Hi - just a bit of back-up info.
This story is called 'Round the Bend' because, in Victorian England, most mental asylums were conveniently placed behind other houses, so as to be out of sight. Anyone who dared to walk 'round the bend' would be faced with one of those building - those buildings that could not be ignored forever.
As you might have guessed, that is where the phase 'You're driving me round the bend' derives from.
Round the Bend
Kitty wanted to be a sailor, and all was fine. Charlie wanted to be a girl, so Mama cried and cried.
Katherine Ford had the ‘mother instinct’ from birth. She had been born a caresser, a soother, her Mama used to say. From birth, Katherine had always been gentle; she had suckled with timidity, she had only cried in desperation, and she had let anyone hold her.
When Katherine Ford was nine, and her brother, Charlie, was three, they had found a baby sparrow – weak, lithe and unfortunate – on the side of a dusty road. She and Charlie had sat with it for two hours, waiting for its mother to come back, but she never had. Charlie had wished to hold it – he reached at it with clammy, pink hands, but Kitty had read the animal encyclopaedia, and knew that by touching it, they would be stopping the mother from loving it for evermore. ‘Eat your apple and be quiet, Charlie,’ she had said, curtly, with a stroking hand. ‘We will wait a little longer for its mama to come by, and then we’ll go homeward.’
As the hours lapsed, their patience withered, and Katherine – or Kitty, as she was then – had bent towards the wide-eyed bird, that was too fragile to move. ‘He is obviously the runt,’ she explained to Charlie, with a childish knowingness. Charlie listened, captivated. ‘The mother saw that he was not like the other birds, and cast him off. She didn’t care whether he lived or died – poor birdie.’ With her motherly touch, she caressed the sparrow with one finger. It did not flinch, but warmed to her touch and leaned as well as it could towards her.
‘How d’you know it’s a he?’ asked Charlie.
‘I don’t. Come, Charlie, give me your jersey. I need it to keep the bird warm. We must take it home with us, and feed it up till it is big and strong.’ And then, to the bird: ‘I will not give up on you, birdie.’
They had taken it home, snug in Charlie’s jersey, and kept it underneath Kitty’s bed at night, and on the windowsill by day. No one had ever known about the bird – named Luck by Charlie – but the two children, who were close as can be.
And when Luck one day learnt to fly, after a grand three months in Kitty’s chamber, they watched with awe, with held hands. ‘Look at him fly!’ Charlie had whispered.
‘Lucky Luck,’ agreed Kitty, with a proud heart.
And so, as a mother by instinct, it was only to be some time for Katherine was to be a mother by reality. At the time that this story occurred, Katherine was thirty-two and married to Rufus Ford, a banker. They had three children: Lucius, Rufus II, and Jemima. They lived in a large townhouse in London, just a stone’s throw from the Thames. Katherine was happy, wiping dirty chins and kissing scratched knees. She took pleasure in listening to her children read, and correcting them as they stumbled over hard words. She held Jemima tight and praised her when her menstrual cycle began. She did not protest when Mr Ford hinted at his desire for another son.
‘Will you stay and play with me tonight, Mama?’ asked Jemima, on a Thursday night. She was fifteen but still enjoyed her idea of ‘playing’. She would take her fourteen porcelain dolls from their glass cabinet, redress them, comb their inhumanely soft locks, and kiss them all. Jemima always did this alone on a Thursday, because her mother, who was not quite perfection, had a Bridge Night.
‘I cannot, sweeting.’ Katherine was said, poised, at her vanity-table, putting on her pearl earrings. She smiled at herself – she was getting old now, but her nice clothes and plentiful jewellery were nice substitutes – and batted her eyelids. ‘Anyway, soon you will have a small brother or sister to teach the rules of the games to. Then you will play to your heart’s intent.’
‘I want to play with you, Mama. I have seen you play Bridge, and it is not very interesting. It is more than anything just a lot of fat old ladies having a gossip.’
‘I am not fat; I am not old.’
Jemima looked sulky, Katherine could see in the reflection, and that was why she was spiteful. ‘Maybe that’s why you go – you are the prettiest of them all, and take pleasure in your vanities.’
‘Jemima, what nonsense! Now leave me, please, for I cannot look my best when I am quarrelling with you.’
Jemima was gone instantaneously, with a slam of the door in response. Katherine sighed; she wished she could stay and be with her children, but what awaited her was infinitely more important. Bridge did not await her – the silly old women with their gossip did not call to her. Reality waited her – hard and crisp and hard to adjust to – and there was naught she could do to prevent it.
‘Miss Reynolds, come this way.’ Katherine always used her maiden name on a Thursday night. It would not do if her husband were connected to her weekly actions. She always winced under the sound of a lie.
They turned round the corridor and towards a firm, oak door. The man turned to her, passed the key and nodded. ‘Call when you’re to leave,’ he ordered, dim-eyed. And then he left and she was free.
Katherine grimaced, placed the key in the lock and turned. It swung open immediately, as though relieved on some great weight. Light alluded dark. A man sat in the corner, on a stack of straw. A tin beside him was full to the brim was stagnant urine. He glanced up, wide-eyed.
It always hurt Charlie to see Kitty look at him when he was this way. She, in her prim housewife clothing, with her pearls and ringlets in her hair, come to see him, who was bearded and thin and proposed mad. There was always the same stabbing feeling.
But Katherine always became Kitty when she saw Charlie. She ran a little and fell to her knees beside him, careless of the grime. She embraced him, soothed him with her kisses. She brought a flicker of life into him, each and every time.
‘Are you feverish? Oh, I have missed you! Will you eat something?’ She brought a slice of cake from the folds of her shawl. ‘Tell me, are you ill? Oh, Charlie!’
Charlie took the cake and demolished it. He took his sister’s hand. ‘Kitty! Kitty!’
Kitty’s eyes filled with tears. ‘My poor Charlie.’
Charlie had been incarcerated in an asylum for seven years yet, and Kitty had visited him nearly every week since, but it always obliterated her heart to see him suffering in such a way.
Charlie grasped her hands. ‘Get me out! Get me out!’
‘Here, Charlie.’ She took out her pearl earrings and hooked them onto the ears that she had once pierced herself. And then she removed her pearl necklace and looped it round his neck. To sooth him, she cooed, ‘Pretty Charlie, pretty Charlie. All the men with love you, Charlie.’
Charlie was soon recovered. He felt the jewellery on him and smiled in a strange way. ‘But I cannot see!’ he said.
Katherine had brought the hand mirror that always lay on her vanity table, but was better in Charlie’s hands. He sat for several minutes, loving his reflection. All the while, she watched him with that mixture of pride and disgust that was familiar to her. ‘You look like a true woman, Charlie,’ she lied into the thick odour of his cell. ‘My dear Charlie.’
And when she left, taking her jewellery and his mirror with her, and the memories of his disappointment as she had taken them away, the man from before attempted casual conversation. ‘He wails for “Kitty” every night, ma’am. Do you know her?’ Not waiting for an answer, he continued, ‘I’ve been here a while and I knows a lunatic when I see one. Begging your pardon, ma’am, but he’ll not be coming out of here any time soon.’
Katherine nodded, but as she reached to door to leave the building, she turned to him. ‘Perhaps he is a lunatic, sir. Perhaps he will never leave. But there is something that I am sure of – he was not mad when he entered this hell. He was different, that is all. But this place, with its prison-like demeanour, and the likes of you as staff, has turned him into a different person. He was my beautiful, courageous brother, sir,’ she whispered, hoarsely. And then she met his eyes. ‘But now he is only a broken man.’
The man said nothing. Katherine seeped into the night. She walked round the bend and back into polite society. She cried into the darkness, deprived of her brother.
