About Matilda

by Bill Walsh

  I don’t know what to do with myself. There’s a small locker on one side of my bed and on the other side a wooden press with three drawers. The bottom drawer is mine and even on my own I’m embarrassed I have nothing to put in it. A window above the bed is big enough for my head to fit through. I can reach out and touch the red-brick wall in front of me and look down to the narrow alley from where the smell of cooking drifts up from the kitchen below. Cigarette butts parade the sill like toy soldiers. I find out later, Mags Riley, who sleeps in the next bed, never uses an ashtray. She doesn’t even put them out and I spend half my night jumping up to check if the bed’s on fire. But I’m frightened to say anything. Not because she’s older and bigger and has arms like a man. Not because she’s rough or tough. I was reared with the roughest and toughest. It’s because she’s from the outside and everything out here is new and frightening. Even the old patients are new.

  I wonder if I’ve made a mistake.

  There are four wards in the hospital, two for old women and two for old men, with twenty iron beds, all numbered, in each ward. I have a mop, a bucket and a bottle of lemon cleanser and every morning I mop and clean. Polish the wooden lockers and shine the windows. I change the sheets with Nurse Agnew. She has a shiny round face and wears a blue plastic apron so the shit won’t stick to her bright white uniform.

  The old woman groans when we turn her over in the bed and Nurse Agnew roars at me, Don’t let that pan drop.

  But it drops with a clatter on the tiled floor, sending piss and shit hopping off the walls.

  Nurse Agnew calls after me. Come back here. Come back this instant. Matron!

  Matron chases me into the bathroom and yells to the back of my head I’ll have to get used to it. I’m stuck to the floor of the cubicle and she tells me there’s no room here for weak stomachs. Up out of it. She pulls the chain and the spray goes in my eyes, up my nose, and I’m puking in the bowl again.

  Then I help with the breakfast and medication.

  The medicine is on the trays in clear plastic thimbles. The trays are numbered and there’s a number for every bed. I found out after I gave number seventeen to number twenty-seven and had the old woman in seventeen asleep all day and the old man in twenty-seven singing, ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’ to Matron and wouldn’t stop for two days.

  I pity the old people, like the bald Missus Sutton in number thirteen. I know how broken-hearted she is over her wonderful daughter and son-in-law who came to take care of her. She boasts how they never missed a day taking her to hospital after she broke her hip, and how they wheeled her to chapel every Sunday. She insisted they wheel her to the solicitor, so she could sign over the red-brick house, and how the very next week they sold up and moved to London and left her here to die. She begs God to take her so she can be with her dead husband who stands at the end of the bed each night, telling her it won’t be long.

  Mister Phelan in bed twenty has a purple nose full of holes like a sponge and tells everyone he’s going to marry me. I turn red every morning when he almost tumbles out of bed trying to peer down the front of my blue smock when I polish his locker. He laughs, Christ, if I was twenty years younger, we’d make a fine couple. What would you think yourself?

  Mister Stacey with the white hair in the next bed says, You should have been dead twenty years ago.

  Let me outa this bed. By Jasus, Stacey, I don’t need to be twenty years younger for you, yeh aul bollox.

  Walking sticks rattle the iron beds and wheezy chests laugh and croak till Matron with her navy uniform and Sergeant-Major walk barges in.

  What’s this ruckus?

  The old men lie back and rest, their eyes blind, their ears deaf, while she parades up and down looking for someone to pick on. She stops at Brendan, sucking an orange in number seven. The other old men say he worked in the Coliseum picture house that’s closed now, which is why he’s tied to the bed at night. Sometimes he escapes and goes around the wards with a toilet roll for a flashlight, waking everyone, looking for tickets.

  Matron pokes him in the ribs with her bony finger. What’s this? We have a bin for orange peel. Haven’t we?

  Brendan jumps up in the bed.

  Tickets, please. He glares at Matron. Who left you in here? Then whimpers when Matron takes his bag of oranges away.

  You can have them back in the morning, if you behave.

  She fixes Brendan’s sheets. Checks the green tubes coming from his nose and tells him, Sleep now till we call you for the late show.

  Two days later, Brendan is dead. Matron closes his eyelids and bends over him with her rosary beads in her hands whispering an Act of Contrition in his ear, and I look around the ward, wondering who’ll be dropping off next. I’ll miss Brendan and hope he’s in a place where cinemas never close and batteries never die.

  I know Matron said not to bring anything for the patients, but it’s hard to refuse after Brendan is carried out white and stiff and Mister Phelan with the purple nose leans out of his bed. Matilda, would you do an old man a kindness?

  I will if I can, Mister Phelan.

  Don’t mind that Mister Phelan. Call me, Frank.

  I will, Mister Phelan.

  Do you ever go to town, Matilda?

  I do on my day off.

  He whispers behind his hand. Can you get me Jack Daniels, Matilda?

  What bed is he in, Mister Phelan?

  Oh, Holy Jesus. He rolls back on the bed with the tears and laughter coming so hard he has to beat his hand on his chest but that only sets him coughing. He rolls to the other side of the bed and churns up ropes of green phlegm into a hankie he keeps under his pillow. He wipes his mouth on the bed sheet, rests back on the pillows and you can hear his chest wheeze every time it goes up and down. Wait till I draw breath. Christ, you’re a tonic. Better than any doctor.

  He reaches under the mattress for a ten-pound note and tells me call to the off-licence on the Quay. Tell them it’s for me and you’ll have no bother. There’s two pounds change. Keep it.

  I couldn’t, Mister Phelan.

  Take it and don’t have me to get out a this bed to you.

  Thanks, Mister Phelan.

  I’m delighted with the two pounds. I’ll give it to Danny for pocket money so I can get him away from stealing. After all, it’s my fault he’s doing it.

  Next pay day, Matron wants me in her office. I feel like I’m back in the convent with Gabriel taking money for curses and broken cups, the way she dangles my wage packet between finger and thumb because she knows I need it. She wouldn’t do it to Maggie Riley or any of the other helpers, but I’m a Shep and I have to be grateful when she tells me I’m to do the night shift. Without a job she knows I have no place to go but back to the convent. All I need do, she says, is sit in the aisle between the beds and call the night nurse if a patient tries to escape.

  Escape?

  She says it happens.

  She doesn’t say at ten o’clock when the night nurse gives out the medication the lights go out and the hospital is a different place in the dark. That all you’ll see are shadows you don’t understand and only the faint light from the nurse’s station tells you where to run if you feel a hand on your shoulder. She doesn’t tell me about the wailing groans and heavy farting smells of old people, or when I’d look at my watch at four in the morning it’s only midnight, that there’s only two hours gone and six to go and not the other way round. She never said I couldn’t get to the canteen because I’d have to pass the dead Mister Sutton telling his wife it won’t be long. She never told me about rattling beds or how helpless I’d feel when they want to scratch but can’t because their hands are tied. She never told me I’d stick my fingers in my ears so I wouldn’t hear the screams brought by bed sores or how I’d hold my nose to block the stench of piss and shit from overflowing bed pans. She didn’t warn me how stiff I’d be, or say how happy I’d be to hear the first bird singing because a new day was beginning.

  Slowly, the darkness melts and shado
ws become curtains and beds again. Strange sounds become old people with names. Mister Stacey wheezing in his ventilator mask. Missus Sutton waving goodbye to her dead husband and Mister Phelan sucking his tongue when he slips me ten pounds.

  Would you like a glass of water, Mister Phelan?

  Water? Is it trying to poison me you are?

  The Matron marches around in her soft white shoes counting beds and patients and I wonder why she has to count beds and who’d want to run away with a hospital bed. Maggie Riley and the other cleaners come in their blue smocks while the nurses put on the blue plastic aprons and untie the patients’ hands.

  Matron says, You look thin, Matilda. Pale even. Maybe this night work doesn’t agree with you.

  I’m fine, Matron. Just tired.

  Go to your dormitory and sleep. You must have your rest, Matilda.

  Yes, Matron.

  Back in the empty dormitory I toss and turn, but how can I sleep when I’ve been reared to live by the ringing of a bell and to ask permission to go to town or make a slice of toast? Suddenly I’m awake all night and supposed to sleep when I should be getting up for mass. I can’t lie in bed all day. It might even be a sin. I have to stop thinking like that.

  *

  The town is deserted at seven o’clock in the morning. There’s only yesterday’s newspaper and last night’s fish and chip wrapping blowing along the gutters waiting for the street cleaner to come along. I wander in circles and end up at the far side of town by the industrial estate. I think about going inside one of the factories and asking for a job, but I don’t know how to ask for a job, and I’d have to tell them I was in the Holy Shepherd and the Mad School and that would be the end of that. I wander back through the empty streets again. The street cleaner strolls by and tips his cap at me. I’m sure he wonders why I’m here every morning but he just keeps strolling along, sweeping the papers onto his shovel and tossing them into his bin before moving to the next pile, pushing his brush ahead of him as he walks.

  By ten o’clock, the middle of town is teeming with people and I know nobody. In Kelly’s shop window on the Quay there’s a blue dress I’d like for Mona’s wedding, but it’s not the same when there’s nobody to say, Yeah, that’s nice, Matilda, and help me find a pair of shoes to match. Someone to have fun with trying on clothes. Someone to have coffee or tea with instead of feeling embarrassed because I’m sitting alone with an empty cup. The waitress clears the table and asks if I want anything else and I politely move on to stare in another shop window, feeling strange and alone because I think I must look strange and I am alone.

  Mona managed to get herself pregnant. It was always going to happen to her. Always going to be her way out. At least he’s stood by her and they’re getting married in a few months and living with her boyfriend’s parents until they can afford a house. I ring Pippa. I imagine her on the other end of the phone in the hotel lobby up to her knees in carpet.

  Missus Schultz doesn’t like anyone from the Sheps ringing, Matilda. I’ll get in trouble.

  I’m your sister, Pippa.

  Doesn’t matter. I can’t meet you, Matilda. I won’t go near town when our father’s around. Anyway, I’m meeting Mona. We’re going to Kilkenny to pick out the wedding dress.

  Don’t ask me, whatever you do.

  I didn’t think you’d come.

  That’s the trouble with you, Pippa. You never think, unless it’s about yourself.

  But…

  Get lost, Pippa. Just get lost.

  I slam down the phone. I don’t know when my sisters became so selfish or if they were always that way and I just didn’t notice. Maybe it’s the way you become when you live on the outside, and maybe that’s the way I should be myself. They should know how I feel. They’re my sisters, my family. They should understand how someone who’s been locked up all their life and suddenly has their freedom can be the loneliest person in the world.

  I wander back to the convent. Men with bulldozers are knocking down the stone wall and I think of all the nights I sat there and wept to be on the outside. Now I don’t belong here either and I wonder if I ever will. I still see the convent as my home but I don’t go in. Reverend Mother doesn’t like you coming back. She thinks you’re looking for something. All I’m looking for is a home. Someplace to belong. I know I have to leave all this behind me now, but it’s hard. I think about going inside the chapel but I don’t pray anymore.

  In Patrick Street there’s a sign in the cobbler’s window: Room to Let. I worry he’ll know I’m from the convent and make some excuse but there’s nothing I can do. There’s a jingle when I open the door and the shop smells of glue. I hear the cobbler hammering out in the back room but he stops when he hears me come in. He’s old and wears a black leather apron and when he comes to the counter I look at him straight in the eye because I’m tired of not being able to look people in the eye. The sweat is thick on my palms when I ask about the room and all I need to do is turn my eyes away to make it stop, but I keep looking.

  He studies me closely.

  You’re a bit young to be out on your own.

  A woman needing new soles on her platform shoes comes to the counter and the cobbler serves her before handing me the key.

  You seem like a nice girl. Take a look at the room and let me know what you think. I can’t come up with you. I’m stuck here for a while.

  The room is small but warm and clean and has a tiny little bathroom with a hand basin and a shower and a small window that looks out to the lane behind the Regina cinema. There’s a single bed, a table and chairs, two armchairs, a cooker. Knives, forks and spoons in the drawer under the sink; cups, saucers and plates on the dresser.

  In the morning, I take a taxi with my suitcase from the hospital and move in. Unpack my two dresses, my two pairs of shoes, one black, one white, three jumpers and other odds and ends. I have a black-and-white photograph of Mona, Sheamie, Pippa, Danny and me that I had framed. One of those cheap silver frames from Woolworths was all I could afford. I found the photograph at my grandmother’s the day of Grandad’s funeral. I decided to go to his burial. He never did us any harm. I know, he never did us any good either. The photograph was on top of the wardrobe covered in dust, with the photograph of my mother and father holding that trophy with the little dancing man and woman on top. I thought about taking that too, but what’s the use? Koala was trapped in the space between the wardrobe and the wall. He must have fallen down there years ago.

  I hang the photograph on the wall and sit in the armchair by the window. I remember the photograph being taken. It was the day we left Australia. My father held the camera to his eye.

  Say cheese.

  Pippa and me were at the top of the slide in blue cotton frocks with short sleeves. I was looking off to one side. Danny was sitting at the bottom smiling at the camera with his little baby teeth. Mona and Danny were standing. Mona in another cotton frock and white ankle socks. Sheamie was looking serious. The sky was clear and blue. The kookaburras were screeching from the treetops and the sun glistened off the metal chute of the slide. I was looking off to the side watching the gate. I was certain my mother would know we were leaving. That she’d feel it. Our suitcases were piled together behind my father and, at the other side of the lawn, a nun was trying to tempt a snake into a plastic sack. It was supposed to be a new start but there’s no such thing. Not until my father is out of our lives.

  The room feels strange after sharing my life with hundreds, but if I can stand a night in the hospital, I can stand anything. I get an extra ten pounds in my wages because I’m not paying the hospital for my keep but I have to buy food now, especially on the evenings when Danny calls, and I can just afford to hire a television and for a few days I feel like a millionaire with buttons and knobs I never had before. I can turn it on or off or turn the volume up and down and move the TV from this wall to that wall but I’ve never felt so lonely, and moving the television around is a sure sign of it.

  I buy a book. It’s b
ig and blue and has a photograph of a pregnant woman holding her belly on the cover and it’s all about women’s bodies. Even though I live on my own I can’t stop myself from hiding it under the mattress. On my nights off I sit up in bed reading about clitoris and uterus and think, don’t they sound like sisters. Good morning, Sister Uterus. Sister Clitoris.

  It says here the clitoris is located, ah hardly, oh… ooh… ooh…oh that’s definitely a sin.

  One night I’m in the dark. No light. No television. No book.

  In the morning, the cobbler comes up to show me where the electricity meter is located under the sink and where I’m to put fifty-pence pieces in the slot.

  You mean I have to pay?

  Did you think it was free?

  I never thought about it at all. I thought it was just there.

  You mean like air?

  Something like that.

  He went downstairs chuckling to himself, Christ, that’s a good one. Wait till the wife hears this.

  I can’t go through the world not knowing electricity has to be paid for, wondering what else I don’t know. I’d like a job, a decent job in a factory where I can meet people who won’t drop dead right and left, people who are more than likely to show up in the morning. People who know about electricity meters.

  21

  In the morning, Mister Phelan slips me ten pounds for Jack Daniels and I ask him if he knows anything about getting a job?

  I should. I had enough of them. What do you want to know, Matilda?

  Mister Phelan knows my grandmother from the shop. He knows I was in the convent and he knows without me telling him that nobody will give someone from an industrial school a job. He calls to Mister Stacey in the next bed, Hey, Stacey, didn’t you work in an office?

  Forty years.

  Mister Phelan tells me to get an application form and bring it here. We’ll handle the rest.

  Thanks, Mister Phelan.

  You must tell your grandmother you were talking to me. Frank Phelan. Tell her I was asking for her.