‘What she say the name was, mate?’ he asked, when Penny had left. ‘Sheilas does that to me, I get that nervous I don’t listen to nothin’ they says.’
‘It’s Billy.’
‘Yeah?’ Nick seemed amazed, ‘That’s gunna be real easy, praise the Lord. I used to ’ave a parrot called Billy. Billy Parrot we named him, he were bald, see.’ He extended a hand on which several fingers pointed in slightly different directions. ‘Gidday, mate, pleasetermeetcha, here to take a nice shower, is ya?’
Billy nodded, too emotionally worn out to do much more. Nick seemed harmless enough, though he may have taken one knock too many on the head.
Nick hopped from one foot to the other examining Billy. ‘There’s bad news and there’s bad news, which you want first?’ he asked, chuckling at his own joke.
‘Seeing I have a choice, the bad news,’ Billy replied, forcing himself to play the game.
‘Righto then, London to a brick yer got nits. Know what the real name is?’
‘No, I don’t think I do, Nick.’
‘Pediculus humanus!’ Nick said gleefully. ‘Nasty them little buggers, bitin’ and itchin’. Now, I can shave yer head off or we can rub it with Banlice mousse, supposed to work pretty good, but that’s kids, blokes like us, that’s different I reckon, but yer need a haircut anyway. That’s both the bad newses,’ he concluded happily.
‘As I’m already bald I don’t suppose it matters too much if you remove the rest of my hair, but I’m rather anxious to retain my head,’ Billy said. He was beginning to feel that he was losing control of his life while, at the same time, he kept reminding himself that, for the present anyway, this was probably the best thing that could happen to him.
‘Praise the Lord!’ Nick said, delighted, this time not simply evoking the Almighty’s name as a figure of speech. ‘I’ll get me trusty clippers.’
Nick disappeared into a small room to the side of the shower block and moments later returned carrying a pair of barber’s clippers and dragging a steel chair behind him. He indicated that Billy should sit down. To Billy’s surprise, Nick was wearing a short white barber’s jacket. ‘Afternoon, sir, nice to see you back. The usual?’ he said in a formal, well-spoken voice.
Billy glanced anxiously at Nick, not sure what was happening. ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ he asked a little tremulously, having noted the condition of Nick’s fingers.
‘Of course, sir, here at the Ritz we take great pride in our hair.’
Billy couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Shouldn’t I have a towel? I mean, something around my neck?’ he asked. ‘Nah, no worries, gunna burn yer clobber. Body lice!’ Nick exclaimed, instantly forgetting his barber’s act and resuming his own vernacular. ‘They’s different, see, can’t see them much, little buggers live in the seams of your clobber, come out, have a nip and nip back in.’ Without asking permission, he pulled the sleeve of Billy’s shirt up to his elbow to reveal his inner arm. ‘See them red marks, that’s ’em. They likes the soft parts. There’s also crabs, Pediculosis pubis.’ Nick paused and came to stand directly in front of Billy, clipper in hand, hopping from one foot to the other. ‘Mate, I’m your expert. You been a naughty boy lately, Billy?’
Billy smiled. ‘It’s been so long I can’t remember.’
‘Me too, mate, shit me britches just thinkin’ about it.’ Billy wondered briefly what might have brought Nick to the stage of being terrified by the opposite sex. ‘So, there yer go then, yer home and hosed. Don’t want to be shaving down where the goolies hang, does we?’ Nick said. ‘Take me word, burnin’ yer gear, quickest way ter catch them little buggers kippin’ in yer seams. We’ll keep yer shoes, if they’s still good enough we fumigate them.’
Billy was so tired he was having trouble following Nick’s rapid patter, but the little ex-jockey who’d turned to Christ was as good as his word and, without a nick or even a nasty pull, removed the hair that grew from the base of Billy’s bald pate down to his shoulders. ‘There yer go!’ Nick said enthusiastically. ‘Good as new, praise the Lord.’ He stood back, admiring his handiwork. ‘Fair dinkum, yer looks just like Billy Parrot.’ He made no attempt to explain his suddenly assumed and abandoned bit part as a barber at the Ritz Hotel.
Billy was given a towel, a pair of pyjamas and a small square packet that looked like clear plastic. ‘Soap’s in the shower,’ Nick said, ‘Rub yer scalp good with the antiseptic shampoo. Gives a call when yer finish, don’t forget to wear yer slippers.’
‘Slippers?’
‘Yeah, them plastic ones, in the little packet.’ Billy emerged from the shower in his pyjamas, wearing his disposable plastic slippers which looked remarkably like shower caps. He carried his briefcase, having shackled it back to his wrist. Nick now seemed to see it for the first time. Pointing to the briefcase he said, ‘Dunno about that, mate. Them yer things in there?’
‘Yes,’ Billy replied, immediately defensive. ‘I couldn’t be parted from it.’
‘Handcuffs, eh? Bloody good idea!’
Billy looked down at his briefcase, then up at Nick, concerned. ‘They’ll not burn it, will they?’
‘Nah, have to inspect what’s innit, that’s all, praise the Lord.’
‘Oh? But there’s nothing . . .’
‘Substances, mate! Harmful substances,’ Nick said interrupting. ‘Major Tompkins’s pretty strict on harmful substances. C’mon, I’ll take you through, but I can’t go in with yiz, it’s me woman thing.’
‘Major Tompkins is a woman?’
‘Yeah, mate, you wouldn’t want ter cross her, bad news,’ Nick warned. ‘Real tough cookie.’
A tough cookie seemed about the last term one might think of to describe Major Tompkins. She may well have been durable but she was a large woman of an institutional kind now obsolete, yet once found in every hospital wearing a white uniform, starched veil and sensible shoes with a watch pinned to her rigidly starched breast. Although Major Tompkins wore a pale-blue shirt, navy skirt and the same sensible shoes, and her steel-grey hair was cut short in a nononsense style that showed a lot of scissor work and very little skill, her old-fashioned medical pedigree was unmistakable. She’d made the transition from hospital matron to the title of Team Leader of the Southport Salvation Army’s Resthaven detox ward without having to draw breath.
She motioned Billy to a chair in front of her desk and glanced at the form Penny had given her. ‘Mr O’Shannessy, welcome, my name is Major Marjorie Tompkins.’
Billy sat down and, as usual, placed his briefcase on his lap. ‘Thank you, major.’ There was no suggestion he call her Marjorie and Billy couldn’t imagine anyone, not even Major Turlington, doing so.
‘Goodness gracious, is that a handcuff about your wrist?’ she asked, surprised. ‘Whatever is it doing there?’
‘Oh, it’s to secure my briefcase,’ Billy said softly.
‘My things, keep them safe,’ he added, a little lamely.
‘Well, never in my born days!’ she exclaimed. ‘Your things will be quite safe here, Mr O’Shannessy. We can’t have you walking around handcuffed to your belongings! Will you please remove it from your wrist so that we can inspect the contents?’
‘There are no harmful substances in it, major,’ Billy protested. ‘Only my personal things.’
‘I’m quite sure you’re right, but I’ll need to see for myself.’ Then, tight-lipped, she said, ‘Those are our rules, Mr O’Shannessy! Without rules, Heaven only knows where we would be.’ She pointed to the handcuff, ‘Do you have a key for that contraption?’
Billy removed the key from around his neck and opened the handcuff. ‘Splendid,’ Major Tompkins replied, ‘I’m very glad to see that you’ve agreed to have a haircut, saves a lot of bother all round.’
Billy started to put the key back around his neck. ‘No, no, I’ll take that,’ she said, holding out her hand.
‘Can’t
have you swallowing it now, can we?’ Billy didn’t feel sufficiently strong to resist, and handed her the precious key. With the evening approaching, his body was now screaming for alcohol and the first of his withdrawal symptoms was cramping at his gut, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. ‘Will you place your briefcase on the desk now, please, Mr O’Shannessy.’ Again Billy did as he was told. ‘Open it, please,’ Major Tompkins instructed. In the meantime, she’d slipped on a pair of surgical gloves.
Billy opened the briefcase and she commenced to examine it, hauling each item out and checking it separately, putting Billy’s knife, fork and spoon to one side along with the bottle-opener, corkscrew and the various bits of wire and different-sized corks. The remainder of the contents she placed on the desk to her right. ‘Goodness!’ she said in surprise as she withdrew the packet of surgical gloves, ‘Whatever are these for?’
Billy was glad that he’d long since thrown away what remained of the rat poison. ‘They’re for scrounging in garbage bins,’ he said, thinking quickly.
Major Tompkins looked up in surprise. ‘Well, I never!’ she said. She examined his notepads and his newspaper clippings, though in a cursory manner. Not wishing him to think she was being overly curious, she did not open the photograph album. ‘Perhaps, when you’re feeling a little better, you’d like to write again,’ she said, not unkindly. Then, turning to the pile on her left, she said, ‘We’ll have to keep these for you and after we’ve fumigated it, we’ll return your briefcase and these things here,’ she pointed to the pile on her right. ‘The dangerous objects you may get when you leave.’
‘And my key?’ Billy asked.
‘No, no, I’ll keep that until you leave, you have a locker beside your bed for your things.’ Anticipating his next question, she added, ‘It has a combination lock.’
Billy knew that Major Tompkins was a relic from a different time and if he’d cared to assert his rights, the over-officious woman would have been forced to back down, but he was too crushed by the events of the afternoon to protest. By abandoning his briefcase, he was making as much of a commitment to his rehabilitation as the admission to Major Turlington that he was not capable of giving up alcohol on his own and needed help. Without his briefcase, he was finally stripped naked.
Billy pointed to the envelope containing Dorothy Flanagan’s letter. ‘I’d like to take that letter with me now, please.’
Major Tompkins seemed to hesitate for a moment before she handed him the letter. ‘If you have any money on you, you may leave it with us for safekeeping or keep it in your locker.’ She smiled at Billy, ‘It says on your report you haven’t eaten for two days, we’ll give you something to eat and then you’ll see the doctor.’
Billy’s resolve was weakening by the minute, he would have liked to ask for his clothes to be returned, run away and fled to the nearest pub. But he was in the hands of experts, his clothes were probably being incinerated by Nick, who’d be praising the Lord and burning the bug eggs in the seams. Any attempt to escape in his pyjamas, wearing his plastic slippers and with his head plucked like Billy Parrot, he didn’t think would get him too far. The Salvos had him by the short and curlies.
Billy was given a bowl of thick beef broth and two slices of white bread before being taken through to the detox clinic by a male nurse for his medical examination. He was to discover that most of the nurses were male. Most derelicts felt very uncomfortable around women. Life on the street for an alcoholic was almost exclusively a male experience and contact with females was rare except for an occasional short and often wordless sexual encounter with a prostitute in an alley or an equally brief and only slightly more personal contact with a barmaid in a pub. Females in the bureaucracy such as social workers or the people at Centrelink, where they applied for a pension and other concessions, were not regarded as having a gender. They were simply neuters who asked questions and, in turn, received answers in monosyllables, their eyes averted.
The doctor seemed pleasant enough, he was young and possessed an easy manner. He introduced himself as Mike Todd, a simple name to remember, but Billy, despite the soup and bread in his belly, was now beginning to feel decidedly the worse for wear and somewhat agitated, so immediately forgot it. This was unusual, for Billy took great pride in remembering people’s names. It was not only his massive hangover and the start of his withdrawal symptoms but he was also emotionally drained. Dorothy Flanagan’s letter had simply blown him out of the water.
By the time the doctor had completed examining him, giving him a medical that included a blood test, his malnutrition status, respiratory problems, dental problems, an assessment of his alcohol and nutritional intake, and examination for bronchitis, diabetes (very common in alcoholics) and pancreatic inflammation, it was almost eight o’clock. Billy had broken into a fairly heavy sweat on his face and chest and was experiencing small and constant tremors of his upper extremities.
‘Mr O’Shannessy,’ the doctor said after completing his examination, ‘you are a highly intelligent man, but you are also a very sick one and we’re going to try to make you better. It won’t be easy and you’re in for a rough ride, which we’ll try very hard to make as easy as possible. I’m going to prescribe 20 mg of Valium every two hours until you’re fully sedated. You’ll start to feel sleepy and hopefully relaxed. A senior nurse will also give you a vitamin B injection each day for the first three days and we’ll be watching you carefully, checking your progress constantly.’
‘Checking me for what?’ Billy asked. ‘Withdrawal symptoms?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I’d like to know what to expect, doctor.’ Billy shivered, his mouth so dry he was having trouble articulating.
‘Could be almost anything,’ the doctor replied.
‘Exaggerated shaking. I see that you’re perspiring now.
That, for instance, could get a lot worse, so could the tremors. Nausea may be present, we’ll treat that. High blood pressure, heart palpitations, some diarrhoea, dehydration, insomnia.’ The doctor spread his hands. ‘Mr O’Shannessy, you’re in good hands, we’ll be checking you constantly for the next three days.’
‘Is that all, doctor?’ Billy asked, his expression doubtful.
Mike Todd smiled. ‘Oh, I see, you’re thinking of delirium tremens? The Valium will usually take care of most of that but, yes, some hallucinations can and do occur, though not as often as before. You’re almost certain to feel some degree of anxiety and agitation and, perhaps, disorientation.’ He shrugged, ‘You’re an alcoholic, Mr O’Shannessy, and we can’t predict what will happen. But be assured, there will be someone near, or at your side, all the time.’
Billy was escorted to the detox ward, which was freshly painted and very clean, each bed covered by a dark-blue doona and fitted with fresh bed linen. A tall wooden locker stood beside his bed with a combination lock fitted to it. His bed contained a typical hospital tray of the kind that could be wheeled away when it wasn’t needed. The most remarkable thing about the ward was the huge painted sign in fire-engine red against the white end wall facing the door as you entered. It read:
THERE IS HOPE.
Billy was given a shot of vitamin B and of Valium and put to bed. He needed sleep but he was still conscious of sweating and waited for the Valium to take effect. He had gone longer than this before without alcohol, he could do it again. But when he tried to think when that might have been, he couldn’t. The thought of never again walking with wee Johnnie Walker crept into his mind and soon became unimaginable.
He’d been drinking more than was reasonable since university when he’d entered law school at the age of seventeen. He was fifty-six years old, he’d been drunk at his graduation, drunk at his wedding, drunk at Charlie’s funeral, drunk at his daughter’s graduation, he’d been drunk when he signed the deeds to the family home and the settlement he’d made with his wife, drunk when he’d made the financial arrangements for hi
s daughter, drunk when he’d bade them all adieu and walked away from everything. But he hadn’t been drunk when he’d made the decision to walk away from Ryan. That was the only mistake he’d made, running away while sober. Now they were taking away his support, his emotional crutches, before he could walk. He’d been using them for thirty-five years, matching strides with Johnnie Walker, and now they were expecting him to walk alone without a friend in the world. It wasn’t fair!
Two hours later, when he received a second shot of Valium, he was still awake, the night nurse asking him if he was all right. Billy nodded. He didn’t know if he could speak, but he didn’t wish to do so, speaking was out of the question, his mind was turned inward and all he could think was that the lights in the ward didn’t go out. The bloody lights never went out. The fucking lights never went out! A great spotlight was beamed on him and its heat was making him sweat but instead of feeling hot he was freezing. That was it, ten thousand candlepower burning, focused on him, like a magnifying glass concentrating the sun’s rays, white light burning into the ice of his soul, demanding he do something he couldn’t do.
By morning he’d had 80 mg of Valium and had barely slept at all, the constant coming and going of nurses sounded to him like a troop of horses stampeding down a tarred road. The medication they gave him became lost in the confusion of whirling lights, mixed with faces, groans and sighs and occasional screams from other patients. The accumulated terror, his, theirs, the terror of every drunk he had ever known, now aggregated, then clumped together tighter and tighter until it seemed to become a ball of light roughly the size of a tennis ball that proceeded to bounce against the white walls of the ward, each bounce harder, faster, louder, more furious, until he became exhausted attempting to follow its frenetic cat’s cradle progress.
Matthew Flinders' Cat Page 23