The Ballroom (30 page)

When she saw him standing, waiting with the tube, she thrashed about like an animal. A length of muslin was tied around her mouth – presumably to keep her from biting those around her – but it did not prevent the most terrible, bestial noises from escaping. The nurses took up their positions, two of the strongest on each side to hold the patient down and another freer to move about. As Miss Church was placed in front of him, the hands of the nurses became white with the effort of restraint. A nurse stepped forward and untied the gag, and almost as soon as she had done so the patient began to spit and curse.

Charles stood by, astonished, as the words spewed from her. Had it been in her all along, this propensity for filth? Or had she learnt it here from companions like Miss Fay? He could not but suppose the latter; still, the performance had to be seen and heard to be believed. It was like cutting into something fine – a good steak, perhaps – and seeing that beneath it was rotten and that flies had beaten you to the feast. When he had heard enough, Charles gave the signal to the nurse, who pinched the patient’s nose with a clip. A sheet was tied beneath the chin. The patient was obstructive, tightening her lips, but Charles stepped forward and pulled them apart. He called for the steel gag, which he ran around the gums, feeling for gaps in the teeth. She twisted her neck wildly. ‘Hold her, nurse!’ The free nurse moved to her head, and with two of them there the patient ceased her movement and he found a gap – cutting the flesh of the gums a little in the process, blood running over his fingertips as he prised the jaw open wide, then secured it tight. A low moaning came from the patient now, but the eyes were the only things that moved. He was reminded of the time he read her notes, of placing his handkerchief over those eyes so that he might not see. Now though, he did not need any such props, now he stared straight back and it was she who looked away first.

He brought all of his attention to the task in hand. Though such feedings happened in the asylum every day, it had been a good while since he had carried one out himself. First, he took the end of the length of India-rubber tubing and began to train it down into the throat. On the first attempt Miss Church gave way to a violent coughing fit, and the tube was expelled, but on the second try Charles was more careful, and after an initial gagging from the patient the tube passed through the throat and into the oesophagus, and there were no more convulsions from the chair. He placed the bowl ready on top of the rubber tube and called for the mixture. It was ready prepared, the same used for any patient who must be fed: beaten eggs and milk and vitamins added to the whole, altogether as much nourishment as might be had in liquid form, and really, he thought, as he steadied it over the opening of the tube and the patient’s eyes grew wide, really, she was lucky they were feeding her at all. In Holloway, he had heard, they poured the mixture in through the rectum; punishment, not nourishment, was what was offered there. He could see the bared whites, the curve of the eyeball, the thin red veins lacing the sides. He began to pour. Silence. The only movement in the room the preparation moving from bowl to tube, the only sound the soft
glug
as the mixture went down. After a moment, the patient’s body convulsed, and the nurse closest to him put a hand on Charles’s arm. ‘She can only take so much, Dr Fuller. It’ll just come straight back up.’

He poured more slowly then, steadily, not stopping until the whole bowlful had disappeared. ‘The mixture needs to digest,’ he said when he was finished. ‘And we’ll have no vomiting tricks. Hold her down while I am gone.’

When he stepped out of the room and pulled the door shut behind him, Charles found his shirt was damp with sweat. He needed air. The infirmary was on the west side of the asylum, close to the men’s quarters, and it was a short enough walk to a side entrance that brought him out overlooking the wood. Even at this early hour it was hot, and the heavy quality of the air felt wrong, like something rotten. He hurried towards the trees; let their green coolness envelop him. Fine spider’s webs looped from their branches, filaments glistening silver. The first horse chestnuts had fallen and old leaf fall crunched beneath his feet as he walked. He made his way to a clearing and packed his pipe. Somewhere close by a twig snapped, making him jump. He cast his eyes about him but could see no one there.
The trees were our only witnesses.
Had it happened in here? In this very clearing perhaps? Impossible to know which trees had been witness to the sordid act. A small breeze came, ruffling the leaves in the high canopy, and Charles had the uneasy sense he was not alone. ‘Was it you?’ he said to the thick-trunked beech beside him. ‘Or you? Or you or you or you?’

But the trees only stood there and said nothing in response. He was woozy as he made his way back to the asylum, and somehow the path he took was the wrong one, leading only to more trees, thicker now, darker, through which he stumbled, pushing through their branches, emerging in a bramble thicket, gasping into the light. When he reached the safety of the buildings, he turned and looked back. The wood was traitorous. He would not come here again.

The treatment room was empty but for one nurse sitting beside Miss Church, who stood as he entered. The patient was slumped in the chair. She appeared to be asleep. He approached her quietly. Looking at her lying so still, with her pale skin and her fine, light colouring, it was almost possible to feel tenderly towards her, to feel as though she might yet be unspoilt. She really was a most attractive girl. Then her eyes fluttered open. ‘All done,’ he said. Her expression had changed. There was something else there. Hate. He pulled on the end of the tube. It was strange to watch it come out. There seemed to be so much more length than had gone in.

I
T WAS THE
first cool place she had been for months, and at first it was almost a pleasure to be down where the sun was tamed to a high, bright rectangle on the wall.

Her fury kept her hot though, wrenching and turning in the long sleeves, even though she knew it was useless, until she had tired and bruised herself. She conjured Clem’s words, her twisted face.

You think he’d like you if it weren’t for me?

How do you even know what he wrote? I could have made it all up.

She saw the triumph on the Irish nurse when she had claimed the letter, and she knew that she and John were in danger now. And wasn’t that Clem’s fault?

But then the cold began to seep up from the ground, and the strangeness of it all stole over her: Clem’s dancing, her opened mouth, her searching tongue, and then her anger paled and cooled.

Was Clem down here too then, in the long sleeves? She could be in the next cell for all it was possible to know.

And she feared for her then. She wouldn’t be able to eat, strapped in like this. Someone should tell them that she hadn’t eaten. It would be six days, wouldn’t it, without any food?

When they brought her back up, there was no sign of Clem or of the books. A new woman was sitting in Clem’s chair, toothless and square as a box. She growled when Ella came near.

Ella took a seat on the other side of the room and nursed her swollen, painful arms, while around her the women fratched and cried. Outside, the sun shone, as though it still, after all these months, had something to say, lighting on the women’s maddled faces, on the close, brown walls, the locked fireplace. On the piano, lying closed and heavy and still.

As soon as she could, she stood, went to the bathroom and made her way to the last of the stalls. But when she got there she saw the window had been replaced with green marbled glass. They knew. She climbed up on the toilet seat and put her eye to the pane, and a strange, twisted world became visible: brown grass, stretching; the stand of trees. The fields. There was no line of men though. The harvest was done. Whether the sun knew it or not, summer was coming to its close.

She pressed her forehead to the glass and groaned.

When she came back out of the toilet block, she threaded her way around the women to her seat.

‘
Whatisitthatshewants?
’

‘
He’sburningburningburningher.
’

Old Germany caught Ella’s hand. ‘Where is she?’ Her face was plaintive. ‘Where’s my lovely? Where’s my lovely to play for me?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Ella, miserably, prising the old woman’s hand away. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know.’

Late in the afternoon the dog men appeared, and the old familiar fear rose in Ella: the chronic ward, the gawbers. With no music to cover it, the women’s whimpering was loud. But sitting there amid the reeky stench and the yammering women, watching the men go about their work, something came to her, a thought that was clear and whole: she would go to the chronic ward. Go in with the gawbers. John was in the men’s chronic ward. And the women’s ward was surely where Clem would be. If she could not run, then she would stay. She would choose it.

The thought flamed in her blood.

It wouldn’t be too hard to get there. She would simply have to do something bad. Start a fight. It would have to be vicious though, to make them send her there. Her eyes grazed the room and then tangled with those of the Irish nurse, who was sitting over by the door. The woman gave a brief, nasty smile, and Ella’s blood quickened.

The next time the woman was close, she would grab her head and bray it against a wall. She didn’t need a reason – although she had reason enough. It would better, in fact, if there were no reason at all, since that was more often the way of the women in here. Then the dog men could come and take her off, but they wouldn’t have to carry her. She would walk between them with her head held high, knowing that what she wanted had come to pass. She clenched her fists around her thumbs.

But the afternoon passed and the Irish nurse was called away, and Ella sat, twined tight.

Tomorrow, she would do it. Tomorrow she would be gone.

But early the next morning, she was called to see the doctor.

Perhaps this was it, she thought, as she was marched down the corridors to his room. Perhaps it was already done. Perhaps it was him had read the letter. He was going to be surprised when she nodded her head and agreed that the chronic ward was the best place for her.

He was already there when she entered the room, standing behind his desk, hands clasped behind his back. He looked thinner than before. ‘Miss Fay! Please,’ he nodded to a chair, ‘sit down.’

The large book was open in front of him, and she could see her page, the one with her picture on it, the wrong way up.

‘I’ve been reading your file.’ He drummed his fingers on the dark wood of the desk. ‘And the more I read of these pages the more they tell me how well you’ve been doing here. Entry after entry acknowledges that you are a good, hard worker.’ He threaded his fingers before him and looked her up and down. ‘And now I have you before me I can see it for myself. Our food’s obviously suiting you too; you look as though you’ve put on weight.’

He pulled out his chair and sat before her, turning the pages back.

‘Not last week, there was a report by one of my colleagues that suggested that you should be set at liberty, pending a little further observation. Indeed, had this incident with Miss Church not occurred, you would have been sitting here around about now, visiting me for a review. And if you had passed that review, then we would have recommended you for release.’

His words hung in the air like strange dark fruit waiting to be plucked. Ella put her hands in her lap, making herself still, watching his pawky, cunning face. He was playing a game. He had read the letter and was playing a game. She needed to work out the rules of this game, and quickly, before it was over and she was beaten.
Think. Think.

‘Wouldn’t you like that?’ he was saying. ‘Isn’t that what you want? I seem to remember a day, not so very long ago, when we faced each other in this room, and it seemed to be what you wanted very much indeed.’

A coldness was creeping up her legs, as though it were coming from the cells beneath. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘Yes, I would.’

Was it the right thing to say? She couldn’t tell, but it was something, thrown into his path, something to slow this down. So she could think. Why couldn’t she think?

His chin rose, his eyes narrow for a moment, and then that smile was back. ‘Good,’ he said.

Do you ever think that people are wearing masks?

‘Witnesses report it was not you but Miss Church who started the incident in the day room. We are going to treat this as a misdemeanour. Providing all goes well over the next week, we will arrange for your release. Stand up, please, Miss Fay.’

She did so. He stared at her for a long moment, then shook his head and gave a quick, barking laugh. ‘Goodness. Do close your mouth, Miss Fay. The door does not only go one way.’

Whatever the game was, she knew he thought he had won.

‘What about Clem?’ she said.

‘Miss Church? What of her?’

‘Is she on the chronic ward?’

Fuller closed the casebook, his mouth turning down at the corners. ‘I’m afraid not, Miss Fay. Miss Church is far too ill for that. She is in the infirmary, where we are feeding her to save her life.’

‘Her life?’

‘Indeed.’

‘But … you …’

‘Yes?’

She wanted to rip his mask off, rip it so she could see the animal beneath. She was ready. She wasn’t afraid. But she did nothing. As much as it was his fault, she knew it was also hers. She should have given Clem more. They were both of them to blame.

H
E WOKE TO
find three boxes of matches on his pillow, and before he was fully awake they were tucked in his sleeve and he knew: Dan was gone.

Seconds later, the ward was in uproar. Confusion daubed on the faces of the attendants. No trace of him, no broken window. No open door. John, along with everyone else, had no idea how he had done it; Dan had simply disappeared.

The men were locked into the day room and extra attendants were placed at the doors, and as men gathered in those close and foetid quarters, wild rumour spread. Dan had had the help of giants. He had been carried off by fairies. Had stolen a horse from the stables and ridden across the moor in the night. He had become a horse himself.