Spider Light(43)

‘You’re seeing it through rose-tinted spectacles,’ Cormac had once said when Bryony was in a nostalgic mood. ‘The house was falling down around our ears–there wasn’t a whole brick in the place or a sound tile on the roof, and most of the furniture was nearly in matchsticks from woodworm. It’s all probably crumbled into nothing by now.’

But they both knew the Irish house would not really have crumbled into nothing, and Bryony thought that children did not really notice or care about crumbling roofs or worm-eaten furniture. When she thought about the house she only remembered how the rooms had been scented with beeswax from when there had still been housemaids to polish the furniture, and how, if you stood on the terrace and looked across to the west, you could see the purple smudge of mountains and the glint of the sea…

Her father said that when he was a boy his mother used to walk in the gardens wearing a huge shady hat and cutting sheaves of lilac. ‘As unruffled as if she had all the time and money in Christendom and all the leisure in the world,’ he said, but then he would add, ‘And as if there were no bailiffs permanently camping out in the kitchen, or men arriving with a distraint on the furniture three times a week.’

When he talked like this, Bryony told him he had no romance in his soul, to which he usually replied that their family had kept the noble profession of debt collectors in business for at least two decades. He always sent her his slant-eyed smile when he said this, and Bryony thought they both knew that one day they would find a way to go back to that house.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN




The photocopied papers Antonia had brought from Quire House did not seem to be in any particular order. The first set appeared to contain financial statements and accounts, mostly relating to maintenance of the fabric: repairs to the roof and gutters, to broken windows and kitchen supplies. Antonia flipped through these rather perfunctorily, pausing over a set of accounts headed Forrester Benevolent Trust, which appeared to be a specially created trust fund for the benefit of patients at Latchkill Insane Asylum who for some reason could not be admitted to the paupers’ ward, but who had no money of their own for the private section.

There was an exchange of letters between a local doctor and Latchkill’s matron. They did not seem to be in chronological order, which might have been because someone had thrust them carelessly into a box or an envelope twenty or even a hundred years earlier, or it might be down to haphazard photocopying by the sullen Greg Foster. Who cares about the dates on a load of boring old letters, he had probably thought. But it was easy enough to put them in sequence. Some of them were in a small, rather mean-looking hand, and others appeared to have been dashed off by somebody who was either in a hurry or was exasperated with the intended recipient.

The earliest was one of these exasperated in a hurry letters. The date was October 1899 and the address was Bracken House, Amberwood. Antonia wondered if Bracken House still existed. She would make enquiries tomorrow.

She began to read.

Bracken Surgery

Tuesday p.m.

My Dear Matron

I am appalled to learn you have administered apomorphine mixed with hyoscine to two Reaper Wing patients. Please never use this method again–it’s a terrible and inhumane treatment.

I also believe that despite my request, you have discontinued the exercise hour for Reaper Wing because of the apparent attempt by two patients to escape. Even if any of them did escape they would not get very far, and in any case they would be too bewildered by the world to inflict any real harm on anyone. So please restore that hour to them at once. It’s an important part of their day: they look forward to it and it gives them a semblance of normality, which is vital.

Thank you for the recent invitation to afternoon tea, but I regret I shall not have time to accept. I do not, in fact, normally drink afternoon tea.

Sincerely,

Daniel Glass



Latchkill Asylum

Wednesday a.m.

Dear Dr Glass

In re. your letter of yesterday, the apomorphine/hyoscine was administered as an emergency measure. On this occasion, my nurses were being distracted from seeing to the breakfasts. It is my rule that breakfast is at 7.00 sharp, which means the night staff have to begin preparations around half past five–porridge for sixty people does not prepare itself. The hyoscine draught was intended as a calming method and it proved effective, allowing staff to attend to their other duties.

Reaper Wing’s recreation hour has been reinstated as per your instructions, although I am unhappy about it. It seems unnecessarily public to actually allow them into the grounds.

I am afraid your little protegée, Dora Scullion, is not turning out very well. I believe her to be quarter-witted, and doubt her suitability for the work here even in the kitchens.

I am sorry to hear you cannot take afternoon tea with us. Perhaps morning coffee another day might be more convenient. Shall we say Monday of next week?

Cordially,

Freda Prout (Matron)



Bracken Surgery

Wednesday p.m.

Dear Matron

I am not surprised your treatment had a calming effect. If you were forced to swallow a violent emetic and spent the next twenty-four hours vomiting, you would end in being very calm indeed. I don’t care if these patients try to take Latchkill apart brick by brick, or if you and your staff have to stand guard on them from now until the start of the second millennium, apomorphine and hyoscine are never to be given again, not to any patient in your care.