Rosie

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘I didn’t ask for the day off,’ Rosie retorted with some indignation. ‘Mrs Cook asked Matron. I didn’t even know about it until Matron told me.’

  ‘But why you?’ Mary piped up indignantly, her usually gentle blue eyes flashing with spite. ‘Maureen and I have been looking after Donald for years. Why don’t we get any appreciation?’

  Mary was normally so easy-going and generous-natured that it was obvious someone had been working on her. Rosie was tempted to point out in her own defence that neither Mary nor Maureen ever spent more than a couple of minutes a day talking to Donald. They were kindly enough towards him, but they both tended to use him merely as an extra pair of hands on the ward and treat him as an irritation when he dogged their footsteps. But to say that would only make the present situation worse.

  Both Mary and Linda mellowed marginally after Rosie said she was sorry, produced the cake and made them a new pot of tea. She was dying to tell them about Gareth, but under the circumstances she thought that might be a mistake, so she asked them about their day instead.

  It was only as Linda described how Tabby had clawed at Simmonds when she’d brought up the tea to the day room, and how Archie had seized the opportunity to pick up the teapot and fling it across the room, that Rosie noticed how silent Maureen was. Usually it was she who relished telling such tales, three patients with minor scalds and a domestic with a clawed face was her idea of an exciting day. All at once Rosie knew she was the perpetrator of all this bad feeling.

  Rosie fully intended to tackle Maureen about it once they were alone in their room, but she fell asleep waiting for Maureen to come up. So far this morning there had been no opportunity to bring up the subject again either.

  ‘You can lock that door up again,’ Matron said in a crisp voice from her position on the stairs. ‘I want you up on the second floor in future.’

  Rosie wheeled round in alarm. ‘Me? Upstairs?’ she gasped.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t talking to the wall,’ Matron retorted sarcastically. ‘Give me that set of keys, you won’t be needing them any more.’

  There was nothing unusual about Matron suddenly ordering one of the more senior girls upstairs. In an emergency they were often called up for a couple of hours. But the spiteful expression on Matron’s face and the demand for the keys meant this was permanent and intended as a punishment. Rosie surmised it was Matron’s way of exacting revenge for her having had the audacity to get herself invited out by the Cooks.

  Rosie turned back to the door, pushing it open a little. ‘Can I just go in here first and tell the patients where I am?’ she asked. She could imagine Donald being very upset if he didn’t see her this morning.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Matron snapped. She stepped forward, pulled the door shut with a bang and pocketed the keys. ‘As if they care where you are! You do have such an inflated idea of your own importance.’

  Rosie’s heart sank. To argue would just result in further trouble, so she had no alternative but to follow Matron meekly up the stairs.

  As Matron unlocked the outer door to the closed ward a babble of noise and a stink of excrement wafted out. But once they were through the second locked door it grew far worse, making Rosie gag and recoil in horror.

  The stench was appalling, as bad as any pig farm, and the noise was terrible. Hammering noises, yelling, shouting and wailing.

  ‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ Matron smiled maliciously as she saw Rosie’s stricken face, and she grasped her arm firmly. ‘The smell will go once they’ve all been cleaned up. You’ll learn to live with the noise.’

  Rosie’s heart plummeted even further as she was led unwillingly down the corridor for there wasn’t even a comforting similarity to the first floor. The corridor there was wide and bright, the several long, narrow windows between the various rooms bathing the area in natural light from both sides. This floor looked just like a prison landing, no windows, only dozens of locked doors, each with a small viewing panel. Even the ceiling was lower, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere, and it was lit by harsh strip lighting.

  As Rosie passed along and she saw a grotesque face flattened against one of these panels, tongue lolling out, eyes rolling, all the revulsion she’d felt on her first night in Carrington Hall came back with a vengeance. She had always been so curious about this floor, but all at once she sensed it was going to be far worse than even her wildest imaginings.

  As they reached the office, which was at the far end of the corridor, Saunders, the male chargehand, was just putting on a short-sleeved maroon jacket that matched his trousers. Staff Nurse Aylwood was sitting at the desk, checking some notes. They both looked round as Matron came in with Rosie.

  After the oppressive atmosphere in the corridor, the office was surprisingly pleasant with a view of the fields beyond the back garden and an early morning breeze coming through an open window.

  ‘Smith will be working with you in future,’ Matron said curtly, without even the most cursory of introductions. ‘She thinks she’s a cut above the rest of the staff, so start her with an initiation into the morning routine immediately. That should cut her down to size.’

  As Saunders and Aylwood looked at Rosie with unmistakable hostility, she quaked with fear. They were both very big people, and she felt dwarfed by them. Saunders was some six foot one or two, and perhaps fourteen or fifteen stone. Aylwood’s height was not so apparent while she was sitting down, but her shoulders and forearms were hugely masculine, and her eyes as dead and cold as a cod on a fishmonger’s slab.

  ‘It’s no picnic up here,’ Aylwood said in a voice as cold and unwelcoming as her eyes. ‘So you’ll do exactly as I tell you. This is no place for giggling squeamish schoolgirls.’

  Rosie looked at the three adults and saw a similar malevolent look on all their faces. Saunders’s pale eyes narrowed and he smirked. Aylwood was now standing, her big arms folded across her chest, and she was sizing up Rosie with clear resentment. Matron’s close-set eyes glinted with pleasure. All at once she knew they were all in league in some way.

  From down the corridor came a guttural bellowing accompanied by frantic thumping on the door. Rosie’s blood turned to water.

  Matron turned and left without another word. As her feet tapped off down the corridor, both Aylwood and Saunders took down large green rubber aprons from a hook on the wall and put them on over their uniforms.

  ‘Scared?’ Aylwood asked, raising one thick grey eyebrow. She had a very deep voice with a hint of a Newcastle accent.

  Rosie nodded. She saw no point in trying to hide it.

  Aylwood gave a ghost of a smile, but there was no sympathy in it. Her face had an unhealthy grey tinge, her skin looked as if it was stretched over her bony features. ‘Well, that’s the first thing you have to overcome then,’ she said. ‘They’re animals up here, and they sense fear and play up to it. Don’t give ‘em an inch and don’t ever turn your back on them.’

  For the first time in her life, Rosie was tongue-tied. She wondered why just yesterday she’d been allowed to be so happy, then today it was all snatched away.

  Saunders handed her a rubber apron too. ‘It’s got its compensations up here,’ he said with a leer. ‘Once they’re cleaned and fed, there’s nothing else to do.’

  Aylwood gave him a peculiar look. Rosie couldn’t tell if it was disapproval or warning. ‘Come with us now,’ she said, nudging Rosie out of the door and into the corridor. ‘You’ll just observe this morning, but mind you watch us closely because tomorrow’s my day off and you’ll be taking my place with Saunders. We have to work fast to get them all cleaned up before we feed them.’

  Rosie had never considered herself to be squeamish. Right from when she was a small child she’d emptied buckets of slops, seen rabbits skinned and chickens gutted. Since coming to Carrington Hall she’d seen so many unpleasant sights and cleaned up so many disgusting messes that she thought there could be little more to shock her. But when Aylwood unlocked that first door she reeled bac
k in disgust. It was like a stinking medieval dungeon. She had to clamp her hand over her nose and mouth to fight the nausea.

  The room was around nine foot long and perhaps six foot wide, almost dark because the only light came from a twelve-inch barred window right up by the ceiling. The patient, she couldn’t tell if it was male or female as its hair was cropped short, was crouched on the floor, daubed with faeces. It was making a low moaning sound, rocking back and forth on its heels, face hidden in its arms. The bed and floor were as filthy as the patient and the smell so appalling Rosie couldn’t breathe. As Saunders and Aylwood marched in to grab the patient’s arms and pull it to its feet, it let out a snarl of anger.

  ‘This is Monica,’ Aylwood said, turning her head just slightly to where Rosie cowered in the doorway. ‘She’s thirty and she never speaks.’

  Rosie could hardly bare to look. The woman wore nothing but a rough linen shift and her legs and arms were no thicker than a small child’s. But it was the face rather than the filthy state she was in which really appalled Rosie: contorted, bestial and savage. Her lips were drawn back revealing yellow teeth.

  ‘She’s the worst here,’ Saunders said as he and Aylwood dragged the woman towards the door past Rosie. ‘She isn’t human.’

  Rosie thought she had never seen anything so vile as the way Saunders and Aylwood dragged that demented, shrieking woman along the corridor to the bathroom, her feet scrabbling uselessly at the floor. Yet she had no choice but to follow.

  The bathroom wasn’t like the ones downstairs. There were two baths in it, one with a solid contraption over it which suggested patients were immersed, then locked in with only their heads sticking out. The rest of the space was taken up by a large white-tiled shower area, divided into three with metal partitions in-between. Aylwood manhandled Monica into the corner with Saunders holding her tightly from behind the partition, then Aylwood turned on the water and jumped back.

  Monica’s scream proved the torrential water was icy, and the force of it made her cower back into the corner. But Saunders merely reached up and redirected the shower head right on to her and held her securely beneath it. To Rosie’s further horror, Aylwood picked up a long-handled brush and began to scrub Monica with it, her face, head and body. Monica’s shift slithered down to the shower floor at almost the first thrust of the brush and her body was so emaciated and covered with bruises that Rosie averted her eyes. She was acutely reminded of disturbing pictures she’d seen of inmates of the concentration camps in Germany.

  ‘There isn’t any other way to clean her,’ Aylwood shouted over the roar of the water. ‘So take that look off your face.’

  Rosie was absolutely certain there must be a kinder way. It was like watching a cow or pig being scrubbed down ready to go to market, but no farmer she’d ever met was as rough as these two. Aylwood whacked the woman on her back, forcing her to bend over, then thrust the brush up between her legs to wash her there with almost vengeful pleasure.

  Such barbarism was made worse by knowing that tomorrow Rosie would be expected to take Aylwood’s place. She just knew she couldn’t do it.

  Monica continued to yell, but slowly it became less strident and interspersed with gasps and finally they turned off the shower. Saunders held her while Aylwood rubbed her down with a thin grey towel. They forced her arms back into a clean linen shift, then dragged the woman back down the corridor to a different room. Here without a word to Monica they forcibly pushed her in, then Aylwood locked the door.

  As they went back down the corridor to fetch another patient, one of the domestics, Coates, was just finishing scrubbing out the room Monica had vacated.

  ‘Coates cleans out the rooms as we do the patients,’ Aylwood informed Rosie curtly. ‘If she’s slow tomorrow when I’m not here, shout at her. It causes problems if there isn’t a clean room to put them back in after their showers.’

  Rosie didn’t think she’d ever have the nerve to even ask Coates to hurry, let alone shout at her. She was an ex-mental patient like all the domestics, a big raw-faced woman with purple hands the size of hams, who constantly muttered to herself. It was common knowledge that even Matron was nervous of upsetting her.

  There were only nine patients in all, five women and four men. Rosie was surprised by this; she had always supposed there to be at least fourteen or so, and there were enough rooms up here for that many. Of these nine, only three more were dirty, two men and Mabel, the woman Rosie had heard wailing on her arrival at Carrington Hall. She had imagined someone able to keep up such a constant noise to be robust, a sort of stereotype madwoman like the wife of Mr Rochester in Jane Eyre, but she was nothing of the kind.

  Mabel was just a frail old lady, so thin she could barely stand on her own, and her back was deformed. Her white hair was sparse, she hadn’t a tooth in her head and just one glance told Rosie that she wailed merely because she was in pain. Her heart went out to her. She wanted to pull Aylwood away from her, insist that Mabel was put in a wheelchair to take her to the bathroom. But she didn’t dare do or say anything.

  Another two men and one woman were just wet, but all of them received the same appalling treatment as Monica, even though they showed no inclination to fight, and one of the men was so infirm and shaky he could barely stand. The last two females, one a young girl called Angela, the other a strapping great woman called Bertha, almost as tall and as heavy as Saunders, were allowed to use a toilet and then wash themselves under a warm shower, but Aylwood and Saunders still stood menacingly over them, allowing them no privacy.

  Maureen had related many hideous tales of brutality at Luckmore Grange, including a description of bathing much like this, but Rosie had never imagined for one moment that such things could be condoned in a private home. In truth she had always suspected Maureen of wild exaggeration anyway.

  Now in the face of what she’d seen, she did believe Maureen. She was appalled to think that she’d heard those terrible noises for so long, and been so suspicious, yet allowed herself to be convinced by others that it was none of her business. What sort of person was she that she could work, eat and sleep in a place, sensing that some thing was badly wrong, yet do nothing, say nothing?

  Perhaps she was mistaken in thinking Aylwood and Saunders enjoyed humiliating and hurting these unfortunate people. Maybe time and experience would prove that they were merely callous rather than cruel. But all the patients had bruises and scars on their bodies. Every one of them had cowered away from their keepers like frightened dogs as their cell doors were opened. The rooms they were returned to had the mattresses and bedding removed for the day, leaving only the bare wooden base of the bed which was securely fixed to the floor. They had nothing, no clothes, shoes, personal possessions and absolutely no comfort. It was barbaric.

  Rosie was acutely embarrassed to be forced to stand beside Saunders watching Angela and Bertha washing themselves. They looked perfectly capable of doing it unsupervised and even if a man was needed there for safety he could at least turn his back on them. She stole a sideways glance at him. He was watching Angela closely as she soaped her breasts and stomach, his tongue flickering across his lips.

  Unlike the other patients, Angela was young and quite pretty, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five, and her thick black naturally curly hair hadn’t been shorn off. She had a curvy, well-rounded body with small pert breasts and taut buttocks. There was a savage look in her eyes, and she was muttering and grunting just as much as some of the others had, but there was nothing repulsive about her.

  The hairs on the back of Rosie’s neck stood on end as she saw Saunders’s response. Although she had no real experience of such things, she was sure that he was becoming aroused by looking at Angela. His expression reminded her uncomfortably of the way Seth had looked at women. She looked inquiringly towards Aylwood, perhaps hoping to have this thought squashed, but instead she saw an equally lascivious expression in her eyes too. But as if she sensed Rosie watching her she smirked.

  ‘I bet you’re w
ondering what she’s doing up here?’ she asked. ‘She looks harmless, doesn’t she? But believe me, Smith, she’s the most dangerous patient in Carrington Hall, far worse than Monica because she’s entirely unpredictable. She was down on the first floor when she first came here, until she attempted to strangle another patient. She tried to blind Sister Welbred with a fork once. She’s bitten and clawed everyone. She’s like a cobra, and you never know when she’s going to strike. So don’t give her an inch.’

  The bathing was completed by half past eight, and by then Rosie had seen enough to want to run out of Carrington Hall and never return. But if she thought the bathing was inhumane, breakfast was to prove even worse.

  Saunders went to one end of the corridor with Simmonds in tow. Aylwood and Rosie began at the other end. Rosie had a small tray shoved into her hands at the first door, a bowl of almost cold porridge, another bowl of equally cold scrambled egg, two slices of bread and marge and a mug of tea. Aylwood unlocked the door and walked in, then made Rosie stand with her back to the door to prevent the inmate making a break. This first patient was one of the old men; she wasn’t even told his name. He was sitting on the bare wood of the bed as Aylwood handed him the porridge. He lifted the bowl to his lips, sucking it down in one noisy slurp, then held his hand out for the scrambled egg which he ate with his hands. From starting his porridge to the final guzzle of his tea, the whole thing took less than two minutes. As they locked the door behind them on the way out, Rosie glanced back through the window and saw he was picking the spilt food off his shift and eating that too as if he was still hungry.

  The next room was Mabel’s and she was already wailing again, lying down on her side on the bed rocking herself. Her thin bare legs were covered in hideous, bulging purple veins and she made no move to sit up for her food. Aylwood poured the porridge into a spouted feeding cup, added more milk and stirred it round. She advanced on Mabel, hauled her up by the shoulder, then holding the old lady’s neck in a vice-like grip, she literally poured it down her throat. Mabel was gagging as it went down, her arms waving frantically like sails of a windmill, but Aylwood didn’t slow down. When the cup was empty, she poured the tea into it, and that was force-fed too.