The Ballroom (9 page)

‘Go and work with her.’ The nurse who had marched her there pushed her in the direction of someone who was bent over a large metal drum. ‘She knows what she’s doing. She’ll show you what’s what.’

It was Clem, sleeves rolled and face glossy with sweat. She surveyed Ella coolly through the damp air. ‘Careful with your feet,’ she said, as Ella picked her way over the wet ground towards her. ‘You don’t want to get them wet. You get all sorts of blisters and it’s hell for weeks.’

The air was damp and heavy. The huge steel drum Clem was standing beside was shaking and whining. Elsewhere, women’s voices were drowned by the rattle and hum of other machinery.

‘So,’ said Clem, raising her voice to be heard. ‘There’s different types of laundry in here. Clothes …’ She turned and gestured to where linen lay in great drifts at the side of the room. ‘It’s our job to sort them into types: shirts, skirts, blouses, underwear. You put a mask on for that. Then there’s flatwork: sheets and pillowcases. That’s the stuff that really breaks your back. Here.’ As the steel drum before her came to a shuddering stop, she bent and yanked open the lid. ‘We put the laundry in these machines and then a bucket of soap in there too. These sheets are done, so we need to take them out and put them through the mangle. Go on then.’

Ella reached into the drum, trying to lift a sheet, but they were all cluthered together and heavy with water.

‘You won’t get far like that. Here.’ Clem elbowed her out of the way and, reaching into the water with quick, deft hands, unravelled a sheet from the knot within. ‘When you’ve managed to get one free, you give it a first twist.’ She worked as she talked, squeezing the sheet so that grey water poured back from it into the tub. ‘And then when you’ve done that, you carry it over here.’ And she looped the still-dripping sheet over her shoulder and carried it to the other side of the room where a huge mangle stood.

The machine was about the same size as the double share Ella minded in the mill. There were even belts running around the ceiling to operate the machines. It was a factory. Not so loud as the mill, but a factory for all that. She took a corner of the sheet as Clem walked a few paces so the wet material grew taut between them.

‘You feed it in between the rollers so it catches. Slowly. That’s it. The next bit is dangerous. You have to make sure you’ve stepped back and your hair’s tucked in before you make it start.’

Make sure your hair’s tucked in.

Clem pulled down on a lever, the mangle started up with a shuddering movement, and Ella was eight again, watching the belts tightening, feeling her life contract. She shook her head to clear it. ‘How do you stand it?’ she said.

‘Stand what?’ Clem’s eyes were fixed on the mangle as the sheet fed itself through the rollers.

‘All … this.’ Ella threw out her arm. ‘Does it not make you mad?’

Clem glanced up. ‘
Much madness is divinest sense
,’ she said, and gave a small laugh. ‘There are plenty of mad women in here. I’m not sure I’m one of them though.’ She shrugged. ‘You’ll get used to it.’

The words sank to the bottom of Ella’s stomach as though she had tied them around a stone. She wanted to tell Clem she wouldn’t get used to anything, not any of this, that she’d be out a long time before that, but even though the desire to speak was salting her tongue, she held it. It was safer to say nothing for a while.

Clem moved to the other side of the mangle, where the sheet was ready. ‘Come on. We need to peg this lot out to dry.’ She threw the sheet on top of a wicker basket, gesturing for Ella to take the other side. The basket was heavy, but Clem lifted it with ease.

They passed into another room – this one filled with lines and lines of hanging laundry. It was hard to tell for certain, since any number of people could have been hidden behind the clothes, but for the first time, there did not seem to be any nurses watching over them.

‘It’s all right in here,’ said Clem, as though reading Ella’s thoughts. ‘You’re left to yourself a bit. I always make it last as long as I can.’ She pulled a small book from the pocket of her apron and gave a swift half-smile. ‘Sometimes I’m here for hours before they remember to look.’

It was much quieter in this white dampness, where sound seemed to be gathered by the hanging clothes. The smell was not so bad either – sharp starch and bleach, but none of the thick rammy stink of the room next door. Here, too, were only two doors that Ella could see – the one she had entered from and one at the far end of the room.

‘I don’t think it leads anywhere exciting,’ said Clem.

Ella looked back and coloured.

‘Maybe the kitchens, but you can bet it’s locked. They miss nothing, you know.’

As Clem reached up to peg a sheet, Ella saw those red, ridged marks again, all the way down her wrist until they disappeared into the fabric of her blouse. They were too thin and regular for burns. The rest of Clem’s hands were chapped and raw, the skin bleached and baggy, as though it had been held in water for too long. Again, as though she had caught her watching, Clem brought down her sleeve.

Ella stepped over to help her. After a moment, she spoke. ‘Who are the gawbers?’ she said.

‘The gawbers?’ Clem looked over. ‘That’s what the women in here call the chronic ward. They believe that when you’re on the chronic ward, you don’t get out. Unless you’re dead, that is.’

‘But people do get out before that?’

‘Look,’ said Clem, crossing her arms and looking at Ella straight. ‘There are three ways out of here. You can die. That’s easy. People die all the time. You can escape. Almost impossible. Or you can convince them you’re sane enough to leave.’

‘Which one are you doing?’

A quick colour flared in Clem’s cheek, and she bent to pick up another sheet. ‘None of them yet,’ she said. ‘I’m still deciding what I want.’ She was silent a moment, then said, ‘Where would you go then? If you got out?’

‘I don’t know. Away.’ Ella thought of a picture she had seen once, a poster of the seaside up on the wall of the Co-op – of the green land ceasing, giving way to blue. ‘The sea.’

‘Have you ever seen the sea?’

Ella shook her head.

‘Well,
I never saw a moor
,’ said Clem. ‘
I never saw the sea, And yet I know how the heather looks, And what a wave should be.
’

‘What’s that?’ asked Ella.

‘Just a poem.’ Clem shrugged, and bent down and swiped up the next item in the basket.

‘What about you?’

‘Me? University,’ she said. ‘And I’m going too. I’m just … waiting.’ She held the piece of clothing out to look at. It was a man’s cotton shirt, large and stained at the cuffs. ‘My brother’s about to go to university,’ she said, ‘to Cambridge, to study English. And he’s so stupid he thinks Kipling is the finest poet there is. He probably thinks Dickinson is our grocer.’ She looked up, a half-smile on her face. ‘Well, he
is
our grocer, but that’s not the point. Do you know, I said to him once, “
There’s a certain slant of light. Winter afternoons. That oppresses, like the heft of cathedral tunes.
” And he just stared at me like this.’

And Clem pulled such a gawping, vacant face that Ella had to laugh. ‘He had no
clue
what I was talking about,’ she said. ‘No clue.’

Neither had Ella, but the feeling of the laugh remained, softening the air between them.

‘Men,’ Clem said under her breath, gazing at the garment in her hands. ‘You can never get the stains out. Here.’ She chucked the shirt at Ella, who caught it.

‘Are there men in here then?’

‘Not
here
, obviously, but on the other side of the buildings. We never see them though, apart from Fridays.’

‘What happens on Fridays?’

‘Don’t you know? There’s a dance, in a ballroom. They have a proper stage, and an orchestra, with violins and trumpets and … well.’ Clem reached down for another shirt. ‘You should see it, before you get out of here. It’s all right. The doctor leads it. You know … the one who plays the piano.’

‘How do you get there? To the ballroom? Who’s allowed to go?’

‘I don’t really know how they choose. They call your name on a Friday, and if they call your name, then you go. Those who’ve been good, I s’pose.’

Be good.

Ella stretched the shirt in her arms.

After that, things were different between them. Not friendship perhaps, but something like it. Ella took the seat beside Clem’s in the day room, and walked with her at recreation, which was hardly worth the name: half an hour every day of nantling up and down a thin stone yard – two by two like in Sunday school – with echoing walls on either side.

Otherwise, she kept her mouth shut and worked hard and watched. When she wasn’t hauling sheets or feeding them into the mangle, she was in the sorting room, low-ceilinged and so filthy-smelling she had to tie a cloth over her nose and mouth just to stand it. Her hands were raw from the chemicals in the laundry, and the skin between her fingers had grown soggy and stinging and split. One of her fingernails had broken as she twisted cloth. Her feet grew so swollen from the heat and from standing all day that it was hard to take off her boots before going to bed. But she did not complain.

In the day room, in the afternoons, while Clem read her book, Ella looked out of the window.

She could see the path she had taken when she ran, across the short grass and then curving round the buildings to the left. She remembered the feel of wind on skin, running at the edge of her lungs.

On Fridays after dinner, the Irish nurse came in and rattled out a list of names of the women who were allowed to go to the ballroom, and Ella always listened, breath bated, for her own, but the weeks passed and it was never called. She saw the excitement of those who were though: donning themselves up as best they could, tugging their clothes straight, brushing at the oily white flecks that clung to their shoulders. They would help each other – standing in front of one another and acting as each other’s glass. Old Germany always badgered Clem till she brushed out her hair and put it up in fresh bunches for her. Often, when the women were all ready and jostling with excitement, but it was not yet quite time to go, Clem would get up and play the piano for them, just a few bars, and they would hold hands and dance on the spot.

They put her in mind of the women and girls in the mill, that same elbowing to get a glimpse in the bit of mirror at the end of the spinning shed on a Friday night, the same flashing hopefulness as they turned and patted and sucked in their cheeks, as though they were covering themselves all over with hooks that might land a catch.

She had never wanted to see herself in that mucky bit of glass. Knew what she looked like well enough, with her red and swollen eyes. Besides, even if she’d managed to make herself look nice, what would it be for? She had been out promming on Manningham Lane and Toller Lane with the rest of them in the summer, on Friday or Saturday nights – in amongst so many young people that the police had to come and shout to keep the crowds moving. Great dense girl-packs all arm-in-arm and clavering away and swooping looks at the lads. She had never walked with them though. They made her feel trapped, those packs of girls, taking up the middle of the road.

But she saw the way the attendants looked at the patients, sniggering sometimes behind their hands. She had heard the Irish nurse the other day, chattering to another in her harsh magpie voice:
Aren’t they just animals? Worse than animals. Filthy, aren’t they? And the way you have to watch over them all the time? Aren’t they? Aren’t they just?

And now, sitting there in the day room as the Fridays passed, watching the women get ready, she felt afraid.

Who would know the things inside her if she stayed in this place? She had no one to speak for her here, no creature to echo her, nothing to say who she was or might have been.

T
HE NEWS CAME
on a Friday, by the second post: a single letter in a thick envelope bearing a London postmark with the address 6, York Buildings, Adelphi.

When he lifted the flap, saw the name of the Society printed at the top and read the first line – ‘
We should be happy to accept your paper for the Eugenics Congress of 1912
’
–
Charles was so delighted he couldn’t help himself dancing a little jig on the spot.

‘All right there, Dr Fuller?’ The old porter was regarding him with something approaching horror.

‘Yes! Gosh – yes! Quite all right.’

Charles’s first instinct was to take the letter straight to the superintendent – to see, perhaps, a glimmer of approbation on Soames’s face. But he restrained himself. He was learning to be measured. It was better by far to be politic. To bide his time.

Now, his work took on a different cast. He kept a notebook on him at all times, and as he passed through the corridors and wards, scribbled down anything in thought or deed that seemed of relevance to his case.

He began to indulge in a small fantasy, and each time furnished it with a little more detail. It was this: he imagined Churchill and Pearson and Tredgold – even Superintendent Soames – sitting in the audience at the Congress as he gave his speech, listening intently, his words swaying their opinions, and afterwards Churchill approaching him, the Secretary, Dr Crackanthorpe, making the introductions: ‘
Home Secretary, may I introduce Dr Fuller, who has done such fine work with music with his lunatics in the north.
’

And Churchill nodding, his handshake warm, that handsome baby face of his sporting a smile. ‘
Interesting, Fuller. Very interesting paper. Lots to think about. We must come up your way and see for ourselves.
’

Life was hopeful; the air had lost the keen edge of winter and the evenings were getting visibly lighter now. The grass on the lawns had recently had its first mowing and felt soft and spongy underfoot. Snowdrops had come and gone, and now daffodils were pushing themselves up in great clusters from the soil. Charles had a new duty too: it was his job to escort the female patients from the acute wards to the reception room and oversee them on visiting days – Wednesday afternoons, Saturdays and Sundays. On the one hand he thought it might be a good thing – a sign the incident with the girl had faded and the superintendent was trusting him more, but on the other, it might be an attempt by Soames to weight him so heavily with work that he had no spare time. Regardless of the motives, however, it was proving to be a useful little role.