Victorian Maiden (24 page)

“So where is this Elizabeth Wilson now?”

“She's presently awaiting trial for the murder of that same uncle, Alfred Roberts.”

“Dear God, her mother's a murderess!”

Lucie waited until the dust of the cataclysm had settled. Then she said: “Nothing has been proven yet. Elizabeth Wilson has senile dementia and I, as a nurse, don't believe she is capable of murder. But it's her dearest wish to see her daughter once more before her mind goes completely – or before she is hanged or locked away forever in an asylum.”

Elswick bit his lip and said, “I see, Mrs Fox.” Then after a moment of pensiveness, “My wife is older than me by quite a margin, do you know?”

“We saw that in the parish register. It's neither here nor there.”

“Oh, but it is, Mrs Fox, it is. You see, the reason she married so late in life was because her father left her with a profound mistrust – a fear, even – of men.”

He coughed, suddenly nervous.

“Even after we were wed, we had certain, shall we call them, difficulties, in our marriage that we needed to overcome before we could have children.”

Atticus coloured deeply and Lucie said, “I perfectly understand what you mean, Mr Elswick. It must have been very difficult for you both. Perhaps Michael Roberts could help her?”

“What I'm saying is that Sarah has reached a level now where she can function perfectly well as a wife and as a mother. You are asking me to jeopardise all of that, all of her pain and struggle, for the sake of someone she hasn't even seen since she was a tiny girl and someone she can only just remember?”

“I suppose we are,” Lucie conceded.

Elswick's eyes flickered past her head and widened in guilt. He looked like a boy caught with his hand in the sugar bowl.

“Anne!” he exclaimed.

Lucie turned and Atticus looked up. There, leaning on a walking stick, her face radiating indignation and anger, and perhaps fear, was Mrs Price.

“Not content with bothering me in my own home, you've come to hound my family here too.”

Her voice was like the exhalation of a blast furnace.

“These people are relentless, Samuel. I trust that you are going to throw them out before they succeed in destroying both your wife and your marriage?”

“I was just explaining, Mother… and yes, I was about to ask that they leave.”

She waved the point of her walking stick somewhere between Atticus and Lucie and the blast furnace ran cold.

“We will not tolerate these intrusions any longer. You will leave my son-in-law's house, and you will leave Northumberland this very instant.”

“Mother, I already knew about the Friday Club. Sarah told me everything, long ago.”

Elswick's voice sounded suddenly weary.

“So I already knew about her father and I already knew about what he used to do to her.”

“Her father was a philanthropist, a great philanthropist like Alfred Roberts,” Mrs Price protested indignantly.

“Mother, if Barty Price was such a philanthropist, then why after he died did you have his rooms exorcised?”

Atticus glanced at him, horrified, but Elswick looked away and said: “For my mother-in-law's sake, Mr Fox, please, just do as she asks and go.”

“We're all moving to Knaresborough, Lizzie.” 

Mary's face shone with eager excitement as she made the announcement. 

“The parishes have decided to join together into a union, and they're building a brand new workhouse, just behind the High Street.”

Elizabeth looked at Mary and tried to comprehend her joyous enthusiasm. 

‘How,' she thought bleakly, ‘Can you be so happy about it? How can you be so happy about anything?'

Knaresborough. In her mind, she pictured again the great viaduct over the River Nidd, and thought of how one and eight and eight and one never did add up to eighteen. She pictured Tom, dear Tom, now gone forever, and felt the heavy timbers of the false-work arch rushing up to shatter her.

“There's to be a new uniform for the inmates,” Mary continued, “With pretty blue stripes, and you, Lizzie, are to work in the bake house,” 

At last Elizabeth felt the tiniest shiver of interest. There would be knives in the bake house – sharp knives. There would be knives with shining, silver blades, with rainbows at their edge, which could slice deeply into flesh and blood. They could push away the anger and the hatred; they could push away the memories; those awful, awful memories, whenever they fell from that foul, dark, demon-infested place she kept especially for them – whenever they came to hurt her.

The fleeting shadow of a smile flitted across her face and Mary sobbed for her. 

“Oh, Lizzie, I'm so glad you're happy about it. There's nothing to be scared of. I'll be going and all the other inmates here will be going. And, Lizzie, you know how you like to watch the railway? You know how you watch out for trains for hours and hours and look in all of the carriage windows as they pass, just as if there might be someone in there you know? Well, the new Union Workhouse is right next to a railway cutting, and the bake house and the bread store are to be just over the yard from it. You'll be able to look out and see the trains all day long if you want to.”

And then, in the time it took for a tiny, broken bird to fall from a bridge, she was there; in the brand new bread store of the brand new workhouse, watching through the tiny panes of the window. She was waiting for the train.

She knew it was coming; she had no need for the clock. She knew that for a few minutes each hour, the deep cutting that ran by the workhouse would tremble, and the air would be filled with smoke and steam like the coming of the Apocalypse. And then the monster beneath it would shriek, and plunge into the black tunnel mouth and be gone.

Mary was right. The railway both drew her and utterly repelled her.

‘Carriages without horses shall go, And… fill the world with woe.'

And when the monster beneath the smoke shrieked so that the windows of the bread store rattled, and when it plunged headlong into the blackness of the tunnel, so she too would hear the shrieking of her own mind, and it would be louder than any locomotive, and so she too would be plunged into blackness.

One of Old Mother Shipton's prophesies had come true. Whenever the shrieking of the train lashed the walls of the workhouse, lashed the walls of her mind, it would shake loose her memories of the railway, of the carriages, and of what happened when the carriages did go.

They were laughing at her, jeering her. Their hands were prodding her, touching her, grasping at her clothes, pushing her from one to the other, the other to the next, round and round and round the carriage.

From below her she heard the rhythmic clicking of the carriage wheels. It was as if the train had a heart that was beat-beat-beating in anticipation of what was to come. But before it did, she desperately needed it to be a different little girl, being pushed, being pulled, half-naked now between the gentlemen; a different little girl being forever ‘it' in this hellish game of kiss-chase where she was always caught, caught, and caught again. 

She stumbled to the floor and, as the gentlemen closed in, so she closed her thoughts to everything except her urgings of the train to go faster, for its heart to beat louder, faster, more staccato, to overwhelm her, to crowd out whatever it was they were taking turns to do to her body.

‘Please, Lord Jesus, please make the train get to the station, please make it stop, so that finally they will stop.' 

But it was when they stopped; when she had to stop being a different little girl and become Elizabeth Beatrice Wilson once again, that she had to stand, as naked and as sinful and as exposed as Eve, to gather together what clothes and dignity she could. It was only then that she could begin once more to hide away the memories.

When the gentlemen of the Friday Club had finished with the waif and stray girls, when Mrs Eire had sewn them up until she could sew them up no longer, and even Mr Otter had had his fill, they would disappear. They would disappear one day in Mrs Eire's wagon with its padded sides and its double windows and its double locked doors. Some, she knew, would be taken away to Brimston to have their babies, or to accommodate the gentlemen there, or to have Mrs Eire ‘give 'em the iron.' This she knew was some way to make their babies into cherubs for Jesus without them even having to be born. She had once asked Mrs Eire to give her the iron, to save her baby from being born, but Mrs Eire had just laughed. 

If they weren't to have their babies, if they weren't to accommodate the gentlemen visitors or be given the iron, the girls would be taken to York.

Before they joined Starbeck or Knaresborough or even Harrogate to the railway, when she still believed that one and eight and eight and one surely made eighteen, it was necessary to travel to York to take a train. Mr James was a ship owner, and his ships carried passengers and freight from the ports of Yorkshire all around the Empire. Like Mr John Walton, Mr James was a great advocate of the railways. He even had his own railway wagons that carried his freight from the ports of Yorkshire all around the country.

Sometimes Mr James' freight was little waif and stray girls, and whenever this was the case, Mrs Eire would always fetch them to York. There, they would be loaded onto Mr James' railway wagons, taken to a port, and sent on to a new life abroad.

Like Mr Price, and like Alfred Roberts himself, Mr James was a great philanthropist. It was no surprise to anyone, therefore, that whenever he could, he would spread his philanthropy far and wide. 

On occasion, Mr James would feel inclined to bring waifs and strays back from other countries in his ships and in his special railway wagons. These would be little girls – and sometimes boys – that he bought from the slave markets and orphanages of the Orient; from Arabia, from India and from Canton, and they would be brought back to be given a ‘proper education.' 

Mr James would always laugh when he said they were to be given a proper education, as if it were a joke. He would engage Mrs Eire's wagon to fetch them to the Annexe like so many lambs, and Mr Otter would take them downstairs.

Whenever Mr James brought in a consignment of ‘native girls,' as he called them, the Friday Club would be every bit as busy as the nights Miss Pearce came down from Budle. The girls looked exotic, otherworldly even, as Mr Otter led them shyly up the iron stairs to the slaughter. They were rarely able to speak English, but that never mattered. A scream was a scream whatever the language.

When Mr James brought in a consignment of native girls, Lizzie would try to relax – just a little. She knew that on that Friday, the shadows on her door would stay still and the only thing that would disturb her would be the sounds of the girls. They would be as shrill and piercing as the railway engines thundering into the blackness.

It was when she still believed that one and eight and eight and one might yet add up to eighteen that the railway had come both to Knaresborough and to Starbeck. But it was when she finally realised it did not, nor ever would, that Old Mother Shipton's prophesy came horribly, horribly true the most. 

A carriage without horses had gone forever, and with it, it had taken something precious. But it had been an accident, it truly had. She had been foolish. Perhaps her head had been muddled from the chloral hydrate Mary had given her for her pain, but gone it had, and she had let this fill her world forever with woe. 

 

“So you see no hope of her daughter, of Sarah, coming, Atticus?”

Roberts was rubbing Gladstone's ear gently between his thumb and forefinger, and there was a steady, deep thump as the dog's tail beat against the leather of the chair.

“Very little, I'm afraid. Mr Elswick told us that Price used her, just as we expected that he would have done. It's still too tender a wound to cut open again.”

Roberts nodded sadly.

“Mary will be distraught. She had quite set her heart on re-uniting my aunt and her daughter. I suppose the best we can hope for now is that we get our certificate of guardianship; that Aunt Elizabeth is discharged into my care and that in time this Elswick has a change of heart.”

Lucie asked, “How is Miss Elizabeth, Doctor?”

Roberts shook his head gravely.

“She seems to be declining quite rapidly now. She keeps asking for her mama all the time. We've quite given up telling her that she's dead. She gets so dreadfully upset, almost as if it's only just happened, and then ten minutes later, she asks for her again. Her memory seems to have fixed itself on her mother's death and on her time at Sessrum. Mary has been hoping for a while that she would regress back further, back to her time at Halcyon – her mother's house – for example. She was happy back then. When she began to ask constantly for her mama, we thought that finally she had. But then she swears it's Eighteen Eighty-One and she's going to Heaven. Then she thinks she's going to Hell. It's awful, truly awful to watch, and very draining on poor Mary.”

“May we see her?” Lucie asked.

“Of course, but as I've warned you, she's deteriorating quickly. In my opinion, she's right on the edge now.”

 

“I think she might be on the edge of lunacy.” 

The Medical Officer's sharp whisper carried across the infirmary ward of the Knaresborough Union Workhouse, empty save for an old pauper woman wrapped tightly in a thin blanket on her narrow, wrought iron bed. She was trembling and gently sobbing as she lay curled on her thin, flock mattress. 

“She just keeps saying over and over that she wanted the world to end, that she was promised that the world would end.”

“Lizzie has always wanted that to happen, ever since she was apprenticed down at the Castle Mill and someone told her about Mother Shipton's prophesy.” 

Mary Lovell glanced across the ward at Elizabeth's tiny, shivering form, and there was pain in her eyes.

“What, that the world would end last year – in Eighteen Eighty-One?” the Master exclaimed. “Surely she didn't really believe any of that Old-Mother-Shipton-bunkum, did she?”

Mary nodded. 

“She believed it, or hoped and prayed for it anyway. Ever since her little daughter was adopted out from Starbeck, all she has ever wanted to do is to die. She tried to kill herself twice when she was eighteen, and she's been waiting for the world to end ever since. Now that it hasn't, it seems to have utterly crushed her.”

“Is she becoming a crawler, do you think?” the Master asked.

The Medical Officer wrinkled his brow in puzzlement. 

“A crawler, Mr Liddle? Whatever in this world is a crawler?”

Mary answered. 

“A crawler, Mr Manders, is a pauper. It's a pauper who has reached such a state of utter wretchedness that they hardly have the will to move. They just sit around and let the world do what it will with them. It is the saddest, the very saddest sight that you could ever possibly imagine.”

Manders looked across the long lines of identical iron beds to where Elizabeth lay. 

“I don't believe she is becoming a crawler then, no. She is, in my opinion, a depressive, maybe a manic-depressive. It will pass eventually if we rouse her and set her to work.”

“It's always passed before,” the Master agreed, “And when it does, she works like a demon. It just seems to happen more and more often as she gets older – and for longer each time. I hear she's taken to fetching
the bake house knives back to her ward to cut her own arms and breasts with them.”

“She's done it for years; it helps her to cope,” Mary explained.

“It seems a peculiar way to cope if you ask me. Should we be restraining her then, do you think, for her own safety?”

“No!” Mary's retort echoed between the infirmary walls and Elizabeth started. “No restraints; it would be purgatory for her.”

“Very well, very well, no restraints.” 

Liddle seemed taken aback by her outburst. 

“I could never understand why she's still here though, why she was never married. She was supposed to have been quite beautiful when she was younger, and she has high intelligence and very nice, gentle manners. Surely there were offers, I mean other than the unpleasant suggestions she occasionally got from one or two of the vagrants, that is.”

“There was one man,” Mary said quietly, glancing again at the wretched huddle of blankets. “He was called Tom and he was the foreman at the Castle Mills where Elizabeth was once apprenticed. He was kind and gentle, and desperately in love with her. Poor Lizzie; she could never understand that a man could be kind to her, that he could want her just for who she was. She hated herself, you see. She still does. That's why she mutilates herself, and that's why she wants to die.”