Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

So finally I did.

The Moor Gate Institute for Socially Afflicted Youth

Case File No. 039985–27b

Subject: Eleanore Jones, Aged 16 years (approx.; actual DOB unknown)

Date: August 28, 1914

Date Admitted: October 21, 1913

Assoc. Dr. Julius M. Sotheby, assigned.

Subject is physically hale child of unknown descent, average height, underweight. Complexion, hair color, eye color: Fair.

Subject admitted Moor Gate via Blisshaven Foundling Home. See: Mr. Henry Forrester (director). Subject physically, verbally combative in Home; Melancholy; Antisocial; Complained of constant, nonexistent songs/voices; Unusual sensitivity to tastes, colors, smells.

Diagnosis: Behavior consistent with adolescent Feminine Hysteria.

“Tell me, Eleanore. How are we feeling this morning?”

“I’m well.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. How was breakfast?”

“It was fine.”

“Mrs. Pearl informs me you finished all your eggs.”

“Yes.”

“And … how did they taste?”

“They were fine.”

“Powdered, were they?”

“I … suppose.”

“You couldn’t tell?”

“No.”

Appetite showed marked improvement in past six months. No weight gain as yet. Subject no longer leaves meals unfinished.

“And how did you sleep?”

“Well.”

“Any dreams?”

“No.”

“Really, Eleanore? None?”

“I …”

“Mrs. McLeod left a note here for me. It says she heard you moaning last night on her rounds. Tossing about. You don’t remember that?”

“I—I might have dreamed. I’m sorry, I really don’t recall.”

“That’s all right. That’s just fine. We don’t remember every single dream, do we?”

Subject initiates and maintains eye contact. Visible trembling of hands first witnessed in October ‘13 vanished. Hair combed and plaited. Shirtwaist neat.

“I understand you’ve been paying particular attention to another girl here. Hattie Boyd. Eleanore? Is that right?”

“Yes, sir. Hattie’s nice.”

“She certainly doesn’t seem to enjoy the company of anyone else. Intentionally speechless. Afflicted with unpredictable spells of rage or sudden screaming. Does she ever speak to you?”

“No.”

“No words whatsoever?”

“No.”

“Why, then, are you kind to her? What is it precisely that makes her nice?”

“Hattie … needs a friend. I understand that. So I try to be her friend.”

“I see.”

Subject demonstrates evidence of reemerging Feminine Virtues: Compassion. Docility. Tenderness.

“Tell me about the songs, Eleanore.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The songs you hear. Are they still haunting you?”

“No, sir. I don’t hear them any longer.”

“Truly? That seems peculiar, don’t you think? When you first arrived here, you insisted they were everywhere. In the stones of the walls, in the nails in the doors. The iron bars of the cells. Do you recall that?”

“Yes. But …”

“Yes, Eleanore?”

“I’m sorry. They simply aren’t here any longer.”

“Are you quite sure about that?”

“Yes. Quite sure. I suppose it was rather as if … they grew fainter and fainter during my time here. During the treatments. And now they’re no longer here at all. Doctor.”

“Excellent.”

Subject’s marked improvement in all Areas of Concern indicates treatment course successful. Recommend discharge in one month. In the interim, continue treatment course: Daily ice bath submergence, mercury tonics, biweekly harnessing/electrical shock.

“Doctor Sotheby?”

“Yes?”

“Is it true, what the nurses are saying? About the war?”

“What is it you think they’re saying?”

“That now that we’ve declared against the kaiser, we’ll be under attack. That he’ll send his aeroplanes straight to London, and his armies right after.”

“It’s really none of your concern. You need only concentrate on getting well.”

“But—a war—”

“This war, child, will be concluded in a matter of months. His Majesty will see to that. The Germans will never have a chance to reach us here, neither by air nor land nor sea. We are safe as can be. I assure you, there is absolutely nothing for you to worry about.”

Eight Months Later

Victoria station was cavernous, a fairy-work construction of wrought iron and steel and great canopies of glass, with locomotives that heaved and puffed into their slots by the platforms like groaning, overstuffed beasts. I’d never been in a place so big before. I’d never seen so many people amassed together at once.

I stood with my single suitcase clutched in one hand and my ticket in the other. Men and women in fine coats and hats pushed by me as if I was invisible—which, in a way, I was.

I had a coat, but it was rather obviously too small. Once it had been a decent black worsted, but that was several owners past. By the time it had been given to me, the dye had faded to more of a drabby charcoal, and the cuffs were frankly tattered. Sometimes, were I caught in the rain with it without an oilskin, my skirts would darken and my wrists would end up stained with bracelets of gray.

I had a hat, too, plucked straight from the donation bin. It was straw, a summer hat even though summer was very much done, and so plain that it couldn’t be termed in fashion or out. A hairpin stabbed through it into the thickness of my chignon, a pin that never stopped humming against my scalp. The buffed steel ribs stretching across the glass ceiling above me sang a deeper bass, great reverberating ba-ba-BUM-bum sounds that were nearly drowned out by—

Stop. We don’t think of that.

The canopy revealed a murky sky. It was not yet noon, but the sun had been swallowed by London’s ever-present miasma of fog and soot. A sheet of paper pasted to a pillar nearby declared in hasty lettering that the gas lines had been damaged in last night’s bombing, and there was no gas to burn in the jets along the walls. Everyone around me was wrapped in shadow. We were ghosts in the steamy stink of the station.

The East Smithfield Ladies’ Society for Relief—that’s what their banner read—had set up a table of free biscuits and hot tea for all the departing soldiers jamming the platforms. A quartet of pink-cheeked women was pouring cups as quickly as possible from the urns. Tommies surrounded them, laughing and shifting their rifles awkwardly from shoulder to shoulder as they drank.

The tea smelled stale. The biscuits, however–oh, the biscuits were nearly still warm and iced with maple sugar. I wished devoutly that one of the Tommies would offer me one, but not a single man returned my stare.

A young boy to my left was sobbing. He had hugged both arms around his mother’s knees, refusing to let go.

“Now, Bobby,” she was pleading with him over and over, her hat dribbling faux blackberries and her skirts all bunched up by his grip. “Now, Bobby, please. ”

He wasn’t the only child in tears. There were scores of them, probably hundreds, all over the station, everyone wan and sniffling and red-eyed, their parents—if they’d come; sometimes it was clearly only the nannies—forcing smiles and making promises that no one in their right mind would believe, no matter how young.

“It’s just for a while, sweetheart. Just a short while. You remember your auntie’s farm, don’t you? All the fine ponies and sheep? Of course you remember—”

“—and I’ll come get you soon. As soon as I can, me and your grandmum both. Soon as I can—”