Signs for Lost Children by Sarah Moss (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📕

time, if she has not even the professional competence that requires punctuality—He is down there, on the quay below the bridge, talking to the man with the boats. She lifts her skirts, too high, and hurries down the stone stairs.

‘Mr. Cavendish, I am so sorry. I was at the asylum and underestimated the time for the omnibus, and by the time I had understood how late I might be there were no cabs to be seen. I hope you will forgive me. I did not intend to waste your time.’

The boatman is gazing at her. Hysterical female. She must stop.

‘Please believe that I do understand the claims on a busy man’s day. You would have been perfectly in the right had you given me up; you are most kind to wait.’ Stop, she thinks, be quiet. You reveal too much.

‘Miss Moberley, please. Do not say another word on the subject. It is a pleasant day to dally at the riverside. So much so that, instead of walking, I thought we might hire a boat. I have been missing the water. Could you trust yourself to me on the river?’

She has not been in a boat since Aubrey rowed her and May across the lake in Albert Park. Certainly not since May—The river at her feet flows to the sea, out into the Channel, which is a backwater of the Atlantic Ocean. It runs brown and silent here, the colour of milky tea, and it is hard to imagine fish or even weeds below the surface.

‘Of course. Anywhere.’

The boatman smiles, raises his eyebrows. She must not be obvious. She does not know the correct way to accept such an invitation; perhaps it is not correct to accept. She draws aside and stands watching the brown water absorb sunlight and carry it out to sea while Tom pays the man.

‘Let me help you,’ he says, taking her hand, and she does let him. The boat wobbles under her as she steps in, as she stands with her feet below the water level. She has to tuck her legs under her to give him space to row. The tide is turning, he says, and they will go upstream first. He likes to see the Houses of Parliament from the river; she will have quite a new view of London. He has removed his jacket and she can see the muscles bulging and flexing under his shirt sleeves. He rows energetically, as if there is haste, and soon his face reddens under the freckles.

She should say something. The least she can do is make conversation for him. She clears her throat. ‘Do you row in Falmouth?’

He nods as he bends forward. ‘Sometimes. Up the river. Penvenick keeps boats.’ The oars trail a moment. ‘Easiest way of getting around down there.’

She rubs the lace on her cuff between her fingers. The shadow of her straw hat makes an ellipse on her grey linen skirt. Water drips from the oars. She should think of something else to say.

He glances at her. ‘There are some places where the trees grow right out over the water. You can row under them, into the woods. Inlets without paths. Jungle, I sometimes think, though I’ve never seen a jungle.’

She looks up. ‘Should you like to?’

‘Maybe. I’d like to see more of the world. And you?’

The river swirls around the bridge pilings, making whirlpools and eddies of foam. The water is still silent and she can hear the oars dip and drip. Even from so close, she can’t see into the river at all, as if it’s really only two-dimensional.

‘I hope only to be a doctor. It is ambition enough, for a woman.’

He pauses. ‘Look up. You can see Westminster. St Paul’s. But you have almost achieved that ambition. Surely there are more to succeed it?’

She shakes her head. She should be working, should have stayed in her room with her books. ‘It is sufficient. More than sufficient. Many would say that I already expect too much.’

He leans to his oars again. ‘And I say they are wrong. Your degree is only the beginning. Tell me then, how did you find the asylum?’

Wind comes over the water to ruffle her hair and tug her hat. ‘It was both better and worse than I expected. The inmates seem safe enough. It was not dirty. Many of those I saw are encouraged to occupy themselves, or perhaps even compelled to do so, though I am aware that there are certainly others I did not see.’ The ‘back wards,’ the places where dirty and refractory patients are kept. She clasps her hands around her knees. ‘But it was quite without hope. There is no treatment. Some cases seem to resolve with time, but for the great majority their incarceration is permanent and their condition can only worsen in the unrelieved company of the mad. The asylum exists only to pass their time. Until death. A kind of warehouse.’

He stops rowing. The boat begins to drift, sideways. Stone sidings loom above them, as if she and he are ducks or frogs, creatures on a smaller scale than the surrounding edifices. ‘But that is dreadful. An appalling thought. There is a resident doctor?’

She nods. It seems less dreadful here, floating in the sunlight. ‘He conducted me around. Although he cannot approve of women doctors. He conceives his role as being to treat the inmates’ physical disorders, where they exist and where the patients are able to give any reasonable account of their symptoms. In many cases, it is hard to distinguish delusion from sickness. He told me for example of a patient who believes that there are maggots inside her skull, feeding on her brain. She complains also of headaches and odd sensations in her ears, and it seems to me not impossible that there is some physical cause of these discomforts from which a disordered mind might deduce the presence of maggots; that in such a case the physical symptoms may precede the mental disturbance.