The Lost Bookshop(85)

We were led into a narrow office on the first floor with a thin brown carpet and a flickering light overhead. There were rows upon rows of steel-grey filing cabinets.

‘Sharon normally takes care of the admin,’ the woman explained, immediately absolving herself and again checking her watch.

‘Not to worry Ms …?’

‘Mrs Hughes.’

‘Mrs Hughes,’ I said, ‘this won’t take long. Any chance of a cup of tea in the meantime?’

‘No.’

With that, she left the room and we both waited until her footsteps were far enough down the hall.

‘What the hell was that, Angela Lansbury?’ I whisper-shouted.

‘I don’t know! It just … happened.’

‘I can’t believe it worked.’

‘Nor can I.’

She was giddy with excitement. We didn’t know how to celebrate so in the end we just high-fived.

‘Okay, we better start looking.’

We didn’t have much time and our task was daunting. Admissions files were categorised by date, but then some records were filed under the resident doctor’s name and others still were filed under the patient’s name. It was basically a mess. We agreed to begin at opposite ends of the room. I was searching the dates – mid-1920s onwards – and Martha was searching for Carlisle. We hardly spoke, apart from the occasional ‘I still can’t believe you did that’ coming from me. I was pleasantly surprised by how much she wanted to help me. Or perhaps that was conceited. If what she said turned out to be the case and she had found herself in possession of Opaline’s book, then it made sense that she had her own connection to this intriguing woman. After all, as I’d told her on the bus, you didn’t need a qualification on paper to make a big discovery. Knowing my luck, she’d probably find the manuscript before me. The thought hit me like a sucker punch. I looked across at her and watched as her fingertips picked their way through the hanging manila files. Had I been played all along? Was she using me?

‘Henry. What are you doing?’

‘What?’

‘We don’t have much time,’ she said.

‘Right. Yes. Sorry.’

I pulled open another drawer and flicked through the files. They were all too recent. We were about to meet at the middle filing cabinet when I heard footsteps coming quickly down the hall.

‘Shit!’

‘Stall her,’ Martha said.

I didn’t think, I simply did what she said and met the woman just outside the doorway.

‘I’ve been on to the department, and they’ve never heard of a Dr Field. In fact, they said there was no spot-check arranged. So now, would you care to tell me who you are and what you’re doing here?’

‘I would like to tell you, Mrs Hughes. But if I did, I’d have to kill you.’

‘Excuse me?’

Jesus, what was I saying?

‘Candid camera,’ Martha smiled, coming out of the room. ‘See, I have a camera in my bag,’ she explained, pointing to what looked like a badge on her rucksack.

‘I don’t—’

‘Oh, you’ve been such a good sport, hasn’t she, Henry?’

‘Yes, yes, absolutely,’ I said. ‘Thanks for taking part.’

‘Oh, I—’

‘Someone will be in touch shortly. Of course we’ll need your consent before we can use the footage on our show, but there’s a two hundred euro fee so just have a think about it, okay?’

Martha took my arm and we half-ran down the stairs. We kept running until we reached the bus stop and I had to bend down with my hands on my knees for a good ten minutes, trying to get my breath back. She was still laughing when I looked up.

‘You should be on stage. Honestly, how do you improvise like that?’

‘I don’t know, maybe Madame Bowden’s rubbing off on me.’

The bus pulled in and we got back into the very same seats that we’d had on the way out.

‘Well, that was an experience. Pity we didn’t find the file,’ I said.

‘Oh, but we did.’

She pulled a folder out from her backpack and handed it to me. I was speechless.





Chapter Forty-Six





OPALINE





Connacht District Lunatic Asylum, 1941


A war has been raging overhead, or at least that was what I was told. At St Agnes’s, all remained deathly still. The place was like a vacuum, sucking life away from the people who were trapped within. Food was scarce; we subsisted on vegetables that grew stunted and undernourished in the dry ground outside. I became numb over the years, unsure when that set in, like rot. My skin would itch and flake and I would scratch until I bled, just to feel something. Eventually, I felt nothing.

Our numbers shrank. The appetite for reforming women had dulled somewhat since a madman decided to reform Germany. War made everyone question the status quo. It appeared to me that men in particular seem to need a war to find meaning in what they already have. To feel that heady sway on the verge of losing everything before waking up and stepping back from the brink. Why was that?

I had become a competent seamstress thanks to Mary’s instruction and it was the only thing that gave my day any semblance of order. I began stitching words from Emily Bront?’s story of Wrenville Hall into my skirt. At first it was something I did to amuse myself, but then it became a way of remembering that I did have a life before this place. Some sections of the manuscript came clearly and intact, but I knew there was no way I could remember it by heart. The joints in my fingers ached as I strained to make my stitches as tiny as possible.