Читать книгу Letters from Alice: A tale of hardship and hope. A search for the truth. - Petrina Banfield - Страница 11

We are all mad when we give way to passion, to prejudice, to vice, to vanity; but if all the passionate, prejudiced and vain people were to be locked up as lunatics, who is to keep the key to the asylum?

(The Times, editorial, 1853)

The call of distress from the Redbournes’ home came just before five o’clock that afternoon, as the meeting between Alice and Dr Harland was drawing to an end.

A quiet but feverish rapping at the door drew everyone’s attention. ‘Come in,’ Bess Campbell said without looking up. The tapping stopped but the door remained closed. Alice turned to meet Frank’s gaze. He sat motionless, eyeing her through a cloud of smoke. She huffed out some air and got to her feet. When she opened the door her eyes widened in surprised recognition – standing before her was one of the Redbourne girls, Elsa, wearing nothing more than a thin cotton dress. Soaked through and shivering with cold, the twelve-year-old looked close to passing out. ‘Please, Miss, can you come?’ she cried breathlessly. ‘Something awful’s going on.’

Alice glanced behind at her colleagues. Miss Campbell and Dr Harland were already on their feet. She turned back and quickly beckoned the girl into the basement. ‘Yes, of course, I will come directly, but what is it? What has happened?’

Bess Campbell draped a blanket over Elsa’s shoulders and guided her to one of the chairs closest to the hearth, where a fire blazed. The girl refused to sit down. ‘We have to go!’ she cried, hopping from one foot to the other. ‘Mum says you have to come. Charlotte’s gone mad and you have to lock her up.’

Alice, Frank and Miss Campbell exchanged glances. ‘Why, my dear?’ the Lady Almoner asked. ‘What on earth has happened?’

‘I dunno! They won’t let me see her, but Mum says she’s lost her mind and the devil’s responsible. She said you would take her away.’ Elsa began sobbing. Her legs buckled and Alice guided her gently down onto a chair.

Bess Campbell looked expectantly at the doctor. ‘I’m about to go off-duty,’ he said. After an uncomfortable silence he looked up at the ceiling and added gruffly: ‘Right, I’ll make a house call then, shall I?’

‘Good,’ said Miss Campbell. ‘Alice?’

The almoner gave a grim nod. ‘I’ll accompany them,’ Frank said, reaching for his hat.

Elsa made a move but Miss Campbell pressed her hands down onto the girl’s damp shoulders. ‘You’ll wait here with me, at least until the storm passes. Once we’ve established what has happened, then you may return.’

Moonlight flickered as Alice, Frank and Dr Harland disembarked from a hackney carriage taxicab at the end of Dock Street. The rain was lashing down, arcs of light from the terraced houses rippling over the surface of the puddles.

Clumps of confetti from the New Year celebrations still littered the pavements, the soggy flakes clinging to the hem of Alice’s long cape and the tips of her laced-up boots. A discarded sock trailed over the side of a cattle trough, the wool stiff with cold.

Frank marched purposefully towards the Redbournes’ house, his head tilted against the onslaught of rain. Alice wrapped her scarf carefully around her neck and squinted, the doctor following on a few feet behind. Their steps seemed to drag as they followed Frank. Setting out like this gave them all a sense of the likely grimness that lay ahead.

‘She was morally flabby right from the off,’ Mrs Redbourne proclaimed as soon as she opened the door to the small party. Her jowls quivered as she spoke, her compressed mouth growing so thin that her lips were barely visible. ‘Never sat still in church. I knew she’d never amount to much, what with the aggression and the wild ways, but you’d think she’d have learned her lesson after the last time.’ She looked angry, but her eyes were shiny with suppressed tears.

‘What ails Charlotte, Mrs Redbourne?’ Alice asked as she followed Frank into the hall. The doctor stifled a yawn on the shoulder of his coat as he closed the door behind them.

‘I don’t know what it is, do I? An overflow of blood to the head, George says. I say it’s the work of the devil.’

Alice was accustomed to dealing with families who were so mortified by their daughters’ behaviour that they claimed they had been inflicted by a sudden onset of insanity. A diagnosis of insanity was seen by some families as a way of ridding themselves of the embarrassment of wayward daughters, a sort of absolution from the stain of it. The affluent sometimes shipped their ‘excitable’ daughters abroad, or confined them and their offspring to a secluded cottage somewhere in the grounds. There were few appealing options open to most of the Royal Free’s patients.

Surprise rippled over the faces of Alice and her colleagues at the apparent spite shown by the woman, quickly followed by distaste. They watched her in silence for a few moments. It was Dr Harland who spoke next. ‘If you’ll show us the way, then, Mrs Redbourne,’ he said quietly, nodding towards the stairs. There was a coldness to his tone and a degree of irritation as well.

Mrs Redbourne pulled her chin in and straightened the apron she was wearing, her neck flushed. When she next spoke, it was with a precision that was uncharacteristic and clearly forced. ‘They’re in the back parlour. Step this way, won’t you?’ Her use of the plural pronoun seemed to go unnoticed by the doctor, but Alice and Frank exchanged puzzled glances as they followed Mrs Redbourne along the dim passageway. There was no sign of the other children, but excited mutterings and a distant thud suggested they were shut away in one of the bedrooms upstairs.

Outside the parlour room door, Mrs Redbourne lowered her voice to a loud whisper. ‘You’ll pardon the smell. I haven’t been able to get near the bed to change it and she won’t surrender the babe. She’s not put it down since delivering.’

Alice turned and looked at Frank with astonished eyes. He grimaced in response, pipe suspended in the air an inch from his mouth. As Mrs Redbourne pushed the door open and went inside, the smells of the enclosed room spilled out onto the hall: damp linen, lochial blood and the sickly sweet smell of colostrum. Frank took a staggering step backwards, folding himself against the wall. Alice sidestepped him. With her eyes fixed on the bed, she raised the coned sleeve of her cape to cover her mouth and stared.

Several dirty blankets formed a makeshift wall along each side of the mattress and just visible above the bedclothes beyond was Charlotte, a tiny infant’s head lying in the crook of her left arm. Mother and child were utterly still, their faces alabaster. The bedspread covering them, large with embroidered flowers, was crumpled and heavily stained.

‘When did she deliver, Mrs Redbourne?’ Alice asked, a slight catch in her throat.

‘About an hour or so ago. She’s working in the kitchen then all of a sudden she abandons the preparations and goes missing. I heard all the carry-on in the privy.’

Alice closed her eyes momentarily but Mrs Redbourne’s face was set, her expression implacable. ‘She needs to rest for now,’ the almoner said, looking at the woman evenly. ‘I shall wait with her while she recovers, and we can examine her when she wakes. The time might be useful for you and your husband to reconcile yourself with events.’

‘No, no way,’ Mrs Redbourne spat from the foot of the bed. ‘You need to get them out of here now. George won’t have no product of sin …’ she stopped, gathering her rage. ‘A bastard. He’ll not have no bastard child in this house, and nor will I!’ On speaking the word ‘bastard’, she crossed herself.

Charlotte stirred then and half-raised her head from the pillow. The baby remained still. The teenager’s faintly puzzled frown deepened as she took her unannounced visitors in, then her eyes grew wide. A flush rose up her neck, flooding her cheeks crimson.

For several moments no words were spoken, but a strange uneasiness grew. The seconds stretched out. Charlotte’s eyes flitted around the assembled group, analysing their every movement. Slowly, without taking her eyes off her audience, she eased her cradling arm half an inch to the left.

Her mother turned to Frank, eyebrows raised. Taking his cue, he stepped forwards, and then several things happened at once. Charlotte bolted upright and fumbled for her baby, clamping the bundle tightly to her breast. Her thin cotton nightgown shimmered in synchrony with her trembling limbs.

Alice moved then. With one gloved hand outstretched and placating, she edged sideways around a chamber pot half-filled with pink water, blood-soaked rags and something fleshy floating around inside. ‘Charlotte, it’s all right. We’re not going to harm the baby.’

The girl stared at Alice, her eyes wide and fearful. Her lips were almost without colour, the rims of her eyes white. ‘When was the last time Charlotte ate or drank anything, Mrs Redbourne?’ Alice asked, without taking her eyes off the young woman. ‘She looks terribly weak.’

The woman folded her arms haughtily. ‘I’ve told her. She’s getting nothing ’til she recites Our Lord’s Prayer.’

‘Am I to understand nothing has passed the girl’s lips since delivering?’ Dr Harland asked quietly from the doorway. Charlotte turned towards the voice, the glaze clearing from her eyes. A shadow passed across her face, one that seemed to pass unnoticed by the others in the room.

Mrs Redbourne shook her head. One of her eyelids flickered, a brief insight into her guilt. She swept it away with a swift wave of her hand.

‘Oh for heaven’s sake, woman,’ the doctor burst out. ‘She must have water.’

The woman baulked at that, flattening her hands either side of her substantial breasts. ‘I’ve told her –’

‘Water, now please,’ the doctor blasted through gritted teeth.

Mrs Redbourne’s arms fell to her side and her mouth dropped open, but after a moment’s hesitation and an affronted stare she barged past the assembled group and slammed out of the room.

She returned a minute or so later, a cup of water in hand. Without a word she passed it to her daughter, who took a hungry gulp and then choked, the rest of the contents spilling over onto the bed. The infant failed to stir at the disturbance. Alice turned, her features tightened with concern. Dr Harland dropped his Gladstone bag onto a side table near the bed and pulled out his stethoscope. ‘I really must examine the child,’ he told Charlotte. ‘We mustn’t delay.’

‘Come near me and I’ll make you sorry!’ Charlotte cried shrilly. She shrank away, tucking herself at the far end, between the head of the bed and the wall. Her arms tightened around the tangle of blankets and towels housing her small, naked infant, her eyes burning manically. Frizzy tendrils of dark hair had escaped the long braid that hung over her shoulder and were standing out from her head, adding to the appearance of madness.

Doctor Harland draped the scope around the back of his neck and lifted his hands up in an exasperated gesture. He glanced at Alice. She hesitated before opening her mouth, but before she could speak, Frank intervened. ‘Come now, Charlotte,’ he said, easing past the doctor. ‘We need to make sure the infant is well, there’s a good girl.’

‘No!’ Charlotte cried out again, this time with a violent lunge across the filthy mattress. Scrambling back out of reach in the far corner of the room, she began screaming incoherently, all the while clutching her still bloodstained baby to her chest.

Fear and grief masqueraded as madness, so that it appeared that the young mother was wildly out of control and in no fit state to take care of her baby. That she was driven to this because three strangers had descended upon her with the intention of tearing her newborn baby away was equally undeniable.

‘We had all this last year!’ Mrs Redbourne screeched. ‘Her being free with herself. There’s nothing else for it but to get her brains tested.’

Alice frowned. ‘I don’t follow.’

‘She lost it at five or six months gone, thank the Lord,’ the woman continued in explanation. ‘You’d think that’d be enough to stop her, but, oh no, she had to go and do it again, didn’t she?’

‘Perhaps if I spoke to Mr Redbourne?’ Alice ventured. ‘Sometimes, with support, families are able to –’

‘He’s disgusted with her,’ the woman snapped, though a mild flicker crossed her expression. ‘I don’t think there’s no way you’ll talk him round.’

With continuing insistence, Mrs Redbourne acquiesced and asked her husband to come down from his retreat in their bedroom.

‘Ain’t something you expect, is it?’ the porter mumbled grimly when Alice spoke to him in the hall. His dull eyes rested on his wife as he spoke, his fingernails scratching restlessly at the wooden banister. ‘Not from your own.’

Mrs Redbourne nodded along with his every word. ‘Yes, see, I told you.’ She rushed back along the hall towards the parlour, her arm outstretched and beckoning. ‘Come on, then, quick. Let’s get on with it.’

‘Just a moment,’ Alice said, unmoving. Mr Redbourne hovered on the bottom stair, looking troubled. The almoner fixed him with a steady look. ‘There might be some level of support we can put in place, Mr Redbourne, if you were willing to keep Charlotte here. I cannot promise anything, but if you feel differently to your wife, we can perhaps come to some agreement you would both be –’

‘Would you credit it?’ the woman roared. ‘You’re the limit, you really are!’ She charged back up the hall and waved her husband away with a flapping hand. ‘Trying to come between a woman and her husband!’ she said, her hands on her hips. ‘We’re in agreement, and nothing you can say will change his mind.’ Alice’s gaze was still resting on Mr Redbourne. He flicked a regretful glance towards his wife and then turned, trudging back up the stairs.

‘She’s turned into one of those imbeciles you hear about,’ Mrs Redbourne shrieked as she led the way back into the parlour. ‘She’s beyond helping, she’s morally corrupt!’

Dr Harland watched helplessly as Charlotte thrashed around, her lips contorting manically. He was a chest specialist with little experience in the field of psychiatrics, but any doctor was allowed to make a diagnosis and confirm a committal to a mental hospital, whatever their speciality. Tears painted white streaks down Charlotte’s blood-streaked cheeks. Her eyelashes were wet, her pale cheeks suddenly a bloody crimson.

‘Doctor?’ Alice said, her tone suggesting impatience.

Her intervention seemed to snap the doctor out of his indecision. He glanced at Frank, who nodded grimly, then turned back to Charlotte. ‘Miss Redbourne, I have reason to believe you are suffering from an infliction of the mind.’ Charlotte continued to scream and the doctor raised his voice. ‘I fear I must commit you to a hospital for your own safety and that of your child.’

He turned to Charlotte’s mother. ‘Is there insanity or instability elsewhere in the family?’ The Mental Deficiency Act provided local authorities with the power to lock away women deemed defective and, although there are no official figures on the number of unmarried women certified for becoming pregnant – most of those unable to support themselves were sent to the workhouse – some unfortunate victims lost their liberty. A repeat offender like Charlotte could be locked up without an official diagnosis, all on the say-so of one of her parents.

Mrs Redbourne reddened with outrage. ‘Certainly not! It’s nothing to do with us. She’s possessed, I tell you. We were willing to put up with her lashing out, destroying property, we even put last year’s business behind us, but to do it again? That’s just not on. That’s madness!’

Alice winced. Motioning Frank with his eyes, Dr Harland strode forwards and made his way around the end of the bed. Frank pocketed his pipe and followed. At the same time, Charlotte lunged over the other end of the bed and slipped off the side nearest the door. Her foot skidded out. A ghastly gurgle followed as the chamber pot upended and the putrid contents spilled out over the floor.

For a moment everyone froze. The room fell silent, the only sound the relentless drum of rain at the window. It was then that Alice grasped the opportunity to take control. ‘Charlotte,’ she said gently, ‘pass the baby to me, dear. I’ll be very gentle, I promise you.’

The young woman swung her head from side to side, feverishly checking the position of the others. Frank and the doctor remained still for a full minute, Alice speaking soft platitudes all the while.

After weighing up her options, Charlotte seemed to reach a decision. Locking her eyes on Alice’s, she shuffled her feet forwards. There was an oddness to her gait as she rested the infant in the almoner’s arms, though she didn’t let go of her grip.

Alice made a reassuring noise in her throat. ‘There, it’s all right, Charlotte. It will be fine.’

Frank crawled over the bed then. Approaching Charlotte from behind, he rested his hands firmly on her shoulders. ‘That’s it, child, let go.’

Her grip on the infant slackened and she backed away, holding empty hands in front of her. The sodden, meconium-streaked blankets loosened to reveal a tiny baby boy with a painfully thin body and sagging, greyish arms and legs. Alice looked down at him then fixed her gaze on Frank. She pressed her lips together and gave him a sombre, almost imperceptible shake of her head.

Charlotte’s chest heaved. A terrible sound escaped her lips then, a mournful, inhuman howl. She sank shakily down onto the bed, put her head in her hands and wept. Her tears fell onto her gown and mingled with the dark splodges of colostrum staining her front. With an awkward manoeuvre, Alice shrugged off her cape and, discarding the filthy swaddling, wrapped the still infant in its soft wool.

‘We must get Charlotte to hospital,’ Dr Harland said grimly.

The almoners were accustomed to dealing with society’s ills, the cases they became involved in so distressing as to sometimes keep them from sleeping soundly in their beds. Charlotte’s case was different though, because despite their involvement her immediate future still looked bleak.

And so far there had been no indication that the biggest shock of the evening was yet to come.