The Ballroom

by Anna Hope

  A new charcoal portrait stood on the mantelpiece. Charles went to pick it up: Mulligan, in the moments after the Schubert. The likeness was not bad. The Mulligan on the paper was one anyone would recognize: square-shouldered, slim but well muscled. The hair close cropped to a finely shaped skull, a steady brow, eyes the colour of flint. But the man’s expression – its very inscrutability – had eluded him.

  Having not been the admitting doctor, Charles knew little of the particulars of the case. He had a mind to check the man’s admission papers as soon as possible, see what had landed him in here. He placed the portrait carefully back on the mantelpiece then went to his desk, where he shuffled through his post. A slim brown envelope with a London postmark lay within the pile. Taking his letter knife he sliced quickly through the card, and felt a pleasurable quckening as a light-green pamphlet fell into his hands. The Eugenics Review.

  It was always a treat when the quarterly arrived. A glance at the clock showed it was after ten, but Saturday mornings meant a slightly later start. Plenty of time still for reading. He brought his chair up to his desk and sharpened a pencil, before bringing his notebook towards him. As he opened the pamphlet, a coal popped and cracked on the fire.

  The first of the articles was a tribute to Sir Francis Galton, first cousin of Charles Darwin and erstwhile president of the Society, who had died last month at the age of ninety-three. Pearson had always hailed Galton as the man who had taken his cousin’s findings and applied them to society; the man who dared to pose the question of how better people might be made. After due observance of Galton’s polymath genius (explorer, meteorologist, statistician), the end of the piece looked forward to Major Leonard Darwin’s forthcoming presidency. Another scion of the Darwin line, the great man’s son this time; he was due to give his inaugural address in the summer. Charles scribbled the date eagerly in his notebook. It had been far too long since he had visited London, and this would be a happy hook to hang a trip on. He was allowed seven holiday days a year and had taken none so far. He would have to make sure to book the day off soon.

  Aside from the usual calendar of meetings and talks, the main body of the journal was taken up by the transcript of Dr Tredgold’s recent address to the society at the Caxton Hall in London, rather grandly entitled ‘Eugenics and Future Human Progress’.

  Charles knew Tredgold had been the chief doctor of the Royal Commission of 1908. It had been reported in The Times that Dr Tredgold’s findings on the matter of the Feeble-Minded had been passed to Parliament, and as such would be vital in shaping the debate over the coming bill.

  Tredgold’s argument began simply but was elegantly and persuasively expressed.

  Man today stands on a much higher plane of development than did his palaeolithic ancestor. The human race has undergone a progressive evolution … If the race is to develop, it must give rise to individuals who can do more than mark time, who can advance.

  Charles nodded in agreement. It would be a fool who would seek to refute it.

  Tredgold went on to argue that, throughout this evolution, disease had played a vital part in ‘purifying the race of its weaker members’, but that now:

  I have no hesitation in saying, from personal experience, that nowadays the degenerate offspring of the feeble-minded and chronic pauper is treated with more solicitude, has better food, clothing and medical attention, and has greater advantages than the child of the respectable and independent working man. So much is this the case that the people are beginning to realize that thrift, honesty, and self-denial do not pay.

  Charles shifted in his chair. Such rhetoric always made him uncomfortable; feeble-minded and chronic paupers were the mainstay of Sharston’s ranks, and they did indeed have good food, clothing and medical attention; what man living in the crowded backstreets of Bradford had his milk from a flock of specially selected Ayrshire heifers, ate fresh meat and vegetables with his supper most evenings and was played classical music as he rested for the afternoon? But the asylum was not a prison; the aim of its treatment was not punitive but restorative.

  He glanced over at his charcoal sketches, catching the eyes of Mulligan. Shouldn’t a man like Mulligan be treated with solicitude? Shouldn’t he hear and respond to Schubert? Wasn’t there potential in the man? And then there were the dances; if he closed his eyes he could see the ballroom as it had looked this evening – the fireplaces lit and blazing, the orchestra – aside from the odd squeak from Goffin – sounding fine, but suggestive of greater things to come, the patients clapping and smiling and turning together on the floor. If the good burghers of Bradford and Leeds had not wanted their pauper lunatics to have some pleasure and – yes, why not say it – beauty in their lives, would they have built such a magnificent space for them to meet?

  He turned back to the pamphlet, where Tredgold’s argument was reaching its crescendo:

  The stream of degeneracy is steadily increasing, and is threatening to become a torrent which will swamp and annihilate the community. It is quite clear that we are face to face with a most serious problem, one, indeed, of vital importance, not merely to our future progress, but to our very existence.

  So. Here was the nub of it. And while absolutely seeing the problem – Sharston itself was bursting at the seams with the poor and mad – Charles was not so sure of the means by which to address it.

  It seemed certain that the feeble-minded should be prevented from breeding. But how to proceed from this – how to define that category and how to go about that prevention – was something about which Charles was unsure. It was the idea of enforcement that sat uneasily with him.

  The sexes could easily be kept apart in the sort of gentle segregation that was practised at Sharston, and while here they could, perhaps, with the help of good food, good behaviour and good, honest work (not to mention good music), improve. Become better specimens.

  In truth, Charles thought, it came down to this: one either believed people could change or one did not. And Charles was, by nature, an optimistic man.

  He glanced back at the Review:

  I unhesitatingly affirm that if measures of social reform are not accompanied by others to prevent the alarming multiplication of the unfit which is now going on, the end will be National Disaster.

  Charles let out his breath in an irritated sigh; there was something so joyless in the man’s rhetoric. He tapped the end of his pencil on the desk. The Eugenics movement was split between those who believed in sterilization and those who argued for the merits of segregation, and here was the chief doctor of the Royal Commission, the man who had the ear of the Prime Minister and of Home Secretary Churchill, who, while he did not come right out and declare for sterilization, did all but.

  Charles stood and went to his window, hands thrust into his pockets. In the small wood that bordered the buildings, tall trees waved their branches to the moon. Soon, although spring came slowly to these moors, they would be coming into leaf. Beyond the wood lay the farms that would provide food for the thousands within these walls. Soon, it would be time for planting – six hundred glorious acres of self-sufficiency.

  He knew that Churchill had recently given a speech in Parliament on the idea of labour colonies for mental defectives. Well, Sharston was a labour colony by any other name. What if Charles might have Churchill’s ear?

  He glanced over to the Call For Papers, lying where he had left it.

  Call For Papers

  First International Eugenics Congress

  Subjects of Wide Importance and Permanent Interest.

  Tredgold needed answering.

  He bent over his notebook and scribbled:

  Expense

  One of the main arguments against Segregation is expense, Tredgold’s ‘taxed and taxed heavily’, but the amount needed to keep Sharston going, contrasted with other such institutions (schools and hospitals for instance), is negligible – testament to the self-sufficiency wherewith the patients are employed in growing their own food, caretaking their own cattle
and washing their own clothes. At present our death rate is high, running at around 15 per cent. The more men we get out into the fields, the healthier our population will be.

  The patients here are a ready-made workforce, one that finds its therapy, moreover, in the good and honest work it does. In the future, there could be more farms like Sharston’s – more patients put to work, an excess produced. We already produce enough meat to sell on to local butchers – imagine if enough meat and vegetables were produced to feed half of Bradford and Leeds!

  It is clear from the shortest of my walks in the villages hereabouts that the countryside economy is shrinking – anyone with anything about them is eager to move to the towns. Let us then give over these jobs to our pauper lunatics! Let us do so in great and greater numbers! Let us see our countryside flourish again!

  (N.B. The root of the word Eugenics comes from the Greek, meaning of noble birth. Is it not most noble, indeed, to work towards the highest good for all?)

  Charles read back with mounting exhilaration – yes, there was something there. He particularly liked the last sentence. He underlined it, and as he did so a thought slid into his head.

  He would write a paper for the Congress.

  He would write such a paper that he would convince Superintendent Soames, and Dr Tredgold, and Churchill, and all of the others, that sterilization was unnecessary – that there was another way, a way that did not tax the ratepayer too greatly, and that, moreover, allowed for the possibility of improvement: of culture, of music, of – yes – joy, why not say it, in the lives of the pauper lunatics in their care.

  He scrabbled in his drawer, brought out writing paper and an envelope and then, flipping back through the pages of the Review, he stopped; on the first column was the name of the secretary, a certain Dr Montague Crackanthorpe.

  Dear Dr Crackanthorpe,

  I was very interested to read your Call for Papers in the latest Eugenics Review. You ask for work which discusses the relative merits of Segregation and Sterilization.

  I should like to put myself forward as a candidate.

  If chosen, I will present on the benefits of music and segregation at Sharston Asylum in the West Riding of Yorkshire.

  Yours sincerely,

  Dr Charles Fuller

  First Assistant Medical Officer

  John

  THERE HAD BEEN an incident in the ballroom. Dan had been too boisterous, it seemed, and was confined to the day room for a week.

  So John was sent out to dig with young Joe Sutcliffe instead.

  The mornings were a little lighter now, and a pale-orange strip lit the sky as they walked out towards Mantle Lane. Sutcliffe seemed steady enough on the journey out, but as soon as they came in sight of the graveyard, and the grave they were to finish, he started shaking. ‘How many go in there?’

  ‘Six,’ said John.

  ‘No.’ He stood by the side of the deep hole, staring down. ‘They’re making me dig it. I won’t do it. No.’

  ‘What do you mean, lad?’

  ‘The grave.’ Sutcliffe pointed at the raw gouge of earth. ‘It’s mine. I know it. They’re making me dig it. And they’ll put me in there when I’ve done.’

  ‘No, lad.’

  ‘They say you never get out.’ Sutcliffe lifted his panicked face. ‘Not when you’re where we are. Not on the chronics. They say that’s it. That you’ll die here. That you’ll get thrown in a hole like this with people you don’t know, and no one’ll find you again.’

  ‘Come on, lad.’ John put a hand out to the lad’s shoulder, felt the tremble on him, the thin bones like blades beneath his palm. ‘Calm yourself.’ He climbed down into the hole. When he held out his hand, the boy clambered awkwardly down alongside him, but, once there, Sutcliffe stood frozen and useless.

  ‘Sit yerself down a while.’ John gestured to the lip of the hole. It was clear there would be no good work from him. ‘I’ll get on by myself all right. And it’s not your grave I’m digging, lad. I can promise you that.’

  Sutcliffe hauled himself out and sat on the side of the hole. He shoved his hands in his armpits and stared down at the earth. He looked no happier than before.

  ‘Why don’t you turn round? Look up there instead?’ John pointed to the brow of the hill, the place the girl had come from when she ran.

  Sutcliffe raised a grey, grateful face to him. ‘Can I?’

  ‘Aye.’ John nodded. ‘Do that.’

  The young lad stood, turning three times on the spot, and then, like a dog fussing over its bed, set himself down on the earth, facing away. John could hear him muttering away to himself as he began to dig.

  After an hour or so, when sweat was pouring down his face, and Sutcliffe had grown quiet and, from his bent head and thin, bowed back, looked as though he might have fallen asleep, a whistle blew, and the figure of Brandt appeared on the brow, swaggering down the hill.

  ‘What’s happening here?’ The attendant came to stand before Sutcliffe. He kicked the lad hard in the knee. Sutcliffe sounded a frightened yelp. His face, when he raised it, was panicked, puffy with sleep.

  ‘Get up. Go on.’ Brandt kicked him again. ‘Get up and get down in there.’ He pulled Sutcliffe up by the elbow and shoved him backwards into the grave, where he sprawled in the dirt.

  ‘If you don’t start digging, I’ll start digging,’ said Brandt. ‘And I’ll bury you in there.’

  Sutcliffe began whimpering. ‘No. No. It’s not for me. He promised it’s not for me.’

  ‘If you don’t shut up, when you’re finished I’ll send you downstairs.’

  ‘Please, no …’ Sutcliffe gasped, pointing to John. ‘He said … he said … it weren’t for me.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Brandt’s ratty little eyes came to land on John. ‘So you’re giving orders, are you, Mulligan?’

  John shook his head, lifted his spade, carried on with his work.

  ‘Hey.’ The man’s stick thwacked him on the upper arm. ‘Hey. I’m talking to you. Can you not hear? Or are you deaf as well as daft?’

  Brandt crouched on his haunches, and their eyes were level. ‘Do you know what?’ The man had no front teeth and he hissed as he spoke. ‘I’ve always wondered what you were in here for. What is it then? Being a stupid Irish fuck? I know you lot.’ His spittle landed on John’s jacket. ‘You come over here. Sit on your arses. Expect to be looked after. And now you’re telling people what to do?’

  The man’s breath stank of cheap liquor. The edges of his eyes were yellow, but their pupils were beady and black.

  ‘Why are you never in the ballroom? Don’t they have dances back in Ireland? Can’t lift your feet up out of them bogs? Or is it you don’t like women?’

  ‘Aye,’ said John.

  ‘Aye you do or aye you don’t?’

  He said nothing more.

  ‘Don’t they teach you to speak English over there? En-ger-lish?’ Brandt made his mouth slack, tongue hanging, like some of the men in the ward. ‘En-ger-lish, you fuck.’ He waved his stick in the air, as if deciding which of the two of them to beat with it. ‘Tell you what,’ he grinned, gesturing towards Sutcliffe, ‘I’ll let this lad off his trip downstairs if you say it. Say, “I’m a stupid Irish fuck.” And you can dance while you do it.’

  Sutcliffe had stopped his moaning. John could hear him panting like an animal behind him.

  ‘Say it.’

  John’s hands twitched on the handle of his spade.

  There was a stirring on the hill above them. A small procession coming down across the railway tracks to Mantle Lane: four men, carrying a plain coffin, and a vicar, all in a line. Brandt twisted to look and then clambered up to attention, his hat pulled off his head and held in his hand. The funeral party stopped at the unfilled grave. One of the men took the boards from it and laid them to the side, and the coffin was lowered in. John could see its pine lid peeking out. Space was tight in there; the grave was full.

  The vicar looked uncomfortable, as though he had been pushed o
n to a stage against his will, long skirts flapping in the cold and the breeze. One of the men stepped forward and put something else in the hole, a small box this time, just a foot long, and when he saw what it was, John’s stomach clenched.

  The vicar held his Bible, said a few words, bent for a handful of earth, which he threw on the coffin, then looked over to where the three men stood. ‘Fill this in,’ he said, before he turned and led the small procession back across the lane.

  John took a spadeful of earth from the side of the new grave to the other and tipped it in.

  ‘You know why they do that, don’t you?’ Brandt had come up behind him. His tongue rested between his missing teeth. ‘Put little’uns in’t bottom.’ He reached down with his stick and rapped it on the wood of the smaller box. ‘So as they won’t be lonely.’ He snorted. His mouth was a black pit when he laughed.

  John moved away quickly, back to the other grave, digging a fresh load of earth.

  ‘What about you?’ Brandt called after him. ‘You ever had a little’un?’

  John’s load rattled like sharp rain on the lid of the small wooden box. If he covered it fast enough, Brandt couldn’t touch it again.

  But Brandt was crouched before the grave now, rocking on his haunches. ‘I always heard babbies were born in here, but I never seen one myself.’

  He struck his stick, harder now, on the wood of the tiny coffin. It gave off a small dull sound. Then, tongue between his teeth, Brandt edged the end of his stick between the wood, beginning to ease it open.

  John roared, launching himself towards Brandt. He grabbed him by the collar and twisted, wresting him around, bringing his face up to his. Brandt coughed, gasping for breath, hands flailing before him, face reddening from the lack of air.