The Other Mrs Walker

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  ‘Oh?’ Despite everything, the Head of the Unit was always willing to help.

  ‘I need to make a phone call.’

  ‘A phone call?’

  ‘To my solicitor, of course.’

  People who fry their brains. People who slash their wrists. People who hear voices inside their heads. People who wear nightdresses out into the street. Ruby Walker had seen it all, and then some, in the six-and-a-half years she had been incarcerated at someone else’s behest. At times, she had been one of the worst.

  In and out of a series of asylums, chasing something she couldn’t quite see but knew that she had lost, Ruby had discovered the hard way what happened to women who would not comply. In police cells. In hospital wards. In rooms where the walls were covered in padding and cloth. Not to mention all sorts of treatments. Paddles to shock the brain. The boom in little blue pills. The drip of a syringe as a needle point pressed in towards a vein. Also what happened at night behind tall grey walls when women were harnessed to their beds and all the lights were off.

  Still, Ruby found a way to prosper when all around her seemed lost. Razor blades and cigarettes. Small tablets of all descriptions secreted beneath the tongue. Treasures hidden away behind toilet cisterns and inside bars of soap, or stitched into hems to keep them safe. Though it wasn’t how she’d imagined her life might turn out, Ruby had been right at home amongst the madwomen once it became clear that those on the outside did not wish to facilitate her release. In some ways she hadn’t even minded. Ruby always had been one of the abandoned. Or simply one of those who refused to desist.

  But now that she had found what she wanted, it was time to move on.

  Sitting at a desk with the phone to her ear while the Head of the Unit hovered outside, Ruby recognized the voice on the other end at once. Pale-yellow gloves and a matching hat, holding a handbag to her stomach as though to ward off the worst. A girl whose whole body had trembled as she’d waited for the butchery to start. Over ten years had passed since Ruby first met Jessica Plymmet. But she’d known even then that the girl would never forget.

  ‘Nye & Sons solicitors.’ Those liquid, caramel tones.

  ‘It’s Ruby Walker.’

  ‘Ruby Walker?’ Suspicion curled around the young woman’s every vowel.

  ‘We met before. I would like to meet again.’

  Ruby listened to the pause on the other end. She’d got used to knowing when to be silent and when was the right moment to speak.

  In the end, it was the woman on the other end of the line who spoke first, in a manner that suggested she did not want someone through the wall to hear. ‘All right.’ And Ruby was delighted to discover that despite the years that had passed, Jessica Plymmet still aimed to please.

  They arranged to meet at a jeweller’s shop on Tidbury Street. Rose & Sons, jewellers of distinction, just a few streets away from the office with the stuffed stoat. Ruby arrived first, wearing a smart coat liberated from a hook on the back of the Head of the Unit’s office door, carried to the bus stop inside a basket in which nobody thought to look. It was amazing what people left in Ruby Walker’s way, when really they should not.

  When Ruby rang the discreet buzzer to the right of the jeweller’s front door, she was wearing an odd assortment of clothes. A green dress with its hem hanging down. Sandshoes borrowed from a nurse. A pair of tights taken from a patient who would only use them to hang herself if she could. Still, Ruby knew the people inside the jeweller’s shop would not be overly concerned. Despite outward appearances, it was often the crazy ones who turned out to be worth the most.

  Ruby was welcomed into the jeweller’s by a small man who bowed as she came through the door, giving her the kind of look that certain psychiatrists used to give her when they first met. When Ruby showed the old man why she had come, he took her straight through to his office. She knew that he could smell it already. A profit to be made.

  There in the dark of the jeweller’s back room, Ruby spread out everything she had managed to gain and everything else she had managed to keep.

  One emerald necklace.

  Two earrings to match.

  A brooch with a single red stone at its heart.

  And several other things, more precious than not.

  The jeweller squeezed his eye into a tiny magnifying glass and examined the treasure, piece by piece. Across the table Ruby watched him and understood that the news would be good. The man’s cheek twitched every time he picked up a new item. ‘Excellent condition,’ he murmured, holding an earring close. ‘Well chosen. Nice setting. Where did it come from?’

  ‘A gift.’

  ‘And this one?’ The broker held up a string of grey pearls, small moons liberated from the thick flesh of a neck.

  ‘Oh, here and there.’ Ruby looked away for a moment. She always had been good at acquiring things which were not strictly hers to keep.

  The only aberration was the star-shaped brooch with its little red heart. The jeweller’s cheek didn’t move at all as he lifted that to his eye. ‘Best keep it,’ he said, dropping the magnifying glass back on the desk. ‘Not worth a thing, I’m afraid. Paste, dear. Nothing but a fake.’ The jeweller held the brooch out towards Ruby. ‘They made a lot of them during the war. Love tokens. Keepsakes. That kind of thing. But pretty.’ He smiled at Ruby, cracking open his teeth for the first time. ‘You should wear it yourself.’

  Outside on the shop floor, Jessica Plymmet was waiting when Ruby and the jeweller came back through into the light. Twenty-six now, or thereabouts, still with those bony knees she never could disguise, Jessica Plymmet didn’t seem so very different to when Ruby had first met her in Mrs Withers’ hall. She was still clasping a handbag to her midriff as though ready for an assault. But her hair was more of a helmet now, her face a kind of mask.

  Ruby knew she too had changed since they last met. No longer a young woman ready for life, standing in the shadows waiting to be handed a coat. There were creases around her mouth now that seemed to be fixed. Wrists no bigger than the thin branches of a tree. Her hair was run through with tiny rivers of white. And she suspected that if the wind blew too hard, it might blow her off. Up, up and into the sky. Over the hills and far away. Into a gutter, or a rich man’s bed, or the oblivion of a bar still open at four a.m. Or across an ocean, perhaps. Still, Ruby Walker had been kind to Jessica Plymmet once when no one else had cared. That was what had counted then. And that, Ruby knew, was what would count now.

  There wasn’t any small talk. Ruby got straight to the point. ‘I want you to keep these for me.’ She placed a velvet bag on the jeweller’s glass counter. A tiny star-shaped brooch pinned to her lapel winked at Jessica Plymmet across the shop floor and Ruby saw the way that Jessica Plymmet blinked back.

  ‘What is it?’ Jessica Plymmet approached, but she knew not to touch.

  Ruby pulled at the drawstring of the bag, the lightest of tugs, opening up a glimmering pool for Jessica Plymmet to see. ‘I want you to look after them for me. Then, if I ever need money, I’ll get in touch.’

  Ruby watched as Jessica Plymmet twisted the ring she now wore on her right hand – a not insubstantial chip, more glittery than glass. Ruby was glad to see that something of what the young woman was owed by Mr Nye Senior was going her way at last.

  Jessica Plymmet stared down at the small heap of treasure inside its velvet bag. ‘Why don’t you sell them yourself?’ she asked.

  Shoplifters. Drug addicts. Kleptomaniacs. Thieves. Ruby had spent what felt like a lifetime protecting the few things she had from mad people of all sorts. ‘It’s better if someone else keeps them safe,’ she said. ‘I’m not exactly sure where I’ll be staying next.’ She didn’t want all her treasure to fall into the wrong hands if she ended up back in a cell once again.

  ‘Are you going somewhere?’ Jessica Plymmet liked to understand the detail. Just so that she could keep everything straight.

  Ruby glanced away for a moment. ‘There’s somebody I’d like to find,’ she said.
>
  ‘Abroad?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  Jessica Plymmet nodded. The younger Mr Nye was abroad. Had been for some time.

  Ruby drew the strings of the small velvet bag tight. ‘You’ll be my last resort,’ she said to Jessica Plymmet. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘In case of what?’

  ‘Disaster. Or other emergencies.’

  ‘Well, I suppose . . .’ the younger woman faltered. ‘If you trust me.’ No one had ever asked Jessica Plymmet to be their last resort before. Nor their salvation should disaster strike.

  Ruby nudged the bag across the counter. ‘The jeweller has a note of what they’re worth now. Don’t take any less. When I need some money I’ll phone and you can sell some, then send me the cash.’

  ‘But why not just take the cash now?’

  ‘Money can be unreliable,’ replied Ruby. ‘One minute you have it. The next it’s disappeared.’

  Into the pockets of orderlies. The aprons of matrons. The hands of other patients when their advances proved too difficult to resist. Hard cash, earned the hard way, just like in Ruby’s youth. Money for a walk in the yard. For an extra portion of dessert. Or for razor blades, ready and waiting, for when it all became too much. One slash to the wrist, then the splash and trickle of blood. Ruby had tried it, several times.

  Except . . .

  They always found her before it was too late. Locked her up afterwards with the other women for whom it had been too late long since, standing between the beds or wandering up and down the aisles as though they couldn’t remember how they had got there or where they were going next. Whispering into the walls to find out each other’s secrets, just as she and Barbara should have whispered into the walls of St Paul’s if they had really wanted to hear each other speak.

  Still, that was where Ruby had found what she had been looking for ever since she was eight.

  ‘Mama?’

  Just as Clementine had said. Sitting on the end of a bed, at the end of a long ward, singing, ‘Oh my darling’, just as Clementine had told Ruby she would. If only Barbara could see, thought Ruby, then she’d know what I told her was right. Their mother, their real mother, swaying and rocking as she brushed and brushed her hair, nothing to her but a hospital gown and toenails curled in towards the soles of her feet.

  Before they dragged her away, Ruby sat with Dorothea and sang too, holding one of her mother’s hands in her own, while with the other she checked through Dorothea’s bedside drawer. A hairbrush with a handle made of bone. Two dollar bills of a not-inconsiderable amount. And an ancient ticket to America. The promised land, at last.

  Ruby was nothing if not practical. She knew what it all meant. Her mother might be alive. But she was also mad. Whereas Clementine was overseas, just waiting for her little sister to search her out.

  Jessica Plymmet nodded now as Ruby handed over her treasure – a bag full of gemstones, hard earned. ‘I could get you a job if you wanted,’ she said. ‘And a bank account.’ Ruby Walker might need help, she thought, to heal whatever was broken inside. Perhaps Jessica Plymmet could deliver it herself.

  But Ruby shook her head. She knew the other woman didn’t really understand. What use did Ruby have for a bank account when she’d lived her entire life on the wrong side of the tracks? So she made Jessica Plymmet swear, instead.

  Tell no one.

  And asked her to write out a receipt. On the nearest headed paper they had to hand: Rose & Sons, jewellers of distinction. Just in case.

  ‘Can you put your phone number here, so I don’t forget?’ Ruby indicated the bottom of the piece of paper.

  ‘Of course.’ And with a quick stroke across the page, Jessica Plymmet wrote down the number for Nye & Sons solicitors. ‘But how will I know that it’s you?’ she said. ‘When you call, I mean.’ Jessica Plymmet was nothing if not thorough. Ruby was pleased about that.

  ‘We’ll have a code word.’

  ‘A code word?’

  ‘Yes.’ Ruby smiled. ‘It’ll be our secret.’

  Jessica Plymmet blushed. A fetching shade. She had only ever had one secret before and that had involved Ruby Walker too. ‘What word do you want to use?’ she asked.

  Ruby folded the receipt for the jewellery and put it into the pocket of her stolen coat. ‘Clementine,’ she said.

  Jessica Plymmet hesitated for a moment, then gripped her handbag tighter. ‘All right. I’ll do it.’ She was familiar with the contents of the Walker file kept under lock and key in Mr Nye Senior’s desk. As she was with all Nye Senior’s secrets, whether he knew it or not.

  Ruby smiled. ‘And you won’t tell Mr Nye.’

  Jessica Plymmet didn’t hesitate. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No need for that.’

  It was just before they left, with a brief goodbye on the pavement outside, that Ruby asked for one more thing. Well, two to be exact. ‘It’s about my sisters. Can you give these to them, when the time seems right.’

  Two envelopes, each embossed with the stamp of a psychiatric unit somewhere to the south. One already sealed, addressed to a Barbara Walker, flat and papery with some piece of paper folded up inside. The other with Clementine written across the front.

  ‘Isn’t your older sister . . .’ Jessica Plymmet wasn’t certain how to put it. ‘Dead’ seemed so final, especially when Ruby had only just been released.

  ‘No,’ said Ruby. And she unpinned the star-shaped brooch from her lapel and popped it into the envelope, sealing the lumpy package with a flick of her tongue.

  ‘Do you have their addresses?’ Jessica Plymmet asked.

  ‘Oh no.’ Ruby shook her head. ‘But perhaps you can help with that too. My sister Barbara, in particular. I’d like to know where she lives.’

  Jessica Plymmet twisted the ring on her finger for a moment, turning the chip of diamond in towards her palm. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why not.’ She was a woman of ways and means, after all. Official letters were what she did best. Dear Miss Penny . . . Perhaps it would hit its mark.

  The letter arrived at Barbara’s bedsit a few weeks later.

  Dear Miss Penny . . .

  Not quite a ‘Mrs’ yet.

  She opened it at her breakfast table, no warning that it was anything other than the unassuming papery thing it first seemed. Barbara scanned what it said before putting it down amongst the crumbs. The news that she had been waiting for, found her out at last.

  The letter had caught up with Barbara when she was living in a one-roomed flat in a different part of town, no forwarding address. Yet there it was, left on a table in the hall amongst all the other mail, no suggestion that it might explode at her touch. She had a new job now, though it didn’t pay as much as the last, and she still shared a bathroom down the end of a corridor, cold tiles against her bare feet. But just like all her sisters, dead, abandoned or lost, Barbara Penny was determined that she would do things the way that she wanted. Or not do them at all.

  The letter didn’t say the same thing as the ones she used to get years before. Dear Miss Penny . . . From hospitals or police cells, or other kinds of places where they kept mad people safe . . . Your sister needs your help. Crossed out, redirected, passed on from bedsit to bedsit until they found her once again. Then kept in her handbag for weeks until she tore them into tiny pieces and scattered them outside to the wind. Barbara never could understand how Ruby got them to do it, when their job was to lock her sister up. People who fry their brains. People who slash their wrists. People who hear voices inside their heads. Barbara knew that madness ran through her family – wasn’t that what Mrs Penny always said? Still, she clung to the idea that it was through Ruby’s veins that madness ran the most.

  The other envelopes had always been scribbled over with, ‘please forward to . . .’ or ‘not known here . . .’, until they found their mark. And then Barbara had known that she was safe, at least for a time. But this letter slid through her door with an envelope like virgin snow, single postmark only, signed at the bottom by a Jessica Plymmet on paper marked
with the Nye & Sons stamp. Long thighs. Bony knees. And a hand on a silver blade. This letter threatened all sorts of things that Barbara understood at once. Jessica Plymmet. A young woman already steeled against the disappointments of her age, much like Barbara herself. There was only one other person Barbara could go to, in circumstances such as these.

  That night at Mrs Penny’s Home for Troublesome Girls there were babies wailing as though they would never stop. All over the house, from the kitchen to the highest, furthest floor, infants of all sizes and dispositions shrieking and bawling fit to burst. Barbara sat with another cup and saucer in her hand thanking God, or whoever, that she had managed to escape. Opposite her, in his usual place, Tony sat with a child on his knee. Six-and-a-half years old, or thereabouts, skirt rucked above her small knees. Tony held the girl round her waist and ran his fingers up and into her armpits so the girl giggled and shrieked too.

  ‘Well, what do you want me to do about it?’ Mrs Penny was lining up bottles of milk in sterilizing pans for all the little bastards upstairs. ‘I don’t want to see her, either. Stole everything I had.’

  A fox with a mangy head. A photograph of two dead children. A blanket with a torn satin trim. Barbara sipped at her cup of tea. Our things, she thought. Some of them, at least.

  Across on the other side of the stove Tony coughed and winked at the child, who had slid off his knee now to play with an old tea caddy, all battered and scratched.

  ‘How about Mr Nye?’ Barbara said. ‘Maybe there’s something he could do?’

  Mrs Penny lifted her heavy kettle and began to pour boiling water into the pans to heat the milk. She let out little huffs of breath as she did it. Her chest wasn’t sounding much good these days. Perhaps something bad ran through her veins too. ‘Mr Nye did his bit all those years ago, don’t you think,’ she said.

  Both women stared at the little girl as she wriggled and squirmed against Tony’s knee.