factory walls as they passed, her head lolling against the glass, shaking with the vibrations of the car.
It was a mild spring day, but the women in the streets were still bundled into their heavy coats. They pushed children in trolleys, their heads bowed against the breeze. Sunlight dappled the glass of a bus shelter. The mill gates and little rows of shops gave way to an area of semi-detached houses with white painted fences and pretty flowering shrubs in the gardens. A red housing estate climbed up the side of a hill. Soon they were in the country. Miss Tidmarsh wound her window down, and the smell of fresh grass filled the car. They turned into a gateway, into a gravelled drive shaded by towering hedges. Clouds flew across the windscreen. The car nosed onwards, through the summer ahead; birds wheeled over the fields.
The house itself, a crumbling grey core, looked out over the fields and towards the road. Gravel paths ran away from it, with flower beds on either side. There were parked cars, an ambulance, a scatter of Nissen huts and sheds, and a colony of new buildings, made of metal and varnished wood and plate glass. Beyond these was a belt of dark trees, and more fields. There was a faint ground mist, and moisture in the air.
When the car stopped, Muriel scrambled out. “Hang on a minute,” Miss Tidmarsh called. She took her by the elbow. It reminded her of Mother.
The paths were dotted with little signposts: Hunniford Ward, Greyshott Ward, Occupational Therapy. She did not have time to read them all, but she could read much better than they thought. She craned her neck, straining back over her shoulder. “Come on, my dear,” the woman said. My dear; for the second time. Mother never said it, only “You useless lump.” Useless lump or my dear, the meaning was the same.
Inside the big building the tiles were cold underfoot. Another woman came out, wearing a blue and white check garment. She had an elastic belt and a paper hat. “Oh hello, Miss Tidmarsh,” she said. “And how are we today? Got another customer for us?”
She had a special way of looking at Muriel, as if she looked straight through her and around all the edges to assess her size and shape. She shifted from one foot to the other, a little self-consciously, and twanged at her elastic belt. “We’re supposed to be going into mufti soon,” she said. “What do you think of that?” The woman made some reply. Muriel looked around the entrance hall, up at the ceiling. The nurse asked, “How about a cup of tea?”
“That would be brilliant,” Muriel said.
The nurse gave her a queer look. “Not you, dear. Patients’ tea comes at ten-thirty, you’ve missed it.”
“I’ll have coffee,” Muriel said. “Jam, ham, Spam, roast beef, cornflakes, and Ovaltine.” Miss Tidmarsh laughed.
They followed the notices that said ADMISSIONS. The ward had thirty beds. This is your locker, this is your orange bedspread, this is your bedside mat, this is where you will live. “And then, dear, in a week or two, when Doctor has had a talk to us, we’ll be moving on.”
Muriel sat on her orange bedspread. “My head hurts,” she said. The nurse took away her dress. She took away her knickers. She gave her a thin cotton gown.
“Don’t you wear a bra?” she said. Muriel shook her head. The nurse smiled. “We don’t want to droop, do we?”
“I don’t know what we’re talking about,” Muriel said. “Our head hurts.”
“We mustn’t be cheeky. We’ll learn that soon enough, dear. Haven’t we got slippers?” Muriel shook her head again. “You’ll have to get your visitors to bring you some.”
“Will I get visitors?”
“You’ll get your family, won’t you, dear?”
Muriel thought this over. Baby: drip, drip. Mother. She closed her eyes tiredly. Mother always said she would haunt.
“Pay attention, dear,” the nurse said sharply. Muriel slapped the palm of her hand against her head. “That won’t help,” the nurse said. “I can’t give you any medication. Not till you’ve seen the doctor.”
“When will that be?”
“That will be on the ward round. Tomorrow.”
When Muriel was left alone, she sat on her bed and dangled her feet. She examined them, hanging there on the end of her legs, her fat red toes. She had done a lot of talking since Mother died. Before, days had gone by without speech; weeks, months. Except for rhymes. She’d not give up making those rhymes, she enjoyed them. They were all she remembered from St. David’s School. Sing a song of headache, holler scream and cry, Four and twenty nurses, baked in a pie. She would not cry; she could not be bothered. She scratched her knee instead. A blind was drawn at the window, and the ward was in semi-darkness. She felt the walls close in on her; safe again. Back in the prison of her body, and back in the prison routine with its sights and smells and noises; rumbling tummy, creaking ankles, the steady beating of the heart.
The first person Muriel met was Sholto. He stood in the long corridor blocking her path, a sinister dirty little man with bow legs. “Are you mad, or stupid?” he enquired.
“Both,” Muriel said promptly.
“Join the elite corps.” Sholto sprang forward and pumped her hand.
Country life. The birds woke her up at four o’clock. She struggled out of her dreams and threw back the bedclothes. She put her feet on the cold floor; head down, she blundered to the window. It showed her a pale milky light and her own pale reflection; the features blurred, amorphous, underwater. She rubbed her right hand down her nightdress, thinking of the clinging green weed.
“Come on, dear, back to bed,” said a voice behind her. “What are you doing up at this time? Didn’t you have your pill?”
Muriel nodded. “I swallowed it.”
Early morning waking, said the nurse to herself, a sign of clinical depression. “Back you go,” she said.
“Those damn squeakies in the trees,” Muriel muttered. She glared at the nurse.
