I Can Jump Puddles, page 3
Father’s influence led me into sometimes seeing people as horses, and as I watched the nurses going up and down the ward they seemed like ponies to me.
On the day Father brought me to the hospital, he had given a quick glance over the nurses – he liked women – and commented to Mother that there were some good shafters among them but they were all shod wrong.
When I heard trotting horses going past the hospital I thought of Father and I could see him sitting on a horse that reared and plunged and he was always smiling. He wrote me a letter and in it he said:
‘It’s keeping dry up here and I’ve had to start feeding Kate. There’s whips of feed on the creek flats yet, but I want to keep her in good nick for you when you come back.’
When I read the letter I said to Angus McDonald, ‘I’ve got a pony called Kate,’ then, repeating Father, ‘She’s a bit ewe-necked but she’s honest.’
‘Your old man breaks in horses, doesn’t he?’ he asked me.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He’s easy the best rider in Turalla.’
‘He dresses flash enough,’ muttered McDonald. ‘I thought he was out of a buckjump show when I saw him.’
I lay thinking over what he said, wondering whether it was against Father or for him. The way Father dressed pleased me. His clothes suggested he was a man who moved quickly. When I helped him put the harness away, the neatsfoot oil left marks on my clothes and hands, but it left no mark on Father. He took a pride in his clothes. He liked his moleskin trousers to be white and unmarked and his boots were always shining.
He liked good boots and regarded himself as a judge of leather. He was always proud of the boots he was wearing – generally elastic sides. When he took them off as he sat in front of the kitchen stove each night, he would examine each one carefully, flexing the sole with his hands and pressing the upper this way and that, searching for signs that his boots were beginning to wear.
‘The upper on this left boot is better than the one on the right,’ he told me once. ‘Funny, that. It’ll go before the left one.’
He often talked about Professor Fenton who ran a buck-jump show in Queensland and had a waxed moustache. The professor wore a white silk shirt and a red sash and could do a double ‘Sydney Flash’ with a stockwhip. Father could crack a whip but not like Professor Fenton.
While I was thinking about these things he came walking down the ward to see me. His steps were short and quick and he was smiling. He held one arm across his chest where, beneath his white shirt, something bulky was concealed. Standing beside my bed he looked down at me.
‘How are you, son?’
I had been feeling contented but he brought with him the atmosphere of home and I suddenly felt like crying. Before he came, the old post and rail fence upon which I used to stand to watch him handling horses, the fowls, the dogs, the cats – all these had moved away beyond my immediate interest but now they seemed close and real to me and I needed them. I needed Mother, too.
I didn’t cry but Father, looking down at me, suddenly tightened his lips. He thrust his hand within his open shirt where he had been holding something to him and suddenly pulled out a struggling thing of soft brown. He lifted the blankets and pushed it beneath them against my chest.
‘Here, hold this against you,’ he said fiercely. ‘Clutch that to you. It’s one of Meg’s pups. It’s the pick of the bunch and we’re calling it Alan.’
I wrapped my arms around its warm, snuggling softness and held it to me, and my need passed from me in a breath. I felt a surge of pure happiness and, looking into my father’s eyes, I passed it on to him, for he smiled at me.
The pup moved against me and I looked down beneath the arch of blankets I had formed with my lifted arm and there it lay with its bright eyes watching me, and, seeing me, it wriggled with a quick friendliness. The eager life of it moved into me, refreshing and strengthening me so that I felt no weakness at all. Its weight upon me was good and it smelt of home. I wanted to hold it forever.
McDonald, who had been watching us, called to Mick walking down the ward with a towel across his arm, ‘Keep the nurses talking out there, Mick,’ and to father he said, ‘You know what they are – dogs in here . . . No understanding . . . That’s the trouble.’
‘That’s so,’ said Father, ‘five minutes’ll do him. It’s like a pot to a thirsty man.’
respected men. I regarded them as capable of overcoming any difficulty, of possessing great courage. They could mend anything; they knew everything; they were strong and reliable. I looked forward to the time when I would grow up and be like them.
It seemed to me that Father was typical of all men. In those periods when he acted in a way I considered unusual for a man, I felt he did so consciously and that his object was to amuse people. I was sure that, on such occasions, he was always in control of his actions.
This explained why I was not afraid of a drunken man. When Father was drunk, which was rarely, he still retained, I imagined, a perfectly sober and grown-up side of the character he was presenting to onlookers even though he did not reveal it.
When, on arriving home from a prolonged visit to a pub, he flung his arm round Mother’s waist and, with a ‘Ho, there!’ swung her round the kitchen in a wild dance lit with whoops, I watched him with delight. A drunken man was a romping, talking, laughing man who staggered for the fun of it.
One night two nurses came into the ward guiding between them a drunken man that the police had brought to the hospital. I looked at him in astonishment, afraid of what had happened to him, for he was being directed by something within him he could not control. Tremors shook him and his tongue was loose in his open mouth.
As he was led through the open door he looked up at the ceiling and shouted, ‘Hallo. What are you doing up there? Come down and I’ll have a go at you.’
‘There’s nothing up there,’ said one of the nurses.
‘Come on.’
He was a prisoner walking between them. He went blundering towards the wall like a blind horse, but they guided him into the bathroom.
When they had bathed him and put him into his bed next to Mick’s, the sister gave him some paraldehyde. He made strange noises when he swallowed it and cried out, ‘Hell!’ then added plaintively, ‘That’s crook. That’s terrible crook stuff.’
‘Lie down now,’ the sister ordered. ‘Nothing will touch you here. You’ll soon be asleep.’
‘The coppers tried to tack it on to me,’ he muttered. ‘Me mate came at me first . . . Well, yes, that’s right . . . Where the hell am I? You’re a nurse, aren’t you? Yes, that’s right . . . How are ya? We been on the booze for weeks . . . I’ll lie down . . . I’ll go quiet . . .’
The sister, with her hand on his shoulder, pushed him gently back on to the pillow, then went away.
When she had closed the door he lay quietly for a moment in the half dark then sat up stealthily and looked at the ceiling. Then he looked at the walls and the floor beside him. He felt the iron framework of his bed as if he were testing the strength of a trap.
He suddenly noticed Mick resting on his pillows watching him.
‘Goodday,’ he said.
‘Goodday,’ replied Mick. ‘You’ve been in the rats, have you?’
‘Rats is right,’ said the man shortly. ‘What do they slug you in this joint for the night?’
‘It’s on the house,’ said Mick. ‘You’re jake.’
The man grunted. He had full, sagging cheeks covered with a greyish bristle. The flesh around his eyes was swollen and inflamed as if he had been crying. His nose was large and fleshy, pitted with sunken pores, dark-centred, as if each of them clasped the root of a hair.
‘I might know you,’ he said to Mick. ‘Ever been to Mildura? Ever been on the Overflow, Piangle, Bourke . . . ?’
‘No,’ said Mick, reaching into his locker for a cigarette. ‘I’ve never been up that way.’
‘Well, I don’t know you then.’
He sat staring ahead of him, his hands moving purposelessly upon the bedclothes. Suddenly he whispered urgently, ‘What’s that over there? Look! Near the wall! It’s moving!’
‘It’s a chair,’ said Mick glancing at it.
The man lay down quickly and pulled the blankets over his head. His bedclothes were shaking.
When I saw him do this I too lay down and put my head beneath the blankets.
‘Hey!’ I could hear McDonald speak to me but I did not move.
‘Hey, Alan!’
I pulled the blankets away from my face and looked at him.
‘It’s all right,’ he assured me. ‘He’s been on a bender and he’s got the D.T.’s.’
‘What’s that?’ I asked him, my voice shaking a little.
‘Too much booze. He’s seeing things. He’ll be right tomorrow.’
But I could not go to sleep and when the night nurse came on I sat up to watch her as she walked down the ward.
‘Come here, sister,’ the man called to her. ‘I want to show you something. Bring a candle here.’
She walked over to his bed, holding her lantern high so that she could see him. He had pulled back his blankets and was holding his finger tight against his naked thigh.
‘Look! I’ve got it here. Look!’
He lifted his finger and the nurse, bending forward with the light of the lantern full on her face, gestured impatiently.
‘It’s a freckle. Go to sleep.’
‘It’s no freckle. Look, it’s moving.’
‘Go to sleep,’ she said, giving him a friendly pat on the shoulder.
She pulled the blankets over him. She was so calm and unconcerned that it comforted me. In a little while I was asleep.
When I woke up in the morning I lay for a moment thinking sleepily of the eggs in my locker. I had counted them the day before but, with my mind still bemused with sleep, I couldn’t remember how many were there.
Breakfast in the hospital was a meal patients ate without enjoyment.
‘You eat it to keep alive,’ Angus explained to a new arrival one day. ‘You couldn’t eat it for any other reason.’
It consisted of a plate of porridge and two thin slices of bread bearing a scraping of butter. Those patients who could afford to buy eggs or had friends or relatives with fowls kept a supply of eggs in their locker. They treasured these eggs and became concerned when there were only one or two left.
‘I’m getting low in eggs,’ they would say, peering frowningly into their lockers.
Each morning a nurse walked down the ward carrying a basin.
‘Come on. Hand out your eggs. Who’s having eggs for breakfast?’
Patients would sit up hurriedly at the sound of her voice and lean towards their lockers, some stiffly and painfully, others weakly with drawn faces, and they would open the cupboard doors and reach in for the brown paper bags or cardboard boxes that contained their eggs. They would write their names upon the eggs they intended giving her then sit hunched forward in their beds looking around them as they nursed their eggs in the grey dawn light like sad birds in their nests.
It was necessary to write your name on the eggs you gave the nurse, for disputes often occurred and a man with a supply of large, brown eggs might claim he was given a pullet’s egg when, after cooking, they were returned to their owners. There were some patients who took pride in the freshness of their eggs, and they would sniff suspiciously at the ones returned to them and argue they had received the staler ones of another patient.
Those patients who did not have any eggs always watched this morning ceremony with wistfulness that was sometimes resentful. Then they lay back and sighed or complained about the bad night they had had. Many patients shared their eggs with these unlucky ones.
‘Now, here’s three,’ Angus might say to the nurse. ‘One is for Tom over there, and one for Mick. The other’s mine. I’ve marked them all. And tell the cook not to hard-boil them.’
The eggs were always returned hard-boiled. No egg cups were provided and you held the warm egg in your hand while you gouged into it with a spoon.
Mother sent me a dozen eggs a week and it delighted me to be able to call to a man across the ward, ‘I’m putting in an egg for you this morning, Tom.’ I liked to see the smile on his face when I told him this. My dozen eggs went very quickly; then Angus would give me one of his eggs each morning.
‘You hand out eggs like a Buff Orpington,’ he used to say. ‘Hang on to some of them. I’m getting short.’
I was trying to work out what patients didn’t have eggs when I suddenly thought of the new arrival who now, when it was light, did not seem so frightening. I sat up quickly and looked across to his bed but he was hidden beneath the blankets.
‘What’s he doing now?’ I asked Angus.
‘He’s still seeing things,’ answered McDonald, who was unwrapping a small piece of butter he had taken from his locker. ‘He was crook last night. He got out of bed once. Mick said he’s as weak as a cat this morning.’
Mick was sitting up and yawning, accompanying his yawn with a doleful cry. He scratched his ribs and said, answering Angus, ‘He’s weak all right. No wonder . . . The cow kept me awake half the night. How did you sleep, Mac?’
‘No good. I’ve got that pain again. It’s got me licked. It can’t be my heart because it’s on the right side. I told the doctor but he didn’t say what it was. They tell you nothing.’
‘It’s a fact,’ said Mick. ‘I’ve always said there’s no one feels the pain like yourself. I rolled on my arm last night and had the devil’s own job to stop from yelling out. This bird here,’ he nodded towards the new patient beneath his blankets, ‘thinks he’s crook. Well, he had a hell of a good time getting crook. I’ll swap my arm for his guts any day.’
I liked listening to this talk in the morning but often had difficulty in understanding what was said. I always wanted to know much more.
‘What did you roll over on your arm for?’ I asked Mick.
‘What for!’ exclaimed Mick in surprise. ‘What do you mean “What for”? How the hell do I know? I rolled on it because I thought it was my good arm. You’re a funny little beggar, you are.’
The man in the bed beside him groaned and Mick turned and addressed the mound of bedclothes.
‘Yes, you’re done, brother. You’re going to push up daisies tomorrow. All good things come to an end, more’s the pity.’
‘Don’t say that to him,’ protested Angus. ‘You’ll frighten hell out of him. Do you want an egg this morning or not?’
‘Make it two and I’ll pay you back next week when me old woman visits me.’
‘She mightn’t bring you any.’
‘And she mightn’t at that,’ said Mick nodding his head resignedly. ‘It’s a funny thing but a man never marries a woman as good as his mother. I’ve seen it scores of times. Women today are all the same. They’re going back; anyone will tell you that. You go into my old mother’s pantry back home now. Hell! A mouse couldn’t push his way through the jars of pickles and jams and bottles of sauce and hop beer – all made with her own two hands. You ask any woman today to make you a pot of jam . . .’ He gestured contemptuously, then added in a change of tone, ‘She’ll bring in the eggs. Give me two. I’m hellish hungry this morning.’
The drunk suddenly sat upright and flung back the blankets as if he were going to leap out of bed.
‘Hey! Pull ’em over you again,’ ordered Mick. ‘You played up enough last night. Stop there. They’ll strap you down if you bolt now.’
The man pulled the blankets back and sat clutching at his hair. He stopped and said to Mick. ‘I can taste that medicine yet. Everything’s jumping.’
‘Do you want an egg?’ I called out to him in a quavering, uncertain voice.
‘The kid over there wants to know if you want an egg for breakfast,’ Mick informed him.
‘Yes,’ he said still holding his hair. ‘I’ll have it. I’ll have it. I’ve got to get me strength back.’
‘He’ll have it,’ Mick called to me. ‘Shove it in.’
I suddenly liked the man and decided to ask Mother to bring me enough eggs for him too.
After breakfast the nurses hurried from bed to bed replacing the quilts they had removed the previous evening. They leant over each bed, the patients looking up at them from their pillows. The eyes of the nurses, as they concentrated on the movements of their hands, were not aware of the patients. They tucked in the bedclothes, smoothed them, patted them into creaseless bindings in preparation for the matron’s tour of inspection.
Some of the nurses, if they were not in a hurry, would joke with us. Some of them were friendly, comfortable persons who gossiped with the patients and called the matron an ‘old hen’, and whispered ‘Look Out!’ when the sisters came through.
One of these, Nurse Conrad, a dumpy little girl who often chuckled when she was talking to the patients, was a favourite of Angus’s. He always kept an orange for her when anybody gave him some.
‘There’s a kind little girl, now,’ he said to me one day when she smiled at him as she passed. ‘I’ll shout her to see “The Blanche Family”, blowed if I don’t!’
This travelling troupe of ‘Instrumentalists and Master Entertainers’ were on their annual visit to the town and the exciting posters announcing them had already been discussed by the patients.
‘There’s one thing I’ll say about “The Blanche Family”,’ announced Mick, ‘they give you a run for your money. There’s a bloke there . . . he was there last year and I’m tellin’ ya, he’s good . . . This bloke played “She Wore a Wreath of Roses” on beer bottles, and hell! he brought the tears to your eyes. And only a little bloke . . . Nothing to him . . . You’d meet him in a pub and never notice him. By cripes, I’m sorry I’m missing it!’
The morning after they appeared Nurse Conrad, hurrying into the ward in the dawn light, was greeted by Angus, eager for news of her outing.
