Chapter 25

Meg

I opened my eyes to a darkness so complete that I wondered if I had gone blind. I was lying on something cold and when I sat up, pain flashed through my back as though someone was hitting my ribs with a stick. I could feel my breath coming in sharp gasps, and instinctively felt around me for something to get my bearings. Another sharp pain in my finger, a puncture of some sort, and something small and rectangular was digging into my thigh. I felt among the folds of my skirt and thanked God when I discovered the unmistakable feel and sound of a box of matches in my pocket. Withdrawing them, I felt along the edge of the box for the right place to strike, and the tiny flame burst into life all around me, reflected dozens, hundreds of times, in walls that were a mosaic of mirrors. I recognised the hexagonal room then as Erik's torture chamber.

At my side lay the shattered remains of a lantern, but the candle was still intact, and I touched the match flame to the wick before it could shudder and die. At my back was the huge iron tree that reached up to the ceiling I must have fallen through, each finely crafted detail glittering in the light of the reflected candles.

I struggled to my feet, hissing at the pain in my back, and pounded my fists against the mirrored walls.

"Monsieur Erik! It's Meg! There was no response, and I could feel panic starting to tighten my chest and throat. "I am trapped in the mirrored room!"

"He can't hear you, you know."

The female voice made my blood turn to ice. I had avoided looking into the mirrors as much as possible, had kept my eyes averted from the iron tree, because I knew that the rope that was tied into a noose among its branches would not be empty. I had to look now, and saw Emily Tamworth hanging there, mouth and eyes wide as her body decomposed in death, but her stare was directed at me and the lips twitched in a smile.

"You'll never get out of here." Her voice was hampered by the noose around her neck. "But then, did you ever truly leave?"

Nausea flooded my body and bile filled my mouth the grotesque sigh. I turned back to thump the walls again, but Emily's corpse was reflected back at me from every direction. On the other side of the tree trunk, a man in a fine suit was lying on the silver floor, his neck broken at a grotesque angle. To my complete horror, he began to move, trying to push himself upright.

"Phantom!" I screamed, "Let me out! For God's sake, let me out!"

A door opened, and I swung around. Silhouetted against his candlelit bedroom, Erik was standing in the doorway to his torture chamber.

"Oh, thank God!"

I rushed towards him, but he held up a hand.

"Stop."

I froze at the order, and he stared at me.

"Watch your head," he said, and then something dropped directly in front of me, the hanging form of Joseph Buquet, eyes and mouth stretched wide in horror, the Punjab lasso cutting into the skin of his throat.

I started to scream, and screamed and screamed until I woke myself, tangled in the sheets at Kirkbride and drenched in sweat. Tillie was at my bedside, shouting something, and even as my eyes adjusted there was a light coming along the corridor, and Nurse Barber entered the room with one of the night nurses.

"What's the commotion?" She demanded.

"She was screaming fit to bust," Tillie explained.

"I was having a nightmare," I sat up shakily and peeled off the sheets, trying to remember to breathe properly. "It's over now."

"You need a doctor?"

"No, Nurse Barber, I will be quite well presently. I apologise for the disturbance."

Nevertheless, I was still trembling when the nurses left and Tillie returned to her bed, and even after I bathed the sweat from my body with cold water and a soft washcloth, I could not bring myself to attempt to sleep again. Instead, I sat on my bed and waited for dawn. Once there was enough light to do so, I wrote the dream down in the journal that Dr Lockwood had insisted I keep for that purpose.

It was the first time I had kept a diary, even though I had been given one for my tenth birthday, because I never felt comfortable with the idea of my innermost thoughts and feelings being laid out in black and white for anyone to see. Even now, writing down the dream made it run through my head in sharp focus and feel even more real than ever.

"It's not surprising that you're having nightmares after you saw Mrs Tamworth like that," Lockwood assured me. "Writing them down is perhaps the best thing you can do, to rid yourself off them."

"It didn't feel like a nightmare," I replied quietly. "It felt real, like the dreams I used to have that my father was taking me to the asylum where he was incarcerated, because the people there said they could make me well, and then they tortured me. I know it was just a dream, doctor, but it was so wildly real that I'm scared of going to sleep tonight."

"A medical necessity, I'm afraid. Did you know that vivid dreams are a side-effect of pregnancy?"

"That is yet another of the things I did not know," I admitted, and rubbed at the ache in my back. "And these pains?"

"Again, perfectly normal, and encouraging really. It means that the baby is growing as it should. I'll contact the nuns of St Gerard Majella to come and visit you shortly so that they can better prepare you for giving birth itself."

"Is there any way to stop dreams?" I asked. "I don't think I can bear to see poor Emily like that again. Her, my parents, my fiancé… There are so many that I have lost, and I do not wish to be haunted like some waif in a ghost story!"

The tears were stinging my eyes.

"You know that it wasn't your fault, don't you?" Lockwood said. "You are not responsible for Emily Tamworth taking her own life, and you are not to blame for the death of your father."

"So you keep telling me," I replied wearily. "And yet I cannot believe that it is the truth."

I hated how death was so much at the forefront of my mind again, and it brought with it a lingering fear that I was struggling to hold at bay. What if, when it came time for my child to be brought into this world, I would leave it? So many women died in childbirth, and that thought suddenly made a name flash across my mind: Angela.

"What is it?" Lockwood asked. "What just happened to you?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I was just thinking about the baby coming, and the idea that I might die in childbirth—"

"We will be providing you with the very best care possible, Miss Giry, I promise you. No woman has ever died in childbirth while being treated in this facility."

"Yes, I know that, but it just made something pop into my head."

"Well?"

"Angela. The name Angela."

"A name you are considering for your daughter, perhaps?"

"I don't think so," I shook my head slowly. "I was no angel when I was little, I would hate to implant that expectation onto a child of mine." I looked up at my doctor. "I don't want to die."

"I know, and you won't."

"But that's just the thing. At some point I wanted to die, or I would not have attempted to do so," I looked down at the white scars on my wrists. "Or maybe I didn't want to die. I just know that I wanted everything to stop, and I'm sure now that that's the same thing." I sighed and looked back at him. "I am not making any sense at all, am I? Perhaps I have lost my mind after all."

"You are regaining your mind," he assured me. "And between us, we will see you fully restored. You have suffered much, and such suffering has caused you damage, but that damage can be repaired. We are repairing it at this very moment."

"Then you will not think me insane for what I am about to say?"

He gestured to me. "Please, Miss Giry, speak without fear."

I leaned forward in my seat, resting my elbows on my knees and pressing my knuckles into my temples.

"Sometimes I feel like there is some little goblin in my head that is running around and hiding things from me, trying to confuse me. I look back on the day I cut myself, and there is this blank space in my mind that I cannot recall. I remember watching Christine Daae sing, and I remember how moved I felt. Joyful, and sad because the song made me sad, and so pleased and proud. I know that I was happy in that moment. And then I remember sadness and pain and guilt, and just wanting everything to stop and I don't know why." I lowered my hands. "Explain that to me, doctor. If that is not madness, then what is it?"

"It is called repression," he told me, and I was surprised not only by his answer, but by the kindness in his tone. "Something happened to you during that time period that you are blocking from your memory. Your goblin, to use your own term, has built up a wall to stop you from accessing it."

"Why?"

"It is a form of protection. Some part of you doesn't want to remember."

"Then how can I ever get well? How can I raise a child when there is some part of my mind literally missing?"

"Miss Giry, please calm down. Remember to breathe. Come on now." He waited until I had taken several deep breaths, and then continued. "You and I are already working together to overcome that issue. By beginning with your past, we are working up to the day that you hurt yourself. You must see now that it was not just this one forgotten incident that was the cause, it was the build-up of so much over a lifetime. This branch of science is still new but we are making huge steps with the help of people like our founder, Mr Kirkbride, and men like Yung and Freud. In other cases like yours I would use hypnotism to try to expedite the process, but you are not susceptible to hypnosis."

"Am I not?" I looked up at him, surprised. "Have you tried to hypnotise me, then?"

"Not I, but you guardian has."

"Of course he has." I rolled my eyes. "Yet another attempt to control me, I have no doubt."

"He failed." Lockwood gazed at me thoughtfully. "It is not a technique that works with everyone, so we must continue on this slower path. Have faith, Miss Giry. We are doing wonderful things, you and I, and some of that work necessitates a loss of control on your part."

"I have come here and submitted to your treatments, doctor, that is a huge loss of control for me."

I wondered how frequently we would re-tread the same grounds in our therapy sessions as the weeks marched onwards. Without warning, I would feel the flutter of the baby growing inside me, and prayed that I truly would be well enough to take her home.

"Are you an Angela?" I asked her softly. "Is Angela your name? Or maybe you're an Annie, like my Mama? Bernadette? Clarice? Danielle?"

None of the names I murmured to that fluttering life inside of me felt right, and I wondered if maybe I would have to wait, and see if her appearance or the circumstances of her birth suggested a name. After all, I had been named Marguerite because I was born midway through a performance of the opera Faust, and that was the name of its leading lady. My middle name, Evangeline, had belonged to an aunt on my father's side who had died in infancy.

It was with some caution that I greeted the two nuns from St Gerard Majella when they came to visit me during the sixth month of my pregnancy. They were waiting in the Infirmary, where, it had been decided, I would bring my child into the world.

Although both wore traditional black and white habits and wimples, they appeared to be polar opposites of each other. One was tall and thin with her face as wrinkled as an old apple. The other was young, short and plump, and beamed at me when I entered. Both were holding medical bags.

"Good morning, Miss Giry," the elder of the two said. "My name is Sister Rosemary, and this is Sister Constance. We are midwives with the Order of St Gerard Majella, and we will be checking up on you regularly for the remainder of your pregnancy, in addition to the care you are already receiving from the staff here."

"It's good to meet you both," I replied, smiling a little nervously.

"We're both fully-trained midwives who have helped hundreds of girls like yourself," Sister Rosemary continued. "Now, if you strip down to your shift and step onto the scales, we'll measure your progress."

The scales on which I had been weighed when I first entered Kirkbride had been moved into the infirmary, and I did as I was told, removing my apron and dress and stepping onto them, watching as they recording my weight. Then, Sister Constance pressed a tape measure vertically across my rapidly growing bump, which she called my 'fundal height', and beamed as she wrote the number down in a small black notebook.

"Right on target for a delivery during the third week in October," she told me cheerfully. "Off with your drawers and up onto the exam table, and we'll make sure everything is alright inside."

Sister Rosemary carried out this more invasive, less comfortable part of the examination, and Sister Constance, seeing that I was embarrassed, took my hand in hers and let me squeeze it for comfort. Lastly, with my drawers back in place but my shift hiked so that the bump was still on display, Sister Constance said:

"Let's have a listen to Baby's heartbeat, shall we?"

She produced a strange metal object, rather like a large ear trumpet.

"This is called a Pinard horn," she explained. "I'm going to press it quite hard against your skin so you might feel a slight discomfort."

She did as she said, and I tried not to wriggle as she listened to the other end.

"There we are," she murmured. "Baby's heart is beating nice and strongly."

"What does it sound like?" I asked.

Sister Rosemary looked around the infirmary with a smile. "Well, let's see if we can find a way for you to hear it for yourself. You can sit up, if you prefer."

She picked up a stethoscope that someone had left on the windowsill and brought it over to me as Constance helped me into a sitting position. She inserted the earpieces for me, and then held the cool metal disc against my chest, closer to the centre than I had expected.

"That's your heartbeat, you hear that?"

"Yes," I replied, and she moved the disc onto my abdomen, to where Constance had been listening with the Pinard horn, and again pressed hard into my skin.

"And this… is your baby's heartbeat."

In that moment, everything else in my world was eclipsed. It was a high-pitched noise and far faster than I had expected, a light ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom like a tiny pony galloping on carpet.

"Oh…" I breathed. "It's so fast, is it suppose to be so fast?"

"Yes, it's a perfectly normal heartbeat for Baby's development."

"It's a magical sound, isn't it?" Constance asked.

"It really is."

Despite the fact that I had been feeling the baby moving for several weeks now, that the feelings had become stronger, more little kicks than just flutters, it suddenly dawned on me all over again that there was a real human being growing inside of me, someone of my own flesh and blood.

XXXXX

Friends continued to visit as the weeks passed, either individually or in small groups, and I reflected on how lucky I was that they were willing to enter this desolate place simply to bring me news or comfort. Helen and Julia Roylott sat and talked with me about Helen's performances, asking for advice and encouragement, and I wondered if they were genuine or whether Erik had told them to come and see me, as he had before. Irene came with Hilton Slaney, baring back issues of Penny Dreadful and Strand magazines to keep myself and my follows entertained. I could tell that some of my guests were as nervous of the environment as I was, particularly Lucy Phelps, who visited with Erik in June. She was tense with anxiety when I entered the visiting room, sitting upright and as taught as a bowstring, between Erik and another woman I did not recognise.

"Meg, look at you!" Lucy gasped, rising to her feet and holding out her arms. "You've gotten so big! The baby, I mean."

I smiled at her as we embraced. "I know what you mean."

"May I?" She reached when I nodded and placed both hands on my rounded belly. "Oh! It's moving, I can feel it kicking me! Mr Danton, you have to feel this."

Erik and his companion had also stood and Lucy seized his wrist, placing his hand were hers had been. He looked astonished for a moment, and smiled briefly.

"I am very pleased that the pregnancy is progressing so well. And how are you physically, Meg?"

"I'm a little uncomfortable," I admitted. "Back and hip pain, mostly. I am assured that it is perfectly normal."

I did not want to go into my embarrassing details, such as my frequent need to urinate and the unexplained bouts of sexual desire that occasionally raced through my body, not with a stranger present. Erik saw where my attention was directed as we sat around the table, one on each side.

"Meg, this is Clara Hoffman, she is a wetnurse and an expert in looking after new-borns. If you are still a patient of this facility when you give birth, then she will be providing milk and childcare needs."

I was glad that I was already sitting down, for I felt a little faint. I closed my eyes and tried to block out the screaming denial that blasted through my mind, and when I opened them again, Erik was looking at me with such a worried expression that not even his mask could disguise it.

"A prudent precaution," I said at last. "I have been at Kirkbride now for three months, and there is another three months to go before the baby is due. But while Dr Lockwood is pleased with my progress, there is no guarantee that I will be well enough to leave."

"You are looking much better than the last time I saw you," Lucy said.

"I agree," Erik added. "And your behaviour seemed improved as well. You thought about what was being said to you, instead of just reacting. I do not believe that you would have done so a few months ago."

I sighed, and pinched the bridge of my nose, and then looked to Clara. She was in her mid thirties, I estimated, her dark hair pulled back into a rather severe bun, but her figure was soft and rounded and her eyes, somewhere between blue and grey, were kind. I caught the glint of a wedding ring on her left hand.

"Mrs Hoffman, please tell me a little about yourself, and what makes you suitable for taking care of my child."

Erik bristled, and I noted that he was reacting, instead of thinking.

"Do you not think that I have already asked Mrs Hoffman such questions."

"It's alright, Mr Danton," the woman responded. "Miss Giry has a right to know." She smiled at me. "Looking after babies is my profession, Miss Giry, and I have been doing so for over a decade. I lost my husband and my infant son at the same time through circumstances I would rather not discuss."

"I'm so sorry," I was shocked.

"Thank you. I was breastfeeding Nathaniel at the time, so my milk was in. One of my friends had recently given birth and was gravely ill, so I offered to feed the child. When she recovered and was able to perform her motherly duties herself, I realised that there must be many women who have similar needs. I worked for my last employer for three years, feeding and weaning the baby, and then acting as a sort of nanny. What you might call an au pair."

"I see. And you live with the family during that time, I take it?"

"Yes, Mr Danton will be seeing to accommodations for me."

I took several deep breaths.

"I can only thank you for agreeing to help us in our hour of need, Mrs Hoffman. I hope, of course, that your services will not be required, but in the eventuality that they are, I am happy that you will be able to provide care while I am unable to do so."

"This is entirely my aim, Miss Giry," she replied. "I know that some women may feel that I might be trying to take their role as mother away from them, or to replace them in their child's eyes, but please rest assured that that is not the case."

"I believe you," I told her. "I am sure that you are very good at your job and will be a most efficient au pair, or Mr Danton would not have hired you," I raised my eyes to his, "without telling me first."

He did not respond except to return my look with one of slight defiance.

"You have got to do more," I told Lockwood at our next session. "I cannot have someone else looking after my baby, no matter for how short a time. It's my milk and my care she'll need, not some stranger's."

"We are already doing what we can," Lockwood replied patiently. "I have explained to you that your pregnancy means that some options are unavailable to us."

"What would you be trying if I weren't pregnant?"

He sighed. "The hydrotherapy temperatures would be far more dramatic, for a start. I do not believe that having them as they are is doing much good at all; something to be noted for future patients."

"I'm so pleased that I can assist in confirming what does not work for the hysterical," I told him sarcastically. "What else?"

"Well, Dr Wilmont has had great success with his electroconvulsive techniques, but we have no way of knowing how that treatment may impact an unborn child. I cannot risk it."

"Meaning that the child's life is more important than my sanity."

"Meaning that it would be more than my job's worth to be the first to attempt such a treatment on a pregnant woman. If you want to try it after you have given birth, then we will do so. Until then, we have no choice but to continue with the talking therapy and the drugs you are taking. It's only been a few weeks, Miss Giry. I know that you have a deadline in mind because of the baby, but real life is not so accommodating."

"I am well aware of that, doctor." It grated to have to acknowledge it, to be reminded yet again that there was no quick fix for my problems.

On the one hand I wanted to be out of Kirkbride and back with my family as soon as was possible. On the other hand was the fear that that course of action would result in my father's fate also becoming my own. He had not been in the asylum when he had committed suicide, he had been at home for weeks, and his inability to assimilate back into his old life had perhaps been what had driven him to end it.

I wondered why the hospital had let him return to us if he was not well enough. Perhaps they had considered his case hopeless, as they had done with Catherine Fox, and let him out so that he could spend his last days in the company of those he loved. Or perhaps, as I had believed all along, the treatment he had endured there had been so horrific that living through it had robbed him of the ability to ever be happy again.

The latter would mean that the asylum was to blame for his choice. The former would mean that it was still on the cards for me.