The Ballroom (3 page)

‘Here,’ said Dan, when they were a good couple of feet down and standing in the hole. He palmed a bit of shag from his pocket, jerking his shoulder towards the fence that hugged the field. ‘Wouldn’t take much to climb that now, would it?’

John rubbed his forehead with his cuff, a sweat on him now. Beyond the fence the land rose a little – not the high rise of the moor that could be seen from their ward, but gentler. A few houses dotted the horizon. He glanced at Brandt and, seeing the man had his back turned, leant in, took a pinch of Dan’s tobacco and rolled a quick thin cigarette for himself. Dan was right. The fence was just the height and a half of them. A leg up and they would both be over and away.

‘Where would I go?’ said Dan, in answer to a question unasked. ‘If I did a scarper? Well now,
mio Capitane
, let’s see.’ He struck a match, the flare of it licking the hollows of his face.

John leant in to the small flame. He never knew how Dan managed to find and smuggle his lunts, but he had the knack of it. And a small piece of pride was always saved in not having to beg the attendants for a light.

‘Know what I wouldn’t do.’ Dan spat a stray piece of tobacco on the ground. ‘Nothing like them daft buggers who went wandering round the village.’ He gestured to the houses in the distance. ‘You wouldn’t want to do that. Not in this clobber.’

Everyone knew about the four who’d escaped. They were out for less than a day and did nothing worth the effort, wandering around Sharston in the daylight, going into a newsagent’s, visiting a barber for a shave. The man read the labels on the eejits’ fronts while they were sitting in his chair.

He and Dan were both wearing suits made of rough grey tweed,
Sharston Asylum
sewn on the outside of the jacket. Dan pinched the cloth of his label in his fingers. ‘I can’t hardly read, but even I’m not daft enough to think they wouldn’t brand us like sheep. No …’ He stepped back, eyes half closed now, smoke curling from his nostrils in the low winter light. ‘You wouldn’t head for the village. You’d head for the wood.’ He leant his weight back, gestured over to the west. ‘I’ve friends in the woods. They’d help me. They’d help you too,
chavo
. They always help an honest man.’

John took a draw on his cigarette. He never knew quite what sort of friends Dan meant.

He liked his stories, did Dan, looked like some strange sort of story himself, with his slab of a face and his strongman’s chest and his arms like great hams, inked all over with tattoos of birds and flowers and creatures that were half woman, half beast. He had been a sailor –
twenty years of it
– and called John his Captain, since he reminded him, so he said, of an Italian skipper he’d had:
a right handsome omi, just like you.
He’d sailed until he’d lost his registration ticket, then become a pugilist, knocking down lads for money in the fair. But he had many stories, and you never knew which ones were true.

Most of the men in there had faces marked with something John knew – poverty, or the fear of it. Dan Riley’s face was different – the only marks a nose that had been broken many times and creases made by laughter and sun. In two years, John had never come to know quite why the man was in there.

‘And then I’d head to sea,’ Dan carried on. ‘The sea,
mio Capitane.
South Shields. That’s where to go. You turn up with nothing, and they’ll take you on a merchant ship. No questions asked. I’d travel by night.’ Dan gestured a winding way with his cigarette. ‘Keep away from the roads.’ He slowed up a little, savouring. ‘And when I got there, I’d go round Norah Carney’s house.’

Norah Carney. The legend of Norah Carney had passed many an afternoon’s work.

‘I’d knock on her door, and she’d appear.’ Dan stepped back as though to make room for her between them in the hole of the half-dug grave. ‘She’d take me in, like she always does. First thing we’d do, we’d burn this lot o’ clobber in the grate.’ He gestured at his suit. ‘Then we’d up and off to her
lente
, and I wouldn’t get up till—’

A high whistle sounded in the distance. Over Dan’s shoulder John could see Brandt waving his stick. Dan laughed, a ripe cackle that shook his body as he rubbed his butt out between his fingers and threw his cigarette on the ground. ‘What about you? Where’d you go,
mio Capitane
?’

He had a way of asking questions, looking at you straight, as though he wished for an answer. As though he were interested in the answer you might give.

The edge of a dress.

A woman. A child.

Before.

‘Nowhere,’ said John, and brought his shovel back down to cut the earth.

They dug for the rest of the morning and were left to it. Dan hummed and sang while they worked. He sang to suit his mood: sometimes a murder ballad, verses of blood and revenge, or scraps of wandering songs from the road, but most often a song of the sea:

I am ragged love, I am dirty love, and my clothes smell much of tar
,

I have silver love in me pocket love and gold in great store.

I am frolicsome, I am easy, good tempered and free,

And I don’t give a single pin, me boys, what the world thinks of me.

Then he changed the words, making them filthy, adding verses about slippery, lusty lasses called Norah, making himself laugh.

And though the work was bleak – this digging of graves twelve foot down to be filled six deep – when the smell of the earth rose fresh to your nose, and someone was singing beside you, and the digging was hard and the sweat came, blinding you from time to time and stinging your eyes, the world was simple enough.

Some time after the main clock had struck eleven, when they were a good few feet down, there came a commotion. Whistles, not one but many this time, being blown over and over again. They looked up and saw a figure coming towards them from the far side of the building, small, dark and hurtling.

Dan let out a low whistle. ‘Would you look at that,
chavo
…’

It was a woman, moving fast, heading right for where they stood.

‘Well I never,’ Dan grinned, ‘a
dona
in the morning.’

John stared. Women were ghosts. They shared the buildings with them but were never seen. Other than on Fridays: the dancing. And he didn’t have anything to do with that.

Dan pushed his cap back on his head. ‘Go on, lass,’ he said, under his breath.

The girl was coming closer, arms pumping at her sides, face dark red with the effort of it. A wildness in her. A freedom. It pitched and turned in John’s gut.

‘Go on, lass!’ roared Dan, throwing his shovel to the ground and flinging out his arms. ‘
Go on!!
’

Behind the girl, on the rise of the hill, not twenty feet away, was Brandt, his thin black shape gaining on her, and behind him, nurses: three, four, five of them, skirts flapping, arms flapping, useless birds that could not fly. John scanned the distance to the trees, breathing fast, as though it were him running, not the girl. She might make it. She might.

‘Stop her.
Stop her!
’ Brandt was shouting, mouth open, face twisted as he ran.

‘Did you hear that?’ said Dan.

‘Hear what?’ John spoke softly. Neither of them moved.

Go on, lass. Go on.

But the girl looked up then and saw them. And though both men put their hands in the air to show they meant no harm, there was terror in her eyes and she swerved in her path, stumbling, falling badly, rolling towards where they stood.

For a terrible second she was still. John moved – did it before he thought – hauling himself from the hole and starting over to where she lay. He knelt on the mud beside her. ‘Are you all right there?’

The girl was not moving. He reached out and touched her arm, and she rolled to her back. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheek a painful sight. Her wet dress covered with mud and grass. He put his hand out to help her up, and she reached for it, but it was smacked away with such force that John was felled, sent spinning on to the ground himself. And when he stumbled to his feet he saw that Brandt was on her, his knee in her spine, her arms already pulled behind her back.

He watched, helpless, as the girl was pinioned and trussed, a rabble of nurses around her, squawking and squalling. Throughout it all, the girl’s red eyes were fastened on his, and he could not look away.

‘What?’ she snarled at him, as she was pulled to her feet. ‘
What are you looking at?
’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, half to himself, and turned away.

Dan was thigh-deep in the grave, his cap pushed back on his head. He let out another low whistle. ‘Thought she was going to scarper it good and proper then.’

‘Aye.’

She had been running fast. She had been going to make it to the trees. She could have outrun Brandt. And then she had seen them and fallen, and now she was taken.

The moment had stained the morning. As yet, its colours were unsure.

John lifted his shovel to the hard winter earth. And he thought of where he was. And how long he had been there. And what was simple broke apart and became a shattered, sharded thing.

I
T WAS ALMOST
a relief when the call came; late afternoon and he was on the far side of the men’s quarters, over in ward five, playing Mozart sonatas to the epileptics.

A young attendant tapped him on the shoulder and gave the news, ‘The superintendent wishes to see you now,’ and he was forced to break off in the middle of the Adagio of the C major, K545.

A queasy feeling assailed him as he hurried down the long main corridor, unlocking and locking doors as he went. He knew what this was about: it was about that girl. He should have gone after her. It had made him look weak. To have such a breach of security on his watch was not good.

As he approached the superintendent’s door, Charles took a couple of deep breaths before rapping on the wood with what he hoped was a confident tone.

‘Come!’ The superintendent’s voice was muffled by the heavy door. ‘Ah … Fuller.’ Soames was seated behind his desk. ‘Sit down.’

Charles felt the man’s eyes on him as he crossed the room.

‘All well, Fuller?’

‘Very well, sir,’ said Charles, taking his seat.

‘Good, good.’ Soames’s black-rimmed spectacles, perched as they were on the tip of his nose, gave the impression that he might be looking at him with multiple eyes. There was, in fact, something distinctly spidery about the man, tall and thin-limbed as he was; he rarely moved from this office, set at the centre of this web of corridors, but he missed nothing that occurred beneath his care. The superintendent gave a brief nod. ‘We have more music in the day rooms now, I hear?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve just come from the piano, in fact.’

‘Indeed? And how goes the new
regime
?’

‘Ah. Well …’ Charles tried his best to make his voice light. ‘I believe the patients seem to like it. I’ve … experimented a little with the different composers. It’s almost becoming a … prescription, if you like.’

‘I see.’ A brief twitch of the lips that could almost have been a smile. ‘And whom do they like the best?’

‘Well, it rather depends.’ Charles leant forward. ‘I tend to favour Mozart for the epileptics. Or Bach. They seem to appreciate the order it brings and, then … Chopin, Schubert, the impromptus – for … well, for their … beauty, I suppose.’

‘Beauty?’ Soames raised an eyebrow.

Charles’s blood quickened. He decided to brazen it out. ‘Yes, sir. I find them the most beautiful of all the music for solo piano.’

Soames made a non-committal noise. ‘And the orchestra?’ he said. ‘Not too much for you? We can always find someone else to take up the strain.’

‘No, sir.’ Charles laughed. He had meant for it to sound easy, but it came out instead as a congested bark. ‘Not at all. Coming along well, sir. We have a viola now and a trumpet, so as of last week we are a full complement at last.’

‘Very good.’ Soames leant back in his chair, index fingers steepled beneath his chin. ‘How long have you been with us now, Fuller?’

‘Five years, sir.’

‘Five years.’ Soames sounded thoughtful.

‘Sir …’ Charles fretted his fingers together. ‘About the girl. I’m terribly sorry, I should have seen the signs, but she has been sent downstairs now and I believe—’

The superintendent held up his hand. ‘Did I ask you to speak, Fuller?’

‘No, sir.’

A heavy silence filled the room.

‘Tell me, Fuller. How did the girl appear to you?’

‘I – she …’

She had smelt of engine grease, urine and wool. His only thought while taking her pulse had been to wish the interview were over soon.

‘Her notes were scant. Birth date approximate. Family, but estranged.’

Soames nodded. ‘And physically?’

‘Physically she was … below par.’

Well below par. He had expected one of the lower examples of the female, but she was quite a sight: eyes so swollen as to be almost deformed, skin pink and stretched above and below the eyeball, the conjunctiva inflamed and weeping, the edges crusted and yellow. Below them was an open wound, recently made, a punch to the upper cheek, which had split the skin.

‘Here’s the thing, Fuller.’ Soames’s eyes met Charles’s. ‘We don’t want any more escapees. Diminishes our reputation. Scares the villagers. You understand? We cannot be seen to be … out of control.’

‘Yes, sir. Absolutely. Quite so.’

‘I hope your recent promotion will not be found to have been too presumptuous. Can’t have you taking your eye off the ball.’

Charles nodded and shifted in his seat. ‘I do see, sir. And I sincerely hope not.’

‘Very good, Fuller.’ Soames lifted his hand in dismissal. ‘That will be all.’

Charles stood. Took a few jellied steps towards the door, then hesitated. It was rare enough to have an audience with the superintendent. Who could say when the next one might be? ‘Sir?’ He turned back.

Soames looked up as though surprised to find him still standing there. ‘Yes?’

‘I know you will be aware, sir, of the Feeble-Minded Control Bill the government hopes to introduce this coming year.’