by Carole Gill
“Is anyone looking for Dr. Sutton?”
“Oh you mean like the coppers? No they was, but then they stopped. Don’t know why like.”
One of the staff called to her then, and she stood to leave. “Best bid you good night, Rose.”
I watched her leave, and wondered for how many years would I call this place home.
Chapter 4
It might surprise you that I could not tell Grace what had happened to me, but I could not. If I couldn’t tell my doctor yet how could I tell another inmate?
This was me again, worrying so how my horror would affect another. I have always been like that, drawing myself inward—keeping things to myself because I thought it was easier.
But in Grace’s case I didn’t have the heart to tell her of such horror for it seemed to me she just managed to get along as it was. And besides, I was fearful that an upset might set off a fit for I had heard of such things.
Sunday came and with it a fresh shift for chapel. I didn’t wish to go but Grace told me I must. “Whatever you do lass, do not stand out!”
I realized she was right for I had seen awful things with my own eyes—frightful sights of obstinate or confused inmates being dragged by the hair or pulled along as though they were sacks of potatoes and not human beings.
Had I ever known such cruelty like this existed? I thought not, at least I hoped I didn’t.
I think though I always knew that the unfortunate in this world were vulnerable to the whims and dictates of the powerful.
Dr. Bannion ran things, and his staff enforced his rules. Chapel goers, or so they claimed to be, these custodians of the mad were sometimes cruel. I had seen it with my own eyes—chains or not.
The chapel overlooked the dreary building that housed those deemed dangerous. God only knew how they were treated. I shuddered to think of it as I took my place in one of the side pews.
The vicar was frightfully old and difficult to hear. I nearly dozed but for Grace’s sharp pokes in my ribs.
We stood for the hymns and sat for the muddled sermon, head bowed when everyone else’s was, and then it was time to go. After which, we had the day to ourselves.
I hadn’t yet been given any chores, which surprised Grace but then she looked thoughtful and solemn as if she knew something but would not say what it was. I asked her about it but she put me off.
“No lass, I am just quiet today, there is nothing the matter.”
I thought there was and wished to press the matter but I didn’t wish to upset her.
Luncheon was served; we had some left over stew and fried bread. Afterwards, Grace said she was going to help in the kitchen because she did that sometimes even on a Sunday.
“They’ve got an old man in to help but he keeps crying.” She shook her head. “They oughtn’t to be dragged up to work some of them, it’s mean.”
She explained they used other inmates to work on Sundays, inmates who weren’t able to work but one day a week due to their illness. It was cruel I thought, but it was part of a much larger picture of the gross heartlessness that was Marsh Asylum.
I didn’t know where the fault lay; I suppose it had to be with Dr. Bannion although I didn’t want to think that, not then.
Left to myself, I began to think. Not something I wished to do. I didn’t want to be idle as being idle brought to mind things I didn’t want to remember. But how could I forget that awful day or how my family looked when I last saw them? Nightmare images had a way of popping up in my head when I least expected them to. Somehow I banished those horrible thoughts, but in doing that I began to recall things I had long forgotten, things best left buried in the dusty recesses of the mind.
I began to remember stories my father told me when I was little. I hadn’t told Dr. Bannion of my father’s illness yet, nor had I mentioned how much he had changed after it. His whole personality had altered after his stroke.
Well, it took one moment for him to crash to the floor with an agonized groan, and then weeks in bed with Dr. Arliss telling my mother in a low voice that father would never be the same again.
She didn’t know I listened.
“He’s had a brain hemorrhage, Mrs. Baines. He might not walk again or be able to speak…”
But he had been able to speak though, with a drooping lip. His entire right side was affected. He began to drag his leg and was no longer able to use his right arm. It just seemed to hang there, apart and useless.
He could no longer write. He tried writing with his left hand but found he could not master it.
“Scrawls! Just scrawls!” he’d scream in his indistinct rant. His voice had been a great asset as a barrister. He could sway people just by the sound of it.
Yet now he sounded garbled and awful and because he did he’d grow angry and irritable, which made it worse.
He went from being a barrister in a leading London law firm to selling produce in a market.
Something died in him then, and he began to change. His moods became dark and frightening. If only he could have gotten help…
Yes but to do what he did, Rose.
Yes, I thought—that doesn’t excuse him from his final horrific act of violence.
Yet, was he responsible for it all? He had changed so. Where he had never ever come home late, he began arriving after sun up sometimes.
Mother stopped asking him where he had been for the slaps steadied her tongue.
“Shut up! It’s my business and not yours!”
Poor mother.
He didn’t take out anything on me, I was his favorite, but my poor brother bore the brunt of his fury and sometimes my younger sisters did, too.
And then during all of that he began to tell me the strangest fairytales.
“Come Rose, I shall tell you a story…”
Though his speech was badly affected I got used to it and found I could understand him. This drew us closer too, I think, as he came to rely on me more and more.
But there was something ominous about this time and him when he’d take me into the library. “Now this is a story of a certain monster that punished bad children…”
Once I saw my mother snatch the books away and I feared for her.
“Those are the books Father reads to me from.”
“They are evil, the devil’s work!”
Why had she said that? Were they?
I decided I would have to tell Dr. Bannion about it the next time I saw him.
*
Night, I decided, was the worst time in this place, for I heard sobs and screams, too. Rarely did anyone come to comfort those who suffered. I tried to shut my ears to the noise but it was impossible.
There was one woman near me, who just wept. I crept out of bed to see if she was alright.
I whispered to her. I was afraid to reach over and offer a comforting hand for fear as to what she might do. But I did ask her if I could help.
There was no answer. Not even a word.
As I walked back to my bed, another called me over. “There’s nothing you can do for her, no one knows why she cries, not even the staff. They don’t even know her name. They just found her that’s all, found her near dead outside. Someone nearly killed her. Best go back to bed now, ‘fore they see you up.”
That was all she said before she turned over.
This was an awakening for me. I wasn’t the only person to have suffered hell on earth.
I lay back and thought about what I had heard. And between my thoughts and the occasional scream and sob, I was serenaded until sleep finally came.
An attendant woke us all with a bell. “Time to get up. Breakfast now. Time to get up!”
No one grumbled or said anything. The faces looked as they usually looked, blank for the most part, sometimes sad. It varied.
The unknown woman was just rising when another attendant yanked her out of bed and began hollering.
I nearly called out but was advised against it by one of the other inmates. “You can’t do nothing. Best not t
o try.”
My first Monday at Marsh.
There were buckets of water so that we could wash. After which we had to put on the same shift again.
Then we were marched two abreast, toward the dining room to get our meal.
We weren’t supposed to talk, although many did. Some spoke gibberish and others in half sentences no one understood.
I decided those that inhabited a far-off world, were better off than those like myself who had most of our wits about us.
It was one of my first lessons. The lesson of Marsh.
Breakfast was potage and watery tea. I just stared at mine until an arm reached out and took both the potage and the tea away. When I glanced after it, one of the women shook her head. “If you don’t take it quickly that’s what happens. Serves you right love, this ain’t Buckingham palace.”
There was a ripple of laughter after that, although I think in retrospect few understood what they were laughing at.
*
“Yes, of course, any information you can give me is of great importance.”
Monday morning found me staring at Dr. Bannion’s ink bottles trying to summon up the courage so I could go on.
“Please Rose, it is good to tell me these things. You are brave and I admire you, do go on. What kinds of fairy tales were they?”
“They were different than those my mother told me. These were about monsters and demons…you see Father was so different after his stroke, so very changed.”
He admonished me gently for not having told him of this before. I said I was sorry and went on. “They were dark stories filled with violent deaths and sometimes even things children were not meant to know about…”
“What kinds of things?”
“Just things that were upsetting about ladies and gentlemen—”
“And?”
“Dr. Bannion, please…”
“But you must give me an idea, Rose.”
“He told me things they did to one another, vile disgusting things! Things he did to me…” I broke down then. There I was, a sobbing mess with Dr. Bannion shaking his head.
I felt I knew what he was thinking—he was thinking of my father and the effect that recent assault must have had on me.
He told me to rest and get my breath back, which I did.
“They are terrible things you have locked away in your mind, best let them out and they will go away.”
“Yes, sir.”
He was studying me carefully. “And there was violence, too. Your mother you say suffered as well as your siblings?”
“Yes, quite.”
“But that is all?”
We both knew what he meant by that. “Yes,” I replied. “I am certain of that.” My mind began to wander, or not to wander really but to fix itself upon a thought I had had.
“Rose, you look far away, what is it, can you tell me?”
“Dr. Bannion, do you believe people can invite evil in?”
Every drop of blood appeared to have drained out of his face. I watched him put the pen down.
Now I began to worry that I really sounded insane, but he started speaking just then, “Let us be clear, Rose. When you say, ‘let evil in’, what exactly do you mean?”
“Well, I mean he changed so much and as I was a child, I hadn’t connected his actions with other things…”
“Like what other things?”
This was difficult. “I don’t know. Our home seemed to have changed when he did.”
“You mean his actions caused things to be different.”
“No, Dr. Bannion. I think I mean more than that. I mean, truthfully I had forgotten about this for the longest time. But now, what I mean is, I remember clearly feeling the house was different. We were all unhappy, yes—and suffering too—but there was something else. Something dark had come to dwell amongst us.”
Dr. Bannion stared at me. It was difficult to say what he was thinking. “Did anything happen then?”
“No, it was more like a feeling of dread that came upon me. I asked my mother if she felt it too, and she told me—I was a child you understand—not to worry about such things. And that’s when the fairy tales started.” Suddenly I paused:.“Dr. Bannion, now that I am an adult it seems to me that he was using those fairy tales to accomplish something evil.”
He didn’t reply for the longest time. He looked quite thoughtful, then he said, “Sometimes bad things happen to nice people through no fault of their own. Sadly, it is what happened to all of you, including your father.”
Chapter 5
I hadn’t thought of my father that way, not really. Perhaps evil had made a victim of him as well.
I thought Dr. Bannion quite clever to have said it like that, for it seemed to help me cope. And I had to cope if I ever wished to be free of this place, for Marsh killed in its own as my father had, as evil always does.
When the spirit dies the soul goes too, and what is left then is sobs in the night in a ward in a madhouse.
I asked Grace about that poor woman in the ward. We had snatched a moment to chat near the kitchen.
“There is a woman who cries, she was found outside…”
Before I even finished Grace nodded. “Yes, that would be Helen. That’s what they call her. Oh, sad is that. Proper tragic story. They think she might have come from somewhere fine. Her nails was clean and she was well cared for if you know what I mean. She was young, probably no more than twenty. I think she fell in with a bad ‘un.”
I was incredulous. “But what about the police, the authorities?”
Grace laughed. “You think anyone cares for the likes of us? You’re mistaken, Rose. We aren’t in too many a folks thoughts, I can tell you, not for good that is.”
Someone shouted for her and she rushed away. “I best go back, or I’ll get a right bollocking!”
I watched her disappear into the kitchen.
I was still thinking of Helen when I heard someone call my name. It was
Dr. Bannion. He looked pleased to see me. “How would you like a job, something to keep you busy?”
I must have looked worried for he added, “You’ll quite like it. It’s sewing. And as I know you, I have vouched for you that it is quite safe for you to work with needles.”
He led me toward the main door. “It’s in that building over there. A nice lady runs it, Rose. Would you like to meet her?
“Yes, sir.”
As I followed along I wondered how he could appear so happy surrounded by all the sadness and suffering. After all, this was no garden party, this place. It was a sad repository for so many lost souls it seemed to me, myself among them.
It was a tiny cottage packed with rolls of fabric and boxes and cupboards. It looked positively jammed. A kind looking woman nodded as we entered.
“This is Mrs. Dean and she will tell you exactly what your duties are.”
I liked her as she seemed nice enough, so nice in fact I wondered if she had been an inmate originally who had made good and earned her release.
She began to show me around as Dr. Bannion turned to leave. But suddenly he stopped in his tracks, for the most exotic looking lady had just come in.
I have seen many well-dressed ladies in London, some of them quite grand as this lady was. For she was exquisitely turned out in an emerald green velvet day dress with matching coat and bonnet.
She and Dr. Bannion chatted amiably and then she looked at me. But she didn’t just look at me. She stared at me, with a strange expression upon her face as if she was surprised at seeing me.
Dr. Bannion seemed somewhat startled. But then he smiled and introduced us. “Mrs. Darton, this is Rose Baines, she’s staying here for a while.”
I greeted her shyly, for I felt myself blushing under her stare. Not that I found it an unkind stare, I just found it uncomfortable.
“I am pleased to know you, Rose.”
She had a French accent and it was musical sounding and suited her.
Dr. Bannion smiled at her and
at me until she finally looked in his direction and they proceeded to the door.
“I have some lovely clothes I shall bring next time I am here, James,” she said, nodding toward me.
I watched them leave. I glanced at Mrs. Dean and wondered when she’d give me some work, but she was looking after them, unsmiling and thoughtful.
Later, I was happy with the work I was given and even though she was nice to me and helpful, I felt her mood quite changed after Mrs. Darton made her appearance.
At last, she seemed to recover herself and began instructing me on what I was to do. “You will mainly do hems and repair stitching. Things need to last, after all.”
I wondered about the pretty fabric I saw though. Mrs. Dean noticed. “We get many donations. Much of it from the outside, as you now know. We make things and sell them too, and the profits go to the institution.”
As I began she advised me to be careful of the needles. “We always do a count before closing. Also the scissors, mustn’t let those fall into the wrong hands now, mustn’t we?” She looked serious and I was hoping she didn’t mean me.
“Yes, Mrs. Dean,” I said. “I shall be careful indeed.”
*
I told Grace as soon as I saw her. She was pleased about my job but when I mentioned Mrs. Darton she shrugged. “Oh, her. Yes, she’s a patron and has much to do with the place. I think Dr. Bannion quite likes her.”
Grace was serving me my supper of watery stew and dumplings.
I wanted to talk more to her but she had her work to tend to. So I sat and thought about the sewing and Mrs. Darton and Dr. Bannion.
Upon watching Grace and the other kitchen helpers rushing back and forth, I decided I was pleased with the sewing work. It was easy and pleasant.
I think I was beginning to feel a little hopeful of getting better. It was a good idea to be busy. I was quite looking forward to it.