Beyond the Veil of Tears (28 page)

‘Wait here.’ May raced back the way they’d come and returned in a few moments, coughing and her eyes streaming, but carrying one of the straight-backed chairs from the
nurses’ station in the ward, along with a still-smouldering blanket. Positioning the chair beneath the window, Angeline steadied it as May climbed onto the seat and then onto the back of it
and hoisted herself onto the narrow window ledge. Passing May the blanket, Angeline watched as she wrapped it round her hand and arm, before punching the glass in the window as hard as she could.
It shattered immediately, fragments of glass raining down on Angeline’s uncovered head and into her loose hair, although the worst of it fell outwards into the courtyard, which housed the
small outbuilding holding the shower-bath for the hospital wing and seclusion rooms.

Flames were now licking under the far door and the black smoke from the hospital wing was thicker. May had breathed in great gulps of the fresh night air, and as Angeline sank down onto the seat
of the chair, coughing and choking, May positioned the folded blanket across the base of the window to protect them from any remaining shafts of glass and then leaned in, her arm outstretched.
‘Come on, reach up to me.’

Still in the powerful grip of the sedative and with her chest aching from the inhalation of the foul smoke, Angeline shook her head. ‘I can’t.’ She just wanted to lie down and
rest.

‘You must. Angeline, you must. For Verity, if not for you. Do you think she’d give up, in your place? Don’t let her die for nothing. We can escape this place tonight – I
know we can. Who will be able to say exactly who died and who didn’t? This is our chance, and we have to take it.’

‘We can’t escape.’

‘We can. When I came back in for you and Verity, the superintendent had already ordered the gates to be opened to allow in help from the village down in the valley, and messengers have
been dispatched to Newcastle asking for aid from the fire brigades. The staff have got their work cut out with the patients who have managed to get outside – the hubbub is deafening. If we
don’t escape tonight, we never will. Your husband will make sure you rot in here, and they’ll keep me as an unpaid skivvy for the rest of me days. I’ve seen it with other
patients, lass. I know what I’m on about.’

Angeline looked up at May through blurry, streaming eyes. Something outside herself enabled her to climb onto the chair and reach for May’s hand, but she still couldn’t grab the
bottom of the ledge or May’s fingers.

‘Wait a minute.’ May swung her legs out of the window and turned onto her stomach, as her feet found a foothold in the old stone wall outside. Balancing on her belly and with both
arms now reaching for Angeline, she said fiercely, ‘
Try
, damn it! Try, lass. You can do it, I know you can.’

Somehow Angeline managed to get one foot on the top of the back of the chair, but without anyone to steady it, as she had done for May, it slipped from beneath her. But May had grabbed her,
almost overbalancing and falling back inside as she took Angeline’s weight. Scrabbling with her bare feet up the wall, and with May dragging her upwards, it was only a second or two before
Angeline was able to heave herself onto the ledge, but it felt as though she had run a mile. Hanging there, with May now steadying her, she gasped for clean air. And suddenly there was an almighty
bang, as the door at the far end of the corridor seemed to explode and a huge ball of fire belched towards them.

May jumped down into the courtyard, pulling Angeline with her, and Angeline felt the fury of the fire singe her feet as she tipped headlong towards the stone slabs. But for the fact that she
fell squarely onto May, whose body cushioned the impact, she would have done herself a serious injury. As it was, a sharp, shooting pain in her left wrist told her she hadn’t escaped
unscathed. May had had the wind knocked out of her and lay for a minute, fighting for breath, as Angeline rolled off her.

When May could speak again it was with her usual humour: ‘Good job you weren’t Big Bertha, lass, or I’d be as flat as a pancake on Shrove Tuesday. What have you done to your
wrist? Ooh, that’s broken, by the look of it. Everything else all right? Come on then, we have to find a way out of here without anyone noticing us.’

The pain in her wrist now excruciating, Angeline held it to her chest with her other hand as she stumbled after May. In one corner of the courtyard a small, narrow gate opened onto a row of
greenhouses and beyond them stood the walled kitchen garden. May seemed to know her way about and led the way past the kitchen garden, taking care to stay in the shadows cast by the high brick
wall.

As they walked, Angeline became aware that they were at the back of the asylum, but as they skirted more outbuildings, which May informed her were the men’s workshops, and began to move
down the side of the building, the shouts and screams and general hubbub became louder.

May stopped, drawing Angeline to her side. ‘The water tower is at the back of the men’s side of the building, and they’ve got everyone helping who is able, but the fire’s
got too much of a hold. That’s why the superintendent’s sent for help. We need to get down to the main gates while they’re still open, if we can.’

Angeline gazed at May. ‘But the gatehouse? The keeper isn’t going to let us just walk out. They’ll be watching for patients all the time.’

‘I know, but we have to try – it’s our only chance. Nothing like this is going to happen again.’

Angeline looked down at her feet, which were cut and bleeding from the glass in the courtyard. ‘May, I’ve no shoes and I’m in my nightdress. How far do you think I’d get?
You have to go by yourself. Everyone will know I’m a patient.’

May looked down at her own striped dress. ‘They’re not exactly going to think I’m Lady Whoever, lass,’ she said wryly. ‘But once we’re outside, we’ll
manage somehow. Beg, borrow or steal.’ Then she paused. ‘I’ve an idea. Wait here.’

Before Angeline could stop her, she had disappeared back the way they had come, running like the wind. Angeline sank down to the ground, her head spinning and her wrist so painful it made her
feel nauseous. Verity, oh Verity! She gave a little moan. Please, God, let the smoke have overcome her before the flames reached her. May had said she’d found it impossible to reach the
seclusion rooms, but the echo of the terrible cries coming from that direction reverberated in Angeline’s head.

She shut her eyes, willing the dizziness to subside, as the smoke and screams and shouts became a sickening cacophony that made her wonder if she
was
going mad.

How long it was before May returned, Angeline didn’t know. It could have been minutes or hours, because she was sure she had slept in between. Then May was standing in front of her, her
arms full of clothes and a pair of boots in one hand, dangling triumphantly from their laces.

‘Courtesy of the clothes store behind the laundry.’ May grinned at her. ‘So you won’t have to leave practically naked after all, and I will never
ever
wear
anything with stripes again for the rest of me days.’

‘How did you get into the clothes store?’

‘I’ve got the hang of breaking windows now. These are clothes they have for the paupers who come in, so they’re not what you’re used to, lass.’

Angeline took the clothes May passed her. ‘If we get out of here tonight, I
am
a pauper, May. Angeline Golding will have died in the fire. I can’t go home and, even if I
could, there’s nothing there for me any more.’

They stared at each other. ‘We can stick together, lass. How about that? I can’t go home, either. Me da washed his hands of me when he found out I was expecting a bairn. It
didn’t matter to him that it weren’t my fault. Mind, I’m not sorry to see the back of him. Knocked us about something cruel when we were bairns, he did – me mam an’
all. I’ve a brother in Newcastle. He left home as soon as he could, we all did. We could look Jack up. He’s the only one who’s come to see me since I’ve been
here.’

Angeline had managed to pull on the petticoat and the coarse grey frock May had brought as her friend had been speaking, but May had to fasten the buttons. As she stuffed her feet into the ugly
black boots she found they were a couple of sizes too big, not that it mattered. If by some miracle they really could escape tonight, nothing mattered. No one but May was going to help her get out
of here, she knew that. And May was right: Oswald would see to it that she was incarcerated here for years, and how much insanity could you be party to before you lost your own mind? That was the
thought that had become a constant torment of late.

May had changed her frock and now bundled the despised striped dress under one arm, saying, ‘I’ll get rid of this when we’re far away from here. Don’t want to leave any
clues that we got out alive.’ Then, taking in Angeline’s chalk-white face, she proceeded to rip the skirt of the striped dress in two, making a rough sling, which she tied round
Angeline’s neck, before helping her to insert her injured wrist into the hanging fold of material. ‘Better? Good. I know it’s painful, lass, but if you can stand it, we need to
go.’

They crept along the side of the building, and now the night was lit by the glow of the fire. Skirting under the cover of some trees, they stood for a moment looking at the scene in front of
them. One or two ladders were propped against the building, and some of the male staff had entered windows on the first floor and were helping patients and nurses who had been trapped by the flames
to climb down them. Patients of both sexes in their night clothes were standing, sitting or lying in the courtyard, with nurses and attendants – some of whom were also in their night clothes
– attempting to take care of them and keep order. Quite a few of the figures lying on the ground appeared to be in an insensible condition, and a number of patients were clearly distressed,
some being forcibly restrained by staff.

Even as they peered out from their hiding place, they saw one of the female patients climbing one of the fire escapes and then clambering along the guttering of a ward roof, followed by a
uniformed nurse. As the nurse reached the woman, the patient clearly objected to being held, flailing her arms and struggling to get away. Flames were licking along the roof towards the two women,
and some male staff left their fire buckets and stirrup pumps and ran to fetch a ladder from a few feet away. But as they hastily leaned it against the wall, both women fell, screaming, to the
ground.

‘Wait, May.’ As May went to move off, Angeline grabbed her arm. ‘Shouldn’t we try to help?’

‘Help?’ May stared at her. ‘Don’t be daft. You can do nothing with that arm, and if you think I’m risking escaping this place to help them, you’ve got another
think coming. God helps them that help themselves – that’s what my da used to say, when he was thieving stuff down at the docks. And although I didn’t agree with much he said,
that rings true. You want to do another five, ten, fifteen years in here? Do you?’

Angeline shook her head and, as May moved away again, she didn’t stop her, but followed after a moment or two.

Beyond the copse of trees they had sheltered in lay an open stretch of lawn, leading down to more trees and then the huge walls enclosing the grounds of the asylum. The drive that led down to
the gatehouse was to their right. As they reached the edge of the trees, May stopped. The moonlight, added to the illumination provided by the raging fire, made it almost as light as day in the
courtyard fronting the asylum; but even here, some distance away, it wasn’t as dark as they needed it to be.

Angeline glanced at the girl who, together with Verity, had kept her going over the last months. Without the pair of them, she doubted she could have kept her mind focused and her will strong.
May was staring ahead over the expanse of manicured lawn, her lovely face rent with doubt as her black hair wafted about her shoulders. ‘May?’ Now looking straight into the vivid green
eyes, Angeline said, ‘Anything is better than not trying. All their attention is on the fire. If we can get to the trees, we can try to climb one and get over the wall that way, rather than
leaving by the gates. Let’s do it. We’ve nothing to lose.’

‘I haven’t perhaps, but you?’

‘I would rather die than become Oswald’s wife again. One way or another, Angeline Golding is dead. If we succeed tonight, we start afresh. If not . . . ’ She shrugged, wincing
as her broken wrist sent a shaft of pain shooting up her arm. ‘But we will succeed. I know we will.’

May’s gaze searched her face. ‘For Verity,’ she said softly.

‘For Verity.’

And together they left the shelter of the trees and began to run across the open space, expecting any moment to hear shouts and cries behind them and the sound of their pursuers.

‘No, oh no, Albert. How did it happen? Is Miss Angeline all right? How can we find out? How many people were hurt?’

‘Whoa, lass, take a breath.’ Albert put his arm round his wife’s shoulders. Myrtle and Frederick had arrived at the farm minutes beforehand, after their overnight stay in
London, and all day he had been dreading having to break the news to her about the fire at Earlswood Asylum. ‘I only know what’s in the paper. It being market day, Daniel went in to
Castletown with the eggs and cheese and what-have-you, and everyone was talking about it apparently. He pricked up his ears when he heard it was an asylum that had gone up, so he went and bought a
paper, to see if it was Earlswood.’

‘And it was.’ Myrtle’s face was tragic. ‘I shan’t rest till I know Miss Angeline’s safe. And this after Mrs Jefferson said she’d help to get her out of
that place.’

‘She did? Well, that’s good, lass. Now, don’t you go thinking the worse. Likely Miss Angeline’s as right as rain.’

‘Let me see what the paper says.’ Myrtle took it, sitting down at the kitchen table in her coat and bonnet and reading it avidly, while her mother made them all a cup of tea. It
began: