Rosie (30 page)

‘The chairs are supposed to be moved when the floor is washed over,’ she said tartly. ‘Jackson! The hem of your uniform is coming down. Fix it before I catch sight of it again.’

‘Witch,’ Maureen muttered once the woman had left, Simmonds close behind her with the breakfast trolley. ‘Have you noticed she never even speaks to the patients, you’d think they were just bits of furniture. What did she want you for?’

Linda often joked that Maureen would be a natural successor to Matron if she learned to read. She certainly made it her business, like Matron, to know everything that went on in Carrington Hall. Yet Rosie thought Linda was too harsh; in her view Maureen was to be pitied because she was in fact more like one of the inmates than a member of staff. Because of this Rosie never told her to mind her own business when she asked questions, as the others did. So she related the entire conversation between her and Matron.

‘Why did she pick on me do you think?’ she asked.

Maureen shrugged. ‘Search me! But don’t complain, Mr and Mrs Cook are nice and you’ll have a far better afternoon than I will up here. Some people get all the luck.’

Donald got very excited when Rosie told him the news. He jumped around the day room like a kangaroo and finally flopped down on his back, drumming his heels noisily on the floor.

Rosie suddenly felt a little better as she watched Donald with affectionate amusement. She felt he had the personality and behaviour of a large puppy. Many of the patients like Aggie and Archie still repelled her, some were exasperating, but Donald was just lovable. If he wasn’t nearly six feet tall, and didn’t have to shave every day, anyone could just think of him as a child. He had been assessed as having a mental age of eight, but Rosie had discovered he could read a little and she was privately convinced that if books, jigsaw puzzles and board games were provided in the day room, then he could learn a great deal more than he already knew.

‘Get up, Donald,’ she said, resisting the temptation to tickle him and make him laugh more. ‘You can come and help me with the cleaning and making the beds. If you carry on like that all morning, everyone will get cross with you. Me included.’

One of the saddest things of all in Carrington Hall, as far as Rosie was concerned, was that all the patients were lumped together and treated as being on the same level as the most severely retarded ones. Even though she’d only been here for such a short time, with no previous experience of people with mental handicaps, she felt there should be times in the day when the more able ones should be separated and given things to do. She had suggested this to Mary once, but she just laughed at her, and said Matron wouldn’t like it because they’d need more staff.

Rosie wasn’t brave enough to do anything Matron didn’t like; she sensed that would be asking for trouble. Besides, no one else on the staff shared her views; they all liked to just sit, chat, read, or knit while the patients shuffled about aimlessly. Even Maureen, who did talk to them, was as bone idle as the rest. That was why Rosie ended up doing almost all of the daily cleaning.

But Rosie had worked on Donald quite a bit, particularly during the last week when she’d wanted something to take her mind off her father. She had brought in a gardening book to read and showed Donald the pictures of the flowers, getting him to learn many of the names. Another time she had let him do a dot-to-dot puzzle in a magazine and had been surprised to find that he recognized most numbers. In the main, however, her progress with Donald had been in talking to him as they made the beds and cleaned. Sometimes he dropped the stuttering for long periods and he loved playing a game with her where she made up a few lines of a story, then made him finish it. Sadly his imagination didn’t stretch beyond Carrington Hall. She might start a story with two little girls going on a train to London, eating their sandwiches and having a drink of lemonade, but invariably when he continued it would always be with something like, ‘Then Matron told them to put on their shoes and coats because it was time to go down to the garden.’

Perhaps it was purely because she knew her father would never see the outside world again that her thoughts had turned to wanting freedom for Donald. He had done nothing wrong, yet he was imprisoned too and it wasn’t fair. She wished that she could take him out to the shops, or just for a walk in the countryside, to buy him a comic, take him on a bus, or let him see a field of cows. She wondered if she might get a chance to broach this subject with the Cooks.

As they washed over the dormitory floor that morning, Rosie sang to Donald. She began with ‘Molly Malone’, then as that pleased him she sang ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’.

‘I kn-kn-know that one,’ he said, interrupting her. To her surprise he began to sing along with her, no stutter, no hesitation, and he knew most of the words.

‘Who taught you that song?’ she asked, after they’d been through it several times.

‘Mother,’ he said and his face glowed with pleasure. ‘Sh-sh-she used to s-s-sing it when I went to b-b-bed.’

Rosie prompted him to tell her more. He remembered feeding ducks, going on a swing and rolling out pastry.

Some of the other patients occasionally recalled things from their childhood. Tabby remembered the seaside, Archie talked about trains, but their reminiscing was very disjointed and it was impossible to guess how old they were at the time, or even who they’d been with. With Donald the memories were very lucid. She felt the song had been the key which unlocked them and Rosie wondered briefly just how much more she could achieve with him if she had a free hand.

At two-thirty Mrs Trow came to say that Mr and Mrs Cook were waiting downstairs. Donald had been bathed, his hair washed and his fingernails cleaned before dinner. Now in his own pale blue sweater, grey flannel slacks and a white open-necked shirt he looked very smart, quite different from how he looked every other day. He held Rosie’s hand very tightly as they went downstairs, and she was almost as nervous as he was.

The visitors’ sitting-room overlooked the front garden. Because of so many trees growing close to the window, it was a rather dark room, but as it was raining hard outside and someone had lit a cheerful fire, it looked very cosy and, compared to the austerity of the rest of the building, extremely comfortable.

Mr and Mrs Cook were both older than Rosie had expected; she thought they were in their early sixties. Mr Cook was a big man, with a ruddy complexion and a large stomach. Although his hair was thin and grey he had very dark bushy eyebrows which gave an impression of sternness. His wife was a small, dainty woman dressed in a dark blue fitted coat and a matching cloche hat. Her hair was more white than grey, indicating she had been a blonde like her son, and her skin was very soft-looking, not lined exactly but more like a peach once it is past its best.

Donald ran straight to his mother, enveloping her in one of his bear hugs and sniffing rapturously at her perfume. Rosie stood back, feeling self-conscious and superfluous. She knew why a member of staff had to stay in the room, but she couldn’t see Donald escaping or throwing some sort of tantrum, not when he was so thrilled to see his parents.

Mrs Cook had tears in her eyes when Donald finally let her go. Rosie glanced at Mr Cook as Donald went to embrace him; his eyes were swimming too, although he tried to hide this from both Rosie and his wife.

‘This is Smith,’ Donald said suddenly, taking Rosie by surprise as he bounded back across the room towards her and caught hold of her hand. ‘She’s my f-f-friend.’

‘Then Miss Smith had better come over and sit with us.’ Mr Cook smiled at her, and it warmed Rosie.

For the first part of his parents’ visit, Donald chattered non-stop, about what he’d had for meals, the other patients, even about the rain and how it stopped them all going into the garden. His parents seemed quite happy just to listen, though Rosie felt it was sad he wasn’t asking them questions about home. Then quite suddenly Donald jumped up from the settee where he’d been sitting with his mother and, holding her hand, dragged her over to the window.

‘Those are M-M-Michaelmas daisies,’ he said, pointing out a clump of the purple flowers just outside the window. ‘Smith s-s-said they are p-p-perennials, that means they come up every year.’

This display of a remembered lesson astonished Rosie, but Donald went on, pointing out other flowers. There weren’t many, as the front garden wasn’t kept well like the back, but he got all the names right.

Mrs Cook looked at Rosie quizzically.

‘I like gardening,’ Rosie said by way of an explanation. ‘I’ve been telling Donald a bit about it when we’re out in the back garden.’

‘And you show me the book,’ Donald reminded her excitedly. ‘Smith is nice, Mummy, she gets me to show her the words I can read in magazines and she tells me stories and sings songs.’

The most extraordinary thing was that Donald didn’t stutter once in that last statement. His father sat up straight in his chair, seemingly more aware of that than the content of what Donald had said.

As the visit went on, Donald talked more and more about ‘Smith’, to the extent that Rosie began to squirm. Pat Clack brought in tea. Mr and Mrs Cook told Donald about his older brother, Michael, who had a new baby called Robin, and they got out some photographs to show him. Rosie felt easier then as Donald was at last weaned off her as a subject.

Rosie hadn’t lost her curiosity since coming to Carrington Hall, and as Donald chattered to his parents she was glad of the opportunity to study them. She had never met anyone rich before and she had expected wealth to show on people like a badge. But it didn’t show on the Cooks, at least not in the flamboyant way she had imagined. They had good clothes – Mrs Cook’s blue coat looked as if it had been made to measure and the cluster of blue stones on her brooch weren’t just glass. Her shoes were dainty crocodile ones which matched her handbag, and there was the big, gleaming black car outside in the drive. But they didn’t put on any airs and graces.

Donald had the same sad blue eyes, wide mouth and fair hair as his mother, but he’d inherited his father’s height and his slightly jutting jaw. But what pleased Rosie most about these people was their real pleasure in being with their son. She didn’t once see them sneaking a look at a watch, or hear a yawn; they laughed with him, encouraged him to talk. This was no duty visit from rich people who’d abandoned their child because he was an embarrassment to them. They really did love him and they were reluctant to leave him.

She wondered if they knew Donald hadn’t worn the clothes he had on today since their last visit, or that the rest of the time he wore whatever happened to fit him from the store room. She wondered too if they had any idea how bleak the day room was, or how many scratches and bruises he’d had from other less placid patients. Would Mrs Cook be shocked if she saw he had to eat his food with a spoon, or spend the night smelling other patients’ urine or worse until the morning? She was pretty certain they knew none of this.

At four Rosie tactfully reminded the couple that Donald had to go back to the ward. Donald got up, hugged both his parents and made for the door quite cheerfully, without any protest. But as Rosie went to follow him Mrs Cook caught hold of the sleeve of her cardigan.

‘Miss Smith,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Could you come back down after you’ve taken Donald upstairs? We’d like to speak to you in private.’

Rosie felt very uneasy as she returned five minutes later. Matron didn’t approve of staff becoming involved with patients, her excuse being that the patients suffered when the member of staff left. Rosie thought this might be why Matron had asked her to meet the Cooks today, guessing that Donald would make too much of her and upset them. Matron always took Saturday afternoons off, so she was probably sitting somewhere gloating over the thought of her most junior chargehand getting a dressing down.

But as Rosie came back into the sitting-room, both Mr and Mrs Cook beamed at her.

‘We’ve never seen our son in such good spirits,’ Donald’s mother said, patting the settee for Rosie to sit beside her. ‘I just felt compelled to say thank you for taking care of him.’

‘You taught him flower names and he remembered them,’ Mr Cook said. ‘In fact today he seemed almost, well, normal.’

‘He is normal,’ Rosie said with some indignation. ‘He’s just a bit simple, that’s all.’

Almost the second the words left her mouth she regretted them. She had no business to be airing her views on a patient. That was the doctor’s or Matron’s job. She waited to be slapped down, not daring to look at either parent.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, still hanging her head. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that I like Donald.’

‘You should say what you think,’ Mrs Cook said, and her voice seemed to have a smile in it rather than anger.

Rosie glanced up and saw the woman was indeed smiling, and those eyes which had looked sad before were now sparkling with amusement. ‘You’ve just said words that every mother in my position wants to hear,’ she said. ‘But I’m very curious as to why you think you shouldn’t have said it.’

‘Because I’ve only been here a few weeks. Because I’m too young and inexperienced to have an opinion about Donald.’

‘It couldn’t be that you are afraid of displeasing Matron?’ Mr Cook asked pointedly, raising one thick eyebrow. ‘Anything you might like to say to us, Miss Smith, we will treat as confidential. We asked you to come back down because we sensed you really were our son’s friend. So we want your opinion, regardless of whether you feel too young or too inexperienced for it to be of any value.’

Rosie looked at Mrs Cook, then back to her husband. They both had identical open expressions on their faces, and she knew they really did want the truth.

‘I don’t think he needs to be here,’ she blurted out. ‘In fact, if you don’t mind me saying so, I think it’s going to make him worse if he stays here much longer.’

Suddenly she didn’t care if she got the sack, there was a fiery ball of anger inside her which she had to let go. The world was full of injustice and prejudice and maybe giving her opinion on Donald wouldn’t change that, but if she did speak out, his life might improve.