Strange Music by Laura Fish

over-powering. Already the gates to her freedom are locked, draped with black garments and funeral cloths, the key thrown away.
    Everywhere are memories. Everywhere I am unfolding. Pains stretch right round my back; my spine feels swollen; and, from straining a muscle whilst saddling Moses, I suffer recurring agony. Dear Papa, and finally Mama, visit intermittently. I am treated for disease of the spine. This entails the horror of regular cuppings, which I only just survive; and being strung up four feet from the ground in a spine crib, and – with the fear of being driven, quite literally, batty, by boredom and inactivity – told to lie and wait . Never have I been without that dusky-brown drug since. Many women now take it from babyhood. Were I to completely cease the consumption of it, I would die.
    The woman stares across the room. Whey-faced, she rises, a sombre figure in a black satin dress; stumbles, falls. She tries to scoop herself up and then from exhaustion, collapses again, wilting into the smog of despair. For once our eyes truly meet, that she might reach me; a mysterious brown look with a mischievous glint. Closing my eyes I tell myself I will not look at her any more, that I have been dreaming. When I open my eyes she is staring at me. Have I been hypnotized? Can such a thing be achieved in the murky depths of sleep?
    Dimly I see the woman now as a whisper not of the past or present but of the future. Vast clouds of the agony of disappointment loom over her body. As long as she takes opium, that path journeying to hell remains open to me.
    16 May 1839
    I shall demand Bro stay on the sofa in my room after the sun has set. Is this selfish of me? This afternoon Henrietta and I had another scrape.
    All about me is red. Red as poppies’ yearning open succulent mouths. Mist breathes across the bloodshot sky, over cerise sheets of deep water. Mist circles the masts of the Hopeful Adventure as she slips sedately from the bay, sliding into that wondrous sea – forgetfulness.
    My dearest Miss Mitford,
    . . . what makes me write to you so very soon as this morning, is to beg you not to take the slightest trouble about the baskets which are worth none, & also to beg for Mr. Naylor’s book . . . Don’t send it in the basket, because that would be the overthrowing of the return-basket principle. I mentioned the returning of the baskets only because I had fancied you would have no more trouble in accomplishing it than was involved in writing my name on the other side of the direction card (by the way – the first came back safely), but I do assure you that the race of basket-makers is not extinct here, barbarous as we are, & that Dr. Mitford may & shall have his fish without any return -basket to put it in. In the meantime , try to forgive me . I am sure it must need an effort – for if it had not been for this fussy & most unpoetical thrift of mine, you might not have known a word of the neighbourhood of the omnibus – not for another year at least! . . .
    . . . No plan fixed about my removal to London! I LONG to be at home – but am none the nearer for that  . . .
    I must train my thoughts away from the trivia of fish baskets. But does my dear friend Miss Mitford know what it is to be shut up in a room by oneself, to multiply one’s thoughts by one’s thoughts – how hard it is to know what ‘one’s thought is like’ – how it grows and grows, and spreads and spreads, and ends in taking some supernatural colour – just like mustard and cress on a (wet) flannel in a dark closet?
    4 June 1839
    Ever dearest Arabel,
    Bummy has just interrupted me by bringing in a ‘water-colour drawing left as a gift by Mr. Weale to me’. But no, no, Bummy! You can’t take me in so adroitly. It is a copy of a drawing of Mr. Weale’s, & very well executed by Brozie – excellently well considering that he never