The Book Collector Page 11

  Those were the words that rang in her head as she left the doctor’s. ‘Best wishes to Archie.’ As if in some way this comment undermined the sanctity of her world, suggesting that she was actually in someone else’s world.

  As she walked back through the village, she wondered about returning to the field. She decided not to. She reached the house, where she saw Clara at the kitchen window, her hair glinting in the sun. She looked like a visitation, a hard angel, cut out from stained glass. Violet suddenly felt, I’m not ready to see her, not up to pretending to be normal. I’m too tired.

  Without seeming to make a decision, she had turned and was walking back out towards the fields and forest. She walked through the wood, the trees gently brushing her cheeks. It had been a delusion, wasn’t that what the doctor had said?

  She found her breathing grow heavier. As she approached the stream it looked exactly the same as it had when she had shown Archie the scene earlier. The water flowed gently. She peered into the stream. There seemed to be no disturbance to the pebbles or indentation in the sandy bottom. She took off her shoes and socks and entered the water. It was freezing, like a wild animal biting into her flesh. She walked further into the water. The reflection of the sunlight on the water still concealed some of the bottom of the stream. If she could look directly down, using her body to shield the water from the sun, she could see the bottom clearly.

  There were just some golden pebbles and a few jagged black rocks. Some delicate strands of green weeds, waving in the currents. Something had been caught on one of them, a thread of silver light. She bent down into the cold water, her hand feeling as if it had been turned to stone. She carefully plucked the weed, tugging it out of the pebbles. It came away quite easily.

  Unable to bear the cold any longer, she staggered out of the water and collapsed onto the bank. Her legs had grown purple, but she was holding the weed tightly in her hand, slimy and cold, like a small slithering fish. She opened up her hand and there on her palm lay the weed, thin and delicate and frail. Caught up in the weed was a glittering piece of metal, a silver pendant in the shape of the letter B. She pulled the pendant out from the weed. B for Betsy. The pendant was cold and hard, and real to the touch of her skin.

  Later, she hid the piece of jewellery in her jewellery box. They had taken all her secrets away from her in the asylum. They had shone a light on them and seized them for themselves.

  Chapter 30

  SHE RETURNED TO London and to Lavinia’s grand house in Eaton Square, with the black ornate balconies and the walls white as icing on a wedding cake. To her surprise the butler let her in without question and again showed her up to the drawing room to wait. She picked up a book from a table. On the cover was a fine ink drawing: it clearly was a tattoo. A tattoo of a ship’s wheel, the circle with the spokes of the wheel dissecting it. She touched the inky artifice of the wheel. The cover felt like skin, she thought. And now the wheel lay in the centre of a book’s cover. She opened up the book. It was of a book of poems by Milton.

  Lavinia came in to see her looking at it.

  ‘A beautiful edition, don’t you think?’

  Violet nodded.

  ‘Very rare.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did you get it from?’

  ‘I bound it for the wife of a captain whose body was washed up onto the shore. She never collected it from me. Some like to bind books in human skin as a keepsake. Can be of someone who is loved. A widow might bind her late husband’s skin to remember him by, or a lost daughter.’

  ‘How many of these collectors are there?’

  She shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘I have no idea . . .’

  ‘It all sounds grotesque,’ Violet said. ‘Books bound in human skin.’

  ‘Never underestimate the ingenuity of the human mind. What is it that Shakespeare says? “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” Physical transience comes second to the permanence of art and genius. Books take precedence over our insignificant human mortality.’

  ‘How extraordinary.’

  ‘Do you think so? It just seems sensible to me. Like keeping someone’s hair in a locket. It’s not so different. Archie asked if I would do this for him, too.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Take some skin. To bind a book. I imagine it was the book you were asking about the last time you were here. He had a book of fairy tales he had been planning to give Rose on their first wedding anniversary. She had always loved fairy tales.’

  ‘So you did? You bound a book in her skin?’

  ‘Yes. It worked beautifully. I had to dry the skin first. And stretch it. She had pale skin. It took the green dye well. He wanted that piece of skin especially, to remind him of her. It took a while to do this. By the time I had finished, he had married you.’

  Chapter 31

  SHE HAD ALWAYS trusted him, his sense of convention. She had trusted him with her life. And she had believed in their marriage, she had believed that if they just both kept walking without looking down, they would get to the other side. She had let him into her heart when she should have erected barriers around it and built walls and dug a moat beneath and filled the moat with deep water.

  One night she followed her husband down the road again. He walked through the forest but this time he didn’t take the road to the asylum. He continued walking through the forest to a sheer rock face where a tunnel had been roughly hewn into its side. She watched as he disappeared into it. She found she couldn’t go any further. She was scared of what she might discover. She ran back home and went to bed and slept long and dreamlessly.

  The next night, she got out of bed. It was a moonlit night and she could see everything clearly. Archie was sound asleep. She got dressed and crept out of the house and went down the garden to the woods. At first she missed the tunnel and had to retrace her steps using a deformed tree, bent over low like a witch, as a marking post. At the entrance of the tunnel she could hear crying sounds or was it just the cry of an owl from far above? She entered the tunnel and came to a series of doors. She tried one, but it was locked.

  ‘Is anyone here?’ she cried out. But there was no answer. Then she heard music coming from inside one of the rooms. It was piano music, the sound of Schumann, one of his last sonatas. Was someone playing on the piano? Or was it a recording?

  ‘Is anyone there?’ she shouted over the music.

  She walked back home, her heart pounding at what she was discovering about her husband. This new fairy story she had been plunged into against her will.

  In the morning she came downstairs. She heard the same Schumann sonata she had heard in the cave coming from the piano in the drawing room. She went to the doorway. She recognised the golden hair of Clara’s head as she bent over the piano. Had it been Clara who had been playing the piano in the cave? Violet quietly stepped away from the doorway.

  Violet confronted Archie when he returned home.

  ‘It’s to do with the book,’ she said. ‘The book of fairy tales. You used Rose’s skin. For the binding. And now you are murdering women taken from the asylum. And Clara is helping you. What are you doing with them?’

  Archie looked at her astonished. ‘Have you gone completely insane? What are you talking about? Using Rose’s skin to bind a book does not make me a murderer! You need rest. Go to bed. I’ll call a doctor.’

  ‘I don’t need a doctor.’

  When she started screaming she found she couldn’t stop.

  Archie shouted out for Clara. A few moments later she came rushing in. Violet deliberately knocked over the velvet armchair to block Clara’s way. It crashed to the floor. But it made no difference. What was substantial in the room were desires and fears. The air had become violent with possibility.

  ‘Felix,’ she shouted. ‘What about Felix?’

  They were both approaching her as she backed into the wall. How could she escape? She was struggling to think clearly.

 
‘Felix will be fine,’ Archie said.

  They were about to grasp her when she heard the door open. Felix, small and intent, stood in the doorway.

  ‘Mummy,’ he said.

  She nodded dumbly, trying not to cry, not to worry him. ‘Go back to bed,’ she whispered.

  Clara quickly swept him up and she could hear them going upstairs.

  Archie was now standing over her.

  ‘What are you going to do, Archie?’

  He smiled. ‘Nothing. There’s no need to worry. I am not going to harm you. You are in a delusionary state, dearest.’

  His dark eyes looked fondly, almost flirtatiously, at her, trying to beguile and convince her, she thought.

  ‘No,’ she shouted. ‘I’m fine. Leave me alone.’

  She looked frantically around. She had to stop this. She saw a silver paperknife on a table and grabbed it. She flashed the blade at him and he took a step back.

  ‘Don’t be foolish, Violet. I’m going to do you no harm. I’m wanting to help you.’

  Again that fresh innocent smile. She felt a moment’s doubt. Was he right? Was this all fantasy? Had she gone mad again? But she kept the paperknife stretched out in front of her, aimed at Archie’s chest to prevent him from coming any nearer.

  She could see his confusion, his fear of her impulsiveness.

  ‘I know all about you. Where you go to at night,’ she cried.

  ‘We both just want to help.’

  ‘So you deny you know anything about these missing women?’

  ‘Of course. Do I look like a murderer?’

  She looked at him. No, he didn’t look like a murderer. But hadn’t that been the point all along, that Archie didn’t look like a murderer. He had been different from how he appeared. He had always looked so plausible.

  ‘If we take you to the asylum, they will be able to help you, to get you through this. It will be best for Felix. You want the best for him, don’t you?’

  How predictable of him, to use her weakest point, Felix.

  ‘You don’t want him to come to any harm again, do you?’

  She felt the paperknife waver and Archie lurched forward and wrenched it from her hand. He then grabbed her roughly around the waist.

  ‘No,’ she screamed.

  She struggled but he was far too strong for her. Clara returned downstairs and they pulled her up the stairs to bed still screaming. Archie forced open her mouth and Clara poured laudanum down her throat until she fell into a fitful sleep.

  A few hours later she woke up. She looked at the clock: it was midnight. She heard noises downstairs. Someone had come into the house; that must have been what had woken her up. A few moments later there was a knock at the door and the local doctor came in, next to her husband. This time his face had features and she was astonished at how fair and young he looked. He smiled gently at her as if she were a patient. And she suddenly realised that she was a patient, that was what she had become again.

  ‘Your husband called me, Lady Murray. He’s worried about you.’

  She simply looked at him, not knowing what to say, suddenly vulnerable lying in bed as the men in suits stood in the doorway.

  ‘I mustn’t look weak,’ she thought. ‘I mustn’t start feeling paranoid. That is what they think I am. I must seem calm and sane.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s a misunderstanding.’

  The doctor came and sat down by the bed. She stared at his mouth. He took her hand and held it firmly, like a romantic lover, she thought. He measured her pulse.

  ‘Her pulse is absolutely normal.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It would be.’

  ‘Otherwise you’re feeling fine?’

  ‘Just a bit tired.’

  ‘Your husband says you’ve been talking about a book, a book of fairy tales.’

  But she saw the two men exchange glances. He had come for her, not to help.

  ‘It’s just a misunderstanding,’ she repeated. ‘He buys so many books.’

  Yes, she thought, he buys so many books. She had got confused. Her heart was pounding. She had to appear normal.

  ‘You’ve been ill for quite a while now, haven’t you, since the birth of your son? But you are a lot better than you were. How long was your stay in the asylum?’

  ‘Over a month,’ Archie said.

  ‘My husband. He is a book collector.’

  The doctor produced a syringe from his bag. ‘I know that, Violet.’

  ‘You don’t understand. The book of fairy tales. It’s bound in Rose’s skin.’

  ‘You are hallucinating.’

  ‘No. You must help me.’

  But she could see the patient look in his eyes meant he didn’t understand. The lack of natural incredulity meant he didn’t believe the truth.

  He injected her and, still struggling against the sleepiness, she whispered, ‘Felix . . . Felix,’ before falling into unconsciousness.

  Chapter 32

  SHE WOKE UP in the asylum in the familiar long serge nightgown. She felt paradoxically relieved – perhaps it was all a delusion, these thoughts were insane. This was where she belonged.

  The asylum doctor came in. He exuded his normal warmth and paternalism.

  ‘This is the day of your new treatment.’

  She was confused. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s a pioneering method. It will stop any of those nasty delusions coming back.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘Rewires your brain. Absolutely painless.’ He smiled at her reassuringly.

  Her heart was beginning to race. She remembered the woman in the wheelchair in the reception room. ‘I don’t want it.’

  ‘I’m afraid you don’t have any choice in the matter. I have discussed it with your husband and we both agree that this is what is best for you. You have to think of Felix, too. Your husband has signed the forms.’

  She was feeling like she was going to be sick. ‘He wouldn’t want this for me.’

  ‘He just wants to help you. As we all do. Help care for your baby.’

  ‘Let me see the forms.’

  He showed them to her. There was Archie’s signature, clearly written, giving his consent. She started to scream. The doctor immediately grabbed her, called for the nurse and they held her down on the bed while he gave her another injection. She felt the cold liquid course through her veins.

  ‘Just a sedative. To help you sleep.’ And after a while she became infused by a feeling of calm, and her hands fell still.

  Chapter 33

  WHEN SHE WOKE up she was in a high hospital bed, in part of the asylum she had never seen before, in a brightly lit room. Her legs and wrists were tied by shackles to the bedposts. A leather helmet encased her head. Wires led from her forehead to a machine on a trolley by the side of the bed.

  The nurse came in. Her eyes seemed too big for her head, Violet thought, like large orbs. They were dark brown, like the fake eyes on an owl’s wings, and they stared unblinkingly at her. Violet looked down at her own body covered by a coarse cream linen shift of rough cotton, that oddly gave her some comfort, as its roughness on her skin reminded her of her own flesh. The nurse was wearing a blue uniform, with a crisp apron as white as snow and a little cap perched on her head. Violet, because of those eyes, could imagine her head rotating right round, like the other nurse’s had.

  ‘Are you feeling better?’

  Violet nodded. It was coming back to her, the fear of her husband. She heard the voice in her head saying, ‘He will want to kill you, too.’ Standing by her bed the doctor was examining the machine and carefully adjusting the dials.

  ‘We’ll start off at a low voltage, nurse.’

  She tried to move her lips, to say that she was sane, but found there was a leather strap binding her mouth. The doctor looked down over her.

  ‘Don’t worry, Lady Murray, you will be perfectly fine. The leather is to stop you biting down on your tongue. We don’t want you hurting yourself. This is
only going to take a few minutes.’

  Her eyes widened with fear. The light in the room was so bright. She couldn’t move. They were bustling about and talking in low whispers. She could do nothing to help herself. She was powerless. Her eyes filled with tears of absolute fear. How did they know that the treatment would not harm her? It might eradicate who she was. It seemed so unpredictable.

  The doctor turned the dial and a flash of light went through her head, like lightning. It was as if the entire world had exploded in a globe of light. This is what death is and then blackness.

  She regained consciousness with the room slowly coming into focus again. The nurse at the machine still had her back to her, as if no time had passed. The doctor was looking down at Violet, his forehead furrowed. Her whole body was aching and she had the worst headache she had ever known. But I don’t feel any different, she thought triumphantly. As if reading her mind, the doctor quickly took out his notebook and made some notes registering her reaction. This was where insanity lay, she thought, in his taking down of notes.

  He turned to the machine. Tears again started to pour down her face. Her head began shaking, no, no, stop it, but she had been silenced and the doctor turned the dial higher. She felt like a horrible nightmarish mechanical toy, at the whim of her human master. Except he wasn’t human, he was less human than she was.

  Her whole body shook. Her body arched as much as the restraints would allow and she felt the hard leather strap between her lips and teeth as she bit down. She lost control of her bladder and the sheets grew warm and wet around her. The neural rebirth of her brain took on the form of fire. Pyrotechnic blooms of thought. A flashing light illuminated her brain, as if she had become the sun. It was a kind of ecstasy and she thought, life will never be the same again.

  Chapter 34

  WHEN SHE WOKE up, Archie was standing by her bed. He was giving her his grin that always disarmed her but at the same time she thought, why is he smiling? What is there to be smiling about?

  ‘Hello darling,’ he said.