A Petrol Scented Spring (13 page)

Perth in December. Day has hardly dawned before the light is ebbing. I'm out of doors by ten, whatever the weather. ‘Getting to know the town.' A mostly profitless trip to the butcher's. Assuaging my loneliness by smiling at mothers out with their children, who stare back at me with wondering eyes. I could gain some acknowledgement on the North Inch, but word would soon spread that the doctor's new wife is making eyes at soldiers, so I make do with patting dogs and stroking cats, if I find them; watching blackbirds pulling worms from the vegetable beds. Walking for miles. I'll need new shoes before long. An excuse to visit the shops and talk to a saleswoman. By half past four I'm feeling my way along walls in the blackout. Home to the prison.

Aunt Nellie says I must get involved with a charitable committee or two. I agree, before changing the subject. How can I enter a room, discuss the welfare of the needy, when I'm drowning in self-pity, when it's all I can do not to burst into tears? And sometimes it is fury that keeps out the cold when I'm walking. How dare he pretend he loved me? I would not treat my worst enemy as he treats me now, so coldly polite. I have tried to broach the subject, steeling myself against humiliation, asking him if he would rather I had loved a man, if it is giving my body to a woman that so revolts him? He turns and leaves the room. When I follow him he asks, have I no self-respect?

I can't stand another silent meal. The tick of the clock. The clink of cutlery on plate. The hurricane roar of my own breath in my ears. Is this it, for the next fifty years? Yet it is worse having to smile and chatter and pretend on Christmas Day. Uncle George admires Hugh. They have been to concerts together at the City Hall. They retire into Uncle's study to discuss the war. Before lunch, Aunt Nellie drew him aside to ask his advice about the Sick Poor Nursing Society. They know nothing of our troubles, but still I feel my own relatives have turned against me.

With January comes the snow. A thaw, then a long hard freeze. The streets are like glass. Impassable. Through the window I glimpse Mrs Grant, the Governor's wife, collecting a pail of snow. My own taps are still running. Although never formally introduced, we have nodded to each other in passing. Her maid-of-all-work is laid up in Luncarty with a broken ankle. She won't hear of borrowing Mrs Hendry, but consents to a cup of tea, so long as we agree not to tell our husbands. She gives me a conspiratorial grin I am sorry to be too clueless to return. A nice woman, even if she smells of Parma violets. Over the next two years, she will prove a good friend to me. And a mine of information.

February brings two developments. A Peterhead prisoner, John Maclean, is transferred to the gaol, and my husband starts talking to me.

The new convict is a Glaswegian firebrand, a self-styled revolutionary Socialist sentenced for making speeches against conscription. He has many followers, and not just in Scotland. Convinced the prison is drugging his food, he refuses to eat. The government is anxious that he remain in good health. It seems Hugh is a specialist in treating those who starve themselves. Without the intelligence passed on by my secret friend Mrs Grant, I might have suspected him of infidelity. His colour is better, his eyes bright. One morning, passing the bathroom door, I hear him whistling in there.

*

 

Maclean is a potato-faced fellow with a shrewdly-assessing gaze. Highland stock. Thirty-seven years old, five years the doctor's junior, quite apart from his status as convict and his ignorance of medicine, and yet he shows no deference. He addresses everyone – doctor, warders, Prison Commission officials – as his equal, socially and intellectually. The warders don't like it.

‘You know why you're here?' the doctor asks him.

‘A police officer lied.'

‘Why you're here
in Perth
.'

‘I caught them tampering with my food in Peterhead.'

‘Why should they do that?'

‘To discredit me.'

‘So the police lie about you, and the warders contaminate your food?'

‘And you will certify me mad.'

‘For what reason?'

‘Because your imperial masters don't like me speaking against their war.'

‘I thought the police lied.'

‘They lied in the particulars. The law requires exactitude to masquerade as just. I oppose the war, like anyone with a head on his shoulders.'

‘You don't think we should honour our treaties and alliances?'

‘Use your brains, man. Who is this
we
? Not you, not me. If the workers withdraw their labour in protest, they're forced to work as soldiers. What does that tell you?'

‘That resistance is futile.'

‘The game's rigged against us. Capitalism is rotten to its foundations. I see it. They see it. That's why they put alcohol in my food.'

‘And I'm a part of this conspiracy?'

‘They don't have to take you into their confidence. You do their bidding, no questions asked.'

‘You're very sure of me, on less than an hour's acquaintance.'

‘I know you inside out. A yeoman with an education. A class traitor who thinks he's bettered himself. They're laughing at you, man.'

‘They tell me you lost your job as a teacher.'

‘I'm a teacher with or without their job.'

‘You made allegations against your headmaster. An enquiry found them baseless.'

‘He's bedding her. An infant teacher sharing the duties of a dominie? It's wrong, and they know it. So they cover it up, like every other abuse of power in the system.'

‘The warders say you masturbate several times a day.'

‘Tell your peeping toms to mind their own business.'

‘It's making you irritable, suspicious, prone to delusions.'

‘So that's to be your diagnosis, is it: I'm a sex maniac?'

‘You'd be happier if you abstained.'

‘Would I?'

‘You lost a stone in Peterhead, you can't afford to lose more.'

‘I can't afford to let this place turn me into a gelding—'

So far the prisoner's gaze has been fixed on the doctor's face. Now it loses focus. He is thinking.

‘—It's a fair question: why turn inwards, to your own pleasure? Are the women the same? Don't tell me you don't know. It's natural to dwell on what you're deprived of, I suppose. But there's more to it. Power. One will forced on another. Disgusting – but exciting too, eh: refusing every decent human impulse? Oh aye, the Devil has some good tunes. Not so good for me, on the other end of it. My body's no choice in the matter, but my mind's still free. I can put myself in your skin, the same as you can put yourself in mine.' An amused breath. ‘Aye. I see it in your face. Oh you're ashamed, but you know what I'm talking about. We're two sides of the one coin, you and I. What do you do with it, take it home to your wife?'

‘You go too far.'

‘Or maybe one of the wardresses, eh?'

 

I remark to my husband that he seems more animated these days. Is he enjoying his work? He replies that he is not paid to enjoy himself. A difficult case has been placed in his hands. A dangerous man? Not a murderer, but yes, dangerous to our country and its security. He will require treatment for some considerable time, but there is reason to think he can be cured.

And so our silent dinners come to an end. Two months of misery is over because my husband wants someone to boast to. Not that I'm not grateful. The battle of wits between doctor and prisoner is interesting. There's the new light it casts on my husband's character, the vanity I hear when he speaks of his notorious patient, the superior tone, and yet the trace of admiration. Feeling some sympathy for this schoolteacher with whose intimate habits I am so fully acquainted, I ask my husband, is onanism always unhealthy? Surely all men indulge before marriage. Surely Hugh does still.

The look on his face frightens me.

‘I mean, since we don't . . .'

‘The last thing the world needs is another idiot child.'

The mystery begins to unravel. Bill and Hilda are blameless. It is Grandmother Kate I have to thank for the misery of my wedding night. What he tells me – eventually – is so grotesque, it can only be an old woman's fantasy. So I write to my mother, the most embarrassing letter I will ever have to compose. Her reply is curt, no less embarrassed. I am to speak to Aunt Nellie.

 

Nellie is delighted to see me. George is out visiting his parishioners. She receives me in the drawing room, seats me in the wing-backed chair, tells Aggie to bring the leftover Christmas cake with our tea. Am I quite comfortable? A cushion for my back?

She thinks I have come to break the news that I am pregnant.

Just for a moment, I am tempted to tell her everything. To be pitied and petted in my comfortable chair, knowing she will confide in Uncle George and that, after much discussion, they will feel duty bound to tell Pa and Mama. And then what? I am a grown woman. I chose him of my own free will. I can't be the only wife in the world who did not get what she bargained for. So I put a decent face on it: my husband's very natural concern, after speaking to Grandmother Kate. He has some experience of asylums and the wide variety of circumstances that lead men to be admitted as patients, no one is better placed to understand, but he must know the full facts of the case.

Auntie's eyes fly everywhere but my face. There is nothing she can tell me that Dot does not know. But Mama is down in England, I say; perhaps it is not a matter to be imparted in a letter? This seems to strike home. She bites her lip and quits the room, to return a couple of minutes later, having given Aggie instructions that we are not to be disturbed. Sitting down again, she takes out a handkerchief and rubs at some insignificant mark on her skirt. I catch her eye. She sighs, ‘I only went there once.'

Haltingly at first, she tells me the whole story.

 

The asylum is set in a hundred acres of parkland. A plain old crowstep-gabled house, shouldered – bullied, it seems to twenty-four-year-old Nellie – by newer wings, so the whole is an ugly agglomeration of cliff-like walls topped by gables and turrets. The Superintendent seems to think this ugliness can be disguised with a profusion of rhododendrons. He is a great believer in the morally elevating properties of fresh air. There are two secure courts where the inmates play bowls and shuttlecock, and walk about, and garden. When it rains, they take carriage drives through the grounds, safe from the inquisitive gazes of strangers. He prescribes an excursion a week for his melancholics, the speed quite restoring their animal spirits. Of course, cases of mania like Mr Richmond's require more protracted moral treatment. Uncle John returns a curt nod, the way he does when the seedsmen try to haggle with him in front of his nieces. He's of the old school, holding that women should not be sullied by talk of business, but the fact remains: the sweeping lawns, the strident blooms, the comfort and elegance demanded by patients of higher ranks, all these have to be paid for.

It is 1888.

Nellie wonders how many visits it takes to achieve the indifference her uncle shows to his surroundings. She has eyes for everything. The ornate ceilings and gleaming floorboards, the damask and brocatelle and button-backed upholstery, all these empty chairs. Where is everybody? Shivering in the airing courts? Locked away in their rooms? The silence is eerie. But now, as they climb the great staircase, she hears a noise, a sort of lowing, as if the Superintendent has stalled his cattle on one of the gracious upper floors. She feels a tug and looks down to find that her sister, Dot (who will become my Mama) has grabbed a fistful of her skirt and is holding on for dear life. A maid in drab approaches with a mop and metal pail. Her eyes dart to the Superintendent's and some wordless communication passes between them.

The Superintendent knocks twice and a bold-faced man of about Nellie's age appears in the crack between door and jamb. When he sees the Superintendent, the boldness turns to deference. The door swings wide. A hunched figure is sitting by the window. Nellie takes in his sunken eyes, the yellowish skin stretched over his hollow cheeks. His frock coat seems cut for a bigger man. The hands protruding from its sleeves are skin and bone. So changed! Yet how could he not be, in this place?

What choice does she have but to advance into the room, crossing the polished boards to sit on the Chesterfield beside him? He recoils from her nearness, shuffling his skeletal frame into the sofa's padded arm. They remain like that, side by side, Nellie regarding his profile while he stares straight ahead. It is only now that she notices a man of about fifty sitting in an armchair on the far side of the room. His distinguished leonine head is quite grey, but still recognisable. A flush sears her chest, spreading up over her neck and face, as she rises and makes her way towards him.

Dot gets there first, flinging her arms around his neck.

‘
Papa!
'

A lump forms in Nellie's throat at the unforced joy in her sister's cry. She is his little
Prinzessen
again, as if the past eight years were a horrid dream, and now she has awoken to a view of mountains and a breakfast of
brioche
and
Schokolade
. How is it that Nellie remembers so perfectly the way Dot used to behave with him? She too must have taken a habitual tone, smiling in a particular way, but for the life of her she cannot retrieve them.

The door opens and a third man comes in, a fidgety fellow in an extravagant Paisley coat whose teeming threads coil like her own anxious thoughts. How does it feel to be mad, she wonders? Is it quite senseless, like a child's scribble when he first holds the pencil? Or is there some pattern to it, a thread of meaning in the maze, until the eye blinks and the attention fails, twisting away into another looping path?

Ask anyone who knows Nellie and they will describe the serious young woman who took over the mothering of her sister so capably after they returned to Scotland. But there is also this other, whose sympathy is a form of pride, a refusal to be shut out from the world's distress. Her eyes lift from the mesmerising Paisley to the face above. No hair at all on the crown of his head, but great woolly clumps around his ears. His hands move busily, the pad of each thumb rubbing over and over his fingertips.