Isobel on the Way to the Corner Shop (7 page)

One of them said ‘Isobel Callaghan’, and she thought with relief that she hadn’t lost her handbag. Didn’t they say that it took a surgical operation to separate a woman from her handbag? Her honour is the second last thing to go. It’s a surrogate womb. Some smart-arse had said that once. Why don’t men carry them, then? That comment hadn’t gone down so well.

She was handled, moved about, rolled over. She didn’t like it.

‘Beastly cold,’ she grumbled. That must have been a stethoscope pressing on her bare chest. ‘Beastly cold.’

They ignored her.

Somebody said, ‘Better take it per rectum, Sister.’

What on earth? How dare you?

‘Just keep still, will you?’

She kept still.

One voice said, ‘I don’t like the sound of it. I don’t like the sound of it at all.’

She was a parcel. She didn’t mind being a parcel. It was easy.

Someone was tapping most annoyingly on the bones of her ribcage, one after the other. It was too much. Then somebody rolled her over and the tapping began again on her back. She uttered a sharp protest, which was answered by an odd sound like the clucking of a subterranean fowl.

‘What’s she mumbling about?’

‘Says she isn’t a bloody xylophone, sir.’

‘Oh. Well, it’s still no laughing matter.’

‘No, sir. Sorry.’

Then she woke up to morning light and found herself in a little tented room with walls of heavy white cloth. There was a nurse standing beside her bed.

‘So you’re with us, are you? About time, too.’

‘How long?’

‘How long have you been here? Just the neat forty hours. You came in on Wednesday night. If you call that coming in—not under your own steam, I assure you. What were you doing, wandering about town in a high fever?’

It was too difficult to explain.

‘I just thought I had a bit of ’flu.’

‘Well, I can’t offer you anything to eat yet. Doctor wants a specimen of your sputum before you take anything by mouth. Want the pan?’

‘Yes, please.’

One had to remember that one was only a parcel. Parcels can have no pride.

‘Right. And I’ll see about the jar for the sputum.’

What was sputum? The nurse departed. Something one spat, of course.

The nurse came back carrying a huge china shoe. She slipped it into the bed and sat Isobel on it and left again. Isobel considered her situation. She was clean and smelt of soap. She was wearing an extraordinary flowing garment of pink cotton which seemed to have no back to it. She investigated and found that it was fastened with tapes at the back from neck to waist. Below the waist it hung free. What an odd arrangement. Very convenient of course for sitting where she was sitting at the moment.

The nurse came back and set down on the cabinet beside the bed a small screw-top jar still warm and shining from the steriliser.

Bright and brisk, she said, ‘Finished?’ She removed the pan, peered at the contents and frowned. ‘Doctor says you’re to cough up from as deep as you can and close the jar straight away. Okay? After that I can get you something to eat.’

If I wasn’t a parcel, thought Isobel, I’d be wondering what this was about. It was all too much trouble.

Coughing proved difficult, extremely painful and quite exhausting. She spat the small trophy into the jar, closed it as hastily as if she were trapping an insect and lay back on her pillow.

‘You finished?’

The nurse must have been waiting outside.

‘Yes.’

The nurse came in, picked up the jar, saying, ‘Doctor’s waiting for this,’ put it in her pocket and departed.

She must have pulled a cord as she left, for the curtain walls rolled away and Isobel appeared as it were on centre stage to the sound of a cheer and gentle hand-clapping.

‘She made it! She made it!’

‘Good on you, kid!’

There were five other beds in the room, all of them occupied by women who were to Isobel voices rather than faces, though each face was turned towards her with a look of beaming goodwill.

‘You were all very quiet,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t know there was anyone there.’

‘We were afraid of disturbing you, love,’ said her neighbour. ‘Sister said this morning you were in a natural sleep and we didn’t want to wake you.’

‘That was very kind of you.’

‘Did you know what was happening? They had a specialist come in from North Shore last night. Doctor told Sister that you were reacting and it looked like you were coming round.’

‘I got bits and pieces,’ she said.

‘Well, you better keep quiet for a while. Don’t tire yourself.’

There was a rumbling noise as a trolley approached, and appeared, pushed by a gangling, fair-haired young man in a white coat.

‘Breakfast!’

He pushed the trolley into the centre of the room and began to distribute bowls of dry cereal.

He approached then with a large jug of milk and poised it above the bowl on the table which spanned Isobel’s bed.

She looked at the bowl and shook her head.

‘The sooner you eat, the sooner you’re on your feet,’ he said.

‘Don’t bully her, Eric. She can’t eat what she doesn’t fancy. What else have you got under those covers?’

‘A nice bit of poached egg on toast.’

‘Try her on that then. What about a bit of poached egg, love?’

Eric took away the bowl of cereal and replaced it with a poached egg on toast.

‘The first mouthful’s the worst. Give it a go.’

Isobel, feeling foolish, like an infant under the eyes of five anxious mothers, tried a mouthful and discovered that she was quite hungry. All the encouragement which accompanied her ingestion of the poached egg was unnecessary. She was relieved when the others withdrew their attention to their own meal.

Eric went away to distribute other breakfasts, came back to collect the used crockery and to pour tea.

‘Milk for you,’ he said to Isobel, handing her a plastic beaker. ‘Seeing you didn’t eat your cereal.’

‘Bit of a boss cocky, aren’t you, Eric?’

‘Got to look after you all, haven’t I? Now get on with it. I’m off.’

Isobel drank her milk and set the plastic beaker on the table.

‘When they brought you in in your clothes, we thought, God forgive us, that you were drunk. In the DTs, like, because of the way you were talking. But Sister said straight, “Don’t imagine that she’s drunk. She’s wandering a bit because she has a high fever.” How come you were in your clothes?’

‘I went out to buy food. I thought I had a touch of ’flu, that’s all. I must have collapsed in the street. They did think I was drunk and somebody sent for a policeman. He sent for the ambulance. I don’t remember much after that.’

‘Don’t worry her, Marj. Let her be.’

Marj nodded amiably.

In the ensuing silence Isobel slept again.

When she woke, the curtain was closed and a nurse stood beside the bed holding her sweater and her pants.

‘Don’t you have any underwear?’

‘I was only going to the corner shop.’

The nurse raised her eyebrows in astonishment and disapproval.

‘You’d better put these on then. You have to go down to X-ray after lunch. Bend forward, will you?’

She untied the tapes which held the indecent smock in place and hung it on the end of the bed.

Isobel pulled on pants and sweater, the nurse opened the curtains and departed.

There were gasps from the sympathetic audience when they saw Isobel dressed in outdoor clothes.

‘They’re not going to turn you out? In a bit of a hurry, aren’t they?’

‘Heartless, I call it.’

‘No. I’m only going down to X-ray after lunch.’

She did not feel inclined to explain that it was for want of a pair of knickers that she was wearing outdoor clothes.

At the mention of X-ray the women had fallen silent. One or two of them exchanged glances, then looked hastily away, as if some secret was making them uneasy.

Eric wheeled in the lunch tray, six plates of salad, five of them on thick white china, the sixth on a paper plate. With a grimace of apology, he set the paper plate on Isobel’s table.

Parcels do not ask questions. Isobel accepted the discrimination in silence under the eyes of the other five, in whose faces sadness had replaced unease.

She did not do well with the salad. Eric did not scold. He offered her a cup of tea, which came in a plastic beaker, and said, ‘I’ll be back for you in half an hour. Going to take a nice ride in a wheelchair.’

‘That’ll be fun.’

‘That’s the spirit, kid. Take it as it comes.’

Marj, blonde, bony and high-coloured—no doubt by her own hand—said, ‘Are you on your own, kid? No Mum or Dad? We wondered when nobody came.’

‘That’s right,’ said Isobel. ‘Orphan child.’

She spoke flippantly, without knowing why. It might be in reaction to the solemnity which she sensed now in the air. She could not understand that either. She was still brooding over the humiliation of being without knickers. The best people wore knickers, even on a trip to a corner shop.

When Eric came back, he was pushing a wheelchair. He scooped Isobel out of bed and sat her in the chair with a smile, as if he were taking a small child on a treat.

Someone said, ‘Best of luck, kid.’

This was getting really spooky.

They rolled along a corridor and into a lift which took them down to a basement. She was expected in the basement. Eric called out, ‘Here she is,’ and a voice answered, ‘Right. Wheel her in, Eric. That’ll do, thanks.’

Eric departed.

The speaker was another white coat, a brisk and stringy woman of commanding manner.

‘Strip to the waist, please.’

Isobel had managed to wriggle into her two garments, lying exhausted on her bed after that effort. The upward heave required to take off the sweater was beyond her.

She shook her head.

‘Sorry.’

The brisk woman hesitated. A radiographer left alone with a patient who could not take off her own clothes was, it seemed, a woman with a status problem.

She solved it with a reversal of attitude and came smiling to help as a gesture of friendship rather than a humiliating chore.

‘You shouldn’t be out of bed, but Doctor Hansen wants this as soon as possible, like yesterday. I’ll get you as close as I can to the machine. Right, now? Rest your chin on this ledge, elbows here, lean forward, breathe in, hold, breathe away. There you are, all done.’

She helped Isobel back to the chair and into her sweater.

‘You should have a blanket. Eric!’ She opened the door and called, ‘Eric! Go find a spare blanket, will you? You know you have to wait?’

There was a price to pay for friendship.

‘Is that right? The police picked you up in the street and got an ambulance to bring you in? How come?’

What sort of plausible fiction could she invent to cover her situation? They didn’t give her time to think up a story. It would need to be some story, at that.

‘I just went out to buy food. Things sort of got out of hand.’

‘Didn’t know how sick you were. Wasn’t anyone looking after you?’

Oh, it’s a long story.

She shook her head, looking sad and sensitive.

The woman said no more.

Eric arrived with a blanket.

The radiographer wrapped it round her as a final gesture of friendship and resumed her official manner.

‘Do you know you have to wait for doctor? They’re developing straight away. Doctor Hansen will be down in a minute. You can wait outside till he arrives, I think.’

‘Would somebody mind telling me what this is all about?’ asked Isobel.

The woman looked at her and seemed about to speak, but changed her mind.

‘Doctor will speak to you soon. I’ll just see how Don’s getting on with the developing.’

She disappeared. Eric wheeled Isobel out and they waited. Eric found nothing to say to lighten the atmosphere.

He said at last, with relief, ‘Here comes the doc,’ as a small, dark, rosy-cheeked young man in a white coat came hurrying down the corridor and into the room. Minutes passed. The young man reappeared. ‘Wheel her in, will you, Eric?’

They followed him into the X-ray room, where the radiographer stood holding at arm’s length a dripping X-ray suspended from a frame.

Doctor Hansen looked at it and nodded. He put his hand on Isobel’s shoulder and said, ‘Do you see that whitish blob on your right lung? Between the third rib and the fifth?’

Isobel looked at the white hand-print which had settled itself in her chest, thinking, ‘So that’s it. So there you are.’ The source of it all, the red lightning of rage, the muttering madness, the scream of paranoia—it was like seeing the master criminal revealed, the evil spider in the centre of his web of mischief. The invader. Not I. The enemy within. Something that looked like a baby’s hand-print.

‘Well, we did think at first that you had pneumonia, but…we sent a specimen of your sputum down to the Tuberculosis Clinic and we can’t say definitely till we get the results from them, but meanwhile…Combined with other indications, we can’t ignore the possibility that you have tuberculosis.’

‘I was beginning to get the message.’

‘You mustn’t panic. Even if it does turn out to be tuberculosis, remember that it is curable. It’s not a death sentence any more, you know. Meanwhile, we have to take precautions for the sake of other patients, so we’ll have to isolate you while we’re waiting.’

‘May I ask you for your own opinion?’

‘I don’t think there’s much doubt about the diagnosis.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re taking it very calmly.’

However, she was not taking it at all. She was suspended somewhere above reality.

‘What to do with you now is the problem. We don’t have a tuberculosis ward here. A pity,’ he said to the radiographer, ‘that she wasn’t taken to North Shore in the first place.’

‘The Registrar rang them and they said they didn’t have a bed vacant.’

‘If the ambulance had taken her there, they’d have had to find room.’

One was not only a parcel. One was a toxic, undesirable parcel.

‘Room 207 is vacant, isn’t it? Better take her up there, Eric. I’ll fix it with Matron. She can’t go back to the ward, of course.’ Feeling a belated need to recognise Isobel’s humanity, he said, ‘Do you want us to notify anyone? Doctor Manning will ring your parents for you.’