Next came scrambled egg with tiny cubes of fried bread. Rosie had to assume it was cut like that to eat with spoons. But many of them ignored the spoons and ate it with their fingers, cramming it into their mouths so fast she thought they couldn’t possibly be chewing.
As Rosie spread slices of bread and marge with a thin layer of marmalade, she found herself thinking back to Mrs Bentley and her continual carping about ‘table manners’ and wondering what she’d make of this lot. Donald was the only one who ate with some dignity, and Rosie wondered why that was. Had he only recently been admitted, or was it because he was a bit brighter than the others and so retained things he’d been taught as a child?
Mary came down from the second floor at nine to join them, complaining bitterly that one of the patients had eaten her breakfast, then vomited it up all over her, forcing her to change her entire uniform and even her stockings too. She flopped down in a chair and said she was already exhausted. It seemed that Linda was staying on the second floor today.
Matron had informed Rosie that as part of her duties as a chargehand she was to mop over the day room, dormitories and corridor floors with disinfectant, make the beds and scrub out the bathrooms. She’d said that Rosie was to look at the rota and see what jobs she’d been allocated. Maureen, however, didn’t seem to care what was on the rota; she said that Simmonds was already making a start on one of the dormitories and that she and Mary would tackle the day room. Rosie could join Simmonds and do the rest.
Rosie agreed willingly. She suspected from Mary’s raised eyebrows that this wasn’t exactly a fair allocation of work, but to her it was preferable to being locked in the day room with the patients. The feeling of revulsion hadn’t diminished. It made her flesh crawl to watch them shuffling about aimlessly, scratching at themselves, picking their noses. She wondered if she’d ever be able to talk to them. They didn’t even appear to communicate with one another.
‘You could take Donald to help you,’ Mary suggested. ‘He’s good at cleaning and it gives him something to do. He always helps me.’
Rosie shuddered. She had visions of Donald grabbing her again as he had last night, and no one being around to stop him.
‘He’s quite safe,’ Mary said quietly. ‘Just look at him!’
Rosie turned to see Donald standing by the door. His face was anxious; he was smoothing down his blond hair as if trying to make himself look more attractive to her. Something clicked inside Rosie. She’d seen that very same expression on Alan’s face so many times in his older brothers’ presence. Wanting to be liked, ready to do anything.
‘Okay, Donald, you’ll be my helper,’ Rosie said with some reluctance, but she was rewarded with a wide, merry smile.
Within half an hour of being alone with Donald in the first dormitory, Rosie found that she was not only very glad of his help, but she saw that Maureen was probably correct in saying he didn’t really need to be here at all.
He knew exactly what to do. He had the clean sheets and pillowcases out of a cupboard and on to a trolley before she could even think where to start. Then he led her down to the end of the row of beds, quickly threw the blankets and pillow on to the next one, then spread out the clean bottom sheet.
‘L-l-like this,’ he stammered, showing her a special way of doing neat corners. ‘Hospital c-c-corners. S-s-sister showed me.’
He said very little as they worked, but Rosie found herself smiling at the pride he took in his work. The top sheet had to be turned down just so, and the pillow plumped up and positioned carefully. He was quicker and more efficient than many of the nurses she’d observed during her stay in hospital. When they’d finished the women’s dormitory they joined Simmonds in the men’s to help her, and Donald showed Rosie which was his bed, the only dry one, down by the window.
‘I l-l-like to look at the g-g-garden in the morning,’ he stuttered. ‘I w-w-wish I could g-g-go out there, wh-wh-when I like.’
This wistful remark put Donald’s and the other patients’ predicament into perspective. Already just a few hours into the day, Rosie was hankering to go outside and breathe in the fresh air. Her entire life there had been wide open spaces just beyond the back door. But she could go out this evening, sniff flowers in gardens, walk in streets and fields if she chose, yet poor Donald, through no fault of his own, was destined to spend all day, every day trapped in here, viewing the outside world through a window.
Later Donald showed her where the buckets, mops and cleaning materials were kept, and sped off into the sluice room to fill the buckets with hot water. Simmonds took one bucket from him and began to mop down the corridor, and Rosie and Donald worked side by side along each of the dormitories. Again he was thorough, taking care to wring out the mop properly. Rosie felt his silence was probably because he was very aware of his stutter, yet he was agreeable company, and she found his way of taking the bucket from her to empty and refill it rather touching.
Simmonds had left the ward to help down in the kitchen when they moved on to clean the lavatories and bathrooms. To Rosie’s horror someone had defecated on the floor just inside one of them.
Rosie retched, and Donald grabbed her arm pulling her back. ‘I’ll d-d-do it,’ he said.
She almost let him, but a glance at his face proved he was as squeamish as she was about such things. ‘No, Donald,’ she said, and smiled reassuringly at him. ‘It’s my job. You just get some more hot water.’
By the time he came back to the lavatory, Rosie had managed to scoop up the offending mess with some toilet paper and flushed it away. Donald looked relieved. ‘It’s S-s-sister’s fault,’ he stammered. ‘She d-d-doesn’t always unlock us in t-time, not even wh-wh-when we shout that w-w-we want to go.’
Rosie couldn’t imagine that was the reason for this mess; if a patient had got as far as the lavatory, to her mind he or she could manage to sit over the bowl. But all the same Donald’s remark stuck in her mind and when they got back into the day room just after eleven having finished all the cleaning, she thought she’d ask the other girls if what he’d said about Sister Welbred was true.
Maureen and Mary were busy repositioning the armchairs after the floor had been washed. But when Rosie put her question to them, to her amazement Mary, who was bending over, jerked upright, her face tightened, then said, as if she hadn’t heard the question, that it was time she made the ‘elevenses’.
As Rosie watched Mary’s unduly rapid departure from the day room, Maureen moved nearer to her. ‘You’ll make a lot of enemies if you start asking too many questions,’ she said crisply.
Rosie frowned, she didn’t understand what Maureen meant. ‘But surely if we have to keep cleaning up messes that aren’t necessary, we should do something about it?’
Maureen just looked at her for a moment, sighed and then sat down in an easy chair, beckoning for Rosie to join her. ‘Look,’ she said wearily. ‘It’s true that some of the patients are a bit scared of Sister so they don’t call out at night or first thing in the morning when they want to go. If you want my opinion, I’d say we’d get no more than two wet beds a night and hardly ever a messed one if there was a lav the patients could get into on their own.
‘But on the other hand, we find messes like the one you found quite often, at all times of the day. I reckon it’s Archie, he’s got some disgusting habits as you’ll soon find out. So don’t go giving your opinions about anything until you know how it really is here, not unless you want to find yourself very unpopular.’
Rosie didn’t say any more, but images of helpless patients too afraid to call out to use the bathroom for fear of upsetting a trained nurse stayed in her mind. It smacked of that same kind of intimidation Seth and Norman had inflicted on Alan.
After elevenses, disturbing noises were coming from the second floor. Mostly it was just banging and bellowing, but every now and then there was a real scream. It was strange that neither the patients nor Mary and Maureen appeared to notice it, but Rosie found it very distressing.
‘It sounds like they are being tortured,’ she blurted out at one point to Maureen.
She just laughed. ‘They aren’t, it’s just the way they try to get attention. Some days it’s worse than others, they set each other off, you see, but you’ll get used to it. In a week or so you won’t even hear them.’
Simmonds brought the dinner up on a trolley at twelve-thirty. It was a stew followed by jam roly-poly and custard. Once it was on the table Maureen said that she and Mary were going down to the staff room to have their own dinner, leaving Rosie to oversee the meal with Simmonds’s assistance.
Rosie was aghast. She didn’t feel capable of coping with the patients without experienced help and Simmonds made her even more nervous than some of the patients. The woman was very tall and broad, with a face like undercooked beef, wide shoulders like a man’s and an antagonistic look in her eyes. Over the bed-making Rosie had felt cowed by her cold silence punctuated only by loud sniffs, and as Mary had informed her the woman was another ex-patient, Rosie had a feeling she was someone that you didn’t turn your back on.
Maureen must have guessed what was on her mind, because before leaving she patted Rosie’s arm and grinned. ‘Simmonds is quite safe,’ she said. ‘Just silent, but very capable. Let her do things her way and just follow. After they’ve finished their dinner, she’ll take them in twos out to the lavs and to wash their hands. You just stack up the plates on the trolley and when I get back you can take it down with you and go for your dinner. There’s a lift just by the staircase. Now don’t panic, especially if you find yourself on your own for a few moments. Just be firm with them all.’
Dinner was an even more nauseating sight than breakfast had been, and several times Rosie actually gagged. The patients crammed the food in, chewed it with mouths wide open and often took it out again for examination. Patty, the old lady with the scarred face, half chewed several pieces of meat then spat them back on to her plate. To Rosie’s horror Jacob snatched them up and ate them. Only Donald was bearable to watch. As at breakfast, he ate with as much dignity as any man could manage when being forced to use only a spoon. Rosie wondered how much longer his good manners could last surrounded by such animalistic behaviour.
Yet as appalled as she was by these people, however much she wished she was a hundred miles from here, she could feel a prickling of sympathy for them too. She had thought she knew how it felt to be an outcast from society, yet these poor wretches were so much worse off than she had ever been. She might be as unwanted and as unloved as them, but she had a keen mind, she was young and healthy. She could find a happier way of life one day soon. They never could.
Pat Clack was just giving Rosie her dinner down in the staff dining-room when Linda Bell, the London girl she’d met that morning, joined her.
‘ ’Ow’s it going?’ she asked as she sat down at the table beside her. They were the only staff in the dining room. ‘I’ad ‘oped I could keep you under me wing today and show you the ropes. But bloody Matron sent me up to the second floor.’
‘It wasn’t quite as bad as I expected,’ Rosie lied. She didn’t want the other girl to think she was a misery, or feeble, especially if she was kind enough to want to look after her. ‘But I think the time will drag this afternoon with no more cleaning to be done.’
‘Get yourself a book,’ Linda suggested. ‘That’s what I do. Mary knits. As long as you’re there, it don’t really matter what you do. I read a couple a week, more when I’m upstairs.’
‘But Maureen doesn’t read,’ Rosie said. She didn’t think anyone should bury their nose in a book when they were supposed to be watching people, however boring that was.
‘Well she can’t, can she? She’s a bit simple ‘erself.’
Rosie was stunned by this. She hadn’t thought of Maureen as simple.
Linda laughed at her shocked expression. ‘She’s weird an’ all. She don’t wash, she eats like a pig and sucks up to Matron. I’m just glad I ain’t got to share a room with ‘er. You wait for a day or two. She ‘ad a bath yesterday, but that was only because we made ‘er. She stinks.’
Rosie blanched. She recalled wondering where Maureen had washed that morning; obviously she hadn’t bothered. Heather had instilled a need for cleanliness into her. She’d made Rosie wash every morning and night, right up until the time she disappeared, and Rosie had never lost the habit.
‘Perhaps no one ever told her about those things,’ Rosie said gently. ‘Her mother died when she was little.’
‘I was dragged up in a tenement with four of us sharing a bed,’ Linda retorted. ‘We were so used to dirt we didn’t notice it. But I managed to work out for myself when I got to about thirteen that soap and water made you a little more attractive.’
‘If she gets smelly I’ll say something,’ Rosie said evenly. She didn’t feel right dishing the dirt about Maureen behind her back. ‘I thinks she’s kind anyway. She was nice to me when I arrived and she’s sweet to the patients.’
‘Just watch your step with her,’ Linda said darkly. ‘Don’t tell her anything, and hide your money away somewhere safe.’
Rosie bristled. She knew from school how bitchy some girls could be, she’d been on the receiving end of it many times. In fact Linda looked none too clean either; her hair needed a wash and it looked as if she picked her spots all the time. Suggesting Maureen was a thief and a tell-tale sounded like pure spite. ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say,’ she said tartly.
‘You’ll find out soon enough that she ain’t very nice,’ Linda smirked. ‘Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. Now to get on to something more bleedin’ cheerful, what’s up with that uniform of yours? It’s big enough for an elephant!’
Rosie had to smile. She had already been teased by Mary. She told Linda what Matron had said about altering it and her fear that she might not be able to do it.
‘I’ll take it in for you if you want,’ Linda offered unexpectedly. ‘I did a spell as a machinist before I came ‘ere. There’s a sewing machine in the staff sitting-room. I’ll do it tonight. And don’t think I’m an evil cow saying that about Maureen. You might thank me one day for warning you.’