A Very Unusual Pursuit (20 page)
Looking down, she was puzzled by the strange garment that had been wrapped around her. It was a kind of stiff white jacket, covered in buckles and straps. No matter how frantically she struggled, she couldn’t release herself from its grip.
‘Get me out of this!’ she screeched. ‘Let me go!’
‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ the doctor replied. ‘You might injure yourself.’
‘
He-e-lp
!’
‘Take my advice and save your breath. As long as you’re wearing a camisole restraint, no one is going to pay the slightest attention.’ Feeling the carriage slow, Doctor Morton peered outside. ‘Ah,’ he murmured. ‘Here we are. And not a moment too soon.’
‘Where are we?’ Birdie was almost hysterical with fear. ‘What are you doing?’ Remembering suddenly that the carriage was a hired one, she raised her voice again. ‘
Help! Help me!
’
Doctor Morton clicked his tongue and shook his head. ‘Poor girl,’ he remarked, before pushing the door open.
As he hopped down onto the road, Birdie thought,
This is my chance.
She lurched to her feet, hoping to escape through the door on her own side of the carriage. But she couldn’t open it because she couldn’t move her hands – and when she dropped to her knees, hoping to use her mouth, she slammed her face against the door-panel, making herself dizzy.
Then her stomach heaved again, protesting against the sudden jolt. All at once she was vomiting onto the floor.
Next thing she knew, someone was trying to drag her sideways.
‘No!’ she gurgled. ‘Help!’
‘Shhh. It’s all right, dear. It’s all right . . .’
The sound of a woman’s voice calmed Birdie. She assumed that a passer-by must have heard her frantic shouts. ‘Get this off!’ she groaned. ‘I can’t move! He tied me up!’
But other people were also talking, and they didn’t seem to hear.
‘Take her inside,’ said the woman, very softly. ‘We’ll clean her up in there.’
‘Which room, ma’am?’ A male voice spoke somewhere over Birdie’s head. It belonged to the very tall, raw-boned, grey-haired man who had pulled Birdie from the carriage. Now he threw her over his shoulder like a sack of coal.
Suddenly Doctor Morton began to speak.
‘That girl needs to be in seclusion,’ he announced. With a squeak of alarm, Birdie craned around to see that he was offering a handful of coins to the cabman. ‘I’m sorry about the mess. This is for your trouble.’
‘
No!
’ she yelled. ‘
No-o-o! I want to go ho-o-ome!
’
She kicked and bucked, but the man who held her was very strong. His grip tightened; he pulled her legs down and clasped them against his chest with iron fingers.
‘
Help! I’ve bin snatched!
’ she wailed. ‘
The doctor done it! Help me!
’
‘The restraint room, Mr Doherty, if you please,’ said the soft-voiced woman, who was standing close by.
‘Aye, ma’am.’
Suddenly Birdie found herself bouncing along again – only this time she wasn’t in the carriage. This time she was moving
away
from it. She could see one of the carriage lamps shining down onto Doctor Morton’s head. He and the soft-voiced woman were conversing together gravely, while the cabman climbed down from his box with a handful of cleaning rags.
‘I’m afraid she won’t even answer to her own name,’ the doctor was saying. ‘She adheres with an almost desperate stubborness to this false history she’s created for herself. Her family have been coping as best they can with her lies and abuse and episodes of self-harm, but when she absconded from their care, they realised that they could no longer ensure her safety, and applied to me for help.’
‘Poor child!’ his companion exclaimed. She was quite tall, for a woman – as tall as the doctor – with a long, yellowish face and a beaky nose. She wore an old-fashioned, wide-skirted black gown topped off by a white shawl collar. Her dark hair was streaked with grey. ‘You can see the refinement in her features, beneath all that grime and filth . . .’
‘Self-applied, I fear. She refuses to wash, or to change her clothes—’
‘Is she a danger to others?’
‘In one of her fits, she may be. It is not out of malice, you understand. She has uncontrolled episodes. They are part of her madness.’
At that precise moment, Birdie suddenly realised what was happening. They were talking about
her
! They were calling her
mad
! But as she opened her mouth, a door swung shut in her face. It blocked her view of the street and everything in it: the stationary carriage with its muddy yellow wheels, the dim line of townhouses across the road, the glowing lamps, the patches of cobblestone, the woman in the black gown, the evil doctor beside her. All of it vanished behind the big, dark, heavy door, which closed with a slightly hollow
thunk.
Birdie screamed again. Her head felt as though it were going to burst, because it was hanging upside-down. And when she tried to lift it up, her neck ached horribly.
‘Hush, now,’ Mr Doherty said, ‘or ye’ll be waking the others.’
‘Let go!’ Birdie implored. ‘You have to let me go!’
‘I’ll do that presently.’
‘Now!
Please!
Before the doctor comes!’
‘Katie-Ann.’ They halted. ‘Have ye the key to the restraint room?’
A girl’s voice answered, from somewhere beyond Birdie’s line of sight. ‘No, of course not. You must ask Mrs Ayres for
that
key.’
‘But I just left her. She’s outside, with Doctor Morton. She never gave me the key, nor mentioned it.’
There was a sharp, impatient sigh. ‘I’ll fetch it from her, then. You go in.’
As Mr Doherty shifted position, a pattern of coloured floor-tiles spun before Birdie’s eyes. Then she spotted a blue skirt and white apron rustling past.
‘Wait!’ she wheezed. ‘Please, miss – you’ve got to help me! I’ve bin kidnapped! The doctor’s a murderer!
Please
, miss!’
But Katie-Ann ignored her. And Mr Doherty said reproachfully, ‘A fine thing ’tis, telling such lies about Doctor Morton who only wants to help ye.’
‘
No!
Let
go!
’
‘If ye weren’t out o’ yer senses, I’d call ye wicked, so I would.’ Suddenly a strange, unearthly moan sounded somewhere in the distance. It rose to a shrill scream, then broke on a sob – making Mr Doherty click his tongue. ‘There, now,’ he said crossly. ‘Ye’ve gone and wakened the others with all yer noise and fussing.’
Birdie whimpered. She could hear two more voices joining the first in a kind of urgent, howling chorus. ‘Oh, please,’ she croaked. ‘I ain’t mad. I don’t belong here, I
don’t
. . .’
‘Mebbe not,’ Mr Doherty replied. ‘But I’m just the night porter, so it’s not for me to say.’
He began to move down a long hallway, past a massive flight of mahogany stairs. From her upended viewpoint, Birdie couldn’t see much; just floor-tiles, skirting boards, and the clawfooted legs of occasional tables. Everything was very well lit, by paraffin or gas lamps that hung from the ceiling. Soon the tiles were replaced by flagstones, and the wallpaper by scuffed paint. Mr Doherty then turned a couple of corners, plunging into the depths of what seemed to be an enormous house full of closed doors.
With her arms crossed against her chest, and her head dangling like a piece of fruit on a branch, Birdie was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. That was why she finally stopped yelling as the porter reached the end of a long corridor, and carried her into a very strange room. In the dim light filtering through its small, high window, she saw that its walls were covered in canvas, and stuffed with something like horsehair. Even the back of the door was padded.
A palliasse lay on the floor, next to a chamber-pot.
‘There, now.’ Mr Doherty set Birdie down on the palliasse. ‘That’s a bit better, wouldn’t ye say?’
Gulping down a few lungfuls of air, Birdie waited for her head to clear. Then she tried to get up – but without the use of her hands, it was very difficult.
‘Please,’ she gasped, ‘
please
let me out o’ this thing!’
‘That’s for Doctor Morton to decide.’
‘No!’ In a flash, Birdie realised that the more she ranted and raved, the madder she would look. So she tried to speak calmly – reasonably – even though she wanted to scream and shout and bite and kick. ‘Doctor Morton is lying. He wants to lock me up because he killed four boys. He put ’em in the way of a bogle. I’m a bogler’s girl, see, and the man I work for found a bogle in Doctor Morton’s house . . .’ Seeing the expression on Mr Doherty’s flushed face, she trailed off.
He didn’t believe her.
‘It’s true!’ she exclaimed, tears spurting from her eyes. ‘I swear it’s true! I’m Birdie McAdam! Ask anyone in Bethnal Green! Where is this place? Where am I?’
‘Hackney,’ the porter replied.
‘Hackney?’ Birdie’s heart leaped. ‘Then we ain’t far from where I live! Go and find Mr Alfred Bunce –
he’ll
tell you! Ask Mr Bunce!’
Mr Doherty was standing by the door, looking nervous. At the sound of approaching footsteps, however, the anxious lines on his brow relaxed.
‘Here’s Mrs Ayres,’ he announced. ‘She’ll know what to do.’
‘I’m a-telling you what to do! Send word to Mr Bunce!’ Birdie cried. ‘I work for him! I live in his house!
He’ll
tell you I ain’t mad!’ But the porter had vanished, yielding his place to the soft-voiced woman in the old-fashioned gown. She stood for a moment, framed in the narrow doorway, holding a bunch of keys.
‘Now, Leticia,’ she chided gently, ‘you know very well that you live with your mother and your aunt. It’s thanks to
their
generosity that you’re here at all – for London House isn’t a charitable institution.’ As Birdie stared at her, open-mouthed, she added, ‘Why not think about that for a while? Think about how worried they must be, and how much you owe them. And perhaps when I come back, you’ll have decided to be a good and grateful girl, rather than a foolish and ungovernable one.’
Then she retreated from the room, locking the door behind her.
Left alone in the dark, Birdie had to swallow the scream that was building inside her. She knew that if she howled and moaned like the other inmates, she would never be released. So she sat quietly on her palliasse, looking up at the window and thinking.
She was in Hackney. That was good news. She hadn’t been spirited away to Kensington, or Wandsworth, or even further afield – into the country, for instance. She was in a private lunatic asylum called London House. That
wasn’t
such good news, especially since Doctor Morton seemed to be on the hospital’s staff. He had planned everything very cleverly. What better place to hide a hostage than in a madhouse? It was like a private prison, where the doctors were all-powerful. No matter what Birdie said, Doctor Morton would deny it – and everyone, but
everyone
, would believe him.
Birdie whimpered. The full horror of her situation was overwhelming. But then she told herself, as she always did,
This ain’t no worse than a bogle. I face up to bogles, so I can face up to this.
She took a deep breath. She thought about Alfred, who would certainly be looking for her.
He’ll find me
, she thought.
He’ll check every hospital until he does.
Meanwhile, it would be her job to get out of the locked room, into something that was more accessible from the outside.
By the time Mrs Ayres returned, with Katie-Ann at her heels, Birdie had decided to be as good and grateful as anyone could possibly wish.
‘Now, Leticia,’ said Mrs Ayres, who was carrying a nightdress and a towel, ‘my name is Mrs Ayres, and I want to give you a sponge bath and some clean clothes. Once you’ve washed, you may have your tea. But only if you behave like a sensible girl and don’t make a fuss – is that clear?’
Birdie nodded.
‘Very well, then.’ Having put down her armful of linen, Mrs Ayres began to unbuckle Birdie’s camisole restraint. The relief of having her arms freed was so great that Birdie barely noticed that her clothes were also being removed. It was only after the numbness and tingling in her hands and wrists had stopped that she saw Katie-Ann dip one of the towels into a basin of steaming water that had been placed on the floor nearby.
‘Look at this pretty little face, all covered in dirt,’ Mrs Ayres remarked as she pushed the fine, gold hair out of Birdie’s eyes. ‘It seems a terrible shame, doesn’t it, Katie-Ann?’
‘Yes’m.’
‘And whatever happened to this arm? We’ll have to change the dressing, it’s
filthy
. . .’
Birdie allowed herself to be scrubbed from head to toe. She allowed herself to be called ‘Leticia’ without uttering a word of protest. She donned her new nightdress obediently, and let Katie-Ann carry away her dirty clothes – though not without a pang of regret. When Katie-Ann returned, bringing a laden tea-tray, Birdie drank every drop of the tea that was offered to her, and stolidly ate four thick slices of bread and butter.
She didn’t mention bogles. She didn’t abuse Doctor Morton. She didn’t insist that her name was Birdie McAdam. But as Mrs Ayres began to leave, having promised nothing more than a visit the next morning, Birdie could remain silent no longer.
‘Mrs Ayres?’ she blurted out. ‘Could you pass a message to a friend o’ mine?’
The woman paused. ‘Not if you insist on speaking in that silly way,’ she rejoined. Seeing Birdie blink, she added, ‘You know perfectly well that you can talk like a proper lady, Leticia. You were raised to it, after all. That common accent is another one of your wicked lies.’
‘But it ain’t, ma’am, I swear!’
‘Nonsense. Of course it is. And I cannot help you if you keep lying.’
Birdie was dumbfounded. How could she talk like a proper lady? She wouldn’t be able to, no matter how hard she tried.
Frantically she tried to think of something clever to say, before Mrs Ayres left the room. Katie-Ann had already vanished, along with the basin of dirty water. When Mrs Ayres began to jingle her keys, Birdie jumped up from the palliasse and cried, ‘Please, ma’am, will you not speak to Mr Bunce? Mr Alfred Bunce of Bethnal Green –
he’ll
tell you who I am!’