by Amy Witting
What better news could one have, than the hope of a future without madness?
She would do everything they told her, she would eat whatever they gave her, beginning with breakfast.
A new orderly appeared at the door, this time an older man, short, sturdy and grey-haired. He looked to be one of the kind ones.
‘Want a cup of tea?’
‘Yes, please. No milk or sugar.’
This time the tea came in a cup.
‘Is it all right for me to use the china?’
‘Special issue. You have your own. No need to take too much notice of her.’ He didn’t have to identify the woman behind the pronoun. ‘We don’t mind looking after you. Keeping the china separate is no trouble.’
Isobel smiled at him and accepted the tea, which came with two biscuits. She would eat them both.
‘Is that right, the police picked you up in the street and got the ambulance?’
She nodded. There was always the same price for kindness.
‘How did that happen?’
‘I live by myself. I ran out of food. I went out to buy some. I don’t,’ she said boldly, ‘really remember much more.’
That would be it from now on. I don’t know. I must have passed out.
He nodded sympathetically and left her to her tea and biscuits.
The story would not cover the absence of knickers but it would do for most occasions.
After breakfast—she managed half the cereal and most of the milk it swam in, being determined to drown that hand-print in milk—she showered, clinging to the chrome bar, and managed to scrub some of the hoarded salt along her teeth. She walked back into the smock and collapsed again. How odd to be inhabiting this flaccid body. It sprawled limp on the bed and she had the greatest trouble in urging it under the covers.
The blonde nurse who had winked at her came in, pulling on a face mask.
‘It’s just while I make the bed, dear. Rules from the TB Clinic this time. That’s when the bugs fly, apparently. Matron’s been on the phone to them, carrying on, asking what measures she should take to protect her staff. Honestly! You don’t want to pay too much attention to Matron. We all think you are marvellous to be so game. Eric said you even raised a laugh when he was wheeling you back. Could be shock, of course. But you’re just as good this morning. Hanged if I could take it like that.’
Meanwhile she had hoisted Isobel’s limp body out of bed, had sat it in the armchair and was making the bed.
How could she explain the relief she felt at learning that this thing had a name and a location, that there were people whose business it was to deal with it? That she was no longer alone in the grip of something she could not understand? That there was even hope for the future? Her troubles were embarrassments only, bodily weakness, lack of knickers and kin; they could not dim her joy.
‘Do you think somebody could get me a toothbrush and some toothpaste?’
The nurse looked startled.
‘Somebody should have thought of that. You’ve set us all on our ears. Real tragedy queen, you are.’
‘I’d better make the most of it. It’s not likely to happen again.’
‘That’s the spirit!’
The nurse helped her back into bed.
She produced the thermometer from her breast pocket, saying, ‘Put it under your tongue and keep your mouth closed. And what on earth are you grinning about?’
Impossible to explain while she was keeping her lips closed on a thermometer, that a memory had returned with enlightenment.
The nurse shook her head in bewilderment while she pressed fingertips to a vein in Isobel’s wrist and counted seconds.
She removed the thermometer, checked temperature, made a note on the chart hooked to the end of Isobel’s bed and said, ‘Now what was that about?’
‘Per rectum. I just remembered, somebody said, “Better take it per rectum, Sister.” I just realised, she must have been taking my temperature. But I didn’t know what “per rectum” meant.’
‘You found out!’
The nurse was laughing, too.
‘And I was most indignant! I thought I was being got at in a very nasty way. I’d forgotten it until this minute.’
‘You weren’t right out to it, then?’
‘Not all the time. Things kept getting through.’
‘Like saying you weren’t a bloody xylophone.’
Isobel groaned.
‘Did I really say that?’
‘Yes. You got Doc Hansen into trouble for laughing. He said he couldn’t help himself. It just took him by surprise. Well, it’ll certainly take a lot to get you down. I’d better get on or Her Nibs will be on my back. I’ll see one of the orderlies about the toothbrush and anything else you want from the shop. Bye.’ She said from the doorway, ‘My name’s Bernie, by the way.’
I like you, Bernie. And you didn’t ask me, ‘How come?’
The chat had been enlivening, but tiring. She lay back and dozed, thinking she could do this for ever, just lie passive and let the time pass.
Her next visitor came after lunch, a small slight woman, black-haired and black-eyed, quick in movement, earnest in manner.
‘Hullo. You’re Isobel? I’m Roberta Mills. Doctor Hansen thought we should have a talk. About things in general. Facing up to tuberculosis is a big thing. I’m not talking about the cure, that’s for the doctors and they know what they are doing. You can be sure of that. There may be other things you would like to talk about. Doctor Hansen said you haven’t asked to have anyone notified?’
‘My parents are dead.’
That wasn’t going to satisfy Mrs Mills.
‘No other family?’
‘I have a sister who lives in the country. We had lost touch.’
‘Any family problems I can help with? Anyone you would like me to approach on your behalf?’
‘No thank you.’
Mrs Mills wasn’t going to give up easily.
‘Tell me something about yourself. When did you and your sister part?’
You couldn’t tell Mrs Mills to mind her own business. This was her business. This was all part of being a parcel. Parcels can be opened and inspected.
‘After my mother died, an aunt took Margaret to live with her in the country.’
Mrs Mills became alert.
‘Did you feel rejected, that your sister was chosen? Were you invited to join them?’
How to keep Aunt Noelene out of this? If Mrs Mills discovered the existence of Aunt Noelene, she would be making an approach there, whether Isobel liked it or not.
‘No. I didn’t want to go to the country. And I wanted to be independent.’
‘At what stage were you when your mother died?’
‘I’d just finished the Leaving. Margaret was working in an office. She is two years older than I am.’
‘And you didn’t think it odd, that the younger sister should be left alone in the city, while the other was taken into a family?’
‘It was what I wanted.’
Mrs Mills nodded.
‘How did you do at school?’
Pretty well. Dux, actually.
Truly, the question was impertinent.
‘All right.’
‘What about your pass in the Leaving? Were you happy with it?’
‘First class Honours in English and German, As in French and History, Bs in Maths I and Chemistry. I suppose I wasn’t too happy about those.’
Mrs Mills looked at her steadily and earnestly.
What’s a nice girl like you doing in a plight like this?
Just lucky, I guess.
No use trying dirty jokes on Mrs Mills.
‘Isobel, are you sure there is nothing you want to talk to me about? No trouble you want to discuss?’
Drink, drugs, kleptomania, men?
Only the Muse. And what a tyrannical, possessive, secretive old witch she is.
She must somehow get control of this conversation, find a sop or two to throw to this ear
nest, well-meaning Cerberus.
‘I was working in an importer’s, doing office work and translating the German mail.’
Mrs Mills approved.
Isobel assumed a frank and confiding expression.
‘I don’t know really how things went wrong. Everything seemed to weigh on me. I lost my temper and I lost my job. Things just went downhill from there…I don’t know how to explain. I felt wretched…Everything seemed to slip away from me.’
Mrs Mills was sympathetic.
‘You didn’t think that you were ill?’
‘Not seriously, no. I just seemed to be depressed, and I couldn’t make the effort to get in touch with anyone…’
She hoped she wasn’t overdoing the pathos.
‘Perhaps it’s all for the best. We’ll find people to help you now. I’ve asked Mrs Delaney to look after you. You’ll like her, I’m sure. She’s one of our volunteers and a truly lovely person. And you’re quite sure that there’s nothing I can do for you?’
Isobel smiled gratefully and shook her head.
You can just go away.
‘I’ll leave you then. Rose—Mrs Delaney—will be in to see you tomorrow.’
*
When Mrs Mills had left, Isobel lay back on her pillows, feeling ashamed. That pathetic expression! That soapy voice! Was that me?
This sort of thing is not at all good for the character.
She was cheered by the reappearance of Eric.
‘Bernie says you want some shopping done.’ He added, ‘This isn’t my area, but I took the chance to come and see how you were making out.’
‘All right. Bernie is a dear. It was good of you to come. Will you hand me my purse? I want a toothbrush and some toothpaste.’
‘Right, love. Any preferences?’
‘Not a hard toothbrush, please. Any toothpaste will do.’
‘Right. Everybody in the ward is asking about you.’
Isobel remembered the muted cheer and the soft clapping and smiled without pathos.
‘Tell them I’m fine. Living in the lap of luxury and loving every minute.’
‘That’s the style. Enjoy it while it’s on. I’ll be back with this as soon as I get a break.’
That, Isobel decided, was enough traffic for one day. She closed her eyes and played possum. The effect of that was to send her to sleep, which passed the time.
When she woke, she found toothbrush, toothpaste and change of a pound on the side table. It was disappointing to have missed Eric’s return visit. Funny, that, to become attached in so short a time. It was like clutching at people as one drifted past, going where?
The evening meal arrived: runny scrambled egg. Don’t think of it as food, think of it as fuel or muscle. One couldn’t live for ever in a body that flopped about like a dead jellyfish. She worked her way through half of it.
Lights out. Morning. Tea, shower, breakfast, Bernie and bed-making.
‘Thanks for getting Eric to shop for me.’
‘He didn’t mind. Said you were asleep when he got back. Found the things and your change all right?’
‘Yes. I never dreamed I could sleep so much.’
‘Best thing for you. I do believe you’re looking a bit better. Feel any better?’
‘Kind of boneless, that’s all. All right otherwise.’
‘Well, it’s to be expected.’
Bernie took her temperature, counted her pulse-beats, made notes on the chart and departed.
That was another one she wanted to cling to, absurdly, crying, ‘Don’t leave me!’
Jellyfish body, jellyfish mind.
The woman who arrived that afternoon, announcing herself as Rose Delaney, was middle-aged yet looked girlish. This was not, Isobel saw at once, the effect of vanity, a desperate clinging to youth, but indifference to the passing of time, as if the curling brown hair had been greying and the flesh of her neck and her body loosening while she was thinking of other things. Age had lined the skin about her beautiful blue eyes but had left the wide mouth untouched. She had about her an air of privilege which she owed as much to her casual manner as to her expensive silk shirt and loose-fitting but well-cut suit of burgundy red wool. Her handbag and her low heeled shoes were made from the skin of a reptile. She wore wealth as carelessly as she wore age.
‘Hullo. I’m Rose Delaney and I’ve come to be your friend in need. I’ve heard you could use one. What can I do for you?’
She took a small notebook and a slender silver pencil out of the reptilian handbag and sat waiting.
‘It’s a lot to ask.’
‘It’s what I’m here for. Speak up.’
‘Well, I need someone to pack my belongings and close my room for me. The rent’s paid to the end of the week. I don’t think they’ll worry about short notice.’
‘Address?’
She wrote down the stark address without raising her eyebrows.
‘Got any idea how much stuff you have to move? And how much luggage do you have?’
‘The things that really matter are my typewriter, my folders, any pages with writing on them, my books. Oh, and a shoebox with my embroidery. And my topcoat and my suit. They’re hanging in the corner behind the curtain.’
Thank Heaven she had emptied that bucket. How close she had come to utter degradation!
She had, on the contrary, achieved esteem. Mrs Delaney had detected the presence of the Muse, and was smiling as she nodded in understanding.
‘What about luggage?’
‘A suitcase and a duffle bag. It won’t be enough. I can buy something. I do have some savings. If you could go to the bank for me. I have forty pounds.’
‘We’ll make the money go as far as we can. There’ll be things to buy if you go into the sanatorium, which looks likely.’
‘Do I have any choice about this? I mean, nobody’s asked me.’
Mrs Delaney considered this.
‘In theory I suppose you have, but in practice, no. You would have to prove that you were living in conditions that didn’t endanger others, I think. There would be so many difficulties that in the long run you would have to agree. But they are being a bit highhanded, I suppose.’
‘It would be nice sometimes to be included in the conversation. I feel like a parcel being handed around.’
Mrs Delaney laughed.
‘You’re not the only one. I always feel like that if I’m unlucky enough to fall into their hands, believe me. Is there anything from the room you want straight away?’
‘Some knickers and my nightdress, please. And, if you wouldn’t mind, there are three paperback books of poetry, Auden and Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins.’
‘You’re just like my daughter Sara. She loves poetry too. I’ll get them for you. Now you’ll have to give me a letter of authority to show to the manager. I didn’t think of that. Um. I’ll go and get some notepaper from the desk. I’ll probably have to buy an old tin trunk or some such, for storage. I’ll look around the secondhand shops if I can’t scrounge one somewhere. I’ll scrounge what I can.’
At the prospect of scrounging she brightened and looked more juvenile than ever.
She added as an afterthought, ‘You don’t mind, do you? You don’t object to taking handouts?’
‘Am I in a position to mind?’ asked Isobel, but she was grateful for the courtesy.
‘Well, I’ll fetch the notepaper, you can give me the authority, and we’ll be in business.’
After her departure, Isobel thought how painful this conversation might have been, and how comfortable she had found it. What a rare talent, to give charity without giving offence.
Mrs Delaney returned with a writing pad of small pages bearing the printed name and address of Saint Ursula’s Hospital. Isobel wrote to her dictation:
I give authority to the bearer Mrs Rose Delaney to remove my possessions from Room 14B and to bring them to me at the above address.
Isobel Callaghan
‘And I’ll want your key, of course.’
&
nbsp; Isobel handed it over, knowing for certain now that she would never see the room again.
‘Thank you, my dear. I’ll be back with your things tomorrow and we can talk some more about the situation when I’ve seen what we have to do. Goodbye now.’
No doubt about it, the room seemed dimmer without her. Mrs Delaney radiated.
*
She looked even more radiant when she returned, late in the next afternoon, carrying Isobel’s duffle bag.
‘I’ve scrounged a suitcase! I knew I probably could. People don’t throw out luggage. It’s an old expandable leather bag, heavy as lead and it looks like a dead dinosaur, but it will do. And I’ve got a little grant for you. Five pounds. The Auxiliary has a fund. I think I can stretch it. I’ll get pyjamas straight off. SSW, are you? I thought so.’
Isobel smiled at her enthusiasm and whispered, ‘Do you enjoy vicarious poverty?’
‘Oh, dear, does it show so much? Yes, I do rather. I grew up during the Depression. Of course it was a terrible time. I always think of it when I smell soup. Mum used to start the soup pot in the morning, meat stock she saved from everything, chopped vegetables and barley. That was for the people who came to the door selling bootlaces and such. We were better off than most. Dad stayed in work and though we were poor it was, as Mum used to say, enough for ourselves and a bit over. And she was a marvel at managing, making something out of nothing. I went to my first dance with an evening coat, a pretty olive green bolero, they were all the rage, and nobody knew that mine was made out of the best bits of an old velvet curtain. I can see her now, holding the cut-out pieces to steam over a kettle. She was a wonderful person. Scrounging and managing for somebody else just takes me back, I suppose. Well, so long as you don’t mind it…’
‘It’s a whole lot better than someone doing her duty without a smile, I assure you.’
‘I’ll tell that to Sara, the next time she tells me I’m just enjoying myself instead of tackling the serious issues of society. Now I’m making you talk too much and I’ve been told not to. Not another word from you. I’ll unpack for you and be off. Don’t expect me till you see me. I don’t know how long things will take.’