An Indecent Obsession

‘I’m going to a place called Morisset to train as a mental nurse.’

Faith Langtry gaped. ‘You’re joking!’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘But—but that’s ridiculous! You’re a senior sister! You can go anywhere after the sort of experience you’ve had! Mental nursing? Good God, Honour, you might as well have applied to become a prison wardress! The pay’s better!’

Honour’s mouth set; her mother suddenly saw the best display yet of the power and determination which were so alien to her concepts of her daughter.

‘That’s one of the reasons why I’m doing mental nursing.’ she said. ‘For the last year and a half I’ve nursed men who were emotionally disturbed, and I found I liked that sort of work better than any other branch of nursing. People like me are needed—because people like you become horrified at the thought of it, among other reasons! Mental nurses have so little status it’s almost a stigma to be one, so if people like me don’t get into it, it will never move with the times. When I rang up the Department of Public Health to get some information about training as a mental nurse and said who and what I was, they thought I was some sort of crank! It took two trips in person to convince them that I, a senior nursing sister, was genuinely interested in becoming a mental nurse. Even the Department of Public Health, which administers all mental hospitals, thinks of it as becoming a madmen’s keeper!’

‘That’s exactly what you will be,’ said Faith.

‘When a patient enters a mental hospital he enters a world he will probably never leave,’ Honour tried to explain, her voice full of feeling. ‘The men I nursed weren’t as badly off as that, but there were still enough direct comparisons to make me see that people like me are needed.’

‘Honour, you sound as if you’re doing penance, or preaching conversion to some religion! Surely whatever happened to you during the war can’t have warped your judgment that much!’

‘I suppose I do sound as if I’m all fired up with a sense of mission,’ Honour said thoughtfully, lighting another cigarette. ‘But it isn’t so. Nor am I atoning for anything. But I won’t concede that to want passionately to do my bit to help lessen the plight of mental patients is an indication of mental instability on my part!’

‘All right, darling, all right,’ Faith soothed. ‘I was wrong to suggest anything of the kind. Now don’t get hot under the collar if I ask you whether you’re going to get anything concrete out of it, like another certificate?’

Honour laughed, her indignation dead. ‘I’m very much afraid I don’t get a thing out of it, Mummy. There’s no proper course of instruction, no certificate, no nothing. Even when I’m finished my training I won’t be a sister again. I’ll still be plain Nurse Langtry. However, when I’m put in charge of a ward I understand my title becomes Charge Nurse Langtry—“Charge” for short.’

‘How did you find all this out?’

‘I went to see the Matron of Callan Park. That was where originally I thought I’d go, but after we’d talked for a while she said she strongly advised me to go to Morisset instead. The teaching’s just as adequate, it seems, and the atmosphere’s a lot better.’

Faith got up and began to pace. ‘Morisset. That’s near Newcastle, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, the Sydney side of Newcastle. About sixty miles from Sydney, which means I’ll be able to pop off to Sydney when I need diversion, and I think I’m going to need all the diversion I can get. I’m not looking at this through rose-colored spectacles, you know. It’s going to be very hard, especially being a probationer again. But do you know, Mummy, I’d rather be a probationer and learning something new than stuck at P.A. as a senior sister, bowing and scraping to everyone from Matron to the HMOs to the Super, and having to leap some sort of rules and regulations hurdle every five minutes. I just couldn’t take the formality and the drivel after the sort of life I’ve led in the army.’

Faith reached out for Honour’s packet of cigarettes, took one and lit it.

‘Mummy! You’re smoking!’ said Honour, shocked.

Faith laughed until the tears came. ‘Oh, well, it’s comforting to know you still have some prejudices! I was starting to think I’d produced some sort of latter-day Sylvia Pankhurst. You smoke like a chimney. Why shouldn’t I?’

Honour got up, went to hug her. ‘You’re quite right. But do sit down and be comfortable about it! No matter how enlightened one thinks one is, one’s parents are always godlike. No human failings, no human appetites. I apologize.’

‘Accepted. Charlie smokes, Ian smokes, you smoke. I just decided I was being left out in the cold. I’ve taken to drink as well. I join Charlie in a whisky every night before di

‘Very civilized, too,’ said Honour, smiling.

‘Well, I just hope it all turns out as you hope, darling,’ Faith said, puffing away. ‘Though I confess I do rather wish you had never been posted to a troppo ward.’

Honour thought before she spoke, wanting her words to be telling. ‘Mummy, even to you I find I can’t talk about the things that happened to me while I was nursing troppo men, and I don’t think I ever will be able to talk about them. Not your fault, mine. But some things go too deep. They hurt too much. I’m not bottling them up, exactly. Just that no one could ever understand unless they knew the kind of world ward X was. And to try to explain with all the details I’d need to make you understand—I don’t have that kind of strength. It would kill me. And yet, this much I can tell you. I don’t know why I think so, but I do know that I’m not finished with ward X. There’s more of it to come. And if I’m a mental nurse, I’ll be better equipped to cope with what’s still to come.’

‘What could possibly come?’

‘I don’t know. I have some ideas, perhaps, but I don’t have any facts.’

Faith stubbed out her cigarette, got to her feet, and bent to kiss her daughter tenderly. ‘I’ll say good night, darling. It’s so good to have you home! We worried a lot when we didn’t know where you were exactly, or how close you were to the lines. After that sort of worry, mental nursing’s a sinecure.’

She went from Honour’s bedroom to her own, ruthlessly switched on the bedside lamp and flooded her sleeping husband’s face with light. He grimaced, grunted, and turned away from it. Leaving it on, she climbed into the bed and leaned heavily on Charlie’s shoulder, patting his cheek with one hand and shaking him with the other.

‘Charlie, if you don’t wake up, I’ll murder you!’ she said.

Opening his eyes, he sat up, ru

‘It’s Honour,’ she said, her face crumpling. ‘Oh, Charlie. I didn’t realize it until just now, when I was talking to her in her room!’

‘Realize what?’ His voice sounded wide awake.

But she couldn’t tell him then, for the grief and the fear overcame her; she wept instead, long and bitterly.

‘She’s gone and she can never come back again,’ she said when she was able.

He stiffened. ‘She’s gone? Where?’

‘Not bodily. That’s still in her room. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you. It’s her soul I’m talking about, whatever it is keeps her going. Oh, God. Charlie, we’re such babies compared to her! It’s worse than having a nun for a daughter—at least if your daughter’s a nun you know she’s safe, the world hasn’t touched her. But Honour’s got the footprints of the world all over her. And yet she’s somehow bigger than the world. I don’t know what I’m saying, it isn’t right, you’ll have to talk to her and watch her for yourself to see what I mean. I took up smoking and drinking, but I think Honour took up all the cares of the world, and that’s unbearable. You don’t want your children to have to suffer like that.’