Gilgamesh

by Joan London

  Edith found herself shaking her head. For if she didn’t feel lonely, who had been with her all these long months?

  ‘Have you thought about how society will regard you and this child?’

  You didn’t have to think about it, you knew. It seemed you’d always known, even as a little girl. It was the fall over the edge. It was the darkness beyond. It was the worst thing that could ever happen to you, next to death.

  But more and more Edith did not believe people could see her. She was no more than a tree or stone in the landscape. Outside the surgery window petals fell non-stop from an almond tree, their soundlessness a message. Stay silent. Promise nothing.

  Dr Bly said that in view of her youth and small pelvis, the isolation of her home and the state of her mother’s health, he would arrange for her to go to Matron Linley’s in Busselton for the delivery and lying-in. That she mustn’t worry about the cost, Matron was a friend of his.

  ‘I had a lot of time for your father,’ he said, head down, writing in his pad.

  He didn’t deserve this, poor old Frank.

  Somewhere on the track back home, as darkness fell, Edith lay down, shut her eyes, lost consciousness. When she woke it was dark, before the moon had risen and she lay and listened to the rustles of the bush around her. You haven’t done anything wrong, she heard a voice say. Who spoke? It wasn’t a voice she recognised. Could it be, repaying her for her loyalty, the voice of the child? Or was it her own, startling, thought?

  On the appointed day, calculated on his desk calendar by Dr Bly, Edith set off across the yellow summer grass of the clearing to catch the bus to Busselton and Matron Linley’s. It was seven in the morning, not yet hot, but she walked slowly, as if she carried a stone between her legs. Frances stood watching her from the verandah, the closest she could come to saying goodbye. A few weeks ago Frances had gone to Torville and bought flannelette for napkins, to save Edith from prying eyes. She had delivered a message to the Sea House that Edith was sick with tonsillitis and would not be back to work for the time being, doctor’s orders. It was kind of Frances to do this as she hated to lie. She never spoke the word ‘birth’, as if it was obscene.

  Edith hoped nobody from the Sea House would see her now, especially as she was wearing her black uniform, it was all that would fit her. She covered it over with a shirt of her father’s, and pulled her straw hat low over her face. All that she carried with her was stuffed into a raffia shopping bag. She also wore Ada’s long outgrown gold wedding ring with some wool wrapped round the back of it to make it fit. She stood at the far side of the Nunderup Hall until she heard the bus. She was lucky—there were only schoolchildren getting on, no sharp-eyed farmer’s wife. She sat at the back, invisible, while the children shouted and flirted and conspired.

  All the way along the road to Torville the bus passed mailboxes with the names she could chant from her childhood, Lewis, McKay, Ward, Robertson and Riley. Her father had made their mailbox out of a kerosene tin, as he made everything they used. He had painted CLARK across it in whitewash that was too sloppy so that each letter ran like a tear. When he nailed it to the stump at the end of their track, he would have hit his thumb or torn a nail. He always did.

  She remembered how he used to swipe his fingers across a pan of dripping, and rub the fat into his suffering hands.

  In these last days she thought about her father constantly.

  They said he never had any luck. But what was luck? He used to rage at her and Frances, tell them they would starve if they didn’t hop to, look smart. You will only have yourselves to blame, he shouted, as they stood squinting up at him. He didn’t believe in luck. Luck was what you made of your life.

  Yet in the end he had lain patient and gentle all day on the couch, as if resigned to what life had brought him.

  She felt his resignation, his exhaustion had taken root in her.

  She’d forgotten that it was bumpier at the back of the bus. She cupped her hands over her belly to protect it. Did luck get handed down?

  Matron Linley’s was on a flat stretch of road on the outskirts of town. As Edith trudged towards it she saw far ahead of her an Aboriginal woman walking softly through the dust, carrying a baby and holding the hand of a little child. I wonder where she had her baby, Edith thought suddenly, I wonder if she was afraid. The flat brown earth seemed to open out around the woman and the sky above her seemed immense, burning blue and cloudless.

  The hospital was built of stone, with an iron roof and wide verandahs all around. It had probably been a farmhouse once for an early settler. A cow still grazed in a dusty paddock beside it. There were no other houses in sight. This gave the impression of quarantine. Out the front was a yellow lawn and some old peppermint trees. Smoke uncoiled from a chimney, and white sheets flapped on a line. It looked too quiet, too innocent, like a witch’s house.

  Matron Linley herself met Edith at the door.

  ‘Goodness, you’re small, lass,’ she said. ‘I hope you’ve got your dates right. We’re overbooked as it is.’

  Edith’s head swam after the brightness outside as she stood in the dark hall. It smelt of carbolic and something sweetish, medicinal, a strange unnatural smell. The hall was lined with closed doors. Very faintly, as if from far away, came a mewling cry.

  Matron Linley wore a veil, a grand affair of folds of stiffened voile, to frame her handsome face. This was a surprise. Sea blue eyes, clear as a nun’s. White clean-pored skin. A calm low voice. Surely a good witch. Edith followed her onto a side verandah, partitioned off with canvas blinds. A solitary high iron bed faced out onto the paddock. A magpie sat on the verandah rail.

  Matron turned and paused, and the light fell full on her face. Even the little creamy middle-aged pouch beneath her chin was adorable, and the gold watch pinned above her full bosom.

  ‘We call this the Overflow Room. Nice and cool at night! Put your bag down and come and have a cup of tea, lass. Then perhaps you could give a hand with lunch. I’m afraid it’s all hands to the wheel round here for the present time.’ Being pretty gave her even more authority. She knew God was on her side. You felt grateful for her smile, it was a pleasure just to see those shapely lips curve. Edith tried to smile back.

  Besides Matron there was another nurse, who rode a bicycle to work, a thin freckled woman with round shoulders called Sally Baker. She never sat down, or ate or even drank a cup of tea. Baker! Matron called, and Sally’s feet went flying up the hall. There was also a cook, a huge woman called Doris, who seemed indifferent to everything around her. She called Matron ‘The Widder’. A lanky young man in working clothes came in for lunch. Doris dolloped corned beef and mashed potatoes onto a plate and handed it to Edith. ‘Widder’s son,’ she said with a nod in his direction. The young man winked at Edith as she set his plate before him. He had pimples on his chin and Matron’s blue eyes. One day he would be flashily handsome. He was about the same age as Edith. Something about the way he looked at her made her flesh crawl, filled her with shame. She took her plate and sat on the back steps.

  After lunch a hushed commotion started up in the shadowy part of the house, frantic footsteps, telephone calls, a wailing voice. Matron’s son went outside to smoke by the woodshed. Doris lay back in a wicker chair with a newspaper over her head. Edith found her bed on the verandah and lay watching the afternoon breeze ripple through the yellow grass. When she woke the sweetish smell was very strong and she could hear the thin afternoon wails of hungry babies.

  Edith washed and dried the breakfast dishes, Widder’s orders, said Doris. She ran a mop up and down the hall. It was a dark house, shadowy from the peppermint trees. Doors opened and closed on secrets, straps and pulleys, chamber pots, bloodied sheets. There were five other patients, Edith counted as she helped set out the trays. Sometimes one or two of them sat whispering in dressinggowns on the verandah, or shuffled to the bathroom holding sponge bags and tin washbowls. None seemed to be expected to put their hands to the wheel. It was hard to tell from their swollen
bodies who had or had not given birth. Matron addressed each one of them as ‘Mother’. She scolded them for walking. They were supposed to lie in bed, bound up, for two weeks.

  In the evening husbands came and sat on chairs beside the mothers. Edith could hear snatches of conversation through the French doors which opened onto the verandah.

  Johnson s got his transfer, that leaves us underhanded.

  Did you bring in the wash? Did the children eat their tea?

  Later a little woman with a high voice and fine silvery hair, popped her head around the canvas partition and asked Edith if her husband was coming. Edith said he was away. That’s probably best, the little woman said. Best not to have to bother about them. She gave a tinkling laugh, but her glance flickered over Edith’s left hand. She said her name was Mrs Taylor, Margery. She had Three under Five, three girls, so she was keeping her fingers crossed for Number Four. Edith said that she was Mrs Clark, Edith and that this was her First.

  ‘Isn’t Matron wonderful? Mrs Taylor said. ‘I just put myself in her hands.’

  Three days passed, and still Edith’s baby was not born. Matron set her to sweep all the verandahs and help with the wash. Edith wished Matron would smile at her. She wondered if the child did not like Matron and was lying low and would never be born here. Late in the afternoon as she sat on the back steps watching Lance Linley in the distance tinkering with his motorbike, Matron suddenly appeared with a brown glass bottle and a tablespoon. ‘Open wide, lass,’ she said, and pushed the spoon into Edith’s mouth. ‘Castor oil. I’ve told Doctor we need your bed.’ She scraped a drop up off Edith’s chin and tipped it in. ‘Now we’ll see some action.’

  A long high wail wafted down the hall from the Labour Room. Edith thought she recognised little Mrs Taylor’s soprano tones.

  ‘I think we’ve had a false alarm,’ Matron said. She was without her veil, in a hairnet, beneath which were tight-coiled snail curls. Her uniform was buttoned over her nightdress. She certainly wasn’t smiling. Without her veil she looked smaller and angrier. The baby seemed to have changed its mind. Sally Baker yawned as she took Edith’s pulse, because she had just ridden her bicycle through Busselton’s dark streets.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Edith gasped to Sally Baker, who said that there was nothing to be sorry about, babies always chose their own time.

  Matron said that since there was nothing doing she would try to catch some beauty sleep.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ Edith heard herself wail, clutching Sally Baker’s hand, as surely all the mothers did. For as soon ai Matron’s footsteps had faded down the hall, the child started to make its way again. Sally held Edith’s hand and said she had the pulse of an athlete, she was a strong farm girl, like her, Sally Baker, and that she was going to be fine. Every time Edith opened her eyes she saw that Sally Baker was watching her very steadily, as if she was willing her onward through the waves. Her flat freckled face, just beyond the circle of light, was spare and delicate and concentrated, like a lover’s. Sally Baker had no lover or child, but she understood pain.

  A bell rang, Doctor Bly was here after all, and Matron in her veil, they were leaning over her together, putting a cloth over her nose and mouth. A whiff of Twilight Sleep, Edith, said Dr Bly, and she was overwhelmed by the sweetish smell. Reluctant little cove, he was saying, and from a long way off she saw something skinned and soapy held up like a rabbit, getting spanked for being her child.

  Mrs Taylor called her baby Raymond because she’d always thought the name refined. She couldn’t stop calling out to Edith in her bed on the verandah. Little Raymond was beautiful, everybody said he was, his little ears lay flat against his head. Their boys were almost twins, perhaps they would be friends, share birthday parties! Her silvery laugh rang out again and again.

  Edith couldn’t say her baby was beautiful. He had a thatch of black hair and a big nose and sallow skin. More than anything she felt surprise. She had thought of him as a spirit that had taken root in her, an old wise spirit, and here he was in this helpless, primitive form. She had no name prepared for him.

  She couldn’t call him Frank, she wasn’t sure her father would have appreciated it, in the circumstances. Frances certainly wouldn’t. She thought of his middle name, James. A quiet, dignified name tucked in between Francis and Clark. A name to lie low in. But she wasn’t sure this child looked like a James.

  The next day Mrs Taylor’s milk came in and she cried and said she wasn’t used to boys, it didn’t seem right, you know, to give him the breast, and come to think of it she had never really felt at home with men.

  Edith couldn’t answer because by then her baby, whatever his name was, had started to scream.

  Matron had never known a child to scream like him, and she had known a few screamers in her time. Some of the Mothers were finding it hard to get their sleep. She said she thought he was a hungry baby, and should go straight onto the bottle. She would come back when she had a minute and bind Edith’s breasts.

  ‘As a matter of fact, lass,’ she said, lowering her voice, leaning down so close to Edith that her veil seemed to make a private room for them, ‘there’s been an expression of interest from a lady—I’m not naming any names, she lives in the area—all I can say is, it would be a very good home.’ Her breath had a perfumed, toilet smell. Her clear calm eyes surveyed Edith. Eyes that knew everything, like Dr Bly’s. Eyes that had right on their side. Any moment now she, silly little Edith, would give in and do the right thing. She had to, now she was a mother.

  ‘You’ve made a terrible mistake, lass, but you can still give your son a chance in life.’

  She doesn’t call me Mother, Edith thought.

  ‘Doctor has been very kind to you, but don’t think life won’t make you pay.’

  A strange memory crossed Edith’s mind. She was being wheeled out the door of the Labour Room. Matron was bending over the delivery table to gather up the sheets and Dr Bly reached out his hand and jabbed his finger between her ample buttocks. The picture was so vivid that Edith shut her eyes so Matron would not see what she knew.

  Surely not! Not the good doctor, her father’s friend! Could this just be an effect of Twilight Sleep?

  ‘Think it over,’ Matron was saying. ‘The lady is going to pop in for a look-see tomorrow.’

  Edith’s baby screamed so hard that Matron turned away and picked him up. ‘Come on, young man,’ she said, ‘you’re going back to the Nursery.’ Off she stalked with the red-faced bundle. ‘Nobody will want you if you scream like that,’ Edith heard her say.

  From her bed on the verandah Edith saw Bickford’s Ford coming along the road. Surprising the pang of recognition it gave her, like a messenger from a long lost world. It was slowing down outside Matron Linley’s, it was turning up the drive. Sure enough, when she peered around the canvas partition, there was Bickford having a smoke with Lance under a tree.

  Bickford wasn’t a talker, she remembered. He would be here for the length of his smoke. She had five minutes. She pulled her hospital gown off and stuffed it under the pillow. She pulled her black dress on, loose now over the slack bandaged flesh of her belly. She had to lace her shoes tightly, they were so big. Her legs were rubbery, and her hands were shaking. In the kitchen she could hear the clatter of the afternoon tea trays. She climbed down through the verandah rail into the yellow grass and made her way to the front door ducking low along the side of the house. No one was sitting on the verandah. The screen door was unlatched. The Nursery was on the right, its door closed. What would she do if Matron was in there? The room was dim, three babies slept in a row of wicker cribs. A long muslin curtain sucked in and out of the window as if in the peaceful current of their breath. No Mother about. Her baby was the darkest, already startlingly familiar to her. She unwrapped his hospital blanket, picked him up and wrapped him in her father’s shirt. Such a long walk, across the hall, across the verandah, across the yellow lawn. She felt so light she could blow away, except for the bundle she carried. Bickford’s bla
ck dog started barking at her as she approached the Ford. Bickford, his trouser bottoms flapping high above his boots, made his unhurried way down the driveway.

  ‘Mr Bickford.’ Her voice was weak, as if she hadn’t used it for a long time. ‘Could you please give me a ride?’

  Bickford came to open the door for her. She and her bundle climbed inside.

  Bickford didn’t speak or look at her all the way to the Sea House. There was just the rattle of the truck and the dog barking and the bush in the late afternoon light. It seemed to be welcoming her back after a long absence. She hardly knew how to hold a baby yet, but she sat up straight and gripped him tight. She didn’t know if he was asleep or not in all this noise, but he was quiet. She would have liked to turn and watch out of the cab window to see if anyone was in pursuit, Matron, say, veil flying, behind Lance on his motor bike. Very gently, because of the Font-A-Nelle that Matron had spelled out, she blew away the red dust that powdered his feathery skull.

  At the top of the Sea House driveway, Bickford pulled up, jumped out of the cab and came around to open her door.

  ‘Thet your bebby?’ She had never heard his voice before.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Boy or gel?’ He gently pushed the shirt from the baby’s face with a sausage finger.

  ‘Boy.’

  ‘Mother and son,’ said Bickford. There was a movement in his moustache and he produced a brown-toothed smile. For some reason the fact that she was now two seemed to give him great pleasure and just as unaccountably Edith was cheered.

  ‘What name?’

  ‘James,’ said Edith, uncertainly.

  Bickford bent down over him. ‘Gidday, Jim,’ he said.

  It was only as he drove off that she realised he didn’t have any deliveries for the Sea House.

  Bickford, unlikely saviour.

  Bickford and Sally Baker.

  That was the first of her and Jim’s escapes.

  ‘Now let me have a look at this baby.’ Madge Tehoe peered down at Jim who was lying on a rug in the autumn sun that splashed across the verandah. ‘Hello there,’ she said after a pause, with a stiff lipsticked smile. Jim did not look like a baby, more like a miniature youth going through an ugly stage. Strands of long black hair fell over his solemn face. His nose was big and his dark eyes seemed glitteringly aware. His arms were long and skinny and he had red pimples in a rash over his cheeks.