The Girl Who Couldn't Read

by John Harding

  With no window, the room was pitch black. I had a box of matches in my pocket. The box was half full. I took one out and struck it on my shoe and looked at the door. I tried the handle but, sure enough, it was firmly locked. I held the match up and looked around the room, foolishly allowing myself to hope there might be another door that I somehow hadn’t noticed. Even a cursory glance told me there was none. I went to inspect the shelves in case there was anything on them that might help me pick the lock. Before I could get to them the flame of the match burned down to my fingers and I dropped it. I fumbled out another and lit that. In its eerie glow I looked at the shelves on one side of the room, which proved to contain nothing but cobwebs. I turned to the other side but my match went out again.

  At this rate I would soon run out of matches. I lit another and saw something I had missed in my first look at the room. A book, quite a large volume too. I just managed to make out the title on the spine when the match fizzled out. I lit another. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Well, who would have thought it? What book would I have chosen if I had been told I must be locked in a room with only one? Here it was.

  It was covered in dust and I blew it off, forgetting myself for a moment and blowing out my light too. Here was an irony and no mistake. To be in solitary confinement and to have the best book a man could want for company and yet no light to read it by. This was an exquisite form of torture indeed!

  I felt inside the book. The pages were as thin and insubstantial as they always are in large books such as The Complete Works and the Bible. I lit another match and looked in my box. I would soon be deprived of light at this rate. I looked again at the book. What I was about to do was sacrilege, but there seemed to be nothing else for it. I thumbed through the list of contents. It was an unfamiliar edition.

  I began to make a choice and then the match went out. I made up my mind, lit another precious match and found The Comedy of Errors. I had the book open at the first page of the play and found the last one. When my match died, I steeled myself, apologised to the spirit of the great man and ripped out the whole of the play. It troubled me more to desecrate this book than any of the things I had done in this life, although I knew it ought not.

  I put the book down on the shelf and then took a leaf from the torn Comedy. I rolled it and then twisted it to make a spill, then another and another. I carried on until I had finished the whole play. I cannot tell you how bad this made me feel.

  In the dark I arranged my spills in a line along the shelf, then struck a match and lit one. As I had hoped, it burned slowly and lasted longer than a match. It gave me more chance to look around.

  One after another, scene by scene, act by act, I burned my way through the Comedy. Apart from the shelving, I was looking at bare walls; there was not even a fireplace and a chimney I might have tried to climb up. But then why would anyone have wanted a fire in a storeroom? I crawled over every inch of the floor, on the off chance there might be some trapdoor or manhole, but there was nothing. I even looked at the ceiling in the forlorn hope of an opening, but there was none. I was well and truly trapped.

  I sank to the floor with my back against the door. There was only one way I was going to get out and that was if someone released me. But I knew that could not happen by chance. It was obvious the room hadn’t been used in ages. How likely was it that anyone would happen to visit it just now? There could be no accidental rescue. Or any other kind either, unless I made a rumpus to attract attention, as no one knew I was there.

  Or did they? Why had O’Reilly chosen that moment to lock the door? Was it because she had noticed it was slightly open when it was normally kept shut and in shutting it thought she might as well lock it too? That was more than possible. She had that perfectionist efficiency about her; it was one of the things that I, who am entirely the opposite, slipshod and laissez-faire, disliked about her.

  Or had she sensed my presence? Had she been alerted to the possibility of my being in the storeroom after having met me in the corridor the day before, when I had no business to be there? There was no way of knowing.

  I had no idea what to do. If I did nothing, then I would starve to death. Even if I stayed long enough to be missed and a search was initiated for me, it was unlikely anyone would look here. The only way out was to bang on the door and attract the attention of someone passing along the corridor. This would lead to all kinds of embarrassment and awkward attempts on my part to explain how I came to be here, but if it were done it were best it were done quickly. The longer I left it, the bigger deal my absence would become and the still greater fuss would be made about how I had happened to be locked in the room in the first place.

  I decided I needed to think things through before taking this inevitable action. There must be some plausible excuse I could come up with. I sank once more to the floor and put my head in my hands. I could feel the blood beating in my temples. I thought how if I only had O’Reilly in here with me now, I would show her how dangerous an enemy she had made, and then, unaccountably, I fell asleep.

  Heaven knows how long I dozed. I woke in darkness completely ignorant of where I was and in a blind panic. I thought it was the henhouse where my uncle used to shut me up to punish me for transgressions when he couldn’t be bothered to strap me. I put my hands upon the floor and could not understand why it was not covered with the thick parquet of dried chicken excrement. The smell of the stuff singed my nostrils. I could feel the chicken feathers in my mouth, in the back of my throat, choking me, suffocating me. I could not breathe, the stench was overpowering, I screamed my head off. I clambered to my feet and felt for the wall. I groped along it and found a door, my hand was upon the handle, I turned it and tugged at it – and the door swung inwards. I was free.

  As light poured in from the corridor I came to my senses and realised where I was. Had I really screamed? I could not be certain, though I was pretty sure that I had. I listened. There was no sound from outside. Slowly I peeped around the edge of the doorframe and looked in both directions. There was no one. I stepped quickly outside and gently closed the door behind me. I had no notion of the time but guessed I must by now be late for dinner with Morgan. I began to hurry along the corridor, then remembered how dusty the room had been. I looked down at myself. My jacket and pants were covered in dust. In the dim light of the corridor I must have looked like a ghost. I began to brush down my pants. I took off my jacket and beat it furiously. I didn’t have any explanation ready for how I’d gotten so filthy. The air around me was clouded with dust that got up my nose and sent me into a paroxysm of sneezing. It was a good few minutes before my clothing looked reasonably decent and all the sneezing had stopped.

  I straightened myself up, put my jacket back on and hurried to the front corridor and ran full tilt along it and almost bundled into O’Reilly and one of the attendants as they came around a corner. She gave me a supercilious smile. ‘Ah, there you are Doctor Shepherd. Dr Morgan has had people looking all over for you. You’re very late for your dinner, you know. Where have you been?’

  I simply stared at her. We both knew where I’d been. I hadn’t been certain that she had deliberately locked me in the storeroom because I wasn’t sure then that she knew I was there. But it was obvious to me now she must have known I was inside. Why would anyone else unlock the door and not open it and look inside? The puzzle was why she had let me go. Why had she not humiliated me in front of Morgan and the whole hospital, as she could have done if she’d waited until I made a racket screaming to be let out? One look at her face told me all I wanted to know. She had imprisoned me as a warning, to tell me not to meddle in things that were none of my business. Little did she know me, though, or what she was taking on.

  I dodged around the two women and hurried on my way, but O’Reilly called me back. ‘Oh, Dr Shepherd …’

  I stopped and turned around. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Forgive my mentioning it, but you have what appears to be dust on the seat of your pants.’


  I arrived in the doctors’ dining room a good half hour late. Morgan was just finishing his main course. I saw his watch was open on the table beside his plate. ‘Ah, there you are, Shepherd. You’re thirty-two minutes late, you know. Where on earth have you been? If it’s that Moral Treatment business with the girl that is messing up my schedule, then I shall have to think again about allowing it.’

  I decided the best form of defence was attack. ‘Oh, no, sir, it was nothing at all to do with her. I went for a walk outside and sat down under a tree and I must have dozed off. I haven’t been sleeping too well since – well, since that night when I found the woman setting fire to your desk.’

  I knew this was not a subject Morgan would want to revive. He avoided my eyes and then indicated his plate with his fork. ‘I asked the kitchen to keep some supper warm for you. First-class meal tonight. Great favourite of mine; you’ll enjoy it.’

  I sat down and my food was brought to me. I looked down at my plate and knew right away that I wouldn’t be able to manage even a mouthful. It was fried chicken.

  17

  Next day it snowed. It was by now mid-November and Morgan and I sat at breakfast watching through the window as the heavy flakes began to carpet the lawns in front of the house, and he said, ‘That’s all you’re going to see for the next few months. Take my word for it, it’ll be like this until February now. It’s the same every year.’

  I could have told him how little it bothered me, how anything that increased our isolation here was welcome to me, even though I had no coat. I realised Shepherd must have had one with him, because the day of the accident had not been warm. But he had obviously taken it off for the train ride, the wagons being well heated, and he must have stowed it in the rack above his seat. I didn’t blame myself for missing it when I took his valise. I’d had hardly enough time to exchange clothes with him before people arrived on the scene; I was lucky to have gotten away as I had.

  Later that morning I visited Jane and found her kneeling upon her armchair at the window watching the snowflakes falling. She heard the sound of the door and turned toward me excitedly. ‘Oh look, sir, look. It’s snowing!’ It was said with all the delight of a child.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ I said, smiling back. She resumed gazing out the window.

  ‘The lake will be frozen. We’ll be able to skate.’

  ‘But, Jane,’ I said, tentatively, because I did not want it to be too much of a shock, ‘don’t you remember? There is no lake here.’

  ‘No lake …?’ She sank back on her haunches, her brow corrugated into a frown. ‘No lake? But how will we be able to skate?’

  There was an awful silence, somehow made worse by that eerie quiet that always seems to descend with snow. She began to cry. I strode over to her and put an arm around her shoulders. She buried her face in my chest. Her frail frame was racked by great sobs. We were like that some few minutes. I could feel her heart beating against mine. She was as warm as a freshly killed hen, and almost as limp and lifeless.

  When the sobbing at last began to subside I said, ‘What lake were you thinking of, Jane?’ There was no answer. ‘Try to picture the place, Jane,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you see in your mind’s eye.’

  ‘It’s the lake I told you about before, sir. In the trees, in the woods.’ Suddenly she let out a little cry and pulled away from me, the knuckles of her right hand in her open mouth. Her eyes were wide open and wild, staring at something far beyond this room.

  ‘What, Jane, what is it? Tell me what troubles you.’

  ‘Something bad, sir, something bad happened.’

  ‘At the lake?’

  ‘Yes, but it was not my fault, I swear it, sir. It was not my fault.’

  ‘Did someone fall through the ice? Is that it, did the ice break and someone skating upon it fall through and drown?’

  She chewed her knuckle furiously, eyes still off someplace else, and then all at once her head collapsed onto her chest and she whispered, ‘I – I do not know. I can’t see, sir. I can’t see anybody falling through the ice.’

  I wanted to push her further, to urge her to keep looking into her mind, but I held back. I sensed her sanity was close to breaking point here, whether with the sheer effort of trying to remember or because deep down she feared to do so, I didn’t know. So I said nothing, but put my hand on her shoulder, and stroked it gently, my fingers touching the downy hair on the back of her neck.

  ‘It’s all right, Jane,’ I said softly. ‘Nobody blames you for anything. You are not there now. You are here with me and I will keep you safe and warm.’ At which she threw her arms about me and buried her head in my chest once again. Even through my clothes, I could feel her sharp little nails digging into the flesh of my back. I wanted for her never to let me go, but after what must have been at least a couple of minutes I forced myself to break away, gentle as I could. I had to. The old feelings were flooding back.

  At this separation she grew more distressed again and I almost did not know what to do to calm her. My great fear was that she might go into some kind of fit, start screaming perhaps, drawing the attention of any attendants who happened to be near. I was particularly worried about O’Reilly. In such a case I had no doubt that Morgan would be only too delighted to pronounce my trial of Moral Treatment a dismal failure and bring it to an immediate halt. I did not think I could bear to see poor Jane Dove returned to the ranks of living dead, condemned to sit in silence every morning, staring mindlessly into the endless night her future would become. And to be honest, nor did I think I could stand it myself, to lose her lively company; she was the only friend I had in this godforsaken place, the only thing that made it possible to endure here.

  ‘Come now, quiet yourself,’ I said in as cheery a voice as I could manage, for I was trembling on the brink of the precipice here. ‘Let’s have a little of the bard, what do you say?’

  She managed a weak smile and wiped away her tears with the sleeve of her gown. I had lately begun reciting parts of Shakespeare to her, acting out bits of plays, taking upon myself all the characters and distinguishing them one from another by assuming different voices. It had proved a great success, much more so than I had expected, for although Jane was only young, she had taken to the great man’s works immediately, and made no difficulty of understanding the language. For me it brought back all the pleasure of my profession, even though I knew that part of my life was gone for ever; I relished the joy of performing and, if I’m honest, the thrill of showing off.

  At first I did this only in the early evenings before dinner, when I had time to return to my room and collect The Complete Works, but then Jane suggested I leave the book in her room. At first I resisted because it meant I did not have it myself to read at night, and it was of no use to her when I wasn’t there because the book had no illustrations, but she pointed out that leaving it there would mean that even if I popped in on her for a few minutes between duties I would be able to act out a scene or two for her delight, and so in the end I acquiesced.

  Now I took up Hamlet, already her favourite, and acted out the wonderful scene with the prince and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the witticisms and wordplay of which I was confident would banish her unhappy mood. Sure enough, the great man did not let me down now and soon her tears were dry, her face began to lose the blotchy redness that comes from crying and she was laughing away in spite of herself. I had just finished the scene and she was clapping and pleading ‘Encore, encore’ (which I had taught her was the actor’s reward for a good performance) when I remembered I had meant to be there only a few minutes, having just dropped in on my way between tasks. With no timepiece, I had no idea how long I had been with her, except that I knew it had been too long. Seeing she was now more or less all right, I told her I would have to go and rushed from the room.

  I was supposed to be helping Morgan assess the new arrivals and went quickly to the examination room, where I found him in the middle of examining a patient. He was making his own notes, which was
normally my task, standing over a desk to write down his observations instead of calling them out to me. He looked up angrily when he saw me and tossed the pen down on the desk. ‘At last!’ he snapped. ‘Take over the notes, if you please.’

  We finished the examination of the three new patients in a silence as frosty as the weather outdoors. As soon as the women had been taken away and we were alone, he said to me, ‘What explanation do you have for being so late, sir?’

  ‘I’m most terribly sorry, Dr Morgan. I quite lost track of the time.’

  ‘You were with your special patient, I presume?’

  I paused. I did not want to admit it but I had no choice, since it was obviously so. I nodded.

  He stood up and put his hands behind his back and began to pace around the room. Once again I had the feeling that he was trying to get control of himself, that he feared his anger taking him over. I could not help wonder what experience had led him to suppress that side of himself so. Was it the madness he witnessed daily that made him resist any primitive wild impulse in his own nature? I felt a certain sympathy with him in this. I of all people knew only too well how hard it was to contain the beast within.

  At last he stopped his perambulations right in front of me, lifted his head and looked me straight in the eye. ‘I said we would continue this experiment only as long as it didn’t interfere in your proper duties.’

  ‘I know, sir. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘You’re right about that, because I am calling a halt to it now.’