by Martha Long
We pushed off down the ward and about ten pairs of eyes lifted off their plates and stared after me.
‘Byeee!’ roared Pascal. ‘Pity you can’t stay! You would have loved it here!’
I lifted my hand, waving my fingers at him, and we turned out the door and headed out of the hospital and into an ambulance.
The evening light was bright with watery sunshine, and it hit me between the eyes for a second. I blinked, shutting my eyes, then opened them. It was lovely to be in the fresh, crisp air again, and a sudden pang hit me. I wanted to have my old life back, the one before Sarah grew up to gallivant off without me. And she still only a little chicken! And the bloody health. I suppose that would come back if I gave it a chance. But I can’t seem to get the strength to lift myself or find a reason to live. Then they rolled me into the ambulance.
‘Up you get,’ Baldy said, ‘and sit down here.’
The other fellow handed me a bunch of daffodils. I looked at them, wondering where they came from. ‘They’re yours,’ he said, nodding at me.
I stared at the flowers, wondering who had brought them. The only person who came in to see me was Charlie, and he wouldn’t buy flowers. Anyway, he wouldn’t have the money. I shook my head, blinking at him as a way of thanking him. Then he slammed the doors shut and went around to the front, and jumped in to drive the ambulance. We were motoring.
I sat on the side of the stretcher, clutching my bunch of daffodils. I felt very removed from everything and everybody. At home, I had been terribly isolated and had no one to share anything with. I would have loved to belong to someone, have someone who meant the world to me, someone I could trust. Life is not that simple, though. Things have to be done, like earning a living and looking after a child.
We had great times together, Sarah and me, wandering up and down the Alps when she got her summer holidays. Nearly getting nabbed by the police for crossing the border with the edelweiss plant in my rucksack. ‘Nein!’ they screeched. ‘Das ist verboten!’ I picked it walking along the Tyrolean Alps in Austria.
We were in and out of museums in Florence, with me refusing to pay to get into any of them. Shockin! Culture should be free. So we sneaked in! I had no money! We were doing the Grand Tour on fresh air. That didn’t stop us, and it gave us plenty of laughs.
I waltzed around the Continent on the old adage ‘necessity is the mother of invention’. Sarah must have her education! So, I staggered up to the guard with the gun in his holster at the entrance to the Papal Apartments, clasping my forehead and gasping for ‘Aqua! Aqua!’ while he runs off to get the water for the young woman with the long flowing hair down past her arse, in the tight shorts and Roman sandals, with the little blonde girl and her long, flowing fair locks. Sarah stood watching, roaring her head laughing at my acting.
‘Andiamo!’ I mutter, as I grab her hand and we dive in, joining the English tour tripping around the Sistine Chapel.
Then it was another year, and we were seen to be taking a bus tour from Ireland to the Dordogne. It was cheap. The bus had been scrapped back in 1940, and they had to push it, belching black smoke, across the Continent, looking for parts. The ‘Group’ were a shower of religious maniacs who insisted on saying Mass twice a day and praying for a safe journey clutching their rosary beads, looking at the sights out the window of the bus when it was actually moving under its own steam.
When we sailed from Cork harbour to France, Sarah and I travelled in great style. It was the height of summer, and the sun was splitting the rocks. The ship heaved, blew its horn, then staggered out to sea, stuffed to the gills with passengers. The religious maniacs discovered they had to sleep on deck. The French passengers swarmed around the reception desk, buzzing like demented wasps. ‘Allez! Allez!’ they screeched to the receptionist. ‘Arrêtez-vous, idiots paysans!’ they hissed, snorting insults at each other over all the pushing and shoving. Then it was back to waving wads of money at the receptionist, with the lot of them all desperately looking for a cabin. Nothing could be had. ‘Fermé! Closed! We are full,’ roared the receptionist, flapping them all off like a load of chickens.
I wandered off up to First Class and occupied an empty suite with a sitting room, four double bunks and a bathroom. They had very kindly left us a bowl of fruit and the keys of the cabin.
We sat munching on the fruit while I waited to see if the cabin would be claimed by anyone or the staff would check. The door was opened by the private stewardess, and I sat both impervious and imperious, giving her a cold stare, pained with the whole business of being rich and having to slum it in a so-called first-class cabin.
‘Oh! You are late arrivals!’ she announced.
‘Yes,’ I murmured in a bored tone.
We wait to see if she will check. Half hour later, nothing happens! I grab the keys. ‘Right, darling! Follow Mummy. We are going to find something to eat, and this is our new sleeping quarters!’
We wander down to the religious maniacs, looking for the grub they promised as part of our package.
‘Where’s the paté and the other “exotic delicacies” you promised us?’ I ask the aul fella with the rotten black teeth who is running the trip.
‘Over there!’ he points to a battered old tea chest.
Sarah and me peer in. Squashed, mouldy, damp tomato sandwiches. Bloody disgusting!
‘Come on, darling. Follow Mummy!’
We wander into the cafe and trace the long queue snaking its way painfully slowly around the ship. I stop to look at what they are serving – greasy, half-cooked chips and sausages. Disgusting! And look at the prices! ‘Follow me, darling!’
We wander to the dining room, with the black-suited, bow-tied waiter waiting to bow and greet the more discerning clients, with the money.
‘Look at the prices, Sarah!’
We glance in and see an enormous round buffet table groaning with every conceivable dish to tempt the tired and jaded palates of the bored rich, and all to be enjoyed sitting at a table draped with a white linen tablecloth with a view of the great ocean.
I took a deep breath, straightened my shoulders and whispered to Sarah, ‘Follow me, darling.’
I swept past the waiter, who bowed and glanced, watching me move imperviously and imperiously past the cash desk then sweep over to a man sitting down minding his own business with a white napkin tucked under his two fat wobbling chins. He was happily slobbering over a plateful of foreign-looking grub. I tapped him on the shoulder, screeching, ‘DARLING! HERE YOU ARE!’
His mouth dropped open, showing something with legs dangling out. ‘Mon dieu!’ he puffed, dropping a bit of what looked like a frog’s leg, landing it straight into his lap. He stared at me with the eyes bulging outa his head.
‘Sorry! My mistake!’ I said, bending down to him. ‘I thought you were that handsome brute of a friend of mine! Really sorry,’ I said, leaning into him and patting him on the shoulder.
He smiled, and I weaved off, throwing an eye back to the waiter. No problem! He’s taking no notice. We dined on frogs’ legs, salmon, and had a bit of everything. Then went back for more and more, till we burst! It was a buffet!
‘Don’t feed me any more!’ Sarah complained, looking half dead with the eyes closing.
I casually threw out to the missionary nun travelling with the group – she was back home from China for a well-deserved rest – ‘Oh! You are sleeping on deck? Well, we have some spare beds in our suite. You are welcome to stay with us!’
‘Oh, really! Would you mind if I invited my friend, the other missionary priest? He has nowhere to sleep.’
‘No problem. He is very welcome!’
Sarah and I were in bed early, roaring our heads laughing.
‘They think we are rich, Mummy! And if the staff come knocking on the door in the middle of the night, the nun and the priest will get arrested!’
‘Yeah! Shockin!’ I clucked, laughing me head off, thinking, I can imagine the disgrace! Priest found sharing luxury cabin with nun. They had an i
nnocent woman and child in tow. The unfortunate mother said, when charged with the other two culprits, ‘It was all a misunderstanding. We all thought the other was paying!’
We sailed into the dining room in glorious sunshine the next morning, after a luxurious bath, me wearing a long, red gypsy skirt and a white-linen peasant blouse, with the hair streaming out behind me. I was showing off my tanned legs at the front, but they looked like milk bottles at the back. I managed that by lying sprawled on my back in the back garden. I never turned over, not wanting to miss even a bit of the sun on me front. I did that every evening. Rushing out to grab the last of the dying sun after I limped home from my ‘executive’ job. That job didn’t even pay enough for me to get the bloody bus home. I had to hitch.
Sarah was wearing her boiler suit. She looked lovely, very cute!
‘Look, Mummy! There’s our new friends!’ she said, pointing over to the window at the two grinning faces waving happily at us, stuffing their big gobs.
‘They didn’t invite us!’ I muttered through gritted teeth, smiling back at them.
‘But they think we’re rich, Mummy!’ Sarah leaned into me, sounding like an old woman full of wisdom.
‘Yeah! Suppose so,’ I said. ‘Maybe we should charge them a few bob! They can afford to eat here,’ I said, thinking. We were travelling on a wing and a prayer!
Happy times, I thought, slowly lifting my head.
There were many happy memories. Life was one big adventure. There was nothing we didn’t do. Down to RTE, the national television studios, and into the subsidised canteen on a Saturday night for our tea, then sit back and watch all the stars stuffing their gobs before they went on The Late Late Show! Sarah loved it.
Yeah! We were always on the move, up to something. Out to the Phoenix Park to ride on the flea-ridden nags. I got a book from the library on horse riding, and the two of us studied it. We got our ‘seat’ in no time and became quite competent horse riders. Until I took a tumble, got concussed, and that was the end of me dreams of joining the hunting fraternity in the area.
Myself and Kitty, a friend, we would lunch in the local pub afterwards, leaving the bill for a friend of mine. He’d made the mistake of telling me to ‘Just call in and tell Joe, the owner, you are a friend of mine. I’ll pick up the bill!’
Ah! Great times. Yer man never did succeed in getting me into his bed! It was par for the course then. Men thought because you had a child and were not free to marry then you were fair game. No! I had a higher price on myself than a romp in the sack and a few meals. I never did meet a man I could trust. They all seemed to want something from me.
28
* * *
The ambulance man jumped down to open the doors. ‘We’re here!’ he said, jumping back in to collect my yellow plastic bin liner from the hospital with the red romper suit and granny nightdress. ‘Hotel Paradiso!’ he cackled.
I climbed out, still clutching my bunch of flowers.
‘I’ll take them,’ he said, reaching for my daffodils.
‘No! Let go!’ I snatched them back and jumped down, landing on the concrete ground in my bare feet. I have no slippers.
I looked down at myself wearing a bright-orange dressing gown, a pair of pyjama bottoms miles too long and ten times the width of me. I had to tie the waist in a knot. A top with half the buttons missing around the chest, exposing everything, with the hospital logo written all over the front. No belt for the robe, and it was too tight anyway. I was so thin from starving myself I could be marked absent if I turned sideways, so it must have belonged to a midget.
‘Right! Follow me!’ he shouted, thinking I was deaf as well as probably mental.
I padded in behind him and we waited while he rang the bell.
The door was opened by a long skinny monk. Well, he would be, I thought, gazing at him, if old age hadn’t bent him in two. His head was trailing the ground.
‘This is the patient from the general hospital for admittance here,’ said Baldy, pointing to me then standing back.
The monk made no move to open the door wider, and just stared from the ambulance men to me.
Baldy stood with the smile frozen on his face, waiting to do battle. The monk kept looking at us. I got fed up waiting and pushed past Baldy, saying, ‘Open the door. Outa the way, please!’ and pushed past the monk into the wide, carpeted entrance hall.
The men stepped in behind me, leaving my yellow plastic bag in the hall beside the monk, and handed him a brown envelope. The decision was made for him, and he shook himself, gave a watery smile to the men, closed the door, picked up my bag and said, ‘Follow me.’
I trailed behind him down the long wide passage with red carpeting.
‘Why must you young people take yourselves in here?’ he said, shaking his head that was nearly tipping the carpet. ‘You should be out enjoying yourself!’
‘Don’t you dare speak to me! I did not give you permission to speak to me,’ I boomed, astonished at hearing myself. Listening to meself sounding like Queen Victoria.
He went into an office with a high ceiling and a mahogany bookcase. It was stuffed with books: St Thomas Aquinas and the Lives of the Saints, Nursing the Mentally Ill.
‘Take a seat,’ he said, pointing to an old, well-padded mahogany chair.
I sat down with the chair pointing to the bookcase. My eyes wandered up and down the titles. He sat behind a lovely big old rosewood desk. It was groaning with papers and books.
‘Tut, tut!’ he muttered, reading whatever was said in the brown envelope. Then he stared down at me over the small round glasses sitting on his nose.
I stared back, folding my arms and letting my head drop forward, daring him to say another word.
He shook his head from side to side, very slowly, and tutted again, saying, ‘Oh, you are a very silly girl!’
‘I didn’t ask for your opinion!’ I snapped, hearing the crisp Oxford English drip from my tongue again. Hmm! I thought. This is obviously the tone I adopt for doing battle with the Establishment, or any idiot who thinks they can push me around.
He pulled down a massive big ledger book and started writing down details from the brown envelope.
That’s it! I thought, watching him. I am now a marked woman! I can just see the questions when I have to apply for something that requires a bit of sanity. For example, a job as a nanny in New York. ‘Are you of sound mind? Have you ever been in a loony bin? Sorry, I will rephrase that. Have you ever spent time in a mental institution?’
‘Eh! Noo! I was only visiting, well, went for a short holiday. Nice place. You can let your hair down!’
My thoughts were interrupted by the monk pushing back his big old cushy armchair, the castors squealing on the wooden floor.
‘Come along now!’ he said, waving me out of my chair and herding me out the door. He took off at a fair lick, me trotting behind to keep up. His long brown robes with the white-knotted rope tied around his waist kept flapping against his brown leather sandals. His big head, with a mop of snow-white curly hair, was swinging along the floor as we headed up an incline in the passage. It was glass from ceiling to almost floor on the right side all along the passage. It looked out onto a very lush garden, almost like a jungle, with huge palm trees and all sorts of exotic plants and shrubs. It was so dense you could get lost in it.
We stopped at a lift, and the monk reached over and pressed a button. We stepped in as the doors whished open. More carpet, and the walls were dark smoky glass. This place is really upmarket. I bet it’s private. They need not think they are getting any money out of me! I haven’t got two halfpennies to rub together! So fuck them! Maybe they’ll kick me out faster when they find that out. Yeah! If I know the Church, that’s exactly what they will do. On the other hand, they could send me to Grangegorman, where me poor aunt Nelly used to end up when she had one of her fits. Jaysus! I’d never live that down!
The lift stopped and swished open. We stepped out onto a landing with a wrought-iron banister rail curl
ing down a staircase, carpeted, of course, in bright yellow. I looked up to a ceiling-to-floor window going down the length of the building. The monk headed for a glass door, turned the handle, and we were standing in a big reception area with a long desk and nurses looking busy, writing and talking on the phone.
‘Ah! Sister Mulberry,’ the monk said, heading over to a steel-grey-haired woman with a short-cropped hairstyle and wearing a dark navy pinstripe suit. He handed her a file and pointed to me, whispering into her ear. She listened carefully, leaning into him, watching me, her eyes flicking up and down me, taking my measure.
I pulled myself up to my five feet nothing, crossing my arms, staring at her, taking her measure.
She nodded her head when he was finished giving her a blow-by-blow account of my ‘character’. ‘Thank you, Brother,’ she said, as he moved away, smiling and heading out the door again.
I watched him as he removed a big bunch of keys tied to the rope hanging around his waist and picked out one, opening the door and swinging it shut behind him.
Fuck! That door is locked. I’m locked in!
‘Nurse!’ barked Sister Mulberry to a little blonde-haired nurse busy writing up charts at the desk.
‘Yes, Sister?’ breathed the little nurse, dropping her pen and rushing over.
‘Take this new patient down to room seven and admit her.’
‘Yes, Sister,’ said the nurse, dropping her eyes and turning to me and smiling. ‘Come on down with me, and I’ll get you settled in,’ she said, taking my arm and walking me down into a wide-open sitting room with a huge plate-glass window running in a square around the whole floor. I could see it was looking down onto the same courtyard on the bottom floor. You could walk around the full length of the corridors here and see everything that was happening on this floor. This place has eyes everywhere! There’s no escape! They can watch you all the time.
We walked past doors on the left, and a big woman with long, curly, black-and-grey hair roared at me as we passed, ‘What is your name, my dear?’