24
Miracle Baby
‘She used to be married,’ Edith whispered. ‘It was her husband who had her put into Bartholomew Place when he couldn’t cope. She was there more than two years, I think. They divorced.’
They were sat scrunched up together on a small sofa; on either side of them a pile of clothes in carrier bags. The living-room, if anything, was worse than the hall. Vince could just about see the corner of a television poking out from behind a pile of wooden tea chests that appeared to be filled with nothing but old copies of The Radio Times. You could hardly move – breathe, even – for crap, he thought.
‘And you say she’s better now?’ he asked incredulously. ‘I would have hated to have seen her when she was worse.’ He nodded towards a door. ‘What’s she doing? She’s been in there ages. It’s only a pot of tea she’s supposed to be making, not the pot itself.’
‘You’re so impatient!’ she chastised lightly. ‘Nothing’s that simple with Aunty Liz. There are all manner of rituals to get through, all in a set order, and if she misses one or screws it up, she has to begin all over again.’
After what seemed an age Aunty Liz came in bearing a tray, which she carefully put down on the edge of a coffee table before them. Vince automatically went to move a pile of paperback books out of the way.
‘No!’ she cried, and his hand jerked back as if stung. ‘Leave all those just as they are; it’s important they stay that way – can’t you see, young man?’
He nodded quickly. ‘Yes, I can. Now that you mention it.’
She sat down on a padded chair, which was in the in the slow process of losing its padding from various rips and tears. A cat jumped up onto her lap and stared an unforgiving stare at Vince. ‘He’s a bright boy,’ she said to Edith as if Vince weren’t in the room. ‘Where did you find him?’
‘He works at the Empire cinema, Aunty Liz, as a projectionist.’
‘Really? Does that kind of job pay enough to get married on?’
‘Aunty Liz!’ said Edith, her cheeks at once flushing the brightest pink. ‘We’re not getting married!’
‘What? Oh dear! You’re not going to live in sin, are you?’ She wagged a finger at Vince. ‘That’s not the way to behave, young man. You must make an honest woman out of her. You do know she’s a miracle baby, don’t you, Vernon?’
‘Vince,’ he corrected.
‘He doesn’t want to hear that, Aunty…’ said Edith.
‘But you are a miracle, darling! You shouldn’t be here! And miracles deserve better treatment that this.’ She glowered at Vince. ‘My sister couldn’t have a baby, they told her, but Edith here was born against all the odds. She is a bona fide miracle.’
‘I’m not, Aunty, really…’ said Edith.
‘Don’t argue, dear, I know a miracle when I see one. Barren, she was, your mother. Unable to bear children. God smiled on her and gave us you, our little Edith!’ She turned to Vince. ‘So you will marry her.’ She began to look around the room.
‘What are you looking for, Aunty?’
‘My hat, of course!’
‘Which hat, Aunty?’
‘The one I shall be wearing at your wedding, silly! It’s here somewhere.’
Edith passed Vince a cup of tea. She caught more than a glimmer of alarm in his eyes. ‘Don’t worry about the hat just yet, Aunty Liz, there’s plenty of time. I’d like to ask you a question or two, if I can?’
Her attention snapped back. ‘Yes, dear, fire away.’
Bartholomew Place,’ she said. ‘You do remember that, don’t you?’
She smiled sweetly and forgivingly. ‘Do you think me dotty or something? Of course I remember it.’ She bent closer to them both, her voice lowered by an octave. ‘It’s where they put people who were not quite right in the head, dear.’
‘Where is it, Aunty Liz?’
She sat back. ‘Oh, it’s over the border in Dorset. Not far outside Dorchester. Such a dreary old building. Some say it used to be a former workhouse and whether that was true or not it looked the part. It had high walls, like a prison, you might say, in case any of the nutters escaped. You wouldn’t want that, would you, mad people running like crazy all over the town?’ She gave a chiming little chuckle.
‘Do you remember being there, Aunty?’ she probed gingerly.
‘Yes, like it was yesterday. I was posted there in a governmental advisory capacity,’ she said with authority. ‘I was brought in to sort things out, to bring a bit of order to the place. That’s what I was doing there. It wasn’t an easy time for me, mind, being amongst all those crazy people, dribbling, moaning, screaming or wetting themselves all over the place. But one had a job to do.’
‘Do you remember anyone called Laura Leach being inside Bartholomew Place?’ Vince asked.
‘Most definitely. Laura had been in a long time before I went there, and she was in when I left.’
Vince’s heart sank. ‘The same Laura Leach who lives out at Devereux Towers?’
‘The one and the same. Her father was instrumental in having her committed, they say; pushed for her to be sectioned.’
‘Why? What was so wrong with her?’
‘Ah, I don’t rightly know. Some really terrible thing had happened, that much was obvious. I mean, you wouldn’t be in Bartholomew Place all those years without something being dreadfully wrong. One minute she’d be as placid as a little lamb – never talking, mind you, all blank eyes, that kind of thing; and the next thing, well, screaming so much that you feared her lungs would pop with it, a regular banshee, tearing at her hair and arms in a most frightening way. They’d sedate her and lock her away in restraints when she was like that. Then you’d never see her for ages. They tried all sorts to cure her of whatever was wrong with her – ice-cold baths, electric shocks, all the most modern treatments, but she never got any better whilst I was there.’
‘That’s so sad,’ said Edith, glancing at Vince’s crestfallen face.
‘The screaming fits were the worst thing,’ Aunty Liz continued. ‘At those times she’d call out someone’s name over and over again.’
Vince’s ears pricked. ‘Whose name?’
Liz had to trawl through her fogged memories. ‘Gosh, now there’s a thing. Who was it now?’ She fell into what appeared to be a semi-trance-like state and Vince was on the edge of getting concerned for her when she said, ‘Alan! That’s who it was – Alan. Over and over and over, till they put her to sleep.’
‘Have you any idea who this Alan was, or why she’d be calling his name?’ Vince asked.
‘No, hang on…’ she said. ‘It wasn’t Alan, it was Alex, and it wasn’t just Alex she called; she used to shout, Alex, I’m sorry…’ She smiled a self-congratulatory smile. ‘That’s what she used to say.’
‘What was she sorry for, Aunty?’ Edith pursued.
‘For whatever terrible thing she’d done to Alex, what else?’ said Liz.
Vince felt decidedly uncomfortable now. He lowered his gaze and studied his hand on his lap. ‘I’m sure she’s better now,’ he ventured. ‘She has to be, hasn’t she? I mean, they wouldn’t have let her out otherwise, would they?’
Aunty Liz swung her head slowly. ‘No one as bad as that can ever truly get better, can they?’ she said, her eyes sombre and inward-looking. ‘It’s always there, just below the surface, like flowing water beneath a crust of ice. You never know when the ice will crack and the water will come gushing out again.’
* * * *