The Asylum

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  Gerald Peacock opened the door, huffed and raised his eyebrows. ‘That a new tree for me, is it?’ he said, eyeing the envelope, which Morton was holding.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Morton replied. ‘That’s being printed and will be sent directly to you as soon as it’s ready.’

  ‘So, what is it you want, then?’ the old man sniffed, making no attempt to admit Morton into his house, which was actually fine by him.

  ‘Here,’ Morton said, passing him the envelope. ‘Your father’s marriage certificates.’

  Gerald’s eyes enlarged, as he caught the fact that the word certificate had been used in the plural. ‘Certificates?’ he questioned, placing great emphasis on the final letter.

  ‘Yes,’ Morton answered with a self-satisfied smile. ‘As I said before, your father married Louisa Pengelly in 1922. She died at the County Lunatic Asylum two to three weeks before your father married your mother.’

  ‘But…’ Gerald stammered.

  ‘Anyway, I shan’t keep you. Goodbye,’ Morton said, turning around and walking back towards his car.

  ‘Wait!’ Gerald cried. ‘The Asylum? What was wrong with her?’

  Morton stopped, span around and shrugged.

  ‘Well, can you find out?’ he said. ‘I’ll pay you.’

  Morton thought for a moment, considering the question. He had no other jobs on, so the money would be very welcome. But, working for this loathsome man had not been the most pleasant of jobs and he could already foresee the holes which would be picked in his every piece of research.

  ‘Please?’ the man implored, showing a well-hidden, gentler side for the very first time. ‘I’ll pay double the hourly-rate.’

  ‘What is it that you wish to know, exactly?’ Morton asked, folding his arms.

  ‘Well, anything about this first wife of his and her time in the asylum, I suppose. Who was she? Did they have children together? Goodness me, I could have siblings out there somewhere and…’ An unexpected rise of emotion seemed to catch the old man by surprise, curtailing the end of his sentence with a quivering cough.

  ‘Yes, I’ll do it,’ Morton heard himself saying, instantly hoping that he wouldn’t regret his decision.

  ‘Much obliged to you,’ Gerald said quietly, with a nod of his head. ‘I’ll hear from you in due course.’ He shuffled back inside the house and closed the door.

  Back in his flat, Morton made himself a large cup of strong coffee, sat down at the small desk in the corner of his bedroom and placed a priority twenty-four-hour order for Louisa Peacock’s death certificate. Next, he ran a Google search for the East Sussex County Lunatic Asylum. Having been born in the county himself, Morton had heard of the asylum before under its more recent appellation, Hellingly Hospital. As he sipped his coffee, he recalled the various times from his childhood when his father would unkindly say that someone, who had disgruntled him—and that was something which had happened often—‘should be locked up in Hellingly’. Other than its serving as East Sussex’s main mental hospital, Morton knew very little about the place. In just a few clicks, Google had helpfully filled the gaps in his knowledge, a summary of which he wrote on his notepad: Opened 1903 near the village of Hellingly. Later named Hellingly Hospital. Female wards located on the east side, separate from the male wards on the west side. Accommodation for female working patients and for mentally defective children. 1980s one of five mental hospitals to be a medium-secure unit. Closed down 1994. Rapid decline of buildings. Arson / theft / vandalism. Sold to a private housing developer awaiting development.

  An image search for the asylum mainly brought up a series of more recent pictures, showing haunting, long, empty hospital corridors with graffitied walls and immense rooms with tall smashed windows. He could only hope that the place had been less disturbing back in the 1920s, though he feared that that was likely not the case.

  Opening up a new browser, Morton used the Access to Archives website in order to confirm that all of the records for the former asylum were now held in East Sussex Record Office. Knowing that Louisa Peacock’s death certificate would be arriving tomorrow morning, Morton booked a table at the archives for tomorrow afternoon, so as to avoid the possibility of finding the place fully booked again.

  Using the Ancestry website, Morton began to look into Louisa’s early life. Having been born in 1902, she had missed being included on the most recent census enumeration of 1901. He found her birth reference and made a note of it, then he turned his attention to one of the questions that Mr Peacock had asked: Did Stephen and Louisa Peacock have any children together?

  Sorry, we found no matches, was the answer given by the FreeBMD website for the period 1920-1924 for births registered under the name Peacock with the mother’s maiden name recorded as Pengelly. He altered the spellings but received the same answer. Removing the mother’s maiden name revealed a surprising count of 1655 records for the same period.

  After some time experimenting with different dates, spellings and locations, Morton reached the conclusion that no, Stephen and Louisa had not had any children together.

  He drank some coffee and went to close his laptop when something occurred to him: in all of the searches which he had just conducted, he had no recollection of seeing the birth reference for Gerald Peacock. Returning to the FreeBMD website, Morton entered his name into a birth search between 1920 and 1930. Nine results. None with the mother’s maiden name recorded as Carey. None in the district of Hailsham. None at all in 1925, the actual year of his birth.

  Finishing his drink, Morton stared at the screen, confused.

  He looked back over the notes which he had made on his initial visit to see Gerald. Gerald Peacock, born 14th November 1925, Hailsham to Stephen & Emma Peacock (née Carey).

  Morton checked again. The birth should have been registered in the December quarter of 1925, possibly March 1926 at a push, but there was nothing at all bearing any resemblance to the reference, which he had expected to find.

  He only had a short amount of time left before he would need to get ready for his date tonight, but he ran the same search on Ancestry, receiving exactly the same results.

  Somewhere along the line, an error, oversight or deliberate act of deception had occurred.

  Morton sighed, closed his laptop and went to take a shower and get ready for his big evening out.

  A nervousness, which Morton had previously managed to keep at bay, began to tingle and rise in his stomach, as he drove to the pub in which, in ten minutes’ time, he would be meeting her. Having discovered that the woman from the library had written her phone number on the bottom of the Your Guide to Reducing Food Waste leaflet, Morton had texted her to ask if she would like to meet for dinner, to which she had agreed. The problem, which was only adding to Morton’s anxiety, was that he still didn’t actually know her name. She had signed the leaflet with the letter J and his hope that she might copy his example of adding his name to the end of his text, had not happened.

  ‘Jenny…’ he said, trying to reconcile the name with her face, as he pulled into the car park of The White Hart pub in Lower Horsebridge. No, she didn’t look like a Jenny. Well, maybe. Jane? Definitely not. Julie? Possibly. No, actually. Janice? Jemma? Jackie?

  ‘J…J…Ja…Je…Ji…Jo…Jo?’ he said, mouthing his way around possible vowel sounds. Yes, Jo fitted. Joanne. Joanna. That’s where he was putting his money.

  He switched off the engine and stepped from the car, looking up at the building. It was typical of the older pubs found in the Sussex countryside: top-half tiled and the bottom-half painted white with lattice-style windows.

  ‘Have you got one of those hands-free devices in there?’ a voice asked, startling him. He whipped around to see her—the woman from the library—looking absolutely stunning in a long black dress.

  He frowned. ‘Er…what do you mean?’

  ‘As you were parking the car, you looked like you were talking to someone…but making funny shapes with your mouth,’ s
he clarified.

  Morton flushed bright red, as potential answers flashed through his mind. He could just be honest and tell her that he didn’t know her name and had been trying out different women’s names beginning with J, but quickly reasoned that he would make himself sound extremely odd. He could lie and say that, yes, he did have a hands-free device, but then what if for some reason she got into his car? ‘Talking to myself,’ he answered with a grin.

  ‘First sign of madness,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe not the first in my case,’ he replied, walking towards her and being unsure of whether or not to peck her on the cheek.

  Fortunately for him, she took the decision out of his hands and leant in and kissed him lightly.

  ‘You look lovely,’ he said.

  ‘Why, thank you,’ she answered, swishing her hair back playfully. ‘You don’t look too bad, yourself.’

  He held the pub door open for her, releasing a warm beery draught, and followed her inside. A group of local pot-bellied men, propping up the bar, glanced around briefly at the new arrivals, then continued with their football-themed conversation.

  ‘Evening,’ a middle-aged bald barman greeted.

  ‘Hi,’ Morton said. ‘I’ve got a table for two booked under the name Morton Farrier.’

  The barman turned around, studied an open book situated beside the till and promptly nodded. ‘Yep. Come with me,’ he said, picking up two menus, as he went. He led them to a quieter restaurant area to the right of the bar. A dozen pine tables lined two sides of the narrow room, most of which were already occupied. The barman pointed to a vacant table for two. ‘Here we go,’ he said, waiting for them to sit down before handing them the menus. ‘Can I get you something to drink? Wine? Beer? We’ve got some great local beers: Harvey’s bitter or a Long Blonde…’

  ‘I’m not sure a long blonde would be appropriate on a first date,’ Morton quipped.

  J raised an eyebrow and smiled. ‘A glass of house red for me, please.’

  ‘I’ll have the same,’ Morton said. ‘Thank you.’

  The barman scuttled off to get their drinks, leaving them alone at their table. Morton suddenly became aware that the two couples on either side of them were not talking to each other, making him squirm inside with embarrassment. He pictured them watching on in amusement when they overheard him eventually confessing to her that he didn’t know her name. He just needed to bite the bullet and ask—

  ‘So, what is it that you do, exactly?’ J asked him.

  ‘I’m a forensic genealogist,’ he said, noticing the woman on the next table glance over upon hearing his pompous-sounding job title.

  ‘What does that actually mean?’ she pushed.

  ‘It’s a bit of a grand title for researching people’s family trees,’ he explained.

  ‘Hence loitering around the local and family history sections of the library,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Exactly, yes.’

  The barman returned with two glasses of red wine. ‘Have you decided what you’d like to eat, yet?’

  ‘Oh, no, sorry,’ Morton apologised. ‘Two minutes.’

  ‘No worries,’ he said, wandering off to check on another table.

  Several seconds of silence passed whilst they studied their menus.

  ‘Scampi and chips,’ they both said simultaneously, then laughed.

  ‘Ah, but salad or peas?’ she asked.

  Morton took a breath, narrowed his eyes and thought. ‘Peas,’ he said at last.

  ‘Wow, that took some thinking,’ she mocked. Tilting her head to one side, she pulled a faux-disappointed face. ‘Salad for me. Oh, and it was all going so well…’

  Morton grinned, raised his glass and said, ‘Let’s hope we can salvage it. Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers,’ she said, clinking her glass against his.

  Morton sipped the wine, then asked, ‘And what about your job? Like it?’

  She exhaled and pouted: ‘I should like it. I studied English Lit. at university…and I love books…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But it’s boring as all hell,’ she laughed. ‘I need something more exciting…challenging.’

  ‘Chief Librarian?’ Morton suggested.

  ‘Don’t go too mad.’ She sipped her drink. ‘I’ve even toyed with the idea of something like joining the army.’

  ‘God, that would be a career change,’ he said. ‘Books to bullets.’

  ‘Yeah, and I’m not quite sure these heels would cope in a warzone.’

  ‘What about something a little less dangerous, perhaps, like the police?’ Morton suggested.

  She nodded. ‘I have thought about that before. Maybe. Need to think about it.’ She drank some more wine. ‘I take it from your wanting to see Hailsham parish registers from the 1920s that you’re working on something local to here, then at the moment?’

  He was impressed that she had remembered the purpose of his visit to the library. ‘Yes, that’s right. Trying to find out what happened to my client’s father’s first wife, who ended up dying in Hellingly Asylum in 1924.’

  ‘Oh, right. Sounds interesting, actually,’ she said.

  ‘Actually?’ he repeated with a wide grin.

  She returned his smile. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just researching other people’s family trees doesn’t sound all that—’ she paused, searching for an appropriate word ‘—exciting?’

  Morton laughed. ‘It depends on the job, really. This one could be interesting. An unregistered birth and a death in the asylum.’

  The barman returned and asked, ‘Have we decided, yet?’

  ‘Indeed, we have,’ J answered. ‘We’d both like scampi and chips, please. One with salad and one with peas.’

  The barman made a mental note of their order and disappeared off to the kitchens.

  ‘So, tell me about yourself, Morton Farrier,’ J said, sitting back and sipping her wine.

  Morton wriggled uncomfortably, not enjoying answering such open questions about himself; it simply wasn’t something which he was used to doing. He thought about what he might say, which would be at all interesting, but evidently for too long—

  ‘Brothers? Sisters? Ex-wives? Kids?’ she suggested.

  ‘No ex-wives…nor kids,’ he replied. ‘I’ve been single for about a year since my only serious relationship broke up when my ex, Madison decided to return home to America. One brother… well, sort of.’

  ‘A ‘sort-of’ brother?’ she quizzed.

  Morton drew in a long breath, wishing now that he’d not added the problematic qualification ‘sort of’ to the end of his sentence.

  ‘You don’t have to say,’ she said, correctly interpreting his reticence.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ he insisted. And, actually, surprisingly, it was. ‘I was adopted, so Jeremy is my adoptive brother, not my ‘sort-of’ brother.’

  ‘Oh, okay. So, presumably being a forensic genealogist, then, you know the ins and outs of your biological family, too?’

  Morton shook his head: ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’ she repeated, sitting forwards, as if to check what she had just heard.

  ‘Nothing,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Why’s that, then? Because you just don’t wish to know? I’d certainly want to know, if it were me.’

  ‘I do want to know… I think. My adoptive father won’t tell me anything and my adoptive mother died—’

  The barman arrived carrying two plates. ‘Two scampi and chips. Whose was the peas?’ he asked.

  ‘Mine,’ Morton said.

  ‘Enjoy the meal,’ the barman said, setting the plates down.

  ‘Are there no official records or anything, so you can bypass him?’ she asked.

  ‘There are, but it’s quite a long and complicated process. You have to have counselling and…well, I’m not sure…’

  ‘Oh, wow. And…when did you find out, or had you always known? If you don’t mind me
asking, that is,’ she said.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ Morton answered and, as they began to eat their meal, he opened up about his adoption. He spoke at length, revealing more to this woman, whose name he still didn’t even know, than he had to any other person before. Perhaps it was owing to her being a nameless stranger that he found it so easy. Or perhaps it was because he felt an instant connection to her. He didn’t know. Either way, by the time the meal was over, she knew more about his private thoughts and feelings on his having been adopted than any other person had ever done in his entire life.

  ‘Well, thank you for a really lovely evening,’ J said, as they stood outside the pub.

  Morton smiled, hoping that she meant it. For him, the evening had gone unimaginably well and, despite his still not knowing her name, he felt that there was now something between them. ‘I really enjoyed it, too,’ he muttered, not sure of how enthusiastic he wanted to appear in case the feeling were not mutual.

  ‘We should do it again,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, that would be great. I’m free most of the time,’ he said, instantly flushing with embarrassment at how empty he had just made his life sound.

  ‘Well, good night,’ she said, leaning in and kissing him on the cheek. ‘Oh!’ she gasped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look at that!’ she gestured over his shoulder at an old signpost across the street: HELLINGLY HOSPITAL 2.

  Morton stared at the sign, wondering what had evidently got her so excited. The signpost was damaged and tilting over, appearing as though it had been struck by a car at some point.

  ‘Two miles away,’ she said. ‘Fancy a look around?’

  ‘What…now?’ he asked, looking around at the falling dusk.

  ‘Why not?’

  The legalities of trespassing on property aside—property, which he knew to be owned now by a private housing company—it felt a very strange conclusion to what had been such a lovely evening. Despite these reservations, he said, ‘Okay, let’s go!’