller outside the railway station. The pollen has brushed onto my coat like smears of mustard powder. My eyes prick.
‘You can always wait till three,’ he says. ‘After they’ve had their sleep.’
I shake my head. ‘Sorry, I can’t stay. My children . . .’
The gatekeeper sighs and walks over to a little office in the lodge house. He brings out a ledger. ‘Ward?’
‘I don’t know. It’s my dad I’m visiting. I’ve not been before.’
‘Name?’
‘Hannah Loxwood.’
‘Not your name, yer dad’s.’ His grey moustache twitches in amusement.
‘Edward White.’
The man goes back into the office and chooses another ledger from a shelf. Through the window I can see him running a finger down pages of names.
‘Edward White of Poplar?’
‘That’s him.’
‘“Low Grade . . . Ward D1.” You’d better hurry. Through this gate, then at the main entrance to the hospital turn left, stay on the path, keep going for five hundred yards or so. You’ll see the signs.’
I half run down the driveway, the catkins jiggling like proper lamb’s tails and my breath catching in the icy air. Low grade. The words sing in my head, so trifling, so hopeful. Low grade can’t be serious, can it?
Skirting the front of the main building, I can smell meat roasting. Knives are being sharpened in the hospital kitchen, the scrape, scrape, scrape of metal on metal. The asylum is vast, a never-ending wall of yellow bricks and arched windows. I glance through one of the windows. Two women chairs, their hands clasped in their laps. They are smiling.
Finally a sign: WARDS A–D. LAUNDRY. ORCHARD. It must be after midday by now. I dash through an open archway and into a dark courtyard where clipped boxed hedges surround a frost-pinched lawn.
Wheeled chairs are lined up along one side of the courtyard. There’s a scrap of grey material on the wicker seat of one of the chairs. When I pass, I look closer: it’s a tiny rag doll, the hair fashioned from twines of white cotton, apple pips for eyes.
The ward marked ‘D’ is at the far end of the courtyard. As I approach, the door is opened by a nurse and three women file out. The women walk in detached silence; only one nods a greeting to me as she passes. I quicken my pace and reach the door just as the nurse is drawing it shut.
‘Excuse me, Nurse!’
She stops in surprise and looks up.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m visiting my dad, Mr White. Ward D1.’
‘Visiting’s finished.’
‘Please, just for a couple of minutes. To give him these?’ I hold out the bunch of catkins and she jerks her head back as if I’m presenting her with a pail of pigswill.
‘Just a moment.’
Eyes are watching me as I wait, I’m sure of it. I scan the courtyard, but the visitors have all left and there is only the queer rag doll, slumped in the wicker chair. In a nearby building, cutlery clatters and voices drift: calm voices, none of the jabbering or wailing you’d expect in a place like this.
The nurse reappears. ‘You may visit for five minutes. Just on this occasion.’
I follow into the hallway where a desk is covered in tidy stacks of paperwork.
‘Sign here, please.’
I write my name and address in the visitors’ book. She nods, then takes a wooden box from a drawer and places it on the desk. The white label on the lid is upside down, but I can read it easily: “Low Grade Mental Defectives. Male D.” There are hooks inside the lid of the box, a large key hanging on each one. She takes a key, shuts the box and locks it back into the drawer.
‘Follow me.’
Inside the ward, the walls are bare – not even any plaster to cover the bricks. There’s no ceiling either, just
the wooden beams and an echoing space up to the rafters. The room is like a barn; there may as well be straw on the floor. Dad’s bed is at the far end, near the fireplace at least, though the heat is blocked by a heavy iron guard.
Dad is sitting on a chair next to the bed. He hasn’t shaved and his stubble is grey. Around his mouth, there are deep creases, straight down his jowls like someone has scored ink into his skin. Four months he has been here. Four months and he has become an old man.
His face lifts into a smile when he sees me. ‘Beatrice!’ he says. ‘Look at you, beautiful as ever.’
I shouldn’t be surprised. He was always getting names mixed up, even when he was well, and this isn’t the first time he’s called me Beatrice.
‘It’s Hannah, Dad.’
‘That’s right. Well, sit down, then.’
I’m not sure where to sit. There’s only the chair that Dad’s in and I don’t want to borrow one from another patient. I brush down the blanket and perch on the edge of the bed.
‘How are you, Dad?’
He stares at me with dull eyes. ‘I’ve been worse,’ he says. ‘It’s the flames you have to watch out for.’ His voice is strong enough, but somehow it doesn’t belong to him. It’s slower, more careful.
‘I brought you these.’
He doesn’t take the catkins, just stares intently.
‘There you go again, Beatrice, suiting yourself,’ he says. ‘It’s not right. This has to stop!’ He bunches his hands into fists and bangs them on his thighs.
‘Dad? Some flowers for you!’
But he doesn’t take the catkins, just keeps thumping himself and shouting, ‘This has to stop!’ I leap up from the bed and look for the nurse. She’s here already, must have been watching, and she takes me by the shoulders and ushers me away. Two orderlies stride down the ward, big men, both of them.
‘Visitors can agitate the patient,’ the nurse says as we reach the double doors that lead into the hallway. ‘He’s perfectly calm most of the time.’
‘But . . . low grade, isn’t he? Surely that means not too serious? You’ll be letting him home soon?’
‘I’m not at liberty to discuss the patient. Perhaps – your mother is it, who generally comes? – perhaps your mother would like to make an appointment with the doctor next time she visits.’
I turn back to Dad and I wish I hadn’t. He is out of the chair now, weeping. ‘Beatrice! Beatrice!’ he sobs. One of the orderlies takes a screen from the corner of the room and unfolds it around Dad’s bed.
Back in the courtyard, I hurry past the line of wheeled chairs. The little rag doll has disappeared. A gong sounds and the smell of gravy makes my stomach heave. Again, I have the sensation that someone is watching. Crows caw, closer now.
Why did I come? I wanted to see Dad, of course I did, but I wanted something more: his forgiveness. Forgiveness for Daniel, for what is to come. When I was a girl, he’d forgive me anything. Used to eat Jen up with jealousy. I can hear her taunting me now. Rotten creep. Rotten daddy’s girl.
So much for forgiveness. Perhaps, in his illness, Dad recognizes me as I truly am. A wicked wife? Wicked as Auntie Bea.
I drop the catkins in the wheeled chair where the rag doll used to sit. A gift for the watching eyes.
Guilt laps at me like a rising tide, but I won’t let it seep in. Wicked or not, I can’t be sorry. How can I be sorry when I feel like this, as if my life has started up brand new, sharp and colourful, a swirl of terror and bliss like I’m lost in a fairground, blinded by naphtha flares? Friday at seven, the lights flash out. Friday at seven.
The London-bound train is just pulling in as I arrive, breathless, at Colney Hatch Station. I find a seat in an empty carriage and I give in to my wickedness, push away the other faces: Dad and George, Mum and Jen with their disapproving eyes. I won’t even think of Dor. No . . . I’m with Daniel under the blackened oak. I feel his lips on mine, and his breath warm on my skin.
Friday at seven.
21
‘You up there, Hannah?’
Can’t get a minute’s peace.
‘Just coming.’ I take the stairs slowly, folding George’s letter into my apron pocket. He sounds glum, says he’s missing me and the kids. He wants me to go down Whiffin’s, get some family photos taken. The children must be growing fast. Give them a kiss from their old dad.
In the parlour, Mum is dozing, and Jen is knitting a shawl from an unpicked pullover. Teddy is trying to make a house from his cigarette cards, balancing them against one another to build the walls. His sock puppet is inside the cigarette-card house, squashed into a ball.
‘Don’t forget Alice needs fetching,’ says Jen.
‘As if I would.’
‘Just saying. And why don’t you take Teddy along? He hasn’t been out all day. He likes to see them coming out of school, don’t you, Teddy? You’ll be one of them before we know it.’
‘Want to stay here,’ Teddy says, and his arm jerks a little so that the house collapses on top of his Ducky. He doesn’t cry, though; he picks up the cards and starts again. A glob of dribble forms at the side of his mouth.
‘Do you want to come and collect Alice?’ I ask him, impatient.
‘Too cold.’
‘I’ll be off, then.’
Alice skips ahead of me, her grey school socks sagging round her bony ankles. She stops when we turn onto Sabbarton Street and points at the dilapidated baby carriage parked outside the house. The sight of it catches my breath. I’d recognize that carriage anywhere, with the coloured ribbons looped round the iron frame and the crooked wheel that always sent it weaving towards the gutter.
‘What’s that?’ asks Alice.
‘Dor’s mum must be here. That’s their old baby carriage. We spent hours pushing the little ones round in that.’
‘What, you and Auntie Dor?’
‘Yes, when we were your age. And if we kept the babies out long enough, Mrs Flynn would give us a toffee apple with a farthing stuck in the top.’
‘Can I have a toffee apple with a farthing?’
‘When you start being a bit more helpful, p’r’aps.’
As we pass the carriage, Alice tugs at one of the ribbons. My nerves are terrible: I can’t cope with her fiddling. ‘Leave off and get inside.’
‘I didn’t do nothing!’
‘Just don’t start. If Dor’s family are here, the last thing they need is your whinging. Show some respect, can’t you?’
Alice flounces in the back door and I follow her into the parlour. Mrs Flynn is in the armchair, her face red and puffy from crying. At her feet is a pile of folded clothes, and on her lap is one of Dor’s new hats. There’s no sign of Jen. She’ll be upstairs: she doesn’t like any upset, not in her condition. Mrs Flynn turns to me and I bend to give her a peck on the cheek.
‘Hannah, love,’ she says, then wells up, pulling a handkerchief from her sleeve.
‘Meena has been having a sort-out,’ says Mum. ‘She’s brought some of Dor’s clothes round in the pram.’
‘Thought you might like them,’ says Mrs Flynn. ‘She’d splashed out on a few bits recently, with her money from the factory. They paid her well, you know.’ Her voice rises, shaky.
At the top of the pile is the cream striped blouse, the one she wore for Daniel.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I couldn’t . . .’
‘Why not?’ she snaps. ‘I’m too fat for them. They’ll only waste. And this hat, it’s too modern, with that peculiar brim. Here.’ She spins the hat towards me; it stirs up the air and there’s the smell of drink from Mrs Flynn, strong drink, probably whisky. I catch the hat and hold it at my side.
‘Put it on, Mummy,’ says Alice.
‘Not now. I’ll look after everything for you, Mrs Flynn.’ I scoop the clothes into my arms along with the hat. ‘It’s kind, thank you.’
‘Wear them, why don’t you? You’ll look a picture.’ She starts to cry again. Mum takes the almost-boiled kettle off the stove and warms the pot.
‘Have a cup of tea, Meena,’ she says. ‘It’s a terrible time for you. The worst.’
‘And now Kit going off,’ says Mrs Flynn.
‘What?’ Mum looks shocked, but it’s no surprise to me.
‘Kit. He’s eighteen now, isn’t he? Dear God . . .’ She raises her eyes to the ceiling. ‘I can’t stop him. And my little boys will be next. Where will it end, Susan?’
Mum hands her a cup of tea and I carry Dor’s clothes up to the bedroom. Each stair creaks under my feet. I take the steps one at a time, both feet on each tread, trying to breathe deeply, shake off the giddiness, the guilt, the thought of Dor in the cream striped blouse.
I squash the clothes into the wooden trunk with the kids’ old baby things. The hat won’t fit, so it has to slide under the bed. Tangles of dust gather around the brim. I’ve not cleaned in here for days – weeks, probably. Not since I swept up the glass the night of the explosion.
Back downstairs, the children are playing in the corner near the stove – Teddy still with his cigarette cards, and Alice doing her best to finish a line of knitting. She grips the large needles like her life depends on it. I sit beside her and watch as she loops the blue wool under and over the right needle. She’s determined to make a pair of socks to send to her daddy. Bless her, this first sock looks as if it’s turning into a tea cosy. When she drops a stitch, I place my hands over hers and help her to put it right. Her little hands feel so warm under mine, so vulnerable.
Mrs Flynn drains her teacup. She has stopped crying. ‘I’ve not heard from Dor’s other friends – you know, this Daniel she was seeing, or the girls from the factory.’ She blows her nose into the handkerchief. ‘Well, there was a letter from the management, very nice and all, but they didn’t really know her. I’d like to meet the other crowd sometime. I couldn’t chat after the Mass. Just couldn’t do it.’
‘Hannah is seeing them tomorrow night, aren’t you?’
‘Oh?’ Mrs Flynn is looking at me, but I keep my eyes on Alice’s knitting.
