Empire Day

by Diane Armstrong

  Several days later, the secretary of the immigration department wrote to the Daily Standard to refute Ted’s article and said that Ted had probably got confused between the tattoos of concentration camp inmates and those of SS men. In a scathing riposte, Ted replied that, unlike the letter writer, he could tell the difference between a forearm and an armpit.

  Chapter 20

  It had been exciting, hearing the wail of the siren and knowing that the ambulance had come for him, Meggsie thought. Seeing everyone out in the street watching him being carried out on a stretcher, he’d felt like the hero of one of his adventure stories, especially when he’d seen Hanny’s worried face pressed against the window. But as soon as the ambulance had sped from Wattle Street and rushed along streets he’d never seen before, he’d thought about his useless legs and had trouble getting enough air into his lungs.

  He’d tried to sit up but the ambulance officer had told him to lie still.

  ‘The paper round!’ he’d cried out, his eyes wide with alarm. ‘Mum, I didn’t do the paper round this morning! Mr Smithson will go crook. He’ll give the round to someone else and then I won’t get any money.’

  Taking his hand, his mum had said, ‘Don’t worry about it, love. I’ll tell him you’re sick and he’ll keep the job for you. You’ll see, you’ll be running around in no time.’

  The ambulance had pulled up in the driveway of a brick building with big pillars and before Meggsie knew what was happening he was being wheeled away without having a chance to say goodbye to his mother. At the end of a long corridor, in a brightly lit room, they placed him on cold white sheets on a hard table under a lamp that shone into his eyes. Everything in there was cold and white, even the caps and coats the doctor and nurses wore, and the masks that hid their faces.

  ‘Are you a brave boy?’ the doctor asked.

  Meggsie nodded but his stomach was churning round like the time he’d had a roller-coaster ride at the Easter Show.

  ‘What’s your favourite book?’

  ‘Biggles,’ Meggsie said in a whisper that didn’t sound like his own voice.

  ‘Well, let’s see how brave Biggles can be,’ the doctor said as the nurses rolled him over on one side. ‘This might sting a bit, but we need you to keep very still so we can do a little test to see what’s wrong with you. Do you think you can do that?’

  Meggsie nodded but his heart was pounding. He wished his mother was there. He felt like crying but he wanted to be brave. Two nurses were holding him down and suddenly he almost leapt into the air with a pain that took his breath away as the doctor stuck a needle into his spine. He thought it would come out on the other side and stab him to death, and he heard himself screaming in a way he’d never screamed before. He was mortified. He’d let Biggles down.

  The next day the doctor came to see him.

  ‘Dr McCallum was right,’ he said. ‘It’s poliomyelitis. We’re going to put your legs in splints.’

  Meggsie didn’t know what poliomyelitis was, or why the nurses were putting something hard at the back of his legs and padding it with a soft mesh-like fabric, and then placing something under his feet. He heard them saying something about stopping foot drop, and he thought it meant his foot was going to fall off.

  In the isolation ward he was dimly aware of other beds and other children, but he felt hot and cold and shivery and didn’t feel like talking and, he supposed, neither did they. In his feverish state he saw white-clad figures with masks covering their faces hovering around his bed like ghosts. They spoke to him but the masks muffled their voices and he was too exhausted to reply. He thought they said his mother wouldn’t be allowed to come and see him for some time, but his head was too fuzzy to take it all in. All he could do was mumble through his cracked lips.

  He didn’t know how long he’d been there by the time his head and neck stopped aching and he heard the ladies in the white masks saying that his fever had dropped.

  ‘How’re you going? All right?’ one of the masked nurses would ask with a sympathetic smile whenever she brought his dinner tray with shepherd’s pie, sago and stewed apples. ‘Not much fun in here, is it? But only another week and you’ll be in the orthopaedic ward, and then your mum will be able to visit you. But your brothers won’t — children aren’t allowed into the polio wards.’

  He didn’t know what the orthopaedic ward was, but from her tone it sounded like an improvement on the isolation ward where he couldn’t see his mum or anyone he knew, and there was nothing to distract him from his misery, not even the sound of a wireless. Lying in the bed with his useless legs, he wanted to scream at the nurses to take off the splints and the bandages so he could get out of there. Through the window he could see tiny motes of dust suspended on shafts of light high above his bed. When a breeze swayed the branches of the gum trees outside, they brushed against the panes in ever-changing patterns of light and shade, and occasionally he heard a bird chirping and saw the shadow of its wings as it flew past, and wished he was a bird and could fly away.

  Whenever a nurse came in, his eyes followed her hungrily, hoping that she’d stay and talk to him, but the nurses were always rushed off their feet and only had time to exchange a few words as they straightened his bed or took his temperature.

  Most of them were kind but some were as crisp as their starched uniforms and veils; they told him they had their time cut out trying to get their work done and didn’t have time for idle chitchat.

  The prettiest young nurse, whose name was Cecily, often stopped by his bed and tried to cheer him up.

  ‘Buck up,’ she’d said one day. ‘Next Sunday you’ll see your mum. She won’t be able to come into the ward, but you’ll be able to see her through that window. She came last Sunday, but you were too sick to know she was there.’

  He had counted the hours until Sunday, and now it was here he was counting the minutes. Finally two o’clock arrived, and when he looked towards the door, there she was, her pale face looking at him through the window, but all they could do was look at each other and make miming gestures. She kept wiping her eyes and trying to smile as she waved to him. When the bell rang and visiting time was over, she blew him one last kiss, and as he listened to her slow footsteps growing fainter he felt more alone than before.

  In the long, lonely hours after she left, Meggsie went over the events of the past few weeks and came to the conclusion that God had punished him. He thought about all the bad things he’d done, like fighting in the schoolyard, breaking Pete’s wooden train and not telling Alan that Gran had left a bag of lollies for him when he was sick, and eating them all himself. When he got out of hospital, he’d buy Alan a big bag of liquorice all-sorts, fix Pete’s train and never fight again. Suddenly he remembered Mrs Browning telling his mum that two policemen had taken Mr Emil away, and he felt sick. That was why God had punished him. For spying on his neighbour and dobbing him in.

  When Nurse Cecily brought his porridge next morning, she was holding a book. ‘I’ve brought you something,’ she said, placing The Count of Monte Cristo on the bed. ‘When I was sick, my mum gave it to me. I loved it. I’ll bring you a reading stand so you can put the book on it. Try and turn the pages yourself, but I’ll come in and turn them for you whenever I can.’

  He wondered whether she’d had polio as well, and had her legs in splints, but she’d gone before he had time to ask.

  At first it took so long to read each page that he became discouraged. The print was small, there weren’t any pictures, and he couldn’t understand many of the long, unfamiliar words. The detailed descriptions bored him, and he couldn’t follow who was who, or what was going on. But with nothing else to do, he read each page several times, and before long he became so fascinated by the story of Edmond Dantès that he couldn’t wait to find out what happened next, especially when the hero began to dig a tunnel to escape from the Chateau d’If.

  Each night before falling asleep, Meggsie would relive each scene in his head. He seethed with indignation at the in
justice of Edmond Dantès’s sentence and wondered if he would ever escape and get his own back on the horrible man who’d had him imprisoned. He became so absorbed in the story that he began thinking of himself as Dantès. After all, he was imprisoned in this hospital, far from everything and everyone he loved. If Dantès could escape from his island fortress, then perhaps one day he might be free too.

  Finally the day he’d been longing for arrived. The three-week infectious period had passed, and he cheered when Nurse Cecily told him that he was going to be moved into the orthopaedic ward that morning.

  ‘I bet you’re glad to be rid of me!’ she laughed.

  His face fell. He hadn’t realised that moving out of the isolation ward meant changing nurses.

  Seeing his dismay, she said, ‘It’s funny, isn’t it — whenever we get something we’ve been wishing for, it never turns out exactly the way we expected.’

  He was struggling with that idea when she added, ‘I suppose you’ll know the book off by heart by the time you go home.’

  ‘I won’t be in here that long,’ he said.

  As soon as they transferred him to the orthopaedic ward and he saw the row of beds on the long verandah with other children in them, he forgot his disappointment about Nurse Cecily. In the bed next to his lay a boy about his own age, and on the other side was a little kid who reminded him of Pete. At the far end was an inquisitive little girl with a mop of curly hair. Betty, who was five, immediately wanted to know all about him and his brothers: what were their names, how old were they, which one did he fight with the most, and which one did he like the best?

  Facing him stood a large metal contraption. At first glance it looked like one of the coffins he’d seen the night he spied on Mr Emil. Then he decided it was more like the boxes he’d seen in magic shows, the ones where the magician pretended to cut his assistant’s head off. He was surprised to see a girl’s head poking out of the box.

  But he didn’t have time to find out what it was because a woman in a white uniform came towards him and told him she was the physiotherapist and she’d come to remove his splints and put his legs in plaster ones instead. The moist plaster felt pleasantly warm as she slathered it all over his legs. When it was dry, she picked up some cutters and cut away the top part so that his legs rested in the plaster cases.

  ‘That’s so you’ll be able to get your legs in and out of the plaster,’ the physiotherapist said in a reassuring voice. ‘Just imagine that your legs are wearing half a sock to keep them warm.’

  After the physiotherapist had gone, he looked at the metal contraption again, trying to work out what it was for. When he looked up he saw his mum standing there. At first his mind was as numb as his legs, and he couldn’t think of anything to say because there was so much he wanted to say that it got all jumbled up inside his head. She just stood there looking at him with tears pouring down her face. He hadn’t been able to touch her since the day the ambulance brought him to the hospital, and he reached out and clutched her hand. He hadn’t seen her cry since the day his dad walked out, and although he felt like crying too, he felt embarrassed in case someone was watching.

  Suddenly his mum was hugging him and they were both talking at once. He wanted to hear about his brothers and his friends. Did Alan get into the cricket team at school, did Hanny ask about him, was Mr Smithson keeping his job for him? She wanted to know whether his legs hurt, what were the nurses like, and what he ate for dinner. Then she started taking things out of her shopping bag: his balsawood plane, some Batman, Superman and Mandrake the Magician comics, a lamington and two iced finger buns. He wanted to tell her all about Nurse Cecily, and the wonderful world of the Count of Monte Cristo, and about the grumpy old nurse, but suddenly the bell shrilled. Visiting time was over.

  ‘I’ll come again on Sunday, love,’ his mum said, and with one last hug she disappeared through the door.

  This time his sense of loss was so intense that he bit his lip hard to stop himself from crying. His joy at seeing her turned to sadness. After not seeing her for so long, having to part after such a short time was like being offered a gift and then having it snatched away before he could open it.

  He felt sad for another reason he couldn’t quite understand or put into words. Something had changed between him and his mother. Too much had happened to him that she didn’t know about and he couldn’t express. He wondered whether that was what Nurse Cecily had meant, that the things we long for never turn out the way we imagine.

  ‘Hey! You!’ The girl in the metal box was calling him in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Hey!’ she said again. ‘What’s your name? Mine’s Dawn.’

  ‘You can talk!’ he said.

  ‘Of course I can talk,’ she retorted. ‘I’m paralysed, not dumb. Was that your mum? She looks really nice. She brought you things and said she’ll be back next Sunday. You’re lucky. My mum can’t come every week. She just had a baby.’

  Dawn had been in the iron lung for seven months. When she explained that it breathed for her, Meggsie peppered her with questions.

  ‘See that thing on the side? That’s a sort of pump. It’s connected to the iron lung by a tube that moves my chest so I can get some air in,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I’d be dead.’

  Meggsie was impressed. This was better than anything he’d ever seen in the comic books, better even than the serials they screened at the matinees on Saturday arvo, where spacemen travelled in those weird aircraft. He wished he could have a closer look at the pump and see how it worked.

  ‘Gee, that’s like a magic trunk,’ he said. ‘When I get out of here, I’m going to see a real magician, Morris the Magnificent.’

  Then he stopped talking as a frightening thought took his breath away. What if he didn’t get out in time?

  Chapter 21

  As Sala walked to the tram stop she was enchanted by the light pouring down from a sky tinted with gauzy wisps of pink. It was spring, or what passed for spring in this strange country which had no real seasons. The trees didn’t change colour in autumn, and there were no crocuses or primroses at the end of winter. The only difference she’d noticed was in the quality of the light, which shone with a golden radiance. There was one other difference — something in the air made her sneeze so much that her head ached.

  ‘Hay fever’ was what Mrs Browning had called it when she’d heard her sneezing. That made no sense as there was no hay anywhere around. Sala wondered if she’d ever become familiar with these illogical English expressions. Szymon, who never let his lack of vocabulary stand in his way, just laughed at her frustration. He forged ahead, misusing words and phrases in a way that made her cringe, but somehow he made himself understood and everyone thought he was a ‘bonza bloke’ for ‘having a go’, whatever that meant.

  Slipping onto a slatted wooden seat that had been buffed to a high gloss by passengers over the years, she thought about their latest argument which, as usual, had been about her work. Suddenly a paperboy jumped onto the running board and poked his cheeky face into her compartment. ‘Pypah, read all about it!’ he chanted, and leapt down again just as the tram was moving off.

  A moment later the tram guard came into the compartment, his battered cap slightly askew. ‘Lovely morning, eh?’ he said as he tore a ticket off the large leather ticket holder scuffed from decades of use. ‘Soon be beach weather, I reckon. You like the beach?’

  ‘I like very much,’ she said, handing him her fourpence.

  This time she got off the tram in Taylor Square near the court house, whose Grecian columns she found so incongruous in this slummy area of boarding houses, sly grog shops and poky corner stores. On the corner she stopped for a moment to look at the array of abandoned possessions in the pawnbroker’s window: watches, bracelets, a tarnished trumpet, an old Leica camera and a pearl necklace that looked as if it had never been taken out of its crimson velvet case. There was probably an interesting story behind each one, and she wondered what it was.

  Turning into Darl
inghurst Road she walked past old terraces with splintered doorways, cracked tiles and sagging verandahs. Behind the leaning fences and broken palings, uncut grass straggled in neglected front yards. A young woman in a tight red skirt was puffing on a cigarette as she leaned suggestively against the open door of a terrace, eyeing the passers-by. Inside, the wireless was on full blast, and Sala slowed down to listen to Peggy Lee’s husky voice singing ‘Mañana’. The record finished, and with a bored look the young woman tossed her cigarette butt onto the cracked tiles, ground it out with the toe of her black ankle-strap shoe and disappeared inside.

  A few doors further down, a toothless man sitting in a frayed wicker chair on his verandah waved at Sala as she passed. Beside him hung a birdcage whose occupant, a large grey-and-pink parrot, made her jump as it screeched ‘Hello cocky!’ in a hoarse drunken voice.

  There were few people in the street so early in the day, and the corner shops hadn’t yet opened, but high in the acacia trees, small birds twittered and whistled. Sala filled her lungs with the cool freshness of the September morning, and she could feel the muscles in her neck loosening up. She and Szymon had had an argument that morning, but by the time she pushed open the door of the Jewish Welfare Society she no longer felt angry and she resolved to be less critical.

  She opened the door to the cleaning closet, reached for her crossover apron on the hook, and almost fell over Beryl who was propped up against the wall, her head slumped on her chest.

  ‘Strewth, I feel that crook,’ she mumbled, holding her head.

  ‘You should go home,’ Sala said. ‘I will tell Mrs Feldman you are sick.’