Chapter 18

Meg

Despite Sally Caldwell's suggestion that the pills given to me had been a sedative, my first night as a patient of the Kirkbride Psychiatric Hospital had not been a restful one. The bedroom was cold and I struggled to get comfortable on a mattress that was too firm for me, shrinking away from the leather restraints, under a blanket thinner than I had thought. After half an hour or so, I left the bed and groped in the darkness for its twin. Finding it, I stripped off the blanket and added it to my own bed. I had just started to doze off when a shaft of blinding light struck me in the eyes. I squinted against the glare and resolved it into a figure with a lantern on the other side of the door, shining the light directly into my face. I groaned and pulled the extra blanket over my head. The person with the lantern moved on, and I listened to the staccato footsteps, the light changing as its bearer checked the rooms on the opposite side of the corridor.

I felt exhausted, but rest would not come to me. I spent the entire night half awake and half asleep, my mind whirring with thoughts and emotions.

Before I knew it, someone was pulling my double layer of blankets away from me, and a voice said:

"Come on, it's time to get out of bed."

I dragged myself into the bathroom, annoyed to find that only one of the gas lamps was illuminated and without any windows, the room was swathed in shadows. I nearly jumped out of my skin. For a split second, I was convinced that I was looking at a ghost, but then my exhausted mind readjusted to real life. If my years around Erik had taught me anything, it was that there were no such things as ghosts, and all attempts to make someone believe otherwise were grief, fear-mongering or manipulation.

The pale figure was another patient, and as I squinted at her in the dim light, I recognised her.

"It's Miss Tamworth, isn't it?"

She was standing utterly silent and still at the far end of the room, her white fingers clutching the edge of one of the washbasins. It was full of water, right to the brim, and she was staring down into it, her long blonde hair, several shades lighter than mine, resting its split ends on the shimmering surface. She jumped when I spoke, her head twisting towards me, and I saw that her hair was not just light blonde, but that there was a streak of grey in it too, running from root to tip as if someone had swiped a paintbrush down its length.

"Emily." She corrected. "Only the staff here call me Miss Tamworth."

"My name is Meg Giry."

Despite the grey streak, Emily Tamworth was younger than I was, although it was difficult to tell upon first glance. Her face was thin, hollowed and pale in the manner of someone struggling through a long illness, the sort that ate a person from the inside out. She looked like she had lost a lot of weight in a short amount of time, and her eyes were dull.

"Are you the one who is expecting a baby?" She spoke slowly, and I wondered if she was drugged as I nodded in the affirmative. "I had a baby once. A son. Kit, his name was. Christopher really, after his father. My little Kit. He would be three and a half in a few days' time. But he was only just three when I lost him." She turned her attention back to the washbasin. "He drowned in the pond in the park."

I felt the breath catch in my throat. Such simple words, delivered in a tone as dull as her eyes, but so full of grief that I could see her being consumed by it. I remembered how much the loss of my unborn baby had torn at my soul, and that was before I had given that child a name, cuddled him, fed him, seen him laugh and begin to grow into a person in his own right. Grief like that could send a mother, younger than I was, sinking into insanity.

"He loved to feed the ducks, and it was such a shallow, small pond. There were other people around; mothers and nursemaids and nannies with their charges. And I was so tired that day, Meg Giry. I sat down on a bench to rest my feet. I don't even remember falling asleep. But when I woke up, the park was almost empty, and Kit was floating face-down in the pond. He was so tiny. The water was not deep, but it was enough to take him from me."

The fear was clutching with icy fingers at my heart and stomach, and yet very slowly, as if I were nothing more than a wraith myself, I moved closer to her. I could see her reflection in the still water, her gazed fixed on that of her mirrored image. Was she seeing her child's eyes, instead of her own?

"I have always wondered what it must be like to drown. To open your mouth for air, and have only water fill you instead. It wasn't even a deep pond, but Kit was so tiny."

"It is peaceful," I told her, feeling the lie coming so naturally from my lips that I might almost believe it myself. "It feels like falling asleep. Once there is no more air, water is a comfort. With someone so tiny as your Kit, it would have been quick and painless. There would not have been any pain."

I could feel tears prickling at the back of my eyes, blinked rapidly to hold them back, and reached for the chain of the plug, and pulled it free from the washbasin. As the ripples washed across the surface and the water began to swirl down the plughole, it was almost like the spell Emily Tamworth was under seemed to lift slightly. She raised her eyes to mine.

"It's time to get dressed, Emily." I told her, my voice gentle but firm. "The sun is out and it promises to be a beautiful day."

It may not be hygienic to start the day without washing, but I was scared by the notion that Emily Tamworth might have been standing at that washbasin for hours, perhaps all night. Had she been building up the courage to plunge her head into the water? I should not have lied to her; should have told her that drowning was the worst possible death a person could experience, that water would burn the lungs and the body would rebel against the inevitable with everything it could. That instead of peace, a person's last moments would be slow and filled with torment and terror and terrible pain. But how could I do that to someone who looked so fragile that she might break as I linked her arm through mine.

I led her to the room opposite my own, where her roommate Winifred Dent was nothing more than a bundle beneath the blankets of her bed, snoring gently. I wondered if she had been given a wake-up call as I had and simply chosen to ignore it. Feeling like a mother myself, I helped Emily out of her nightgown and into clean clothes, buttoning her apron for her. Unlike in my own room, there was a mirror on the writing desk, so I had Emily sit down on the end of her bed, facing it, while I knelt behind her. I brushed her hair using an ivory-backed brush with her name stencilled in gold on the back, then plaited her hair into a French braid, and fastened it with a little piece of twine.

Emily smiled at herself in the mirror, and then turned to me.

"Can I show you something secret, Meg Giry?" She kept her voice low in deference to the sleeping woman in the next bed.

"Of course."

"You need to stand up."

I did as she asked, and glancing at her sleeping companion, Emily took hold of her mattress and lifted it up. I thought that whatever she wanted to show me was concealed inside it, but she actually worked her fingers inside a hole in the mattress and withdrew something gold and glittering. It was an oval locket on a fine chain, and when Emily pressed her thumbnail to its edge, it opened. Inside, I saw a photograph of a small boy in a sailor suit gazing blankly into the camera. I had the nasty impression that this might be a post-mortem photograph, but bit my tongue. Held in the other half the locket was a lock of pale blonde hair, fairer even than Emily's, almost white, tied with a black ribbon.

"Your son was beautiful," I breathed, anxious not to disturb the tiny strands of hair.

"Yes, he is," she replied.

"You're not allowed that."

The new voice made me jump, and Emily snapped the locket shut, closing her fist around it. I looked up as Mrs Dent woke with a grunt to see that there was another patient standing in the doorway, her hands in her apron pockets. She was a tall, well-built woman with her medium-brown hair in a fashionable Gibson Girl bun, her lightly-tanned skin marked with the small dents of chickenpox scars.

"Go away, Harriett," Emily told her harshly. "You're not allowed in other people's rooms without permission."

"I'm not in your room," Harriett pointed out. "I'm standing outside your room."

"Just go away."

"I just strolled by to say 'good morning'. But you really shouldn't have that, you know, it was in the booklets and everything. You're not supposed to bring any valuables into Kirkbride, in case they get lost. If Nurse Barber finds out, she'll take it away from you."

"You keep your thieving hands to yourself!" With more energy than I had seen from her thus far, Emily strode to the door and slammed it closed, the locket still clutched in her hand. Mrs Dent sat up in bed and rubbed her face, and I nodded nervously to her.

"Who was that?"

"Harriett Turney is a thief," Emily said, her whole body tense. "The doctors have given it a special name, but she steals anything she can get her hands on. You can't trust her, Meg Giry, you can't trust her!"

Reassuring Emily that I would take her warning seriously, I returned to the bathroom to get washed myself and prepare for the day. As I went downstairs for breakfast, I wondered if I should tell someone on the staff how I had seen Emily standing over the sink, as though she were contemplating ending her own life in the same way that her young son's had ended. But it was just an impression, probably my twisted mind making problems when there were none there, and would make them thinking more poorly of me than they already did. Her grief was so overwhelming that I wondered how I could possibly compare my own to it. It was Emily Tamworth, and those like her, who deserved the attention and care of the doctors. Not people like me, who were not worthy of that attention.

"You look exhausted," Nell observed when I entered the common room.

"I didn't sleep well," I told her.

She smiled sympathetically at me. "I don't think anyone sleeps well their first night here. I know I cried myself to sleep. Let's take a turn about the common room. Who didn't you meet last night?"

Together we circled the common room, stopping every few paces for her to introduce me to another woman in red and grey.

"This is Catherine Fox, I'm not sure why she's here, but she doesn't talk, do you, Mrs Fox?"

The woman Nell addressed just smiled vaguely up at her and went back to her crochet.

"Her case is hopeless," Nell murmured in my ear as we moved on. "She simply refuses to speak. I have never heard her utter a word."

"Then how do you know that she can speak?" I asked. "I have heard of mutism before."

"Is that a joke, Meg?"

"Certainly not," I replied, wondering what would give her that idea.

"Mrs Fox could speak earlier in her life, certainly when she was first married, and there is nothing physically wrong with her, from what the staff here say. But something happened to her and whatever it was, it was so traumatic for her that she lost her voice altogether. The doctors have done all they can to try to make her communicate with them, but to no avail and she's been here nearly two years."

I glanced back over my shoulder to Mrs Fox, her head bent over her craftwork. "What will happen to her if they can't get her to speak?"

"I don't know, but it is not cheap to house someone like us here, Meg. My guess would be that her husband will have her moved somewhere else. Somewhere not as forward thinking as Kirkbride."

She did not need to say any more, I could picture it well enough. Cages, shaven heads, brutal punishments, methods of treatment that only led to more darkness and death. I shuddered.

"This is Mrs Diana Brocklehurst," Nell had stopped at a table where two women were playing cards. "And Leah Pierson. Ladies, this is Meg Giry, she's new here."

Leah was a middle-aged woman with a kind smile and watery blue eyes beneath tufty pale blonde hair. Like me, she had bandages around her wrists.

"Another self-harmer, are you?" Diana had angular features, her straight black hair scraped back into a tight bun. "Like Leah. She almost slashed herself to ribbons, didn't you, my dear?"

Leah scowled. "It makes me feel better."

"I'm not like Leah," I replied. "Not exactly. No doubt you will find out soon enough, since it seems impossible to keep anyone's diagnosis' private in here."

Leah giggled. "The staff here are good at what they do, but they're not much good at confidentiality."

"And what of you?" I asked Diana. "What has brought you here?"

"No doubt you'll find out soon enough," she echoed.

All too soon, it was time for my appointment with Dr Lockwood.

"Good morning, Miss Giry," Dr Lockwood beamed at me from behind his desk, fresh-faced and well-dressed, a man who seemed full of the joys of Spring. "I trust that you slept well?"

I glared at him, a woman with red-rimmed eyes, dirty hair and a porridge stain on her apron.

"No, Dr Lockwood, it is not a good morning and I did not sleep well." My voice rang with hostility. "Who can sleep when they are being interrupted by lantern bearers?"

"It is entirely natural," he said. "Once your surroundings become familiar you won't even notice the night nurses checking on you."

I glared at him. "What were the pills you gave me?"

"What pills?"

"The pills that Nurse Barber made me take last night," I fumed. "She said that you prescribed them."

"I expect they were sedatives."

"Judging by the night I had, they were not sedatives. Dr Lockwood, it is an extremely disturbing thought that you do not know what medication I was given last night!"

He looked up. "There were sugar pills, Miss Giry."

"They didn't taste like sugar."

"It means that the pills are neutral; they will do you neither good nor harm. We are trying to see how you respond to medication prescribed by a doctor, especially given your feelings about the medical professional."

I fixed Lockwood with the kind of glare that Erik impaled people with, that made them bend to his will. He had tricked me, manipulated me, and I was not going to put up with it. In a place where all control, from what I wore and what I ate to how I behaved, was in the hands of other people, I had to strive to hold on to whatever might still be mine. I was tired, angry and upset, and I did not have to talk to Lockwood. He could not force words from my lips the way his nurses might try to force drugs down my throat.

"We have an hour, Miss Giry, so we had best make good use of it, or are you going to be difficult?"

The doctor opened his desk drawer and pulled out a cardboard folder printed with my name. He opened it, and I saw with a jolt of surprise pages and pages of illegible notes in black ink. But I did not speak. He watched me, waiting for a response, and when none came, it was Lockwood who spoke.

"I have been a doctor for a long time, Miss Giry, and I know that you are cross with me, that you feel slighted because you were made to do something that you did not want to do." When I still said nothing, he leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together over his abdomen. "Sitting here refusing to talk to me, like a petulant child, is not going to help, is it? The first treatment I try with my patients is called talking therapy, because it has proven to be the most effective, but it requires that you talk to me. I have had a long conversation with your guardian Mr Danton, and he has provided me with a look into your history. Your depression clearly extends over many years and you have been trying to mask it from those around you. Partly because society demands that such things be kept private, and partly because you think that revealing your depression will cause others to believe that you are mad, and they will have you institutionalised."

I pressed my lips together, feeling my eyes sting. I would not cry in front of this man. It had not occurred to me that Erik would have told Lockwood what he knew of my past, the two of them creating their own theories as to what had caused my breakdown.

"The worst has already happened, Miss Giry. You are here, and you came of your own free will. Given that you have proven to be a danger to yourself, Mr Danton was perfectly within his rights to have you restrained in a straightjacket and marched into this hospital under guard, but he did not. You came here for help, and that is what I intend to give you. The human mind is a strange and wonderful thing, and I like to think of it rather like a garden."

I frowned, not understanding, and he smiled.

"Ah, so we have some non-verbal communication, Miss Giry. Not ideal but better than nothing at any rate." I felt myself blush, and he smiled again. "Not speaking to me is not so easy, is it? You speak with your body if not with your mouth. To explain the metaphor: The soil of the garden is the basis of the mind and how it works as an organ, telling the body what to do and so on. The trees that grow are our relationships with those around us; mighty and beautiful things that are necessary to our survival, but which still take nourishment and effort to maintain. The flowers are our talents and skills, blossoming in our life. And lastly, in any garden, there are weeds. Those are things that are ugly and damaging to us, like the depression in your case. Your garden is overrun with weeds, Miss Giry and you need someone to help you get rid of them. If you will cooperate with me, we can find the cause of your depression, and we can tear that weed out by the roots. The process may well be painful and it will take time, but we will restore your garden, your mind, to the beautiful thing it is meant to be."

"I did not come here to be bullied, Dr Lockwood," I told him. "By you or by your nurses."

"Is that what you think is happening? You may not like the methods of myself and my staff, but it is certainly not bullying. No-one is trying to debase or demean you. All that has been done, in the mere twenty-two hours that you have been here, is the same process undertaken with every patient that enters this facility. Nurse Barber and Nurse Reardon have passed their observations of your on to me, and it seems that you have been uncooperative in almost everything the staff have asked of you." He looked down at the page of notes, ran a finger over one line, and then raised his eyes to me again. "I need you to be honest with me, Miss Giry. Tell me what it is that you are afraid of, in being here."

"You will hurt me," I said at last. "And you will call it medicine. You will lock me up or tie me down. You will beat me as if I were a disobedient stepchild. You will cut off my hair. And you will tell anyone who asks, if anyone asks, that it is standard medical practice, that I deserved to be punished, that the hospital was overrun with lice so you had to cut my hair."

Lockwood nodded thoughtfully, and when he spoke, his voice was gentle.

"I know why you would have those fears, since I understand that your father was incarcerated in an asylum when you were at an impressionable age."

"They tortured him."

"I know it might seem that way to you—"

"That was what he told me!"

"—It may have seemed that way to him as well. There have been facilities that treat their patients appallingly, I'm sad to say, but is the twentieth century now and things have changed. I'm going to give you some medicine that will help you to feel less anxious and upset, and you will experience side-effects for several days as your body adjusts. You'll feel sleepy, sluggish and slow; you may feel nauseous. But as those effects pass, you will find that your mood is improving. In addition to that, we will also spend time discussing your past and the events that led to your decision to cut your wrists, and I want you to keep a record of your dreams."

"What for?"

"Dreams are the brain's way of working through thoughts and feelings and events. If you know how to read them, they can reveal a great deal, the same way that talking about the past can."

"I don't understand why," I admitted. "It cannot be helpful to drag up the past, there is no way of changing it."

"Our futures grow from our pasts," he said, and I wanted to roll my eyes at his garden metaphor again. "It is how we become who we are."

"What if I don't want to talk about my past? What if there are things that—that shame me?"

"The experience may be shameful, or painful for you, Miss Giry, but it will work out for the best in the end."

I had no choice, I knew, and there was no use in resisting. I would have to open myself up to this man, the way I had disrobed for my clients back when I was working as a prostitute. I knew that in the coming weeks, I would be violated again. Maybe not physically, sexually, but this man would force me to reveal aspects of myself so deeply buried that they would need to be dug out.

xxxxx

"Meg Giry!" Emily Tamworth caught hold of me just as I was leaving the dining room after the evening meal. "Where have you been?!"

"Nowhere," I was startled by the note of accusation in her tone and the wildness of her expression. "I mean I haven't left Kirkbride. I've been trying to familiarise myself with the building."

Even with the map it had felt like a Herculean task, and I was almost pleased that a heavy downpour of rain meant that my exploration of Kirkbride's gardens would have to wait.

"I've been looking for you," Emily said.

"Well, you've found me now."

She dropped her voice. "You know the thing I showed you this morning, that I wasn't supposed to have?"

"You mean the gold—"

"Shh!" She gestured meaningfully to the orderlies who lined the walls like suits of armour in an ancestral home. "Of course that's what I mean."

"What of it?"

"It's missing. The last time I saw it was this morning when I was showing it to you, and now it's gone."

"And you think I stole it?" I asked slowly.

"Well did you?"

"Of course not." I held up a hand to calm her. "But I know how awful it feels when something precious goes missing." I turned out the pockets of my dress to prove that they were empty. "Would you like me to help you look for it?"

Emily blinked at me. "You would do that?"

"Yes."

"I want to search your room."

I sighed. "Have at it. I didn't take it, and I have nothing to hide."

I took Emily up to my room and started off by tipping the contents of my carpetbag onto my bed and letting her sort through, before putting it all back again. Since my stay in Kirkbride had been so short, and I had no intention of making the room feel like home, as I would be leaving as soon as humanly possible, I had done nothing to personalise the space except rest the unframed photograph of Mother and myself against the window.

As Emily commenced a thorough search of my room, I sat on the spare bed and told her about the time that Alfie Anderson had stolen my engagement ring in a misguided attempt to raise money for a girl he believed to be his sweetheart. My story did not have the affect I had anticipated and only served to increase Emily's anxiety. When she was satisfied that I did not have her gold locket either in my room or about my person, we moved to her own room, and I assisted with a second search. By the time we were finished and the locket was still lost, Emily was in floods of frustrated tears.

"I'm sorry, Emily, but it can't be far away." I reached out a hand to offer her comfort, but she twisted away from me.

"Don't touch me!"

I backed up. "Well, the locket isn't up here. Do you want to try retracing your steps?"

"I will," Emily rubbed her face. "Thank you for your help, Meg, but don't let me take up more of your time."

"I don't mind helping."

"It's fine, Meg, go enjoy your evening."

Uncertain how to enjoy myself in an environment that I hated with every particle of my being, I reverted to the only small pleasure I had found in this place and went to the library. It was on the ground floor, a smallish space with windows high in the walls, moderately stocked with heavily dog-eared books and staffed by Mrs Lloyd, a patient in her sixties with skin as papery as the volumes in her care.

Mrs Lloyd wrote my name down on two long rectangles of cardboard as she explained the process of using the asylum's library with deliberate care and slowness.

"These are bookmarks. You keep one in the book you have borrowed and one stays here in our catalogue so we know which book you have in your possession. You take one book at a time, and you treat them with respect, you hear?"

"Yes ma'am," I assured her, and once my bookmarks were completed, I took mine and proceeded to browse the shelves, looking for something in my native language. As I expected, all of the volumes were in English. I closed my eyes and inhaled the scent of the pages, trying to pretend I was standing before the bookcase in my own Brooklyn apartment. I would never have thought that freedom would smell like second-hand books. I rested my forehead against the stiff spines of the books and felt the tears burning behind my eyes, forced them back.

I ended up choosing a copy of Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift on the basis that I had never read it before and that it looked like one of the least-handled options available to me. I took it into the common room and settled into an armchair by the window, once again closing my eyes, feeling the shape of the book in my hands, listening to the rain still drumming on the windowpanes, smelling the cigarette smoke permeating the space. It took a long time for me to become absorbed in the book, but by the time I had reached the fifth chapters, I was thoroughly invested in Lamuel Gulliver's adventures and his fantastical discoveries.

"You thieving bitch!"

The shout rang through the air and I lifted my head, my senses momentarily muddled the by jolt from fiction to reality. As I blinked my eyes back into focus, realising that it was dark outside and later than I had thought, I saw Emily Tamworth snatch a newspaper from the hands of Harriett Turney.

"Uh oh," Sally murmured, appearing at my left elbow. "Sit tight, kid, here comes the entertainment."

"What the hell?!" The other woman was shouting at Emily. "What is wrong with you, you crazy piece of trash?!"

"She's a kleptomaniac."

"A what?"

"I know you took it!" Emily's voice was shrill and full of tears. "No-one else would have! Whatever the doctors' fancy Greek word is, you're a thief, and I want you to give me my locket back!"

Whatever the word meant, I decided that it must have something to do with theft.

"I haven't taken your locket!" Harriett objected.

"Please," Emily sounded tired now, as well as angry and upset. "It has a lock of my son's hair in it, and it's all I have left of him. Please, just give it back."

I felt an intense rush of sympathy for Emily. If I had lost a child in the dreadful way that Emily had, I would want to hold onto whatever remembrance of that child I could, even if it was nothing but a few strands of his hair in a locket. Event thinking about it made the hot prick of tears build behind my eyes.

"I don't have it!"

"Liar!" Emily seized the older woman and dragged her out of her chair. Harriett reacted immensely quickly, breaking free of her grip, but it was obvious that the two were squaring up for a fight, and I shrank back into my armchair. The orderlies, taken aback by the explosion of violence, tried to intervene, but a ring of women were surrounding the pair, who were now grappling with each other. They were just forcing their way through the throng, when Emily seized an apple from the fruit bowl, and threw it at Harriett. Sensing the missile aimed in her direction, Harriett ducked, and the apple struck the unfortunate woman who sat directly behind her. Me. It hit my jaw so forcefully that I felt my teeth rattle. My inadvertent cry of pain made the rest of the room fall silent.

"Oh, God," Emily gasped. "Meg, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—no, get off me! Let me go!"

The orderlies had taken the opportunity to muscle their way through the crowd, seizing hold of both Emily and Harriett, and as they were dragged out of the common room, I could do nothing but stare after them.