‘Our pupils will come after they have finished their work in the kitchens. They are not allowed here unless they have shown themselves trustworthy.’
‘Trustworthy? But they cannot escape.’
‘Work in the kitchens is a privilege reserved for those who are not violent in their behaviour. There are knives in the kitchen.’
Harriet’s nervousness returned. Anna unlocked a cupboard. ‘I do not have many teaching materials, but there is a blackboard, some slates and an abacus.’
‘Are there books?’
‘The Bible. Here it is.’
‘Just the one?’
‘I shall have more. With your help in the classroom I can spend more time visiting local landowners for donations. It is hard work because most of the charitable ones already give towards the upkeep of the asylum. Persuading them to pay for schooling is not easy. Like you, they believe the insane cannot learn.’
‘I’m sorry, I did not know.’
‘Oh, you are right. Many cannot learn. But for those who can it is their lifeline to the outside world. I have women in my class who were educated before they were admitted and seek only to return to their former lives.’
‘Will they do so?’
‘Perhaps, if I can buy paper and ink for them to write letters to their fathers or guardians.’
‘I see.’ Harriet surveyed the paucity of equipment in the cupboard.
Anna saw the dismay on her face. ‘Do not despair. Everyone here will be grateful for anything you can do.’
Harriet gazed at her companion. ‘Your brother is right.You have chosen a most difficult task for your mission.’
Anna gave her small smile. ‘I did not choose it, it chose me, and it would not be a mission if it were easy.’
‘How many pupils should I expect?’
‘It is never the same number. Attendance here is a reward and can be taken away. Sometimes we have no one to teach and sometimes as many as a dozen.’
‘Only twelve? My classes were much bigger at Blackstone.’
‘You will find each inmate difficult in her way.’
‘What have you done with them so far?’
‘Mainly they read the Bible to me. I tried giving writing and counting exercises but I do not have teaching experience. This is where you can help.’
Harriet nodded and began to organize the slates. ‘I shall find out what they can do first. There isn’t much chalk.’
‘Chalk isn’t dear. We can buy more. Listen, they are coming up the stairs.’ Anna went to the door. ‘Only six today.’
They were dressed in the most awful brown gowns Harriet had ever seen. The material was as coarse as that used at Blackstone, and poorly sewn. The garments looked to be all the same size and with little shape to them so that they hung loose on some and were stretched tight on others. Harriet was shocked to see that every woman’s hair was cut short under a dingy calico cap. But they were not children.They were grown women, all of whom watched her closely as she stood in front of them.
The warden’s wife and a nurse came in with them and stood at either side of the group. They were both large women with big hands, and the nurse wore a heavy grey gown covered by an apron of the same colour. Nobody smiled as Anna told them about Harriet.
The warden’s wife left immediately. Harriet had only four slates so the nurse selected three women for writing exercises with her, and Anna took the others to the far end of the room for reading. Shortly afterwards, the nurse went downstairs and Harriet heard voices from the office below.
The women sat at one end of the table and she asked them to put their names on the slates. They obeyed silently. They wrote their surnames so she suggested they added their Christian names. They seemed hesitant. Harriet showed them hers on her own slate. Then one woman, she seemed to be the oldest, spoke. ‘We are called by our surnames here,’ she said.
Harriet smiled pleasantly. ‘But you have another name. Can you write it for me?’
They did so, and Harriet walked around them to watch as they formed their letters. Isabel. Madeline. Bridget.
‘
What pretty names,’ she said. ‘Now write down where you live.’
‘We live here,’ the oldest one said.
‘Where you came from,’ Harriet added quickly.
As the lesson progressed, Harriet noticed one of her class was snuffling quietly. She had her head down as though concentrating on her slate and was breathing shakily.The older woman kept glancing at her and Harriet realized that the younger one was distressed. She was weeping in a silent, controlled way that indicated to Harriet she was trying not to show it.
‘Be quiet, Wingard,’ the older woman hissed.
Isabel Wingard wiped her nose on her sleeve.
‘What is it, Isabel?’ Harriet asked gently. But she realized, of course, that here it could be so many things. Isabel began to cry again. Harriet gave her a handkerchief, which only made her worse.
The older inmate moved to Isabel’s side and spoke firmly: ‘Hush now. They’ll hear you downstairs.’
Isabel breathed in deeply with a shudder.
‘
I
’
ve stopped,
’
she said. ‘I’m sorry, Miss Trent. Please don’t send me back to the kitchen. It’s - it’s just that no one’s called me Isabel since my brother came to see me.’
Later, when the lesson was over, Anna and Harriet were given bowls of soup with bread and cheese in a small room next to the kitchen. It was nearer to the cells where the inmates lived and they could hear shrieking and wailing, shouting and the clanging of doors.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ Anna said, and kept her eyes on her food. ‘The nurses eat here,’ she explained. ‘They will be in the refectory now. Everyone eats together, our pupils with poor creatures who can barely feed themselves.They rock backwards and forwards and cry out.’
Harriet frowned with sympathy. But she was full of admiration for Anna. ‘Did they take you in there to see them? How brave of you to go.’
Anna hesitated before she replied. ‘Not exactly, but I know how they suffer, and how they fight when they do not understand why they are here.’
Harriet thought of occasions at Blackstone when she had been called upon to calm a pupil who had rebelled against the discipline of school, and had kicked and bitten her teachers. ‘Thank goodness for the nurses,’ she responded. ‘They all look very capable.’
Anna looked uncomfortable. ‘Yes. They are employed for their strength.’
Harriet tried to imagine how it must feel to lose one’s mind. She could not.‘But our pupils have some education.They speak well. Why were they admitted?’
‘The oldest one ran away from home. Isabel - poor Isabel - is very highly strung and wept all the time at first. I believe she refused to marry the gentleman her father had chosen for her.The other girl in your group bore a child out of wedlock.’
Harriet thought of Olivia, who could so easily have ended up an inmate if she herself had not been able to tame her wild ways. She hoped that she would not disobey her husband in a similar manner. Harriet worried that she had deserted her too soon, that Jared would not keep his word, that Olivia might run away. She missed her dreadfully and wanted to go back and see her. She sighed.
‘Our pupils have a little hope,’ Anna reassured her. ‘With your help, their lives may be better.’
They met with the warden and his wife after dinner to talk of their plans, then returned to their home outside the gates. The cottage was tiny and damp and Anna did not have a maid. After the relative luxury of Hill Top House it felt to Harriet as though she had returned to the poverty of Blackstone. In fact, in some ways it was worse for at Blackstone, and even in the poorhouse, they had had a cook and an endless supply of children to do washing and cleaning. Here, they had to do everything for themselves, as well as the mission work in the asylum. And they had very little money, save what Harriet had brought with her and what Anna could raise from benefactors. Their existence was frugal.
But, as promised, shortly after quarter-day, their lives were brightened by a visit from Tobias. He arrived on horseback, bringing small luxuries and supplies: tea, soap, a length of linen, a collar of bacon, which they boiled with dried kidney beans and feasted on for days. He brought money as well.The cottage had only one room downstairs with a lean-to scullery at the back, so Harriet was there to see it change hands.
Tobias smiled at Harriet. ‘It is our allowance,’ he explained, ‘from the investments left by our late parents. To use in our missions.’
‘We divide it equally between us,’ Anna added. ‘It is not much, but it helps.’
Harriet gave a small smile. Tobias had had no cause to tell her about his affairs but she realized he did not see why he should not. They had accepted her as an equal, and she felt honoured and valued for that. He was, indeed, a very fine gentleman and Harriet warmed to him as she had not with any gentleman she had met before.
It was a strange feeling. Gentlemen had always controlled her life in one way or another: a distant cousin, who had removed her from the poorhouse but had not enquired for her since, the principal at Blackstone, a strict churchman and disciplinarian. Latterly, she reflected, it had been the master of Hill Top House, who had taken her virtue and turned her into a whore without a by-your-leave.
Tobias Holmes was like none of them. He did not seek to dominate his sister, or indeed Harriet, as the asylum-keepers did their inmates. Or, she reflected bitterly, as Hesley Mexton had done at Hill Top House.Tobias was a sincere, kind gentleman, who put the needs of others before his own. He treated her with respect, and after his first visit, she anticipated the next with eagerness and excitement.
When she saw his horse outside the cottage on her return from the asylum one month later, her heart swelled.
He sat with them at the kitchen table and asked how she was faring.
‘I have settled well, thank you. The teaching is much the same as at Blackstone.’
‘You are not afraid of the inmates?’
‘I should be, I think, if I were asked to be a wardress or nurse. I do not know how they do their work. Sometimes I hear the inmates screaming and shouting, and the banging of doors. The nurses have the worst of it, I am sure.’
‘One of Harriet’s pupils has begun writing to her family,’ Anna said.
‘Really?’ Tobias and she exchanged a glance.
Harriet hoped they were pleased with her progress. Since Isabel had started her correspondence she had hardly wept at all.
‘Yes,’ Harriet replied. ‘Isabel Wingard. Her father is a landowner in the South Riding. He will have nothing to do with her, but her brother is more sympathetic, and now that he is of age and gainfully employed he is willing to care for her.’
‘Her brother?’ Tobias repeated, and his gaze became fixed on his sister across the table.
Anna gave a sad smile and Harriet thought her eyes held an unshed tear.
‘Are you all right, my dear?’ Tobias asked his sister.
She nodded.
Harriet became concerned.‘Have I done something wrong?’ she asked.
‘No, of course not,’ Toby answered. ‘We are pleased for you. What does the asylum doctor say?’
Anna’s sadness passed. A painful memory, perhaps, Harriet thought, and went on, ‘She is well enough to leave. The board of governors will consider her case at their next meeting.’
‘Why, Harriet,’Tobias smiled,‘this is your first success.We must celebrate. Boil the kettle, Anna, and make chocolate to drink.’
Harriet had drunk chocolate at Hill Top and adored it. It was warming and made her feel good in a way that nothing else could. Except, perhaps, strong drink. Neither Anna nor Tobias ever took spirits unless they were ill, claiming that it overheated the blood and led to sin. Harriet brewed beer in the scullery on the advice of the asylum doctor, who told her it was safer to drink than water. He believed that water could cause the fever unless it was boiled.
After they had drunk their chocolate it was time for bed, and Harriet damped down the kitchen fire while Anna pulled out a wooden pallet for Tobias to sleep on. The cottage had only two small chambers upstairs and Harriet was now in the smaller one. It had a tiny window that looked over the rear yard. Harriet blew out her candle and watched as Tobias went outside to his horse. There was an outhouse next to the privy where they kept their wood and coal and it was just big enough for a temporary stable.
She heard him pumping water.The moon was bright - a sign of a frosty night - and she lingered in the shadows by her window, waiting for him to emerge from the outhouse. She admired him so much for his devotion to his sister and her work. She wondered what he did at his own mission in the town. Wrapped in her calico nightgown and fortified by the chocolate, she climbed into bed and drifted into a pleasant slumber, thinking of the kind gentleman who was sleeping downstairs.
The following day the distant clang of the early-morning rising bell in the asylum roused her, and her first thought was of Tobias. She strained her ears, heard him raking the ashes and imagined him in his shirtsleeves, with stockinged feet. After a few moments of this indulgence, she flung back the bedcovers and moved about quickly to wash in cold water and dress in the chilly air.
Later, when they waved him off on his horse to return to his own mission, Harriet wondered how she would survive until his next visit. She did, of course, for there was much work to be done and it filled her head during waking hours. But alone in her bed at night, she dreamed of him and counted the days to the end of the quarter.
Chapter 19
Jared reined in his mare as he rounded the hillside. He had a good view of their cottage and the track from the trees behind the little church. He cantered down the slope, across the sheep pasture, dismounted and tethered his horse inside the tumble-down building. He stayed on the shadowy side. The summer days were long and many a hill walker crossed the ridge to visit kin over the moor.