The Girl Who Couldn't Read

by John Harding

  I went downstairs – I downstairsed – to post the letter in the mailbox, whistling a merry tune to myself. As I rounded the turn of the stairs I nearly bumped into O’Reilly who was coming up.

  ‘Ah, it’s you, Mrs O’Reilly.’ It was stating the obvious but then that’s what one does in such a minor awkward situation.

  ‘It’s nobody else, sir.’ She had an annoying way of putting me in my place and making me feel a fool. ‘Been writing a letter, have you?’ She nodded at the envelope, which I held to my chest so she might not read the address.

  ‘So it seems,’ I replied. Touché.

  She held out her hand. ‘Let me post it for you, sir.’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t trouble you to do that.’ I clutched the letter more closely still. ‘Anyway, you’re on your way up.’

  ‘I just remembered something I forgot to do downstairs, so it’s not any trouble at all,’ she said and stretched her hand out further.

  I held the letter tighter still, for I really had the feeling she might actually snatch it from me. It was as ridiculous as a children’s game, as if I were holding it above my head and she leaping up and trying to get it.

  ‘Yes, that’s very kind, but I’m on my way to the library, you see, and I have to pass right by the mailbox on the way.’

  She dropped her hand and nodded. Checkmate. ‘Very well. Goodnight then, sir.’

  We stood there awkwardly for a moment, in each other’s way. Finally I said, ‘Well, go ahead, then. You said you had to go back downstairs for something you’d forgotten.’

  She smiled her sinister smile again. ‘Ah yes, sir, so I did. But I’ve just realised, I don’t need to after all.’

  I flattened myself against the banister rail and, with a nod of acknowledgement, she stepped past me. I turned and watched as she glided up the stairs exactly as I’d always thought a ghost might walk. I went down and mailed my letter. I did not go to the library. O’Reilly – if she was watching – and I both knew what the game had been about, so what would have been the point?

  15

  In the following days I noticed O’Reilly was becoming increasingly casual in her behaviour toward me, almost to the point of insolence, even in front of Morgan. One morning he arrived in the hydrotherapy room, where we were preparing a woman for treatment. He looked surprised as he came in and pulled out his watch.

  ‘This woman was meant to be in the bath seven and a half minutes ago. What is the reason for the delay?’

  Before I could say anything, O’Reilly said, ‘We were waiting for Dr Shepherd, sir. He was meant to supervise. Only I think he was delayed by his special patient.’

  This earned me a scowl from Morgan. ‘First things first, Shepherd. You need to get your priorities right.’

  I merely nodded and scowled myself as, when Morgan took the patient’s notes from O’Reilly and began to study them, she regarded me behind his back with something like mockery in her eyes. I was putting a brave face upon things, though, for I had heard the emphasis with which she had referred to me as ‘Doctor Shepherd’. It reinforced my fear that she had wastebasketed me, found my discarded draft letter to Caroline Adams and guessed the truth about me.

  Afterwards I told myself I was being silly. Of course the letter showed that I was duplicitous toward my erstwhile fiancée, but it didn’t necessarily indicate that I was not who I was supposed to be. I told myself this, but I was not reassured. Everything in O’Reilly’s demeanour toward me now – the lack of due respect, the mockery, the talking about me to Morgan while I was there as if she were above me in the pecking order – indicated that she had something on me. The question was, was she going to use it, and, if so, when?

  I began to hate her lean and hungry features, her bony face, her scrawny chicken’s neck. I had made an enemy, without ever actually doing her any wrong. What I had to do now was find a way to stop her hurting me. The woman’s interference could, after all, cost me my life.

  Such was her insolence, I would have loved to teach her a lesson once and for all, but I knew that that way madness lay. I would simply bring down upon myself exactly the consequences I feared she might cause. I spent hour after hour lying on my bed, head resting on my hands, staring at the ceiling as the shadows crawled across it and dark descended outside. It was no use; there was no obvious way out. O’Reilly was a powder keg that might blow up at any moment. It seemed I powerlessed to predict when that moment might be or to prevent it when it did.

  But a few days after the incident in the hydrotherapy room, I was walking with Jane Dove in the grounds at exercise time when I saw in the distance the women from the third floor. It occurred to me that I hadn’t inspected them since the day after the incident with the madwoman in Morgan’s office, when I had tried to get another look at her but found her absent from the group. I thought she must have rejoined it by now and I determined to seek her out.

  I was only half paying attention to what Jane Dove was saying – a rambling story she had extrapolated from the picture of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, the book she had now moved on to after inventing stories for all the illustrations in David Copperfield, although, of course, she did not know the name of the woman in the picture – and I changed direction suddenly to one that would lead us to encounter the top-security patients. Jane paused in her patter, evidently surprised at the way I stepped across her to veer off in this new direction, but then, not getting a reaction from me (I was too focused upon my mission), she resumed her tale. A hundred yards later, as I had judged we would, we had to wait while the line of roped women crossed our path, exactly as they had before, and Jane stopped talking as we both watched them. Glancing at her, I saw a shadow of fear pass over her face, and you didn’t have to be a psychiatrist to know she was again considering the possibility that she might one day find herself in the ranks of these wretched specimens. It was but a momentary thing and I did not have time to study her because I needed to scrutinise the faces of the women as they went by. Once again I looked carefully at each and once again I drew a blank. The madwoman was not there.

  I wondered if my mind was playing tricks upon me, if in the heat of the moment in Morgan’s study I had been too terrified to notice the woman’s features properly and commit them to memory, but I immediately dismissed the idea. I knew the picture of her face was etched in my mind with acid; it would be with me until my dying day – along with some other women’s faces, of course. I wondered, then, if perhaps the woman’s expression had been so distorted by the frenzy she was in as to make her unrecognisable now in the shambling blankness I saw upon the faces of the women before me, the deadness that represented some kind of repose. But that notion, too, seemed fanciful. Even allowing for the difference in situation, the drama of that night, the routine of this exercise walk, there wasn’t anyone here who looked the least bit like that mad fiend.

  As the last woman went by us, I stopped the attendant who was bringing up the rear of the procession.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Tell me, would you, where is the other woman from the third-floor ward?’

  ‘Other woman, sir? I’m afraid I don’t know who you mean. These are all the women from the secure ward.’

  ‘All? Surely not? Is there no one sick or under extra restraint somewhere?’

  She puzzled me one. ‘Why no, sir, they’re all here, all present and correct. There is no one else.’

  I nodded and she hurried off to catch up with her charges. I stood staring after them. ‘Strange,’ I said to myself. ‘Passing strange.’

  ‘What?’ asked Jane Dove. ‘What is strange?’ and I realised I had spoken the words aloud.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I replied, giving her a cheerful smile – cheerfulling her one – ‘now, you were saying about the old lady in the wedding dress?’

  ‘Oh, sir,’ she said crossly, ‘you have not been listening, have you? That was some time ago. We have moved on since then. We are in a rowing boat now.’

  ‘Very well,’ I said.
‘Recommence rowing.’

  She did, but I fear she must have found me as inattentive as before. I had a lot on my mind.

  My first thought was to ask Morgan once again about the missing woman. Assuming the attendant had been correct – and she’d been very definite in what she said – then Morgan had lied to me. The madwoman (I thought of her as such, although, of course, they were all mad here) was not on the violent ward, even though she was extremely violent, as the scratches on my cheek and the burn on my hand testified. So where was she?

  Moreover, the attendant I’d spoken to seemed to have no knowledge of her. She’d stated emphatically that there was no other woman upstairs. And yet I was pretty sure that if I asked Morgan about the woman and mentioned her not being at exercise, he would tell me the same as before, that she was under restraint because she was still too disturbed to be returned to the others.

  I thought back to that night and how agitated Morgan had been. I remembered the conversation with O’Reilly that I’d overheard, his fury with her and the way she’d answered him back, something I had never heard her do before. Then there was that twenty dollars a month mentioned in her file, an absolute fortune for a woman like O’Reilly. Whatever the secret was about this woman, there was no doubt the two of them were in it together. I began to see this was the source of O’Reilly’s self-assurance and arrogance. I also saw it might be an avenue to explore as a means of breaking her hold over me. If I could just find out more, I might use it against her to counteract what I suspected she had on me.

  That evening I looked in on the dining hall when the patients were having their evening meal. It was a thing Morgan and I took turns in doing. The attendants were perfectly capable of managing the meal on their own, but Morgan liked to maintain a tight rein on everything. He thought our appearance would keep everyone on their toes and stop standards slipping.

  I saw O’Reilly at the head of the hall, her eyes scanning the tables in front of her, ranging up and down each, like a bird of prey selecting its next victim. I was at the other end of the hall and she acknowledged my presence with a nod, the slight inclination of her head somehow conveying so exactly the way she regarded our relationship that I could not help thinking the woman was wasted here; she would have earned a fortune on the stage. Then she carried on with what she was doing, as if I were not there. I watched her and thought what a smug predator the woman was, a jumped-up queen in her little empire who needed taking down a peg or two.

  I was wrenched from these thoughts by a dispute at the table closest to me. Two women were squabbling over a piece of bread, one of them hugging it to her breast and the other attempting to pry it from her. Suddenly the one with the bread took one hand off it and fetched the other a hefty slap across the face.

  I signalled to the nearest attendant, who hadn’t noticed the affray, and she rushed over, pulled the women apart and gave the one without bread another slice. The woman took it resentfully and shot the other woman a smouldering look and I was riveted for a moment, wondering if she was going to slap her back. I found myself quite excited at the prospect of a lively fight, with plenty of womanly biting and scratching. But nothing happened and the affair fizzled out with both women too busy eating to continue the ruckus. I looked up and across the hall. O’Reilly was gone.

  I strolled the length of the hall and worked my way to where she had been standing, thinking that in the noise and confusion, with the patients talking and cackling and arguing and appealing to the attendants who were rushing here and there, I’d simply misplaced her and would spot her again in a moment. But no, my first thought had been correct: she was gone.

  I left the hall and wandered out into corridor. I went into the day room. Empty. I had no idea how long O’Reilly had been gone. I paced around, looking everywhere I could think she might be, but there was no sign of her. Eventually I walked the length of the building but still didn’t find her. I decided to go back to the dining hall. She still wasn’t there. I went out through a door on the other side of the hall this time, which led into the back corridor that ran parallel to the main corridor at the front, and began walking along it and almost immediately met O’Reilly coming toward me. I nodded and carried on past her so as to avoid any suspicion that I’d been looking for her. All the way along the corridor I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my head, but when I finally looked over my shoulder, she wasn’t there.

  I had never been in this part of the building before. There was nothing here that had anything to do with me, and my presence here must have made O’Reilly suspicious. As far as I knew, the passage led to the kitchens, the laundry room and storerooms, places where I had no concern. Perhaps O’Reilly had gone to one of those. But then I came upon something that made me think that, no, she had not. Something that interested me greatly. What I found, near the end of the corridor, were the back stairs.

  Was I being fanciful, or had O’Reilly disappeared from the dining hall to go upstairs to her very own ‘special patient’? Had she slipped away to deal with someone over whom she had a particular charge? Had she perhaps gone to the kitchen and helped herself to a portion of food, to take somewhere to a woman who was locked away all on her own? My heart beat faster. I had stumbled upon some mystery here, that was for sure.

  Later, lying on my bed, reading my Shakespeare, I began to draw a lesson from Hamlet. It was no use prevaricating, waiting for something to happen to me, because if I did, that thing would be bad. I had to be the one calling the shots. I had to take control of the situation or all would be lost. I resolved I would follow O’Reilly secretly and discover the truth.

  16

  Next day it was Morgan’s turn to look in on the patients’ supper, and a good hour before the meal began I managed to get away and slip into the back corridor. I made my way along it to foot of the back stairs. I was tempted just to head up them on my own, rather than wait for O’Reilly, but decided it was not a good plan. For one thing, what would I do when I reached the third floor? I would have no idea where to go, where the woman I was looking for might be. Not only that, I would have O’Reilly coming up behind me and might find myself trapped with no convincing explanation for being there.

  I looked along the corridor and saw a door a little further along. I walked over to it and tried the handle. It proved to be unlocked and, opening it, I found the room in darkness, for it had no window. The dim light from the corridor showed it to be some kind of storeroom, with shelves along two of the walls, all empty. There was dust everywhere, which told me it was not in regular use. I slipped inside and pulled the door to behind me, leaving it open perhaps half an inch, through which I had a perfect view of a bit of the corridor and the bottom of the back stairs. All I had to do now was wait for supper to begin and then hope that halfway through it O’Reilly would sneak away as she had the day before.

  I had a fairly tense time of it. After I’d been there half an hour I heard women’s voices coming along the corridor toward me. I pulled away from the gap in the door and held my breath and prayed they wouldn’t notice it was open. It was a couple of attendants and they were so busy talking about some expedition to a dance hall they were planning that they didn’t notice the door was ajar or think it significant if they did, and went on by. I let out my breath and resumed my vigil.

  Nothing happened for what seemed like hours and I grew so weary of standing I sat myself down on the dusty stone floor and was just beginning to think I was on a fool’s errand when I heard brisk, clipped footsteps in the corridor and knew without looking that they were O’Reilly’s. Once again, I held my breath.

  The footsteps grew closer and closer and then stopped. I guessed O’Reilly was at the foot of the stairs. There was a long silence and I heard a creak, which I knew must be her setting a foot on the bottom step. After that there was another long silence. I could hear my heart beating. Had she gone up the stairs or was she still there? I had no way of knowing. I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and let it out as quietly as I
could. I decided to risk a peep around the edge of the door to make sure O’Reilly was out of the way and that the coast was clear. I eased my head round so my eye could see through the gap and straightway pulled it back. O’Reilly was standing at the foot of the stairs, one foot on the bottom step, the other on the step above it. I took another peek. She was holding a tray on which I could see some crockery and a glass of water. I could smell food, roast beef, unless I was mistaken, better fare than the thin soup and rancid cold meats the women in the dining hall would be tucking into at this moment. O’Reilly stood still as a statue, head slightly cocked, like an animal listening for its prey.

  I moved further back into the storeroom, away from the door, and listened. I heard the creak of the stair again and thought for a moment this meant she had resumed her ascent, but then came the sound of her steps along the corridor again. She moved slowly and once more I took a deep breath as she passed by my door and the footsteps retreated along the corridor away from the stairs and the way I had come. It was no use putting my eye to the gap in the door now, because it faced the wrong way to see her. I listened while the footsteps went slowly, tentatively you might have said, further away. Then abruptly they were coming toward me again, and were now short, quick steps that stopped right outside my door. The door was pulled shut, I heard a clink of metal and then, to my horror, my absolute horror, the sound of a key turning in the lock.

  The footsteps marched quickly away again. My instinct was to cry out, to shout that I was locked in, but I held myself back. How on earth would I explain what I had been doing here in the first place? It was impossible to think of any reasonable excuse for skulking in an empty storeroom. I listened as the sound of the footsteps grew more distant and then stopped. I heard again that creak of the stair and guessed O’Reilly had gone up. I was left alone and trapped in the dark.