Property of a Lady

‘Occasionally, I worry that I might still be slightly mad – like a cracked piece of pottery – but the medics are being very breezy and cheerful, and saying I’m entirely recovered. Perfectly capable of going out into the world again, they say. It’s a cold and very large world beyond the walls of Brank Asylum, but I dare say I can put up a good enough show of sanity in front of most people.

The doctors here never did put a label on what was wrong with me – I shouldn’t think there was a suitable label for it really. Instead, they talked about a breakdown from overwork and stress. Stress! Ha! I’ve never suffered from stress in my life, and as for overwork – I’ll bet I could overwork the doctors here into the ground any day.

When I asked if they had any objection to my drafting out a few notes for this book that’s going to include Brank, they said not at all and added that writing was therapeutic, pronouncing this solemnly as if it might not have occurred to me.

I’ve told the historian I’m as sane as he is (ha!), but that I unravelled a bit at the hem a couple of years ago. Like that sweater you’re wearing is unravelling at the hem, I said. (It was what we use to call Fair Isle, although I don’t know what they call it today. I dare say if he uses any of this stuff in his book he’ll leave that bit out.)

If he does decide to put that in, I’d like it understood that I consider I was entitled to unravel a bit at the hem two years ago. I think anyone would have unravelled if they’d seen what I saw in that hellish house.

The historian-cum-author can print this verbatim in his book if he thinks it will be of any interest, or it can be clipped to my medical records or flushed down the nearest lavatory for all I care. But perhaps if I write it down, it’ll drive the memories from my mind once and for all. Then I can draw a line under it and write QED. That which was to be proved. And now I’m reducing Charect’s darkness to a mathematical equation.

Charect. It’s a very old form of word. In essence, it means an inscription, as in ‘character’. But before the word became virtually lost, it signified something rather dark and often forbidden. I was allowed books while I was in Brank – and I found a number of interesting applications of the term. One fifteenth-century document recommends a specific charect to promote easy childbirth, while another was created as a defence against violent death, although there’s a counter-warning against that one, which says, “What wicked blindenes is this than to thinke that wearing Prayers written in rolles, thei shall die no sodain death, nor be hanged, or, yf hanged, shall not die.” That warning seems to have been issued after a charect was found on a murderer in Chichester Gaol in 1749. Curiously, it appears the man who possessed the charect actually did cheat the gallows, although there’s an ironic twist to the story. It seems the condemned man was struck with such horror on being measured for the irons in which his hanged body would later be displayed (they say the twentieth century is violent!) that he expired on the spot from sheer terror. Which goes to prove the old saying that the devil never keeps his side of a bargain.

What’s interesting on a purely local level is that a seventeenth century source states a charect can be used as a defence against: “Witchcraft, evil Tongues, and all efforts of the Devil or his Agents who walk the world seeking prey.” Is that why Charect House was so named? It wasn’t always called Charect – I discovered that early on. Its original name was Mallow House. That’s a lovely name for a house – it’s a deep purple name, redolent of scented summer nights with pale lilac flares in the dusk . . . There was a mallow at the house – I remember seeing it. But the house’s name was changed in 1890 – one of the older attendants in Brank says her father told her how the name was changed to give the house protection from what walked there.

“Did it work?”

“They say not. They say whatever haunted that house, still does.”