An Indecent Obsession

‘It’s just the uniform,’ said Nurse Langtry. ‘You’re used to seeing me without an apron and with a veil.’

‘Well, whatever you wear, you still look like a new pin.’

‘Did you get your deputy matronship at North Shore?’

Sister Dawkin looked suddenly very sad. ‘No. I couldn’t stay in Sydney after all, worse luck. I’m back at Royal Newcastle because it’s close enough to home to live at home. How’s mental nursing?’

‘I love it,’ said Nurse Langtry, her face glowing. ‘It’s not like general nursing in the least, of course, though we do have our medical crises. I’ve never seen so many status epilepticus cases in all my life! We don’t save them all, poor things. But as a mental nurse I feel more important, somehow, more wanted and needed. As a senior sister I’d lost all touch with real nursing, but here, no matter what, you nurse. The patients are like relatives, almost. You know they’re going to be here as long as you are and longer, unless they die in status or of pneumonia—they’re frailer than people whose brains are intact, I’ve found. And I’ll tell you this much, Sally—if you think general nursing involves a commitment, you ought to try mental nursing.’ She sighed. ‘I wish I’d done a couple of years here before I had charge of X. I made a lot of mistakes on X through sheer ignorance. Still, better late than never, as the bishop said to the dancing girl.’

Sister Dawkin gri

‘I can think of worse fates,’ said Nurse Langtry, smiling in a sudden genuine rush of pleasure. ‘Oh, Sally dear, it’s so nice to see you! I didn’t know who might be waiting for me. This place is so far out in the sticks that I’ve never had a visitor before.’

‘It’s nice to see you, too. You’ve been conspicuous by your absence at reunions and suchlike. Don’t you even try to keep up with the old gang from Base Fifteen?’

‘No. Fu

‘But that’s mental nursing you’re describing.’

Nurse Langtry folded her arms across her stomach and leaned forward. ‘I never thought of it quite like that. But I still hate post-mortems.’

‘You’re going dotty, is your trouble,’ said Sister Dawkin comfortably. ‘I knew you would, living and working in a place like this, pretty gardens and all.’

‘What made you ask about Base Fifteen, Sally?’

‘Oh, nothing, really, except that before I left North Shore to go to Newcastle I had one of your men from X as a patient.’

Nurse Langtry’s skin prickled and shivered and twitched like a horse’s. ‘Which one?’ she asked, dry-mouthed.

‘Matt Sawyer. His blindness was no hysteria.’

‘I knew that. What was it?’

‘Walloping great tumor impinging on the optic tract. An olfactory groove meningioma. Sitting getting bigger all the time. Only it didn’t cause his admission to North Shore. He had a subarachnoid bleed.’

Nurse Langtry sighed. ‘So he’s dead, of course.’

‘Came in comatose and passed away a week later in no pain. Shame about his family. Lovely little girls, nice little wife.’

‘Yes, it is a shame,’ said Nurse Langtry colorlessly.

A small silence fell, not unlike the silence of respect which is accorded to those of sufficiently worldly note who go to meet their Maker. Nurse Langtry occupied it by wondering how his wife had coped with Matt’s blindness when she finally learned of it. What effect had it had on his children? And did his wife understand the magnitude of the stigma they had attached to him, the diagnosis of hysteria? Had his wife perhaps railed at a mind which obstinately refused to permit its eyes to see any more? Or had she been convinced something more malignant than mere mind was causing the blindness? Surely the last, if the photographer had truly captured the eyes of the real Mrs. Sawyer in that picture he used to keep on his locker. Well. Sleep easy, my dearest Matt, she thought tenderly. The long battle’s over.

‘What made you leave North Shore to go to Newcastle, Sally?’ she asked, puzzled as to why when Sister Dawkin had dreamed so of that deputy matronship she had been willing to let it go.

‘It’s my old father, actually,’ said Sister Dawkin miserably. ‘Atherosclerosis, senile dementia, cortical atrophy—same difference. I had to commit him this morning.’

‘Oh, Sally! I am so sorry! Where is he? Here?’

‘Yes, he’s here. I just hated to have to do it, and I did try not to, believe me. I came home to Newcastle hoping I’d be able to manage, but Mum’s well into her seventies, and she can’t cope with Dad piddling his pants and taking it into his head to trot down to the grocer’s without a stitch on. The only way I might have managed was to give up work entirely, but I’m the only one, there isn’t that sort of money, and I’m an old maid into the bargain. No husband to bring home the Dawkin bacon, worse luck.’

‘Don’t worry, he’ll be all right,’ said Nurse Langtry, her voice strong with reassurance. ‘We’re good to our oldies here, and we’ve got lots of them. I’ll look in on him regularly. Is that how you found out I was here?’

‘No. I thought you were at Callan Park, so I tried desperately to get Dad in there rather than here. I even went to see Matron at Callan Park—thank God I’m on the inside of the profession, it makes such a difference!—and I found out from her that you were here. She remembered your interview with her at once. It isn’t often nurses with your kind of background front up to apply to train as mental nurses, I suppose. Well, as you can imagine, it was ma

‘Always, Sally, you know that. I’ve cried on yours.’

Sister Dawkin brightened. ‘Yes, you certainly did, didn’t you? That bloody little bitch Pedder!’

‘I don’t suppose you know what’s happened to her?’

‘No, and what’s more, I don’t care. Oh, by now she’ll be married, I’d bet a year’s pay on it. Pedder wasn’t cut out to work for a living.’

‘Then let’s hope whoever her husband is, he’s comfortably off and sanguine by nature.’

‘Yes,’ said Sister Dawkin, but a little absently. She hesitated, drew a breath as if to embark upon something she found unpalatable, and spoke awkwardly. ‘Actually, Honour, there’s another reason besides Dad why I wanted to see you. When Matron at Callan Park told me where you were, a few pe

Nurse Langtry looked blank but wary. ‘No.’

Sister Dawkin nodded. ‘Well, I knew you weren’t a Hunter Valley girl, and I just had an idea when I found out where you were that you couldn’t be reading anything out of Newcastle. Because if you did, I don’t think you’d still be here.’

Nurse Langtry flushed, but sat looking so proud and unapproachable that Sister Dawkin found it difficult to go on.

‘Your fondness for Michael Wilson was fairly obvious to me in Base Fifteen days, and I must confess I rather expected you and him to make a go of it after the war. But when I read the story in the Newcastle paper I knew you hadn’t made a go of it. Then when I found out you were here at Morisset, it looked to me as if you’d put yourself down somewhere close but not too close, maybe hoping to run into him, or pla