Property of a Lady(54)
‘I’d like that,’ said Nell. ‘I’m hoping to have a sort of Open Day at the shop on Christmas Eve – mulled wine and mince pies and music.’ It was part of a Chamber of Commerce project – most of the local businesses were participating, and she was going to have Victorian Christmas decorations in the shop. ‘If you’re around, you could look in,’ she said, hoping this sounded casual. ‘And the Harpers as well, if they’re here.’
‘That sounds nice,’ he said. ‘I will. Thank you. Goodnight, Nell.’
‘Goodnight.’
After he rang off, the flat felt annoyingly silent and lonely. Nell stirred the fire, which had become desultory, washed up the wine glass, and sat down again. It was ten o’clock. She switched on the television news, found everything too gloomy for words, and switched it off again. The book about Marston Lacy lay where she had left it, and she supposed she might as well finish reading the chapter. It had not looked as if there was much more of any interest about Brank Asylum, but she would make sure.
The semi-religious ceremony focusing on Elvira Lee was followed by a short paragraph introducing the next set of case notes. The author explained it was a mixture of material taken from the records of someone who had been Brank’s final patient and a written account provided by that patient. ‘She was the last patient to walk out through those doors,’ he said, sounding pleased at having hit on this phrase. ‘Everything in this account is reproduced with her full permission.’
Nell rearranged the cushions in her chair, and began to read.
‘They said, two years ago, that I was mad. I can no longer judge if that’s true. But if mad means seeing things that aren’t visible to other people, and hearing things not audible to anyone – such as a fleshless voice, chanting a grisly old rhyme . . . Yes, if those things made for madness, then I certainly was mad for a time – possibly for all of the time I was in Charect House.’
At these last words, Nell felt as if every nerve-ending in her body sprang to attention. Brank Asylum had closed at the end of 1966, and Alice Wilson had been at Charect House in the early 1960s. Was she making too many assumptions? But Alice had stashed her diary in the old clock, making some light remark about returning to reclaim it. But she didn’t, thought Nell. Did she encounter something that night that brought about some kind of nervous breakdown? Is this Alice’s account I’m reading?
She glanced towards the phone, wondering if she dare ring Michael, but thought it was a bit late. And this extract might not be anything of any value. She would read it now, and if necessary she could email him.
As she began to read again, the light from the table lamp mingled with the flickering of the fire, sending shadows dancing across the chimney breast, and she had the familiar sensation of unseen hands tugging her down into the past once more.
EIGHTEEN
‘Occasionally, I worry that I might still be slightly mad – like a cracked piece of pottery – but the medics are being very breezy and cheerful, and saying I’m entirely recovered. Perfectly capable of going out into the world again, they say. It’s a cold and very large world beyond the walls of Brank Asylum, but I dare say I can put up a good enough show of sanity in front of most people.
The doctors here never did put a label on what was wrong with me – I shouldn’t think there was a suitable label for it really. Instead, they talked about a breakdown from overwork and stress. Stress! Ha! I’ve never suffered from stress in my life, and as for overwork – I’ll bet I could overwork the doctors here into the ground any day.
When I asked if they had any objection to my drafting out a few notes for this book that’s going to include Brank, they said not at all and added that writing was therapeutic, pronouncing this solemnly as if it might not have occurred to me.
I’ve told the historian I’m as sane as he is (ha!), but that I unravelled a bit at the hem a couple of years ago. Like that sweater you’re wearing is unravelling at the hem, I said. (It was what we use to call Fair Isle, although I don’t know what they call it today. I dare say if he uses any of this stuff in his book he’ll leave that bit out.)
If he does decide to put that in, I’d like it understood that I consider I was entitled to unravel a bit at the hem two years ago. I think anyone would have unravelled if they’d seen what I saw in that hellish house.
The historian-cum-author can print this verbatim in his book if he thinks it will be of any interest, or it can be clipped to my medical records or flushed down the nearest lavatory for all I care. But perhaps if I write it down, it’ll drive the memories from my mind once and for all. Then I can draw a line under it and write QED. That which was to be proved. And now I’m reducing Charect’s darkness to a mathematical equation.
Charect. It’s a very old form of word. In essence, it means an inscription, as in ‘character’. But before the word became virtually lost, it signified something rather dark and often forbidden. I was allowed books while I was in Brank – and I found a number of interesting applications of the term. One fifteenth-century document recommends a specific charect to promote easy childbirth, while another was created as a defence against violent death, although there’s a counter-warning against that one, which says, “What wicked blindenes is this than to thinke that wearing Prayers written in rolles, thei shall die no sodain death, nor be hanged, or, yf hanged, shall not die.” That warning seems to have been issued after a charect was found on a murderer in Chichester Gaol in 1749. Curiously, it appears the man who possessed the charect actually did cheat the gallows, although there’s an ironic twist to the story. It seems the condemned man was struck with such horror on being measured for the irons in which his hanged body would later be displayed (they say the twentieth century is violent!) that he expired on the spot from sheer terror. Which goes to prove the old saying that the devil never keeps his side of a bargain.