The Captain's Daughter

by Leah Fleming

  ‘What friends?’

  ‘The lady from the cathedral has been asking about you. She’s called in twice with flowers. See, over there? The beautiful gladioli.’ The nurse pointed to a glass vase full of coloured spears that were out of focus.

  Had the wife of the college principal been visiting? How kind of her. ‘I’m sorry to be a trouble, but I must go home.’

  ‘Now that won’t be possible, dear, just yet, not until you’re better. You tried to drown yourself.’

  ‘I did what?’ May shrank under the covers.

  ‘You ran into the sea and had to be restrained. You scared people with your antics. Now we can’t have that, can we?’

  May’s head was spinning at her words. If only she could remember, but everything was fuzzy and blurred, just pictures that fell into pieces when she tried to stare at them. There was the sea, yes, like a silver mirror glinting, reflecting her wickedness back at herself. She had wanted to smash that mirror. It stirred things up in her head she’d never wanted to see again. How the waves had crashed over their heads . . . how the ship had slid under the surface of the cruel ocean. She felt tears, but none came; her eyes were dry and sore. Why am I here? What did I do wrong? And where’s the captain’s little girl now?

  She turned her face from the nurse in shame, wanting to sink back into the mist of forgetfulness, to disappear into the autumn fog drifting over Stowe Pool early in the morning.

  In the days that followed everything around her seemed bleached and colourless. She felt like a stranger in threadbare laundered linen wandering around in a daze of confusion. The food in the dining hall was tasteless, like over-blanched vegetables, and her drugged limbs were heavy as she dragged herself into the exercise yard and later around the corridors to the day rooms.

  There was a smell of bonfires drifting through the open windows, and when she shuffled round the grounds of the hospital, the leaves scrunched under her boots like crushed glass. Her fingers were stiff and swollen as she sat in the workroom watching others struggling with basketwork. She couldn’t concentrate on stuffing toys or knitting. A nurse tried to persuade her to do something. ‘I can’t,’ she complained. ‘My fingers don’t work.’

  It was as if everything here was in slow motion. She watched a woman making lace with pins and bobbins bent over her cushion slowly twisting threads, ignoring her, deep in concentration. If only she could lose herself in something like that.

  She fingered the bone bobbins wrapped with cotton and saw herself young with all the hope in front of her, the clack of the machines, the chatter of the girls mouthing their gossip over the noise. She was back in the mill, so full of life and love and expectation. Who was that girl? Where had she gone? Who was this drab sorrow-burdened old woman?

  ‘Would you like to try this, Mrs Smith?’ asked the nurse, guiding her to a seat to watch how the lace was woven from pin to pin. The cotton threads followed the pattern of the pins, the lace grew so gradually, so delicate but so slow, and her eyes were soothed by the flicking of the bobbins, the rhythm of the twisting threads. She thought of spider webs, loops and links with gaps in between. Her mind was like a piece of lace, full of holes and spaces, and gaps with threads of worry twisting round the pins. Joe and Ellen. Ella, the ocean and that terrible night. Would the nightmares ever end?

  How could she make sense of any of it now? She was too tired and fearful, but she could twist threads and make something grow. She sat down and watched and wondered at the delicate bobbins, like tiny fingers dancing over the cushion. This was something she could try.

  Later, as she paced around the outer building, she sensed St Matthew’s was not the workhouse of her fears. It rose majestically like a brick castle out of the mist, and she was overawed by the size. She had heard about this place but had never seen it. Here she didn’t have to think or prepare meals but just sit in the vast dining hall and be served. She was given menial jobs to do but there was time to sit with the bobbins and lose herself in the threading, learning a new skill that was loosening her stiff fingers.

  Life here wasn’t real, none of this was real. She’d been taken out of the real world into this mansion for a rest, but across the valley there was the child to consider.

  Ella didn’t deserve what was happening to her. She was just a child, confused and frightened, now orphaned in effect. Who was looking after her? If only she wasn’t so tired and heavy. Perhaps Ella was better off without her? Who would want a mother like her?

  During the weeks that followed the terrible trip to the seaside everyone at school was kind to Ella. She felt people were tiptoeing around her as if she was wearing a label round her neck that said: ‘Her mother is locked away. She’s got no one to look after her so don’t keep staring.’ But that wasn’t true. Hazel was kind and her mother was letting her stay with them, on a camp bed in Hazel’s room. She didn’t understand why Mum had to be taken away with her arms tied up or why she wasn’t allowed to visit her in St Matthew’s. Mrs Perrings tried to explain.

  ‘She needs rest, love. She’s been under a lot of strain. Seeing the water, well, it reminded her of your father and how he drowned. The doctors will take care of her. She’d want you to get on with your schooling. I’ve been to see Canon Forester and the College, and they will visit her and she’ll get what she is entitled to . . . Don’t worry. We’ll collect her post and get a few things for you.’

  Ella had just one question: ‘How long will she be in there?’

  ‘Until the doctors think she’s well enough to come home, but don’t fret, you can stay here for a while until we see how things unfold.’

  It was good walking with Hazel to school, and Miss Parry kept her busy if she looked sad. She missed Lombard Gardens and the view from her own room over Stowe Pool. She didn’t have time to go to the cathedral as the Perringses were Methodists and she had to go with them on a Sunday to their Tamworth Street church.

  No one there knew about her mother being sent away, and soon, as the days turned into a week, she began to get used to living with this new sister and her mother and meeting Uncle George the soldier.

  On the first Saturday together they played alongside the brook at Netherstowe and Ella remembered the little shrine to St Chad that had been their wishing well, covered over with an ivy roof. When Hazel was at her piano lesson she took herself down the road to the well and said a long prayer to the saint, telling him to hurry up and make her mum better. Why had Mum not come home? Did she not want to see her again? Was it right that she wasn’t her real daughter? She had to know the truth. It was then that she had her big idea.

  62

  ‘We’ve come to see Mrs Smith,’ Celeste announced, clutching some pink dahlias as she and her father stood in the grand entrance of St Matthew’s, watching the clock ticking round to three and listening for the visitor’s bell.

  ‘She’s not having a very good day,’ the nurse warned. ‘Very weepy . . . She has these spells. Still, your visit might brighten her mood.’ It was Celeste’s third visit but so far she’d not seen the patient. This time she was determined to see for herself what had happened to May. She eyed the hospital with a certain admiration. Of its kind it was clean and functional and on a grand scale.

  They followed slowly behind the nurse, the canon faltering to catch his breath, stumbling with his stick. It was not one of his good days either, but he was determined to accompany her.

  The nurse pointed to a woman slouched over a table, working her fingers at something. She didn’t look up when the nurse announced, ‘You’ve got visitors again, Mrs Smith.’

  ‘May?’ enquired Canon Forester. ‘How are you today?’

  There was no response. She seemed lost in her lace weaving. ‘I’ve brought someone to see you. Look, do you recognize who it is?’ The canon touched her shoulder, smiling. Celeste stepped forward trying not to look shocked at how pale and thin and aged May had become. She could have passed this woman in the street and not recognized her. Gone was the feisty May who, from he
r father’s account, had taken no nonsense from Grover on his visit and stood her ground against a bully.

  ‘May . . . it’s me, your friend, Celeste, back home from America for good.’

  May turned her head, staring, not recognizing her at first and then when she had, she covered her eyes with her hands. ‘I’m sorry, who are you?’

  ‘I’m Celeste, your pen pal from the States, your friend.’

  ‘My daughter turned up on my doorstep without a word of warning. It’s so lovely after all these years. Doesn’t she look well? And I have a grandson, so high.’ Canon Forester lifted his hand to indicate Roddy’s height but Celeste could see May was not listening.

  There was a strange blankness to her features, deep furrowed lines on her brow. How could this be the same woman who had written such lively letters, who’d boxed Florrie Jessup’s ears? What had gone so very wrong for her?

  She was staring at them, still trying to focus on their faces. ‘It was a long time ago. I forget so. I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted journey,’ she replied, turning back to her bobbins and cottons as if her visitors’ presence was not her concern.

  ‘Of course, I should come to say thanks to you for all you did.’ Celeste sat down, forcing herself on her friend again. ‘You redirected my letters, cheered me up when I was low. Now I’m here to help you get better. We’ve so much to catch up on.’

  ‘I’m not good company, ma’am. I don’t deserve to get better.’ She turned her back on them again, but Celeste was not going to give up easily.

  ‘Then let’s help you get better. Is there anything you’d like us to bring? Don’t worry about your daughter. She’s being looked after. I saw her myself only yesterday. She’s a credit to you. We’re going to take her out for a day to meet my son, Roddy. He’s longing to meet her.’

  ‘She’s not my daughter.’

  ‘Of course she is. What put that idea in your head?’

  ‘I’m not her true mother. I’m not fit to be her mother.’ May started weeping and a nurse stepped forward.

  ‘I’m afraid I did warn you . . . not a good day. She gets these ideas in her head. The doctors are doing what they can.’

  ‘But it’s all poppycock. I saw the baby in her arms in the lifeboat . . . We were shipwrecked together. That’s how we met. I owe her so much. She’s an excellent mother. This is terrible . . . what can we do?’ Celeste wanted to weep at the sight of the broken woman. She reminded her of some of the force-fed victims in the suffrage campaign, broken by the torture and sense of failure that they’d felt in swallowing food to survive.

  ‘Time will heal her, Celeste. She needs rest now.’ Her father touched her shoulder. ‘The mind is a mystery. Some of our college students are much changed after the war, some have lost faith, others have had to go into retreat away from alcohol and substances. War is much more than buildings and machinery and bodies destroyed. I’m sure May will heal. She’s in my prayers every night. We’d better go now. I think we’re upsetting her.’

  Celeste was not so ready to leave. ‘Has she seen her daughter yet?’ she asked. ‘That might shake her out of this dream world she’s in and bring her back into real life.’

  ‘Children don’t visit. It’s not advisable. It only upsets the patient more, in my experience,’ the nurse replied briskly.

  As they walked down the long tiled corridor Celeste shivered at the sight of so many shuffling people lost in their own worlds. She’d heard about these places and this was better than most, being bright, airy, clean and spacious, but it was also cold and clinical, so vast in size, without any feeling of home. How could May get better in such a place, cut off from everyday life? Not to see her child, to deny she was her mother was madness indeed. What had put that idea into her head? She looked so muddled, so distant, lost in her own fantasy. Her eyes were like those of a dead fish on a slab, glazed, blank, her hair stringy and greasy. Her dress hung off her shoulders. How did she come to be so hopeless and lifeless, like an empty shell?

  Had May survived their ordeal on the Titanic just to end up this shadow of her former self, making her daughter an orphan? There must be something she could do to bring her back to life, give her something to live for.

  She recalled what Archie McAdam had said, how he’d survived that torpedoed ship, clinging to the lifebuoy, knowing they had only hours to live. How he’d made everyone sing songs and hymns, telling the men stories and jokes and making them picture all their families at home, telling them how they must get back there and keep awake. ‘I just refused to give up,’ he’d said, smiling that grizzled grin, his eyes brimful of life. They’d received a letter already with his new address and as soon as she’d opened it, Celeste knew she’d reply.

  Life goes forward not backwards. She didn’t want to think about her Akron days now. Would she have ended up in one of these places if she’d not escaped from Grover?

  She’d kept going forward, relieved to be home amongst the familiar once more. May must be helped to move forward out of this terrible pit of gloom. What was it all about? She was going to have to find out more.

  Now they were settled back with Selwyn at Red House near Streethay, camping in the rambling old place, crammed full of family furniture and clutter. His temporary housekeeper had given notice, saying the work was too much for her, leaving Mrs Allen, the daily help, to cope alone, and Celeste could make herself useful there for the moment. It was a ridiculous redbrick three-storey house with eight bedrooms. An old farmhouse off the old road to Burton on Trent, it was in need of repair. It looked like a doll’s house in shape but needed a good cleaning from top to bottom and was far too big for a single man.

  Selwyn accepted Celeste and Roddy needed a roof over their heads, and he’d not asked too many questions or pried into what went wrong with her marriage. That was some relief. She was too ashamed to tell anyone her business, not even her father, who she caught staring at her with concern.

  ‘Are you all right, child? I’m afraid May is really quite sick, much worse than I thought,’ he sighed. ‘Such a shame, and that poor girl, all alone in the world.’

  For all her father was frail and forgetful he was a good judge of his children. He’d refused to come and live with them in Selwyn’s barn of a house. He realized they needed their space. Now he sighed as he surveyed the gardens of the asylum from a bench. ‘I’m afraid I’ve landed you right in this. I’m sorry.’

  ‘What for? May stood by me for years. I’m not letting her rot in here,’ Celeste replied. ‘She will get better, won’t she?’

  ‘That’s in Greater Hands than ours. We’ll do what we can and trust to providence.’

  ‘I wish I had your faith, Papa . . .’

  ‘I’m old and I can look back and see patterns in life, turning points, roads not taken. You’ve had a hard struggle but one bad mistake needn’t ruin the rest of your life, child. You need time to heal too, and where better than with your own kind?’

  ‘May has no one . . .’

  ‘She has Ella, she has friends and she has you. She’s thrice blessed,’ he whispered.

  Celeste stared out at the pristine lawns where a man was gathering up fallen leaves into a wheelbarrow and another patient was clipping hedges. Life was so complicated. Her return hadn’t quite turned out as she’d imagined. Had she struggled all this time to untangle one strand of her life only to find herself picking up the threads here? She was in danger of making even more knots.

  63

  Ella told Mrs Perrings she was going into town, but caught the bus to Burntwood at the Market Square. She’d got enough pennies for the fare and in her shopping bag were the drawings she’d done for a present. She asked around enough to know just how to find the hospital, but when she got off the bus and walked the last bit of the country lane, the sight of such an enormous building made her gulp. How would she find her mum in there? It was like a castle with a tower and windows with bars across them.

  There were signs everywhere: ‘Main Entrance’ was what she was
looking for as she scurried past the lodge and the gates, and down the tree-lined drive. There were lawns and a park. It was like visiting a great mansion. She tried to look inconspicuous, but it wasn’t long before a man stopped her path.

  ‘You can’t go in there! No kiddies allowed,’ he said.

  ‘But I want to see my mum,’ Ella replied, holding out her bag.

  ‘I’m sure you do but it’s not a place for children.’

  ‘I want to see my mum,’ she began to cry. ‘I haven’t seen her for two weeks and I’ve written to her. And I know she wants to see me.’ The sight of a child in tears had the desired effect.

  ‘Now, love, don’t cry . . . I’m sure she understands, but rules is rules.’

  ‘But I’ve brought her some pictures.’ Ella was beginning to panic. Why was he stopping her? The groundsman turned her round, pointing her in the direction of the road. Ella began to howl so loudly that people passing stopped and wondered what was happening. An old man in black moved forward to ask but through her tears she didn’t recognize him.

  ‘Ella . . . Ella Smith? Oh, my dear, what’re you doing here?’ He turned to the red-haired lady from America, who’d called after school with a lovely musical box.

  The lady smiled. ‘Oh my goodness! Ella, how did you get here on your own?’ She stepped forward to comfort her but Ella was having none of it.

  ‘I want my mum. She’s in there,’ she cried, pointing to the hospital.

  The groundsman gripped her hand. ‘Now stop this fuss, you’ll get me into trouble! You know this kid? Tell her she can’t go in.’

  ‘She’s come all this way on her own. Surely something can be done . . . It’s cruel not to let her see her own mother. Mrs Smith needs to know she is safe.’ Her mum’s friend was trying to help. ‘Father, we’ll have to go back. Just stay here.’ The lady darted back up the drive while the canon found a hanky for Ella to blow her nose on.