Mandy was pulling a comb through her hair. “Curse these knots. I have to get them out.”
“Tell him to give you flowers,” Bertha said, and Mandy’s face reddened.
“How is it that that mad old bat always knows what’s going on?”
“You are not meeting somebody, are you?” said Grace.
Mandy gripped Grace’s arm and pulled her close. “What if I am?”
“Where? How could you?”
“In the kitchens. Why do you think I volunteered to do the bin work down in that dark basement?”
A scowl came across Grace’s face. “Who is he?”
Mandy pulled away. “I know what you are going to say: to be interested in a girl in an asylum.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“He is a man who likes the look of me and I like the look of him. What is wrong with that?”
“What do you plan on doing?”
Mandy threw her hands in the air. “Have tea and talk about the weather.”
“Mandy . . .”
“Don’t you miss it, Grace? The appreciative look of a man, the feel of his hand, his body.”
“But what if you get caught?”
Mandy jumped up. “Oh, oh, oh, oh, they might put me in the asylum, call me a lunatic.” She laughed out loud and one of the attendants looked their way. Mandy moved closer to Grace and whispered, “We are going to slip through the stile down at the holy well: there is nobody around there and there is a fair bit of cover.”
“Don’t go.”
“He says we can run away together once he works out a plan to get me out of here.”
She rummaged through her clothes.
“I am looking for something to match my pink blouse. Could I wear your red skirt?”
Grace pulled out the poplin gathered skirt she was given on her first week. “Are you sure about this?”
Mandy snatched the skirt and stepped into it. “What’s the worst that can happen? Hasn’t it happened already? You know why I am in this place?”
Grace shook her head.
“I went down by the river with a nice lad when the circus came to town and I ended up having a baby. They took the baby from me, I never saw her again, and my father drove me from the hospital to here. That was five years ago. I was just eighteen.”
Mandy shrugged her shoulders.
“If I am not back in time, will you sneak a slice of bread for me?”
“What do you mean, not back in time?”
“He is friendly with the night porter. I can come back a bit later. Cover for me, won’t you?”
“Dance till your feet give out,” Bertha shouted.
“Oh, shut up,” Mandy said.
She straightened her skirt and did a twirl, laughing with excitement as the fabric spanned out.
“How do I look?”
“You look lovely.” Grace reached over and straightened the blouse collar. “Are you sure?”
Mandy giggled.
Grace stood in the middle of the ward, watching her friend as she reported to the nurses’ station to be accompanied down to the basement.
“For someone doing a dirty job you are very dolled up,” the head nurse said, as she unlocked the ward door and called an attendant to bring Mandy to the kitchen.
Grace sat on a straight chair by the window. From here she could see the curve of the driveway past the grassed lawn and the monkey puzzle tree in the middle, its thick branches stuck at angles, as if it was boxing the wind. A grey stone wall blotted the view of the road and planks of timber nailed across the gates obscured any other view.
The noon bus from Knockavanagh to Wicklow, only its roof visible, slid past. Somewhere down below, a member of staff kicked the ground and dragged on a cigarette. An awful loneliness seeped through Grace, so she took out her sewing kit and threaded a needle. A pile of linen handkerchiefs lay in the basket. She picked up one and began to hem it, concentrating on the neatness and the tightness of her stitches. If she got money for all the hankies she hemmed and the labels she sewed on saying “Made in Ireland”, she would be rich. Sometimes she worked too hard and her thumb chafed from pushing the needles through the double thickness of cloth. Her finger joints pained her because the hankies were fiddly and her back was sore because she had to bend over to get the best light near the end of the day.
Once she held a piece of linen back and left it stuffed in a ball in her pocket for days before she dared take it out, when there was quiet and the attendants had their feet up, gossiping. Flattening the fabric as best she could, with the blue thread she had pulled from the old blanket on her bed she stitched their initials, intertwined. Vikram and Grace: first the V and then the G, as they should be, husband and wife.
He would never use it, he did not like handkerchiefs, but he would never tell her that and would carry it in his pocket all the time because it pleased her so.
It was much later that night when the hunt was on for Mandy.
“Do you know where she is?”
An attendant was standing over Grace.
“Who?”
“Maureen McGuane, that is who.”
“You mean Mandy?”
The attendant walked off, grumbling to herself.
“A man was going to give her flowers and they were going dancing, just like Barry and me,” Bertha shouted out.
The matron, who had arrived at the station, walked over. “What did you say?”
One of the nurses stood between the matron and Bertha. “Take no notice of her, she is always full of that talk.”
The matron, wearing a navy dress, pointed at Grace. “Are you friends with Maureen?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where she is?”
“In the kitchens, working.”
“I hear she was very dressed up for a woman going to empty bins. Would you know why?”
Grace took up a bunch of linen handkerchiefs. “I did forty today. Do you like my stitching?”
“I was asking about Maureen.”
“In the kitchens, working.”
The matron stamped her foot. “A dead loss. Conduct a search of every ward and tell Paddy O’Brien to look around the grounds and alert the gateman,” she snapped to two nurses standing at her elbow. The matron picked up one of Grace’s handkerchiefs. “It is nice stitching. If you play your cards right, make yourself better, we might be able to get you work in a local factory.”
She looked to Grace’s face, expecting some sort of gratitude, but she was staring off into space. The matron turned on her heel and told the attendant to alert her as soon as the patient was found. Using a key from a big bunch around her waist, she unlocked the ward security door and left.
“She has run for the hills,” Bertha said, and Grace looked to her in surprise, but the old woman was picking her nails and muttering to herself.
Grace lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. Vikram whispered in her ear, his arms enfolding her. He had rented out a room in a small hotel in Bray. It was a small room, washed up and forgotten, overlooking the railway line, but the sheets were clean and the proprietor willing to take cash and ask no questions. When Grace first went there, she was nervous. Vikram held her close, whispering in her ear, slowly unzipping her dress. They made love, laughing when the mainline train thundered past, making the room shake and the pictures on the walls shudder. He liked to stroke the top of her arms, all the time whispering his love for her, so that she felt loved and safe. Feeling his touch, she drifted away, imagining they were far away on the coffee estate, locked in by the heavy monsoon rains.
*
It was much later when she woke up. She knew by the way the grey light on the ward threw up shapes on the far wall. Bertha’s heavy snoring punctuated the air: she had fallen asleep, sitting on the chair by the window, her head dipped into her chest. Teresa was beginning to shout for her supper and other women were also grumbling.
“They are very late tonight. Don’t they know we are starving?” the old lady at the end shouted.
Another woman pulled on a coat and stood at the door, as if she wanted to be top of the queue for the dining hall. As the attendant pushed her roughly back to the beds, the door opened and a man with a trolley walked in. First they were quiet, then someone let out a screech and another pulled up her skirt to show her heavy stockinged leg. The man’s face went fire-red as he ladled out bowls of soup and handed out bread.
“Sonny, you can stay and entertain us, we could do with a bit of cheering up,” the old woman shouted, and the others laughed.
A young woman still in her nightgown sidled up to him, making to touch his hair. One of the ward attendants slapped her back. “Behave and let the poor fellah do his job.”
“Why aren’t we in the dining hall?” Grace asked.
The attendant spun around. “Always the questions. If your friend ever comes back to this ward, you can ask her that.”
“Mandy – has she been found?”
The attendant didn’t answer but sniggered, whispering something to the man doling out the food, which made crimson seep up his neck.
“Is she all right?”
“Let’s just say she won’t be worrying about whether the bread is speckled with green tonight.”
Some of the women stopped to listen. Mindful she had an audience, the foolish attendant continued.
“Best to keep the rules: remember that and you won’t end up discarded at the well. Must have been gone in her head to think any man would look at a woman in an asylum.” The attendant laughed heartily at her own joke. “Not right in the head, sure, ye are all wrong in the head, ye poor things.”
“What happened?” Grace asked.
The attendant pulled her aside fiercely. “Five men, that is what happened to her, and her wearing a red skirt. The skirt was found down the holy well. She was only barely alive. You did not hear any of this from me, understand? Or I will have ye.”
The attendant clapped her hands, shouting, “Time to bed down.”
“Did he bring her flowers?” Bertha asked.
“Faith, it wasn’t flowers she got,” the attendant sniggered, putting her hands together loudly to move the women towards their beds.
Grace climbed in. She was shivering, but not from the cold. Teresa was singing at the far end of the ward, over and over, the same line: “Mandy fell down the well. Mandy fell down the well.”
Grace, not caring her feet would get cold, pulled the blanket over her head and shut her eyes tight, afraid to think of what had happened to her friend.