Read Online The Jeweller's Skin by Ruth Valentine - Free Book Online Page B

you understand, they don’t know what to do.  You don’t have to say who he is.  Just tell them something.’
    She was still sitting perfectly upright in her chair.  Dr Gross and the Matron came back to the bed.  Before he could speak, Narcisa said to Madame Taté, ‘Tell them it was the day that I escaped.’
    She nodded slightly and turned to Dr Gross.  His shoulders slumped a little as he listened.
    ‘So the incident took place outside the asylum?’  Madame Taté’s voice was toneless again.
    ‘Yes,’ I said.
    ‘And you are not willing to reveal his name?’
    ‘No.’
    Dr Gross spoke at length.  At the end of the ward, a patient in overalls started mopping the floor.  The smell of bleach made her gag.  Matron spoke to Nurse Wendle, who shooed the patient away.
    ‘Monsieur the Medical Superintendent says you are being very foolish, but that clearly he cannot oblige you to give the name.  They will consider how this should be handled.’
    They got up to go.  ‘What will happen?’ she asked.
    ‘They will tell you when the arrangements have been made.’
    The others were already walking towards the door.  She reached out and touched Madame Taté’s arm.  ‘What does that mean?’
    ‘It means they will send the baby away out of here, after three months, six months?  I don’t know.’
    ‘Thank you,’ she said, but the interpreter was already catching up with the doctor and matron.

Dressing
    1917
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    She woke and a woman was sitting on her bed.  She was wearing patient’s uniform, a too-large dress.  Her hair was pulled back in a thick fair plait.  There was a birthmark high on her left cheek, a raised stain.
    ‘Look,’ she said, and held up a baby’s white wool dress.  Narcisa reached out and felt it.
    She could not stop crying.  Her lungs and shoulders ached with it.  The woman moved to go, but she grasped her arm.  Awkwardly, the woman patted her once on the shoulder.
    She wailed as her daughter had, in desolation.
    The woman felt in her pocket and produced a handkerchief.  ‘You poor thing,’ she said.
    Narcisa stared at her.
    ‘Do you understand?’ She was speaking slowly, whispering not to be heard.  ‘I’m sorry about your baby.’
    She cried again.
    ‘What’s your name?’ the woman asked.  ‘I’m Esther.’
    She nodded.
    ‘I think it’s awful, what they do,’ Esther said.  ‘I’ve got a little boy, you see.’  Then she spoke more quickly, and Narcisa couldn’t follow.  She lay listening to the quiet hoarse voice. At one point tears were running down the woman’s cheeks.  One spread out across the crimson birthmark.
    The woman wiped her eyes with the flat of her hands.  ‘Listen,’ she said, speaking slowly again.  ‘They want to move you.  Do you know what I’m saying?  To the locked ward.’
    ‘Locked?’ she asked, frightened.  ‘Me? Locked ward?’
    ‘They think you’re bad. You know’ – she was searching for kinder words – ‘having a bad time now.  Ill.  Nurse Holmes said.’
    ‘No locked.  No. No, I can not.’
    ‘Can you get up?’ the woman asked.  ‘Put your clothes on?’
    She nodded.
    To avoid the locked ward she would have to be quiet.  She thought of her daughter screaming out to her, carried by Matron out of the long ward.  ‘Baby,’ she said, but couldn’t explain in English.  She rocked on the bed, as she had with the child in her arms.
    ‘Try,’ Esther said, and stood up, as the attendant Parsons came bustling towards them.
     
    *
     
    The thought of returning to the locked upstairs ward sent her back to the security of sleep.  She dreamed of Edwin at the first-floor window of the Camberwell house, making signs to her as she stood across the street.  He repeated the few gestures again and again, and she spread her arms wide in incomprehension, until a policeman came to bring her back.  Then she was inside the house, in some room she had never found before, alone.  She