Hostel Girl

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘They’re artificial. They’re made of wax. They’re not bad but they melt in the sun. My arms are wax too. So’s my head. I’m a wax dummy. I escaped from Madame Tussaud’s.’

  He pronounced it Tussord. Ailsa corrected him.

  ‘So, are you paralysed or something?’

  Helen was walking over the lawn with a jug of lemonade. ‘He had polio,’ she said. ‘And he’s got callipers. He’s not supposed to go round in that thing.’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ Calum said.

  ‘He’s lazy.’

  ‘Thanks for bringing out a glass for me.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ Helen went back to the house.

  ‘You sweat a lot for a girl,’ Calum said.

  ‘At least I’m not stuck in a wheelchair. I can play tennis.’

  ‘Who told you that? You’re the worst player I’ve ever seen. You don’t even know how to hold your racket. Give it to me.’

  Ailsa handed it to him. He threw his head back in mock fright. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Feel how soft the strings are. No wonder you can’t hit the ball. Where’d you get this thing?’

  Ailsa wasn’t going to tell him, from a second-hand shop.

  ‘I’d chuck it in the rubbish if I was you.’

  ‘I suppose you know about tennis then?’ she said.

  ‘He was Hutt Valley under 14 champ.’ Helen arrived with a glass. ‘He played in the national championships, didn’t you Cal?’

  ‘That’s my business.’

  ‘B.P. Before polio.’

  Calum turned the wheelchair half away, but Ailsa did not think he was angry or upset. He was, she thought, trying to be superior — and doing pretty well. He had a cold profile, like someone being English in the movies. She drank her lemonade.

  ‘Come on. Let’s play.’

  ‘Six-love. Six-love,’ Calum said.

  ‘So? I never claimed to be a champ.’

  ‘Nor did I.’

  She grinned at him. She’d got under his skin. ‘You can be umpire.’

  In answer he jerked the wheel again, turning his back on the court. Helen gave him a glass of lemonade. She stroked his shoulder but he raised it sharply in a hump, repelling her. She made a face at him behind his back, then shrugged at Ailsa: ignore him.

  ‘Ha!’ Calum said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Too late.’

  He meant the rain, as sudden as a car crash. It made a silver wall at the garden end, then was all around them, over them, cold and slippery and clean.

  ‘Put your bike in the garage,’ Helen cried.

  Ailsa grabbed it and ran. She leaned it on the yacht (which was called Surprise) and clamped her racket on the carrier. Back in the door, she saw Helen trying to push her brother to the house, but Calum had his hand on the wheel, jamming it. The chair turned in a circle.

  ‘Stop it, Cal,’ Helen shrieked.

  He grinned at her and undid a button of his shirt, letting the rain wet his chest.

  ‘All right, get soaked,’ Helen cried. She ran to the house. ‘Look at my racket strings. All wet.’

  Ailsa ran across the shells to join her. ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  ‘He likes to show off. He won’t let people push him.’

  ‘I will.’ She ran head down to the tennis court. The rain fell as large as bantam eggs, bursting on her neck and arms. Calum was facing it, drinking lemonade. He did not see her coming. She seized the handles and turned the chair. Startled, he dropped the glass, which hit the jug and broke. He grabbed the wheels, stalling the chair.

  ‘You stupid cow.’

  ‘You’re getting soaked,’ she cried. She jerked the chair. It would not move.

  ‘Well, maybe I want to,’ Calum said. ‘And I don’t like fat girls pushing me.’

  ‘You’re a stupid mutt. Stay and get drowned.’ She gave the chair a heave and left him there, wishing she had tipped him on the lawn.

  Helen took her to the bathroom, where she dried her hair. She lent her a blouse, which fitted too tight.

  ‘It’s the polio. He gets fed up,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad I don’t have brothers,’ Ailsa said. ‘Will he come in?’

  ‘If we don’t watch.’

  But they watched, and when the rain was lighter Calum turned the chair and propelled himself to the French doors, taking his time. His hair was plastered to his head and his face was shrunken. It seemed all bone. In spite of that he grinned.

  ‘That was my bath.’

  He let Helen wheel him up the ramp built on the step.

  ‘Stop.’

  She stopped. He took a handful of curtain and dried his hair.

  ‘You’d better pick up that broken glass,’ he said. Dripping water, leaving a track, he wheeled himself across the room into the hall. He turned the chair and closed the door, a moderate bang.

  Ailsa waited until the rain had stopped. She rode home along the wet streets, pushed her bike up the bridge, free-wheeled down the other side, and came to the empty hostel.

  I hope his leg hurts, she thought. I am not fat.

  Chapter 2

  GLORIOUS

  ‘What you are is sturdy and well built,’ Mrs McGowan said.

  ‘You’ve got a nice face,’ Glorious said.

  ‘And a well-rounded body. You should be proud of it.’

  ‘Stop it,’ Ailsa said.

  ‘And you’re not starting a diet and wasting away.’

  ‘I went on a diet once. I lost 10 pounds in 10 days,’ Glorious said. ‘But I was so weak at the end I could hardly stand up. I still can’t look at beef tea.’

  ‘You’re just right now,’ Ailsa said.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Glorious said, smoothing down her dress on her hips.

  ‘Help me put this stuff away, Ailsa. I’m not your servant,’ Mrs McGowan said.

  Ailsa was shifting in with Gloria Wood. Betty Briggs had a new room-mate, the girl who had wanted to escape from Gloria.

  ‘They can pray together,’ Glorious said. She laughed. ‘She used to close her eyes when I put my lipstick on.’

  ‘Can I try some?’

  ‘No,’ Mrs McGowan said. ‘You’re only in here until I find another room.’

  ‘I won’t lead her astray,’ Glorious said. ‘Besides, it’s unhygienic sharing lipstick.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Ailsa said. She wasn’t sure she was going to like Glorious (had better try to think of her as Gloria or she’d say the other name one day). But whatever she turned out like would be an improvement on Betty Briggs.

  The room was on the ground floor, away from the bathroom, where pipes bonged and sang for half the night, but next to the lounge, where, Gloria said, the piano sometimes played till half past 10. (One of the new nurses was crazy on ‘Mairzy Doats’ — or perhaps it was all she’d learned to play.) It wasn’t going to worry Ailsa. She could go to her mother’s living room to do her homework.

  ‘I’ve a good mind to complain to the matron,’ Gloria said, pretending Mrs McGowan wasn’t there.

  ‘They can play what they like. I’ve got no say in that,’ Mrs McGowan said. ‘You’ll both be late for tea if you don’t hurry.’

  They went along the back path beside the washing lines. The boiler man, Ron Stock, was pushing a barrow of coal to the wash house. He had a soft-looking body but hairy arms. Ailsa had never got friendly with him. Ron wouldn’t talk. He read comics in the boiler house in his smoko, sitting on sacks of coal with his tea beside him in a bone china cup and his gingernut biscuit on a matching plate. When nurses tried to talk to him he said, ‘Must run,’ and wheeled his barrow past or hefted a rubbish tin on to his shoulder to hide his face.

  ‘Just a bit simple,’ Mrs McGowan said. ‘But he’s a good worker.’

  This time, when he saw Gloria, Ron pushed the barrow off the path out of her way. He stood still and blushed. Gloria would have that effect on most men, Ailsa thought. It must be nice to start with but would get t
iring before long.

  She grinned at Gloria.

  ‘Every clown under the sun,’ Gloria said. ‘That one could do with a wash.’

  Ailsa wasn’t sure that Ron hadn’t heard.

  They went into the dining room, which was only half full, got trays and plates and cutlery, and stood in line at the servery.

  ‘I’m allowed to eat at the staff table, but I don’t,’ Ailsa said.

  ‘Why not? I would.’

  ‘They don’t get better stuff. It’s the same.’

  ‘Pig swill,’ Gloria said.

  Ailsa was surprised to hear her being so crude. She was also offended, for the remark seemed to criticise her mother, even though Mrs McGowan had nothing to do with cooking the food. And it criticised the hostels, which were Ailsa’s home. She watched Gloria while she was served: a profile that was pretty and pointy at the same time, small nose, pink ears, floppy hair — runny hair, like toffee — and lips that were pouty and discontented, kissy lips. She looked like that actress Ann Blyth, who had been the selfish daughter in Mildred Pierce. Ailsa felt like the plain daughter who had died. But that one had been happy at least.

  Gloria jerked her tray back. ‘I’m not a wharfie.’

  ‘Everybody gets the same,’ said Brenda-in-the-servery, reaching out and plopping another spoonful on.

  They found a table well away from the Christian girls, who were saying grace as they went by.

  ‘Aren’t you religious?’ Ailsa said.

  ‘I’m a Catholic. We don’t go round trying to make other people feel bad. Look at this mashed potato. It’s got bits of skin stuck in it.’

  ‘Put them on one side,’ Ailsa said.

  ‘I shouldn’t have to. I didn’t come to Wellington for this.’

  ‘Why’d you choose a dental nurse?’ Ailsa said.

  ‘Why not? I won’t be one all my life.’

  ‘Someone like you could get married easy. To anyone.’

  ‘Who wants to get married? I’m going to have some fun.’ Gloria pushed her plate away. She lit a cigarette. ‘If you eat all that you will get fat.’

  ‘Well, I’m hungry. Aren’t you?’

  ‘I would be if there was something decent to eat. This is like home.’

  ‘Where was that?’

  ‘Stratford, where the grass grows. And nothing else.’

  She looked, leaning back smoking, like a woman who’d been places and done things and knew about money and the world, yet she couldn’t be much more than 19. She must have been a bombshell in Stratford, Ailsa thought, yet there was something sad in her, the way she only smouldered, the way she looked around the dining room and frowned.

  ‘How come your mother gets a bedroom and a lounge and all the rest of us have to share?’ Gloria said.

  ‘Because she’s the matron. She has to have a private room for talking to the girls.’

  ‘Telling them off. She’d better not try it with me.’

  ‘She won’t if you stick to the rules. She didn’t make them.’

  ‘Where’s your dad?’

  ‘Dead. In the war.’

  ‘I wish mine was.’ She drew on her cigarette, blew smoke across the table. ‘How come you go to a private school?’

  Ailsa saw that she was going to hear ‘how come’ a lot, spoken in that complaining way. But how could anyone want their father dead (although those girls in Christchurch had killed one of their mothers with a brick)? She seemed to look through a door into another room and glimpse Gloria acting strangely, like a woman in a murder movie doing furtive things. Yet she seemed like a child in some ways.

  Mrs McGowan passed on her way to the staff table. ‘Gloria,’ she said, ‘there’s no smoking in here. You’re allowed to up in the lounge.’ She smiled to make it seem not like an order.

  Gloria took another puff. She buried the burning end of the cigarette in her mashed potatoes.

  ‘Are there any other rules I don’t know?’

  ‘It’s the same for everyone,’ Mrs McGowan said, and went on.

  ‘I might as well be back at school,’ Gloria said.

  ‘School’s worse,’ Ailsa said, wondering if Gloria was going to walk out.

  ‘Wasting food is immoral,’ Miss Cotter said, sitting down in one of the free places at the table. She was from House 2 and had been in the hostels almost since they had begun. People avoided Miss Cotter. She had a protruding stomach that she said was a growth and she always wanted to talk about it, even at the table. Ailsa in particular liked to keep clear of her. Ever since the sex scandal Miss Cotter had started shooting frowns in her direction. She believed juvenile delinquency was caused by swimming pools, where too much flesh was exposed. ‘Flesh’ and ‘immorality’ were her favourite words after ‘stomach’ and ‘growth’.

  ‘Is that another rule? Do we have to “eat-up”?’ Gloria said.

  ‘I try to help the new nurses,’ Miss Cotter said.

  Gloria took her pudding spoon and heaped it with potato. ‘Bzzz, here comes the aeroplane. Open the hangar door.’

  Ailsa laughed.

  ‘Young girls should keep quiet, especially now,’ Miss Cotter said.

  ‘I thought this was YW not OW,’ Gloria said.

  Miss Cotter put down her knife and fork and started to cry. ‘I can’t help it if I’ve got a growth.’

  ‘In her stomach,’ Ailsa explained.

  Gloria stood up. ‘That’s all I need.’ She left the dining room, walking quickly, head up, and managed to look like someone stalking out of a restaurant. There should have been a waiter to bow.

  ‘She didn’t mean anything,’ Ailsa said.

  Miss Cotter cried.

  ‘O means old, not something in your stomach.’

  The matron from House 2 came across. ‘What’s the matter, Miss Cotter?’

  ‘That girl.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Ailsa said. ‘Nothing about …’ She tapped her stomach.

  ‘I want to sit at another table,’ Miss Cotter said.

  ‘Yes, do that.’ The matron helped her put her plates on her tray. ‘Go to Miss Turner and Miss King. They don’t mind.’

  ‘Girls should keep quiet. And be good,’ Miss Cotter sniffed, leaving.

  The matron rolled her eyes at Ailsa — ‘give me patience’ not a rebuke. She went back to the staff table. Ailsa, sitting alone, finished her first course and started on her custard and stewed plums. She wondered what Helen was having — what Calum was having. Did polio victims have to eat special food? She wondered if he had been in an iron lung — and remembered a girl called Audrey who had come back to school after getting polio in the epidemic that closed the schools in 1947, and no one wanted to share a desk with her. They called her Hoppity, pretending they could see germs hopping over, and ran to wash their hands if they had to touch Audrey at folk dancing. Ailsa blushed lightly, remembering the part she’d played in it. She wondered if Calum had to put up with things like that. Was it why he had made that joke about the rain being his bath?

  She finished her dinner and went to her new room. Gloria was putting on her jacket and scarf. ‘I’m going for a walk. Want to come?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Anywhere. As long as it’s away from here.’

  ‘I like it here.’ Which was a lie, but she was tired of sneers about the hostels. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to do my homework.’

  ‘Huh,’ Gloria said and turned away, but not before Ailsa saw her mouth grow hard. Men might like her but women probably always turned her down.

  ‘I can come for 20 minutes. Is that OK?’

  ‘Don’t bust yourself.’

  They walked towards the Wainui hill, then turned back by the Prince Edward theatre. It wasn’t seven o’clock yet and the doors were closed. The sun was dipping below the western hills. Gloria lit a cigarette.

  ‘This place is just as bad as Stratford.’

  Ailsa saw what she meant. There wasn’t even anyone in the milkbar. But she seemed to hear the hum
of 300 women only one street away. If they all came bursting out of the hostel doors the footpaths of Woburn would be teeming.

  They walked north up Cambridge Terrace, which stretched along the valley. The railway lines, with their overhead wires, ran parallel, and Oxford Terrace lay on the other side. You’d have to climb the overbridge to see the three-storeyed buildings of Lower Hutt standing like flat boulders in the trees, and far away the lights of Wellington sparkling in the dusk.

  There’s nothing wrong with this place, Ailsa thought.

  Gloria dropped her cigarette on the footpath and stood on it. She walked with a rat-tat of high heels. She’d freshened up her lipstick too, just for a walk in the dark. It was possible, Ailsa supposed, that you’d meet Mr Right anywhere, any time, so be prepared. She gave a snicker.

  ‘What’s eating you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘All those women drive me crazy. Don’t they know they’ve only got one life?’

  ‘Some of them are all right,’ Ailsa said. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘You can turn back any time you like. What were you off school for today?’

  ‘Mid-term break.’

  ‘That’s the life. I suppose they teach you elocution and deportment there?’ She said elocution in an elocutionary way and did an actressy walk for deportment. Ailsa laughed.

  ‘They like us to talk properly.’

  ‘What’s properly? Who are they to say?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ailsa said. ‘Why don’t you like your dad?’

  Gloria made no answer. A unit passed, gathering speed out of Woburn station. People sat inside, some with their cheeks resting on the windows. A guard was clipping tickets. Each carriage made a separate world, pulled from Wellington to Upper Hutt. It made Ailsa feel lonely, especially as she’d asked a question that was far too nosey.

  ‘Can we cross the line?’ Gloria said.

  ‘There’s a sort of track up here a bit. It’s against the law.’

  ‘Who cares?’ Gloria crossed the road. ‘Where?’

  ‘Through the trees. It’s no good with high heels. Watch the fence, it’s got barbed wire.’

  ‘I grew up with barbed wire.’

  She climbed over, but caught her heel on the top strand. ‘Bugger.’

  ‘Told you,’ Ailsa said. She climbed up, one, two, jumped down. ‘Do you want a hand?’