The Asylum (15 page)

We were required, too, to take all our meals in the dining room downstairs unless the doctors considered us too ill to attend. Male and female patients dined together. There were several tables of various sizes; Mrs. Pearce and at least one of the doctors (who all seemed to be bachelors, living on the premises) would preside at luncheon or dinner. At one of the tables, the faces changed from day to day; later I learnt that these were patients from the more restricted wards, brought in to show them the freedom to which they might aspire if they progressed. Conversation was encouraged, but meals were sombre affairs at best. If it had not been for the company, you might have imagined yourself in some genteel boarding-house.

Dr. Straker assigned me to a place at the middle table, between a Mr. Wingrave, who talked continuously, and a Miss Traherne, who never spoke. Miss Traherne, a tall, emaciated woman with a corpse-white face and lank, mousey hair, would sit, radiating misery, staring at the uneaten contents of her plate until one of the attendants reminded her to take a mouthful. Even the seating formed part of the system of moral therapy: Mr. Wingrave was an example of a man possessed by a delusion he refused to relinquish, and therefore condemned to live out his days at Tregannon Asylum; Miss Traherne was a terrible warning of the fate awaiting those who succumbed to despair.

In Mr. Wingrave, I thought at first that I had found an ally, for he looked and sounded entirely sane, and seemed to know exactly what was wrong with our fellow diners. But then he confided to me that society was controlled by a race of invisible beings called the Overseers; he knew this because he alone could hear their voices. He appeared to be resigned to his fate; the Overseers, he said, had compelled Dr. Straker to certify him, so as to ensure that no one outside Tregannon Asylum would ever discover their existence. You could tell when an Overseer had taken command of someone’s mind because of the look in their eyes, a distinctive glassy stare that he had learnt to recognise. After everything that had befallen me, it sounded all too plausible, except that Dr. Straker was surely the god of our underworld; the attendants, his familiar spirits.

Others at the middle table included a Miss Partridge, small, elderly, very gracious in manner, and possessed by the unshakable conviction that she was the Queen’s younger sister. She had been confined by her own children, to spare them embarrassment, I could only suppose, since she seemed entirely harmless. There was Mrs. Hawksley, wild-eyed, very tense and jerky in her movements, glaring at anyone who approached her. There was Miss Smythe, a small birdlike lady in middle age, who shook her head unceasingly, even when she was eating; sometimes slowly, sometimes in a seeming frenzy of denial. There was the Reverend Mr. Carfax, distinguished-looking, immaculately turned out, who would arrange his cutlery with mathematical precision and then sit brushing invisible specks of dust from the sleeve of his coat; and Mr. Stanton, gaunt, grey-headed, with haunted eyes and a permanent expression of dread. There was Miss Lewes, a stout woman in the grip of religious mania, listening to inaudible voices and arguing sotto voce with them; and others whose names I never learnt, like the immensely tall and thin man who moved like some strange wading bird, pausing before each step with his foot poised above the ground, his face set in a look of utter desolation.

Some weeks after my arrival in the women’s ward, I was standing by the library window, which, like that of my room above, looked out upon the stable yard. It had rained earlier that morning, and water was still dripping from the eaves of the stable building opposite. A wagon drawn by a pair of horses rumbled into view, and I saw that the driver was George Baker. He pulled up on the gravel nearby, and was warmly greeted by two stable hands who came out to help him unload. If only, I thought, I had gone anywhere but Gresham’s Yard that night; I could have got out at Plymouth and begged shelter from the woman who had helped me at the station. Tears sprang to my eyes; I bit my lip and pressed my face against the bars to prevent anyone from noticing.

“Miss Ashton.” Frederic Mordaunt’s voice, low and hesitant, spoke almost at my ear. I had time to register, as I turned to face him, that he looked flushed, and ill, and wretchedly unhappy.

Then I heard myself say, with cold, bitter contempt, “You broke your word. You betrayed my trust. You should be ashamed to call yourself a gentleman.”

Every vestige of colour drained from his face. I heard a gasp from somewhere in the room. His lips parted, but my feet had carried me past him before he could utter a sound. Watching from the doorway, with his habitual air of ironic detachment, was Dr. Straker. A moment later, he slipped away, and by the time I emerged into the corridor, trembling from the reaction, he was nowhere to be seen.

As the winter closed in, I felt myself sinking further and further into a dull, listless apathy. At times I still raged against my confinement, but I could no longer sustain the pitch of emotion that had helped me to endure those first terrible weeks. I had often rejected sedatives; now I was taking every draught that was offered and dozing even during the few short hours of daylight. Christmas came and went in a ghastly pretence of celebration, and after that the weather was too cold and wet—or so I listlessly told myself—to walk in the garden. Separated from anyone who cared for me, from anyone who could even recognise me, I came to realise that my life, which had seemed so unshakably real, consisted
only
of memories, which, according to Dr. Straker, did not even belong to me. There were times when I actually strove to remember something of Lucy Ashton’s past, but nothing would come. Even more fearful than the prospect that I might wake up one morning as Lucy Ashton, a stranger in my own body, was the feeling that I was becoming no one at all: not even a stranger, but a ghost in a body that no longer belonged to anyone.

On a still, clear afternoon, late in March, I set foot in the garden for the first time in months, wrapped in my cloak and moving much more slowly than before. Within the shadow of the building, the air was chill and damp, but sunlight was falling upon a bench in the far corner, and after a couple of turns around the path I sat down to rest. The warmth of the sun on my face seemed to release something within me, and I began to weep, not hysterically, as I had so often, but quietly, naturally, the salt tears welling up and overflowing through my fingers, until I became aware of someone hovering nearby. I looked up and saw that it was Frederic Mordaunt, looking even thinner and more wretched than when I had seen him last, and regarding me with evident distress.

“Please allow me to speak,” he said. “I do not seek—or deserve—your forgiveness, but I have something to say to you.”

He stood before me like a prisoner awaiting sentence, twisting his hat in his hands.

“If you insist on speaking, sir, I cannot prevent you.”

He flinched at “sir,” but stood his ground.

“I ask only that you hear me out.”

If he had called me Miss Ashton, I would have turned my back on him.

“Very well, sir; I will listen. You may as well sit down,” I added, moving to one end of the bench and indicating the other. I did not want him standing over me.

“Thank you. When Dr. Straker returned that Sunday night, after we . . . well, when he told me that he had met Georgina Ferrars in London, I did not at first believe him. But when I learnt that the maidservant, as well as Josiah Ferrars, had been present, and still more when I heard the story of Lucia Ardent, and how she had left Gresham’s Yard two days before you arrived here, I had no choice
but
to believe him. And yet my heart rebelled; it simply did not square with—with everything I knew of you. I could not see how you could be—so deluded, and yet seem so entirely sane.

“He replied—I’m sure he has said this to you—that the reason you are so certain you are Georgina Ferrars is because the personality you have assumed is
all
that you experience, so that you are utterly sincere in your belief. But I was still deeply troubled; I even put it to him that the woman he had met in London was Lucia Ardent, and that she had somehow tricked you into coming here.”

“And what did he say to that?”

“He looked at me pityingly and said that it was the first thing that had occurred to him. And that he had spoken privately to the maid, who had assured him that Miss Ferrars had been at Gresham’s Yard throughout the time that—that you and I were conversing here. And—that I had allowed my emotions to get the better of my judgement.”

He was speaking with his eyes fixed on the gravel at his feet, his hands clasped so tightly that the knuckles had turned white.

“I told him,” he continued, “that I had assured
you,
on my word of honour, that you could leave whenever you chose, and that I was bound to see you the following morning, as I had promised.

“At that, he grew angry. He said I had allowed myself to succumb to a foolish infatuation for a woman who was dangerously ill, and imperilled your sanity by encouraging your delusion that you were Georgina Ferrars; and that your eventual recovery, perhaps even your life, depended upon my
not
seeing you.

“It ended with his ordering me to keep away from you. I felt I had to obey; your health was at stake, and—I doubted my own motives.”

“And why are you telling me this now, after all these months?” I asked bitterly. “Has your conscience been troubling you?”

“I tried to speak to you before, in the library, but you did not want to . . . and Dr. Straker rebuked me for distressing you; and after that I was ill, though that is of no consequence. The thing is—the reason I am here . . .”

I had not wanted to show him any emotion beyond contempt, but his hangdog air provoked me beyond endurance.

“And why should you imagine, sir, that your feelings are of the slightest interest to me? You deceived me; you betrayed me; it is because of your treachery that I am a prisoner here, and will probably die here; and you think I should care for your excuses? You say you are heir to this place; if you are not lying about that as well, it is your duty as a gentleman to order Dr. Straker to release me at once, as you promised he would.”

His reaction was not what I expected. He took a deep breath, lifted his head, and met my gaze for the first time.

“Believe me, Miss Ashton—you disown the name, but I must call you something—if I did not know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you are not Georgina Ferrars, you would have been released long before this. But I would rather see you here than in the county asylum, or in prison, and they are the only alternatives. If we released you now, you would go straight to Gresham’s Yard—would you not?—and Miss Ferrars would have you arrested.”

“And suppose your master is—” I wanted to say
lying,
but my nerve failed me. “Suppose he is mistaken, and
she
is the imposter?”

“I fear that is impossible. Dr. Straker would never have certified you if he had the slightest shadow of a doubt: he would be risking his reputation, even his livelihood. And if I were to order him, as you put it, to lift the certificate, he would ignore me. He is the superintendent, and his word, in every sense, is law.”

“If his word is law, sir,” I said, clinging to my anger, “and he has forbidden you to speak to me, are you not afraid of another rebuke?”

“Well, no,” he said uncomfortably, “he seems to have changed his mind. He said to me the other day that since you seem disinclined to trust him, it might help you to see that I agree that you cannot be Miss Ferrars. I said I would only attempt to speak to you if I could be the bearer of good tidings as well as . . . Well, at any rate, he agreed.”

“Do you mean—to release me after all?”

“No, I’m afraid not—not yet, that is. But when Dr. Straker discovers your true identity, it may turn out that you have no money of your own, and—I wanted to assure you that when you
are
released, you will be provided for.”

“By whom?” I asked.

“Well . . . by me,” he murmured, addressing the gravel at his feet.

“And why, sir, would you wish to provide for a lunatic who does not even know her own name?”

“Because I gave you my word, and because . . . I care about what becomes of you, regardless of your name,” he added, in a voice so low that the words were barely audible.

Again I saw myself standing beside him at the sitting-room window above, looking down upon the bench where we now sat, and saying, “Yours is a loving spirit; it should not die with you.” Was it possible that he was in love with me, a haggard and desperate madwoman, as he must see me—as perhaps I was? The thought was swept aside by another wave of indignation.

“Your word, sir, is worthless; I am here because you broke it, and I would sooner starve than accept a farthing of your money.”

“I feared as much,” he said, rising to his feet. “I meant what I said: I do not hope for your forgiveness. I will trouble you no more, but I will not see you starve, however much you despise me.”

He made me a miserable sketch of a bow, and walked away without looking back.

I remained on the bench, shaking with emotion and realising, as my anger subsided, how foolishly I had behaved. Extraordinary as it seemed, he evidently felt something for me, and I ought to have kept my temper and played upon that feeling, instead of driving him away. I rose, shivering, and was walking toward the building when I became aware of a face peering down at me from the end window on the first floor: a large, flat, porcine face that contorted in alarm as our eyes met, and turned quickly away.

If it had not been for her reaction, I would have assumed it was simply a woman who looked remarkably like Hodges. But the flash of recognition had been unmistakable.

I remained staring up at the window until it struck me that there might be an advantage in pretending that I had
not
recognised her. I lowered my gaze, shook my head as if in disbelief, and set off at a slow, mechanical pace, keeping my eyes fixed on the path, continuing on up the stairs in the same abstracted fashion, and along the corridor to my room, where I closed the observation slide and sank down upon the bed, struggling to comprehend what I had seen.