31
A Close Secret
It was mid-afternoon and yet the light was as dull as dusk. It had been raining heavily all day, and had not let up once. Today it had reached monsoon proportions, or what Leonard Kimble presumed must resemble a monsoon as he’d never actually seen one, never been further than Somerset. He wanted that ignorance to change. One day he’d see the world, finally escape this dead hole of a place with its small minds and petty, provincial ambitions. Never more so than on a day like today, when the wind whipped off the levels and drove on unchecked through Langbridge, its cramped streets awash, the fields hereabouts sodden.
Dreary, he thought as he paused on the stone bridge that spanned the swollen river. He’d never seen the Lang so high or rushing so fast, its swirling, muddy waters carrying along huge tree limbs and other detritus, thrashing its earthen banks like a petulant child in a tantrum lashing out at its mother, great chunks of earth being dislodged and swept into the churning depths. Some said, fearfully, that if it carried on like this it would break its banks altogether, like it did back in 1947. What did the morons expect, thought Kimble? The damned place was built on a drained floodplain. Anyhow, that was just people getting wound-up, like they always did around here. They see a shooting-star and they get all superstitious. There were still those who practised wassailing at Christmas, clanging their pots and shouting like mad around an apple tree, and then pouring a jar of perfectly good cider onto its roots. This was 1976, for God’s sake!
The sign was dripping wet. The Sedgemoor Retirement Home. It was an uninspiring grey box of a building erected some time in the late-1950s; it was functional, plain, and constructed at a time when building materials were in short supply after the last war. The stopping-off place for pensioners on their way to kicking the bucket. It reminded him of a concrete coffin, now he thought about it, and that was rather fitting.
He rang the bell at the front door and a woman in a pale-blue uniform covered over with a red cardigan answered.
‘I’m here to see Mrs Bradshaw,’ he said. ‘I’m expected.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said the woman, ‘the man from The News of the World.’ She invited him in. ‘Shocking weather we’re having,’ she said apologetically, as if she were responsible for the rain. ‘We get a lot of this in this part of the country. Is it raining where you came from?’ She led him to the front desk where he signed a visitors’ book. ‘You look very familiar, Mr Hemmingway. Have you been to Langbridge before?’
‘This is my first time,’ Kimble said. ‘Can I see Mrs Bradshaw, please?’
She took the lead down a maze of corridors, the air stifling with the radiators being set to high. Bland prints were hung on bland walls, and all the lights had been turned on to fend off the encircling darkness outside the rain-blurred windows. Every now and again a fresh squall threw more water at the panes. The woman paused at a door and knocked.
‘Ellen – Mr Hemmingway is here to see you.’ She turned to Kimble. ‘They’ve just had their afternoon tea and Mrs Bradshaw normally likes to take a nap at this time, so she could be a little tired.’ A faint voice told them to come in and the woman opened the door for Kimble. ‘I’ll leave you to it. Just call at the desk when you’re ready to be let out.’ She trotted off brightly down the corridor.
Ellen Bradshaw was sitting in a well-padded armchair facing an electric fire, its twin bars blazing orange. She had a friendly face, thought Kimble, if there really is such a thing; rounded, heavy jowls, watery blue eyes, thinning grey hair moulded into a mass of curls.
Leonard Kimble had been doing some digging. He’d searched the microfiche in the Gazette office, looking for any past article concerning Bartholomew Place, particularly where they mentioned ex-employees. He stumbled across a few leads but most people had either died or left the county and he’d no idea how to begin to trace them. He found one, though, and she had been a nurse at Bartholomew Place – Ellen Bradshaw – who had been living under his nose all this time, here at The Sedgemoor Retirement Home over the bridge and on the outskirts of Langbridge. He contacted her and was surprised at how eager she was to speak to him, and even more so when she heard he was from The News of the World. She said she had something she wanted to tell him, something she needed to get off her chest. That suited Kimble just fine. He couldn’t believe his luck.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Bradshaw,’ he said politely, closing the door behind him. The heat inside the room was almost unbearable, but the woman had a thick blanket spread over her legs, and she wore a hefty, hand-knitted cardigan.
‘Mr Hemmingway?’ she asked.
‘That’s right. Call me Ernie,’ he said.
‘Please, do take a seat,’ she said, pointing to a chair by the fire. She looked faintly nervous, her eyes saucer-wide and unblinking. ‘Forgive me for saying, but you look rather young.’
He smiled. ‘I’m older than I look, Mrs Bradshaw,’ he said. ‘And The News of the World has invested in a raft of young reporters learning their craft; it is a modern, forward-thinking newspaper.’
‘A national paper,’ she said.
‘Yes, famously so.’
‘That is good. That is what’s needed.’
Kimble sat down and took his wet coat off. He hung it on the back of his chair and removed a pad and pen from the coat pocket. ‘I won’t keep you,’ he assured. ‘I just need to ask a few questions about Bartholomew Place.’
‘And I need to tell you a few things about it. It’s time I let people know about some of the things that went on inside there. Not just there but in other similar places too. It’s not right; people’s lives have been ruined.’
He was taken aback by the outpouring. ‘Ruined? I’m not sure what you mean, Mrs Bradshaw.’
She stared at him and for a moment he feared she had seen through his deception, but she shifted her attention to the fire. ‘I am ill, Mr Hemmingway. You get to a certain age and you are beset with all manner of illnesses you never dreamt about as a young person. But such things are inevitable. So many changes happen to you as you grow older. It’s like feeling the cold, for instance.’ She pulled the blanket further up her legs and appeared to shiver. ‘Or seeing things in a different light. Seeing things how they really are – were.’ She turned back to him. ‘I’m nearly seventy-seven-years-old,’ she admitted, in that way older people sometimes do when fishing for compliments about how they don’t look their age. Kimble found that the majority not only looked their age but in fact looked far older, in his opinion.
‘You don’t look it,’ he said, playing the game. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re doing in a retirement home – surely you’re far too young?’
‘And you are a practised flatterer,’ she said, smiling. ‘All your life still ahead of you, life as yet to be discovered, both good and bad. It’s easier for the young to lie, to see things in plain black and white, to accept what others tell you is the truth, is the way of the world, and for you to believe what you think is right and proper. A young person’s perspective on the world is not as elastic as it becomes when you get older. When you get to my age you’ll see how things become less straightforward. I was like you once. I believed what I believed, believed what I was told. But now I find I question everything. All manner of strange things. I like Beethoven…’ she said unexpectedly.
‘Beethoven, Mrs Bradshaw?’
‘I ask myself, do I love to listen to Beethoven because I like his music, or because to like Beethoven is cultured and his music raised on a pedestal by the musical elite, and to like it is to be like them, cultured? How much of that has influenced me in liking Beethoven in the first place?’
‘That’s very interesting,’ said Kimble, not the slightest bit interested in her ramblings. He wanted to get the silly old duffer back on track. ‘So, Bartholomew Place…’
‘Now I look back on my life I see where I have been blind, misled, whilst all along so sure in myself that everything I did I did for the benefit of people, for their good. Today I see it clearer than I’ve ever done before, and I see it for what it is; that I was so very wrong. I’m too old, Mr Hemmingway, to keep these things to myself. Before my time is up I feel I must make some amends for my own part in things, albeit a small part. That is why it was fortuitous you contacted me when you did, almost as if my prayers had been answered. Perhaps you have been sent by God.’
He followed her gaze, which settled on a wooden crucifix fastened to a wall above a cabinet. He smiled uncertainly. ‘How long did you work at Bartholomew Place, Mrs Bradshaw?’
‘Twenty-five years, give or take a few months.’
‘A long time.’
‘Time to experience many things. I wanted to help people, you see, for as long as I can remember. My mother, bless her, didn’t like me being involved in that kind of work, close to people who were not right in the head, as she used to say – couldn’t understand why I was drawn to it. But I saw it as a calling. To support people less fortunate than myself. Ill, but not physically – illnesses of the mind, where the damage cannot be seen, cannot be cut out with a surgeon’s knife.’
‘That’s very worthwhile and commendable of you, Mrs Bradshaw. As I said when we spoke over the phone, I’ve been tasked with writing an article on the state of our mental institutions, past and present; how they’ve changed and the levels of care, that kind of thing.’
‘Yes, that is something that desperately needs to be written.’
This was going to be far easier than he first thought, Kimble mused. ‘I mentioned also that I’d like to talk about a particular patient who resided at Bartholomew Place a number of years ago…’
She shrank back. ‘Oh, we can’t mention names! Patient confidentiality.’
‘Please don’t worry about that. Everything will be kept anonymous. We’ll call this patient Miss X, shall we?’
She thought about it. ‘I suppose that will be acceptable.’
‘You were there when a patient called Laura Leach was admitted, correct?’
She struggled within herself. ‘No names?’
‘No names at all,’ he said. ‘But a specific patient experience will emphasise the validity of certain treatments.’ He thought he was talking bullshit but she nodded in agreement.
‘That’s true,’ she said, as if to give herself reassurance. ‘And we will be calling her Miss X, won’t we?’
‘Yes,’ he lied, and found lying was coming far too easily to him.
‘And Laura’s case was typical of so many young women who passed through Bartholomew Place, if indeed they passed through at all. Some never left. It would be good to use her as an example, as an illustration of the wider malaise.’
What on earth was she going on about, he thought? ‘OK,’ he said, ‘for starters, why was Laura admitted to Bartholomew Place? I understand from my other source that there was a death involved – is that right?’
‘A death. Yes, that’s absolutely right. Poor man…’
She fell infuriatingly silent as her mind wandered back over past events. ‘Mrs Bradshaw?’ he prompted.
‘Laura Leach came to Bartholomew Place the same year I retired,’ she began, her fingers fumbling beneath the blanket. ‘That would be 1959. She was about seventeen-years-old, as I remember. A snip of a thing. Terribly shaken, afraid, not knowing what was happening to her. I didn’t know the full story at first, not till I had access to all her notes.
‘She’d been away at boarding school. Bullied relentlessly it appears, which drove her into such lonely depths one can hardly imagine. When she was old enough her father paid for her to take driving lessons. The driving instructor was a young man, married with a child. We never knew his name, of course. It seems she fell for his easy charms, and, perhaps, he genuinely did care for her. But Laura, being so young and impressionable, deprived of companionship and warmth for so long, fell in love with him, or what innocent and impressionable young women like Laura mistake for love. He should have known better, of course – she was only just sixteen. But in a moment of weakness, madness – perhaps even true love – they…’ She lapsed into silence again, looking up at Kimble. ‘Well, you know. I needn’t describe the details. Maybe this was only intended to be a one-off on the man’s part. Maybe they both realised the mistake they had made. We shall never know. But as is the way with these things it took only the once and she became pregnant with his child.
‘She didn’t know what was happening to her at first, being innocent of such things. But it dawned on the deputy headmistress, who noticed the telltale swelling and who insisted on calling out a doctor to examine Laura. When they discovered she was pregnant that’s when things blew up. Laura refused to believe the evidence of her own eyes at first, but when the truth could not be ignored, instead of being horrified she was beside herself with joy at the prospect. The sheer magic of a new life, something that she would nurture and give all the love she never had, swamped all other practicalities and misgivings.
The headmaster informed Laura’s father at once, and took it on himself to privately inform the young driving instructor. Both parties took it badly. Unable to bear the shame, to face the consequences of what he’d done and the consequences for his marriage, the driving instructor took his own life, apparently dying of carbon monoxide poisoning inside the very car in which they’d conceived the child.
‘Laura was grief stricken at the news. But her father came at once to take her from school and bring her back to Devereux Towers. He was immensely angry and disgusted that Laura had not only brought disgrace upon herself and her family but had compounded things by bringing about the death of the young man, tearing apart his family in the process. He heaped full blame for all that had happened on Laura, and Laura alone.
‘Abortion being out of the question, she was kept a virtual prisoner in Devereux Towers till the child was born. She named the baby Alex, though it was never christened such, because the child was taken from her as soon as the umbilical cord was cut. She cried out for it as the midwife wrapped the baby in a blanket and carried it from the room. She never saw the baby again.
‘Her father could not forgive her. He was already a man with a voice in Langbridge, standing on the town council as well as being from the wealthiest family in the area. He put her behaviour down to a diseased mind and he used his influence to have her sectioned and sent away to Bartholomew Place.’
Leonard Kimble had stopped scribbling on his pad a while ago, engrossed by her story. ‘You mean Laura was sent to an asylum primarily because she was a young woman who had a baby out of wedlock?’
She nodded gravely. ‘You imagine this to be an isolated incident, young man? Do you know how many women have been put into asylums for this very reason, the country over? How many years some of them stayed in these places? As for Laura, like so many others she was sterilised whilst inside Bartholomew Place, so she could never have children again. They believed people with mental health issues should not have children. So you see that’s why I needed to tell my story to you, to the national press. Poor Laura was but one amongst many women who have had to endure this barbarism by our so-called care system.’
‘She wasn’t mad?’
‘It depends who is making the judgement. Pregnancy in one so young was once considered the act of a degenerative mind. The additional suicide of the father was a double-blow for Laura. It sealed her fate.’
‘But her father – he pushed for this to happen?’
‘He actively sought it, yes. Laura was in Bartholomew Place for many, many years.’
‘She didn’t kill anyone?’ he asked.
‘Not directly. Her only crime was the opposite – she gave birth. Are you getting all this down, young man?’ she said curtly, nodding at his frozen pen.
‘Yes, I am,’ he said. ‘But being held in such a place for all those years – could this have had a negative effect on her mind?’
‘It can’t have had any other.’
‘Could it have made her violent, for instance?’
She frowned at his bluntness. ‘Who knows what effect such a lengthy immersion can have on people? Anger, vengeance, an inability to make relationships, suicide – they are all possibilities. The loss of her baby made Laura both inconsolable and angry, till that anger was driven out of her by various treatments. Or they tried. Who knows what kind of legacy that leaves on a sane mind? You must help me, Mr Hemmingway; you must help me bring all this to light by bringing it to the attention of the wider public. For all I know such practices are still going on, even though it is 1976. I need to get my story out for all those women who have suffered and who continue to suffer.’
‘And the baby?’ he asked. ‘What became of Laura’s baby?’
‘It was given to a childless couple living in Langbridge.’
‘And Laura never knew who they were? Never knew where her child lived?’
She shook her head. ‘She never knew. It was her father who orchestrated finding the couple and arranged for the baby to be adopted. No one outside Devereux Towers or Bartholomew Place knew of Laura’s pregnancy. It was kept a close secret. But even close secrets leak out, especially in a place like Langbridge.’
‘Do you know who the child is, and where it is now?’
Ellen Bradshaw’s eyes began to water. Kimble didn’t know whether it was the heat from the fire or emotion that prompted them. ‘No names?’ she asked again, firmer. ‘You have to promise me that. And it must not go any further than you or I. The child does not know its sad beginnings or who its real mother is. It would be devastating to find out such a thing, as you can imagine.’
‘Yes, I promise,’ said Kimble, ‘it will be our secret. And it is good for your health to get things off your chest.’
‘I shall tell you who the child is,’ she said, her jaw stiffening. ‘But first put away your pad and pen.’
* * * *