The Many Daughters of Afong Moy(92)
That’s when Zoe decided to leave Summerhill and go find her teacher. If she could only speak with Mrs. Bidwell face-to-face, perhaps she could tell Zoe what to do to untangle this skein of romantic misadventure.
Zoe went to bed and, after a restless night, got up the next morning, waited for Lily and Mildred to get dressed and leave for breakfast, then quietly packed a small valise with a change of clothes. She stepped out into a gray, dewy morning, but instead of following the other students in the direction of the dining hall she walked to the gatehouse. She surreptitiously left school property and headed toward town without declaring her absence to her roommates or notifying the school office.
She walked five miles, past the ancient tower of St. Margaret’s church, past the steam works that made portable engines, until she reached the town square in Leiston.
There she waited for a postbus to Crowthorne.
Outside the Royal Mail office, she sat on a bench in the shade of the old brick building, next to an old man who smelled of whiskey, who edged a little too close to her for comfort as he slurringly introduced himself again and again.
“You’re a pretty lass, aren’t you? Shouldn’t a bird like you be in school?”
She didn’t feel like talking and looked away.
He kept pestering her in a way she was certain would never happen if she were a boy. She cleared her throat and shook her head, hoping he’d take the hint.
“Where are you going?”
Zoe finally turned and stared at him. “Crowthorne.” Her tone of voice said, Leave me alone. “I’m going to Broadmoor.”
The man’s eyes widened. Even drunk, he recognized the name of the asylum and found a place farther down the bench. He didn’t speak to her again.
When a horsebus finally arrived, the carriage was packed. Even the garden seat on top was completely occupied, so Zoe paid the postie and stood on the knifeboard, where she held on tight as they bumped along the pitted country road.
They passed a pear orchard, and she smelled burning tar from the smudge pots beneath each tree. Zoe’s nose itched and her eyes watered as she thought about what she would say to her teacher. She’d written several new poems, all of them for Mrs. Bidwell. Most were about her, though one cursed the villainy of her husband. But Zoe had kept them hidden at school, guarded, fearful that if discovered they would only make Mrs. Bidwell’s predicament worse.
Could it get any worse?
When she finally arrived in Crowthorne, Zoe followed wooden signs in the village to Broadmoor, which was hard to miss because the building looked more like a penitentiary than a hospital, with tall curtains of red brick and enormous twin towers flanking a gated entry. Everywhere she looked, the windows had been barred. Zoe heard laughing in the distance, somewhere inside, followed by hysterical wailing. She shuddered at the thought of Alyce locked away somewhere therein.
I’m so sorry.
Girding her courage and her conviction, Zoe strolled through the heavy iron doors, walked through the waiting area, and found an administrative desk. She signed in as a visitor for Mrs. Bidwell, keeping her eyes down, worried that the clerk might recognize her as the mysterious girl alluded to in the scandal-ridden newspapers. But the woman merely stamped the time on a visitor’s pass, handed it to Zoe, and barked, “Next!” to the person standing behind her in line.
With pass in hand, Zoe was directed to a small courtyard used for visitation. She sat at a picnic table, wary of the staff who wore the uniforms of prison officers instead of the capes of the Royal College of Nursing. Broadmoor was supposed to be a hospital, but when the patients are all deemed criminally insane, the bedside care evoked severity and punishment, instead of looking out for the health and well-being of the residents.
Zoe spent forty restless minutes watching visitors and patients come and go. She tried not to stare, casually observing how some of the visitors shared tears, some shared letters, while some consoled their loved ones as they keened and quaked with madness.
A door on the other side of the courtyard finally creaked open and a man in a dark blue uniform pointed toward her. Her heart raced when she saw the woman she’d known as Mrs. Bidwell step out of the shadows, squinting up at the overcast sky. The woman who once looked so strong, so confident, yet always softened by her wry sense of humor now looked like a beleaguered doppelganger, a wilted flower, a funhouse mirror reflection of the person Zoe hoped to find. She stood and tried to smile, but fought back tears when her teacher removed her hat. Alyce’s head was shaved and bandaged. She looked wan and pale, in a tattered gray dress that Zoe realized had once been white in a previous lifetime. There were stains and soil marks, rips that had been patched and repaired by hands better suited to meat-cutting than sewing. She wondered how many women had worn that frock. Had they worn it until their departure? She feared that the previous occupant of that dress had likely worn it until their demise. The horrible image of male orderlies flashed through Zoe’s imagination. She envisioned men with thick forearms tasked with undressing corpses before cremation, quietly disrobing the men in workmanlike fashion, but ghoulishly leering and touching the bodies of the women. She could almost hear their laughter. Zoe chewed her lip and hoped they laundered the dresses before doling them out to the next patient.
Patient? They’re inmates.
Mrs. Bidwell walked across the pebbled courtyard in her bare feet, stepping gingerly, flinching each time she stepped on a sharp rock. Zoe held her breath in anticipation. The bald woman looked around, confused, at the guards, the high windows. She finally sat but stared down at the table.