by Louise Allan
Alf drove me into Ben Craeg to catch the bus. Just before I climbed from the car, he said, ‘Can you keep an eye on Nora?’
‘I’ll visit her every day. You didn’t even need to ask.’
As I was unpacking, I found the parcel of Grace’s hair and unwrapped it. The long skeins lay over a page from the Personal Notices. The waves were flattened but the hair still shone red and gold and all shades in between. I folded them back up, then placed the parcel inside my box of keepsakes, on top of the babies’ layettes and shawls, Mum’s embroidery and the photos of Ted. All the reminders of children and people who were no longer with me.
That night as we lay in bed, Len said, ‘Do you reckon the shock treatment will fix her?’
‘The doctors think it will,’ I said.
‘I dunno if anything will fix her,’ he said.
I rolled onto my side and I could make out his profile against the window: the curve of his forehead, the peak of his nose and chin. ‘I know what you think of her,’ I said. ‘And I know what she’s like and what she’s done…But she’s my sister. I’ve known her the longest of anyone on this earth, since she was a child. And once you’ve known someone as a child, that’s how you always see them. I saw what she went through. I was there, and I know. I know, too, if circumstances been different, what might have been.’
‘But it doesn’t excuse what she does.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘But I can’t leave her on her own.’ I shifted closer to him so I fitted alongside his arm and hip and legs. ‘I tell you, Len, that night she took the gun…It scares me to think what she might have done with it.’ I rested my arm on the flannelette of his pyjamas. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if I lost her.’
‘You’re good at forgiving, Ide.’ He slid his arm under my head and I caught the faint odour of his underarm as I settled into his shoulder. ‘Too forgiving sometimes.’
‘Family is family,’ I said. ‘It’s more important to me than anything.’ Then a bit later. ‘I’m not giving up on her.’
The next day, I caught the bus to the General Hospital at the top of Charles Street. It was high on the hill and big and white, with a long, curving balcony along each of its three storeys. The wind was gusting, blowing the leaves along the gutters, and the clouds hurried across the sky. I had to hold on to my hat as I walked towards the doors of the hospital.
Inside, I combed my hair with my fingers and smoothed my coat before I asked at the counter for Nora’s room. Then I walked down the long corridors that smelt of waxed linoleum and antiseptic, past nurses with clipboards and stainless steel dishes, until I found her.
There was another woman in the room, skinny and young with limp, brown hair. She had a visitor, an older woman. They were both smoking and the ashtray sitting on the tray by the bed was full of butts. They looked up as I entered and watched me walk over to Nora and stand by her bedside.
Nora looked ghostlike. Her eyes were shut, her mouth open and her face appeared bloodless. Her hair looked wiry and clung to her cheeks in jagged strips.
I laid my hand on her arm and her skin felt dry. Her eyes opened at my touch and her head wobbled as she turned, as if her neck couldn’t hold it up. The sheets scratched as she shifted. It took her a while to focus, then she said, ‘Aww, gawd,’ in a slurred, low voice. ‘Fancy seeing you.’ Her arms shook as she pushed herself up on the pillows and the bed rattled. Then she lifted an unsteady hand, which trembled. I grasped it and bent to kiss her.
‘Hello, Nora,’ I said, trying to keep my voice bright, so she wouldn’t notice my shock at the sight of her. ‘How are you doing?’
She lay back on the pillows and shut her eyes. ‘Not too good.’ She exhaled as if exhausted and lay motionless on the pillow. Her eyes opened and she beckoned me closer. ‘I don’t know why they’re keeping me here. It’s like a jail,’ she whispered. ‘I just want to go home.’
I squeezed her hand. ‘Soon, Nor. You’ll be home soon.’
The next day when I visited, Nora’s bed was empty, so I sat down and pulled out my knitting and prepared to wait.
The other patient piped up, ‘I don’t know where they take her, but she never looks too good when they bring her back.’
I nodded and kept my eyes on my knitting.
‘The doctors here aren’t any good,’ she continued. ‘They keep us here when there’s nothing wrong with us.’
‘Oh,’ I said, glancing up and back down again.
She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘I know about the Russians,’ she said. I looked over at her. She was only young. She lit a cigarette and began telling me how the Communists were sending messages to her through her wireless. I focused on the garment growing beneath my fingers, on the softness of the wool and the gentle waves of the cable, as she went on.
‘I keep trying to tell the Premier and the police, but they don’t want to know. They just keep sending me back here.’
Outside in the corridor, heels tapped up and down and trolleys rattled past. I sat in that austere room with its anaemic walls and bare linoleum, listening to bizarre stories of Russian spies, all the while trying not to imagine what the doctors were doing to Nora.
About an hour later, they wheeled Nora in. She was lying on her back, with her mouth half-open. She was still and barely moving, and her skin looked grey. As soon as the nurses left, I sponged the goo from her temple, and cleaned the hair that was stuck to her face. She groaned, and I patted her arm and told her I was there.
When she woke, she ached, in her head and jaw and limbs. She didn’t know where she was or why she was there, and I had to remind her. Her memory returned over the next couple of days, just in time for them to take her off and do it all over again.
We were getting into winter and the frosts had started. The following Monday when Ted came, I’d set a fire in the lounge and the kitchen was warm from the stew I’d cooked. I told Ted about Nora while I was dishing up. He sat at the table, his face tense and his jaw muscle twitching.
When I told him about Grace’s hair, he thumped the table so the cutlery jangled. ‘How could she do that?’
I set his plate in front of him. ‘She thought she was protecting Grace.’
‘Protecting her?’ His voice was raised. ‘What sort of mother cuts her daughter’s hair off to make her ugly?’ His nostrils flared as he exhaled.
I served Len and then myself. ‘She was protecting Grace from what happened to her.’ I explained about the letter from the boy.
‘That’s just insane,’ he said. ‘She’s gone off the deep end.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She has. She’s had a breakdown and she’s not thinking straight.’ I told him about the gun, and the hospital and the shock treatment.
He folded his arms as I spoke, staring at the steam rising from his plate. His shoulders rose and fell with each breath. He didn’t look at me and I wasn’t sure he was even listening.
‘Stop,’ he said after a while. ‘I don’t want to know any more.’ His eyes looked cold, but his knee was jiggling.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
Ted ran his hand through his hair. ‘It’s not my fault. Even if she had killed herself, it’s not my fault.’
I waited until he glanced up. ‘No, it’s not your fault.’
He swallowed. ‘I don’t want to hear about her ever again.’
I bit my bottom lip and nodded. ‘Righto,’ I said.
He wiped under his nose and sighed, then reached to the middle of the table and picked up the tomato relish. He spooned some onto his plate.
‘What about your father?’ I said, and felt Len’s sharp glance although I wasn’t looking at him. ‘Do you want to hear about him?’
Ted stilled. He shook his head, then replaced the relish in the centre of the table.
He was quieter for the rest of the evening and every time I glanced at him, his eyes were dark and sad. When he was leaving, Len and I went outside to say goodbye. The night was cold and foggy, and the light from the hall didn’t penetrat
e far into the darkness. Ted hovered by the door. He pulled the collar of his coat up and thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘There was something I was going to ask you tonight.’
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘But maybe it should wait.’ He was fidgety and his breath puffed in the air.
‘You don’t have to wait,’ I said. ‘Just ask.’
He kept his eyes on the coir mat by the front step and brought the pockets of his coat closer together, gathering the wool more tightly around him. ‘I was wondering if I could…bring someone to meet you.’
‘Oh,’ I said. My hand went to my chest.
‘Course you can,’ said Len.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Of course you can.’
‘Her name is Clara,’ he said, glancing up.
‘Clara,’ I repeated. ‘That’s a lovely name.’
‘Bring her around whenever you want,’ said Len.
‘Next week even,’ I said.
We said goodbye and, as soon as the door clicked shut, Len said, ‘I once knew a dairy cow called Clara.’
‘Anyone called Clara has to be nice,’ I said. ‘I don’t care what she’s called anyway. I’m just glad he’s got someone.’
‘Yes,’ said Len. ‘That is nice.’
‘I won’t have to worry about him so much.’
‘You don’t have to worry about him now,’ said Len. ‘But you do anyway.’
Alf came into town to see Nora at the weekend. Ben and Grace stayed with Rex and Beryl because the doctors didn’t think it would be good for Nora to have too many visitors.
We went up to the hospital together. The room smelt of cigarette smoke and stale food. Alf stood stiffly on one side of the bed, while I sat on the chair on the other side. I chatted about the garden and the weather and anything that came to mind. Between us, Nora lay silently, her eyes staring without blinking, as if they were stuck and couldn’t move.
Alf was quiet on the walk back to the car. The clouds were low and the air felt heavy. He didn’t speak for the whole drive home, and when we reached Pearson Street, I had to ask him twice if he wanted to come in for a cup of tea before he heard me. His face stayed bland as he shook his head.
I collected my bag and opened the door.
‘I thought she’d be back on her feet by now,’ he said.
I turned. ‘The doctors know what they’re doing.’
He scratched his chin, the engine still idling. ‘I hope so,’ he said.
I stepped out, and Alf put the car into gear and drove off. I waved, but he didn’t look back.
Towards the end of the following week, I was walking down the corridor of the hospital when I spotted a familiar figure. I hurried my step and caught up to her.
‘Dr Godfrey-Smith?’ I said.
She turned and her face crinkled. ‘Oh, Ida!’ She recognised me straight away. She wore glasses and her hair was a soft grey, but she looked just the same, her skin only lightly etched by time. Even wearing a white coat, she still looked as gentle as the cashmere for which I remembered her.
When I’d first left work, I used to see the Godfrey-Smiths once or twice a year, but we’d drifted out of touch and it had been a few years since we’d caught up with each other. She asked me how I was and what I was doing at the hospital. I told her I’d been to see Nora.
‘Oh, I hope it’s nothing serious,’ she said.
I hesitated, but she was a doctor, so I told her about Nora and the breakdown. I told her, too, about the shock therapy.
‘It’s been over two weeks and she’s not getting better,’ I said. ‘She seems to be getting worse, in fact. Barely moving or eating or talking.’
She nodded as I spoke.
‘And she forgets everything. Where she is and what happened the day before. She can’t even remember what she did on the night she had the breakdown.’
‘That can happen,’ she said. ‘Electro-convulsive therapy can cause short-term memory loss. But her memory will return. Sometimes it takes a while to notice an improvement.’
I sighed. ‘It’s hard to watch. It’s like she’s disappearing before my very eyes.’
She took my hand. ‘She will get better.’
She felt warm and still smelt of lavender, and I believed her.
I asked her about the girls. They were all grown up. Elizabeth had moved to America to study naval architecture so she could design ships.
‘Naval architecture?’ I said. ‘I didn’t even know such a thing existed. But of course they’d have that in America.’
Mary had become a doctor like her parents. She’d gone to the mainland for her training, and it didn’t look like either of the girls would return to Tasmania.
‘You must miss them,’ I said.
‘I do,’ she said. ‘But they’re out in the world, pursuing their dreams. What more could a mother want?’
Ted brought Clara di Bertoli for dinner the following Monday. She was dark and petite and smelt like musk. Her hair was short and wavy and teased high on her head, and her eyes were as black as midnight. She worked at a bakery in town and had met Ted when she did the banking.
‘Everyone in the queue in the bank probably thought I was polite letting them go first,’ she said. ‘But I wanted to wait to make sure I could go to Ted’s window.’ She giggled.
She was exactly the sort of girl you’d want to serve you vanilla slice in a bakery.
Ted had booked a taxi to take them home, and they walked down the steps in their coats and hats with their arms around each other.
‘Told you someone called Clara had to be nice,’ I said to Len after they’d gone.
‘Yes, you did,’ he said. ‘And you were right.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And don’t you forget it.’
‘You won’t let me,’ he said.
It took four weeks before Nora began to improve. She started eating more, first dessert and then a small meal. Then she got out of bed and sat on the chair. The following week, she began taking short walks along the corridor. She’d lost so much weight, it looked like the bones of her body were about to break through her skin. Alf came in at the weekend and his face brightened when Nora asked about the kids.
The doctor reduced the medication and frequency of the shock treatments. Nora became less drowsy and her memory started to return. The events of the night she was admitted came back to her. She remembered cutting Grace’s hair and taking Alf’s rifle. As she was telling me, her legs writhed under the sheets and her hands twisted themselves into knots.
‘What have I done?’ she said. ‘What have I done?’
‘Nor, go easy on yourself,’ I said, stroking her arm. ‘You had a breakdown. Don’t give yourself another one.’
One afternoon, we went outside for a walk. It was the heart of winter, and the sunlight was muted and the air frosty. I felt the cold through my coat, but although Nora was dressed only in a dressing gown and slippers, she didn’t seem to notice. The lawns were green and lush and a few lonely leaves still clung to the branches of the birch trees.
‘I don’t like it here,’ Nora said quietly.
‘I reckon you’ll be able to go home soon,’ I said.
‘I don’t like the doctors,’ she said. A nurse was wheeling a patient in the opposite direction, and Nora waited for them to pass before she continued. ‘Or the nurses. Everyone here treats me like I’m…a lunatic.’
I shifted a little closer to her.
‘But I’m not a lunatic.’ There was an edge to her voice even though it was quiet. ‘I’ve just made so many mistakes.’
‘Grace has forgiven you,’ I said.
‘It’s not just Grace. It’s everything. I wish I could undo everything and start again.’
‘Nor,’ I said, taking her hand. The skin on the back of her hand was mottled by a big purple bruise. ‘You have to forgive yourself.’
‘I can’t.’ She said the words under her breath.
We reached the end of the path, so we turned and headed back the way we’d come.<
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‘I can’t forgive myself for what I did.’
‘But you must,’ I said. ‘Or you’ll never be happy.’
She shook her head. ‘Then I’ll never be happy.’
‘Nor, you’re serving a lifetime penance for a mistake you made as a young girl.’
‘I deserve it.’
I shook my head. ‘No, you don’t. It’s time you gave yourself a bit of mercy. How can I make you believe that?’
She shook her head again. ‘You can’t.’
After nine weeks in hospital, Nora was discharged. I helped her pack and make her way down to the entrance of the hospital, while Alf drove the Ford up to the doors. Her face was the colour of ice, and as I held her arm, I could feel her bones and sinews through her coat.
Outside, the air was sharp with cold. The fog was so thick, the birch trees on the lawn appeared like ghostly outlines.
‘Thank you, Ida,’ said Nora when the Ford appeared. She took my hands in hers. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you. I mean it.’
‘I don’t know what I’d do without you either,’ I said. ‘And I mean it, too.’
She slid inside and Alf closed the door. Nora raised a gloved hand to the window, and they drove off, the two rear lights swallowed quickly by the fog.
Chapter 29
Tinsdale had grown over the years and now had all sorts of stores, so Nora didn’t come into town very often to shop. I visited Ben Craeg as often as I could, every few months or so. Whenever I went, Nora was tired and listless, but at least there was no sign of her anger.
It felt to me, though, that she’d lost more than her rage. She was disinterested in the food on her plate, and was as thin as a stick insect. She didn’t talk much, either. If I asked her a question, she answered, but it never sparked a conversation, not like we used to. She seemed to be disappearing, becoming as translucent as her skin.
‘It’s a good thing, Ide,’ said Len, ‘that she’s not flying off the handle. She mightn’t be happy, but at least she’s not angry.’
‘I s’pose so,’ I said. ‘But it’s like she’s lost her motor. She might have lost her anger, but it’d be good if there was something to replace it.’