by Nancy Revell
‘Nurse Pattinson, I’m making some alterations to Miss Girling’s medication.’ She started writing on Henrietta’s chart.
‘I want to try and bring her dosage down, which means I need you to keep an extra-close eye on her. If you see any changes, good or bad, I’d like you to report them to me, please.’
Dr Eris smiled her thanks; she knew who really ran the asylum, and it wasn’t the doctors. Nurse Pattinson had been there nearly her entire working life and she ruled with an iron rod. Dr Eris had met nurses like her before and made the mistake of getting on their bad side.
Walking back to her office further down the corridor, Dr Eris opened the door and went straight over to the battered wooden filing cabinet that looked as old as the building itself. She pulled out the top drawer and rifled through the alphabet.
‘Here we are,’ she mumbled to herself, heaving out the two-inch-thick file. ‘Miss Henrietta Girling.’ She plonked the case file on her desk and sat down in her chair.
Rereading the medical notes that spanned more than two decades, Dr Eris started to jot down her observations, but all the while her mind kept skipping back to John. They were going out on a date this evening. A proper date! After their kiss, he’d asked if he could take her out for dinner.
Dr Eris made a mental note to be spontaneous more often.
It had certainly paid dividends for her today.
Chapter Three
‘Isabelle!’
Bel and Helen turned round to see Pearl stomping down the steps of the main entrance.
Helen had been about to walk over to the car but stopped.
‘Talk of the devil,’ Bel said.
‘She looks as white as a sheet. Or is she always like that?’ Helen spoke out of the side of her mouth. She’d met Pearl a few times before but always in the pub, and invariably through a haze of cigarette smoke.
‘She’s never exactly the picture of health,’ Bel said distractedly, watching her ma make her way over to them. ‘God, I hope it’s not Bill.’
‘The landlord from the Tatham?’ Helen asked, thinking of the rather portly but jovial proprietor of Bel’s local.
Bel nodded. ‘He was brought here last night. He was in the Welcome Tavern on Barrack Street when it got hit.’
‘I’m so sorry. I was so wrapped up in my own drama, I didn’t even ask why you were here,’ Helen said. ‘Why was Bill at the Welcome?’
‘Lock-in,’ Bel explained. ‘Getting plastered because Ma got slaughtered and went off with Ronald, our neighbour.’
‘Bloody Nora, I thought I’d never get out of there!’ Pearl said as she reached them.
‘You all right, Ma?’ Bel asked, scrutinising her mother. She was puffing away on a fag as though her life depended on it.
‘Is Bill all right?’ Bel crossed her fingers. They’d been led to believe that those with relatively minor injuries had been brought here – the more serious having been taken to the town’s Royal.
Pearl looked at Bel as though she was talking gobbledygook.
‘Bill?’
‘Yes, Ma. Bill. You know, the man we’ve been looking for all day? Your friend? The one you’ve been worried sick about?’ They had been searching for Bill all over town; had gone to the bomb site where they’d feared he might well have died, then to the Monkwearmouth Hospital over on the north side of the river, before being told he’d been taken to the asylum.
‘Aye … course … Bill,’ Pearl muttered, shaking her head and taking another drag. ‘I got bloody lost. I’ve not seen him.’
Bel was relieved that her mother’s slightly bizarre behaviour was not down to Bill’s demise, but at the same time she was also a little worried as to why she seemed so dazed and confused.
‘Ma, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘I have!’ Pearl spluttered.
Bel and Helen exchanged worried looks. Pearl’s hands were shaking – in fact, her whole body was trembling.
‘Perhaps I should get you both home?’ Helen asked, concerned.
‘I think that might be a good idea …’ Bel nodded. ‘Ma, why don’t we go back with Helen?’
Pearl stared at the glossy black Jaguar she knew belonged to Charles Havelock – Helen’s grandfather. ‘Wild horses won’t get me in that thing!’
Bel looked at Helen. ‘You get yourself off. We’ll be all right. Probably do us good to have a walk.’
‘If you’re sure?’ Helen looked at Bel and then at Pearl.
Bel nodded.
Helen headed over to the car and got in. Taking a deep breath, she turned the ignition. She was still very much a novice behind the wheel, but she managed to pull away with just the slightest of judders.
As she drove towards the main gates, she looked in her rear-view mirror at Bel and Pearl.
And she thought she had drawn the short straw when it came to mothers.
‘So come on, Ma, tell me what’s happened. You went off to find Bill in a relatively normal state, and you’ve come back here a gibbering wreck. If you don’t start making sense, I’ll be forced to take you back inside and get them to check you out.’
‘Over my dead body!’ She watched for a moment as the Jaguar made its way down the driveway, before walking over to the bench by the entrance. Seeing the brass plaque dedicated to Mr Charles Havelock, philanthropist and entrepreneur, Pearl’s lip curled in disgust.
‘Is there no escaping that man?’ she spat out before turning her back on it and plonking herself down. She looked up at her daughter. ‘Will yer gan ’n make sure Bill’s all reet? Or at least leave a message with the auld cow on the front desk – ask her to tell Bill I came to see him ’n that I hope he’s out of here soon.’
Bel was observing her mother. Was it fear she could see on her face? She wasn’t sure. But whatever it was, it was obvious that nothing was going to make her go back inside.
‘All right, Ma. I’ll do as you ask, but I want you to reassure me that when I come back you’ll still be sat there – and that you’ll tell me what on earth is going on?’
‘Aye, I will … promise,’ Pearl said, lighting up another cigarette from the one she was smoking. Her hands were still shaking.
Forty minutes later, Pearl’s hands had stopped shaking, mainly due to the double whisky she was drinking, coupled with having put a good distance between herself and the asylum.
‘So, Bill’s definitely all reet?’ Pearl asked for the umpteenth time.
‘Yes, Ma, he’s fine. Like I said, he’s got a big gash on his head and quite a few cuts and bruises, but other than that, he’s fine. Lucky to be alive. And he knows it. He was sat up in his bed looking full of the joys.’
‘So why are they keeping him in?’ Pearl took a sip of her whisky. ‘If he’s all reet, you’d think they’d want shot of him.’
‘He said it was to “err on the side of caution”, with it being a head injury. It did look like he’d taken quite a whack.’
‘Ha! That’ll teach him. Going to a lock-in at the Welcome, of all places.’
‘That’s exactly what he said you would say.’ Bel gave her ma a probing look. ‘I suppose you two must have got to know each other quite well – working day in, day out behind that bar. How long have you been there now? Must be coming up to a couple of years?’
‘Not far off,’ Pearl said.
‘Well, Bill obviously trusts you.’ Bel started rummaging round in her pocket. ‘Because he’s given me the keys to the Tatham and asked you to open up and be “acting landlord” for the evening. He said Geraldine will be able to help out. That she’s always up for a shift.’
‘Always up for a bit of dosh ’n some free drinks, more like,’ Pearl huffed.
Bel laughed. ‘Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.’
Pearl took the keys and put them in her handbag.
‘Bill also seemed even more chipper when he’d heard you’d gone looking for him, although he was a little puzzled as to why you wouldn’t come in and see him, es
pecially after coming all this way.’
‘Aye, well, he’ll have to wonder, won’t he.’ Pearl took another drink of her whisky.
‘So,’ Bel asked, ‘what happened after you left me and Helen?’
‘I got bloody lost, that’s what,’ Pearl said, taking another gulp. ‘It was like being in one of them nightmares where yer just turning around corners ’n hitting brick walls.’
‘So, where did you end up?’ Bel asked.
‘I heard this voice. Followed it to a room.’
‘And?’
‘It was like a proper room, in a proper house. A posh house ’n all.’
‘In what way?’
Pearl took another drag. ‘The way it was decorated. The furniture.’
Bel was watching her ma intently.
‘There was this red Chinese cabinet. I recognised it. And there was a woman with her back to me, sitting at a dressing table. I thought she was talking to someone else in the room, but there was no one there. She was just sat there, talking to her own reflection.’
Bel could feel the hairs on the back of her neck start to tingle.
‘Then she turned around. Realised someone else was in the room.’
Pearl stubbed out her cigarette.
‘And that’s when I saw who it was. When I realised why everything felt so familiar.’
‘Who was it?’ Bel asked.
Pearl looked at her daughter.
‘It was the mistress … Mistress Henrietta.’
‘Really?’ Bel said. ‘I just presumed she was dead when you told me about her that day.’ That unforgettable day when they had stood outside the Havelock house, when her ma had told her it was there she had worked as a maid, there she had been raped, and there where Bel had been conceived.
‘Aye, I did ’n all,’ Pearl said, sparking up another cigarette. ‘Just presumed she’d met her Maker.
‘Are you sure it was Henrietta?’ Bel asked.
‘Oh, aye.’ Pearl let out a burst of dark laughter followed by a hacking cough. ‘You dinnit get many like her.’ She took a drink of whisky. ‘The thing is …’ she gave an involuntary shiver ‘… she looked the same – same red hair all piled up high.’ Pearl lifted her arms and waggled her hands about. As she did so, ash fell from her cigarette, just missing her own hair. ‘All raggedly-taggedly. Same big skirt. Yer knar, the ones with tiny waists ’n the hoops inside them. Face thick with make-up, red cheeks ’n lips, blue all round her eyes.’ She sucked on her cigarette and more ash dropped to the floor. ‘It was like I’d been dragged back in time.’
Bel realised why her ma looked like she’d seen a ghost. She had seen a ghost. A ghost from her past. And one, she guessed, her ma had no desire to be reacquainted with.
‘You must have got a real shock?’ Bel asked.
‘I did, Isabelle, I did that,’ she said, her face deathly serious. ‘What I dinnit understand, though –’ Pearl finished off her drink ‘– was that the nurse that come in ’n chased us out called her by a different name.’
‘Really?’
‘She called her “Miss” for starters.’ Pearl looked down at her empty glass. ‘And what was it she called her? … Something “Girl” … That’s it – she called her Miss Girling.’
‘Well, that is strange,’ Bel agreed. ‘Very strange. Very mysterious.’
‘Course, if yer mate Helen hadn’t turned up, whining on about some bloke, you’d have been with me, I wouldn’t have got lost ’n I wouldn’t have seen Henrietta. All I’d be suffering from now would be a hangover from hell – not traumatised after having a sit-down with the walking dead.’
At the mention of Helen, it suddenly occurred to Bel that Henrietta was not just her ma’s former employee – the wife of the man who had raped her – she was also Miriam’s mother and, therefore, Helen’s grandmother. Did they know she was here?
Bel watched as Pearl picked up her empty glass and knew there’d be no arguing. They were staying for another whether she liked it or not.
‘So, Ma, tell me a bit more about Henrietta – when you worked for her.’ Bel looked across at her mother, who was now almost back to her normal self.
Pearl lit another cigarette. ‘She must have been in her mid-thirties – up ’n down like a bloody yo-yo, she was. I’d never met anyone like her. Still haven’t. She lived off steak ’n caviar ’n a load of pills ’n potions, all necked down with her “special Russian water” – that’s vodka to you ’n me. She called Eddy the butler “Heathcliff”, and Agatha, the housekeeper, “Maid Marion”.’
‘Characters from books?’ Bel asked, intrigued.
‘Aye, that’s right. I never knew which books, but apparently there was a “Pearl” in some book she’d read, so I was lucky ’n got to keep my own name.’
Pearl took a drag.
‘Most of the time she either had her nose in a book or else she’d be flying round the house, full of energy ’n ideas about this ’n that. She’d go on huge spending sprees in town ’n then there’d be delivery after delivery arriving at the house.’
‘And what was she like with Mr Havelock?’ Bel kept her voice low; she didn’t want anyone in the pub overhearing their conversation.
‘Yer never really saw the two o’ them together. I only worked there for about seven months ’n most of the time he was abroad. He only came back during the holidays.’
Pearl took a sip of her drink.
‘The only time I can recall seeing the pair of them together was when he came back for Christmas ’n Henrietta lined us all up ’n introduced us to him as her “household cavalry”. I can still see him now –’ Pearl shuddered involuntarily ‘– standing in his jodhpurs ’n his leather riding boots. I’d been told he liked to give his filly a good thrashing round Backhouse Park when he came back after a spell away.’ Pearl took another drag on her cigarette. ‘When we’d been dismissed, I went to see Jonny, the young stable lad. He was giving the horse a washdown. I asked why the water was red. Stupid I was then. Young and stupid.’
‘He’d whipped the horse so badly it was bleeding?’ Bel asked, shocked.
‘Aye,’ Pearl said, taking a drink of whisky. ‘Given it a thrashing in the true sense of the word.’
Bel heard the bitterness in her ma’s tone.
‘Henrietta must have been quite young when she had Miriam and – what was the other daughter called?’
‘Margaret,’ Pearl said, looking at the pub’s stained-glass window as she recalled the past. ‘Miriam and Margaret. Stuck-up little madams they were.’
‘They must have been about the same age as you when you worked there?’ Bel said.
‘Aye, they were. I was a bit younger – looked a bit like them both ’n all. Fair hair. Blue eyes. I was pretty back then, believe it or not. I thought that might have been why Henrietta took me in.’
‘Because you reminded her of her daughters, and she felt sorry for you?’
‘Aye, that’s what I thought,’ Pearl said, although as time had gone by, she wasn’t quite so sure.
‘So, you didn’t see much of them?’ Bel asked.
‘They’d been sent to a “finishing school”, whatever that’s meant to be,’ Pearl said, trying to shake the pull of the past.
‘I think that’s where young girls go to learn how to be ladies,’ Bel said.
Pearl laughed and then started coughing.
‘Well, from what I’ve heard about that Miriam, they didn’t do a very good job, did they?’
This time they both laughed and Pearl stubbed out her cigarette.
Bel knew her time as inquisitor was up.
‘I think we’ll keep this to ourselves for now, eh?’ Pearl said, standing.
‘You mean you don’t want me to tell Helen, with her being a Havelock?’ Bel said.
‘Aye, that’s exactly what I mean.’
Chapter Four
Driving back from Ryhope, Helen allowed herself to wallow in self-pity for a short while. Pulling over in a lay-by near Hendon beach, she looke
d out to sea, viewing it through a blur of tears, mourning the loss of what could have been. Getting back into the car, she checked herself in the mirror, rubbed the smudges of mascara from under her eyes and applied a fresh layer of her trademark Victory Red lipstick. She had to face the fact that ‘happy ever after’ just wasn’t for her. She should have learnt that she was destined to be on her own after Tommy had chosen Polly, after the debacle of Theodore, after losing her baby … And now, she had lost John. Not that he had ever been hers to lose.
Pulling back onto the main road, Helen was over the north side of the Wear within five minutes. After parking her car by the Admiral pub, she walked across to the huge metal gates that heralded the entrance to Thompson’s.
‘Afternoon, Miss Crawford!’ The young lad who was manning the timekeeper’s cabin shouted down from the counter, tipping his oversized flat cap as he’d seen his elders do.
Carrying on into the yard, Helen was hit by the glare of sunshine reflecting off the hull of a half-built ship that was slowly being brought to life at the far end of the yard. She shielded her eyes and squinted at this urban jungle, this mass of concrete and steel. Looking over at the cathedral-sized doors of the platers’ shed, which were open, she saw a crane trundling out, a huge metal sheet dangling from its pinched beak.
‘Helen!’
She was unable to see the person who had called her name, but she recognised the voice. Moving out of the blinding sunlight, she saw Rosie waving over at her. Her welder’s helmet had been pushed right back so that she looked like some modern-day Janus. She was giving Mickey, the little teaboy, some coppers in exchange for a steaming hot can of tea. Behind her was Martha, the group’s ‘gentle giant’. She was raising her hand and offering a gap-toothed smile in greeting.
As little Mickey trundled off with his jangling pole, Helen saw that Dorothy and Angie were sitting next to Martha on a stack of wooden pallets. They, too, were waving, signalling for her to come over. To their left, she saw Gloria chatting to Jimmy, the head riveter.
‘What are your lot doing here?’ Helen walked over to Rosie, who was taking a sip of her tea.