Disturbing Ground

by Priscilla Masters

  Even the streets were deceitful, the houses built on the catacombs of the ancient mine workings that burrowed beneath most of South Wales. Many of the buildings bore their cracks like the battle scars of a sword slash. The Coal Board would compensate. It was a common enough phrase. And people today were anxious to forget all about the old days and put them behind them. The mines were shut, the tips overgrown or flattened into playing fields, the hollows filled with dark water and renamed - as Llancloudy Pool had been.

  A couple of the mines had been opened as museums. Lest we forget sorts of places, Pwll Glo. Black Gold. Kids were taken down on school trips to teach them about their heritage. But all that people imagined about “the valleys” was different now. And the kids wanted to forget it all. Every bit of it. The male voice choirs, the chapel, the mines, the dirt, the hardship. All was gone except the real mountains. Nothing could shift those. “Not even a Conservative Government”. It was the standing joke during Maggie’s time. Those mountains and this graveyard remained unchanged. One a sign of stubborn constancy, the other a reminder of mortality. Not that she needed one in her job.

  The fleeting thought conjured up the picture of that still dripping body being dragged from the small pond. Meggie frowned, her fingers looped around the handle of the plastic carrier bag tightening. It had been a strange way to die - even for a mad woman. Had no one seen her approach the pool, sensed her intent - if intent there had been. Had no one heard a splash - and wondered - or seen her struggle? Had there been no witnesses?

  Megan walked slowly, struggling still with the question of intent. Bianca’s mind had been occasionally threatening, frequently downright peculiar. Always unfathomable, invariably illogical.

  So why was she, Megan’s doctor, who had seen so many manifestations of her patient’s sick mind, disturbed by the fact that she was unable to understand Bianca’s final illogical act?

  As she continued down the main street she pondered this point and like leafing through the pages of a reference book she found the answer.

  Folk in the Welsh Valleys were prone to gossip. Call it a trait of the Welsh. Or maybe it was something to do with the geographical narrowness of the valleys, of the limitation of an area so sealed in by mountains that there was only one road in. And that too was the road out. But, chin up, defiantly Megan had returned from Italy with Guido in tow fully aware that she would be the subject of this gossip. She already knew every row or kiss, quarrel or hug would be the focus of much attention. Maybe the locals had sensed that all was not perfectly right with Guido long before she had, not blinded by romantic love as she had been but guided to trouble by their antennae. But even very early on, soon after their marriage, their sideways glances had been laden with malice. They had wanted her to look foolish. Most of her class chums from the comprehensive had married and had families quickly and had watched her very public exit to Medical School with a tinge of envy. The valleys loved their successes. But they watched them too for signs of it “going to their heads”. And when Megan had dumped Alun it had been seen as a sign that she had been too ready to shed her roots. This was considered a bad thing. Her return as a qualified doctor had puzzled them. Why here, she could almost hear them question. She could have gone anywhere - the world. Why come back? The answer that they could not work out for themselves was that she loved the valleys. She belonged here. And she wanted to give something back to its inhabitants. Bringing Guido to Llancloudy had alienated her from the locals - as she had known it would. Her early ecstatic happiness had made them shake their heads. And wait.

  Only Bianca, hesitating one day, after a long, pointless and difficult consultation, had pressed her hand, looked at her with penetrating sincerity and wished her happines. Staring back into the powdered face with its brilliant red lipstick curved into a clown’s smile, Megan had been touched beyond belief.

  Now she remembered that day vividly. No one, not even her parents who now refused to even mention Guido’s name, had really, truly, wished her luck from the bottom of their hearts. For that she owed Bianca.

  She paused outside the gateway to the Bethesda chapel then pushed open the gate. It was a small building of grey stone with brown paintwork and arched windows. A modest building, like most of the Welsh chapels, remnants of the old country. There were still plenty of those, the rows of terraced miners’ cottages, derelict mine workings, slag heaps and chapels with Biblical names: Bethesda, Hebron, Carmel, Tabernacle. The geographical narrowness was unavoidable. But today there was a forward looking hope and vibrancy that had been absent from the Wales of her childhood. It lifted her heart as she pushed open the gate.

  She suddenly realised she was very happy and very hungry.

  A cloud that seemed to have sprung from nowhere blacked out the sun temporarily but she refused to let it influence her intention and rediscovered direction. She would eat here again. Alone. Guido’s final humiliating indiscretion would not prevent her doing things she enjoyed - just because she had once done them with him.

  But the elements conspired against her. The cloud burst. Heavy rain splashed onto her arms and face. The darkness now seemed to encompass the entire sky. She was forced to shelter inside the doorway.

  No reading tombstones today.

  The food tasted good. Salty, smoked bacon, a hard boiled egg. Fresh brown bread. Meggie realised how much even the small enjoyment of eating had diminished in the last eight months. Since Christmas time. Guido’s seasonal indulgence had been the last straw.

  She must stop thinking about him. She had a new life now. One without him. A new home. She was still youngish. But it was hard to keep her head up. It had been a public humiliation. She, the pin-up of the sixth form, dumped in favour of a man. The whispering had started within hours, the gossips conducted like a WI choir by Gwendoline Owen. Everyone quickly knew each small detail.

  And now they had a diversion. Bianca Rhys found drowned in a pond little larger than a child’s paddling pool. Megan chewed her sandwich thoughtfully and pictured Alun wading in to recover the body. His trousers had only been wet to the knees. Even if Bianca had fallen in she could have stood up and climbed out. Megan frowned. So it was not like the Hood poem, In she plunged boldly - no matter how coldly? Neither had it been the accidental drowning of Clementine, Hit her foot against a splinter. Fell into the foaming brine.

  She smiled. Even with the most poetic imagination the Slaggy Pool could hardly be described as “foaming brine”.

  She finished her sandwich and opened the packet containing her flapjack just as her mobile phone rang.

  She fished around for it in her bag. “Hello?” She was never at her best responding to it when the number display read Anonymous. She liked to know to whom she would be talking and always answered with a cautious, “Hello?”

  “Doctor Banesto?”

  “Yes.” The voice was unknown.

  “Franklin Jones-Watson here.”

  The name meant nothing to her. “Yes?”

  “We haven’t met before …” A soft, educated, Cardiff voice. “I’m the pathologist here at The Princess of Wales Hospital. I’ve just finished the post mortem on a patient I believe was yours who drowned earlier this week. The police said you were first on the scene.”

  It was as though a stone had been thrown into the deep, dark waters; ripples forming on its surface. “We are talking about Bianca Rhys, are we?”

  “Yes. I understand from the Coroner’s Office that she had a bit of a medical history.”

  “She was a schizophrenic.”

  A pause.

  Her turn to ask a question. “How long did you think she’d been in the water for?”

  “Hard to say. About twelve hours, I think.”

  “But I’d have thought her body would have …”

  “Floated? It was near the surface but according to the police the dress was caught in an old pushchair that had been dumped. And there was some stone thing in the pocket.”

  “Her body was weighted?”


  “Well - yes. No - not really, the stone wasn’t that heavy.”

  “You’re telling me you think she might have drowned herself? Deliberately?”

  “Hard to say. I’ve sent some serum for barbiturates. Hit her head nasty on something in the bottom of the pool too.”

  Megan felt a tightening of the muscle at the back of her neck. “She had a head injury?”

  “Done at round about the point of death.”

  “But you’re not suspicious about it?”

  “Good gracious me no. No … No I don’t think so. I mean you never know with these people what they’re going to do next. Talk about unpredictable. Gets hard for us to work it out. How can we ever know what is in the mind of someone who is psychotic?”

  “So you’re saying …?”

  “Balance of mind was disturbed. I can call it accidental death. Easier for the relatives, you know. No need to call it suicide. She might have collected the piece of stone out of interest or as a talisman, or even because she thought it was the currency of Llancloudy.” He laughed. “Who can know? Anyway. Poor woman. Died quickly. Dry drowning. Not a drop in the lungs at all.”

  “She didn’t even draw breath?”

  “No. Usual vagal inhibition. Shock really.”

  Megan didn’t know whether to be relieved Bianca hadn’t drowned or concerned as she said goodbye to the pathologist. She put her phone back in bag, gathered up her things and returned to her car.

  And so through tacit agreement between GP and pathologist the verdict was passed.

  The coroner would not argue.

  Schizophrenics can be so tantalising, sliding in and out of the truth. Fantasising with the assurance of sane fact, yet terrified of water. And yet Bianca’s most irrational delusion had turned out to be rational after all.

  Chapter 5

  Touch her not scornfully

  Think of her mournfully

  The words of the poem were still echoing round her mind as she returned to the surgery that afternoon. Bianca’s death was still provoking her curiosity so instead of walking straight into her consulting room for her evening surgery, Megan went upstairs to the practice library, selected a pathology book from the shelf, found the chapter on “dry drownings” and started reading.

  “15-20% of all drownings are so called “dry” in that there is no deep inhalation of fluid. Many of these deaths are very sudden and show no evidence of a significant struggle by the victim. The precise mechanism of death remains speculative. One proposal is that the sudden inrush of fluid into the mouth and throat results in laryngospasm with consequent asphyxia.”

  Megan closed the book with a feeling of bleakness. So that was how Bianca Rhys had died. Simple asphyxia.

  It fitted.

  Her terror at finding herself falling into the filthy pool would have been enough to cause paralysing fear, laryngospasm and death. She would not have dared draw breath.

  Only one aspect of Bianca’s death did not fit quite so neatly.

  What had she been doing up there in the first place?

  According to her daughter the pond had been one of the places Bianca had avoided like the proverbial plague. She would not have strolled around it on a sunny afternoon. Let alone on a damp evening. Megan sat very still for a while. It could not have been on a sunny afternoon anyway. Not Sunday. Someone would have seen her. Throughout the day there were always people milling around the place - walking dogs, sitting, gossiping - whatever the weather. And Sunday had been fine. Like the well in Biblical times, the Slaggy Pool had become something of a meeting place, even if it sprouted with urban rubbish - abandoned pushchairs and old Tesco’s trolleys - and its grounds were simply a small, well trodden patch of grass with two, tiny, non-productive flower beds. Vandals never allowed the council plants to grow. They dug them up and transplanted them to their own gardens or simply urinated all over them after a night out, poisoning the flowers.

  So Bianca had fallen in the pool under cover of darkness. On Sunday night, according to the forensic evidence. Megan sat with her chin cupped in her hand and tried to picture this scenario too - and again ran into a problem. Bianca’s paranoia had been deep rooted enough to ensure that she rarely left her house after dark. And it wasn’t solely the result of psychotic imaginings. The strange figure, with her vivid pink hair, thin enough to have posed for one of Lowry’s stick women was a bizarre enough sight. But hunched up, muttering to herself and moving in jerky steps had made her an obvious target for the drunken gangs of mouthy youths which walked the streets of Llancloudy. Once she had been physically attacked - a bottle thrown in her face leaving her with a scar which pulled up the corner of her right eye to add to her bizarre appearance. She was too instantly recognisable as different. To be different is to be noticed. And to be noticed can, in some circumstances, be dangerous.

  So it was unlikely she would have wandered near the pool and after dark unless she had a specific reason for going. The trouble was a “reason” to Bianca might be just about anything. The voices might have ordered her to go there, or she might have believed the pond was filled with money or the gateway to another world. It was even possible that “the voices” had made her more frightened of staying in the house with Esther than leaving it. Or she might simply have become confused and wandered to the pool without knowing where she was. Maybe the best thing would be to speak to Esther Magellan and the next door neighbour.

  Megan smiled, closed the pathology book and wished her mind would stop asking unanswerable questions. The police would surely have followed up these lines of enquiry. It wasn’t really any of her business. Her responsibility towards Bianca had finished. She headed back down the stairs and threaded through the packed waiting room.

  But as she worked her way through the evening surgery only half her mind was concentrating on her patients. The other half was dipping in and out of Bianca’s mind, as though she should not yet abandon her patient. It was almost as though Bianca had some access to her mind and was claiming unfinished business. It was probably because she could not quite banish Bianca from her thoughts that she was not surprised when, at the end of the surgery, the receptionist buzzed through to say that Carole Symmonds had rung, wanting to speak to her. Feeling as though subconsciously she had been waiting for the call Megan took the message and closed her door. She did not want the receptionists eavesdropping.

  Carole answered on the first ring. She must have been sitting over the phone. She launched straight in.

  “The police have told me about the post mortem.” She sniffed and Megan was acutely aware of the depth of Carole’s grief for her mother. She was touched.

  At the same time she was wondering exactly what the police had told Carole.

  “They told me my mother didn’t suffer,” she started. “That she died before she hit the water. She didn’t really drown.”

  “Ye-e-s?”

  “But I’ve been thinking, doctor, and there’s some things I don’t understand.” She sniffed again and Megan knew she was crying.

  “Go on,” she prompted.

  “Mam wouldn’t have drowned herself. You know what she was like about water. She couldn’t have done it. I’ve told them about Mam hatin’ water and then they suggested she’d accidentally fallen in and what with bein’ frightened and her clothes catching on the rubbish in the pond …” She stopped. Megan heard a few more sniffs before Carole started again. “I’ve got an idea, doctor, of what might have happened and I sort of wondered whether you thought it was possible.” Carole hesitated and Megan sensed her embarrassment. “Go on,” she prompted again.

  “Well - you know what Mam’s voices were like. Sometimes they told her to do daft things. And even though she didn’t want to she couldn’t argue so she’d do anything to try and make them shut up. She told me once they screamed in her ear. Other times they’d whisper. Sometimes they’d sing. Other times they’d hum, tuneless like, like those monks chanting. She had to give in to them. The policeman said they found something a bi
t strange in her pocket. A bit of a statue - or something. If they said to get it - I mean - Mam did collect things.”

  “Collect” was a polite word for frank kleptomania. Bianca had been charged with shoplifting on numerous occasions; the empty video cases she was so fond of touching, sweets and other items from the long suffering Co-op. Usually objects she could have no possible use for, babies’ nappies, bars of slimmers’ chocolate, bags of anything - potatoes, dog food, bird nuts, guinea pig straw - stuffing it all in an ancient brown vinyl shopping bag. The shop owners took her to court, attempted to ban her from their store. But she sneaked in and filled her pockets. She always got off on the same defence so what really was the point? It merely clogged up court time. But although the shop keepers were not unsympathetic to Bianca’s diagnosis they were true to the notices pinned up in the front of their shops. They prosecuted every time. And what struck Megan now was that the defence plea which had been trotted out as often as a seaside donkey was exactly the same phrase as was being used now to explain her death. “Balance of mind disturbed …” It was not only an apt phrase to account for aberrant behaviour in a schizophrenic but a very useful phrase which could be used to explain any occurrence, including now her death.

  Megan swallowed a smile. “Yes - she did collect things. You’re right.”

  Carole laughed. “Empty beer cans, bottle tops, video cases. You name it, doctor. She collected them all. You know what her house was like. And the piles of newspapers. Well - it was ridiculous. Boxes of them. Some dating back to the 1960s. Her place was a fire hazard. And a health hazard. I told her so. So I suppose I shouldn’t be that surprised that she had a stone in her pocket.” She paused to breathe in and exhale in a long sigh. “But it still feels all wrong, see?”