Who Was That Woman Anyway? Read online

  ‘You must remember they don’t feel pain the way we do. The dentist comes to do extractions once a year. Messy business. They have to be knocked out of course. Anaesthetised. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it’ was the nurses’ refrain.

  After our shifts, we were usually too tired to do more than shower and collapse on our beds. We comforted one another by adding up how much money we were making. We kept repeating the nurses’ comments that the patients didn’t feel pain the way we did. I wasn’t at all sure I believed that. I was willing to believe it of the oysters I swallowed fresh off their shells: they had a different nervous system. But I felt the children might feel it more and be unable to tell us. Maria couldn’t stand it and left. I went down with her to the small dirty bus stop in the centre of Nelson where we embraced clumsily and I patted her back while she snuffled, mumbling, ‘We’re only twenty. We shouldn’t know that there’s life like this. What if I have a child and it’s like them? The money’s not worth it.’

  In the two months I was on the children’s wards no one came to visit. I wasn’t surprised. If my child were one of these I would not want to visit. It confirmed my belief that there was no way I would ever have a child.

  One thing that made life at the hospital more bearable was the trellises laden with sweet peas outside the ward and the nurses’ home windows. Bright, variegated colours and wafts of scent against the garish blue summer sky. I’d inhale them when I walked to the ward in the morning, hoping that my increasingly grubby uniform would last another day. The flowers hinted at something beyond the rows of befouled ugliness in the wards. Thin consolation though.

  Then I was moved to the old women’s ward.

  ‘Short-staffed there, nurse, too many taking Christmas time off.’

  I thought the old women would be preferable but they upset me even more. The women—Mrs Norman, Mrs Guard, Mrs DeJeune, thirty more of them—had once lived normal lives, had loved, had been married, borne children, baked and iced cakes. Now they were mindless. Or their minds had gone somewhere else, into incommunicable depths from which they would never surface. Most were silent. Some chattered incessantly and meaninglessly. Some were tied to their beds to prevent them escaping to look for the home that was long in the past. Most were incontinent.

  On morning shift, I pulled back the bedclothes and lifted their legs up and put their feet onto the floor. I guided them, holding an arm, to the communal bathroom where I showered them, washing between their legs, lifting their flabby breasts to wash underneath, putting antiseptic cream on whichever bits were festering in the heat. Then I’d help them dress, pulling the clothes over their head, supporting them as I lifted their legs for the bloomers.

  ‘How do I know which are their clothes?’ I asked the nurse the first time.

  Some items in the pile of crumpled clothes had nametags, but the names had faded into blurs with the ferocious washings of the industrial-strength washing machines. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said the nurse, ‘they don’t care. Just check they’re big enough. Don’t worry about it. There’s a bundle of new bloomers if the elastic’s gone.’

  On my first evening shift the nurse told me to collect the teeth and clean them. Almost all the women had dentures. I brushed away the soft yellowing detritus. The children’s ward had hardened me against gagging at the smell. Then I rinsed them clean. ‘Oh dear,’ said the nurse. ‘You should have put their names on their mugs.’ I woke in the night worrying about those women, with the wrong teeth that didn’t fit, uncomfortable in their mouths, rubbing on their gums. I woke, worrying, years later, long after the women would have died. The nurse didn’t seem worried about it though. ‘That’s the way the cookie crumbles,’ she’d said. I’d never heard anyone except my American mother use that phrase.

  Once a niece visited, but she couldn’t pick out her aunt from the group of baggy wrinkled women in faded dresses sitting outside the ward. They all had sun-hardened faces from months, years sitting alongside the ward wall. I had to go fetch the head nurse, who took the niece to a Mrs Guard. The niece stared, tried to smile, went up to her and said, ‘Hello Auntie Gwen, remember me, I’m little Gwen, your sister Doris’s daughter. Doris and Hughie.’ She put her bunch of flowers on Mrs Guard’s knee and backed away from her aunt’s vacant unrecognising stare.

  ‘Hasn’t been before,’ said the nurse. ‘She won’t be back.’

  Back in Auckland I was dazed. Those three months had been so vivid, so real, so appalling. We were all quiet and we avoided telling horrifying or amusing anecdotes to our friends who’d worked in factories or shops. Anyway, we had to find a new flat. All the student flats, shut up over summer, were full of flea eggs waiting for us to hatch them. The eggs would lie there between the cracks of the wooden floors, under the carpet squares, waiting for the thump of our feet. As the one who felt there were a lot worse things than fleas, I would volunteer to take off my jeans, walk around the prospective flat, stamping heavily. Then they’d hatch and spring up, heading for the blood they needed. But they were newly born and confused so it was easy for me to pick them off my legs while I stood in cold water in the bathtub.

  I had to forget the implications of the summer holiday, get rid of fleas, begin to learn Anglo-Saxon, read very long eighteenth-century novels, and mate fruit flies. And I did forget, until November and the end of exams, when we were due down in Nelson again.

  Those wards contained a truth about the short time I was going to be alive, far beyond anything Ouspensky or the spiritualists or the churches could offer me. What did it mean when Jane said, ‘Of course there is a God. I know it’? How could she reconcile that belief with those children, those women? Jane didn’t go back, despite the money we’d all made, which meant we could buy small cheap cars and expensive books, smoke Sobranie Black Russians and drive out to the Western vineyards to buy flagons of Dally plonk. Next summer, it was only me and Liz who drove my Morris Minor across the flat tobacco-growing plains from Picton to Nelson, eating juicy red-black cherries out of brown paper bags and spitting their stones out the windows.

  The letter confirming our appointment told us to go three miles beyond Nelson, through the village of Stoke and up the Stoke Valley. The valley was among low round hills whose grass was burnt cardboard-coloured, even this early in the summer. Stretching up the valley were a nurses’ home, an administration block, and six buildings, which we learned were called villas.

  ‘You’re in Villa 2,’ said the administrator, a short, very fat woman with a gigantic monobrow. ‘The matron is Sister MacFarland. She’s strict, but as long as you keep on the right side of her you’ll be tickety-boo.’ She handed Liz and me each a bundle of pink uniforms. ‘We seem to have run out of belts, but don’t worry, you’ll be fine.’

  Next morning Sister MacFarland, tall, narrow and tight-lipped, took me to meet the more important patients.

  ‘This is Maggie, she runs the kitchen, don’t you Maggie?’

  Maggie, fiftyish and chunky, grinned and said, ‘I do too.’

  ‘And Shirley, she’s head gardener, aren’t you Shirl?’ Shirley’s flabby mouth worked and she mumbled something indistinguishable.

  ‘And here’s Annie, she’s in control of the laundry. We’re practically self-sufficient here. Annie’s such a hard worker.’

  Annie ducked her head and offered me a swollen reddened hand.

  ‘Now, we don’t need that do we Annie? Nurse is a nurse, not a visitor. And nurse, make sure you have a belt on tomorrow. We have to keep up standards.’

  There were thirty-two patients, all women, and they all seemed able, with some encouragement, to wash and dress themselves. They each had a task, which Sister Mac read from a roster at breakfast each morning. Our job involved a certain amount of chivvying—to find the patient doing the task, say, peeling potatoes or cleaning toilets, and then to watch them as they did it. However, after last summer, this was a friendly, even convivial, environment. The patients were either jovial and trying to ing
ratiate themselves with the staff, or somnolent, as they dozed, drugged on lithium, on benches or sofas.

  My first job was to cut long strips out of sheets of gold tinsel paper and, balancing on a wobbly ladder, tack them in a criss-cross pattern over all the wooden panels of the dining room. Then I had to add a sprig of tinsel holly to the centre of each diamond. It was like icing ice cream cakes and it took several days. This was more than a month before Christmas but Sister Mac liked to see the ward looking festive ‘bright and early.’ The Christmas tree from the forest up the valley had already arrived, brought by a work party from the men’s villa, with their male nurse.

  The next day I was assigned to outdoors supervision. It was sunny, so I sat beside the swimming pool, supposedly supervising some of the younger women splashing in the shallow end. What a cushy job this is, I thought. Then I saw the head of a mongol girl going under, surfacing, going under, at the deep end. I ran to the edge and jumped in, pushing her to the safety of the steps. ‘Look, look at nursie,’ called the others. ‘She’s in the water!’ The other nurse, hearing the shrieks and laughter, strolled out. ‘Oh dear,’ she said to me. ‘Now you’ll have to go and get changed. Don’t worry; I’ll hold the fort. Sister should have told you she always does this—she’s like a balloon—unsinkable. You just need to grab her hair and drag her along.’

  I had momentarily felt heroic. Now, as I went dripping to change, I repeated to myself, ‘Think before you act. Think before you act.’

  On Christmas day the head nurse from the male ward came, outfitted as Father Christmas, with a ‘Ho-ho-ho’, a lopsided cotton-wool beard, and a pillowcase of presents chosen by Sister Mac. Maggie had prepared a lunch of roast chicken and Christmas pudding under Sister Mac’s close surveillance. Relatives were invited but only one couple came, the tiny tentative parents of a very large woman who worked with Shirl in the garden. Maybelle introduced them proudly, ‘These are my mum and dad.’ I was shocked. They seemed younger as well as a lot smaller than Maybelle.

  ‘Such nice people,’ said Sister Mac. ‘They had enough sense to stop. Most don’t. They just keep trying. Look at Ruby and Pearl and Emmy. And they have a brother up the valley.’ I looked at Ruby and Pearl and Emmeline. I hadn’t realised they were sisters. All inarticulate and often incontinent. It was impossible to tell how old they were. No one visited them.

  Moana, the other nurse on duty, served the Christmas lunch with me. I got a comb as a present from Father Christmas and swapped it for a plastic Minnie Mouse, when Joannie said, ‘Look. A bloody stupid toy, I’m not a baby,’ and threatened to throw her Minnie Mouse into the ice cream.

  I was a wide-eyed innocent compared to the psychiatric nurses—really wide-eyed, staring at their style and flamboyance and insouciance. They were probably no older than Liz and me, but they seemed so much more sophisticated and they were undeniably tough. They’d been through everything we were going through and had come out bravely. The nurses’ home reverberated with Elvis and the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly and Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry and Little Richard, played on portable multi-coloured record players. Particularly Elvis. One nurse put ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ on repeat full blast, locked her door and went down to the hotel. None of the nurses minded. Next day another reciprocated with ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’.

  The clothesline was festooned with skimpy scarlet lacy knickers and black lacy bras, blowing in the warm valley breeze. Liz and I had never seen undergarments like these. We both wore white cotton underpants with elastic in the waist, which would deteriorate in the wash and leave you walking tight-kneed to keep your underpants up. The nurses invited Liz and me down to the hotel in the village and shouted us beer with ‘top shelf’ chasers. They played pool with the local shearers. The first time Liz and I played I beat the local champion, a dirty sun-bronzed hero. I’d played billiards with my father at home but he always beat me, so it was exciting to be a champion and to be praised by the nurses who laughed and cheered me and bought me drinks.

  Once the nurses realised that both Liz and I would drink as well as play pool, they asked us to their evening soirees. Ten or so would crowd into one of their rooms, cram on the bed, sit on the desk and floor, put the record player on and smoke and drink and drink and drink. They joked about the patients, the matrons, their jobs and one another. They laughed at us—‘little scared white rabbit student girls’—but affectionately, so I felt included and even loved. They all rolled their own which seemed both tough and suave. And dance! Wow, thought Liz and I, could they dance: ‘We’re gonna rock around the clock tonight’ and they would. ‘Don’t be no square / if you can’t find a partner use a wooden chair,’ they shouted along with Presley, at me. Next to them, I was indubitably square.

  One night, sitting on the corner of a bed, squeezed up against Liz, I watched Moana, a handsome Maori woman, crooning to the song on the player. Then she leant into the woman next to her, wrapped her arm round her neck and kissed her. On the lips. On the lips. All those songs that pulsated through the nurses home daily and echoed through my mind on the ward took on a new significance: ‘I can’t think straight’—‘I’m living right next to an angel, I’m going to make that angel mine’—‘cutest little jailbird I ever did see’. My God, these women were gay. Or at least some of them were. These songs were gay songs. I grabbed Liz’s arm and pulled her, protesting, out into the corridor. ‘Did you realise that Moana and Rachel are lovers?’

  ‘I’m not sure. They might just be being affectionate. But I think Jo and Robyn are. And I think they think we are.’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘I think that’s a good idea. It means none of them will try it on with us.’

  That’s when I realised. I would like one of them to ‘try it on’ with me. They were so glamorous and at the same time so competent and wise to be able to handle this terrifyingly other world. I’d like to be like them, I thought. I’d love one of them to feel I was worthwhile. So I went back in.

  ‘Hey, here’s our little timid, white, pool-playing rabbit.’ Moana poured me half a tumbler of Jack Daniel’s, topping it with a slosh of coke.

  ‘I wish you all’d stop calling me a white rabbit.’ My discovery and the bourbon had made me brave.

  She laughed. ‘Well you most surely are not brown.’

  That night was my first blackout. I wavered to my room and collapsed on the bed, the ceiling swirling in huge elliptical arcs above me.

  ‘You drank most of us under the table sweetie,’ said Jo as we dished up the porridge the next morning. ‘I thought you’d be too under-the-weather to turn up this morning. You might be a lousy dancer but you’re sure a champion drinker.’

  The endearment and the combined insult–compliment made me feel I’d been accepted. Despite my hangover I dished out globules of sticky porridge with enthusiasm.

  Three nights later, with ‘Great Balls of Fire’ drowning out any attempt at conversation, the door of Rachel’s bedroom burst open and whacked into my knees. When I looked down I saw the black boots of the door-kicker—then, looking up, I saw a short solid Maori woman in a red shirt and black leather biker’s jacket.

  ‘Hey Suzy, no need to be so butch. You’ve just slammed the door into our white rabbit’s knees.’

  I wanted to draw her attention to me, but the best I could come up with was ‘Ow!’

  The woman grinned at me. A wicked grin that turned her eyes into glinting slits.

  ‘Sorry baby, but it wasn’t that hard was it? Nice knees. Wouldn’t want to damage them.’ She turned to Rachel and held out a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. She then took a glass, and just as I’d hoped, squeezed in between Liz and me as she lit up a readymade.

  ‘Menthol. I’ve got asthma.’ She coughed melodramatically. I loved it—the humour, the drama. ‘I’m on sick leave,’ she announced to the room. ‘Fatigue syndrome and you’d better believe it. Come on baby, let’s rock.’ She yanked me to my feet, held me close and swayed me to ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ in the tiny space between th
e bed and the desk. She’d thrown her jacket into a corner and I could feel her breasts pressing against mine. Shouting into my ear she told me she was the charge nurse at the children’s ward in town, and rented a cottage in Polstead Rd down the valley. She smelled of cigarettes and booze with an overlay of an unsubtle perfume that reminded me of sweet peas. She kept grinning and I kept grinning back.

  The next day was a day off. I was lying on my bed reading the second volume of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. My tutor had said that no one read past volume one and the madeleine, so I had challenged myself to read it all from beginning to end that summer. I’d already read all of Richardson’s Clarissa because the lecturer said even he hadn’t read it. Despite the villainous handsome Lovelace, I’d found it unbearably boring. Now I was wondering if Proust intended me to dislike Marcel as much as I did.

  Someone thumped on my door.

  ‘Hey you in there, there’s the phone for you.’ No one ever rang us. Toll calls were too expensive.

  It was Suzy. ‘We’re driving over to the Pass. Wanna come? I’ll pick you up in fifteen minutes.’

  I had no idea what the Pass was, but M. de Charlus, the Duchesse de Guermantes and the unlikeable Marcel didn’t stand a chance against Suzy’s husky invitation.

  Suzy had a large dirty-brown Chev. She introduced her two brothers, John and Richard, and a cousin, Joey.

  ‘You’re driving, Richard. Here, sling those flagons and those sacks in the boot, Joey. Sit next to me in the back Ngaio. Great she’s got a hori name, eh? None of us have.’