ANNETTE

page 1
ANNETTE
BY ARTHUR ROBINSON
5 SEABANK DRIVE, PRESTATYN, LL19 7PW UK
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I opened the top drawer of Bill's desk and shuddered. "What have you
got in here," I gasped, "You've been working for forty years and I
don't believe you've thrown anything away."

Bill took this comment with his usual good humour. He was in his last
week as Reference librarian and was used to being teased for his
obsessive habits. He checked everything six times, explained everything
twice and it was almost true that he never discarded anything. I
carried on pulling objects from the drawer - staff memos from twenty
years ago, obsolete files from "Citizen's Advice notes", fishhooks,
keys and other articles left by readers.

"Annette Galin - notebook - 1937," I read, holding up a red excercise
book. "Some reader must have left this behind. She must have missed it
because it's quite full."

"Ah now, she wasn't a reader. She was part-time staff. She left quite a
mystery behind when she disappeared." Bill realised that, with me in
his way, he wasn't going to get anymore work done, and he settled back
in his chair. There were the usual

Friday afternoon customers in the library - the travelling salesman
with the voting register, the middle-aged street girl filling in time
before her evening duties, the little man with the runny nose writing
begging letters with the aid of Crockford's Clerical Directory. Later
there would be schoolchildren with their homework.

"She came from Canada and took up a part-time job in the library with
the idea of researching her family tree. She spent most of her spare
time looking up births, deaths and marriages, census records - that
sort of thing. Apparenty her mother had been born in this district and
her family were local landowners. Mr. Davis - he was Borough Librarian
then - recomended her when she applied for a British Museum library
ticket."
Bill looked at the clock on the wall. It had stopped, so he checked his
own watch. "Joe was working here during the war. He may be able to tell
you more. And if you're so interested in the book, why don't you borrow
it?"

Joe was the caretaker. I thanked Bill and departed for my own desk in
the lending library. I had recently come to the Borough as Readers'
Advisor in the Central Library, a Victorian building which had been
converted from an hospital. It was fairly busy right up to eight
o'clock and I didn't get the chance to peruse

the notebook until I reached home and had my evening meal. Ny that time
it was after nine p.m.

Sime of thre writing weas in shorthand, some in small, crabbed writing.
It was going to be difficult to make out.The first pages sketched her
family tree backwards from her parents. Her mother, Anne Smith, had
been born in 1880 and the address on her birth certificate was Kirby
House - no doubt the local landowner's mansion. She had emigrated to
Canada as a child. When she was 22 she had married Jean Galin, in
Senneterre, Quebec. They had ten children, all boys except for Annette,
born in 1910. Soon after that, she had died in childbirth.

Annette had written, "Ma told my brother that her Ma had lived in a
big house called Kirby House with lots of servants. She didn't say
anything about her Pa except that he was dead. When Grandma died Ma
came to Canada and married Pa. Things to do: Find grandpa Smith's birth
certificate, marriage cert ificate. Find out grandma Smith's, birth and
death certificates, maiden name. Find out where Kirby House is or was.
Check census for 1841, local maps."

And then, "Kirby House not mentioned in Victoria County History as
local mansion. Where was it?
May 10th 1941. I mentioned my emquiry to Joe and he said that an old
man who used to read newspapers in the newsroom told staff
that he lived there once.
There was more writing, but it was in shorthand and I had had enough
for one night.

A few days later, Bill held his farewell party. I didn't get a chance
to ask him about Kirby House so I decided to do some digging of my
own.I found out the six-volume Victoria County History and found there
was a Kirby House in the district, not a domestic building but a
hospital and I concluded that it had become this after the death of
Anne Smith's wealthy parents.

Meanwhile, I spent evenings at home with Annette Galin's notebook. She
had spent most of her spare time at the Registrar General's building
and had found her grandmother's death certificate. She was somewhat
shocked to find that her grandmother was described as a spinster and
had died from drowning. Smith wasn't her married name and, of course,
there was no hint of her husband.

Then she had described the old man who read newspapers and had spoken
about Kirby House. "Joe the caretaker pointed him out to
me. He was in his seventies and was very shabby. I asked him whether he
had been in service with grandmother's family.
"'In service? I was never in service. What did you say her name was?' I
told him. 'I remember Annie Smith. Poor girl!She did away with her
first babe and they put her in here. Then she was used by one of the
keepers and had another. They took it away from her and she drowned
herself.'

"I told him that she couldn't have been my grandmother's house. The
Kirby House she lived in was a mansion with servants. The old man
looked at me strangely and shambled away.

I put Annette's notebook aside and went to bed. When I got to work next
morning I asked Joe what sort of hospital the library had been.
"It was a madhouse - a private one," he said, "owned by the Warburton
family. They had madhouses in Hackney and Bethnal Green besides this
one. Some of the inmates were pauper lunatics paid for by the
parish."

I guessed the answer to my next question but I asked it just the same.
"What was its name before it became the Central Library?"

We went into the courtyard, past the huge dustbins and the shed where
they kept the waste-paper sacks and withdrawn books. He pointed up to a
plaque on the wall just under the reference library window. It read
'Kirby House. 1830. J. Warburton.'

"I've never seen the cellar. Buildings like this usually had one,
didn't they?"

"There used to be. After the bomb most of it was bricked up and after
the war there was never any money to do any work on it."

"That's when the girl disappeared wasn't it? Were you here then?"

"Yes. I sdidn't go into the forces - not fit, they said. We didn't tell
her about Kirby House but she found it out by herself. I got all the
public out when I heard the air raid siren. Annette said she wanted
something to read in the shelter and she rushed back in. Then the bomb
fell. That was the last I saw of her,
living or dead. One end of the library was hit including the cellar and
they searched the rubble. All they found were some bones buried under
the floor and thrown up by the bomb."

"What sort of bones were they - animal or human?"

"The police said they were of a woman in her thirties and had been
there for at least fifty years. You wouldn't believe what went on in
those madhouses. The keepers were a brutal lot and quite capable of
murder." He hesitated and then added, "My grandfather was a keeper
there. I don't usually tell people that."

"What happened to the bones?"
"They were givern a Christian burial," answered Jow, a slight hin of
contempt in his voice. He was an old-fashioned communist and had little
time for religion.

"Weren't there any clues?"

Joe shrugged. "Only a few library books which fell through the
floor."

During the next few weeks I had to spend some time in the reference
library. The Council had appointed Bill's successor but during the
interregnum there was a shortage of staff. I had to spend more time in
the Referencer so I could spend more time searching.
In the reserve stack I found several huge, dusty volumes of the local
weekly newspaper, going back a hundred years. There was no mention of
Kirby House or its inhabitants in the 1880 volume. Newspapers were very
much smaller during the war because of the shortage of newsprint, but
the bombing of the library in 1941 had received a brief mention
together with the mystery of the bones. Later that month Annettes
disappearance had been covered. There was an old photograph of her, a
pretty dark-haired girl with soulful eyes. One theory was that she had
managed to escape from the library, only to perish under another bomb.
Idly I wondered if the police had realised that Joe had been the last
to see her alive. Thoughts of Joe taking over his grandfather's
personality were quickly dismissed.

When I started to decipher the next section of Annettes diary I
discovered that she had come to terms with the fact that her mother had
been born in a madhouse. She had been through the archives of a local
charity and discovered that her mother had been sent as a small child
to Canada along with hundreds more who in most cases had ended up as
slave labour for Canadian farmers. Annette had begun to research the
subject of madhouses. She had used her British Library ticket to read
Parliamentary reports on madhouses - the select committee of 1827 and
annual reports of the Commissioners in Lunacy. It was from the report
on Kirby House in 1881 that she found what she was looking for.
"Annie Smith, a pauper and moral degenerate aged about 40, bore two
children out of wedlock. She murdered the first and was committed to
the asylum by the parish. The second was born in 1880- and was
immediately taken into care. Ovecome by despair, the poor woman found a
bucket of water, and, with great determination, held her head under
until she drowned."

Annette had come to terms with her family's shame and was now obsessed
with the fear that her grandmother may have been buried without a
proper funeral service. "Where was grandma buried?"she had written in
her red notebook, "suicides can't be buried decently, can they? Check
the law." Annette, a devout Catholic and knowing the importance of the
sacraments, had searched for her grandmother's grave in the local
churchyard, not realising that paupers don't get tombstones. The Church
burial records had been destroyed in the blitz and the asylum records
had been destroyed on orders of the Commissioner in Lunacy when the
Council bought the asylum.

I wondered if it had really been a suicide. Other inmates had died in
mysterious circumstances when the doctor had certified an accidental
death, such as falling down stairs.If Joe's grandfather had been a
keeper at that time, he may have known the answer. But the notes in
Annettes's notebook came to an end at that point and I never discovered
whether she had solved the mystery.

December 1942. Annette Galin was in the staff room when the siren
sounded. She had stayed behind to look for a book of poetry to read in
the shelter and had found one by Hopkins. A bomb exploded nearby,
shattering a window, and she thought she would be safer in the cellar.
Clutching the book, she ran downstairs. As she reached the cellar door
a second bomb fell and threw her against the wall. Dazed and bruised,
she rose to find herself in a large dormitory. But there were no beds,
just wooden bunks filled with straw. There was no glass in the windows
but even the cold night air blowing through was not enough to dispel
the overpowering stink of dirt, urine and sweat. There were others in
the room, women and girls ,all starved, dirty and scantily
dressed.

She heard someone screaming, "Where's my baby? What have they done with
my baby?" Then she realised that it was her own voice.

"They've taken it away," jeered the inmates, "Annie mustn't have any
more babies. She kills them."

"I don't believe you," she screamed, and struggled trhrough the mob
looking for the infant.

Hearing the uproar, the keepers came, extinguished the oil lamps and
ofdered the women back to their beds. Annier waited
until it was quiet and crept to the alcove at the far end of the
dormitory. There were the buckets, already filled with water.