The Other Girl

by C D Major

  The doll, one eye staring.

  The name on the back door; the feeling he’d had when he’d seen the house.

  He returned the keys to the porter’s lodge, stumbling on the stone steps outside as if he were full of drink, fumbling with the enormous bunch of keys at every door. None of it made any sense. And if it did, what did that mean for Edith? How long had she been here? Years.

  That room: the girl in the photograph.

  Primrose.

  He didn’t see her until she was right in front of him, her mouth opening and closing as she spoke to him, the words delayed.

  ‘. . . tor . . . verything all right . . . em out of sorts . . .’

  He looked up, still on top of that ladder in Oamaru; something he had seen in the corner of his eye. Movement? The face in the window.

  ‘Doctor . . . shall I get someone . . . sit down . . .’

  Nurse Shaw was right in front of him, her face filled with questions, eyes flooded with concern. One hand wavered over his arm as if she was about to touch him.

  He stared at the hand, the clean, clipped nails, blinked once as it dropped back at her side. He had an overwhelming urge, a need, then, to share what he had seen, to speak about all the things that had been crowding inside his head, building up over that day, in the drive back to Seacliff.

  ‘Nurse, would you mind if I asked you, that is to say . . .’

  Where to begin?

  He looked again at her face, the neat arch of one eyebrow lifting as she waited.

  ‘To ask . . .’ She repeated his words slowly, a look he hadn’t seen before passing across her face.

  ‘I have a, well, I was wondering if . . .’

  She made a series of slow nods, her expression encouraging. He recalled a teacher at his school, waiting as he spat out the words, not interrupting, willing him to succeed. He licked his lips. How could he put the things he’d been thinking into words? How did he even know what he had seen? What he had started to imagine?

  Somewhere nearby other voices, shouts, interrupted his thoughts: a whistle for attention. Nurse Shaw looked over her shoulder, wavered, looked back at him. He couldn’t face her leaving. He didn’t want to be alone with these thoughts any more. He reached out, a hand firmly around her wrist, ignoring the startled intake of breath as he steered her to the nearby open door, the men’s billiard room. It was empty, three tables in a line, a sea of green felt, the balls and cues kept in a locked cupboard in the corner; everything always locked up and away from them.

  He turned to look at her. ‘My apologies, Nurse, I . . .’ He looked over his shoulder, imagined ears everywhere. Nurse Shaw’s eyebrows lifted in question. The room was ghostly dark, bluish white rectangles on the table from the high, narrow windows.

  ‘Doctor . . .’ Something about the way in which she addressed him brought him to; he could hear surprise in her voice. And something else he didn’t recognise.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just, I didn’t want others to hear . . . to think . . .’

  Her eyes rounded a fraction. She seemed a little breathless, one hand on her chest. ‘It’s quite all right, Doctor, please, do go on . . .’

  He was grateful to her, swallowing, taking care to form the right sentences. If he said things aloud it would make them more real. ‘It’s a little . . . delicate . . .’

  Did he imagine it, or did she suck in a little breath?

  He started again. ‘I know you’re terribly busy, I’m sorry, I won’t keep you, I just . . .’

  She took a step forward, bolder now, her voice steady as she looked at him. ‘Not at all, Doctor. Please.’ She nodded quickly then, that same expression, coaxing, a half-smile on her face.

  He felt the tension in his shoulders ease as he nodded back. ‘Right, well, you see, I was wondering whether . . .’ This was it. He could say it now. He could ask her outright. Was it really such an impossible question?

  Another step forward and the nurse was very close; he could see a tiny spot on her white lapel. Yellow, small. A patient’s vomit? Spittle? Lunch? The spot was mesmerising as the words jumped and merged in his mind.

  The doll.

  The name of the house.

  Primrose. Her face in the photograph. Her serious expression.

  Edith. Her memories.

  He cleared his throat, ‘Would you say, that is, I mean, have you ever wondered perhaps whether it might be possible . . .’

  She was inches away now; he felt his neck crane back a fraction, his back almost flush against the cool stone. Half her face was in shadow, one side warmed by the glow of a nearby lamp.

  ‘. . . whether there are things that perhaps we can’t explain with science. With reason even?’

  ‘I’d lov— I . . .’ It was her turn, it seemed, to fall over her words. She straightened then, took a step back, one hand up to adjust the hat on her head; her words were slow when they came. ‘I’m not sure I understand your meaning.’

  ‘Do you think people can experience things we can’t explain? That is to say, might it be possible that if an answer looks to be logical, it follows that it is logical, that there is truth there?’

  There was colour in her cheeks as she replied, ‘I believe we can’t explain everything, Doctor. Love, for instance.’

  ‘Love.’ Declan felt himself flush, wrong-footed. What did the nurse mean by that? He thought back to the image he had conjured earlier: a sleeping Edith in the turret, waiting, lips slightly parted. He felt his cheeks grow hot. He didn’t mean his next words to be so loud. ‘No, I mean, if a patient is repeatedly telling you something you know can’t be true, but it then proves to be true, well, what would you think to that?’

  Did he imagine her shoulders falling? Her mouth pinched tight as she answered, ‘A patient . . .’

  She seemed lost. He hadn’t phrased it correctly. He wasn’t sure what he was asking. Didn’t dare speak aloud his swirling thoughts. If someone had lived before, how could someone living now, who had never known them, know the details of their life? He almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of it. Of course he couldn’t say the words aloud.

  ‘A patient, yes. She has lived here much of her life. She didn’t seem to demonstrate many of the traits I’d expect to see in someone with her diagnosis, so I dug a little deeper. I thought perhaps there was something else, some other way to explain things.’

  He imagined Edith suddenly in the room with them, leaning over the billiards table, wild curls falling in front of her face, a bold laugh as she missed the ball she’d been aiming for, a kindly remark as he took his turn. He was smiling as he continued, ‘I wonder if a terrible injustice has been done; she can be so lucid, a musician, gentle . . .’

  The nurse took a step back. ‘It’s Edie,’ she whispered.

  Declan licked his lips, worried now he had said too much. Nurse Shaw had a different expression on her face. ‘Yes, yes, the patient is Edith.’

  Her mouth opened and closed, then she gave a curt nod of her head. ‘Well, if anyone can help, I’m sure you can, Doctor. She’s lucky to have you. Although . . .’ Her eyes dulled as she went on, ‘Matron did tell me Doctor Malone had placed her on his most recent list.’

  ‘List?’ Declan repeated, distracted by the thought of a returning Doctor Malone. If he came back now it would be too late; he wouldn’t be able to see Edith any more. And if he couldn’t see her, how could he find the proof he might need?

  Nurse Shaw looked over her shoulder as another whistle went. ‘Malone’s list,’ she said, watching him closely, ‘of patients.’

  He felt his head cloud as the nurse finished, steel in her voice. ‘Edith has been selected for the new procedure.’

  He missed the expression on the nurse’s face as his jaw fell open and the words bounced around the inside of his head over and over. The new procedure.

  It was confirmed. Edith would have a leucotomy.

  For a second he was stunned, the room, the nurse, the whistles and sounds all melting away so it was just him standing in
the semi-darkness. Then he snapped out of the daze, almost knocking the nurse over as he pushed past to the open doorway. ‘I must go.’

  The whistling had got worse; there were footsteps somewhere nearby, and shouts, but Declan clattered down the corridor in the other direction.

  Nurse Shaw’s words repeated over and over in his head as he made his way to the library, up on the next floor, taking two steps at a time. A leucotomy. The list.

  If anyone can help, I am sure you can, Doctor.

  Chapter 29

  THEN

  Every night waiting for noises, sleeping in snatches, waking with frightened breaths. This morning she’d seen something half-stuffed through the crack under her door. Pulling on the fabric she had darted backwards, realising they were panties: dirtied and stiff. Someone had left them there in the night. She had thrown them across the room, pressed herself against the wall.

  Deputy Matron had heard her crying, unlocked her door, peered down at her crouched in the corner.

  ‘Someone left them there,’ she’d cried out before she remembered not to say anything, the balled-up panties hidden somewhere under her bed. ‘They were there. I saw them.’

  Deputy Matron had stared around the room, seen nothing.

  ‘Breakfast. Now. I’m writing this up,’ she’d said before leaving, and those words had made Edith’s heart rate quicken, her palms damp.

  She felt things shift, time dissolve as if she were back when she had first arrived at the hospital. She had seen Doctor Malone every week then. He was the most terrifying person she’d ever known: tall and impossible to please. Even more frightening than Father when he’d told her to ‘stop’ in that low voice of his when she’d said the things that made him angry.

  He had asked her things then. She’d wanted to get the answers right. She wasn’t a liar. She wasn’t possessed by the devil like her father said. She was Edith, just normal Edith, and she didn’t want to be there in that hospital with the loonies. Then more time would pass and she would wake in a room with her lips cracked and dry and she would be wheeled through to the dayroom and lifted into a chair. She’d be given a soft rabbit with worn fur, one arm dangling on loose threads. She would stay there all day; tiny in the big winged armchair, curled up tight so that she could fool herself she wasn’t there at all.

  She received letters from her parents but she hadn’t been able to decipher them. She would ask the nurses to read them to her but sometimes they wouldn’t: no time, the handwriting was too small. Sometimes she would tear them up before anyone looked at them, not wanting to hear their words. She couldn’t write back and ask to go home. She was too afraid to ask any of the nurses to help her, not knowing if they would laugh or shout or send her to Doctor Malone. She would stay in the chair and curl tighter and tighter, not speak to anyone: attendants, nurses, doctors, until they took her through to the white room and placed the pads on her head again and then she wouldn’t remember after that.

  She hadn’t known how long she would live there. She’d always thought it would be a week, a month. Then she started attending classes, learning the alphabet and numbers as if it were a real school. Forming the shapes on a small chalk board. She was one of the smallest. She often didn’t understand. And some days she couldn’t go to classes, or couldn’t remember what day it was and whether she had done that class before. Some weeks would seem to repeat the same day over and over.

  She learnt that the more she shouted and repeated the same story, telling the doctors the things that had made her father angry, about when she’d been Primrose, the more she would go into the white room. She stopped telling them about Oamaru, her old mother, the house with the red roof, how he’d touched her in the outhouse, the stench of the dunny, watching the penguins, the sea; she even stopped telling them what he’d done to her in the cave. Her other mother would never know. She started to be quieter, answer their questions only inside her head, tell them something different out loud. She didn’t go to the white room as much. For a while she hardly went there at all.

  Years passed, her parents died, she watched some patients come and go. Others stayed. She delivered the mail, took the red pills three times a day, ate, played cards, talked to Patricia, got called ‘pet’ by the woman who always sat in the flowered winged chair by the nurses’ station, who died there but no one noticed until one of the nurses shouted at her to get up.

  She went to bed and grew taller and nurses changed and left but Matron was always there, and Doctor Malone. For a while she didn’t have the treatment and kept things all tied up in her head so they wouldn’t get out and they wouldn’t send her to the white room. And then she realised she had forgotten the things she’d said anyway, and would look at Doctor Malone as he asked about them; her memories became all of the building, the bad fairy castle and the patients in it and the weekly menu and the people who lived at Seacliff.

  She bled every month and she was moved to one of the women’s wards. Patricia joined her. It had been home. Then Donna had arrived, Donna followed everywhere by fat Shirley. Edith never knew where they would be; jabbing her in the chest, pushing her when the nurses weren’t looking, whispering things into her ear that made her want to cover them both with her hands.

  Although it was bad, it was ten times worse for Patricia. Donna found ways to get her into trouble at every turn, knew just what to say or do to get Patricia screaming at her, tugging on her hair until whistles rang out and Patricia was dragged away.

  Edith tried to stay out of their way as much as she could. She tried to stay close to the nurses, spent more time with Bernie, too: never alone. Then Martha arrived. Martha fought and scratched at the nurses and attendants for weeks, in and out of the straitjackets that deadened your arms so that they hung hopelessly by your sides. Edith watched her spit and kick at Nurse Ritchie, watched her face be pushed into the floor, her cheek pressed to the vinyl as Franklin grabbed at her, smirking as he lifted her up and away, his yellowed fingers gripping her arms.

  She wore bandages on her wrists and Edith saw dried blood once. She had a son. She’d killed her husband. Donna was always watching Martha, but one day Martha stood over Edith, asked to play cards with her. Martha had smiled, two faint dimples in a face hollowed like she had scoops out of her cheeks, dark-grey shadows under her eyes, and Edith had smiled back. They played that day and the next and Edith got used to looking for her, a warmth as they sat in silence, just the gentle rustle of the cards. Donna watched them.

  Then, Edith didn’t know how, but suddenly Martha was with Donna, everywhere with Donna, and Shirley, both women now glued to her side. Martha would sneer and laugh as she picked on them, as she taunted Patricia every day, until the day when Patricia had leapt on Donna, slapping at her face, calling her a whore, bit Nurse Ritchie. That was when they took Patricia away from the ward. Martha had laughed as they’d removed her drooping body.

  Then it was just her and Bernie, and Bernie couldn’t protect Edith; no one could help. Edith wondered if it might stay that way forever.

  Bernie, her friend. About to turn sixteen. It gave her an idea.

  She’d mentioned the date weeks ago and Edith repeated it to herself for three days until it really sank in. Then she asked Nurse Shaw to tell her when the date was one week away. And then, when Edith was just listening to the things in her head and looking out at the lawn, at the rain drizzling down the panes of glass, Nurse Shaw leant over her chair, smelling of toothpaste, and reminded her.

  ‘One week, Edie, it’s now one week until the sixth.’

  Everything inside her head died down as she focused on the words, as the realisation sank in that she had seven days to get things ready. She hugged herself tight with the secret, glad Bernie wasn’t there or she feared she would blurt it out to her in a bubbly gush and that would ruin the surprise.

  She’d been told about surprise parties by Patricia when she first arrived. Patricia’s parents had arranged one for her before she came to the building and Patricia told Edith i
t had been the best day, as they’d all eaten cake until they could burst, and danced and sang. Edith promised herself there would be all those things for Bernie.

  She was too shy to play her flute, but Rosa from the orchestra would play her violin and Nurse Shaw told her she would help keep the party a secret from Bernie and tell all the women on the ward when the time was right so they could be part of the big surprise. Nurse Shaw was going to bring out bunting and tie it all round the dayroom. Nurse Shaw had often been kind to her, even if she hadn’t believed her about the key. She asked her if she could go to the kitchen. Nurse Shaw said yes and that Edith could go on her own, as it was only outside the nurses’ station and she could see her from there. She got up right away.

  Edith stood outside the kitchen door, peering through the steamed glass, wanting to see Clive who always gave her extra cheese scones. There were a lot of heads, white hats and movement. She stood on her tiptoes searching for Clive, his wide shoulders, the curl of grey hair at the nape of his neck, always busy. What if he said no? She saw one of the chefs turn, large knife held up as he shouted across the kitchen, bringing it down on a board. Another carried a large tray covered in a tea towel; one was sinking pans into a large butler’s sink in the corner; two men, wearing a slightly different uniform, sat peeling potatoes between an enormous hessian sack: in-patients on the kitchen gang. Then there was Clive, reaching up to a shelf and bringing down a large saucepan. She felt the air inside her puff out in one quick go and found herself lifting a hand, trying to catch his eye.

  The man with the knife looked up, his eyebrows lifted. He’d joined the kitchen a while ago, had big hairy arms, a scar on his chin. He stepped towards the door, the big silver knife still in his hand. Edith couldn’t stop staring at it, at the way it flashed under the strip lights. He pulled at the door with his other hand.

  The noise of the kitchen: the clatter, the voices, the hiss and bubble of the food almost blocked out his words: ‘What are you wanting then?’