Dresses of Red and Gold

by Robin Klein

  ‘Try sitting in this ferry just yet and you’ll end up with blue paint all over your breeches,’ Dad said. ‘Come back another day when it’s dry and she might take you out fishing—she’s pretty good at slinging a line.’

  ‘Can you make up another treasure hunt for us then?’ Barbara asked. ‘That was the best one I’ve ever been on in my whole life!’

  ‘Why can’t we have another one right now?’ Gillian said. ‘Go on, Mr Melling!’

  ‘Clear out,’ Dad said. ‘You can all just flap off now and give a bloke some peace. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, next to sooking, it’s a mob of gabby little earbashing sheilas all over lace and frills and ribbons! Go on, bloody clear out the lot of you and find something else to do!’

  ‘Don’t mind him,’ Cathy said. ‘Let’s go inside and have something to eat. There’s beaut date-slice and tea—made specially with condensed milk seeing it’s my birthday.’

  ‘You lucky thing!’ Barbara and Gillian said jealously. ‘We never get condensed milk at home!’

  Dresses of Red and Gold

  The little annexe off the main ward seemed to contain a permanent draught created by Nurse Durbach’s zealous comings and goings. Her shoes squealed over the polished floor, she whisked towels away before people had finished with them, her voice crackled as starchily as hospital linen if anyone held her up for more than a minute. All that hectic charging about wasn’t really necessary—she probably just felt important doing it, Vivienne decided.

  ‘Last time you’ll be needing a wash-basin now you’re officially allowed up,’ Nurse Durbach said, poised like a statue of Mercury to snatch the dish away almost before Vivienne had time to spit out the mouthwash. ‘You shouldn’t need help getting to the bathroom any more. Use that little one through the end door, only don’t go making a racket and disturbing the lady in the other bed.’

  The other bed was tucked away behind a screen, and its occupant hadn’t uttered one word since Vivienne had been moved to the annexe that morning. It was much more pleasant than the main ward, for there was the garden to look at. When Nurse Durbach had whirled away to tackle a dozen other jobs, Vivienne gazed out at the lawn, carpeted gloriously with fallen leaves. Some had blown against the window panes, attaching themselves like a frieze of red and gold paper decorations. The window also overlooked the hospital driveway, busy now with people arriving for afternoon Visiting Hour. Mum, laden with packets and bundles, was amongst them, and when she finally found her way through all the rambling corridors to the annexe, she was flustered and inclined to drop them all. She’d brought a clean nightie, handkerchiefs, a bunch of everlasting daisies, two library books, an egg-timer she’d packed by mistake and a money-box Dad had made and sent down from Queensland where he’d gone to look for work. Vivienne was enchanted by it. It was shaped like a log cabin, with yellow glass windows giving an impression of miniature people gathered snugly around a fireside within. Nurse Durbach, racing afternoon tea trays around, clearly wasn’t enchanted by such an object cluttering a bedside locker. She brushed up some slivers of bark, and obviously didn’t think much of Mum’s daisies, either. They were whizzed away to be put in a vase, but not brought back.

  ‘It’s a funny thing how that Durbach girl’s grown up thinking she’s just the cat’s whiskers and Queen Mary rolled into one,’ Mum said reflectively. ‘I remember when old Sammy Durbach—that was her grandad—used to have a pie-run. He’d pedal around town ringing a bell on this rattletrap old carrier bike. Saveloys, he used to sell, as well as pies, but you wouldn’t have wanted to buy any.’

  Vivienne grinned, pleased to find that it no longer hurt so much. ‘Doctor Caulfield said I can go home in a couple of days,’ she said. ‘I’m glad it’s all over—it was terrible!’

  ‘Yes, I know, love, but you were a brave girl,’ Mum said. ‘All you’ve got to do now is rest and let things heal in their own good time. They just about always do one way or another.’

  Vivienne imagined her brain sending capable messages to nerves and tissue, saying, ‘Okay now, you lot—settle down! No call for any more fuss, get on with what you’re supposed to be doing!’ and felt comforted.

  ‘How come they’ve moved you out of the big ward?’ Mum asked. ‘I just about leaned down and smooched a perfect stranger before I even realised.’

  ‘Short of space in there, but I don’t mind, it’s nicer out here. There’s even a little bathroom up that end, though I guess I’m supposed to share it with the lady in the other bed. Only I don’t know if she’s allowed up yet, she’s been asleep ever since they moved me out here.’

  ‘No one’s turned up to visit her yet. I wonder if she’s got anyone at all to bring in clean nighties and see to her messages—maybe I’d just better go and…’

  ‘It’s me you’ve come to visit,’ Vivienne protested, concluding suddenly that her brain wasn’t sending healing messages quite fast enough. And also, she noticed, Cathy hadn’t bothered to get any of the library books on the list she’d sent home. Cathy’s selection looked awful, one cover showing a girl on horseback rounding up cattle, the other a ship being attacked by a huge sea monster. ‘Anyhow, if there’s a screen up round a bed it means they’re feeling poorly and the nurses want them getting plenty of rest. Ow, my throat hurts, Mum! I’ve got this horrible taste in my mouth and it won’t go away. They keep making me get up and walk around even though my legs go all buckled, and I want to go home…’

  ‘Stop grousing,’ Mum said. ‘Anyone would think no one else ever had their tonsils out before. And if you don’t stop whingeing, that girl Durbach mightn’t let you have any of her grandad’s nice saveloys for tea.’

  But tea, arriving an hour after Mum had left, was pallid scrambled egg, strawberry junket and bossy instructions from Nurse Durbach to eat every mouthful. Vivienne sat up against pillows pummelled to the consistency of sandbags and didn’t dare disobey, even though she hated both scrambled eggs and junket. The lady in the next bed appeared to loathe them, too, for after ten minutes of coaxing, Nurse Durbach came out from behind the screen with an untouched tray.

  ‘That dinner wasn’t very nice, was it?’ Vivienne said shyly in the direction of the next bed when Nurse Durbach had gone, but received no answer. She got up, feeling heroic on her wobbly legs, and followed the autumn leaf frieze along the row of windows, past the other bed and into the bathroom. There was an alarming moment when the floor in there seemed to swell and curl like a wave, making her cling to the basin till things righted themselves.

  She tottered slowly back to bed, grasping the window ledge. It was growing dark outside now, and the big amber lights had been switched on above the hospital entrance. That lady in the other bed had been very quiet and uncomplaining all day behind her screen. It felt peculiar sharing a room with someone you couldn’t see, even if it wasn’t really a proper room, just a little closed-in veranda. Vivienne glanced at the screen as she passed, observing this time that one of the shirred panels had puckered up, leaving a gap. It was like looking at a picture composed almost entirely in white, she thought, peering through the gap—silvery locks of hair spread over a pillow, elderly skin like furrowed cream, a white bedspread rising and falling so imperceptibly you had to look closely to make sure it was even moving.

  ‘You keep over your own side of the room, Miss Sticky-beak!’ Nurse Durbach said acidly from the doorway.

  ‘I was only…I just…’ Vivienne stammered, retreating to her bed with two spots of colour burning in her cheeks like aces.

  ‘As soon as you’re allowed up, you kids always make little pests of yourselves—and don’t dump your dressing-gown on the bed like that, either! This happens to be a hospital, not the playground down at the park. Fold your dressing-gown over the back of the chair when you’re not using it. If there’s one thing I can’t stand the sight of it’s a messy ward!’

  Vivienne, too intimidated to move in case she got into any more trouble, sat perfectly still until evening Visiting Hour brought Heather, Cathy and
Isobel, but not Mum this time, because the hospital allowed three visitors only at a time. The poor old lady in the next bed, she noticed sympathetically, still didn’t have even one.

  ‘Pity you didn’t have a smarter nightie,’ Isobel said, helping herself to a slab of the Turkish Delight she’d brought as a gift. ‘Fancy Aunty Con expecting you to wear that flannelette thing with the piping gone all runny in the wash!’

  ‘Trust you to make some remark about it,’ Heather said crossly. ‘No one sees nighties, not when you’re stuck in bed, and Mum already had to buy her a new dressing-gown and slippers.’

  ‘If I had to have an operation I’d get everything in oyster satin with matching feathery slippers,’ Isobel said. ‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind a stay in hospital all that much. It must be kind of exciting, all those doctors strolling around in white jackets just like in a film.’

  ‘Well, I’ve only ever noticed Doc Caulfield,’ Vivienne said. ‘And he hasn’t got a white jacket, just his ordinary suit with the fob-watch.’

  ‘I’m really surprised Aunty Connie let that old dodderer yank your tonsils out. He’s so far gone he should be in here as a patient himself. You should have got that gorgeous new young one, Doctor MacNeill, the one who looks just like something out of a Foreign Legion film…’

  ‘But we’ve always gone to Doc Caulfield, right from when we were all born. Grace is even named after him.’

  ‘His first name’s Grace?’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Heather said. ‘It’s Robert, that’s why she’s got Roberta for her middle name. And he pulled Cathy through that time they thought she might have rheumatic fever, and there’s when Dad got gored by the bull. Doctor Caulfield’s not an old dodderer, he’s lovely! He told Mum not to worry about the bill for Viv’s tonsils till Dad finds a job.’

  ‘Doctor MacNeill’s lovelier,’ Isobel said. ‘With a bit of luck he might still be here when I leave school. I’m half thinking of being a nurse, you know—I reckon I’d look pretty good in one of those starchy veils.’

  ‘Only the sisters have those. You have to do three years’ training first and get bossed around something shocking—we learned all about it at Guides when we did First Aid. Anyway, I somehow can’t see you fetching bedpans and holding bowls for people to be sick in.’

  ‘There might be ways to dodge that part. Maybe I could talk them into letting me work just in the operating theatre and wear one of those cute mask things. I bet a certain doctor—and I certainly don’t mean old Pop Caulfield—would get so he wouldn’t even start operating unless I was in there helping!’

  ‘Just as well Viv’s already had her tonsils out, then,’ Cathy said. ‘This is a nice little room they’ve moved her to, better than that big ward with all the wailing little brats down one end. Just two beds—aren’t we posh! Who’s in that other one behind the screen?’

  ‘A really old lady, but I don’t know her name and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her around town before,’ Vivienne said, lowering her voice. ‘I guess she must be pretty sick. They always seem to be popping in there to check up on her.’

  ‘Just like in a film,’ Isobel said enviously. ‘I bet I could do nursey things like taking people’s pulses, too, if someone showed me how.’

  ‘Heather already did once, but you said you hated the feel of it, even your own. I don’t see that you’d be much use as a nurse if you come out in goose pimples taking pulses.’

  ‘It’s probably not all that important. If a pulse thumps it means the person’s alive and kicking, and if it’s conked out then they have, too, and there’s not much anyone can do about it. I expect nurses just take pulses to fill in the time when they’re bored. As a matter of fact I’m bored right now just sitting here. Let’s go round the corridors and see if there’s anyone with an interesting-looking disease…’

  ‘If you’re hoping to catch a glimpse of Doctor MacNeill, you’ll be disappointed. They only do their rounds in the mornings,’ Vivienne said, but Isobel had already gone, taking Cathy and Heather with her. Slightly insulted at being left alone, she reached for the Turkish Delight but found that all gone, too. They were so mean, she thought self-pityingly, coming in to visit but then trotting off to goggle at other patients instead! And eating all her Turkish Delight, not even caring that she’d had her tonsils out and suffered terrible agony. Although the agony had dwindled now to something that could really only be called discomfort, she suspected that the inside of her throat must look quite dramatic if she could bring herself to take a look. If they’d been Cathy’s tonsils, she thought, Cathy would have lost no time in getting the mirror out of the bedside locker, probably straight after she’d come back from the operating theatre. Most likely she would have demanded a magnifying glass, too, but Vivienne had faint-hearted qualms about personally examining Doctor Caulfield’s handiwork for at least six months.

  She scrunched the empty Turkish Delight bag into an indignant wad, then remembered that the only wastepaper basket was in the bathroom and that Nurse Durbach fizzled like static if you messed up her immaculate locker tops. She needed to go to the bathroom, anyway, and it would serve certain people right if they came back to find her bed mysteriously empty! They might think she’d had a relapse and been rushed off to the theatre again. Vivienne took her time in the bathroom, and tiptoeing past the screen on her way back, she was halted by a quavering thread of voice. The voice tripped over itself and mumbled into silence, but had sounded questioning. She hesitated, then put her head around the screen. Milky blue eyes glittered at her disconcertingly from the pillow. She had the odd impression that all the old lady’s energies had drained from her body to lodge there instead, just behind her eyes.

  ‘Er…can I get you anything?’ Vivienne asked.

  ‘Came right up to the front door, bold as brass…Madness…Polly was going by, too—Polly Cleese, that is, not the Atkinson one…My goodness, chest so tight I can’t…can’t breathe.’

  ‘Would you like me to ring for the nurse? I’m Vivienne, they moved me out here because the big ward was full up and they’re rushed off their feet. Vivienne Melling, from Sawmill Road and I had my tonsils out.’

  ‘Polly, she promised not to tell…Can’t trust…Would you go down the lane a little way, just to the corner, he might be…’

  ‘Yes, all right,’ Vivienne said helplessly, and crept away, back to the sanctuary of her bed. Nurse Durbach, she thought, could cope with that poor old rambling thing with her feverish eyes which, in spite of their intensity, didn’t even see things properly any more. She listened, but the troubled whispering had ceased. Cathy, Heather and Isobel came back as the bell signalled the end of Visiting Hour, pinkly subdued after having been told off by Nurse Durbach for roaming at large around the hospital. Isobel, apparently, had pried into a storage cupboard, creating an avalanche of splints, crutches and what she claimed had been a stockpile of artificial legs.

  ‘So it’s all her fault,’ Heather said angrily, grabbing yesterday’s nightie to take home for laundering. ‘The utter embarrassment—all those things spilling out—one of the legs rolled along the corridor and tripped someone up! Just don’t expect to see me in here again, I’d be too humiliated to show my face! If you need anything in particular, you’d better tell me quick and Mum or Cathy can bring it in tomorrow.’

  ‘Ta ta, Viv, hope you make it through the night okay,’ Isobel said. ‘It’s a funny thing about tonsil operations. One minute you can feel all bouncy—but one little attack of the coughs and you could be looking at your own reflection in a lake of blood all over the floor. Cheer up, though, I’m sure that lovely Doctor MacNeill would know what to do.’

  Vivienne, alarmed, took care not to cough or even mildly clear her throat through the routine of being settled for the night. She was drowsily aware of the night nurses coming on duty much later, of someone tiptoeing into the annexe and shining a torch first in her direction, then behind the screen. There were other distractions, also: a phone ringing somewhere down the corridor, cars
passing occasionally along River Road, boughs tapping against the window. She dozed fitfully, longing for her own bed and the comforting presence of Cathy nearby, of Mum just up the hall. The old lady tucked away behind the screen was a poor substitute. In spite of willpower, a tickle developed in her throat, and remembering Isobel’s dire warning, she sat up hastily and sipped barley water. From behind the screen came small rustles and sighs—the old lady was awake, too.

  ‘Do you want one of the night nurses? If you can’t manage the buzzer, I’ll press mine,’ Vivienne said.

  ‘All these years I didn’t break as much as one cup from that good dinner-service. Not so much as a handle smashed! He’ll always check—every time company comes and it’s brought out, he’ll check later. I put a rubber mat in the bowl and wash every single piece myself, bit by bit. Such a worry. Hands shake. I could…could accidentally drop…’

  ‘My mum’s always dropping things,’ Vivienne said chattily. ‘She’s already gone through most of the dinner-set Aunty Cessie gave her Christmas before last.’

  ‘Beautiful fine china. Gold rim. Such a worry and bother, Father always goes to the cabinet and checks. Hateful old man! I’m very tired…never used to get tired…’

  ‘If you’re tired, you should be asleep,’ Vivienne hinted. ‘I’d better stop talking and let you…’

  ‘Hateful, selfish old man! He stopped us. But he didn’t know…I got away, I went dancing in the rain! Soaking-wet flowers from the hedge, we made them up into garlands. “You dear darling!” I said. “Why do you wear that funny thing on your head? Oh, you always look so handsome in your funny hat!” My word, dancing by the river, raining, we didn’t care…Clay all over my good shoes, not fit to be seen. Had to…had to scrape all the red clay off in the garden so Father wouldn’t know we…’