The Asylum

by John Harwood

  “That, at least, is reassuring,” he said, making another note. “And after that?”

  “I remained with my great-aunt, Vida Radford, on my mother’s side, until we lost—until she died last year. After that I went to London to live with Uncle Josiah—Aunt Vida’s brother, so he is my great-uncle, too—”

  Again I heard myself faltering.

  “And has your uncle any children of his own?”

  “No, sir. Like my aunt, he never married.”

  “I see. And—if you will forgive me—what are your financial circumstances? Have you money of your own, or expectations of your uncle?”

  Something in his tone made me even more fearful.

  “I have a small income, sir, about a hundred pounds a year, from my aunt. And my uncle is certainly not rich; he says his estate is worth only a few hundred pounds.”

  “I see. And now we come to your mental health. As Miss Ashton”—he glanced again at the paper on his knee—“you told my assistant that you had no history of mental disturbance. But given that you came here under an alias, and have since suffered a seizure, almost certainly brought on by prolonged and violent mental agitation, perhaps there is something you would like to add to Miss Ashton’s account?”

  Again the room seemed to revolve around me. There were, I thought, with my heart beginning to pound, several things I ought to add; but if I confessed to them, I might never be allowed to leave. The seconds ticked by under his ironic gaze.

  “I—I do not think there is anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Very well,” he said, after an uncomfortable pause. “And now I must look in on some of my other patients. In the meantime, you must stay in bed and keep warm; Bella will see to the fire when she returns with your luggage.”

  “But sir, you will send that wire to my uncle?”

  “By all means. The nearest telegraph office is at Liskeard, a good forty minutes’ ride from here, so we cannot expect a reply until this evening at the earliest. Mr. Josiah Radford, of Gresham’s Yard, Bloomsbury, is it not?” he added, glancing at his notebook.

  You must be able to remember, I told myself as the echo of his footsteps died away. It is like a door that sticks; you have forgotten the trick of it; that is all. Or a name that will not come to you, and then you find it upon your lips a few minutes later. But no matter how hard I strained, I could not even discern a gap where memory should have been. Was it possible that the real Lucy Ashton—where had I heard that name before?—looked just like me? Could we have been confused with each other? But that did nothing to explain what I was doing in a private asylum in Cornwall, a part of the world I had never visited . . . and so my thoughts went spiralling on, until Bella reappeared, struggling under the weight of a stout leather valise, a hatbox, and a dark blue travelling-cloak, none of which I recognised.

  “I am afraid those are not my things.”

  The girl regarded me with, I thought, a certain compassion.

  “Beg pardon, miss, but you was wearing that cloak when you come here yesterday. And look,” she added, setting down the case and opening it. “Here’s your wrap, miss, the one you asked me to look out when you was cold later on.”

  She held up a blue woollen shawl—the pattern was certainly one I might have chosen myself—and draped it around my shoulders. I watched numbly as she opened the closet and began to unpack the case—which had “L.A.” stamped in faded gold lettering below the handle. Everything she took out of it looked like clothes I might have chosen myself, but none of them were mine. It struck me that my own wardrobe, in its entirety, would fit into a case not much larger than this.

  “Wait!” I cried. “I am not staying here; I must return to London as soon as—” My voice trailed away; the fog of confusion seemed suddenly to lift. Why on earth was I waiting for the answer to Dr. Straker’s wire? He had said I was a voluntary patient, and regardless of how and why they had mistaken me for Lucy Ashton—regardless, indeed, of what had happened to my memory—the sooner I was back in London, the better.

  “In fact,” I said firmly, “I wish to leave immediately. Would you please help me to dress, and—”

  “I’m sorry, miss, but I can’t, not without the doctor’s say-so.” She had a soft country accent which would, in other circumstances, have been pleasing to my ear.

  “Then I shall dress myself. Please go at once and find Dr. Straker, and ask him to order me”—I was about to say, “a cab”—“a conveyance, to take me to the nearest railway station. You do understand,” I added, hearing my voice beginning to tremble, “that I am a voluntary patient here.”

  “I’ll go and see, miss. But please, miss, doctor’s orders was for you to stay in bed.”

  She hurried out, closing the door behind her. I slipped out of bed, suddenly afraid that she might have locked me in. But the door opened readily, onto a dark-panelled corridor, in which Bella’s receding figure was the only sign of life.

  I closed the door again and turned to the closet. Lucy Ashton’s taste in clothing was almost identical to my own; like me, she favoured the aesthetic style; her blue woollen travelling-dress was the twin of one that I possessed in grey, and when I held it up against myself, it was plain, even without a mirror, that it would fit me perfectly. Even the laundry marks were exactly the same as mine: small cotton tags stitched into the lining, with “L.A.” sewn into them in neat blue lettering. If I had been asked to outfit myself for a journey, I could not have chosen better.

  Again I found myself clutching at the idea that Lucy Ashton must be my double, only to remember that this did nothing to explain why I was here. Once more I strove to penetrate the void shrouding my mind, until something brought me back to the immediate present, and the awareness that Lucy Ashton’s case contained no purse or pocketbook; no jewellery, no rings, and no money.

  And two other things were missing—though of course they were missing, since these were not my things: the dragonfly brooch my mother had bequeathed to me, which I would never have left behind; and my writing case, a present from Aunt Vida, containing the journal I had kept since my sixteenth birthday. It was a quarto-sized case made of soft blue leather, with two gold clasps, and a key, which I always kept on a fine silver chain around my neck, but which was certainly not there now.

  The loss of that key somehow brought home the extremity of my plight. My strength deserted me, and I sank down upon the edge of the bed, just as Dr. Straker reappeared in the doorway, followed by Bella with a pail of coals.

  “Miss—Ferrars,” he said sternly, “you must get back into bed and stay there. As your physician, I command it. There can be no question of your leaving; you are far too ill.”

  “But sir—”

  “No more, I pray you. The wire has been dispatched as you requested; as soon as we have an answer, I shall let you know,” he said, and strode from the room.

  “Bella,” I said as she arranged the blankets over me, “I can’t find my purse, or my brooch—in a small red plush box; it is quite valuable; or my writing case—a blue leather one. Have you see them anywhere?”

  “No, miss, I ’aven’t. This is all there was, miss, when I packed up your room just now.”

  “But I must have had money,” I said desperately. “How else could I have got here?”

  “You gave me a sixpence, miss, when you was still wearing your cloak. P’raps it’s there.”

  She tried the pockets but found only a pair of gloves.

  “You don’t think I took it, miss?” she said, with a look of alarm.

  “No, Bella. But someone must have, and my brooch and writing case; I would never travel without them.”

  “I don’t know, miss, I’m sure. We’re all honest girls here. Might you have put them away somewhere yourself, miss, and—and forgotten? Now please, miss, I must get on.”

  To this there was plainly no answer. I gave up all hope of escaping that day, and lay with my mind spinning, and a sick feeling of dread gnawing at the pit of my stomach, while daylight slo
wly faded from the room, until I woke with the glare of a lantern in my eyes, to find Dr. Straker standing beside my bed.

  “I am afraid, Miss Ashton, that you must prepare yourself for a shock. As well as conveying your message to Josiah Radford, I took the liberty of asking him whether he had ever heard of a Lucy Ashton. This is his reply.”

  NO KNOWLEDGE LUCY ASHTON STOP GEORGINA FERRARS HERE STOP YOUR PATIENT MUST BE IMPOSTER STOP JOSIAH RADFORD.

  I was sedated, that night, with chloral, and emerged from a pit of oblivion with my body still aching and a foul taste in my mouth. Whether it was the after-effect of the drug, or the accumulated shocks of the previous day, all I could think was that Dr. Straker must have wired the wrong Josiah Radford; further than that, my mind refused to go. Bella brought me breakfast, which I was unable to eat, along with a mirror in which I saw a drawn, sunken face, white as a ghost’s except for dark pouches like bruises beneath eyes that were scarcely recognisable as my own. Dr. Straker, she told me, as she brushed the worst of the knots out of my hair, would be here directly; his orders were for me to stay in bed; and no, I was not to dress on any account. And so I was condemned to wait in my nightgown and wrap until he appeared at my bedside, looking, if anything, even more cheerful than he had the day before.

  “Well, Miss Ashton, as I think we must call you until we discover who you really are, I must say that your case is unique in my experience.”

  “Sir, I beg of you . . . I cannot explain what has happened, but I swear to you, on my dear mother’s grave, I am Georgina Ferrars!”

  “I know. I know that is what you believe, with every fibre of your being. But consider the facts. There is a Georgina Ferrars presently at the address you gave me—no, hear me out. You came here under the name Lucy Ashton, and I think we may say with certainty that Lucy Ashton is not your real name, either. You are, I take it, familiar with Scott’s Waverley novels?”

  I knew, suddenly, where I had heard the name before.

  “Lucy Ashton is the heroine of The Bride of Lammermoor. She is forced by her mother to break her engagement to the man she loves, Edgar Ravenswood, and marry another whom she loathes. She stabs her husband on their wedding night, and dies, insane, of a seizure. So it occurs to me to ask whether this has any personal significance for you.”

  I stared at him, appalled.

  “I have never been engaged, sir, let alone . . . !”

  “Nevertheless, you will agree that it is a disturbing choice of alias for a troubled young woman presenting herself for treatment at a private asylum. It suggests that there is something in her past—perhaps her immediate past—from which she is fleeing.”

  “There is nothing, sir, nothing!”

  “Nothing that you can remember, I agree.”

  “But sir, I have told you my history; you wrote it down yesterday. The person who sent that telegram is lying; I do not know why. If you do not believe me—”

  “I have already been in touch with the medical boards of Clerkenwell and Southwark: a Dr. Godfrey Ferrars held positions there in 1859 and 1862 respectively. He died at Southwark of typhoid fever on the thirtieth of August 1862, survived by his wife, Emily, and their infant daughter, Georgina.”

  “Then how can you not believe me?” I cried.

  “Because—though I am sure you could give me the most fluent recital of the facts of Georgina Ferrars’ life—it does not follow that you are Georgina Ferrars. You may, for example, have met the real Georgina Ferrars, or someone who knows her very well, and—for reasons we cannot yet fathom—become obsessed with her. I have seen such cases before; it is called hysterical possession, where the patient assumes the identity of another and comes to believe in all sincerity that she is that person. As well as the evidence of the telegram, we have the fact that you presented yourself here as Miss Ashton, suffered a seizure, lost all memory of the past six weeks, and only then declared yourself to be Georgina Ferrars—”

  “Sir,” I broke in, gathering my courage, “you must hear me! That cable is a fraud. I do not know who sent it, or why, but if you send someone to Gresham’s Yard, you will find only my uncle; he will come straight away and fetch me. I have a little money saved,” I added, praying that it was still true, “and I will pay any expenses—”

  “That will not be necessary. As it happens, I have to go up to London by this afternoon’s train. I shall call at Gresham’s Yard tomorrow, and speak to Josiah Radford—and, I fear, to Georgina Ferrars, and try to persuade her to come down and identify you—since you clearly know a good deal about her.

  “And if,” he added, before I could speak, “if it should turn out that you have a mortal enemy, who has been lurking around Gresham’s Yard, waiting to intercept a telegram he could not possibly have known would come, I promise to bring Mr. Josiah Radford back with me on the very next train, and eat my hat—a thing I have never promised to do before—as penance. In the meantime, we shall keep you comfortable, at our expense, of course.”

  “But sir, I wish to leave at once!”

  “I am afraid I cannot allow it. You are not well enough to travel, and, if my instinct is right, and you were to appear at Gresham’s Yard in your present frame of mind, you would probably be arrested and confined at Bethlem Hospital, which, though much improved, is not a place I should recommend to anyone in my care. And now I must see to my other patients; I shall leave you in the care of my colleague Dr. Mayhew until I return—which may not be until Monday.”

  “Monday! But sir . . .”

  He rose, silencing me with a gesture, and strode to the door, where he paused.

  “Oh, and I shall ask my assistant, Mr. Mordaunt, to look in on you. I think you will find him—sympathetic.”

  For the rest of that day I saw no one but Bella and Dr. Mayhew, a stout, grey-bearded physician who took my pulse, peered at my tongue, felt my forehead, grunted a few times and went away without speaking. Bella helped me to bathe, and brought me meals, most of which I was unable to eat. You must keep up your strength for the journey home, I kept telling myself, but the clenched knot in the pit of my stomach left little room for food. Once, after she had taken away my tray, I slipped out of bed and made my way unsteadily to the window. The mist had cleared, and through the grille I looked down upon an enclosed garden, perhaps thirty yards across, surrounded by high brick walls. Gravel paths ran between beds of dark green foliage; there was no one in sight, and no sign of any way in or out. Above the walls I could see only the tops of trees, silhouetted against a leaden sky.

  There was no clock within my hearing; nothing to mark the passing of the hours except the slow fading of the light and the occasional spatter of rain against the glass; nothing to do but struggle in vain to comprehend what had befallen me, until I fell at last into a doze and woke in lamplight to find Bella arranging my supper tray. She had brought me another draught of chloral, which I swallowed reluctantly for the oblivion it promised. But instead of sleeping through the night, I woke in a kind of delirium in which I was aware of myself lying in bed, unable to move, spinning through fearful dreams until daylight and the horror of coming fully awake and finding myself still at Tregannon Asylum.

  Before this, the idea that I might not even be—myself, was the only way I could conceive of it—would have seemed merely absurd. But here, anything seemed possible; not only possible, but nightmarishly plausible. How could I be sure that I was not insane? I did not feel mad, but how was I to know what madness felt like? Dr. Straker evidently believed it; and I had only to think of that telegram to feel terror rising to engulf me. Why had I called myself Lucy Ashton—as I must have done, unless everyone here was lying to me? Was there a strain of madness in our family, which had come out in me?

  You must not think of it, I told myself, and a great sob burst from my throat. When the fit of weeping had passed, I lay down and closed my eyes and strove to imagine myself back in my own small bed in our house on the cliffs at Niton, with Mama and Aunt Vida murmuring nearby, their voices blending with th
e ebb and wash of the sea far below.

  My great-aunt Vida had found the cottage many years before I was born, and had fallen in love with it at first sight. It stood about fifty yards up from the cliff, with the ground rising steeply behind. Away to the east ran the great sweep of the cliffs, the edge so sharp in places that it might have been cut with a knife, plunging down to two horizontal lines of fluted rock like great jagged teeth, the lower jaw projecting beyond the upper, and then down again to the falls of rock heaped along the shore far below. Whole farms lay buried in some of these mounds, but my aunt insisted that we were too far from the edge to be in any danger.

  Our sitting room was upstairs at the front, with windows on two sides looking to the east and south, over the vast expanse of the sea. My mother had a chaise longue by the side windows, and here she would spend hours each day reading, knitting or embroidering, or simply gazing out to sea. Every morning after breakfast, the sitting room would become my schoolroom, and much of my education came from reading aloud—I could not remember a time when I could not read—or being read to, and asking questions whenever I did not understand. We read a great deal of poetry, and Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare, and Macaulay’s History; anything from our small library that my mother considered suitable, and I do not remember her ever condescending to me, or saying that anything was too hard for a child to understand.

  My aunt slept in the other front room; my bedroom was across the passage from hers, and my mother had the room next to mine. From my window I could see the long westward sweep of the coast. The dining room, which we seldom used, was downstairs, along with a breakfast room where we took most of our meals, and the kitchen and servants’ quarters where Mrs. Briggs, the housekeeper, and Amy, the maid, lived.

  Aunt Vida seemed, when I was small, to tower above my mother, though I came to realise that there was only an inch or two between them. But my mother was pale and slender, whereas Aunt Vida was as stout and solid as a tree-trunk, her face weathered by long exposure to wind and sun. She was a great walker, and I would often see her striding out in the morning, swinging her blackthorn stick. In summer, especially, she might not return until after my bedtime; I would hear her voice raised in greeting as I was drifting on the edge of sleep, or wake to the murmur of conversation from the sitting room. She spoke, as a rule, in a gruff, staccato fashion, as though dictating her thoughts at the telegraph office. “I should have been born a man,” she once said to me, years after my mother had died, and indeed she behaved, for the most part, as if she had been. Once, having seen her snipping at her hair—a thick, white, wiry mane, very like that of Mr. Allardyce the vicar—with the kitchen scissors, I decided to try it myself, with predictable consequences. “I am old enough, and ugly enough, to do as I please,” she had said sternly, “but you, child, are not.” She despised bustles and crinolines; her wardrobe consisted of two summer and two winter walking-dresses, all in the same shade of brown (“doesn’t show the mud”), and two pairs of stout boots; in wet weather she would array herself in oilskins and a sou’wester. Years later, when I was fully grown, she insisted upon giving me a set of my own, which I thought deeply unbecoming and would wear only as a last resort. They smelt faintly but persistently of tobacco, and I suspected her of buying them from a sailor.