‘This is a state of grace,’ he said.
Nothing had yet occurred; none of those actions had yet been thought of, which would bring us by slow degrees to this parlous state.
I can see him now in my mind’s eye: he will bury Punch on the moor, and he will take trouble to find a place that is seemly, and high, and fit. He will handle the corpse gently, and bury it deep. He will cover the earth with stones. The foxes will not get it. I know all this because I know him as well as my own desires. Perhaps he will pray over the dog, as if it had a soul. He is utterly heathen.
He will come soon, for all that. A dog takes but a little hole. Make haste.
Forgive me. Forgive me God, in whose existence I can no longer trust. Forgive me Meg, whom I did not tend as I should have. Most of all I ask forgiveness of you, Alonso, my friend. I did not understand then the quality of action, which is not like thought. It is final.
Anyhow. I do not seek redemption, not for myself at least. I hope that you may find your way out of the tunnel I led you down, all those years ago. Perhaps contrition, freely offered and without condition, has a merit of its own. I truly hope so. I hope that it can turn the course of events in ways we cannot fathom. Perhaps it will aid you.
This poor book. The cover is marked with tiny burns, and with sprays of rabbit blood. The pages hang drunken from the binding. There are great ragged edges where others were torn away. A poor legacy. But it is all I have to leave to you, Alonso. It is my full and last confession. I make one request only. That my sister Meg should not be left to starve. I have nothing to bequeath. I throw myself on your mercy, utterly.
I am glad that I spoke the truth to you at last. I said those things which I could never have said, had I not known: that this was my last day. Perhaps it was the only honest day of my life.
Please know; it is not for our long and sad history that I do this. Our sins seem as nothing, in the face of the evil I have seen in the night. You do not comprehend what it is to look on her. You cannot. I have known, since before I heard your footsteps this morning on the hill, that this was my fate. Perhaps you will say that it is a cowardly choice. But there is no longer any choice, for me. To see her is to know the vast terror that lies outside the circle of firelight, beyond man’s ideas. The curtain has been torn back, to reveal the gaping chasm in the world. Nothing endures. All is blackness. Horror. We are falling through the dark. We never cease. We never land. We drift in the endless void, suffering. There is no morning light.
As I made my preparations, the day darkened. One minute past the room shone dim as if a hand had been clapped over the face of the sun. I was not surprised; it seemed right that the days and hours be out of joint. But then there came the sweetest sound that I have heard. I have gone to see. I could not deny myself. Through the window the grass is slick and gleaming, a grey sheet lies over the far horizon. Diamonds cover everything; they cling to the old glass and run down the panes – all things shiver and dance through their prisms. Even through the dry dust and sour smells of this house I can catch that other scent; there is such kindness in it; the earth without, beneath the rain.
I have it by me and ready: the rope. I have owed this for many years. I hereby discharge my debt freely, and in hope.
That poem sings in my mind, half recalled … American, of course, but there you are. Something about moonbeams. Something about being old in the autumn, and sleeping in the cool night, with another’s arm flung over you … No, no good. All I can recall is the end of the verse, which is: And that night I was happy.
Iris
1915
Earlswood Asylum
I’m sixteen.
Weak sun across the floor. Mouth like cotton. Dust motes. The others are waking too. They stir gently in their beds like yellow chicks. Their movements are small and tentative as if they’re already weary. Groans of aching joints. Somewhere someone sobbing. Morning, I suppose? They mostly keep me under; I’m not so good with times and days. The battered tin clock high on the wall. The yellow square clipped to the end of my bed which means dangerous. No visitors. No letters.
The large blonde woman next to me stares. Her eyes blue orbs. ‘What time’s the train?’ she says. It’s one of the many things I don’t know. I stare back. She is fascinating in her trembling whiteness, like a milk pudding. ‘What time?’
‘Hello Julia,’ I say. ‘Lovely day.’
She turns away with a sniff, leans as far away from me as her restraints will allow.
I watch the second hand of the dented clock. I allow myself to think about him for one minute exactly. One minute, each time I wake. No more, in case they see his name in my eyes.
Lottie releases us from our night jackets. Everyone shakes their arms for a moment after, to check they’re still there.
‘What time’s the train?’
‘Not for hours yet, my love.’ I don’t mind Lottie so much. The other, Doris, always tells Julia it left an hour ago.
*
Out in the garden I shuffle. I hug the fence, the wall grimly. Once round the perimeter, twice. Sweat beads, drips from my nose. I shuffle on my weak stiff legs until they loosen, until I can approximate a walk. It is better to be under the sky. At least there’s that. At some point Julia joins me. She walks beside me in silence. Her jowls shake.
‘Did you kill your daddy?’ she says. ‘That’s the word.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘It was her.’ She nods. We walk.
‘I killed the baby,’ she says. ‘Didn’t mean to.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘Me too. We’re all sorry.’
I say, ‘We’re not alike, you and I.’ I hurry away on trembling legs.
Most of my waking hours are spent fighting the fear that I’ll die in here.
There’s nothing, nothing to break the grey days. Might as well have chucked me down a well. It comes to the same thing. Sometimes I feel myself falling. Falling in the long dark. I think of Hervor. Journeying through the black land of death to wake her father. If only it could be done.
Food. I’ve been out for a while, not sure which one this is. Lunch or dinner, though – breakfast is bread and this is broth.
A shiver, white wobbling flesh in the corner of my eye.
‘Hello,’ Julia says. I don’t.
‘You’re sad I bet,’ she says.
There’s a bone in the heart of my broth. I trap it between the spoon and the bowl. Bone. Dull metal. Whose head should this be? I press with the spoon. A little crack, a good sound.
‘We’re all sad,’ she says. ‘I know, I know. You’re different. But you’re not, actually, so pipe down.’
Seems unjust. ‘Go away.’
‘Bollocks to you,’ she says fairly cheerfully and when the bone is broken in little bits at the bottom of my bowl I look up again, but she’s gone.
After soup we’re marched back into the ward. We lie flat, each on our cot. Lottie, Doris, Annie go round. They draw the canvas over us, fasten the buckles. Chinking dull metal, leather. All around the ward the sounds of fastening up. They’re quick. There are three of them, thirty or so of us. And sometimes, just sometimes, through the phenobarbital, someone remembers this. Not tonight, apparently.
The sting of the needle. Annie moves off down the row. Don’t have long, be quick. What? The moor. It’s a blustery day …
Don’t make it too good. Don’t make it so that you can’t bear it when you wake up here.
… dusk is coming, but it’s still low golden light. It’s clear from here to the sea. Faint blue line. Invisible sun sinking, an eerie glow in the white west. The clouds in that corner of the sky have golden rims. I say, look … No. Forget that part. I’m alone. I’m walking up the path to Hay Tor. Toes plant in the turf, breath comes good, hard, the good squeak of damp grass under my boot soles. The land falls away, the wind rises. The strange metallic scent of gorse. It’s blazing, yellow. Must be spring.
Something bounds across the path. Small, bri
ght, longlegged. The colour of warmth, blood, sunsets. It pauses, throws a stretched and spiny shadow.
The fox stands, perfect and poised. One slender black forepaw raised. Red rusty fur, big ears, too big, wide petals on the narrow head. Young, not a cub but only just. Great wild golden eyes hold mine.
We look at each other, the fox and I. We’re still. Caught by the land, each other, the sky. The delicate muzzle curls. The fox snarls silent and white. Tiny perfect teeth. It’s so fierce and so small. I grin at it and it’s gone like smoke. Glimpse of a brushy tail.
Why didn’t I ask more questions? Papa. Why didn’t I ask you everything about her? About yourself. About everything. I suppose I didn’t believe, in those days, that people actually died. Not really. I’ve only ever loved two people. You can only begin to believe in death when it cuts you where you love.
The muffling, the black. It closes over.
Morning. Julia’s wailing. It’s clear why almost immediately. The stink is everywhere.
Julia struggles in her night jacket. She wriggles. Her face is shiny with tears, her blue eyes are perfect circles. Doris watches.
‘Oh, that’s dirty,’ she says. ‘That’s shameful.’
She takes a cloth from her waist and unbuckles Julia gingerly with fingertips. It’s all over. The bed is slick with it.
‘Revolting,’ Doris says. ‘No use thinking you’ll get a change. Linens is Tuesdays. You know that.’
‘Couldn’t,’ Julia says. Her voice is thick. ‘Couldn’t, couldn’t stop.’ She cries, a long, high, cracked note. It goes on and on. Around the ward other voices take it up. Cracked, keening.
‘She’s set them off,’ Doris calls to Annie. To Julia, ‘You’ve set them off.’ She tuts, hands on hips. ‘Nasty, nasty,’ she says. ‘You think about what you’ve done, when you’re sleeping in it tonight.’ The stench rises. All around, women shrieking.
Julia doesn’t argue. She quietens. Shame moves up her, through her face, until it enters her eyes. They become little glassy pebbles. She goes somewhere else entirely.
We line up on the bench. Grey morning. Thin cloud. Wind flaps in our white shifts. We’re straggling sheep. Eyes blue and black with sleep. I sit next to Julia. She stinks. She’s shaking.
Doris starts at the top of the line, moves down. She opens mouths. She pokes in them with a fine metal implement. She runs a finger round yellowing teeth, taps them with a fingernail, checking for looseness. Papery tongues, cracked mouths. We’re a puzzled, shaky lot.
‘Look,’ I say to Julia, ‘sorry about before.’
Julia stares. A shining line of saliva drawn across the centre of her chin like a wire. ‘Sorry,’ I say. But she doesn’t reply.
When Doris comes to me I let her come in close. I wait until her pink hand hovers blurry and huge by my nose. I close my jaws neatly, fast. I bear down until I taste blood.
It’s only as I’m sinking, sinking, the needle sweet in my arm, urgent hands battering me about the head, the blood all red and tinny between my teeth, that I see it – Julia’s smile.
Nothing, after that, for quite some time.
Morning. Again. Which? No matter. When Lottie comes to me she doesn’t take off the night jacket. She loosens the buckles at the back, sits me up. Too late I see she has the needle in her hand and I want to weep, I can’t bear it – going back down into the black cellar so soon.
‘Soother,’ Lottie says. ‘No, no, keep still. Just a soother this time – because you’ve someone to see you.’ It doesn’t seem likely. The phenobarbital washes up and down, cleans all the feelings away.
A man comes down the ward. Flat, shining hair. A strand escapes as he sits down beside me, hangs, heavy with brilliantine, over one eye. The firm line of his cheek like the curve of a tunnel. He strokes his lapel in slow small movements, as if the suit were a house-trained animal. His smile is shy. He smells of pipe smoke, of lemons, clean skin. His brow amazes with its smoothness, the colour of warm bread.
Martin smiles. ‘You’re awake,’ he says. ‘That’s fine.’
I smile back. My tongue is thick, disobedient, inert. But inside I am singing. I want to tell him how his face brings the taste of heather, the sound of swallows in the eaves, the clear brown river. He has brought Rawblood into the long dirty room. I ache with my happiness. I should have trusted that someone would come. Martin seems an odd choice but I should have known that someone would … Of course this couldn’t go on for ever. It wouldn’t make sense if life were so cruel.
Martin smiles, I smile and I have a thousand questions – I want to ask him … But no. At Earlswood the walls have ears and hands and eyes and needles. Everyone knows that. All that in good time.
I whisper, so light it’s barely a breath on the air, ‘Martin, thank you. Home.’
Martin smiles into my eyes and says, ‘I’m Doctor Goodman. Do you remember me? It’s a pleasure. May I call you Iris? Yes.’
I try to say Martin, of course I remember. Cranium, mandible …
He takes a tongue depressor from his breast pocket. My jaws are gently parted, the depressor pokes at it like a dry stick. He watches. His eyes kind.
‘I was never permitted to be a guest at Rawblood,’ he says. ‘But I am quite happy to have you stay in my house!’ He smiles at his joke. ‘As long as you like!’
He waits until my breathing has steadied a little. Fastidious, he takes his handkerchief from a breast pocket. The cloth looms. It’s rough on my slippery face. His fingers are scented with lemon.
He says, ‘That’s quite enough of that. You don’t know it, but you’re in luck. Real luck. You can be passed over to me for treatment without reservation. Do you realise? The 1913 Act was your salvation. And you did so well. There was no trouble obtaining the certificates. It will all be different, now, Iris.’
I stare at the yellow square at the bottom of my bed. Of course. No visitors. This is no reprieve. Rawblood is gone. Father is gone. Tom is gone. There is only this room. There will only ever be this room. The air dirty and laden with sorrow.
I turn my head and snap at his hand, but it’s gone. The empty click of my teeth.
He says, equable, ‘Yes, you’re fond of that, I hear. The biter.’ The world shifts. He’s lifting me gently. ‘Swimming in phenobarbital,’ he says, pained. ‘Barbaric. And bedsores. I am very sorry … But we can begin to treat this rationally, with modern techniques. I know your history, I know your case – I have an excellent impression of your mental state, before, which will inform your treatment. It – is – a – piece – of – luck.’ He spits each word delicately into the air. ‘I wish you to understand that this is none of your doing. How to begin? The behaviour of the brain. We are only so far removed from the savage. When a leopard tears apart a bull, it is obeying the promptings of its mammalian brain, which has a similar structure to our own. We cannot expect, simply because we have put on linen and read PG Wodehouse, that this urge will never manifest in ourselves. We wish to tear flesh and also to be moral human beings. This struggle can lead to a disintegration of the personality, particularly in women. The violent animal is at war, eternally, with the natural impulse of a gently reared young lady. For let us not forget – the leopard is also natural. And he is strong. In some, very strong indeed. In you, I think. It is a congenital defect. There is a long history of it in your family. Again – it’s so important to stress this – it’s not of your making. You yourself have said that your father warned you of it …’
‘No,’ I say. The rage rises, welcome. ‘He warned me of her.’
‘Her. Well. I would have done the same. I would have told the story in a way that would not appal, or frighten a child. Believe me, Iris, I find no fault with your father. He did what he could. But she did not kill him. Did she?’
She was there. ‘I can see how it looks,’ I say. ‘But it was her.’ She brushed me with her cold fingers. My father’s gaze on my face. The cold space at my back. The thrill that ran through me. I see … her. Pheno can’t quite stop the tide
which rises, rises, threatening.
‘There is no her, there is only you.’ Goodman is curt.
I want to say you’ve got it wrong – you parasite, you llama-faced nobody, you … But I can’t. Because of course whatever part she played, I did it really. Because Papa warned me. But I would not listen.
‘Tell me, Iris,’ he says, ‘how long can a mind be torn between two divergent impulses without fracturing? I do not know. But in due course that is what takes place. A fracture. A young woman raised in relative isolation. Few pastimes. The masculine impulse encouraged by masculine pursuits – anatomy, and so forth. Then the catalyst – what was it? Something. Some form of sexual incontinence, perhaps. That would be usual. And the leopard is free.’ He mimes a paw swiping across the air. ‘You say that you do not recall your crime. I think you cannot acknowledge the actions of your savage other self. Your distress and your grief are not acknowledged by you because you have shut them up. They are locked in the cage. They are the property of the leopard.
‘I can help you with this. I can tame the leopard. I can make him safe. And you can live, contented, in the gentle state that was meant for you.
‘I will speak to you man to man, Iris,’ he says. ‘I will be blunt. The world is being torn apart, outside.’ His hand holds mine, warm and firm. ‘We are engaged in the war to end all wars. All over Europe the hungry leopards are loose.’ He sighs and for a moment his voice forgets about the lecture. ‘It is unconscionable, what is happening. But it will end and, God willing, there will be a world to live in after it ends. You may partake of it. You have a real chance for rehabilitation. No more drugs. Exercise. Responsibility. Rehabilitation. Now. Will you help me?’
Reprieve here, after all, perhaps. A hidden chance.
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