I wasn’t sure what to respond, so I said nothing.
‘Do you see faces on the wall?’
‘Not at the present moment, no.’
He looked at me with a kind of scorn and I cursed myself for getting smart with him.
‘Do you hear voices?’
‘No, doctor, I do not hear voices. There is nothing wrong with me, you must see that. My brother has engineered this entire charade. He is angry with me because I refused to do his bidding and marry a man I hardly knew. This is his way of punishing me, don’t you see?’
The room fell quiet, save for the sound of his pen scratching his thoughts on to clean, white paper. I wondered where my clothes were and if there was a bus that would take me back to Dublin.
‘That will be all for now, nurse,’ he said, calling for Patricia to come back inside.
‘Can I go home now?’
‘Oh, I’m afraid it will be quite some time before you are ready to re-enter society, Miss Carlisle. If ever.’
His words were like a scripted play, something I expected to hear an actor speak in a theatre. This could not be real life.
‘You cannot be serious! This is the extent of your examination? Asking me if I see faces on the wall? Dr Hughes, you must see that I am as sane as you are.’
‘Your brother—’
‘Forget my brother! Is his word more valuable than mine?’
He said nothing, but replaced the cap on his pen. I had my answer.
I pressed my hands flat on the desk between us.
‘He is lying to you! I can prove it. I have discovered a very valuable manuscript and he wants to steal it, don’t you see?’
The doctor smirked at the nurse who had taken hold of my arms and was half-dragging me from the room.
‘Come on now, Carlisle, it’s better if you don’t struggle,’ she said.
‘Give me any test you like. I will prove that I’m not crazy!’
‘Oh, I think we know all we need to on that score, Miss Carlisle.’
‘No! Please! Where is Dr Lynch? Let me speak to him!’ I was shouting myself hoarse, my useless screams echoing down the hallway. Another nurse was bringing a patient to the doctor’s room and Patricia called to her, saying I’d have forgotten all of this in an hour. They truly believed me to be crazy and every reason I used to protest this fact only confirmed their beliefs.
I was thrown back into my filthy room and I curled myself into the corner and cried for what seemed like hours. As the room grew darker, I looked up and saw a woman sitting on the bed. How long had she been there?
‘Best to get those tears out. They won’t be much good to you in here.’
‘Mary?’
I pushed myself up from the ground, a difficult task with my pregnant belly, and I sat on the bed beside her.
‘Why are you here?’ I asked her, looking at her properly for the first time. Her hair was wild and stuck out all sides, her eyes dark and deep, but her cupid’s mouth spoke with a measured tone beyond her years.
‘Hysteria. That’s what they told me.’
Hysteria; it could have meant anything.
‘And how does it, um, manifest itself?’ I asked, realising now that we would be sharing this room.
‘I become highly emotional when my father beats me.’
‘Dear God.’
She gave me a little smile, as though humour was all she had left.
‘When I fell pregnant, I told him it was the priest that done it to me. But he wouldn’t believe me; said I was a filthy whore. He wanted me out of the house, so he told them I had demonic fevers. That my wounds were by my own hand.’
I buried my head in my hands. How had we ended up here? I had left home inspired by the suffragettes, the modern women who were going to achieve equality and the freedom to pursue their own happiness. With the stroke of a pen, we were locked up. Troublesome women with inconvenient ideas.
‘How long have you been here? You look so young.’
‘Three years. I’m twenty-two.’
My tears spilled forth once again. It all seemed so hopeless. She gave my hand a firm squeeze.
‘You have to be strong for the baby,’ she said, then got up and undressed before climbing into the other bed.
I lay down on the thin mattress and looked up at the moon shining between the bars on the window. Mary was right. I had to look after my little Rosebud. I would eat the food, go outside and breathe the fresh air into my lungs and keep as healthy as I could. If this was the way it had to be for now, then I would accept it. For her good. I couldn’t let myself get worked up like I did today. I knew it wasn’t good for her. So I would be calm and, when the time came, they would take me to a hospital to have my baby and that would be my chance to escape.
Two weeks passed, with every new day identical to the last. One could never have imagined the length of days when there is nothing to do, say or think. The most remarkable feature was the cold. I could see my own breath when I spoke. An elderly woman took a fit one morning at the breakfast table, shivering and convulsing with the cold. She was practically hopping off the bench, such was her suffering.
‘Let her fall on the floor, it’ll teach her a lesson,’ said Nurse Patricia.
The nurses wore their overcoats and despite every fibre of my being instructing me to keep quiet, I simply had to speak out.
‘Can you not see that she will perish with the cold in this place? Surely you can spare her some extra clothing?’
‘She has the same as everyone else.’
And that was the end of that discussion. I gave the woman my cup of hot tea when it came. It wasn’t a great loss, watery as it was and tasting peculiarly of copper.
A new woman arrived that day, which gave us all something to focus on. We welcomed her in as best we could and I could now understand the thirst for information that had greeted me when I first arrived. Everyone wanted to know why she was here, mostly to drown out the mind-numbing boredom. I hoped to be proved right by her story – another innocent victim. But we couldn’t make any sense out of what she was saying and before long she was taken away to be treated, whatever that meant.
Word came back that she came direct from the courthouse where she had stood accused of drowning her child. She believed it was a changeling, that her real baby was taken by the fairies. I almost got physically sick when I heard. I knew I would go mad myself if I didn’t get out of that place. People imagine that the worst thing about incarceration is the thought of being locked inside, but there is another trauma to endure. Whilst some of the women were simply anxious or depressed, I was now living with women suffering all types of physical and mental disability and not only that, was considered to be one of them. That has a profound impact on one’s sense of self; of what is true.
That night, I thought my time for escape had come. The pains in my stomach felt as though I were going into labour and the water that wet my bed confirmed it. I called out to Mary and asked her to alert the nurse. She banged on the door and shouted, but no one answered for a very long time. Of course, it happened in the early hours of the morning, as these things often do, and there was only the elderly nun on duty. She thought I was exaggerating the agonising pain of labour and said she would not wake the poor doctor from his sleep to come and tend to a spoilt English brat like me.