The Beloved

by Alison Rattle

  But an asylum? It was such a gruesome word. One he had always associated with pitiable unfortunates or the lowest of criminals. How could he agree to send poor, sweet Alice to a place like that?

  He could not deny that Alice needed help. For some reason, her temperament was not as it should be. He had been soft on her. He knew that. As a young child, her wild spirits had amused him, but he had always assumed she would grow out of it. That she would settle down and embrace her position in life. But it had not happened. She had attacked the doctor, for God’s sake! Arthur reached for his handkerchief to mop at his face. He did not feel as steady as he should. The illness that had afflicted him the other night had obviously not left his system. He would call for William, to bring one of his brandy tonics.

  ‘Arthur? Are you listening to me?’ Temperance slapped her hand lightly on the polished oak of his desk.

  ‘Of course I am, my dear.’ Arthur adjusted himself in his chair. He did not feel comfortable at all. He took a deep breath and turned his attention back to Temperance. As he let his eyes travel from his wife’s pearly pink lips, down the length of her white throat and into the soft shadows of her bosom, she told him about a place in Bristol – ‘a private asylum, Arthur,’ – that promised to offer a cure for Alice’s affliction. ‘No one need know,’ she impressed upon him. ‘And if we don’t act now … ’ She left the sentence unfinished and Arthur felt the weight of responsibility fall upon his shoulders.

  Could he truly send his only daughter to a lunatic asylum? Could he send her to a place where she would have to endure all manner of unmentionable treatments? Arthur pinched the top of his nose and rubbed his hands over his face. But what was the alternative? To lock her in her bedchamber, or hide her away in the furthest corner of the attic – Arthur grimaced – and watch her grow worse every day? His hands felt clammy, and he wiped his handkerchief across his palms. ‘There must be something else we can do,’ Arthur said hopefully. ‘A second opinion at least. Or we could send her to Bath, to take the waters.’

  He knew his feeble suggestions had fallen on deaf ears when he saw a pink flush spread across, and mar, the perfect creaminess of Temperance’s décolletage. ‘If you do not agree to this, Arthur, I shall never speak to you again.’

  Arthur knew then that he really had no choice in the matter.

  Twelve

  I cannot believe what I have just heard. I wish I had stayed in my chamber now, instead of sneaking down to listen outside Papa’s study door. Eavesdroppers never hear any good of themselves.

  If I had stayed in my chamber, I could have remained ignorant and carried on pretending – for a while at least – that Papa might protect me. But he didn’t even try. I want to hate him, but I can’t. All my hate belongs to Mama. It is easy to hate Mama. It is a straightforward feeling with clean, sharp edges, all neatly packed in a box. But I can’t hate Papa, not even now. What I feel for him is muddled and cluttered and it spills out of me in an untidy mess. I do know I am ashamed of him though, because the thought of what he has done makes my toes curl and my face burn hot. He has betrayed me. He has made it as clear as polished glass that Mama comes first every time.

  I want to fling the door open and spit my venom at them both, but isn’t that what a madwoman would do? I won’t give Mama the satisfaction. I learned a long time ago how to harden my face and my feelings against her. But Papa …

  I always thought that when it really counted, he would step in to save me. He has only ever done it once, but I have held onto that all these years, thinking and praying that he would do the same again when the time came.

  I was only five. It was a cold winter and snow had fallen thickly onto the back lawns. It weighed down the branches of trees and sat in small drifts at the base of each windowpane. It had fallen onto the street at the front of the house too, but had soon turned brown and sludgy under the wheels of carriages and the hurried footsteps of well-wrapped pedestrians. I had never seen snow before and as I pressed my nose against the chill of the nursery window, I wanted nothing more than to run outside and touch this strange white stuff that had iced my world so prettily. But Mama had forbidden me to go outdoors.

  ‘Only fools and thieves go out in this weather,’ she said.

  I knew that wasn’t true because I had seen the gentlemen in their thick overcoats going about their business and the servants were still in and out all day, the hems of their frocks flapping wetly around their ankles. So I waited until Mama was busy with her household books and I slipped the catch on the double doors in the library and stepped out into the dazzle of the gardens.

  My boots crunched into the whiteness and I was amazed at how soft it was and how deep my boots sank into it. I bent down and touched it with my fingers. It was cold, but my fingers burned. I took some more steps, then I stopped and looked behind at the trail of footprints I had left. I was dismayed to see that I had ruined it all. I had spoilt something that had been so perfect. I didn’t know how I was going to fix it, but before I could even try, there was a shout from the house and I turned to see Mama standing at the library doors. Her face was quivering with anger. At first I thought it was because I had made all those footprints in the snow and that it was as bad as if I’d walked mud across one of the expensive rugs in the drawing room. But it wasn’t that at all.

  I had disobeyed her and gone outside.

  She made me take off my boots and my stockings then she shut the library doors in my face and locked them. I was out there for hours. Eli came to look at me once. He pressed his face against the library window and his breath frosted the glass. He waved at me sadly before he turned to go, leaving a small hole of clear glass where his nose had been.

  I stood where Mama had left me. I didn’t dare to move in case I messed up more of the snow. But I was so cold. Too cold to even shiver. After a while I stopped caring about messing up the snow and I lay down in the softness of it and tried to pretend it was a pile of warm blankets and that it was all right for me to go to sleep.

  That is how Papa found me. Half asleep and half frozen in the back garden. He picked me up and carried me indoors, and I cried bitterly when the hot flames from the fire brought the feeling back to my toes and feet.

  ‘Never do that again,’ he said to Mama in a strange, tight voice, as he wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

  ‘She had to learn a lesson,’ Mama had said. ‘I was just about to fetch her in, in any case.’ She left the room without saying another word and Papa held me to him for a while.

  ‘I am sorry, Alice,’ he said.

  I thought then that he was saying sorry for what Mama had done to me, shutting me out in the snow to half freeze to death. But I know better now. I understand what he really meant. He was saying sorry for loving her better than me.

  A hand on my shoulder startles me. ‘You shouldn’t be listening at doors, Alice,’ whispers Eli.

  I turn to face him. ‘And what of it?’ I whisper back. ‘Have they told you what they are planning to do to me?’

  Before he can answer, there is a shift of noise from inside the study and Mama’s voice moves closer. I don’t want her to find me here, so I push past Eli and run back upstairs to my chamber. But I don’t miss the guilt that flashes across Eli’s face, like a rat running for cover.

  Thirteen

  Arthur spent the rest of the day in his study. He felt too guilty and too unwell to see Alice again. How could he face her, knowing what he was condemning her to? He ate a light lunch at his desk and spent a pleasant hour with Eli, going through the mill accounts. The boy was bright and Arthur was confident that before too long, Eli would prove to be an asset to the business. They didn’t talk about Alice, although the unspoken words hung in the air between them and made them squirm uneasily in their chairs.

  As the day came to a close, Arthur felt a great weariness descend upon him. He drained his glass of brandy and took up a candle to light his way to bed. William had turned his sheets down and laid his nightgown out. There was a s
mall fire burning in the grate, warm water on his washstand and a fresh glass of brandy beside the bed. It was good to be home. It would be better still if Temperance was lying in the bed waiting for him, her auburn hair spread across the pillows like a carpet of autumn leaves. Maybe when all the trouble with Alice was resolved, Temperance would be more generous with her affections. Arthur could only hope.

  He climbed into bed and settled himself against the feather pillows. As he reached for his glass of brandy – a final tot before sleep – he felt a weight press upon his chest. A weight so heavy, he thought, it could have been the great roller at the mill and he could have been a solitary grain of wheat being crushed and ground into flour. The glass of brandy dropped from his hand and smashed onto the floor. It was the first thing that William saw when he went to try and wake Arthur Angel the following morning.

  Fourteen

  Something has changed. As soon as I open my eyes, I can sense it. An emptiness. A blankness. As though this new day is the first page in a book full of clean, white pages. It is not an unpleasant feeling and I lie in my bed and soak it up as I watch the morning light steal through the gap in the curtains. I don’t want to move. I don’t want to break the spell. I want to stay here forever so that nothing will ever happen and the pages of the book will never have to get written upon.

  After a while, I realise there is a strange quietness too. I have not heard the usual sounds of the day beginning.

  ‘I am Alice Angel,’ I say out loud, to reassure myself that I have not been struck deaf.

  I hear my voice quite clearly inside my head and outside too. So I begin to wonder then, why the house is so quiet. Even though I do not want to wonder or think about anything. But it is too late now, I can feel the spell begin to break. Bit by bit the cracks appear. They spread like tentacles across the surface of the day. Then, like a broken mirror, the spell shatters into splinters of glass and comes crashing down around me.

  Fear and despair creep through me, as stealthily as the sun sneaks across the wooden floor of my chamber. Will today be the day that I get taken away? Will it be Dr Danby who comes for me? Or will it be rotten-toothed men, snarling like dogs, who rattle through my door with clinking chains to fasten my limbs together and with knives to hack off my hair? I torture myself, imagining dark, damp cells crawling with cockroaches and infested with lice. I imagine filth-caked women with long, yellow fingernails and breath that reeks of dead things. And I imagine a long oak table covered in white linen that is laid out with gleaming scissors, knives, scalpels, metal hooks – all the hideous tools I saw in Dr Danby’s leather bag, and more besides. Soon, I will be laid out on the table too, and a faceless doctor with ice-cold hands will plunge each gleaming tool into my soft flesh and I will be helpless to resist.

  I shake my head, in a bid to fling these terrible notions from my mind. But they refuse to leave. They cling on tightly, inside my head. And soon they are joined – by the one thing I have been trying my hardest not to think about. And my heart is crushed and twisted once more when I remember how easily Papa agreed to send me away.

  I am scared. So scared. I am not good enough as I am. That much is clear. Mama, Eli and now even Papa think I am not the person I should be. So I have to be sent away. I have to be cured of being me.

  I hear noises now. Doors opening. Doors closing. Feet on stairs. They are coming for me. I wrap my arms around the bedpost and hold on tight. I will not make it easy for them. My heart is kicking furiously in my chest and throat and ears. All I can think of is this moment and what I can do to get rid of the fear. So despite what happened to Lady Egerton and Lillie, I close my eyes tight and I wish and I wish with all my heart and soul that something, anything, will happen to prevent me from being sent away.

  I keep my eyes closed as I hear my chamber door opening. The floorboards creak as someone enters. I tighten my grip on the bedpost and ready myself for rough hands to rip me away. But nothing happens. Instead I hear shaking breaths and a familiar voice speaks my name. I open my eyes and there is Eli, in his nightgown with his hair still tousled by sleep, standing in the doorway. His eyes are swollen and red, and tears are pouring down his face. ‘Alice,’ he says again, and half chokes on the word. I am surprised that he has come to say goodbye. But he isn’t trying to help me, so I hate him too.

  ‘Go away,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t want to see you.’ It hurts me to say that when I love him so much. But he has not been the brother he should have, and I want him to know that he has failed me.

  ‘No, Alice,’ says Eli. ‘You need to listen.’ He comes closer and reaches out a hand to me. I shrug it away. Eli takes a deep breath. ‘It’s Papa, Alice,’ he says. ‘It’s Papa. He … he’s dead.’

  I stare at Eli. Why is he being so cruel? Saying such things?

  He wipes at his eyes with the back of his hand. ‘Alice?’

  I blink. ‘What … what are you telling me, Eli?’

  ‘William has just found Papa in his bed. And he has gone, Alice. He is dead.’ Then he turns, and after taking a minute to set his shoulders square, he leaves my bedchamber.

  Everything is still. Even my heart, it seems, has stopped beating.

  Then the long-case clock begins to strike. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven times. Eli has left the door ajar.

  Papa’s bedchamber is next to Mama’s, a few doors away from mine. I walk along the corridor. Daylight never reaches this part of the house when all the doors are closed. There are usually lighted candles in the sconces on the wall, but this morning there are none. So the corridor is a hazy grey tunnel, the floor cold on my bare feet and the air as stale as morning breath. I push at Papa’s door. Inside, his chamber is full of shadows; the curtains shut tight as sleeping eyelids. A single candle burns on the dresser. The flame trembles.

  They are all in here. There is Mama, sitting beside the bed. Her head is bowed and her hair swings loose across her lace-dressed bosom. Her long white hand rests on the eiderdown. Eli is standing behind her. His face is pale and his shoulders are twitching. William is standing to one side with his hands clasped neatly behind his back.

  And there is Papa. His head is resting on a pillow, his greying hair brushed back from his forehead. There is a linen handkerchief folded under his chin, the ends fastened in a knot at the top of his head to keep his jaw fastened shut. The candlelight plays on his skin, which shines damp, although his worry lines have softened and he looks as well as I have ever seen him. I would swear he was sleeping, if it were not for the two silver coins balanced on his eyelids.

  I walk to the bed, the opposite side to Mama, and I stand in silence and stare down at Papa. The eiderdown is stretched tightly across his chest. I watch carefully. There is no movement. His arms have been placed on top of the eiderdown and they lie peacefully by his sides. I look at the lace cuffs of his nightgown. One has ridden up and the grey hairs on his wrists spill untidily from underneath. His gold rings seem too big for his fingers now. His hands are yellow and withered and I notice the nail on the little finger of his left hand is torn at one corner.

  My eyes flick to his face: to his mouth, which is partially hidden by the brittle growth of his moustache and his beard. His lips are cracked and dry and there is a white stickiness at the corners of his mouth. As I study the yellowing edges of his moustache, I realise with a twist of my heart that Papa will never smoke another cigar. He will never lick his lips moist again, nor trim his beard. He will never taste another morsel of food nor utter another word of comfort to me. I reach my hand out to straighten the cuff of his nightgown.

  ‘Don’t touch him!’

  I snatch my hand away and hold it to me as though it has been burned. Mama is glaring at me. ‘He is not to be touched,’ she says again, but calmer this time. She tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. Then she leans over Papa and kisses his forehead. Her lips linger there and for the first time in my life, I see how Mama loves him. My heart twists tighter. I thought he was only mine to love. Mama has always had
Eli, and I have always had Papa. To see her kiss him like that rips at my insides. I turn away and push the heels of my hands into my eyes to stop the hot tears that are spilling down my face.

  ‘Now,’ says Mama. ‘There is much to be done.’

  I turn back and she is on her feet. Her face is composed, though full of purpose. She sweeps from the room and William follows close behind, like a lost dog looking for a new master.

  It is just Eli and me now.

  ‘What happened?’ I whisper.

  He shakes his head.

  ‘I cannot believe he is gone, Eli.’

  ‘I know,’ he whispers back.

  We stand there, either side of Papa, not knowing what to say, while Papa lies on his deathbed listening to our silent grief.

  Eventually Eli moves. He comes to my side and puts his arm around my shoulder. He turns and leads me out of Papa’s chamber. ‘I think the doctor is here,’ he says. ‘I will talk to him. I am the man of the house now.’

  I stop, and feel the blood drain from my face. ‘He has come for me, hasn’t he?’ I say.

  Eli glances at me and frowns. ‘He has come to see Papa,’ he says.

  ‘He has not come to take me to the asylum then?’ I whisper, hardly daring to believe.

  ‘Alice.’ Eli’s voice is full of disappointment. ‘How can you think of yourself at a time like this?’ He lets his arm slip from my shoulder. ‘I am sure Mama has much more important things to consider now.’ He looks at me hard. ‘And I hope you will start to consider Mama now and curb your behaviour. It is not going to be easy without … Papa.’ He stumbles on the final word, then turns from me and heads to his chamber. I turn towards my chamber too. I am shaking now and my head is spinning with a terrible realisation.