Scarborough Fair (Scarborough Fair series Book 1)

by Margarita Morris

  “I guess he had his reasons,” said Dan doubtfully. To be honest, he couldn’t think of any good reasons for getting involved in drug smuggling.

  Fiona looked Dan in the eye. “Your father’s been an idiot, but we have to stick together and fight this. Even if it means selling the house to pay the legal fees. Mr Baker-Howard is good but he doesn’t come cheap.”

  Dan was shocked that his mother could talk so calmly about selling the house. This house was her pride and joy, the ultimate status symbol of their success as a family. She always spoke with bitterness about how she’d grown up in a two-up-two-down in a poor mining village just outside Durham and how she and her sister had practically starved during the miners’ strike in the 1980s.

  “Mr Baker-Howard said the judge would be more lenient if Dad told the police who was behind the drug smuggling.”

  Fiona looked at him with a steely glare. “What are you saying?”

  “I know who gave Dad the drugs,” said Dan. “They came into the arcade. I could point them out in an identity parade if I had to. There are a couple of Geordies and a guy…”

  “Stop right there,” said Fiona, holding up a hand.

  “But…”

  “No. You listen to me. Whatever you do, don’t get involved in this. Do you hear me? People like that are dangerous.”

  “But shouldn’t we go to the police?”

  “That’s for your father to decide. But you stay out of this. Do you hear me?”

  Dan didn’t reply.

  “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes. I hear you.” Dan turned on his heel and ran up the stairs to his bedroom, slamming the door behind him. He shouldn’t have said anything to his mother. He wanted to speak to Rose. He dialled her number but it went straight to voice mail. He hung up.

  ~~~

  “I’m Rose.”

  The girl was looking at her with a mixture of suspicion and hostility. Rose worried that if she said the wrong thing the girl might set the dog on her. The animal was straining at the collar, wanting to come over and sniff her out.

  “What are you doing here?” The girl repeated her question, still on her guard.

  “Nothing. I just came for a walk, that’s all.”

  “That’s a fancy dress for a walk.” The girl took in the black dress and ballet pumps.

  “I’ve been to a funeral. My grandmother just died.”

  The girl narrowed her eyes as if she was assessing the likelihood of what Rose had just told her.

  “It’s true,” said Rose. “And I don’t see why I have to justify myself to you.” She was getting pretty fed up of this girl’s attitude. What was her problem?

  The girl dropped the carrier bag onto the ground and her whole expression changed from one of aggression to one of sympathy. “I’m sorry about your grandmother.” She smiled and knelt down, wrapping her arm around the dog. “I thought maybe someone had sent you to find me, that’s all.”

  “No, of course not.” Rose had no idea what the girl was talking about but guessed she must be hiding out, was maybe on the run or something. She remembered the signs of squatters that she and Dan had seen in the asylum the other day. “So are you living here?” Rose indicated the derelict building behind them.

  The girl jumped to her feet. “So what if I am? There’s no law against that is there? It’s just an abandoned building. Better that someone should be making use of it.”

  “OK, calm down, can’t you?” Rose held up her hands. God, this girl was a prickly character, whoever she was. Part of Rose wanted to leave, but part of her was intrigued by this weird, jumpy girl and the idea that she was living in this abandoned building. Didn’t she get scared at night? Out here all on her own? Rose couldn’t imagine staying in this building after dark. “Look, I don’t mean to be nosey, but isn’t this house going to be pulled down?”

  The girl shrugged. “I guess we’ll have to find somewhere else then.” She patted the top of the dog’s head. The animal looked at her with such trusting eyes, Rose got the impression he’d follow her anywhere.

  The girl seemed calmer now so Rose carried on talking. “Have you been here long?”

  “A couple of months. Ever since my step-dad beat up Mum and she had to go and live in a hostel.”

  “Oh.” Rose didn’t know what to say to that, never having met anyone in such a dire situation. “But how do you manage to live?”

  The girl shrugged her shoulders. “There’s always casual work on the sea-front in the summer. Selling ice creams. Hiring out deckchairs, that sort of thing.” Then she seemed to come to a decision. She held out her hand to Rose. “I’m Zoe, by the way. Welcome to my home - the madhouse.”

  ~~~

  On Wednesday afternoons I have my treatment sessions with Dr Collins. Nurse Cooper escorts me to his office, always making a big show of unlocking the doors and locking them again behind her, as though she were escorting a convicted prisoner to the gallows.

  Dr Collins sees me in his office which is on the ground floor and is furnished with a large mahogany desk, the walls lined with book shelves. The doctor believes himself to be a man of science and learning and he treats his patients as laboratory specimens to be experimented on.

  I believe it is the only ground floor room in the building without iron bars on the windows. I suppose there is no need for them because the room is always occupied by Dr Collins during the day and then locked at night. Besides, bars would spoil the doctor’s view of the sea.

  His first task was to diagnose my case. For a while he seemed uncertain as to whether I was suffering from melancholia, monomania or moral insanity and kept referring to a large leather-bound volume that he kept on his desk. I explained to him, in great detail, the events that had brought me here: how Henry was obsessive and jealous; how he wanted to marry me for my money; how he had sent a man to spy on me. At this last revelation, Dr Collins’ face lit up and he nodded, I thought at the time, most sympathetically. I pressed home my case, describing Jackson, even telling him that I had a photograph which clearly showed Jackson watching me and Mary on the promenade. I was so desperate for Dr Collins to believe me that I started to sound a little obsessed, but I knew I was telling the truth and I had to trust in his judgement as a learned man, a man of reason. When I had finished speaking, Dr Collins got to his feet, took up a position of authority in front of the fireplace and gave me his verdict.

  “Miss Hawthorne, it is quite clear to me from everything you have said, particularly the part about the man following you around Scarborough, that you are indeed under a fixed delusion, an idée fixe as we medical men like to call it. This is the clearest case of monomania I have ever encountered in my time as a doctor.”

  “No, Dr Collins,” I protested. “Please, you have to understand me. I am not delusional. I am telling you the truth.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Dr Collins. “In your own mind of course you are telling me the truth. The truth as you see it. However, you cannot possibly expect me to believe that Sir Henry sent a man to spy on you. The idea is preposterous.”

  “I agree it is preposterous, but that doesn’t stop it from being true.” I was starting to tremble and grow hot. If Dr Collins would not believe me then my case was hopeless. Maybe it would have been better for me if I had stopped trying to persuade him, but I was fighting for my right to freedom, for my life, and I couldn’t stop.

  But having convinced himself of this diagnosis, it was impossible for me to persuade him otherwise. To him, my very denials of insanity were proof enough of the delusion that had supposedly taken possession of my mind. To my claim that Henry had brought me here as a punishment, Dr Collins was adamant that Henry had brought me to the asylum solely for my own good and anything that I might say to the contrary only served to incriminate me further. It seemed to me that if anyone here was suffering from a fixed delusion it was the doctor and not I.

  “You cannot make me stay here,” I said. “It is against the laws of human decency.”

  Dr Co
llins gave me a pitying smile as if I were a small child. “But your husband-to-be has signed the papers. Do you not think he knows what is best for you?”

  “He is no longer my husband-to-be. I refuse to marry him.”

  Dr Collins shook his head. “Come, come, my dear. Mr Blackwood explained to me that you and he have a longstanding agreement that you will marry him when you reach the age of twenty-one and come into your inheritance. I have no reason to doubt the word of a man of his standing, a member of the Carlton Club no less. I consider it admirable in him that he chooses to stand by you given your current unfortunate circumstances.”

  “But Doctor,” I protested, “can you not see that Henry only wants to marry me for my money? He will keep me here until my twenty-first birthday to ensure I do not marry someone else in the meantime.”

  “Miss Hawthorne, you must understand that when it comes to financial matters men, possessing a greater intellectual capacity than women, have a far better understanding of such things and that a large fortune, in the hands of a woman, is liable to be frittered away on mere fancies: ribbons and knick-knacks and such like.”

  “And are you telling me that men do not waste money, with their gambling and their drinking and…and… their whores?”

  Dr Collins looked shocked that I had dared to mention the oldest profession in the world. But I am no fool and I know what Henry gets up to when he frequents the theatres around the Haymarket and Covent Garden.

  “Miss Hawthorne,” said Dr Collins, “you are becoming hysterical and if you do not curb these immoral thoughts then I will be forced to conclude that you are suffering from moral insanity as well as monomania.”

  It is hopeless to reason with Dr Collins. He has an answer for everything I might say to him. The fact of the matter is that he believes Henry because Henry is a man and no doubt Henry has paid him handsomely to keep me here.

  I asked Dr Collins if I might be given paper and pen with which to record my thoughts as I have always been used to keeping a journal and I thought, although I did not tell him this, that it would help me to retain my sanity, of which I was still in full possession. Dr Collins refused my request on the grounds that patients are not permitted sharp objects like pens in case they harm themselves or others.

  After each session Nurse Cooper escorts me back to the ward. I might as well be a convict being returned to her cell.

  If only Mary knew where I was. But she probably has no idea and may even have returned to London without me. If that is true then I fear I really will go mad in this place.

  ~~~

  Two days after the cremation, Rose, her mother, her grandmother’s brother David, and a small group of her grandmother’s closest friends gathered in the cemetery for the burial of the ashes. Rose had thought that they might scatter her grandmother’s ashes out at sea, or something equally liberating, but Andrea was of the opinion that a dignified burial in the family plot was far more appropriate. So for the second time, they donned their new black dresses, Andrea teaming hers with a black and gold scarf this time, and stood in solemn silence as the undertakers performed the short ceremony.

  Rose couldn’t look at the small casket and imagine her grandmother’s ashes inside. A coffin would have been a different matter, but this tiny box seemed totally inadequate to contain the remains of a human life, all its hopes and dreams and achievements.

  The casket was laid to rest beside the remains of her husband, Rose’s grandfather, Donald Shawcross. Rose had no recollection of him because he had died in 1999, a year before she was born. Rose placed a pot of bright pink geraniums on the spot in the ground that now held all that was left of her grandmother. Andrea had arranged for a local stone carver to re-do the headstone so that under the name Donald Shawcross 1936-1999 was added Janice Shawcross née Drinkwater 1938-2016 May They Be Together Forever.

  Whilst Andrea was saying good-bye to her grandmother’s friends and thanking them for coming, Rose found herself once more with her great-uncle, David. Today he was wearing a cream linen suit teamed with a dark blue shirt and his relaxed manner put Rose at her ease.

  “There are lots of our family buried here,” he said in a voice that was half wistful, half amused.

  “Like who?” asked Rose. She had never really considered who had existed before her grandmother, but now that she was reading Mary’s letters she found her curiosity aroused.

  “Just about everyone,” said David. “Let’s see who we can find.” They started to wander around the headstones, peering to read the inscriptions, some of which had become almost illegible with age. “Yes, look,” said David, pausing in front of a headstone carved with a ship’s anchor. “Here are my grandparents and your great-great-grandparents, Walter and Mary Fairbright.”

  “He died in 1914,” said Rose, looking at the inscription on the moss-strewn stone. “At the age of thirty-nine. I guess he was killed in the First World War?”

  “German warships bombarded Scarborough in December 1914,” said David. “He was killed then.”

  “How terrible,” said Rose, thinking of poor Mary. According to the inscription, Mary Fairbright née Brewer had survived Walter by forty-six years, dying in 1960 at the age of eighty-one. It was hard to imagine her living well into the Twentieth Century, Rose was so used to thinking of her as a Victorian. She was born before aeroplanes had been invented and had survived two world wars. Astonishing really, when you thought about it.

  David had already moved off in search of other family members. Rose caught up with him, thinking it was like a slightly morbid version of hide-and-seek.

  “Here’s my mother and your great-grandmother,” said David, standing in front of a more modern-looking marble headstone. “Her name was Lilian and she was Mary and Walter’s daughter.” Lilian Drinkwater née Fairbright was born in 1904 and had died in 1986, a devoted wife and mother. Her husband William, lying beside her, had died in 1945, at the age of forty. The men in this family didn’t have much luck it seemed, dying at such young ages.

  “Did Mary and Walter have any other children?” asked Rose.

  “Lilian had an older brother,” said David. “His name was Frank. But he was killed in the First World War.”

  Another young casualty then.

  “He’s buried somewhere in France.”

  “You’re the only man in this family to survive into old age,” said Rose, and then immediately worried that she’d been tactless, but David chuckled.

  “I do my best to keep going,” he said as they walked back towards Andrea.

  An unbroken chain, thought Rose, from Mary to Lilian to Janice and then to my mother and me. Rose already had a good idea what Mary had been like from reading her letters, and she was grateful that she had known her own grandmother well, but what about Lilian who came in between? What was she like? Rose wondered if there was any way she could find out.

  “It’s time we were heading back,” said Andrea. She turned to David. “Would you like to join us for tea?”

  “Thank you, most kindly,” he said. “But I have to be getting back to York.”

  Rose was sorry to see him go again, this strange man who was so relaxed in some ways and yet formal in others. They walked to the exit where David took his leave of them.

  “I’ve been thinking,” said Andrea as they walked back to the car. “I’m going to have to stay on a while and put Mum’s affairs in order, sort out her will, that kind of thing. I also need to put the house on the market. I’m afraid it’s not going to be very interesting for you, so if you want to go back to London I’d understand. You must be missing your friends up here. It can’t have been much of a fun holiday for you. I could get you a train ticket if you’d like.”

  Rose couldn’t believe her mother was suggesting she go back to London on her own, that she would actually let her live there unsupervised. At the start of the summer Rose would have jumped at the chance, but now things were different. It was over between her and Joe, but there was still unfinished business with h
er and Dan. She’d barely got to know him and although they’d have to say good-bye eventually, she wasn’t ready for it just yet. At the very least she wanted to make sure he was all right. And ever since meeting Zoe she’d been thinking about her living in that abandoned asylum and wondering if there was anything she could do to help.

  “Thanks for the offer,” said Rose. “But I’d rather stay here at the moment.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  “Positive,” said Rose. “I’ll give you a hand clearing out Gran’s house.”

  “Oh, would you?” said Andrea, tears welling up in her eyes. “That would be fantastic.” She patted Rose’s hand. “Shall we pick up some fish and chips on the way back?”

  ~~~

  On the way to see Dr Collins today, Nurse Cooper informed me that he wished to try a new treatment on me. When I asked what she meant she replied curtly, “Nowt for you to worry ’bout,” which only made me worry even more.

  Instead of taking me to his office, Nurse Cooper took me to another room on the ground floor of the building. The room was tiled, like a bathroom, but there were no sinks or baths. Dr Collins was standing with his back to us in front of a large rectangular wooden cabinet with glass sides. The cabinet was on legs and stood about shoulder-height. It resembled a museum display-case of the sort used to showcase porcelain or a collection of fossils. But it contained neither of those things. Inside the cabinet was a large metal wheel in an upright position, like something from a factory machine. On the side of the cabinet was an iron handle for turning, like one I had seen on a barrel organ at the fair. Protruding from the front of the cabinet were two rods with metal balls on them. I had never before seen such a bizarre piece of furniture and had no idea what its use could possibly be. Standing beside the cabinet, by the turning handle, was a man I recognised from the dining room. He was a strong-armed man and his job at mealtimes was to restrain some of the more violent male patients. His presence concerned me. Was he there to restrain me? Why would that be necessary?

  Nurse Cooper leaned close and whispered in a voice too low for the doctor to hear, “This’ll make yer ’air stand on end!” I looked at her in alarm but she only pushed me forwards and said in her normal voice, “The patient’s ’ere for you now, Sir.”