Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop (13 page)

He nodded and they moved on.

His face had been quite expressionless, yet he left Isobel with the reassuring impression that he thought Sister Knox ridiculous. She wondered how he had conveyed that, but was too tired to wonder long.

A nurse came in and asked if she wanted the pan.

Yes, she did.

The nurse brought a basin for washing and a glass of water to help her clean her teeth.

That was the last ordeal. Lights out and sleep.

The day began with a thermometer thrust into her mouth and a hand clasping her wrist to count her pulse beats.

She opened her eyes and seeing Diana smiled at the sight of the familiar face.

‘Hi.’

‘Well, you’re brighter this morning. Sleep well?’

This could be answered only with a nod, since Isobel was sucking a thermometer.

Diana released her wrist, made a note on a chart, withdrew the thermometer and removed herself to the doorway to read it in the morning light.

She shook down the thermometer with an expert flick Isobel could never master and set it in a glass of water cloudy with disinfectant which stood on a shelf above the wash basin.

‘You’re supposed to buy your own thermometer. Sister will tell you about that. You’re to go up to Medical today. How do you feel?’

Isobel tested her extremities and decided that she was languid but mobile.

‘
He
says the sooner you start treatment the better. So if you can make the effort…’

There was no need to ask who
he
was. The one who knew all and promised that she would get better.

‘It’ll be all right.’

‘You’d better eat your breakfast. Morning tea will be along in a minute.’ She took Isobel’s handbag from the cabinet. ‘You’d better put this in the pocket next to the wall.’

The pocket was one of the pair which hung like saddle bags on either side of the bed, and were formed by a fold at each end of a wide strip of material which passed under the mattress. Isobel thrust her handbag into the hidden pocket.

When Diana had left, Isobel pondered the ethics of a trip to the bathroom which she had noted on the journey by wheelchair. It was almost opposite.

If she was well enough to go to Medical, she must be well enough to go to the bathroom. The trick was to do things before anyone had thought to stop you.

She got up to fetch the rose-coloured dressing gown and the scuffs and was pleased to find herself much stronger, even with a reserve of strength which would take her to the bathroom and back without difficulty or at least without disaster.

The corridor was deserted and the lavatory was vacant, though the bathroom door was shut and she could hear running water.

She went back to bed triumphant, the lavatory problem solved for the present.

A trolley rolled to the door and Max looked in. ‘Cup of tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘You’re looking a bit brighter this morning. Had a good night?’

She nodded, still wishing to save breath whenever possible.

He poured her a mug of milkless, sugarless tea, her preference, grinned and moved on, saying, ‘I’ll be back with breakfast in an hour. Keep you busy round here.’

There were sounds, voices, doors opening and shutting. She drank her tea and drowsed.

People gathered in the corridor outside. There was some talk, some clatter of dishes. Max brought in a tray with cereal drowned in milk, a bowl of sugar, a boiled egg and bread and butter.

‘Get around that lot. No excuses.’

She got around that lot, slowly, with perseverance. Max returned for the tray and grinned approval. ‘That’s a good girl. Nice clean plate.’

She found that she did not resent this return to childhood. In her present uneasy situation, any word of approval was welcome.

After breakfast, two young women in white coats and wearing face masks appeared. One was small, exquisitely modelled, with bright blond hair braided around her neat head. Above the mask grey eyes beamed at Isobel.

‘I Tamara. She Elaine. We come to make bed. Out, please.’

She fetched Isobel’s dressing gown from the chair where she had dropped it. Isobel got up, put it on and sat in the chair as seemed to be required of her.

‘We no talk to you. Not allowed. Is too tiring.’

Behind her mask, her taller, less striking companion must be smiling apologetically.

‘She means it’s too tiring for you, you know. We were told not to ask you questions or get you talking. You can ask us, of course, if you want anything.’

Isobel nodded.

The two women did however talk to each other. ‘That very nice fellow you with Saturday. Why no marry, eh?’

‘I don’t like him in that way.’

Elaine was coy, embarrassed. Her embarrassment did not deter Tamara.

‘What way? What you mean. What way you no like?’

Her English was heavily accented, but ready and confident. It seemed that, having adapted the language to her purposes, she meant to give it no further consideration. Elaboration was for others; euphemism had no place.

‘Oh, you know. I mean…not to go to bed with.’

‘Huh.’ Tamara shrugged her shoulders. ‘Go to bed!’ She tossed a sheet with contemptuous ease. ‘Anyone can go to bed. Is easy.’

Elaine giggled shyly.

Isobel pondered the proposition.

Was that true? Funny. She had, she supposed, found it easy enough. That is what most people would say of her. An easy lay. Yet she sympathised with Elaine rather than with Tamara. She had never been an easy lay for anyone she liked. That was unthinkable.

She didn’t suppose that Tamara, who even in a face mask was extremely beautiful, would have been an easy lay. Perhaps she thought going to bed was easy because it was to her an aspect of devotion.

Elaine’s appearance suggested a rag doll that had been left out in the rain; bright, damp blue eyes below plucked eyebrows and a fuzz of brown curls added to the impression of softness which extended to her figure, slight as it was.

She helped Isobel back into her orderly bed with firm, economical movements at variance with her appearance, and the two departed, leaving her waiting for the next event.

This was the appearance of Diana, pushing a trolley, carrying on its upper tray a basin, a jug and towels, on the lower the hated china shoe.

Isobel eyed it with distaste.

‘I went to the bathroom this morning.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t have. You’re on B grade. If you want the pan you ring the bell there.’ She reflected. ‘Just make sure you don’t get caught, that’s all.’

Not getting caught proved to be a principal feature of life at Mornington.

Isobel decided to take the risk. She could go back so far to infancy but no further. Being sat on a potty was too much. Diana closed the verandah door and pulled down the window blind.

‘Listen, kid. Don’t crack hardy. You’re here to get better. Okay, a trip to the bathroom, I suppose, but remember, the more you rest, the sooner you get better. Come on. Pyjamas. Down as far as possible, up as far as possible. You can look after “possible” yourself.’

‘Well, that’s a mercy.’

Isobel rolled over onto the towel Diana had spread on the bed.

What an extraordinary experience it was to be washed by somebody else. The surrender of responsibility was restful, but made one vulnerable. She was thankful for Diana’s professional detachment as she soaped, rinsed and dried the body that Isobel had handed over to her care.

‘You weren’t washed at all yesterday. Don’t bother to mention that to Sister Connor.’

Not being caught went both ways, it seemed.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

‘There you are, then. Clean pyjamas. I’ll send these to the laundry. Best to wear pants under your pyjamas. It cuts down on the washing. You’ll do your own washing on C grade.’

‘When will that be?’

‘When the gods decide.’ She pulled up the blind and opened the door. ‘There you are, all ready for Medical. You might as well sit up.’

She fetched Isobel’s dressing gown, put it on her and paused over the slippers.

‘Do you think they are peculiar?’

‘Better than those scuffs, dear. No, really, I think they are cute. And I just love that dragon coat. Where did you get it?’

‘It was a present from Hong Kong.’

Truth at one remove.

Ten minutes later, a small, trim woman of straightforward gaze and reassuring aspect came in and introduced herself as Sister Connor.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t get to see you yesterday. I had a busy day. How are you feeling? Are you up to going to Medical? The sooner the doctors have the information, the sooner the treatment can start.’

Isobel had been nodding assent.

‘Right. Max is outside with the chair. Here she is, Max!’

Isobel took her seat, they took another journey, this time back to the block where she had come in by the front door, into a large laboratory where Doctor Bartholomew was waiting, in company with a burly, dark-haired individual whose face seemed to be set in a permanent sneer.

This was Doctor Hook, Lois’s dream lover.

Isobel supposed at first that the sneer was an accident of the flesh, like Eily’s boxing past, but she learnt in time that Doctor Hook despised all sufferers from tuberculosis. At worst, they were doing it on purpose; at best, they had only themselves to blame. It seemed that he had chosen to specialise in the illness as an outlet for his inborn misanthropy. His abrupt manners and his brusque commands earned him great respect as a doctor. It was generally agreed that Hook knew what he was doing. Otherwise why would such an unpleasant character ever be given employment?

Lois’s choice of Hook as a lover paid tribute to the absurdity of dream as well as to its autonomy. Handsome Stannard wouldn’t be a safe subject for dreaming, but it did make it easier to endure Hook’s snappish commands to strip to the waist when one thought of him turning his bad temper on an amorous waiter. How frustrating that he would never know of it.

She stripped to the waist, had her chest measured, first relaxed and then expanded. The difference was noted by Doctor Hook, while Doctor Bartholomew, who appeared to be in a state of constant apology for his colleague’s bad manners, said nervously that her lung expansion was very satisfactory. Isobel reflected that it had often got its owner into trouble.

Then came the X-ray and what she thought of as the new mantra: Strip to the waist, please. Chin, elbows, lean forward, breathe in, hold, breathe away. It did indeed become familiar as a mantra.

In the laboratory she struck trouble. A young man trying to draw blood from her fingertip grew irritable.

‘Shake your hand about a bit, will you? This is like trying to get milk from an old dry cow.’

‘Sorry!’

She shook and massaged, feeling shame at her incompetence, and at last the young man got his due of blood which he squirted from his hypodermic into a test tube.

‘That’s it, then. You can go back to the ward.’

Max was waiting outside with the wheelchair. The journey back to the ward was speedy, since it was lunch hour.

There was no special lunch today.

Meatballs and mash.

Food is muscle.

Couldn’t have been better put, she thought, and for all her determination could manage only half a meatball. She pushed the plate away and decided to plead fatigue if she was questioned.

In mid afternoon, Sister Connor returned.

‘You’re to see Doctor Wang. Can you walk it? It’s only a few doors along.’

‘Sure.’

Sister Connor led her to the end of the corridor, knocked at a door, said, ‘Here she is, Doctor,’ and departed.

‘Will you strip to the waist, please? And lie down on the couch.’

More tapping, listening, prodding and noting.

The young Chinese, who had seemed like a stripling beside Sister Knox, gained in stature as he practised his profession.

How much one learnt from the touch of hands: skill, confidence and a kind of courtesy—like freedom, thought Isobel. You can’t define it, but you know when you don’t have it. Doctor Wang passed the test of touch.

As she put on her pyjamas, he asked, with some amusement, as if he recognised the question as a password, ‘How long have you known?’

‘You too?’

‘Oh, yes. I am a member of the world’s least exclusive club.’

His question, she perceived, had been a kind of intelligence test. She appeared to have been given a pass mark.

‘Shall I see you back to your room?’

‘Thanks. I can find my way.’

She wondered, as she made her way down the corridor, how many of the staff had tuberculosis and whether there was any way of telling them apart.

Next morning, after Diana’s visit, an orderly appeared and left the now recognisable manila envelope at the foot of her bed.

After it came Doctor Stannard, less daunting in a limp and sagging white coat, and with him Doctor Wang and Sister Connor.

‘Feeling a bit better?’ asked Stannard.

‘Yes, thank you.’

‘That ambulance trip did her no good, Doctor,’ said Sister Connor. ‘Sitting up all that way next to an open window. Clare was on Reception. She had it out with the driver but he said he had had no instructions, and the attendant had to travel in the back with the stretcher case. He hadn’t been told she was a stretcher case.’

‘They were not cooperative,’ agreed Doctor Stannard.

Clearly it was us against the world at Mornington.

‘Why was she not at North Shore in the first place?’ asked Doctor Wang.

Isobel looked warily at Doctor Stannard.

He said vaguely, ‘It was an emergency.’

He had taken the two X-rays from the envelope and was studying them.

‘I’ll have the fever chart, please, Sister.’

He reflected. He named a number of ccs of streptomycin.

The strep didn’t take
. Pam had been going home not cured because the strep didn’t take. But that didn’t happen often.

Doctor Stannard said to her, ‘Now you’re on your way. Starting tomorrow morning.’

He handed the fever chart back to Sister Connor, put the X-rays back in their envelope, nodded and departed with Wang.

Sister Connor stayed to say, ‘Any questions?’