SKIN HUNGER

                                                     

                                 

in deed    in  dead of night    ‘tis a dark night indeed    i’m friggin’ filthy wiv her    i am so  she keep stickin’ it to me    stitches me up    sticks me up    that psycho fink shakes makes my scone skull shrink    i’ll lob in and put some think in her locker    in her larder    a bitta stuff for a bitta stuff and up the duff    rough stuff, eh?    Where the flamin’ heck is the wick    the light of the wicked world    o light of my life    where’s the bloody light?   Where’s the lay of the lie of the land?    Ah, Uretha!    pum pum pum    how about some jig jog, chum?    youse lovey-dove Mervie-boy    that pillow pal o’ yourn youse pash wiv an’ that    i shake my head no    cos’ i cover you  smover you  lover you    why youse taking night all long lonesome    like a shag bag on them rocks?    an’ not pillock talk wiv me  yourn bright white knight     i’d really really punch the airwaves wiv youse  my honeybunch    pinch youse for take-away     an’ take your breaths away

so take this smackeroni, cutie doll    an’ this    an’ that . . . my passion bash . . . ssshush, yer Brenda bitch!

A young nurse was weaving and ducking down the corridor, occasionally bobbing up on the toes of her small frame, feinting to throw out straight lefts like a boxer.  For all her kinetic enthusiasm, Jan was a skittery cat on a hot tin roof.  The last session of Legal Jeopardy urged her to watch out for the signs of potential violence and call for back-up early.  Avoid confrontation, if possible.  Have recourse to physical force only if absolutely necessary.  Shivers!  She reviewed the scenario presented to her group of medicos:  What if you were attacked by a man with a syringe who was blocking your exit?  Scream, grab the food tray for a shield and place obstacles of furniture in his way.

O yeah, I should be so lucky!  But what if you were acting in self-defence?  ‘Holds, locks, throws, blocks’ stamped across her mind like a Fascist incantation, broken suddenly by a high-pitched scream gurgled down to stifled coughing.  Room 29!

Instantly, Jan turned on her heel and thumped on the door.  Opening it brusquely with her free hand, she blurted, ‘Are you all right, Brenda?’  Already fearful, she’d sensed scuffling in the bedroom and a heavy male presence bent over a futile fending of frail little fists.

‘What the dickens!  Mervyn, come away!’  And rushing in, grabbed both arms back, pinioned.  ‘Back off!  Just back off!’  More controlled but firm:  ‘Now return to your own room, at once, thank you.’  Tugging then shoving at his bulky body, Jan thanked her lucky stars the culprit hadn’t kicked out.

It wasn’t till they turned right into Springvale that Christine trembled with recognition.  Here on this very stretch of road was the first occasion that she had noticed her usually quiet and submissive Mother growing restless, agitated, unusually sharp and tetchy.  Weeks later it dawned that Mum’s agitation was due to a raging desperation for a drink.  What a horrendous shock that was, a lady who barely drank more than an occasional glass of sherry was evidently hooked on alcohol – at eighty!  On unexpected visits to her mother’s flat, she would poke around, uncovering empty bottles of sherry and red wine hidden in the broom cupboard, laundry and beneath the bed.  Seemingly oblivious to this subterfuge, Jock would never interfere with housework; Brenda martyred herself for his creature comforts.  The frequency of finds, the number of empty bottles, Mum’s uninhibited reference to ‘booze’, relishing the long vowel sound as an elixir – perhaps for her dreadful insomnia, perhaps for the abrupt and devastating decamping of the only man she had ever loved, perhaps for the stressful role of the dutiful caring partner she played for Jock, an oafish man almost illiterate with whom she had nothing in common, but a man in trousers nonetheless that she could fuss over and subtly control whilst appearing to yield to his preposterous plans for their future.

O her blindness in not twigging sooner, the revulsion at her mother’s letting go of her self-respect, her common sense and decency, her slurring and tiddly giggling, her erratic behaviour, such as blithely dancing solo at her grandson’s wedding reception, as if floating like a seven year old fairy with up-stretched hands fluttering round the ninth green, whose adjacent hotel held the reception and, hopefully, the family goss in house.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Christine said grumpily.  To be called out of bed at two o’clock in the morning.  Why can’t her latest lodger do something to help.  After all, she’s waited on these no-hopers hand and foot for years.’

‘It’s the last straw, darlin,’ conceded Nick.  ‘We’ll have to insist that Brenda moves into a nursing home.  You can’t keep driving down to the Peninsula in the middle of the night, especially when you’ve got to be at work at nine the next mornin’.’

‘She’ll kick up a stink,’ said Christine, recalling that repulsive picture of her mother propped up in bed wearing that fake grin of piano keys, fixed, mummified.

‘An alcoholic has no choice.’

Gerry Gosling had ‘done time’, as he put it, working as a health aide in America’s privately owned nursing homes in the rural Mid-West.  It was dirt easy to walk in on a job; staff turnover was very high in those wretched working conditions.  ‘It grossed me out,’ he was eager to warn naïve greenhorns.  The menial work, for which you were paid a pittance, was physically demanding, emotionally draining and mind-numbingly repetitive.  The mass of paperwork was not only tedious, but also finicky and time-absorbing.  Besides, no matter how often he showered, he could never get rid of the smell of disinfectant, stale clothes, body odour, farty wind, urine and feces.  To ‘have an accident’, which frequently happened to the oldies, meant they’d fouled their undies and bed linen, then furiously denied the evidence confronting them.  He was obliged to wear scrubs to work, then put them in soak at the end of the day, himself utterly drained and ready for his dry bourbon.  These institutions promised intimate personal care, which, he wryly translated, meant aides giving showers to old ladies, cleaning their genitals, which caused both parties considerable anxiety, forcing him to wince away should they carelessly open their legs.  ‘Just clam them shut,’ he’d pray.  It fell to him to get the old folk up in the morning, tug on and button or zip up their clothes, pile them into wheelchairs and spoon puree into gaping mouths.  Yet it wasn’t uncommon to see inmates packing up their few possessions in preparation for a vacation or some imaginary adventure in la-la land.  Some of the old girls dressed up, admittedly in an odd assortment of woven cotton prints, back-to-front hospital gowns, sweat suits and down-at-heel slippers or scuffing tennis shoes and bobby-sox. 

He couldn’t hightail it out of there quick enough, but his c.v. and references were impressive.  If he could crack it, managing a nursing home back in Australia would be a cinch, a blessed relief.

‘We came as quickly as we could, Mr Gosling.  Is Mother all right?’

‘Er . . . in the circumstances, yes, she is now, but . . .’

‘But what?’

The manager swallowed hard.  ‘She’s had an awful fright.  The truth is . . . I’m afraid she’s been assaulted.’

‘Assaulted!’ jumped out of Christine’s mouth.  ‘How bad is it?   Was she out of her room again?’

‘No, this took place in her own room.’

‘Her own room?   Why doesn’t she lock the door?’

‘Usually, she does remember.’

‘Who was on call?  Was there no one doing the rounds?  You assured me security was top-notch.’

‘It certainly is, Mrs Fryatt, but this was an internal matter.’

‘So what the deuce happened?’

‘The guy who occupies the unit two doors down . . . err . . . tried to err smother your mother with a pillow.   We are all deeply concerned and very shocked.’

‘Good grief!  Was she badly hurt?’

‘A few bad bruises about the face, a cut across the bridge of her nose.  When she woke up to the punches, she did cry out before the assailant pressed the pillow down over her face.’

‘She was attacked while she was sleeping?  With punches?’

‘Yes, a most unfortunate situation.’

‘I trust that you reported the incident to the police.’

‘It’s not that straightforward,’ the manager replied tentatively.  ‘We don’t have to report dementia attacks.  Unless, of course, they are very aggressive cases.’

‘What do you think this is then, when the victim is a helpless, harmless old lady whose mind is cloudy and confused, who is being sexually molested, bashed and suffocated to death in her own bed?’

‘I understand how you feel, Mrs. Fryatt, but it is not easy to prescribe the proper course of treatment for dementia patients with behavioural issues.’

‘Well, you could try anti-psychotic drugs for a start.’

‘Now let’s try to stay calm, Mrs. Fryatt.  There’s growing resistance to their prescription.  In fact, there’s a move afoot to have them banned.’

‘Jesus, what can I do?’ she said with exasperation, eyes glaring.  ‘I’m certainly not satisfied with your diffident attitude, Mr. Gosling.  My mother urgently requires a twenty-four hour watch.’

‘I’m afraid that’s out of the question, Mrs. Fryatt.’  The manager paused.  ‘Unless you want to pay extra for a twenty-four hour watch placed on her.’

‘That’s absurd.  I’m a working woman.  I can’t forsake my job to look after her right round the clock.’

‘Well . . .’ his grey eyes were beginning to take on the steely hue of resolution, ‘you could always move in with her.’

‘Out of the question.  I paid good money for Boniface Aged Care to give Brenda the best high-care needs.’

‘So do you wish to take your mother home?’  There was a hint of defiance in Gosling’s tone.

‘Now look here.  My mother hasn’t done anything wrong.  She didn’t cause this nightmare and shouldn’t have to pay anything extra.  You have a duty of care to look after her.’

‘What exactly is it you want, Mrs Fryatt?’ trying to suppress a yawn.

‘I want to be reassured that she is not going to be suffocated in her sleep.’

 ‘It’s better that we don’t disturb her just at the moment.  She’s still sleeping and one of our nurses is standing by.  Can I get you a coffee?’

Between a rock and a hard place, Gosling felt awkward about fobbing off Mrs Fryatt. Under pressure to stop the misuse of dangerous and anti-psychotic drugs, which killed (‘culled’, he wondered) thousands of dementia patients, if you then remove anti-psychotic drugs you would inevitably produce more violence.  He usually turned a blind eye to the strong-arm cuffing by a minority of his staff and a deaf ear to stumbling complainants about being bashed, biffed, bopped and bagged.  The staff would always heatedly deny accusations of bullying.  In any case, who would seriously believe a cock and bull story issuing from a violent patient foaming at the mouth given to delusions of persecution?  Of course, as manager he was required nonetheless to shunt the worst offenders around the state’s nursing homes.

The following Sunday Christine was walking briskly along the corridor of Boniface Aged Care, holding out before her like an Olympic torch a bunch of home-grown red hot poker and kangaroo paw.  In tow, the teenage twins were gawking about them, sniffing at odours real or imagined, the qualities of the dun nineteenth century reproductions, the pastorals or snazzy but puerile Cubist pastiches, the crooked gait of the drop-jawed curlies shuffling by, some with pushers.

‘Here we are.  Room 29.  A brisk knock and in she sailed.  ‘O do excuse us,’ and paused, puzzled.  ‘Mother, are you all right?  What on earth is going on?  Who is this . . .?’

Brenda was lying sideways across her bed, respectably dressed, her head supported by a pillow.  A man’s back slowly twisting round, his expression changed to confusion or irritation.

‘Oh do excuse me.  Dead leg.’  He made to get up from his chair, but stiffness made it dicey to stand.

‘Don’t fret, Les, it’s only my daughter, Christine.’

‘So this is young Christine, is it?’ piped Les, regaining his feet if not composure, falteringly extending his hand in formal greeting, then quickly withdrawing the offending appendage.

Christine had already appraised his thin thatch of fine fog-grey hair and the knobbly pallor of his skin in her state of beady transfixation.

Behind her, the twins edged forward with eager curiosity, Jill waggling teeny fingers and a twee smile at Nan, Jeff throwing out an arm in salutation.

‘Les was just giving my poor old tootsies a rub, what with these corns and sore spots.’

Jeff stifled a laugh with a snort, Jill still bubbling up, teetering.

                                   

Rhylda Meech was grateful to have a male friend to confer with, who still retained his mental faculties, apparently, and rarely stumbled over his speech patterns.  In fact, the Commander could be quite a stickler for doing things the old way.  Bang on six-thirty he’d sound the dinner gong with a noisy flourish and woe betide anyone who had the temerity to arrive late, however breathless and apologetic.  He also claimed droits de seigneur to the armchair nearest the hearth where the gas fire kept him toasty.  ‘Bugger!’ he was occasionally heard to mutter when he espied anyone sitting in that chair, especially a person of female persuasion.  But he learned how to cheer up Rhylda when she returned from the hospice where her former husband was lying on his back, having inexplicably suffered a stroke that had left him paralysed down one side.  A regular sportsman, Howard, he had always prided himself on his fitness, so it was a savage blow when at sixty-eight he could no longer get up and move around freely.  She would visit the hospice at least once a week and could barely cope with his questions; more to the point, his distorted mouth and garbled speech:  ‘Have you collected the airline tickets yet?’ he’d spit out and stutter.  ‘Did you remember to pay the health insurance?’  She always played along, agreeing and nodding with a fixed faint smile, even though the questions were meaningless – ‘What airline tickets?’ she wondered.  ‘Policy?  We cancelled that policy when you walked out!’  Yet it still seemed the decent thing to make these visits, even though the marriage had snapped two years before.

At first she had resented the Commander’s incursions on her privacy, but his bluff and persistent manner scarcely disguised by an old-fashioned but cumbersome gallantry eventually drew an occasional smile between vapid looks of resignation.  Sometimes of an evening when she was watching the large plasma screen in the lounge, she would tense up at his greeting paw on her shoulder, before he politely asked if he might take the liberty of occupying the seat adjacent.  She could hardly refuse, for one was obliged to keep on agreeable terms with other residents, no matter how trying.

Every day the Commander looked forward to his tactic of touching Rhylda’s delicate shoulder, sometimes summoning the nerve to apply a gentle squeeze and slight rocking, as if reassuring her that it was only he, the Commander, so there was no call to get alarmed or frosty.  Unfortunately for him, Rhylda was demurely self-contained, not the tactile sort, certainly not the matey sort.  Oh yes, when he sought her out or spied her alone at the café bar, ‘May I join you?’ he’d ask.  ‘I’ve missed your company today, my dear’ – if he was reckless.

‘Mother,’ said Christine, who had gathered her wits with a severe frown at the twins’ subversive shenanigans and with raising her body to a more imposing and imperious height, ‘I don’t believe you are quite yourself today . . .’

‘Oh, but . . .’

‘No, no.  Let’s hear no more about it.  And as for you, Mr err . . .’

‘Les, dear,’ interpolated Brenda, to Les’ bemusement.

‘I don’t know what your game is, but you’ve obviously tired my mother out.  I would ask you not to take advantage of an old lady’s erratic behaviour and her . . . her gullibility.  An abject Les shuffled toward the door, not daring to look at the daughter’s over-ripely smeared lips and body-hugging cherry-red sweater, not least the knee-length boots of black leather. 

Giving a half-hearted cheerio, ‘See you then, darl!  Try to forget about our swine of a neighbour.  I’ll fix him with summat.’

‘T’roo, love,’ replied Mum, smiling with the full force of her gleaming dentures beneath those purple bruises as Christine cringed.   ‘Now don’t you go and do anything daft!’

‘’Bye,’ piped Jill cheekily, shrugging her shoulders when her mother fixed her with a frown.

‘Draw a chair up for your Mum, Jim.  And Jill, mind your manners.’

‘Sor-ree!’

‘Now listen, Mother.  You can’t afford to trust men at the best of times, and certainly not that repulsive little scrag.  But now that you have to take things nice and steady it would be foolhardy to compromise yourself with a complete stranger.’

‘You don’t understand, dear,’ Mum said, gathering one of her daughter’s hands in her own, veinous blue like gristle, bony and trembly.  ‘We want to get married,’ pronounced with smug satisfaction.

‘What?’  Christine shrieked, abruptly discarding her mother’s hands to clap her own forehead.

Even Jim, who was staring out the window, dreaming of banana-kicking the winning goal from the boundary line in the grand final, started.

‘You must be out of your mind, Mother!  You can’t carry on like this at your age!  Imagine how Dad would have felt.  You wouldn’t want to let him down.’

‘Chrissie, love,’ Mum replied patiently, reaching out that frail, bony hand once again for her daughter’s clenched palm.  ‘Your father would understand, I’m sure.’

‘Mother, it’s downright disgusting.  I’ll have to have a word with Gosling.’

‘My old body may disgust you, Chrissie, but the old spirit still needs soothing with the human touch.  Remember that, my dear:  the gentlest human touch is as much spiritual as physical.  Nectar for the spirit, they say.’

‘I’ve never known you so stubborn.  We’ll be the laughing-stock of Boniface.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they ask you to leave.’

‘Who is this Les person?’ Christine went asking the manager.

 

‘He’s a timid old cove, a bit slow in his ways and manner of speaking, but means well enough.’

‘But my batty old mother is talking about marriage.  She seems to be living in a fantasy world.’

‘We do make sure that our residents’ lives are routine.  Though Les does have a gripe about always having to sit in the same seat at meal times.  He pesters us to sit next to your mother.’

‘I don’t want any more billing and cooing in public, thankyou.  No doubt, she’s already made herself look ridiculous.’

‘I’m afraid both have requested to have adjacent rooms, then only last week to share a larger unit.’  The manager looked crestfallen.

‘Godfathers!  Thank heavens my dear father can’t see her now.  He would be horrified at her lack of shame, her . . . her . . . waywardness!’

‘It may make you feel better that this proposition for marriage is merely a desperate attempt to carry on secretly what repulses many of the residents.  And err management.’

‘I don’t know about that, Mr Gosling.  What I sense is that my mother is no longer in control of proper behaviour.  Or reality.’

But as the days slowly passed, unerringly ticked off, Rhylda ceased to duck behind the newspaper or pillar when the Commander hove into view, but appeared to relax at his approach, even smile secretly to herself at his lumbering movement, his rolling gait, chuckled at the speculation of a gammy leg or dicky knee or even a bung eye - she’d noticed an involuntary twitch in the left eyelid – or of being all at sea and in danger of slipping and sliding over the gunwales; or was it the gunnals, gunnels?

Whatever, he was always dressed neat and tidy, scarcely ever permitting himself an open-necked shirt but invariably his club or navy tie in the most tropical of weathers, often a navy blue blazer, white trousers always pressed and shoes, for he would never be seen dead like the younger seniors in runners or sandals – spit and polished; well, leastways polished.

Even his bluster amused her, preferably without the heavy breathing, though she was careful not to show it.  For his part, he often looked past her at close quarters, as if to avoid the twinkle in her eye.  His slow sway of a walk indoors required a shooting stick outdoors, the full measure of which he swung out with admirable jaunty control, which leant him a modicum of dash if not vigour.  In addition to his booming voice, he still carried the clout of an exclusive club man and frequently could be heard bestowing his detailed critique of the best restaurants about town to anyone possessed of the tact to ask.

‘They do a beautiful risotto at - ’ was a familiar gambit of his.

That anyone, least of all a high-ranked professional ex-serviceman, should find her interesting was oddly comforting.  She hardly expected the Commander to find her physically attractive, not these days, certainly not such a no-nonsense disciplinarian in what was still, she imagined, largely a man’s foreign domain of tactical manoeuvres, jingoistic broadsides, all swash and buckle and flying the flag, well before current crises of the Royal Australian Navy, still unsolved, of desperate refugees fleeing political persecution in leaky tubs manned by teenage fishermen stood over by people-smugglers on the make.  She would resist asking the Commander for his opinion lest he burst a blood vessel.

Habitually, the Commander was metronomic about time, accustomed in his former life to the three bells or fourth watch.  Nor was he ever three sheets in the wind, but merely savoured the warm glow of a tot of rum in his stomach or a glass or two of wine.  But these days he sensed a quickening of the spirit, for matters were changing, slowly, subtly.  His watery grey eyes almost glaucous from the strain of staring out at the horizon for suspicious enemy action across a vast expanse of water now sought out Rhylda, who like a capstan had become a fixture, no, an exotic feature in the inner courtyard; particularly in the early morning when most residents were dormant or grounded in their apartments; or at afternoon tea.

A bachelor all his life, his adeptness at negotiation was restricted to naval strategies or personal disputes amongst the crew or recommendation for protocol and procedures.  He realized that he entertained no desire to court a woman, not in the romantic sense anyway.  But since he had doffed his resplendent uniform, save for various ceremonial or commemorative occasions, he no longer possessed that old confidence or conviction about his own social behaviour.

Truth to tell, he felt exposed to the vagaries of life that drove in waves.  He needed comforting, reassuring amid these winds of change.  Perhaps he had always needed the senior service to help him look beyond himself and bestow a sense of adventure and derring-do, then became dependent upon the service to issue him with a set of routine tasks each day.  Nowadays, though, the landlubber in him would feel listless without purpose, yesterday’s tar, lost in the doldrums quite becalmed.

Except to stumble across, quite accidentally, the somewhat aloof  but charmingly self-contained Mrs Rhylda Meech.  She’d give him time of day, a polite smile; she neither nagged nor gossiped.  In fact, she’d non-plussed him with a question on Joseph Conrad, then routed him with her enthusiasm for Patrick O’Brien.  Was she deliberately shooting him down in flames?  Or was she, as he hoped, seeking some common ground?  Either way, he couldn’t catch her drift.

He did feel miffed when her regular armchair was empty, on bridge mornings or trivial pursuit afternoons.  ‘Oh, bugger!’ he’d mutter.  Quite by chance, he came across her one Sunday afternoon in the third row of the theatrette – he was grateful she wasn’t perched up on the fifth row and levered himself up beside her, wheezing heavily, not without asking, ‘Is anyone . . . May I . . .?'  And as she could hardly refuse replied, ‘Yes, of course, you may,’ somewhat peeved that his waistline was bulging over her armrest, as he cautiously lowered his barrel base onto the plush landing.

‘Have you seen Battleship Potemkin before?’ she whispered.

‘Why does management show these old black and white films?  There are so many good entertaining up-to-date films available.  Besides, I don’t like sub-titles.’

‘You surprise me, Commander.  There's a huge number of excellent black and white films that still have the .  capacity to move one terribly.  How about In Which We Serve?  That’s right up your alley and extremely moving.’

‘Mm,’ he murmured.  ‘We lost a brave destroyer and countless good sailors to the German bombers.’

It was an inauspicious start, especially when the Commander attempted to bestir himself in his far too small and incommodious seat or complained quite loudly that the captions were too faint and too small and delivered a whooshing ‘ssh!’ towards a couple of hard-of-hearing residents sucking barley sugars.

Why was it, he wondered, he’d become fascinated by this aggravating woman, caught in her net.

Begrudgingly, now marooned in Boniface Aged Care, he acknowledged to himself that he might never have had a strong libido.  ‘Thank God!’ he expostulated, shuddering over the recent spate of scandalous media reports of naval officers accused of filming women in the services having sex with seamen unbeknown to themselves, then emailing their porno ring with visual evidence, running commentary and score sheet for performance and eroticism.  This whole sorry saga sickened him.  He’d certainly never even entertained sexual thoughts of Rhylda.  It was on a day trip to a vineyard in Yarra Valley with the Blokes Alone group, whose rationale was that men might like to discuss men’s problems amongst themselves, a notion which made him highly anxious but the prospect of a subsidized wine tasting was too tempting.  Over a morning break in the bush, squishing through a Viennese slice and hot chocolate served from the back of their mini-bus, his attention diverted by two kookaburras squabbling over tidbits, watched over by a beady currawong, a dozen old-timers chatted and guffawed about everything but their prostate problems and incontinence, their reflux and ingrained smoking habit, their still-nagging footy injuries of forty or fifty years before, but he did overhear one bouncy know-all assert that ‘Life was too short.  Don’t stand on ceremony.  Learn to negotiate with the old sheilas but be frank about it.  Some of them wanted a bit of how’s yer father as much as you do.’

The Commander didn’t desire that sort of thing at all, got quite livid about frequent offers in his inbox for Viagra – there was no way he’d discuss his erectile malfunctions or dysfunctions with a man.  With a woman, absolutely not.  A definite no-no.  So what was it he sought in Rhylda?

She would sit there, Rhylda, as if frozen, a pillar of salt.  Away from the community room and activities room which set her teeth on edge with the distorted sound of inconsequential solo chatter or overbearingly loud, rudderless conversation or rank body odours or even staff who sought to engage her in trivial banter.  ‘For godsake, react!’ they seemed to be saying.  She still couldn’t come to grips with that blasted meditation

routine, the small-mindedness of focusing on one’s breath – how egocentric was that? – sussing out those areas of pain, tension, warmth, visualizing those ugly cancer blobs marching out of your body as you exhaled – supposedly.  It seemed so silly, so unreal.

Far better to console herself with her very talented son excelling in his Business Management course at Harvard.  Too busy to ring his mother more than once a week, then only to seek a brief report on her progress and urge her to look on the bright side or snap out of whatever mood she was wallowing in.

No one genuinely seemed to appreciate the rough trot she had suffered.  Menopause, the waning of sexual desire, the shock separation with Alex as he promptly set up house with some go-ahead bimbo twenty years younger who appeared desperate to kick-start a family before she turned forty, Alex’s stroke ten months later that left him paralysed . . . 

Their marriage had long lost the snug warmth of intimacy.  Later he would blame it on her menopause.  Work proved a mixed blessing:  she could concentrate on administrative organization and have contact with the firm’s legal clients, but then she was constantly confronted by files for divorce at a time when Australian statistics showed a sizeable increase in marital breakdowns after twenty years of marriage.  Yet the busy concentration required for preparing documents for trials and assisting with research for cases pending provided an opportunity to be distracted by the lives of conflicted others.

Suddenly the sledge hammer blow of breast cancer.

‘Think of those twenty-something career girls,’ the psychiatrist had said, ‘suddenly struck down by breast cancer on the cusp of achieving their professional goal.’  Yes, there’s no justice.  ‘There’s always someone worse off,’ the psychiatrist had needlessly added.

She had tired of the woman’s upbeat patter:  ‘You’re a spanking new woman now . . . Remember, you really do have a beautiful body . . . You are a liberated and attractive sexual being with sexual needs, so go for it!  Believe me, you’re as young as you feel.’

I wish!  But after she’d turned forty-five her whole world started to crash.  Self-confidence was shot, her self-respect too.  Not only did she feel eaten away by malevolent organisms – sometimes she swore she could hear them at it – even after the toxins had left her body, but unbalanced figuratively and literally – oh that sickening, hideous reminder of her left breast enveloped in a bundle of bandage sitting on a trolley by the operating theatre.  The tumour had to be expunged soonest, no question, she reminded herself. 

But the fear that my body, my life, would be drastically changed for the worst by a mastectomy was not eased by talk of reconstruction:  would it be fat and abdominal skin or silicone implants inserted into the incision?  Ugly stuff.  Better off neither.  Who’d possibly care for a one-breasted sixty-something gargoyle?  Immediately after the op I could barely bring myself to sneak a downward glance.  I’d been forewarned there’d be scars, bandages, drains, then the surgeon exclaimed, ‘An excellent piece of work!  As good as new.’  I dared just a quick peek at my left breast that was.  With a gut-wrenching yaw, I found one half of my chest utterly flat, just like my Mark at seven years of age, with no nipple and one fine livid scar from mid-breast to armpit.  Some comfort it was, though, that I wasn’t slashed with scars.  Within a month, I found myself enduring the indignity of chemotherapy.  Evidently, the doctors expected me to pull through following the destruction of the remaining cancerous cells.

‘Now you must remember, you still have your life ahead of you,’ said the surgeon, perhaps rankled that I looked so glum.

Every second week I’d attend hospital for three hours, given a sandwich and a cup of tea, then bundled off home.  Drugs were drip-fed into me.  The first time I was sick happened on that very first visit, twice the second visit.  Then as the drugs built up inside my body, I was retching for days.  Very soon my hair began to fall out in clumps.  I’d spend long hours lying in bed staring at the ceiling, all energy spent.  To conceal my baldness I preferred a wig to a scarf.  Either way I’d lost my sense of femininity, my sense of self-worth, any shred of self-assurance.  To hide my shapelessness, I slobbed around in trackies, baggy shirts, oversized sweaters or jackets buttoned up.

How repulsive she was, this new stranger!  No longer wholesome but deformed, malformed.  Even the prosthesis rendered her body odour disturbingly different.  Now she appreciated why her son had insisted she board in an aged care home for the short-term, ‘It’s only for a year, Mum,’ while he was living in Cambridge, so that she might receive good quality health care in a supportive social environment.

Of course, Mark did have good intentions, but he was so very far away, happily embedded in his career, happily distracted.  ‘At least, I haven’t screwed things up for my son,’ she thought.

The Commander had always enjoyed a penchant for Continental food; indeed, considered himself a gourmet, though in stumpy appearance with protuberant belly loomed like a gourmand.  Every Saturday he would treat himself to a grand lunch at Florentino’s, usually a char-grilled Scotch fillet with a small bottle of Jean Grivot red, occasionally braised octopus or risotto.  He would catch the tram down to St Kilda to avoid the crowded narrow streets and dearth of weekend parking.  Effusively greeted by the waiters, who ushered him to his own table always reserved, his familiar and distinguished large head rendered larger by baldness, his gravelly reverberative voice, his formal manner, his portly movement a slow stagger propped by his shooting stick - walking frames and wheelchairs he dismissed with contempt as ‘those wretched things!’  Yet how many thousand others chose these chariots to navigate infirmity?  Taking his time over his repast, smacking his lips frequently, he would fondly recall that period some thirty years before when he would regularly accompany his depressed father, that grim period of grieving when his mother had been carried away by breast cancer.

Rhylda never doubted that he was indeed a Commander, until he let drop that he had served in the Royal Australian Navy as the captain of a frigate at sea around Burma, Korea, New Guinea, ‘all very exciting,’ he’d said with misty wistfulness.  ‘Escort duties for merchant and troopships, rescue missions for our boys in the West Pacific, anti-submarine patrols against the Japanese.  I was very lucky.’

‘I can’t imagine this man ever touching my spirit.  That boat sailed away years ago.  I have no expectations of eliding the boundaries between skin and skin.  But I could let go a little, just being there in those moments with no expectation but rapturous peace.  At any rate, he’s harmless enough,’ she thought.  ‘Unless he keels over and scuttles me.’  Suddenly a fizzy snort of mirth escaped the begrudging smirk of her lips.  Irrespective of any such mishap, she had bought three silky, lacey bras with sewn-in cup to support the prosthesis.  Not wanting a reminder of pink symbolism and not audacious enough for grenadier red, she had selected emerald green.  Oh, and matching briefs for a strictly feel-good sensation.

‘I truly wish I could do so much more to help those who are suffering, but much of the time I feel helpless,’ lamented Nurse Jan Gurney.  ‘There’s Mervyn Crabbe, whom I make a point of bypassing because he’s physically aggressive and verbal with it, sullen and unpredictable.  You’ve just got to watch him.  He’s likely to stalk you from corridor to corridor if he bears a grudge, with the intention of clouting or kicking you or pinching your arm if he catches you standing in a group.  The word is, he’s a biter, so I’d best look out for my ears and neck.  Perhaps my bum too!

Even those I get fond of, like Deidre, who’s reluctant to press the call button because she doesn’t want to be a nuisance, busting herself with holding on, then urgently shrieks out,  ‘I’m gonna pee right now!  Oh sorry, sorry!  I don’t mean to wet the bed, really, but I can’t help it!’  This happens so often that I sometimes imagine locking her chair wheels next to the loo.

Others are quiet as mice, inwardly gnawing away at their fear, their sores, their invasions.  Cecil, now there’s a whiskery old dear, just lying on his bed hour after hour.  His eyes are hypersensitive to light, so he wears sunnies whenever he hobbles about in his walker.

Occasionally he talks in his sleep, mostly gobbledegook.  This morning while I was doing the rounds, he suddenly blurted out these strange words that I made a note of, just in case:  Rumble thy bellyful!  Spit, fire!  Spout,rain!  Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.  How’s that for a classic case of dementia!

Then there’s Molly, who’s forever grazing on packets of trail mix and anxiety:  ‘Why don’t you just tell me what I done wrong?  Why me who always gets the blame, takes the rap?  Why do you all hate me so?  I don’t care a tinker’s cuss, I loathe the lot o’ youse!  Jeez, stop picking on me, yer scabs!’

And who could forget Edwina, with her tats of fiery dragons, shower of snow-white hair and ghastly black eye-shadow, who one day is as crabby as you like; the next, as nutty as a fruit cake or submissive as apple pie doused in cream?  Who is she today, I wonder?  ‘I wish they wouldn’t treat me like an old chook,’ she mutters.  But she is old, seventy-seven, fitted with catheter and diapers, having to put up with impaired vision and regular bedsores.  Whenever I push the bedpan under her, I keep my fingers crossed that I’ve got the angle right or she stays potted till I’ve done the butt-wipe, as Mr Gosling calls this unpleasant business.

This morning I caught Thora hiding odds and ends beneath her mattress, not for the first time.  I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d again nicked the dentures of her roommate, Esme, or her cache of sugar almonds.  ‘You can’t trust nobody,’ she declares, quite uppity.  ‘This dump’s a bleedin’ prison!’

The prison, I suspect, is her own body.

One summer’s evening, through the lounge windows, the Commander was dismayed to witness Rhylda’s face screwed up in discomfort as she hobbled toward the garden seat. Without more ado, he blustered out onto the forecourt.  ‘May I help you, Rhylda?  May I help you, dear thing?’

‘No, no, no need to fuss,’ though she was wincing.  ‘It’s only a spot of cramp.’

 ‘That’s no good.  Listen, I know just the trick.’

‘Oh please don’t.  I refuse any more medication.’  She attempted to escape but groaned in pain, lips pursed tight.

Unabashed, the Commander pressed on, more gently.  ‘If you’ll allow me . . . just sit down again for a few seconds.’

Reluctantly, as if in a pet, she obeyed, sat down gingerly.

‘What I’m going to do,’ spoke the Commander, in slow, softened tones, ‘is to row my hands down that calf muscle.’

In spite of her gasp, presumably anxiety or embarrassment, he slowly, clumsily knelt down at her feet in stages of heavy breathing and audaciously applied his stubby fingers.

Tentatively, shyly awkward like a young foal, she extended both legs to rest just above his fleshy knees, modestly sliding her three quarter-length skirt a fraction above her somewhat stringy right calf muscle, ruffling the creases in his navy blue trousers.

‘Are we nice and comfy?’ his voice creaked.

Never had she thought she’d grow accustomed to the growly tick in his voice.  Relaxed and safe, she had already closed her trusting eyes and drifting, the slightest of smiles impressed upon her lips.

‘I lift and roll and wrestle and mop up messes and butt-wipe every single day,’ muttered Nurse Jan Gurney late one Friday afternoon.  ‘Apart from my mother, who could possibly say, Sweet are the uses of adversity?  Do these oldies come to Boniface Aged Care to die?  Or wait to die?  Can they keep their heart open if their mind and body shut down?  The skin of their arms puckering and blotched, inflamed and scorched, arms skinny as spindles or arms hung lumpen with fat.  Heaven help me, they occasionally get under my skin, but they can’t help it.  Nor can I, I’m so knackered.’

Would she too look so decrepit in three score years?  The very thought sent a shudder, but it also nudged her that one day, impossible as it seemed, one day she might find herself in the same Boniface situation, long-term care.  She must strive not to take it all so personally, the hectoring and whining, the fecal stinks and diarrhoea, the convulsive sobs and bitching, the personal threats and foul mouthings.  Just remember, girl, the wrap-around hugs and sudden grins lit up by wrinkles, those wacky one-liners from left field and contrary non-sequiturs, those kisses blown across a rank of wheelchairs and walkers, all in a day’s tough love.

Chancing by to reception, Jan cast her eyes towards the inner courtyard and smiled quizzically.  ‘An unlikely pair,’ she wondered.  ‘Never seen Rhylda looking so reposed, serene even.  Whereas that old bully seems a bit antsy, out of his comfort zone. ‘Well, good on ‘em, though, each to his own.’ 

      Michael Small

May 28-July 25, 2013