An Indecent Obsession

As her first year at Morisset drew to a close she began to get into stride, and her personality popped to the surface again at full strength. There had been no struggle to subdue it, for it had sunk to the bottom of its own accord, a protective mechanism engineered to cope with probationer status and a job which was not yet at her fingertips.

But truth will out, and the tartar in Honour Langtry was still very much present, considerably refreshed too from its enforced rest. Its reappearance did her no harm, for it had only ever lashed out at stupidity, incompetence or negligence, as it did again now.

She caught a nurse abusing a patient physically, and reported the incident to the charge nurse, who tended to think that Nurse Langtry was being hysterical in her interpretation of what had happened.

‘Su-Su’s an epileptic’ said the charge, ‘and they can’t be trusted.’

‘What rot!’ said Nurse Langtry scornfully.

‘Don’t you try to tell me my job just because you’ve got your general!’ snapped the charge. ‘If you doubt me, read your Red Book, it’s there in black and white. Epileptics are not to be trusted. They’re sly, deceitful and malicious.’

‘The Red Book is wrong,’ said Nurse Langtry. ‘I know Su-Su well, so do you, and she’s completely trustworthy. Which is beside the point anyway. Even the Red Book doesn’t advocate the beating of a patient.’

The charge looked at her as if she had blasphemed, as in truth she had; the Red Book was a red-covered manual of notes for mental nurses, and represented the only written source of authority the nurses possessed. But it was out of date, hopelessly inaccurate and designed for students of degradingly low mentality. No matter what the illness, it seemed chiefly to recommend an enema as treatment. Nurse Langtry had given it one perusal which showed her so many glaring errors she largely abandoned it, preferring to go on her own abilities to learn about mental disorders, and to buy textbooks in psychiatry every time she visited Sydney. She was convinced that the reform in nursing techniques, when it came, would reflect what the latest textbooks of psychiatry were already saying.

The battle over Su-Su went all the way to Matron, but nothing could quieten Nurse Langtry, or make her back down. In the end the guilty nurse was disciplined and transferred to another ward, where she was watched carefully; the charge nurse was not disciplined, but got the message where Nurse Langtry was concerned: have your facts absolutely straight when you dealt with Langtry or you’d live to rue the day you crossed swords with her. She was not only intelligent, she was quite unawed by titular authority, and she had an extremely persuasive tongue.

When she went to Morisset, Honour Langtry was well aware that Michael’s dairy farm was only about eighty miles away to the northwest, though its proximity was not the reason she chose to nurse there. In that she had allowed herself to be guided by the Matron of Callan Park, and knew after a year on the Morisset staff that she had been excellently advised.

During the times when she wasn’t so physically spent that she simply slept and ate when she was off duty, she thought often about Michael. And about Benedict. One day she would venture over to Maitland instead of heading down to Sydney, she knew, but not yet. The wound still hurt, yes, but that was not the reason why she kept postponing the day of her visitation. She had to give Michael time to understand that what he was attempting to do with Ben couldn’t succeed. If her first year at Morisset had taught her anything, it was that people like Benedict must not be thrust into the isolation of a farm, for instance; couldn’t be allowed to limit themselves even further by limiting the company they kept to one other human soul, no matter how gentle and loving a keeper that one human soul was. In a situation like Michael’s farm, Benedict could only grow worse. Which worried her, though she felt there would be no point in her interfering until enough time had elapsed to show Michael he was wrong and she was right.

Within the grounds of Morisset Hospital was a prison hospital for the criminally insane; the sight of it above the trees, tall red-brick blocks barred and walled and under the rigid supervision of a separate staff, always had the power to chill her. In there would Benedict now be living, had events in the bathhouse taken a different turn. And it was not a good place to be. So how could she blame Michael for trying? All she could do was to hold herself ready for the day when he might appeal to her for help, or she gauged she could offer it.

3

When she was notified one evening that someone was waiting to see her in the visitors’ room. Nurse Langtry thought immediately of Michael. If he had had the patience to trace her, he must have need of her indeed—though it could also be Neil waiting, Neil who had the sophistication and the money to know how to go about tracing anyone. It would be like Neil too, the new and tempered Neil from whom she had parted eighteen long months ago, to grow tired of waiting for her to come to him, to decide it was time he insinuated himself into her life again. Also, she was aware that her mother and his could cross paths at any time, though nothing in a recent letter from her mother indicated it.

She walked to the visitors’ room as sedately as she could, enacting the scene to come with every possible variation, and for two different men. For there was no doubt in her mind that she was going to be very glad to see either of them.

But the person in the chair, feet stretched out and shoeless, was Sister Sally Dawkin.

Nurse Langtry stopped as if she had been shot, both hands over her heart. Oh, God, why are women such fools? she wondered, finding a smile and sticking it in place for this first-ever visitor to find her at Morisset. We all live like this, focussed on some man. We can convince ourselves for months on end that it isn’t so, but give us half a chance and there’s the man again, right back in the middle of everything.

Sister Dawkin smiled broadly, but didn’t get up. ‘I was here earlier, but I didn’t like to drag you off your ward, so I had a bit of tea at the fish-and-chippery in Wyong, and came back again. How are you, Honour?’

Nurse Langtry sat down in the chair facing her, still smiling fixedly. ‘I’m very well. How are you?’

‘Oh, a bit like one of those balls tied to a racquet with a long piece of elastic. I don’t know which is going to give out first, me or the elastic.’

‘It won’t ever be you,’ said Nurse Langtry. ‘You are the great imperishable.’

‘You tell that to my feet; I’ve given up trying. They might believe you,’ said Sister Dawkin, scowling down at them ferociously.

‘You and your feet! Some things never change.’

Sister Dawkin was wearing rather drab and badly put together mufti, as was the tendency of so many long-term nurses, used only to appearing awesome in all the starched severity of a uniform and veil.

‘You look so different, Honour,’ said Sister Dawkin, staring. ‘Much younger and happier!’

And indeed she didn’t look any older than the average trainee nurse anywhere, clad in the same sort of uniform she had worn while training at P.A. The variations were minor. At Morisset she wore a dress pinstriped in white and lilac, long-sleeved and high to the neck, with detachable celluloid cuffs and collar. And the apron was the same, a voluminous affair in white, stiff with starch, wrapping completely around the skirt of the dress, up over the chest in a bib, securing across the back with broad straps. Her waist looked neat and very tiny, confined by a wide stiff white belt. Both dress and apron were mid-calf in length. She wore black lace-up shoes with flat heels, and opaque black cotton stockings, just as she had at P.A. The Morisset cap was less attractive than the P.A. one, being a pudding-cloth design, white, secured at the nape of the neck with a drawstring and with a broad stiff band across its front, notched twice in Nurse Langtry’s case to indicate that she was a second-year trainee.