I took the chair next to the girl, startling her. She leaned forward to see more clearly. As I’d thought, the poor thing was nearly blind.
“No,” I said, “we haven’t met. I’m new—the name’s Mary, though I’m not certain of the rest. They took your spectacles, too, didn’t they? And honestly, what was the architect thinking, facing all the windows north? It’s not like London ever has sun hot enough to roast the inhabitants. Perhaps he was afraid we’d get too excited if we had a few rays of sunshine. Would you like me to read to you for a bit? That’s a book of poetry, isn’t it?”
The thick mittens tightened over the small volume as if I had threatened to toss it in the fire. Closer up, I could see the reason for her bindings: the hair at her temple was gone, with nothing but a ragged fuzz. Trichotillomania was known to Aristotle, who placed it alongside nail-biting, coal-chewing, and paederasty. For these arise in some by nature, and in others (such as those who have been the victims of lust from childhood) from habit.
Not that I thought this girl would benefit from a lecture on Aristotelian ethics. “I could read something else, if you’d prefer. Or we could just sit. I’m working on a piece of needle-work here, although it doesn’t seem to be coming out quite what the designer had in mind.”
We sat for a time, me filling in the stiff fabric with blots of coloured yarn, her listening to my coarsely-woven sleeve go up and down. Her hands relaxed, and eventually the left one took clumsy hold on the little book and held it out in my direction. I laid down my art and took it from her.
“Emily Dickinson? Cheerful sort of woman. Did you know that nearly all her poems came to light only after she’d died? And they say she was a gardener. Shall I read where the ribbon is?”
The cotton-covered head nodded, so I pulled the ribbon aside to run my eyes down the page, becoming more uneasy with every line:
The Soul has Bandaged moments –
When too appalled to stir –
She feels some ghastly Fright come up
And stop to look at her –
Salute her, with long fingers –
Caress her freezing hair…
I could not help glancing over at what this girl had inflicted on her own hair. But she had an expectant look on her face—and she seemed familiar enough with the volume.
I cleared my throat and read aloud, through the goblin-sipping and the bomb-dancing, the shackled feet and the welcoming Horror.
Why couldn’t it have been Wordsworth? Even the bee in this poem was long-dungeoned before rising from his Rose. I read down to the last words—“These, are not brayed of Tongue”—and turned the page, only to see what was clearly the beginning of the next poem.
“Hmm. That seems to be the end of it. Can it be a printer’s error? Or is that actually how it ends? And you know, Miss Dickinson might have been a gardener, but she never studied honeybees. It’s the females that do the work, not the males. Typical, males getting the credit.”
The girl smiled, no sign of distress in her face now. I returned the smile, even though she probably could not see it, and turned the page to the next unsettling, agoraphobic, grammatically challenging poem.
Chapter Fourteen
THUS PASSED MY DAY AMIDST the lunatics. Bedlam was a most efficient machine: dinner at 1:00—perfectly edible, with several courses and vegetables that were not cooked to a pulp—followed by supervised airings in the garden, tea at half-four, then a poetry reading and group singing before our supper. The nurses counted every patient going outside, every patient coming back in, and every knife and fork taken from the locked cutlery box. The ward’s scissors were kept at all times on the nurses’ chatelaines, which made for multiple trips back and forth when a patient was working with something requiring much snipping.
All day, patients were kept fully occupied—if not with group activities, undemanding jobs, and outdoor time, then with water treatments, massage, and talk therapy. The nurses were watchful, and skilled at easing tensions, getting us through the day without bloodshed. Or at any rate, without anyone shedding someone else’s blood. And the haggard woman with the heavily scarred arms only managed a small cut on her forearm before the nurse caught her, prising away the scrap of broken glass the patient had found in the flower bed during her airing.
(I surmised, from the tired exclamations of the nurses, that the place was still living with the results of a bomb dropped on the front lawn by a Zeppelin, which had destroyed every window on the north side. I also gathered that there were plans to move the asylum to the suburbs, down near Beckenham, a move that was much anticipated.)
By the time we sat down to our evening meal, I was exhausted, shattered of nerves, and craving strong drink, but I had managed three more conversations—sensible conversations, that is, not those that spiralled into personal delusion and fixation—concerning Nurse Trevisan. My initial impression of her was confirmed: she was competent, efficient, somewhat aloof, and had a soft spot for Vivian Beaconsfield.
When it came to Lady Vivian herself, the consensus was surprisingly sympathetic, despite the title tacked onto her name. She had been here since 1920, and was regarded as one of the permanent residents, the small number of women who were theoretically curable (thus not housed with the permanently damaged) but too refined to join the paupers in a county asylum.
She was melancholic, rather than manic. When she first came, she talked little and was liable to fits of silent weeping. Nurses had to urge her from her bed, urge her to place food in her mouth. They would lead her out of doors, and prompt her to move rather than stand in one place, head down. She was not permitted visitors in those early months, and when it was noticed that letters from home sent her back into her bed, those stopped, too.
Once the outer world had been thus walled away, the fragile creature began to make timorous ventures from her protective shell. A smile, a nod, the occasional brief conversation. She would actually choose a chair in the day room rather than wait to be placed in one, and participate in the arrangement of her hair, clothing, and room. Her equanimity faltered when Nurse Denver, one of her favourites, left to care for an ailing mother, but a few weeks later Nurse Trevisan arrived, and returned to the patient the sense of security she craved.
I was puzzled at the thought that Lady Vivian’s continued presence at Bedlam was by her own choice. However, the view was unanimous: many patients less balanced than she had been long since de-committed and sent back into the world. She looked to be here for life (or, at least, for as many years into the future as her family would pay).
If this was true, I was left with three possibilities. One, the doctors knew something about Lady Vivian that her fellow patients did not. Or, Vivian herself strongly wanted to stay here, where it was “safe.” Third, that despite the laws and reforms of the Victorian era, Vivian’s family—namely, Lord Selwick—was quietly paying the hospital to lock his sister inside walls.
I dreaded the first; I doubted the third. And if staying here was in fact Vivian’s choice—at least, until the previous week—then I for one would have been happy to let her be.
I sighed down at the warped tin plate on the table before me.
However, she had not chosen to stay.
Thus, I needed another head injury.
* * *
—
I picked my nurse with care: one large enough to be somewhat clumsy, young enough to be inexperienced, and among those who had been there since the morning, that she might be going home soon.