At first glance, my eyes interpreted the figure as Ronnie’s ancient grandmother: tiny with age, white-haired, kept upright by the nurse’s assistance.
Certainly she was small—and she did look older than the early thirties I knew her to be, with thin, somewhat greasy pale blonde hair scraped back against her head. She wore normal day clothes, somewhat out of date and with the dullness of coarse laundry soap. It also lacked the belt its side-loops intended. However, the woman herself seemed neither worn nor particularly dull. Vivian greeted Ronnie with warmth, acknowledged my introduction with a hand-clasp, then bent over the infant with all the proper exclamations. She looked less mad than tired, like a woman recovering from a long and dreary fever.
Aunt and niece settled on chairs before the fire to examine young Master Fitzwarren in all his splendour, and were soon oblivious to the world. The nurse remained near the door, which might have been a hospital requirement, although she did not appear impatient or eager to get away. I moved over to her side. She was nearly as tall as I and only a few years older, with short, neat dark hair—short hair perhaps being an advantage to those working with the aggressively insane. She wore no more makeup than I did, not even to lessen the prominent mole along her jaw-line. I nodded towards the Beaconsfields. “I don’t imagine your patients get to see many children.”
“You’d be right there.” Her accent was London, although I’d have said to the north of the River and some miles west. “A sweet world it would be if the mad could be put in charge of the nursery.”
I smiled at the image, and held out a hand. “Mary Russell. I’ve known Ronnie since University.”
“Rose Trevisan. I’ve known Miss Beaconsfield since she arrived.” Miss Beaconsfield, I noted, rather than Lady Vivian. Socialist doctrine, hospital policy—or simple ignorance of titles? Her own name sounded Cornish, but her black hair and olive skin suggested that her people were of a more recent immigration.
“I hope she’s doing all right here, Sister?”
“You knew her before?”
“I met her once, five or six years ago. That was before…”
“Before her troubles descended,” Nurse Trevisan provided.
“Yes.”
“She’s doing well. Finding peace.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Bedlam—sorry, Bethlem—has a rather dubious reputation, but Ronnie says her aunt is happy here.”
The nurse smiled. “An evil reputation can be a protective wall. Those who imagine a vicious dog behind a fence don’t climb over and discover the spaniel.”
It was a startling thought. The wail that had greeted our arrival was far from contented—but before I could say anything stupid, “Miss Beaconsfield” looked up from her great-nephew and called her attendant over to admire him.
We took tea, an oddly normal ritual undermined in part by the pre-buttered scones (rendering knives unnecessary) and institutionally sturdy tea service (which, if broken, would have nothing resembling a sharp edge). The conversation flowed nicely when it ran through the safe territory of books and babies: Ronnie kept her aunt well supplied with reading material, and Vivian’s memories of an infant Ronnie were fond. When those streams ran dry, it was up to Ronnie to supply news, there being little point in asking what her aunt had been doing. Politics was too complicated, mutual friends too few—although when Ronnie happened upon the topic of a formal wedding she’d attended a few weeks before, Vivian’s face came alive, and she wanted to know every detail of dress and music and the foods served.
Eventually, Ronnie’s grasp of the details grew thin, and Vivian sat back with a tiny sigh. The garden outside was fading in the dusk, and Nurse Trevisan—who had remained in the room, reading a book in the corner—took out her watch. As she stood, we heard raised voices from the hallway outside, building in fury to a scream and a scuffle, then silence.
Ronnie bit her lip, not looking at her aunt, but the older woman reached out to take her hand. “Dear child, a disrupted mind is not a pretty thing. I thank you for not coming in recent months. The memory of my dishevelled hair would forever lie between us.”
Ronnie gave out a noise that was halfway between a sob and a laugh, and gripped her aunt’s hand. “Oh, Auntie Viv, I’ve missed you so, I wish I…I could do something for you!”
“Nonsense! Your letters have been life-savers. I treasure the photographs you have sent. Those are the world to me.”
“But, isn’t there anything you need? Would you come and live with Simon and me? Oh, anything at all, Auntie, just ask.”
“Ronnie, dear, I need to stay at Bethlem for a time. I’m safe here. Although if you’d like to send me a present, I’d adore a pot of your mother’s damson preserves, when she makes some. If you posted it to Nurse Trevisan, she could dole it out to me.” She glanced across the room at the nurse, who smiled back at her. “Oh—and I nearly forgot!” She patted at her garments until she heard a crinkle, and pulled out a folded drawing. “This is for the young man. Not terribly colourful, but all I have is a regular pencil. Ah—perhaps if you send me some pastels, I might do a better one for his nursery wall.”
When Ronnie unfolded the paper, her face went soft with delight. She held it up for me to look at: a black-and-white Pierrot with ruffled collar and rounded hat. His expression was bashful yet mischievous, perfect for a child’s room; my hand wanted to smooth away the fold lines across his face.
Ronnie let me hold it as she prepared to depart, bundling the boy, embracing her aunt, taking her leave of Nurse Trevisan. It was near-dark outside, the motor a rumbling oasis on the forecourt, and I laid the drawing on the seat to help Ronnie climb in with her arms full of child and blankets.
As we drove through the gates of Bedlam, back into the streets of London as if we were crossing over from a calm island, young Simon began to raise protests that sounded eerily like the voice of madness. I folded the drawing and tucked it away in Ronnie’s handbag. When she’d got the boy settled, she remarked, “Aunt Vivian used to do the most beautiful watercolours. We have some at home—that one of the cottage, that I have in my sitting room?”
“Yes, I remember. I wonder if she’s started again? I imagine it would do her good.”
“I hope so. Mummy says Auntie Viv closed her sketch-books the day Daddy died, and hasn’t touched them since. She’ll be so happy to know that Auntie Viv’s drawing again.”
Drawing, yes—although I had to think that Pierrot was a rather mixed image for a child’s room: a too-trusting, isolated figure of derision, rejected by his love and mocked by his betters, the most poignant of the commedia dell’arte characters.
And what on earth had the woman meant by I’m safe here?
Chapter Three
“THE LADY VIVIAN SOUNDS LESS of a lunatic than many of those freely walking the streets of London,” Holmes remarked. His pipe had gone cold, and he fished around for the ceramic bowl to knock out its burnt remains.
“She came very near to killing herself,” I noted. “And she’s been known to attack her brother with a steel poker.”
“I have been tempted to do the same to mine,” he murmured.
“She ended up in Bedlam, Holmes. That says a lot.”