“What do we really know about Tess Dawson? I can’t say that I know very much. A few facts. All I really have is a loose impression.”
The question was concise, and behind the words there was an undertone of perplexity. Graham Wood was perplexed – and frustrated. He had met Inspector Ann McKenzie before at a case conference concerning another offender, one who had also proved to be difficult. Then, he had been pleasantly struck by the Inspector’s grasp of the situation and appreciation of the problems in what had also turned out to be a complex case.
Ann McKenzie replied with a shrug: “All I know about her is in my report. There’s background about her family – rather unedifying, I’m afraid. But then what would we expect in a case like this?”
Her question sounded rhetorical, a hint of resignation in her voice, but she proceeded to elaborate. “A woman who buries the body of her small child – baby – in the cellar of her home and leaves her there untouched for seven years has got to be mentally disturbed. I couldn’t do it, could you? Live above a dead body and carry on with life as normal.” She reached for her coffee cup and sipped from the cooling liquid. There was something in Ann McKenzie that was both sympathetic and critical at the same time.
“Of course,” Graham Wood replied. “I’m very keen that she doesn’t end up in an ordinary prison. I’ve got to know her over the past three months. I have this feeling, Ann.” He had been walking slowly around the table in his office on the second floor of the Social Work Department office attached to the Crown Court. He stopped and turned to her.
“I think she’s a candidate for Wellbridge House.” He spoke thoughtfully and slowly. “She’s clearly intelligent. She’s a graduate as well,” he added as an afterthought, “and I think we must do our best to get her into their programme. The psychiatrist thinks she’s traumatised and I agree with him.”
He paused and looked at the Inspector. “I shouldn’t anticipate the trial but I’m pretty sure she’ll be found guilty of concealing a body and not reporting a death. But what are they going to do with the fact that there is no evidence to show that she had a hand in the child’s death? That’s where we get to recommend that she goes somewhere where she can be helped.”
Graham Wood sat down on a chair opposite Ann McKenzie and looked at her, waiting for a response. She was still something of an unknown quantity and he felt that he might have been more candid with her than he had intended to be. Ann McKenzie thought for a moment.
I’m glad you suggested this meeting.” She paused and decided to be candid herself. “My take on Tess Dawson is that her background is pretty awful. I don’t believe that she has much strength in her to withstand the difficulties in life and she’s the sort of person who’s made the best of a bad job. I think her pregnancy was a mistake in the sense that she probably didn’t plan it. Perhaps she was looking for love and got more than she bargained for. It happens to a lot of girls. I agree with you about Wellbridge House. She could get something out of it. Who knows, but when she’s in conducive surroundings she may be able to open up. I can’t see any advantage in sending her to prison, but then where women offenders are concerned I can never see the point of prison. They’re madhouses.”
“Brilliant,” Graham Wood replied. He looked visibly relieved and offered her a wide smile. “Let’s give it our best shot in two weeks’ time.”
The meeting at an end, Ann stood up, offering him her hand and smiling in turn as he thanked her for coming. Social work, she thought to herself, looking round his grim, sparse room, thankless job. But, of course, she didn’t say that, she simply said, “two weeks”, and with a final smile, departed, exiting the building through the side door, looking up at the looming neo-classical edifice of the Crown Court that dominated the precinct.
*
Graham Wood and Inspector Ann McKenzie met one more time after the Court hearing. The hearing itself left the Court with few options. Without testimony from Tess Dawson she was convicted on minor charges, with the murder or manslaughter of her infant daughter left inconclusive. Graham Wood and Ann McKenzie spoke professionally and persuasively about her background and also where they thought she should be sent. So too did the psychiatrist called to give a psychological profile of the young woman. Wellbridge House had been able to offer a place, something that Graham Wood had ascertained through a meeting with the Wellbridge team before the trial, and Tess Dawson was sent to the institution to serve her sentence.
The social worker and the police officer met at Wellbridge House on the day before Tess Dawson’s admission, in the imposing office of the director, Peter Archer. The meeting was largely procedural but there was a brief conversation between the three of them that established something of the tenor of Tess Dawson’s residence at Wellbridge. After confirming the admission date and which member of staff was to be her key worker, Peter Archer, ebullient and charming, invited them to sit with him over a pot of afternoon tea in front of the attractive Victorian fireplace that provided a focus to the spacious and airy room. He gave them a potted history of the house and then of the institution (the second time around for Graham Wood) before launching into questions about his new resident. He always referred to the inmates as his or ‘my’ residents. His tendency toward the ownership of everything around him was noted by both his visitors.
“Tess Dawson appears to me to be an interesting case. Tess isn’t short for anything, is it? I like to get the detail right. I have to admit that I’ve never had to deal with anyone who was unwilling to speak. Have you found it difficult to cope with? I think I might.” He looked at Graham Wood as he spoke, indicating that his question was directed at him and not the Inspector. She tried not to let it wind her up. She had to admit, though, that it did.
Graham Wood, seemingly oblivious to the unspoken encounter, replied in a serious tone: “You’ll get used to it and we’re actually hoping it’ll change, with time, when she’s here, but she is fragile, traumatised we think. I wouldn’t want her to be put under any kind of pressure.”
Peter Archer re-crossed his legs, shifting his gaze from Graham Wood to the Inspector.
“Inspector, any thoughts that might be useful to us here?” He smiled – to Ann’s eyes – in a rather ingratiating way and she felt her anger rise. She had encountered him before – this was not the first time – but not in so intimate a situation. And whereas then she had found him no more than irritating, now she found him pushing every button she had. She felt a sharp sensation of rebelliousness rise in her and said: “I don’t think Tess is short for anything. If it is, I can’t imagine what.” She gave him a long, level look that obliged him to look away and back to Graham.
“Can I pour you another cup of tea?” Peter Archer held the teapot and pointed it rather rudely in turn at each of them and they both hurriedly said no.
“I can tell you don’t like him,” Graham volunteered, standing in the car park some minutes later, as he flicked the lock on his car and it bleeped in reply. Ann smiled in acknowledgment.
“I don’t trust him, Graham. I think he’ll find it very difficult not to put pressure on Tess Dawson. He’ll want the opposite of what you said she needed. He’ll want to get things out of her.”
“I think you’re probably right,” Graham replied. “Nonetheless here we are and we’re just going to have to trust the professionals.”
Ann nodded in turn, and after a brief goodbye Graham left her to off-load her briefcase and files onto the back seat of the car. He drove off down the drive of Wellbridge House and she followed close behind, appreciating the evening light and the trees and the feeling of spring in the air.
*
Tess Dawson stood at the window of the common room in Wellbridge House and stared at the horizon of trees. It was hard to focus properly. She pressed her eyelids together several times then looked away and back into the high-ceilinged room, taking in the grey-painted walls, the floral curtains, the pale and stained carpet, the worn sofas and armchairs that had seen better days. She felt both slightly giddy and the first pangs of hunger. She needed to eat and had no idea when a meal would be made available or where she should go to find it, although earlier in the day she had peered into a room full of tables and chairs and assumed that was the place.
She had found the tea and coffee trolley that was wheeled into the common room at 10.30am. There it stayed, next to the empty fireplace. Now it was 12.15pm and it was still there, the vacuum jugs perched amongst cups and mugs, a jug of milk and a sugar bowl with white sugar containing white granules and stained lumps where wet spoons had been used, and a mug with a broken handle where the clean teaspoons were stacked. On the surface were coffee and tea rings, puddles of milk and water and grains of sugar, used cups and mugs and stained teaspoons. No one had cleared up. Standing on the shelf below on the two-tier trolley was a tin, colourful and inviting. In it was an assortment of sugary and dry biscuits. She had discovered the treasure trove earlier, after the eleven o’clock rush had subsided and she had braved the centre of the room. She had been sitting next to the wall on a worn, brown rattan chair, secluded and invisible, had crossed the carpet and grasped the rail of the trolley to steady herself. Looking round she saw the other inmates (that was how she saw them, herself included) seated on the sofas and armchairs, one or two on the window seats, all involved in their own thing.
Now the room was empty. Tess opened the tin and took the two remaining biscuits, one of them broken. She fed the pieces into her mouth and savoured the sweetness of them. This morning they had left her mostly alone with Mark, her designated key worker. He had handed her a schedule of classes and groups she was to attend and given her a brief tour of the ground floor of the building, pointing out the gardens, telling her where she was allowed to go and where not. He invited her to orientate herself and feel free to find him and ask him any questions she had. But she had no questions and he was clearly rushed.
Mark told her that her first group session would begin after lunch at two o’clock and that attendance was compulsory. Her activities, as he put it, were not optional, they were all part of why she was here.
“As you know, Tess, this isn’t a prison. We have a different approach here. Your punishment isn’t punishment as such, more a chance to be rehabilitated back into society. You’re regarded as someone who will benefit from a therapeutic approach and that’s what we do here. You’ll be asked to look in depth at why you did what you did and you’ll do that through group work, through art work and through individual psychotherapy.”
She looked at him and felt blank, except for a vague feeling that she liked him, and that he seemed straightforward and kind. She nodded briefly, looking at his face, and – registering the significance of this – Mark’s face lit up. A start, his eyes said, then he nodded to her, and said “see you later” and left the room.
Tess, alone again, put out her hand to brace herself on the wall, her fingers spread on its surface, her arm fully extended and locked at the elbow. She felt the solidity and coolness of the painted surface, a warm grey. The building had existed before her and would last long after her, she told herself, and felt reassured, held in a kind of brick and timber embrace.
She had nodded at Mark. She knew the instant he smiled why he had. In her small gesture she had opened herself to the possibility of returning from being cocooned in her own febrile hinterland, afraid to venture out, where her exhaustion had been easier to live with than the consequences of what she had done. She felt relief for a few moments, as if her spontaneous response had lifted a weight from her. But she knew the brief space that had opened would fill up with the exhaustion and anxiety that she lived with every minute. Except for this one. Yes, it’s a start, she thought.
She sat down in an armchair and looked at the magazines on the coffee table. A piece of paper caught her eye – ‘An Introduction to Wellbridge House’ – as it peeped out from under copies of the daily papers. She reached for it under the pile and found an A4 stapled copy of what was an information leaflet. It was dog-eared and crumpled, and the front page was covered in rings from careless cups and mugs. It contained text about the place and colour photos of the exterior, the grounds and one or two of the rooms. On the cover was a photo of the friendly facade and front entrance of the country house. She flipped open the first page and began to read. The leaflet told her about the history of the place. She gathered that there was something idealistic about its origins. There was a candid quality to the writing and by the end she found herself impressed and reassured. An interest in where she was began to grow. As she came to the end of the leaflet, Tess was even more impressed that any institution that could write in such a way about itself must be worth something and it was this and her liking for Mark that were slowly shaping her attitude to the place. She was becoming quietly enthused and hopeful.
*
Sitting at the lunch table sometime later Tess was drawn into a one-sided conversation with Judith, who had been the first to smile at her the day before, after she had arrived.
“How are you finding Wellbridge?” she asked. “Getting used to being here yet? It takes a while. Well, it took me a while. Have you found everything you need, like the laundry room? I guess you must have been shown the ground floor, I know I was when I arrived. The laundry room is at the back of the house, behind the kitchen. I suppose they told you that you have to do your own washing and ironing. It’s part of the rehab.”
It seemed very homely to Tess as Judith talked about domestic things like washing and ironing. She had always paid attention to chores at home; it made her feel as if she had her feet on the ground and that she lived in an ordered domestic world. Comforting too was the fact that Judith seemed unrattled by her lack of response, but then it was already known by her fellow residents that she did not speak, that she had not spoken during her trial nor at any time since. She was the object of curiosity, evoking sympathy in some and antagonism in others, and she was unmoved by either reaction. She nodded briefly at Judith, the same nod that she had delivered to Mark and just that slight inclination of the head made her feel good.
As the days went by Tess watched each one of her fellow inmates and began to feel that this was where she belonged. This was home. The professional care of the staff had a warmth to it and she found a peace that relaxed her in the old house with its airy bedrooms and large comfortable common room, its echoing dining room next to the kitchen that provided nourishing, palatable food. She had no worries, no responsibilities. Her days were structured, times allocated for each activity from the time she woke until the time she went to bed. She slept better than she could ever remember sleeping. She felt no impulse to go back over the details of her crime, nor did it seem to be expected of her. Anyway, she could no longer remember clearly what had happened. Here there was no past, no future. She lived only in the present.
*
After her first week at Wellbridge House she attended her beginning-of-the-week meeting with Mark.
“How do you feel you’re getting on, Tess? You seem to be settling down well and meeting other people here. I have good reports from your group leaders.” He spoke to her as if his conversations with her were two-way. She liked him all the more for it.
“You seem to be finding your feet and to be especially drawn to the garden. Ted’s told me you’re a methodical worker and that you seem to know a lot about gardening.” He paused in case she made a reply. Instead she looked at him across the space between them.
“Well,” he carried on, “now you’ve settled into Wellbridge we’re going to start you with your personal one-to-one therapy. You’ll be working with one of our therapists, Evelyn Doyle, and you’ll meet her tomorrow at eleven o’clock.”
He told Tess more: that she would be meeting with her twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursday at that time and the meetings would take place in counselling room 3 on the first floor at the back of the building. Mark would show her up part of the way tomorrow and that she was to meet him here at 10.55am. After that she would be expected to find her own way there. She would be expected to be on time. She was not to go early or late but at eleven o’clock. The sessions would last fifty minutes. He’d see her tomorrow.
After Mark had shown her out, Tess walked slowly to the common room mulling over what she had just been told. She felt a curious vibration in her stomach, pleasant but unsettling and unfamiliar, as if she were anticipating something positive. She wondered what Evelyn Doyle would look like and conjured up the picture of an elderly greying woman with glasses and hippy clothes. Why this image? she thought. She pushed open the door of the common room and headed for the trolley. She helped herself to biscuits, a cup of coffee from the coffee thermos jug, and sat down sideways on a window seat looking out over the garden. She could see the gardener cutting the grass at the front with his sit-on mower and tried to empty her mind of tomorrow’s development, of Evelyn Doyle. She wondered how she would really look.