The Dark Street

By N. G. Ratana

How do you get to know someone who wants to be invisible?

1979 Dr Noah Blackwood, a young museum curator is infatuated with his vulnerable and secretive colleague.

Everyday he watches Maude Ede come to work, dressed like it's the 1940s and trying to hide her talents, and her bruises.

Tormented by her controlling Aunt, Maude is thrown a lifeline when she joins Dr Blackwood's Histories Department on her twenty-first birthday. This glimpse of freedom strengthens her determination to find her presumed dead mother and escape her closeted life.

Compelled to help, Noah bears witness to her life, opening himself to her struggle to exist among the cruel and the otherworldly. As Maude's past slowly unravels, Noah becomes irreversibly entangled.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rehua Publications
• Release date: Nov 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780473447786

N. G. Ratana

N. G. Ratana is a librarian who lives in New Zealand with her partner and two children.

Book preview

One

Ifirst recorded Maude Ede’s voice onto vinyl and tape when she worked with me at the Museum. The sound is scratched and hollow, hearing her quiet voice break on the edges haunts me still. I recorded her before the news broke and I’ve kept all the newspaper clippings, which have since yellowed with age.

She’d already begun to speak before I put it onto record, so I only have the last few minutes. Truthfully, I can’t stand the ache in her voice. I’ve only listened to it once.

DR N. Blackwood

Subject Miss Maude Ede

Human Histories Department Archives

Vinyl 10 Dept.1979

(Respondent) Miss Maude Ede: ....kissed me and grabbed my hand.

(Interviewer) Dr Noah Blackwood: How old were you?

Ede: Five.

Blackwood: Did you know she was your mother?

Ede: Of course.

Blackwood: Didn’t it seem odd to you? That she was in a nightie and work-boots.

Ede: No.

Blackwood: Did you know she’d escaped? Did you know what she’d done?

Ede: My Aunts always made it clear she was dangerous.

Blackwood: Did they tell you how she murdered your Uncle?

Ede: He wasn’t locked away for all he did to her.

Blackwood: Are you saying he hurt her?

(Maude Ede nods in agreement.)

Blackwood: Did he hurt you?

(No eye contact. No response.)

Blackwood: Did you see what she did to him? She murdered him, brutally and apparently she took something. I can’t find the reports anywhere, there’s nothing only...

(Rustling of papers.)

Photograph of Helene Ede. Hellingly Asylum. Christmas. Circa 1970

Blackwood: So your mother took you from outside Ede House after she escaped from the asylum, where did she take you?

(Five-second silence.)

Ede: To my room, our room. She blocked the door with the drawers.

Blackwood: Your mother told you something, didn’t she?

Ede: Yes.

(Swallows and then drinks water.)

Blackwood: Tell me what she said Maude.

Ede: She was shivering. She kept looking out the window and whispering ‘No one’s there’. I told her no one was ever there. (Silence.) She said sometimes people were in there.

Blackwood: In where?

Ede: In Beth Hill. The Ede family are the custodians.

Blackwood: Yes, I know Maude. What else did she say?

(8 seconds silence. Hands wringing.)

Ede: In our room there’s a dollhouse. Mama told me, ‘It’s exactly like this. He’s in the garden under the water trough and she’s under the floor, with our pendant.’ Mama told me, she’d escaped from the asylum to get back to Beth Hill. She said the diamonds were hidden there and she’d tried to get them, but my Aunts were following her and she had to leave. If they found her, they’d kill her. Mama said she was safer in the asylum, and that she feared for me. She wanted to get the diamonds so we could run away.

Blackwood: What did she mean about the pendant?

Ede: (Speaking fast.)Mama told me the pendant was a gift. It came from where he lived. It calls him and he comes when it’s worn. Althea must have put it on and when he found her, she was already dead. Mama told me the diamonds at the jewellers are real. She told me to get them out of Beth Hill before my Aunts do.

Blackwood: I’m not following you.

(Silence - Maude looks at her wringing hands.)

Ede: They took her, I couldn’t protect her. Men burst through the door. They took Mama away.

Blackwood: What did your Aunt Morag do?

Ede: She said Mama was insane.

Blackwood: And this was the last time you saw your mother Helene Ede?

Ede: Yes.

Blackwood: She died later that month in the asylum.

Ede: That is what I was told.

Blackwood: There’s no death certificate.

Silence 6 seconds.

Blackwood: You have no birth certificate.

Silence.

Tape ends.

THE DAY I MET MAUDE Ede was the day of my descent. A declivity which occurred gradually at first, then spun out of control.

On that day, my team and I had just returned from a botched exploration of an old factory scheduled to be demolished. Back then my team consisted of David, my assistant in the Collections Department. Socially awkward and often seemingly robotic, David was only a month younger than me. Tall and lanky with light brown hair, he stooped over his worktable, taping his broken glasses back together. I looked at my other team member, Melly, my small, dark haired, Textile Preservation expert. She was hurrying to help me stash our bolt cutters away while darting judgmental glances at me. My eyes dropped uneasily to her shoes. Melly was dressed in a perfectly lovely outfit for work, not hard-core breaking and entering and now dark muddy scuffs were crisscrossed on her new high red boots and the trim of her handmade A frame skirt was torn.

Let me explain. The evening before, we'd been given an extremely tepid (at best) tip; there was a safe on the premises of an abandoned factory. This sketchy information was 'leaked' to us from a rival Department, Egyptology. They’d dangled the unopened Edwardian safe carrot, which we all knew was too good to be true, yet I had to check it out, even if we were more likely to find the Holy Grail.

I picked up David and Melly and drove to the city outskirts in my prized 1964 Camaro, black with white stripe. Driving anywhere with David made you question your mental health as he loved signs and would read them out loud. He was agitated about the disruption to his morning routine and as the engine’s deep rumble reverberated around the massive empty factory car park he read out every warning sign in his usual monotone.

Danger.

Abandoned area — stay out by order of the superintendent.

On and on he went until Melly finally lost it (seconds before I would’ve), yelling at him to stop. He obliged by turning down the volume, though continued to whisper.

Abandoned! (Pronouncing the exclamation mark).

Inactive!

His voice never wavered and he had to swallow before he read out my all time favourite:

Stay Out Stay Alive.

A sign, which now guilty stuck out of my backpack, ready to go on my office door. David was a stickler for signs, not authority, thank God. Once inside the factory, our inner urban explorers manifested. We must have investigated the place for an hour. I took some old black Bakelite switches, heritage-fluted bases intact. Goldmine.

There was in fact a not quite empty hole in the wall where a safe once was. Egyptology had left a small Sphinx ornament, with a smiley face sticker on its head.

Nice. I nodded conceding the disaster our morning had become to the mythical creature.

Then it all unravelled miserably fast when Melly slipped and landed on the floor. We never extracted a safe but rather Melly coated in oil, dust, and filth. David and I ended up carrying her back past the concrete beams and pushing her arse up and out a window, and when I asked them to be careful of the interior of my car, Melly lost it.

Screw your Goddamn car Noah! Shocked with her own outburst she blushed. I mean Dr Blackwood. Sorry.

Its fine, sorry about... I nodded down to her skirt and boots, and drove back to the Museum, quiet and deflated.

WE ALL BREATHED A SIGH of relief as we walked in through the heavy oak Department doors and stood in our small Histories department.

The high Victorian ceilings and fittings, our books and boxes of donations, retired displays and huge old windows consistently excited our inner antiquarian. The thick buckling glass distorted quaintly our lofty view down to the busy museum steps and gardens. The wall space we had was lined with drawers, cluttered with treasures and history. Huge Victorian paintings, donations from long ago were hung high as there was no other place for them.

Within the Department was another small room. Complete with it’s own ceiling and little roof, timber framed windows all around, offering a 360 view of the Department, reminding me of a small wartime post office yet this was in fact my office. Built in the late thirties for some long forgotten wartime function and being positioned just off center within the Department it was an inordinately annoying nuisance, but was unconventionally perfect.

This impossibly large, yet seemingly small and poorly designed room for the task bequeathed to it, was where we could admire and love our work, free from judgment and scorn. This Department was our refuge. We all breathed in Histories cold, bookish air and felt the comforting surround of our second home and started to relax. I took another look at my team. We were a mess.

Melly gave me back a cold assessing stare, directed mainly at the mud caked on my brown boots. Then she looked me over. I was tall and thin with black hair, in need of a cut. I was a black tee shirt and dark jeans kind of guy though I scrubbed up in a suit. A thought which must have run through Melly's mind as she flicked a quick glance at some people heading our way. She grabbed David’s blue jacket and threw it at me, as I hastily tucked in my grimy top and nodded a 'thanks', putting the jacket on and scratched my head, trying to strike a casual if not nervous pose. Did I look like an assistant to the curator, a senior in the Collections Department of Human History? I hoped not.

We were the Department of Human Histories — Collections.

God help us. I muttered.

I THINK IN THOSE EARLY moments we were worried it was Peter and Anne coming from Egyptology to gloat. We had a somewhat frenetic atmosphere as we tried to clean ourselves up and pull the calm back into our small Department.

Who's that coming? Melly panicked, trying to fix her short pixie hair. It was too late to tell her she had mud on her forehead.

Who? David squinted up, his tie askew; tape still dangling from his glasses. I watched as a tall and stylish man in a dark blue suit, hat and dark glasses walked towards us.

Mr Black. I whispered to myself, staring at our elusive museum Director, he frequented the museum halls and annual editorials in name only. He apparently brought in the money or was the money and Mr Black being the rarest of artefacts in the museum was headed straight for my Department with a young person. This regrettably meant some benefactor had likely paid a generous donation for their child to have ‘work experience.’

Just breathe guys. I know we never get visitors so try not to scare them away. I whispered and took a calming breath, while trying to hide the evidence of our morning expedition. I scratched my head nervously, put on my black-framed reading glasses and tried to look more intelligent and less like a bank robber.

Initially our Director eclipsed the young woman, obscuring her with his lean height. As Mr Black neared, his presence seemed to pull all air and light towards him, like a black hole. He was younger than I expected, around the same age as me, yet his features were rather impossible to see.

Dr Blackwood. His voice was low.

Sir. I reached out and shook our cold Director's hand, a man I’d never actually met before. I pulled my hand back, slightly dazed by the undeniable chill surrounding him.

Working in the museum, among the unusual, delicate and unique, eccentric was commonplace and yet I turned to see the embodiment of the above made flesh and bone. I was instantly transfixed. She looked like she’d walked out of the forties, in a sea green wartime day-dress and I couldn’t stop looking at her.

Dr Blackwood this is Miss Maude Ede. The Director introduced us.

Maude Ede. Turns out that wasn’t her name, still for what it’s worth, she suited the name, even if she never thought so. She was quiet and contained. My bet was she discovered young in life not disclose anything, and I eventually found out why. Because on meeting Maude, observations and polite questions quickly led to difficult truths causing her life to unravel, and it didn’t take many questions to start her unravelling.

Example.

Where do you live?

Leads to, Oh God! Do you really live there?

Or once I found myself in the position of needing to know her bank details, and a standard form became a tangled mess. Revealing A. She doesn’t have a birth certificate and B. She didn’t have any money.

Yet when Maude opened up, she transported you there, wherever ‘there’ was. She also left you there. Parts of my soul are still scattered and dissolving in the dark places she took me too. Places she begged me to go. Places I couldn’t refuse. I forgive her now. Now that I understand. I forgive her in the hope she can forgive me.

Still, on that day, when I first met her, I knew nothing of her, nonetheless I felt an inexplicable pull towards her and it was all I could do, to try not to stare.

Melly was staring too. If fashion marks time, then Maude was well out of hers. Looking like the height of pre-war in a wardress, which buttoned up the front, circled with a thin red belt. You know those dresses? No? Well, you would if you lived in the 1930s.

She was so out of fashion it was a statement and it suited her, however it didn’t fit her. The dress hung off her; a good two sizes too big and her bare legs would’ve been cold.

Where did you find those shoes? Melly asked. My gaze dropped to her small feet and I had to agree with Melly and wondered where did she find them? Feminine yet built to last, dark leather wedges with a thick Mary-Jane strap and yet they couldn't hold my attention and although I tried and wanted to hide my attraction, my stare went straight back to her soft dark brown hair and light-brown eyes. She appeared vulnerable, especially as she was dwarfed by the almost sinister in appearance Mr Black and myself.

Melly circled her like a shark.

Is this original? It wasn’t a question and I grimaced as Maude and Mr Black stared at the dirt smudged endearingly on Melly’s forehead. I remembered myself and took a good step forward and put out my hand which swallowed her frozen small hand.

Call me Noah. I said as I discreetly pushed back the bolt cutters under the worktable with my boot. I silently thanked her not mentioning the obvious — that I was a New Zealander. I was often asked if I was Australian and the British can be rough when they realise a foreigner is responsible for presenting their history to the masses.

All you’re missing is a gas-mask bag. Melly stammered out.

I left it in the cupboard. Maude replied and she wasn’t joking, which I know now. Maude Ede didn’t joke, on account of her childhood.

At twenty-one with surprisingly no fresh Bachelor of Arts in hand, she seemed an inadequate choice for the Department. This confirmed my benefactor suspicions, although it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d studied or not, Maude would always have reached here. With her true talents still to shine, every road in her life had herded her to this place, to me. I knew it, but I didn't understand it.

Within those moments Mr Black took me aside and quietly announced that Miss Ede would be starting in Histories as of tomorrow. I nodded my unsought agreement to the edict and gave a gentle smile to a most visibly nervous girl. With a quick introduction to our team I let them know that Maude would be joining us. Melly looked to me for the lead. A ‘will we or won’t we’ accept this person moment. Melly could be mean at times, though always loyal. David didn’t appear to even notice the conversation, it was just him and his broken glasses.

I watched as Mr Black led Maude out towards the door with his hand on her back. As she left she gave a quick nervous glance back. She looked not at the displays, or the large paintings and massive windows, she looked right at me and then was gone, pushed on by Mr Black’s forceful hand.

Well, if only it were that easy for all of us, Melly huffed out and I braced myself thinking ‘here we go’. I can’t believe the state of my shoes. She fussed.

David finally put on his repaired glasses and stared at Melly. You have mud on your face.

What? Melly looked accusingly at me.

I was going to say. I lied, but she was gone, clip clopping to the bathroom in a snit.

The next morning was a freezing wet day. I headed to Histories, taking the steps two at a time. Weaving through the Victorian museum’s shortcuts, which most long serving staff knew well. One could easily wander for miles around the sweeping corridors within the institution.

The museum housed collections and artefacts, which made me twitch with reverence. Back then, before the digital age, a museum was a place where the originals held court, no tricks and no illusions. We either had it or not. No rubber molded copies of fossils fobbed off to the public as the real deal.

At the Natural History gallery I stopped and looked far down the hall and saw her. She sat on the mahogany bench outside the locked heavy Department doors, dressed in a pale blue dress, surrounded by a sea of white marble. She was so still, she looked like a photograph.

Maude Ede, a beacon of individualism, seated ethereally among the uniform majestic eye catchers of Roman columns and acres of marble floor. Maude looked down at her hands.

People usually stare at the architecture. I said walking alongside the cast iron railings battening the windows, glancing below at the Winter Gardens. As I neared Maude, I saw her dress was thin, worn and too big for her. It was also short sleeved. Her arms were pale and as I got closer I could see her veins, transparent on her porcelain goose-bumped skin.

Good Morning Dr Blackwood. She stood too fast and we ended up bumping into each other in an awkward, slow crash.

Morning. I murmured as the scent of rose water lifted from her hair. I had to swallow as my throat dried up when I looked down on her crown of thick, brown curls, piled up with bobby pins. I blinked hard, surprised at my unsought reaction to her.

Where’s your coat? It was a cold day and she looked frozen. The halls at the museum were never heated so I took my jacket off and was astonished she let me help her in it. My jacket was huge on her and in those first moments of knowing her I wondered if she was trying to make a fashion statement like young students often did, still I knew something was out of sorts. I didn’t realise then, they were all she had, old clothes that is.

Her huge eyes looked anxiously about and I stood a fraction too long next to her, looking at her. She was beautiful in a classic storybook way and I wanted to reassure her from whatever it was that made her nervous. I wanted her to feel the excitement like I still did at the museum, however David interrupted by bowling up, impatiently waiting for me to open the oak door.

Morning David. I said, noticing the Sellotape had gone and he’d melted the plastic bridge of his glasses back together. David didn’t respond he bounced in impatience on the balls of his heels instead.

It’s late. He said agitated.

It’s two minutes past eight.

We start at eight. David stared at the doors as if willing them to open. I turned the key and David and I shouldered the heavy doors open together.

Usually opening the doors to our Human History Department impressed people, it impressed me, yet Maude was a quiet girl and I never really knew how she felt about many things.

Histories is basically one huge room. She didn’t appear affected at all by our Ali Baba cave room, jumbled in places, vast and open in others. We each had a large worktable as a desk and our working spaces were often cluttered.

The first rule in any good museum is ‘keep everything’. I said as I led her in. She looked about our huge and high ceilinged jam-packed hoarders nest. These were in the times before we had our own dry storage rooms.

This is your work table, I led her over to the far corner to a high wooden table already piled with various collections needing sorting and cataloguing. I showed her how she could adjust her chair. How to raise and tilt the parts of her table. Showing her the various lamps and tools of light.

Your table is next to the window. It offers natural light, much needed and often underestimated in its worth. I said as Melly bustled in the room and sarcastically pretended to yawn.

Have you always wanted to work here? At the Museum? David asked. Maude’s eyes travelled up to David’s and she appeared completely stunned, as if his question were enormous. She wrung her hands nervously, clearly unable to answer David’s benign question.

Let her put her stuff away. Melly gently reproved, as David wouldn’t have picked up on Maude’s tension. Maude sat on her stool having in fact nothing to put away. She rolled up my jacket and her wrists swam in my sleeves.

You know there might be a jacket in the Lost Property you could use. I walked to my stand-alone office. My office, I explained as I went in my internal office, was built during the War and used as a War room. It gives it all another layer of history. I called out as I rifled through the jacket-less Lost Property. Instead I brought out a box, full of clay pipes donated by a collector’s widow.

You can start on these. I handed her the expensive pieces the Department was lucky to have. The job’s easy enough, though it requires method and it’s time consuming. I said quietly to her as she nodded. I have no idea what your capabilities are, it’s very unusual, you being here. I said genuinely intrigued as we sat at the table together shoulder to shoulder and laid the pipes out.

When she moved I smelt a trace of lemon soap under the rose water. The same lemon soap my Grandmother used to scrub clothes on washing day in her washhouse. Sunshine, lemon soap and a brisk breeze. Maude smelt like the warm memories of my past.

Her small fingers took a pipe out of my hand. My heart raced, and that she again, had this effect on me, surprised me more than anything else.

I watched as she handled the collection with confidence, picking the white pipes clean of cotton wool.

You can type out the tickets as you go and you’ll need to research the unlisted ones. I gave her a manila file with the information we had on the collection and had a double take as I watched her handwrite out the ticket on the little card being taken aback by her perfect school hand penmanship.

_______________________________________

1650: Dutch clay pipe. Rim diameter 10 mm.

_______________________________________

WHERE DID YOU LEARN to write like that? I asked, tilting my head to the side, curious as I looked down at her. She knew I was watching and a flush crept up her face. I tried to catch her eye, but she kept her head and eyes down and wrote out the little tickets. Clay pipe this and clay pipe that.

Who writes like that? I whispered to Melly as I walked away, leaving Maude to it.

Who dresses like that? Melly didn’t whisper back.

We both glanced back at Maude. Perched gracefully on her stool working intently, my jacket wrapped tightly around her.

Two

The next day I walked Maude around our Department and surrounding halls. Again she looked cold and stayed close.

Histories Department is filled with ceramics, glass, pottery, papers, metal work, textiles and jewellery. I told her as I showed her around.

Do you know about everything here? She asked while staring at the expanse of our collections. She picked up an old silver goblet close to her, then looked up at me, her mouth parted slightly in awe, clearly ready to believe anything I said.

Ah well...I know a lot in my field, however to be the best at what I do, it’s best practice to hire in the areas you lack. I looked around at our little team.

Melly reigns supreme in textiles and jewellery and you can learn a lot from us here. I gave Maude a small smile, hoping to encourage her and not overwhelm her.

Has Melly taught you things? Maude asked quietly.

Sure, I gave a small smile, she’s taught me about the importance and symbolism of fashion in the past and its cumulative effect in the present. While I don’t feel it like her, she has a passion, which I respect. Mel’s given me a deep appreciation to an area I was somewhat once cynical towards. Melly looked up, unable to hide her smile and gave a dainty, perfectly executed curtsey.

I led Maude by her small wrist to David’s table where everything was laid out with surgical precision. I noted with a grimace he’d outlined his stapler and pen cup with tape on his tabletop. He was methodical, passionless, and yet sincere in his robotic dedication.

David excels at dating and restoring. He’s dependable in his exactitude and care with the oldest of artefacts. David merely noticed us and shuffled further along his table to allow us room. I looked at her and she was looking at everything except me.

So, you know where we all fit, where our strengths are, but we need see where yours are. I said lightly yet she remained tense and tucked a stray curl behind her ear.

Where did Mr Black find you? I asked, watching her.

Pardon? She asked, then her breath seemed to catch and she looked flustered.

Come on, let’s show you the ropes. Melly put her arm in Maude’s and led her away. You’ll just have to wait to see where your new assistant will excel Dr Blackwood. Melly called over her shoulder.

MAUDE PROVED VERSED enough in procedure to open boxes on her own and read through an accompanying letter if one was attached, filling out the appropriate forms and filing them. While the artefacts, which Histories catalogued constantly changed, the processes and procedures were routine enough.

Over those following days Maude displayed a remarkable talent in understanding the past and I truly began to wonder where Mr Black had found her and I didn’t see him again to ask. When I asked Maude how she knew him, she didn’t answer, so I left it.

Maude, I noticed also handled the Victorians with a welcome complete indifference. Our Department, well the three of us before Maude, had a strong dislike of Victorian taxidermy. Melly, David and I were constantly sardonic at the inventive ways the Victorians chose to keep their dead pets. Particularly birds; birds in cages, birds in bell jars, birds in matchboxes, birds in hollowed out books, birds on hats... I’m sure you get the picture.

Melly snorted as Maude opened our scrapbook album full of grainy photographs and daguerreotypes. She looked at our collection of Victorian mothers determined to camouflage themselves as they held their baffled babies and children while they had their portraits taken. Mothers draped in sheets sat in chairs with their children sitting on them. The effect only highlighting their creepy ‘ghostly’ presence. It was exactly the typical Victorian madness, which we found hysterically funny. I noticed how Maude smiled only after looking at us, as if finding her cue for a response, her eyes remained sad.

This we can’t show, David reached