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

and perhaps in the loss of others? To discover kindness, to discover that kindness is the only thing that matters. A late discovery, but then she grew up in a house without it. No, for Aubrey was kind. With whatever motivation, he was kind, to her and to May. We are not judged by the sum of our life’s work, she thinks, as if we were hands in a factory valued only for what we produce. Our labour and our moral worth are not the same thing, for what price kindness? Charity, caritas. A word for caring, not for the payment of a tax or tithe. It is, she thinks, from Aunt Mary that she learnt caritas, Aunt Mary and Uncle James and Annie and Annie’s family, all of whom dress in silks and keep a good table. Not all the words belong to Mamma. It will not matter, in the end, whether she has discharged Mamma’s voice from her head or not, whether she has been freed from those who haunt her or goes to her death still shadowed. It will matter that she has been kind, and that she has done the work to which she is called and trained. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, I am nothing. St Paul, no friend to women. A spectre from the past, or a corrective to Mamma, who despite a life devoted to charitable work has not charity in this sense? One can have charity with voices still in one’s head. The things that matter in the end do not depend on a healthy mind or a healthy body, neither on faith or nor on hope. Goodness, she thinks, is not denied to the mad.

The first ship of the morning is rounding Pendennis Point, leaning on the wind as it enters home water. All our ghosts, Ally thinks, could pass the other way across the waves, all the voices that torment us here could gather and take wing out to sea. She sees them in her mind’s eye, a host of angry spirits crossing the water and dissolving in the light of the rising sun, Mamma and May evaporating like the dew on the grass below to trouble her no more.

She had thought to be up first, to take her ease in the garden for a quarter of an hour before supervising the preparation of breakfast, but the key is already in the front door. It took some time to persuade Dr. Crosswyn to support her over this: naturally the doors must be locked at night, but she wants the patients to know that it is ingress, not egress, that is prevented. That they are safe from intruders and may leave at will or on a whim. They have been locked up long enough. And what do I say to the committee when someone goes missing, or worse, he said. It was not easy, you know, to persuade everyone of the need for Rose Tree House. It is a significant expense. It has been said that even if you are able to discharge everyone permanently cured after three months it will be no cheaper than keeping them in asylum for the term of their natural lives. Then we can tell them, Ally said, that it will be cheaper still if the patients disappear; tell them that we keep the key by the door at night for fear of fire. The newspapers of the last week have been full of the inquests consequent upon a midnight fire at an asylum in Staffordshire, where all the internal as well as external doors were locked.

She should have put on a coat, but it is such a pleasure to be outside without being muffled and fastened into thick layers that the chill is not unpleasant. And the day will warm as the sun rises. The garden is still in shade but the top of the house is patterned with tree-shadows. Ally closes her eyes and takes a slow breath: sea, dew, the smell of new growth in the earth.

‘Doctor?’

It is Mrs. Rudge, wearing a large ticking apron over a worn blue dress and carrying a trowel.

‘It’s all right for me to be out here, isn’t it Doctor? Only I didn’t mean anything wrong. It’s good to plant in the mornings. My husband always used to say. And you said we could sow seeds. We’re already late, see, with the sweet peas.’

‘It’s fine, Mrs. Rudge. That’s why the key was by the door, so you can go out if you want to. Sweet peas are scented, aren’t they? They’ll be nice to put on the table in the summer.’

Mrs. Rudge is still looking at her, expectant or anxious.

‘Plant away. I’ll make sure someone calls you for breakfast.’

‘Yes, Doctor. Thank you, Doctor.’

She watches Mrs. Rudge walk away and crouch over the soil where she left her trowel. At the very least, it will be good for the women to be outside again, to have sun on their faces and wind in their hair. Mrs. Rudge sits back on her heels.

‘Excuse me, Doctor, may I ask something?’

Ally walks towards her. ‘Of course. Mrs. Rudge, you don’t need to ask permission to ask a question.’

‘Sorry, Doctor.’ Mrs. Rudge picks up the trowel again. Her hands are too pale, as white as fish-flesh.

‘What was it? Your question?’

‘Oh.’ Mrs. Rudge spoons up earth. She has half a dozen small earthenware plant pots from somewhere, each already lined with a layer of leaf compost. She puts the trowel down again and looks at the black smears on her fingers. ‘It was only—well—some of us were saying, maybe there could be hens here. They’d eat the kitchen scraps, you see, and we’d have the eggs and a chicken for the pot now and again. But I daresay it’s a foolish scheme.’

Not foolish, Ally thinks. Just not the kind of thing that would