Silence for the Dead

by Simone St. James

  She had a way of looking at you that made you think she knew everything. But she couldn’t have known how those words made me shiver. I understood terror of a man coming home in a way I had never spoken of to anyone.

  “You hadn’t thought of that, had you?” said Matron.

  I shook my head.

  “I didn’t think so. You need to think, Nurse Weekes, if you’re going to succeed here. Do you know why Mr. Somersham was vomiting?”

  “The drugs,” I said numbly. “They were wearing off.”

  “That is, in fact, incorrect. Persistent nausea is part of Mr. Somersham’s particular neurasthenia. For the first three weeks he was here, we had difficulty getting him to take food at all. It usually recurs when he’s had some excitement, such as I understand he had yesterday.”

  I sat silent. I had been so sure.

  “Mr. Mabry,” said Matron, “is subject not only to nosebleeds and delusions, but to violent fits as well. It took us nearly two weeks, I might add, to dry him out. And Mr. Childress assaulted one of the nurses a few days before you started here.”

  “What?” Archie?

  “He assaulted Nurse Ravell, your predecessor, during a night shift. She was so frightened she left right away without notice.”

  That was why she had departed so quickly that she hadn’t taken all of her belongings. I rubbed a tired hand over my forehead. Everything in the dark of night, when I was alone—everything had seemed so different. In the light of day, I questioned what I had seen, what I had thought. I had a particularly bad episode, Archie had told me.

  Matron wasn’t finished. “As for Patient Sixteen, can you explain why you entered his room?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did he request your assistance? The truth this time, Nurse Weekes.”

  “No,” I croaked.

  She sighed. “I know you believe the rules don’t apply to you, but believe me, they apply to you more than to any other nurse I’ve ever had. A condition of Patient Sixteen’s care here is confidentiality. And that is the second time you have entered his room without any authority. He came here to be privately treated for the breakdown of his mental faculties, not to be followed and fawned over by foolish girls who won’t leave him alone. To disregard the rules of his treatment is to set it back.”

  And there I’d been, barging in uninvited, demanding comfort for my own problems. He’d listened so patiently while I’d poured out my stupid mistakes and contravened the conditions of his own recovery. “I’m sorry. I am. It won’t happen again.”

  “That isn’t good enough, Nurse Weekes. I have already written another incident report. I had no choice. Your behavior has compromised the effectiveness of this institution.”

  “The patients all know who he is,” I blurted, my cheeks stinging. “They all know. You can’t truly think there was a way to avoid it.”

  For a second, her gaze flickered. She knew. “A rule is a rule, Nurse Weekes.”

  “But—”

  “I’ve just explained it,” she snapped. “Your job as a nurse is not to question the rules, but to follow them. Failure to follow the rules results in an incident report.”

  I swallowed. “And the incident report is read by . . .”

  “Dr. Thornton, Dr. Oliver, and Mr. Deighton, yes. They all receive it.”

  So I was ruined, then. I had no one to blame but myself, as usual. I blinked back tears, and a flare of anger burned over my shame. “Did he tell you he locked the door on Patient Sixteen?” I asked her. “When he tattled on me? Did he tell you that much?”

  Matron didn’t bother pretending she didn’t know who I meant. “Yes, he did. Orderlies are given keys and can make special judgments if they feel safety is being compromised.”

  “Whose safety? Patient Sixteen is on suicide watch, for God’s sake. What if he had killed himself while locked in? What would your Dr. Thornton or your Mr. Deighton have said then?”

  Creases bracketed her mouth, forming deep grooves. “That has been taken into consideration. In the end, no harm was done. The incident will not be repeated.”

  “Will there be an incident report about him? About Roger?”

  “Incident reports are none of your concern, Nurse Weekes.”

  “They are when I’m about to get sacked.”

  “That is enough, Nurse Weekes.”

  I looked away. It was scathingly unfair. It had taken five days—no, six. This was my sixth day at Portis House and I had already ruined it, ruined everything. I thought about the bottle of pills I’d taken, hidden now under the mattress on my bed. I could tell her—what? That I thought the doctors and orderlies were conspiring to have Jack Yates die by his own hand? What if the admission just doomed me further? What if Jack had stolen the pills and the doctors hadn’t given them to him at all? I’d never asked him. If I revealed the pills now, I could cause him more trouble than I had already.

  Well, she was right about one thing. I’d taken the bottle. The incident would not happen again.

  I was actually sitting there thinking of strategies to keep Jack Yates from trying to kill himself again. It hit me in a wave of awful disbelief. I didn’t realize I’d spoken until I heard the words, tired and quiet from my own lips. “Six months ago he was a hero.”

  Matron sighed. “I am not concerned with heroes,” she said, though her own voice had softened a little. “I am concerned with patients.”

  “Then you should let Jack Yates come out of his room if he wants to,” I said.

  For a second she actually looked surprised, as if I’d said aloud something she’d been thinking. Then she shuttered her expression again. “Let me tell you something, Nurse Weekes. Nursing is a job, and not a glamorous one. You do not get to choose the patients you treat. No one will ever thank you or even tell you you’ve done well. Our only task, which we must perform from waking to sleeping, is to do our duty. That is the profession we’ve chosen.” She put an emphasis on the word “chosen.” “Nurse Weekes.”

  I tried to glare, but it probably came across as sullen. I was too tumbled up to do it properly. “How long do I have?”

  “If you are asking if you will be dismissed, that isn’t up to me. Mr. Deighton receives the incident reports every few weeks, and it usually takes him several days to get to them. Three weeks, perhaps.”

  “May I go now?”

  “Yes. You are on duty tonight, though since you’re dressed now, it’s likely the other nurses can use your help with supper.”

  I pushed my chair back. “I’m going for a walk first. I’ve barely been out of doors since I arrived.”

  She thought about it, likely concluding that if I had the benefit of fresh air, she could get more work out of me. “Very well. One hour. Don’t go far.”

  “May I ask one question?”

  “What is it?”

  “Where did she go?”

  Matron looked surprised. “Who?”

  “The nurse before me. Maisey Ravell. Where did she go when she left here?”

  She frowned. “To the village, I assume, unless she got another position.”

  “The village?”

  “Yes. Bascombe. The village on the mainland, at the other end of the bridge. You would have passed through it on your way here.” Her gaze narrowed. “Why do you ask that?”

  “Because she left some belongings behind. A locket and a few other things. I thought perhaps she might want them. I’d like to write and ask her, if that’s allowed.”

  Again Matron considered. “Very well. I’ll have Nurse Fellows give you the address we have in the records. The post goes in the morning.”

  It wasn’t much, but it was something. And before she could speak again, I was off, my steps taking me down the corridor and away from Portis House as fast as I could go.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  July had almost arri
ved, and true high summer was beginning. To me, the season was usually marked by humid, smoggy London days, clothes that stuck to my skin as I worked, sheets I had to dampen with water so I could sleep in my airless room at night, the smells of smoke and dirt and motorcar fumes like lingering gas attacks. I had never spent summer out of the city.

  The air was fresh here, blowing over the marshes in a warm exhale tinged with earth and salt. I unpinned my cap, untied my apron, and dropped them on one of the chairs in the garden as I went through the garden gate.

  Past the back of the house and the gentle rise of the hills were hunched clumps of low trees, bordering the marshes themselves. I pushed on, farther than I had ever gone while supervising the men at exercise. Long grass, each blade as wide as my thumb, brushed at my skirts with a silvery shushing sound matched by the persistent whistle of the wind in my ears and punctuated by the calls of birds. I leaned my body into the climb up the slope, feeling my legs stretch in their cotton stockings, the pull of the muscles on the backs of my calves. My feet in Maisey Ravell’s practical leather boots sank into the soft earth. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades, not the slick sweat of fear but the honest sweat of effort, dried quickly by the summer wind.

  I had to lift my skirts as I climbed. I should have been cursing my uniform, with its fussy blouse and petticoat, but I was growing used to it. I had never worn a corset—it seemed a pointless extravagance to me, and I had no desire to look like an old biddy—and the uniform, mercifully, did not require one. After several days of hard work in it, I had to admit that it was easy to move in, easy to bend and stretch in, sturdily sewn with minimum fuss. What had seemed prudish a few days earlier I now realized covered everything no matter what difficult position I found myself in. It was nice to know you could help a man vomit into a pitcher on the floor without showing him your calves or giving him a look down your blouse.

  So I pushed myself along now, skirts rustling in the grass, beginning to enjoy the blood pumping in my body despite how tired I was. By the time I reached the top of the rise, my cheeks were hot and I felt damp sweat under my pinned-up braids.

  From here I could see the thicket of trees, clustered like a crowd of commuters on a busy train platform, that were solid land’s last gasp before the marshes began their march to the sea. The grass grew thicker there, tangled with brush and undergrowth, uncut by any visible path. Beyond the trees, the marshes stretched like patchwork, mossy and silvery, their colors strange even in the workaday summer sunlight. They faded into an impenetrable horizon that must be the sea, though I saw no sign of any boat or mast in the long moments I searched for them.

  I turned back to the house. It looked different from here; it was so large I’d only ever seen pieces of it, like the portico on that first day in the fog. There was something both magnificent and ominous about it from here. It stood alone, showing its wealth and outright splendor, spreading its wings against the tremendous expanse of the marsh and the horizon, as if flung down by a giant hand. It was a massive, wide square of pure stone, dwarfing its ornamental gardens in shadow, its windows staring indifferently at the sky and the sea.

  I walked along the rise, unwilling to descend just yet. My hour was likely up soon, but the sun was shining, and this far from the house I could almost feel the ghosts and the devils falling away. The house was just a house from here, after all. I should have been amazed at the quiet and the loneliness, or even horrified, being a London girl; the emptiness here was entirely new to me. But I’d always craved solitude, even on a crowded factory floor. Solitude was safe.

  There was movement in one of the upper windows of the house. Someone was watching me.

  For a second my eyes wanted to see a shirtless man, but no. It was a dark-haired man in the pale shirt of Portis House, sitting on a familiar window seat in an unmistakable pose. Even from here, I knew Jack Yates.

  I had no idea how long he’d been watching as I’d stood staring out to sea without cap or apron, oblivious, my skirt blowing against my legs. He lifted one hand now in salute, palm out, a silent greeting. I raised my own hand in return, held it there. We were locked together for a long moment, and I imagined my hand pressed to the glass of his window. Matron had been right. I should never have burdened him with my problems or sought comfort he was in no position to give. My first priority should have been his care. I’d been selfish, as always.

  I lowered my hand, made myself look away. I turned my gaze to the deserted west wing, its dark windows, and then I froze.

  A woman stood on the grass before the door to the isolation room. She wore a blouse and skirt, the hem lost in the long weeds, her hair tied back, hatless. In the shadow of the looming walls, I couldn’t see her features clearly. But I could see that she stood with her hands at her sides, unmoving. And she was staring steadily at me.

  My heart thumped in my chest. For a long moment I just stood there, my breath short, wondering what I was looking at. A woman? A ghost? I thought of the shirtless man I’d followed into the stairwell and I had the wild instinct to run. But my feet did nothing, rooted to the ground like clay.

  Then she moved.

  She turned with a slow, eerie calm and walked away, back toward the isolation room door and past it. Her skirt shifted as she passed, though in the tall grass I couldn’t see her feet. She moved like a real woman. But then, the shirtless figure I’d seen had moved like a real man.

  She turned the corner and disappeared around the side of Portis House. I stayed frozen for another long moment, but she didn’t reappear. I should go back into the house, I knew. Even though it was improbable, likely impossible, that a woman had come so far alone with no transportation, I should report what I had just seen. Instead, I followed her.

  The breeze died as I descended the rise toward the west wing, giving way to still, oppressive air before I reached the house. I stepped into the curve formed by the cup of the west wing’s walls and my vision was dappled with shadow. Jack Yates’s window had vanished from sight, and no one could see me here. The weeds smelled rank and without the breeze there was no sound, no soft shushing of grass, only the sound of my boots on the choked, soft earth.

  I looked around me and realized where I was standing.

  That spot outside the library, you know. That seems to be the spot they go to. The last one had stolen a blade.

  I glanced down at my feet, as if expecting to see blood still beaded on the grass. For a second I could imagine it clearly: a patient in his Portis House whites standing here with a stolen knife. Shouts, orderlies running. The man raising the blade. When I had first heard it, it had seemed strange that men would supposedly be drawn to this place for such an impulse. Yet as I stood there myself, the loneliness was unmistakable, with the air of a place that was more toxic and sick than any other place in this vast madhouse.

  The windows of the isolation room had been fitted with iron bars, and a heavy lock hung on the door, its keyhole staring vacantly at me. I tried to imagine being locked in there alone, far from the rest of the house, looking out at these hideous weeds. Would they tie a man up? Put him in a straitjacket?

  I had to cup my hands to the glass of the window, between the bars, before I could see inside, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. I saw a cot, a basin on a nightstand, a single wooden chair. The walls were stained; water had come in during a rainfall, perhaps. Dust littered the floor. This was the room’s only window. A man would sit here and stare at nothing, see no one, count the stains on the wall, on the ceiling . . .

  The men know. It’s getting worse, too. Did you hear the last one screaming? Said he could see something from the window . . .

  I pushed away. My skirt caught on something, and I looked down to see a weed growing along the wall, my skirt hooked on its sticky tendrils. I pulled myself free as other weeds scratched my legs. I was in the grip of something strange. I felt as if someone had slipped me a drug, something t
hat made me see more than I wanted, as if I could peel up the edge of the visible world and glimpse what lay underneath. The woman watching me. This horrible, strangely awful room that made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I took a step back. I saw my reflection in the window, and behind me something moved.

  It was a figure. Tall, indistinct. A gleam of sunlight on metal, and then it was gone. Not my father. And yet—

  He found you, a voice said in my head—the same crazy, panicked voice I’d heard in the men’s lav. You broke the rules and he found you and you know what happens when he gets angry.

  I whirled around. Nothing there. Only the hot, dead air and the sour smell of the weeds. And then another voice came, this one deeper, indescribable. You coward. I took a step and something hit me hard in the stomach.

  I bent double, moaning low and terrified, and the impulse to scream was so overpowering I pressed my hands over my mouth as another mad sound escaped me. I breathed out in a hot rush of air. As impossible, as insane as the situation was, my brain still recognized what was happening. I was about to get a beating. I had to run.

  I forced my legs to move, one step, and then another, pushing through wave after wave of panic. Just move, move. I staggered through the fetid grass and out of the shadows into the sunlight again, and then I dropped my hands and kept running.

  I had little memory of the hours after that. I know I put on my cap and apron and helped with supper. I was a shell, functioning like an automaton on the outside, my brain rattling with wild terror on the inside. It was a familiar feeling, a reaction I could not control. It was a survival instinct born of many beatings, of the need to appear normal, not to let on. My mind was very good at this, at moving my hands and feet and working while the rest of me shut down. My life, for a short time, was happening to someone else, and so I got through one moment, and then another, and then another.