Owls Do Cry (25 page)

But what if she doesn’t know me?

He leaned to Toby.

—I say, Toby.

Toby was sitting in a dream, it was a fit coming, he thought, and here of all places, but how could he stop it. He knew that he shouldn’t have come, and
then the cattle in the paddocks and on the railway stations, drinking their blue-lined cups of tea; their eyes and faces, and their horns growing like ivory trees, what could he do to stop it; and then the eel that was winter swallowing up the leaves and colour, and if you put your hand or heart down the throat of winter to seize what had been taken, you would have your hand and heart torn to pieces. It was a fit coming on, Toby thought, and he hadn’t had a fit for a long time, not for very long, it was a fit coming on and what about Daphne, and then there was his mother too, taking up so much space. And the things to sell, at the rubbish dump, not this rubbish dump or that rubbish dump but which one; yes, surely it was a fit coming on and who could stop it?

—I say, Toby.

But Toby fell forward suddenly upon the floor, his body writhing in the old way, his eyes vanished inwards to nothing and his face like a heavy damson plum, and where was Amy Withers to say,

—Take your teeth out, Toby. Take your teeth out.

And lay him on the sofa and put a coat over him to keep him warm, and have a cup of tea for afterwards, and words that said,

—It will go away, Toby. It won’t be for always, and you will grow out of them and be like other boys.

His father knelt down beside him, saying,

—Toby. Toby.

The bananas had fallen on the floor, with the oranges, and the cake of chocolate lay near the fire that must have been warm and they had not known it, for the chocolate twisted and writhed with a curious liquid life of its own. And the nurse from the door came quickly to Toby and took his teeth out and put them upon the mantelpiece, and taking a wooden stick wrapped in gauze, like a stick of marzipan, she thrust it inside Toby’s mouth, and his mouth chewed violently upon it until the fit was over and he fell into a deep sleep, his face peaceful, still flushed, and his hands clasped around the bag, now empty, that they had carried and quarrelled over because it was something to hold on to.

The nurse was calm.

—We see these every day, she said to Bob. Are you waiting for someone?

—My daughter, Daphne Withers, said Bob.

The nurse looked surprised.

—Oh, she said. Oh, I’ll find out.

She went into the office and Bob could hear her telephoning.

She returned.

—Go through the door. The nurse will let you through.

—But what about Toby?

—I’m afraid he can’t go, it wouldn’t be advisable, it will be too late when he wakes.

—But I can’t leave him here.

Bob Withers was afraid. He had heard of people disappearing inside these hospitals, and then, when they said they were visitors, no one would let them out, and no one believed them. Why, anything could happen in a hospital like this, after all, it was still the dark ages.

The nurse divined his fears. She saw many visitors panic.

—You need not worry, she said. Mr Withers will be here when you return. You have to go through there to visit Daphne because she’s a special.

—A what?

—A special.

To Bob Withers a special was some line of food or clothing put cheap in the shops on a Friday, for the people to buy.

The nurse led him past rows of old women in bed, sleeping, or perhaps dead, with their mouth open and their cheeks hollow, and he thought, So this is where they put the old people.

And they came to a small room with a barred window and two chairs and a small table with a vase of violets
upon it, made of crepe paper, though Bob did not notice at first and stooped to smell them, thinking, They’re in flower early, they must be hothouse.

The nurse watched him.

—They’re artificial, she said. Don’t they look real?

She offered Bob one of the chairs and left the room. Bob sat down. He had nothing to give Daphne. He hadn’t brought the bag of bananas and oranges, and the chocolate had melted. How then, would he begin his conversation? He rehearsed to himself,

—Well Daphne, so they’re going to make you better tomorrow. And then it will be all over.

What would be all over? He didn’t quite know. As far as he was concerned everything was over, so what did it matter, and here he was, how strange, sitting in a loony cell with Lou’s overcoat on that still smelt of bath salts.

He began again

—Hello Daphne. Or should it be Daffy? And why didn’t they hurry? His heart was beating too quickly, he felt, and his hands were shaking, old age coming on, and he felt tired, very tired with nowhere to go because the home was dead now and the frost had got the early plums, and he remembered that he had hidden the girdle that Amy made pikelets on, away in the shed behind the gramophone and the old kitchen table, and could not bear any more to look upon it.

If Sister Dulling had not worn her starched uniform and veil flowing and white, though not bridal, she would have looked like a barmaid. She was broad and coarse with her pale red hair and a welter of uncomfortable fat on her body, so that she tried not to eat between meals, but smoked then, to keep her from feeling hungry; and while the nurses picked at sweets and cakes at morning and afternoon tea, Sister Dulling said,

—No thank you, I prefer not to.

Except for an occasional biscuit when the doctor came in for a cup of tea, and

—Is your tea right? Would you like more sugar? A little weaker, perhaps? she would say to the doctor, who sat on the best chair in the office and drank from the best cup, with red string tied around its handle, so as to distinguish from the patients’ cups.

And while the doctor drank his tea and smiled his glory around the staff room, Sister Dulling would find big words to use, difficult words from the Medical Dictionary or the Shorter Oxford Dictionary that she kept in the desk for reference in writing her daily reports and sounding impressive. Other times she used the words more suited to her as a barmaid in disguise, yet a nurse too, who could talk to and tame the wild people so that they followed and obeyed her and gave her presents – the stalk of a flower, an empty envelope, a shoelace, a picture torn from one of the magazines, of real people living in a real house where the doors and windows open, and you know where the key is, hanging on the nail in the scullery.

The afternoon that Bob and Toby Withers came to visit Daphne, Sister Dulling herself had dressed her patient, giving her a ward skirt and pullover, new stockings, her Christmas pants, kept ready and marked with white tape, and a hat with a wide brim, the only hat she could find in the clothes room, to cover Daphne’s head in case her relatives felt afraid and startled at the baldness.

—A nice hat for you, Daphne. Makes you look like a film star.

Daphne in the dead room looked up at the nice hat, seeing only its brown verandah and straw-lined eaves and feeling the heaviness of snow that had fallen all night for years upon the brown roof. She felt safe under the hat. The rain could not fall and her mother would not have to be standing at the door and crying out,

—Come in you naughty bird, out of the rain.

Daphne smiled then, remembering she was a don’t care sparrow, and threw the hat into the corner.

Sister Dulling clicked her tongue.

—Your father is waiting for you, she said. You wouldn’t disappoint him would you? He has come in the train.

Come in the train? If you come in the train you are always disappointed because it never takes you where you would like it to go, it takes you on and on to the waste world of swamp and mai-mai, with all the people crouched inside to break the back of paradise. Trains take you to the end. My father is disappointed whether he sees me or not, because he is sitting in his hut on the swamp, with a licence to die held in his hand and his gun ready to fire at the first sign of peace. How the snow falls on my head. I think there will be a storm.

—Come Daphne.

Sister Dulling replaced the hat on Daphne’s head and led her to the room where Bob Withers sat, afraid and tired, jigging his knee because it was something to do.

—I’ll be in the next room, if you want me, said Sister, with her greet-the-visitor smile.

Daphne stood in one corner of the room and looked at the man sitting on the chair. His face was pale and grey as if he had walked through dust for many years so that it clung to the folds of his clothing and covered his shoes and settled in his hair to make it grey. He has been standing up in the sky, she thought. And is covered with cloud. He has been sweeping out a crumbling house of stone. He has no wife to sweep for him and wear an apron for the children to cling to and cry in when they are hurt. I wish, she thought, I wish he would find a brush and make his suit look clean. And polish his shoes. He sits there, dirty and grey and licking his lips and does not seem to speak.

Who is he? Is he waiting for me to speak?

Pressing her lips together she sat down on the floor, first removing her hat for the sake of courtesy, as she had been taught when the sun stayed early in the sky; and watched the face of the grey man. When she took off her hat and laid it down like a laced straw well to catch the storm from the cloud, she saw the man’s mouth open and his face wrinkle, as if he would cry, the way her father’s face had changed when he heard that Francie was burned, and came home and saw them all clinging together like the people in the story who stuck under a spell; though not dancing up and down the cobbles of a fairy street; but crying. And the grey man in the chair, at the same time that he changed his face to look like Daphne’s father crying, called out,

—Don’t. Oh my God, no!

and looked at where her hair had been. With his eyes popping wide and his face afraid.

Then he said,

—Daphne. Everything’s going to be all right.

But Daphne knew he was talking to himself, telling himself not to worry, that everything would be all right, though it was strange how he had discovered her name, and knew her to look at, that she ought to have had hair. And she should have hair too. Oh yes Daphne thought, I should have long hair to comb like a mermaid. But I have no hair, the woman from the underworld has taken it, so I shall put my hat on to hide that I am bald, like a front lawn or a park in the city or a picnic ground.

She put her hat on, and the grey man smiled and said kindly,

—Hello Daphne. My word, it’s cold out. We haven’t seen the last of winter.

Daphne smiled at him, he was so strange and grey like chalk.

He smiled back and smoothed his hands together.

—It won’t be long now, he said, before you’re home.

Daphne suddenly spoke, in a loud voice that made the nurse peep in the door,

—What’s at home? Are Mum and Dad and Francie and Toby and Chicks at home?

The nurse withdrew and the grey man smoothed his hands again and licked his lips.

—Yes, he said. They’re all at home.

—Say them, then. Say them.

—You mean their names?

—Say them, and tell me.

The grey man repeated the names over, Mum and Dad and Francie and Toby and Chicks.

Daphne listened and thought, He’s a cheat. He says the names as if he had learned them, like mountains, Rimutaka, Tararua, Ruahine, Kaimanawa; or like the names of towns where woollen mills are built; Bradford, Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield. He is in league with the woollen mills and the small rooms on the side of the mountain.

—I hate you, she said. Go away. The snow is too heavy in falling and it falls criss-cross, like a tapestry, so go away.

She came forward and saw that the grey man was shivering.

—Say the names, she said, as if you don’t know them. Say them new and just born.

He repeated the names slowly in a tired voice —Mum, Dad, Toby, Francie, Chicks.

Then he walked towards the door. She followed him,

—What’s Dad doing? she asked.

He hesitated.

—Your father’s gardening, he said. The frost has got the seed potatoes.

—What’s Francie doing?

—Oh, Francie. Well, Francie’s away just now. At work.

At Mawhinneys.

—What’s she doing?

—Oh. Peeling potatoes, I think.

—And what’s Toby doing?

—Selling his scraps. He’s in his truck.

Bob Withers had grown more composed. He felt in a dream, as if he were playing a fantastic parlour game and must make no mistake.

And what is Chicks doing?

—She’s playing with her dolls, dressing them and wheeling them up and down.

—We never had dolls, said Daphne. We had clothes-pegs, which were better. And what’s Mum doing?

—Your mother, said Bob Withers, is making pikelets.

Then he put his hands over his face and went from the room, and the nurse, curious, watched him go down the corridor and be let through the place where the old women lay. He reached the room where he had left Toby. He expected to find the room gone or changed somehow, as if he had dreamed it, and no people sitting with baskets of food, eating cream cakes and drinking thermos tea; but
everything was the same except that Toby was sitting by the fire, crouched over it. He looked blue and cold like a man leaning towards a glacier. He spoke of Daphne.

—How is she, Dad? You were quick. How does she find the life here? The nurse was telling me they play tennis and have dances.

Bob picked up the empty bag.

—Where’s the fruit?

—I gave it to the nurse. Some of the patients have no visitors.

—We’d better go. We’re late. I heard of someone who was locked up in a place like this, through being late.

—How’s Daphne?

Toby stood up to go, and shivered with the cold of the mountain wind and his father glanced apprehensively at him.

—You’re all right? he said.

—Did Daphne know you and talk to you? The nurse was telling me that some of them don’t even know their own mother and father.

—Oh, Bob answered quickly, Daphne’s not like that. She’s different. She’s not like the rest of these queer people. Different altogether, and talking sensibly.