by Amy Witting
He brought progress reports on the foundering marriage of a pair named Paul and Marianne.
‘Looked at one way, Marianne’s a saint; looked at another way, she’s a kind of greenhouse where the vices of others come into full and glorious bloom. As for Rachel’ (who must be the villain of the piece) ‘she’s so suspicious of men that she has to get some other woman to try them first.’
Elsa had smiled and nodded, whispering, ‘Like an emperor with his taster.’
‘Precisely.’
Elsa listened to Sim’s gossip with the quiet relish of one sucking on an acid drop. This was at first disconcerting to Isobel, who had expected a nobler stance. But there it came again—the illusion that suffering ennobled.
Herself, knowing one system of ethics only, she put these remarks and many others away for future use.
Sim was looking for a house in the town.
‘I talked to that remarkably pretty doctor of yours. He says there’d be no objection to my taking you out for the day, so long as you feel up to it and there’s not too much walking.’
‘The hearty breakfast,’ said Elsa.
‘Now, don’t let’s have any naughty talk. I can move in the record collection and get a decent player so that we can have music.’
‘Oh!’
Elsa closed her eyes, this time not in fatigue but in joy.
‘As for the furniture, we’ll simply have to avert our eyes. Such horrors as I have seen, my dear!’
He went into the matter of wicker whatnots, photo frames encrusted with shells (‘like some disgusting skin disease, my dear’), flights of plaster ducks, an occasional table with sinister legs (‘Darling, I thought the object was about to walk’).
‘I shall simply have to dismiss aesthetics, that’s all. What do you think, darling? Could you make the effort?’
‘To hear music again, yes.’
‘Then I’ll settle for this last place, I think. And I’ll bring up the records next weekend.’
Elsa’s day out was planned, as Elsa whispered with amusement, like a safari, every detail a triumph or a concession in the long struggle between Sim and Sister Connor, who made every possible objection to the scheme. Sim asked for a wheelchair to take Elsa to the main door, he would bring the car to the door, there was no need for Elsa to dress, since he would take the car to the door of the rented house, she would lie down all day, yes, on a suitable bed—would Sister Connor care to come and inspect his arrangements? There would certainly be no visitors. He would observe every rule.
To Sister Connor’s objections he opposed Doctor Stannard’s permission, in the light of which he had taken a lease on a house. If he had known of all these restrictions he doubted that he would have taken such a step. He did not mention money, but its presence was understood.
Isobel noticed that, for all Sim’s eagerness to please an audience, he could be sharp; he believed that the spending of money brought privilege and he did not care to have that belief undermined.
He had expected to take Elsa to the house whenever she felt strong enough for the excursion. That was not to be allowed.
Allowed?
Sim’s astonishment amused them all.
The excursions were limited to one a week, on Thursday after rounds, with the doctor’s approval.
Sister Connor did not hold that all animals were equal but some were more equal than others.
It was on the night after the second excursion that Isobel was awakened by the noise of water running full and hard in the basin.
She could not turn on a light. The lights went out at the main switch at nine o’clock. After that there was only the glare from the great torches the nurses carried on their rounds and the moonlight and starlight which prevented C Ward from ever being completely dark.
Elsa was standing at the basin.
‘Elsa. Are you all right?’
‘Did I wake you? It’s nothing, dear. Just a bit pazzy. Those wretched tablets. I’m just getting back to bed. Go to sleep.’
*
Isobel however lay awake wondering at Elsa’s use of the word ‘pazzy’, which was certainly not part of her vocabulary. She might have said ‘bilious’ if it had been relevant. Isobel did not think it was relevant. If the PAS tablets brought on a bilious attack, that happened infallibly before lunch.
She had come back to the hospital, withdrawn in a quiet happiness which she did not seem to wish to interrupt by eating dinner.
Sister Knox’s affectionate protest, ‘Darling, if you’re naughty you won’t be allowed out again,’ had roused her only to a look of polite interest which quelled Sister Knox and made Doctor Wang particularly inscrutable.
Isobel, sure that Elsa was living in the memory of the day’s music, had not wished to disturb her.
She had got up to go to the lavatory, had cleaned her teeth and washed at the basin without any sign of bodily weakness. They had retired with minimal communication for the night.
But pazzy?
Isobel was sure that what Elsa had been washing away at the basin had been not vomit but blood. That was what they called a haemorrhage.
She did not feel any urge to question further. That was the philosophy of the establishment. Living kills, but one may choose to prefer it to mere survival. If Elsa wished to risk her life in order to enjoy her music, the decision was hers.
Isobel was prepared to accept it calmly. After all, it couldn’t have been a major haemorrhage and music was music, life was life.
*
On the following Thursday, Doctor Stannard said to Isobel, ‘Time to get your boots on.’
‘Am I going to D grade?’
‘Yes. You have escaped the knife. Not by your own efforts, may I say?’
Isobel was too happy to resent this thrust, but with Elsa in her thoughts she repressed her delight.
Doctor Wang too was smiling. It was a moment of celebration.
‘And what about that transfer, doctor?’ asked Sister Connor.
‘Oh, yes, of course. Isobel is to go down to Room 8 with Phyllis. A more suitable arrangement, we think.’
Isobel thought at once and with deep dismay that she would miss Sim’s lunches.
Elsa’s eyes had filled with tears.
‘Please, please, don’t move her. Don’t take her away from me.’
‘I’m not a nuisance. I’m not noisy,’ said Isobel. ‘And I can do things for Elsa.’
Doctor Stannard looked from one to the other. The tears on Elsa’s face were a powerful argument.
In a voice full of pity and affection, he said, ‘I think, Sister, we may leave things as they are.’
She knows all about me. I’m a dirty tramp and I’ve made dirty anonymous phone calls and she still wants me to stay.
Isobel’s joy over this was greater than her joy over the promotion to D grade.
‘If it suits them,’ said Sister Connor, with a jaded look at Isobel.
No use trying to save some people from themselves.
IV
MORNINGTON D GRADE
On the following afternoon, translated in checked seersucker and summer sandals, Isobel set off for the lower block and took the wooden walkway which led past the men’s wards in order to keep her promise to visit Lance.
Heads turned as she passed. She heard murmurs. Any new face was a break in the terrible monotony, therefore an object of interest.
However, the silence that fell as she entered G Ward seemed excessive. It made her self-conscious. Was there something odd about her appearance? She had put on weight, so that the seersucker was a little tight. Was it too tight? Was she bursting out of it? Did she look like a skinned rabbit?
To the man in the first bed, she said too abruptly, ‘I’m looking for Lance. He’s in here, isn’t he?’
The man said, pointing, ‘Over there in bed six.’
In bed six Lance was lying supine, staring at the ceiling.
‘Hullo, Lance.’ She pulled up a chair and sat beside him. He did not turn his face.
‘Well, how’s it going?’
‘Don’t expect a civil answer from that sulky little bastard,’ said the man in the next bed. ‘Wouldn’t throw a word to a dog.’
Lance addressed the ceiling.
‘You done this to me. You got me moved.’
‘Lance, no. I did not!’
‘You got Val moved down to surgery because she got on your nerves. They all say that. “Waiting for your op? Just get across that Isobel,” they say. “Down to surgery in three days.” Then I was next.’
‘I think maybe they moved Val out because she couldn’t cope with sharing, with me or anyone. I got on her nerves more than she got on mine. She was breaking down emotionally. I had nothing to do with it. Anyhow, she was ready for surgery. Lance, this is mad.’
‘They moved her up the list because she got on your nerves. Everybody knows Stannard is sweet on you. He just does anything you want.’
I should be so lucky.
Isobel looked round for help to the neighbour, shaking her head in a denial that could not reach Lance.
‘Don’t pay any attention to him. Let him stew,’ the neighbour said, looking shifty.
‘Lance, we were friends.’
‘If you was a friend of mine, I’d still be up there in C Ward.’
‘I’ve never said a word against you to Doctor Stannard or to Sister Connor or to Doctor Wang. You have to admit that you fixed yourself with Doctor Wang. Even so, he would never speak against you. It was your own doing, you wouldn’t stay in bed. If I was to blame for anything, it was for covering for you. And we were friends when you left. You asked me to come and see you.’
‘Didn’t know then what I know now. Stannard’s baby, they say. Stannard’s little bit of fluff. Don’t cross her.’
‘Who says? How can they say what isn’t true? I wouldn’t dare to say a word to Doctor Stannard unless he was talking to me. And I wouldn’t talk about any other patient.’
This, she remembered, was not quite true in fact, though true in spirit.
‘If you had wanted me to stay, I’d have stayed.’
‘They were trying to do their best for you. You didn’t make it easy.’
Lance continued to study the ceiling.
She turned in desperation to the neighbour.
‘There’s not a word of truth in it. I don’t know where he got the idea. It’s bad for him to be so bitter. And to believe such lies.’
‘Don’t worry your head about it,’ the man said, but with discomfort.
For that moment, Isobel hated Mornington. There was poison in the air, like marsh gas that turned an act of kindness into a will-o’-the-wisp of evil. She did not believe the man in the next bed was innocent. If he hadn’t helped to poison Lance’s mind, he hadn’t offered any antidote to poison, either.
She walked out and went no more to the men’s ward.
Lance had known her. There was nothing she could do if he preferred the lies he heard to the truth he had experienced. But what a shame. What a rotten shame! She grieved for what he might have been.
Lance had been a burden. She wanted to be done with burdens.
She walked in the garden, astonished to discover the limit of her strength. Health was after all a long way off. Wellbeing was no guarantee.
She visited the store, run by a stout little ex-wog named Arthur, who had been given six months to live twelve years ago and had beaten the rap. He ran the post office and bank and dispensed paper, envelopes, soap, shampoo, razors, shaving cream, a few cosmetics, a few paperbacks, sweets, sewing equipment, things needed on a journey.
She thought about finishing the Robbie poem and rereading the long story which should be turned into a novel, and decided to put off serious effort for the time being.
She crocheted dahlias, carnations, raised roses and flat lilies, and stitched them onto cardboard. She spent time in the stockroom making up sweater kits, ten skeins of khaki, one motif in contrast and the rest of the contrast with a leaflet of instructions, all packed in the empty Koala boxes.
Miss Landers persuaded her to begin on some knitting for herself.
‘You’ll be needing new clothes when you go out, you know. What about a dress? Or,’ she added hopefully, ‘a dress and a jacket? That jacket Lilian is making with the mustard trim is very smart.’
Perhaps she was trapped in a fairy story where she had to dispose of a hundredweight of khaki 4-ply before she could gain her freedom. She accepted the offer of wool and began to knit a dress for the next winter. In the summer weather, the knitting went slowly, but there was plenty of time.
She wrote the news of her promotion to Olive (‘Give my love to Frank’) and to Tom Fenwick, and wished that she could write it to Boris.
She stayed away from Room 2 as much as possible, to leave Sim and Elsa alone together. Since the episode of the suspected haemorrhage, Elsa had become taciturn, repressing irritation with an obvious attempt at politeness. She would not give up the excursions to Sim’s house, though she returned exhausted. She had protested to Stannard that the PAS tablets were upsetting her stomach too much and causing vomiting fits. Stannard listened in silence. He conferred with Sim in private. Isobel guessed the point at issue: must Elsa give up what made life worth living, in order to preserve life? Wang, who touched on the subject without mentioning names, said that a doctor had no freedom of choice in such a matter. His duty was at all times to preserve life.
‘Is that also your opinion as a man?’ asked Isobel.
‘My opinion as a man I left behind me when I became a doctor.’
Elsa wanted to stop medication. The PAS tablets were causing all her discomfort—she never called it anything worse than discomfort.
Stannard did not ask searching questions about the attacks she complained of, but he did not give way about the medication.
At last he forbade the excursions, though that was hardly necessary. There were days when Elsa could not get out of bed. Diana arrived with the bath trolley, pulled down the blind and shut the door, as she had done long ago in Room 5 for Isobel.
On those occasions, Isobel withdrew, thinking sadly that it should be the beginning, not…
The happy days were over. They had not lasted long, but they would be long remembered. The moments of shared peace between Sim and Elsa grew longer and more frequent: Isobel guessed that these were their happiest times and she tried not to intrude on them.
She was still on streptomycin and was required to stay in bed until the injection had been given. She was required to return for rest period and to stay in bed for dinner and then till morning.
She talked with Wang and Lilian on the verandah, ate lunch in the dining room, worked in the stock room, took her book into the garden, rootless and restless, suffering in sympathy with the pair of friends.
Elsa wanted to see the ocean. Sim’s house, the dwelling he had abandoned to be with her, stood on the heights above Bilgola Beach. Elsa seemed to believe, and insisted against all medical advice, that beside the ocean she would get better.
‘Take me there, Sim. Please.’
‘But what about your medication, love?’
‘I shan’t need it. I know. And those wretched tablets are making me sick.’
It was sad to see serene, rational Elsa peevish and unreasonable.
‘I’ll ask Doctor Stannard.’
Doctor Stannard said he would see about it.
Maybe at Christmas.
Christmas promised to be a bleak season.
Stannard gave way about the trip to Bilgola Beach.
Sim and Isobel were both depressed by what was implicit in his consent. The pair set off at the beginning of Christmas week, Elsa elated and Sim unusually silent.
Doctor Wang was on holiday with his wife and son.
Every patient who was fit to travel and had a home to go to went home for Christmas. Isobel felt like a child left behind at boarding school.
The Red Cross distributed parcels of Christmas gifts. Isobel received
a tin of talcum powder and two embroidered handkerchiefs. She entered them on her list of things for which she must one day make a return: Red Cross, one Christmas parcel.
With a scattering of other patients she ate roast fowl and plum pudding under loops of paper chains made by volunteer patients.
In spite of the recent improvement in her prospects, she was melancholy.
In the afternoon, as Isobel lay reading on her bed, Olive arrived with her husband Terry. Isobel had imagined Terry as a downtrodden mother’s boy and was relieved to find him tall and strong, handsome and cheerful.
‘We thought you might be lonely, it being Christmas day. Terry’s bought a car. There was nothing to stop us. We’ve only ourselves to please. We thought we’d take a picnic lunch and come up to see you and bring you your Christmas presents. So here we are.’
She had brought a bag full of wrapped parcels which she handed over one by one.
Chocolates from Frank, a pretty scarf from Nell and Sandra, a bottle of scent from that odd little Jenny, who loved her without knowing her, Christmas cake in a handsome tin from Olive.
Olive had one parcel left.
‘I kept this till last. This’ll kill you. Guess who from?’
‘I couldn’t possibly guess. Give me a clue.’
‘Well, it’s a violet vase imported from Czechoslovakia…’
‘Oh, my God. You don’t mean to tell me…’ She unwrapped the little crystal vase and gaped at it in wonder.
‘Right. Mr Walter himself. You see, you never miss the water till the well runs dry!’
They sat laughing at tyrants discomfited and pomposity brought low, but Isobel remembered Mr Walter on the day that Nick had died. Beautiful Nick had died on his motorbike, and she had been sent by Helen to break the news to Diana, that obsessed lover who had persecuted him with her passion. Helen had rung her at the office and she had screamed, ‘Dead? Don’t be ridiculous! How can he be dead?’ And Mr Walter, hearing the rumble of the cart carrying forward, had been respectful, even solicitous, looking up maps and bringing water and aspirin. Mr Walter had heard the rumble of the cart and become humble and human.