The Ballroom (7 page)

‘Are you feeling all right, Mr Mulligan?’

He opened his eyes. No road. Only the end of all roads. Only this room, and these men. Only the doctor, sitting in his seat before the piano, looking over at him, a small smile about his face.

‘Schubert,’ the doctor murmured. ‘Impromptu, G flat major. It often has a similar effect on me.’

By Friday evening, though the rain was still lashing against the windows, the mood in the day room lifted, because tonight, as every Friday, there would be a dance. Two hours in the ballroom, and those that had behaved during the week and not cheeked the staff and eaten all their food and could stand on their own two feet and put one in front of the other and keep their hands to themselves were allowed to go.

By half past six the usual commotion had started up. The men on John’s side disappeared off to the washrooms, and when they came back they had scrubbed faces and hair spat on and smoothed down. You could taste their excitement, thick and sticky, filling the air and leaving room for little else. It disturbed the far-gone ones on the other side, who got restless in their chairs and moaned and shouted out. John sat himself in the corner and took small, shallow breaths, trying not to let it in; it was a terrible dangerous contagion, hope.

Someone came up behind him, rubbing his cheek on his, and John jumped back, lifting his hand, ready to strike.

‘Whoa there,’ Dan laughed as he moved around to John’s front. ‘You all right there, lad? It’s only a bit o’ cheek. Smooth as a baby’s arse that.’ He took John’s knuckles and rubbed them against his skin. ‘Took the best part of half an hour:
Riley’s bristles.
You could melt them to make iron.’ His eyes were glittering. He smelt of soap.

‘Will she be there, Dan? The running girl?’ It was Joe Sutcliffe speaking, sidling shyly up to the pair of them. ‘Will she be there then?’

‘Aye, lad. Reckon she might. You ever danced the lancers, John?’ Dan clapped his hands together, banging out a rhythm with his heel on the floor. Several of the men laughed and began clapping along, and Dan was off, scooping up Sutcliffe and hauling him at a racketing pace around the billiard table, until one of the attendants had to grapple him to a stop. ‘Any more of that, Mr Riley, and you’ll be given the long sleeves.’

By a quarter to six they were all lined up, pushing and jostling for space like schoolboys, holding their palms out for the attendants to check. Old Foreshaw was there, standing proud, a smart blue tie tight at his chin. Dan beside him, with Sutcliffe on the other side, the young man’s eyes popping with excitement, elbows sharp, hands jiggling in his pockets. ‘Not coming then,
mio Capitane
?’ Dan yelled over.

John made a gesture: no. Dan knew he never went.

‘Good,’ crowed Dan, clapping the backs of the men on either side. ‘You stay here with the rest of the
meshigeners.
We don’t want you spoiling our chances, do we, lads?’ He took Sutcliffe under one of his arms and knuckled his scalp.

Then they were gone, their voices fading down the corridor and the air empty and hanging. John the only man left on his side. It was like this every Friday. The other men jiggled and gibbered a bit, and then settled back to whatever sort of nothing they were doing before.

He stood, going to the window to look out, but only his face came back to him, blurred and shadowed in dark and rain.
The ballroom
. He had gone there once, when he didn’t know what was what. A vast space with eight fires roaring and a band up on the stage. And women. That had been a surprise.

Was the running girl there then? Or was she downstairs? She’d have to have been put there after a stunt like that. He had been downstairs himself – a long white corridor and rooms off it, tiny cells the size of a man, only a blanket and a bucket inside, and a lone high window, impossible to reach.

He felt it again, standing there, the soaring that had filled him when he saw her run and the ashy bitter feeling when she fell. The furious face she had, the swollen eyes. She was no beauty, but a fierce, frightened girl.

But she had been right, at least, not to take his hand. He was not the man to help her. He would only have pulled her further into the bog.

He went over to the canary’s cage, calling to the bird with a low clucking sound, fiddling in his waistcoat pocket for a piece of bread, breaking it into crumbs and then holding them to the thin space between the bars. The bird hopped over and nipped from his hand. He felt the scratch of its beak, brief against his fingertip. The bird’s black eye was bright, but there was something listless about him. He hadn’t heard him sing for days.

A
S THE MUSICIANS
filed out of the mess room, Charles hurried to catch up with Goffin. ‘Well done,’ he said, as he came alongside him. ‘You made a fine fist of that!’

‘Oh. Thank you! Was it really all right?’

‘Rath
er
,’ Charles averred.

In truth, Goffin’s playing had been a little strident on the top notes and had squeaked terribly on the national anthem at the end of the night, but on the whole the chap had done a good job.

‘Well – thanks,’ Goffin gave him a flash of that sweet smile, ‘for giving me the chance, I mean. It’s an honour to play with a musician as talented as yourself.’

Charles gave a brief shrug –
nothing to it
– but the compliment bloomed in his chest as he and Goffin walked in companionable silence across the grass towards the Barracks. ‘So, how are you finding it? This old place, I mean? Been keeping you busy, have they?’

‘Just a bit.’ Goffin grinned, holding the door open for Charles. ‘They’re a good bunch though. Although the weather’s a little … bleak.’ He grimaced as he shut the door behind him and they began to climb the stairs.

‘Ah, the moors! Not what you’re used to?’

‘Not so much.’

‘Well, I’m glad you’re settling in. Lucky to have you, I say.’

They had reached their respective doors now. ‘Well,’ said Charles, ‘see you tomorrow then.’

Once inside his room, Charles put down his violin and music case and slid his post on to the desk. His head felt pleasantly warm and muzzy – it was always like this after the dances: a sort of glad tiredness that came from long playing, from the companionship of the other players. After the last patient had left the ballroom, there was always a late meal laid waiting in the attendants’ mess room: bread and cheese and jugs of ale, and although he could easily have requested a cold supper to be put out for him in the assistant medical officers’ dining room, Charles always preferred to take beer and break bread with the men. He was not much of a drinker, but a glass or two of ale was always a pleasant way to round off the evening’s work.

He shed his jacket, unlaced his bow tie and unplucked his cufflinks; he always made an effort with his dress on a Friday night and expected his players to do the same.

The week, which had started so badly, had ended rather well; his leadership of the band seemed to be progressing favourably, and the musicians seemed happy enough. Since the meeting with Superintendent Soames he had been careful, working harder at his ordinary duties so he might carve out the time to play for the patients, and the programme already seemed to be bearing fruit – the other day, for instance, he had been playing the Schubert G flat when Mulligan, an Irish chronic, had brought his chair forward to listen. When Charles had finished playing, there was a look on the man’s face that was … well, beyond words really.

A new charcoal portrait stood on the mantelpiece. Charles went to pick it up: Mulligan, in the moments after the Schubert. The likeness was not bad. The Mulligan on the paper was one anyone would recognize: square-shouldered, slim but well muscled. The hair close cropped to a finely shaped skull, a steady brow, eyes the colour of flint. But the man’s expression – its very inscrutability – had eluded him.

Having not been the admitting doctor, Charles knew little of the particulars of the case. He had a mind to check the man’s admission papers as soon as possible, see what had landed him in here. He placed the portrait carefully back on the mantelpiece then went to his desk, where he shuffled through his post. A slim brown envelope with a London postmark lay within the pile. Taking his letter knife he sliced quickly through the card, and felt a pleasurable quckening as a light-green pamphlet fell into his hands.
The Eugenics Review.

It was always a treat when the quarterly arrived. A glance at the clock showed it was after ten, but Saturday mornings meant a slightly later start. Plenty of time still for reading. He brought his chair up to his desk and sharpened a pencil, before bringing his notebook towards him. As he opened the pamphlet, a coal popped and cracked on the fire.

The first of the articles was a tribute to Sir Francis Galton, first cousin of Charles Darwin and erstwhile president of the Society, who had died last month at the age of ninety-three. Pearson had always hailed Galton as the man who had taken his cousin’s findings and applied them to society; the man who dared to pose the question of how better people might be made. After due observance of Galton’s polymath genius (explorer, meteorologist, statistician), the end of the piece looked forward to Major Leonard Darwin’s forthcoming presidency. Another scion of the Darwin line, the great man’s son this time; he was due to give his inaugural address in the summer. Charles scribbled the date eagerly in his notebook. It had been far too long since he had visited London, and this would be a happy hook to hang a trip on. He was allowed seven holiday days a year and had taken none so far. He would have to make sure to book the day off soon.

Aside from the usual calendar of meetings and talks, the main body of the journal was taken up by the transcript of Dr Tredgold’s recent address to the society at the Caxton Hall in London, rather grandly entitled
‘
Eugenics and Future Human Progress’.

Charles knew Tredgold had been the chief doctor of the Royal Commission of 1908. It had been reported in
The Times
that Dr Tredgold’s findings on the matter of the Feeble-Minded had been passed to Parliament, and as such would be vital in shaping the debate over the coming bill.

Tredgold’s argument began simply but was elegantly and persuasively expressed.

Man today stands on a much higher plane of development than did his palaeolithic ancestor. The human race has undergone a progressive evolution … If the race is to develop, it must give rise to individuals who can do more than mark time, who can advance.

Charles nodded in agreement. It would be a fool who would seek to refute it.

Tredgold went on to argue that, throughout this evolution, disease had played a vital part in ‘purifying the race of its weaker members’, but that now:

I have no hesitation in saying, from personal experience, that nowadays the degenerate offspring of the feeble-minded and chronic pauper is treated with more solicitude, has better food, clothing and medical attention, and has greater advantages than the child of the respectable and independent working man. So much is this the case that the people are beginning to realize that thrift, honesty, and self-denial do not pay.

Charles shifted in his chair. Such rhetoric always made him uncomfortable;
feeble-minded and chronic paupers
were the mainstay of Sharston’s ranks, and they did indeed have good food, clothing and medical attention; what man living in the crowded backstreets of Bradford had his milk from a flock of specially selected Ayrshire heifers, ate fresh meat and vegetables with his supper most evenings and was played classical music as he rested for the afternoon? But the asylum was not a prison; the aim of its treatment was not punitive but restorative.

He glanced over at his charcoal sketches, catching the eyes of Mulligan. Shouldn’t a man like Mulligan be treated with
solicitude
? Shouldn’t he hear and respond to Schubert? Wasn’t there
potential
in the man? And then there were the dances; if he closed his eyes he could see the ballroom as it had looked this evening – the fireplaces lit and blazing, the orchestra – aside from the odd squeak from Goffin – sounding fine, but suggestive of greater things to come, the patients clapping and smiling and turning together on the floor. If the good burghers of Bradford and Leeds had not wanted their pauper lunatics to have some pleasure and – yes, why not say it –
beauty
in their lives, would they have built such a magnificent space for them to meet?

He turned back to the pamphlet, where Tredgold’s argument was reaching its crescendo:

The stream of degeneracy is steadily increasing, and is threatening to become a torrent which will swamp and annihilate the community. It is quite clear that we are face to face with a most serious problem, one, indeed, of vital importance, not merely to our future progress, but to our very existence.

So. Here was the nub of it. And while absolutely seeing the problem – Sharston itself was bursting at the seams with the poor and mad – Charles was not so sure of the means by which to address it.

It seemed certain that the feeble-minded should be prevented from breeding. But how to proceed from this – how to define that category and how to go about that prevention – was something about which Charles was unsure. It was the idea of enforcement that sat uneasily with him.

The sexes could easily be kept apart in the sort of gentle segregation that was practised at Sharston, and while here they could, perhaps, with the help of good food, good behaviour and good, honest work (not to mention good music),
improve.
Become better specimens.

In truth, Charles thought, it came down to this: one either believed people could change or one did not. And Charles was, by nature, an optimistic man.

He glanced back at the
Review
:

I unhesitatingly affirm that if measures of social reform are not accompanied by others to prevent the alarming multiplication of the unfit which is now going on, the end will be National Disaster.

Charles let out his breath in an irritated sigh; there was something so
joyless
in the man’s rhetoric. He tapped the end of his pencil on the desk. The Eugenics movement was split between those who believed in sterilization and those who argued for the merits of segregation, and here was the chief doctor of the Royal Commission, the man who had the ear of the Prime Minister and of Home Secretary Churchill, who, while he did not come right out and declare for sterilization, did all but.