by C D Major
Declan sat up in his chair and nodded once. ‘Thank you, Nurse Shaw.’
‘My pleasure, Doctor,’ she said, coming into the room with light steps. ‘It was an excuse to return this,’ she added, dangling a freshly laundered handkerchief across his desk.
Declan was bemused for a moment before she reminded him, ‘It’s yours, Doctor – you were kind enough to lend it to me.’
‘Of course,’ he said, standing, wishing he had a mirror in the room, flattening his hair with the palm of his hand and dragging a tongue across his teeth. He moved his head from side to side, stretching the muscles in his neck before making for the door. ‘Thank you.’
He left the room, Nurse Shaw still standing at his desk. His stride was purposeful, brimming with confidence and then, as he rounded the corridor, a less pleasant thought hit him and he stopped dead in his tracks, Doctor Malone’s door up ahead. He recalled a time in his schooldays, a summoning to the headmaster’s office, and the same sinking feeling washed over him. Perhaps this wasn’t a consult after all; perhaps Declan had done something wrong.
At school Declan hadn’t got into trouble, would sit reading his book on the low, stone wall of the playground, knowing he didn’t quite fit. The other children would race around him as he stared at the words on the page, not wanting to look up; looking up invited danger. Two boys had been prodding something nearby, and Declan peeked over the pages of his book. It was a bellbird, lying on its side, trembling, one wing flapping frantically as it tried to escape.
Then, without warning, they’d stood up; one of the boys had swung a foot back and forward, a flash of black leather, and the bellbird flipped over. Sniggering as Declan yelped, moving to crouch over the broken body, the wing now twisted away at an angle, the dull, tiny eye still open, no more trembling. Before he had been able to do much else someone was hauling Declan away by his ear, the other two boys melting back into the schoolyard.
He received a lashing and carried a reputation with him for the rest of that school year. The teacher hadn’t seen exactly what happened but Declan never said a word about the other two boys, reasoning life might be easier that way.
He still had a thin white scar where the cane had left a welt on his skin; another longer one on his buttock after his father had heard and punished him too. As he knocked on Doctor Malone’s door and waited for the reply to go in, he thought back to that day in the headmaster’s office, his palms up, the agonising sting as the wood met flesh, and felt the same dread creep up on him.
Don’t be absurd, he chided himself. Years had passed and he wasn’t that boy any more. Was he?
‘Come in.’ The voice was muted by the heavy wood.
Declan squared his shoulders and twisted the handle.
He’d been expecting Doctor Malone to be sitting at his desk but the office chair was pushed back, the worn leather seat empty. Doctor Malone was standing, resting against the top of the desk, arms folded, stethoscope around his neck and a patient sitting in a chair beside him. Declan didn’t need to see her face, recognising the back of her head, the thick curls, in an instant.
‘Edi—’ He went to say her name, then stopped.
She glanced round, looking like the deer in the lens before the hunter takes his shot.
Doctor Malone was still resting back on his desk watching Declan, an expression on his face that the younger doctor didn’t recognise.
‘Thank you, Doctor Harris, I wanted you here.’
‘Nurse Shaw told me you asked for me,’ Declan said, clearing his throat partway through the sentence, mind still racing with possibilities as to why he’d been summoned. Was this it? Was Doctor Malone going to transfer the care of Edith to him? Had he been asked in for a formal introduction to her case? He felt himself swell with hope. He thought of her file, at the number of questions he had, where his therapy might begin. He thought of her sitting in the orchestra, just another person, playing the same tune; something clear and uncomplicated about her.
‘I just wanted help with administering the dose. I’m having dreadful trouble with my grip . . .’
Declan slowed the words in his mind as Doctor Malone held up a hand, a sticking plaster on one finger.
‘Papercut. Doesn’t look dreadful but it’s amazing how much it stings. I feel thoroughly debilitated by it.’ A bark of laughter.
‘Sorry, I don’t understand . . .’
‘I thought a man like yourself could help with the correct dose and application. I’ve got it all here, prepared.’ Doctor Malone waved a hand towards a tray on a trolley to the side, and Declan followed his gaze. ‘Nurse Shaw just brought it in. So if you could . . .’
He’d been brought here to administer the very drug he had queried. Was this a test? How was Declan expected to react?
He looked again at Doctor Malone’s face. His voice had sounded soft, jovial, but his eyes were watchful.
‘I . . . insulin would . . . I . . .’
‘Come on, Doctor Harris, we don’t want Miss Garrett to be left waiting around for you to finally wake up, do we?’
Declan was transported back to the orchestra practice: the sad statements she had made, the lucid way she had spoken to him.
‘I was hoping, perhaps . . .’ He should say something, remind the older doctor about his concerns.
‘It’s a simple task.’ Doctor Malone cut him off, steel in his voice now. Declan was clear why he had been brought here. This was a test, a test to see that Declan would do his bidding.
Declan fell silent, pressing his lips together as if that might stem any other words. What could he do? Malone was his superior; he couldn’t defy him without risking his job, his first job. And yet.
They stood staring at each other in the silence, just the tick of the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. Edith hadn’t moved or made a sound but as Declan acquiesced, he thought he heard the tiniest murmur; a whimper.
He moved across to the trolley as Doctor Malone watched, picking up the needle from the square of cream cloth it was resting on and filling the syringe with the right amount.
‘Need to prepare Edith for the new treatment. Finally a cure, Edith, after all this time.’
Declan swallowed, almost returning the syringe. He shouldn’t do it; it was wrong.
Then he stepped across to the chair Edith was sitting on and sank down, knees bent, so he was at her eye level.
She didn’t look at him but allowed him to take her hand. It was cold as he turned the palm towards the ceiling. He held out her arm, the creamy flesh exposed, faint marks from previous needles that had been administered in the crook of her arm.
‘This might sting,’ he said softly.
She turned her head, eyes staring at the bookshelf to her left, the stuffed hawk watching from his spot above them. Her arm felt limp; if she hadn’t made the adjustment he might have wondered if she was listening to him at all. She didn’t make a sound as he sank the needle into the skin, nor as he removed it, cleaned the tip with a cloth and placed it back on the trolley. Declan felt a desperate gloom descend on him, his shoulders weighty as he stepped backwards.
‘Thank you, Doctor Harris. That will be all.’ Doctor Malone had returned to his desk, was bent over notes, writing lines in thick blue ink. ‘And I will see you again in a few days, Edith,’ he said, not looking up. ‘Your treatment is booked and I don’t want to hear you’ve been difficult again.’
Edith said nothing, her head drooping further into her body.
Declan left the room before she had time to get out of her chair, not able to look at her as he made his way back down the corridor, his footsteps rapid on the stone floor.
Chapter 14
THEN
The flower garden made her feel calmer. Edith liked the feel of the soil under her fingernails, the heady clash of smells and the gentle hum of insects. There was space around and above her, not like in the building with its maze of rooms and corridors and shouts and people. There was no one here to hurt her, no Donna, no nurses; she d
idn’t feel so much like the inside of her was wound like a cotton reel, tight, tight, tight.
And she’d told someone. She’d told Nurse Shaw. Edith was so tired, struggling to sleep in her room, imagining someone in the doorway, every noise the sound of someone on the stairs outside, wondering if it was a nurse doing the rounds, if it was someone else, someone with a key to her room . . . Nurse Shaw was nice: she’d listened. She’d find the key.
Edith looked across at Bernie working opposite her, head bent over what she was doing, pressing her thumb into the soil, marking out spots in neat lines ready for planting. Behind her the building lurked, a huge grey backdrop with its thousands of stones and windows casting long shadows on the lawn. Bernie glanced up in that moment and poked her tongue out at Edith. It made them both giggle, their hands shaking with the tiny sound.
An attendant watched them: Malcolm, nice, older than most; he’d been here since she was small. He used to give her toffees from a tin, to put in her laughing gear he said, when other people got visitors on Visitors’ Day. Said it was a shame and ruffled her hair. She hadn’t been as sad when she got the toffees; some of them would stick her teeth together. Malcolm wouldn’t mind them giggling a little.
There was always an attendant watching them until the tools were handed back in. One time a fork went missing and they all had to line up and be checked. Martha had folded it into her cardigan. It was shaken out and landed next to her foot with a clump. No one had said anything, just stared at it. She didn’t come out to work in the gang again and Edith felt better because, now she was always with Donna, Martha made things worse.
Bernie grinned up at her again; she’d seemed happier recently, talking about the new Doctor Harris who seemed to be helping her. Edith had seen him once; he had joined the orchestra and she had watched as he’d played his trumpet, some spittle landing on his shoe, the droplet staying there the whole rehearsal.
Malcolm was walking behind them as they worked, fanning himself with a newspaper. She couldn’t make out all the letters in the headline, shwoosh, shwoosh, too fast. There was a picture of a building with half of its side missing, like someone had stamped on the edge and all the bricks had fallen off. She didn’t like the picture so she looked away. Sometimes the staff talked about the war that was happening far away and she worried that it would come here too.
She went to fetch one of the smaller watering cans, stepping over the upturned shoes of the women in the gardening gang, keeping her eyes down as she walked past Franklin, the attendant with the half-smile on his face. The same expression all the time. He said something to her and laughed low and long. She didn’t like Franklin. She’d seen him once, peering between the bars of the ward bedroom, a cigarette clamped between his teeth. Other patients whispered about him: he sold things he got them from outside.
She sped up, seizing the watering can, skirting round the patch they were working on so she didn’t have to walk past him again. Some of the water sloshed out of the spout and she went to steady it. Bernie looked up at her as she passed behind, shielding her eyes with her hand. There was soil on her cheek. Edith was about to point it out.
‘What are you doing, Edie?’ Malcolm asked, standing in her spot.
Edith raised the watering can towards him.
‘Come on, rattle your dags.’
She dropped to her knees, sprinkling some water on the patch of soil she’d put the bulbs in, gently pressing on the top as she’d been taught. They were growing amaryllis for the grounds; they’d be bright colours, although you couldn’t tell that now. The bulbs were a dirty brown, wisps of roots spurting from the bottom, and they needed to grow. She thought that maybe flowers were like people: you had to uncover the soil on the top to really see them.
It had been warmer in the last week or so and she’d already forgotten the biting cold of the last few months, the wind whistling from the sea and straight into the grounds, down and around the corridors of the building, making her nose drip, her fingers numb. It had seemed like winter would never end. Now it was good to keep her hands moving, the ground still damp where she knelt. She could feel the weak sunshine and the attendants’ gaze on the back of her neck as she worked.
Bernie finished digging and was dropping the bulbs into the new line of holes, covering them up and talking to them, as if she were coaxing them to grow, like babies. Bernie had a baby once, she’d told Edith, that was why she was put here in the building. She didn’t any more. Misty was like Bernie’s baby now, playing with the sleeve of her bed jacket and nuzzling into her neck.
Next to Edith’s gang, through the hedge, the men worked in a vegetable garden. There was hammering as they banged nails into wood, and an almost constant squeaking as one man Edith didn’t know went back and forth, back and forth with a wheelbarrow. She’d never worked in the vegetable garden but she knew Willie, who always wanted to hold the ribbon at Sports Day, spent most days digging up potatoes for the enormous saucepans in the kitchen.
A butterfly dipped in amongst the flowers behind Bernie, and Edith made a noise, wanting to point it out to her but not wanting to draw attention. Then it flew away just as a piercing cry went up, followed by shouting. The man holding the wheelbarrow was still now, staring dumbly at whoever was making the noises. All Edith could see was his head above the line of the hedge, as if it was stuck on the top of the leaves and not attached to his body at all.
One of the voices was raving, lots of words spilling on the top of other words.
‘Take it back . . . I won’t . . . I didn’t . . . you don’t know.’
He was angry, that much was clear; he was swearing and now the words were faster but didn’t make any sense and he was being told to shut up and one man had started to laugh at him. Edith started to feel the swirl in her stomach, acid in her throat. The man should be quiet, she thought. He should stop being angry. He shouldn’t say anything else.
‘Come on, Tom, don’t go off . . .’
The man got louder, screaming, and everyone was looking now. She could just make out the top of a wooden rake, sweeping in an arc; the man was waving it.
Tom. There were a lot of patients, some said over a thousand in the whole place, and she didn’t know a Tom. She delivered the mail so she did know a lot of people, but not this man.
The other man was jeering and laughing, calling Tom a loony, fucking mad as a meat axe. His laugh was like a bark, making her jump. Malcolm stepped across, moved around the hedge. Edith could feel her heartbeat in her ears, bit her lip. She wanted to stop listening but it was too hard, they were so loud and all jumbled now. Tom needed to be quiet.
There were whispers amongst the other women as Franklin with the stupid half-smile turned away to have a gawk, his eyes all lit up like it was the most exciting thing he’d ever seen. He licked his lips, took a step forward, hovering as he watched. Some of the women stood up too, craning their necks to make out more over the hedge. Franklin didn’t notice; didn’t tell them to get back to work.
Then as soon as it began it settled. The voices went quiet and there were other murmurs, movement on the ground. Edith could make out a face pressed into the grass on the other side of the hedge, one hand holding his head down. Tom. He had ginger hair and a beard. For a brief second the eye, brown like a toffee, looked right at her and she started, one hand shooting back, leaving a mark in the soil.
Malcolm was back, straightening his shirt, talking to Franklin. ‘He’s being taken back to the building.’
Franklin smirked deeper than before as if he was sharing a great joke. Malcolm walked away from him, passed Edith still kneeling on the ground. Stopped: one hand on her shoulder. ‘He’ll be all right, Edith.’
She watched Tom being lifted up, a dark stain spreading in the centre of his trousers. He didn’t look all right. She looked away, a memory of herself as a child feeling that awful warmth as it leaked out of her, or waking to find she had done it in her sleep. She clutched at her throat. Remembered standing, nightdress sticking to t
he tops of her legs, shivering on the floorboards as one of the nurses tutted and pulled back the sheets. The straw mattress that always smelt of piss. She would hang her head as the other women and girls walked past, leering at her, while she waited for the fresh sheets to be rolled back across. She hadn’t wanted to do it. She didn’t think Tom had either.
They had always made notes when she talked. Doctor Malone would look at her, big moustache quivering, and she would repeat the same facts over and over. He would pause sometimes in between writing, dip his fountain pen into the ink pot and ask something again, wanting something different, something the same? She had never been sure. She had told him about why she sometimes screamed in the night, why she woke all wet: that she dreamt she was back there, in the dark cave, with him.
She used to tell them what he had done to her but they would say they didn’t believe her, that she was a liar. Then she would be taken through to the big white room and a nurse would hold her down, hands on the tops of her arms as she screamed because she knew they would put the pads on her and wheel the machine over. She would wake up in a different room and they would have tied her down so she couldn’t turn her head. So she did start to lie sometimes, and she said he didn’t do anything at all, that she couldn’t remember any of that.
‘All right there, Edie . . .’ Malcolm was saying something to her, pointing at the soil in front of her.
‘Looks like you’re getting on well,’ he said in a soft voice, as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened and the flower garden was as still and as calm as it always was and the man the other side of the hedge wasn’t being taken away in one of the straitjackets that squeezed your arms against your body so tightly that after a while you forgot you had arms at all.
He was shouting again as they dragged him away, about the treatment, and her hands started shaking as she thought about where he was headed. A tremor she often got. She held one hand over the other, clenched tightly, focused on the water in the can, a small fly, still, dead, resting on the surface. She focused on the darkened soil, the dips she’d made with her fingers, and Bernie opposite her already, humming slightly as she dropped her bulbs into the ground: quickly, quickly, quickly.