The Drying Rooms - Chapter Five

Cross your heart and hope to die

Bahrain - the chauffeur driven car and our family Morris Traveller

Were her breasts or non-breasts really inspected by Cruel Matron? Were they touched by her? Attached to the word developing, yes.  They were checked to see if they were developing. She hears the word ‘developing’ coming out of Cruel Matron’ mouth. It’s there … a gossamer memory that floats in and clings.

It spawns another memory that spans time and attaches itself to her first bra, which she loved. A floppy little cotton thing – mauve and white checked. She loved looking at herself in the mirror in that bra.

But what she really wanted was a Playtex cross-your-heart bra. Can you see me, little one?  Sitting on my corner bed in the dorm with my friends, giggling? We are looking at an ad in a magazine. It’s for a Playtex cross-your-heart bra. And we are giggling because giggling was what we did. A lot. Helplessly. The longed-for Playtex cross-your-heart bra was so clearly not for our little misshapen blobs; they were for real women with perfect, pointy breasts — like Doris Day.

And coming up next in this memory chain is us on the bed again, hunching over pamphlets with diagrams of how to clip pristine white STs on to sanitary belts. More glorious giggling paroxysms. Hammocks for mice. That’s what we called them. There was curiosity, but there was also fear of this thing, this grown-up female blood that our mothers called The Curse. How would it happen; when would it happen? For her it happened a couple of years later, in a motel toilet in Virginia when she was thirteen and she and her parents were touring the American Civil War battlefields. She remembers it because it was her dad — dispatched by her mum — who found a store and bought her a packet of hammocks for mice.

Yes, I know, sorry, we’re not in Virginia; we’re still in the surgery, in the Haliborange queue. Do you like the taste? I could pop a whole jar of them, one after the other. I never had the patience to suck them; I preferred the pop, savour, crunch, swallow technique.

In the surgery, she was given not just the occasional treat of a Haliborange tablet, but at one point, for a while (what point? what while?) she was given Librium. Librium! Really? Yes. She went to a psychiatrist. Who made that decision? Her parents? Or Cruel Matron? And why?  

You must live life. You mustn’t let it live you. Did the bespectacled old man really say that to her? And what the fuck did he mean?

Why was she sent to a psychiatrist aged – what? Nine? Ten?  Eleven? She was always told what a mature, stable little girl she was. Robust. Fearless.  When actually she was full of fear.

Or is it just the old woman who is full of fear?

It was something to do with those stomach migraines. That’s what the adults called them. She had them at school, but she also had one in the holidays – in Bahrain on a balmy night, at the Ruler of Bahrain’s dinner in his palace. She was the only child, included by her parents as a treat. It’s something about which she has always felt ashamed because she took the attention at an event where it absolutely wasn’t her place to take any attention. Walking out alone, backwards — as instructed (by whom? Her mother?) — out of the grown-up chatter of the huge gilt dining room, away from the smell of cardamom, incense and vast piles of steaming rice and the flesh of whole-cooked baby camels, into the peace of the warm night where the cars and chauffeurs were waiting. The relief of the pain easing as she lay flat on the back seat, with their chauffeur remaining in the front, kind but powerless.

The other time she spoiled a precious moment was when she fainted while having lunch with her mother in London …

Mum.  Just the two of us in mum and dad’s smart, hushed club with white linen napkins overlooking Green Park in London. I was eating a roll (the treat of a small warm white roll served with tongs), chatting grown-uply to mum, when echoey swirls sucked me spinning into a black hole.  I came round on the carpet to mum’s loving, worried face.  Why was I having this special lunch with mum?

Was it a treat for a little seven-year-old girl before starting boarding school? Or was it when they were home ‘on leave’? After she had already become accomplished at burying the shards of homesickness in the interstices around her guts.  

Haliborange. Librium. Lining up. The large porcelain (or was it stone?) sink in the corner. The mangle.

Was there really a mangle in that the surgery? Yes! She operated it – and it was kind of fun.

But now, in the excavating of memory, she has a terrible thought. She put sheets through that mangle!

Why?

She’s never asked herself that question. There have always been two unconnected memories. 1. The Mangle. 2. The punishment for wetting the bed.

She has recreated that punishment in Maudie. 

They were queuing up for Haliborange tablets when Maudie felt Axe’s hand land on her arm. Axe’s strong grip steered Maudie out of the queue and across the room.

Then Maudie saw it.

Her sheet! The nametape visible. In the large stone sink in the corner of the room.

Keeping her back to Axe and the line of whispering girls, Maudie did all she could to control the sudden trembling of her chin.

Axe was standing right behind her. “How old are you, Maudie?”

Maudie stared at the undissolved flakes of soap powder floating on the surface of the water.

“Face me when I’m talking to you, young lady. I asked you a question. How old are you?”

Maudie turned round. The girls in the line were silent now, but she knew they were all looking at her. She kept her eyes fixed on Axe’s brown lace-up shoes. 

“Eight,” said Maudie.

“Exactly,” scoffed Axe, “Far too old for this disgusting habit. Washing your own sheets will soon cure it.”

Maudie bit the insides of her cheeks and plunged her hands into the scummy, lukewarm water. She knew if she blubbed now, it would only get worse.

Thank you for that warm touch. Your soft little hand keeps me going, you know. But I haven’t quite finished with this bit. It’s the mangle.

She has a question about the mangle. After washing her sheet, did she really feed the folded dripping cotton through the mangle’s two tight rollers? She can certainly still feel the weight of turning the heavy metal handle. Like an old printing press. And she can re-experience a feeling of pleasant satisfaction as the sheet eases out, pressed and slightly damp but drip free. Is it possible that this clash of visceral memories is true? The pride of a job well done topping off the humiliation of washing her urine-soaked sheets?

In Maudie, I originally had the sound of ‘tittering’ not ‘whispering’ coming from the line of watching girls. But then I changed my mind. Yes, there was bullying in G-Block, but there was also friendship and kindness. And against Cruel Matron, there was camaraderie. Besides, maybe this punishment for bed-wetting was so commonplace that it wasn’t a thing – maybe the others just carried on lining up for whatever they were lining up for and paid me no heed. 

As for the Librium! What was I being cured of?

She feels sorrier for herself now than she did at the time. At the time it was just what reality was. Nobody had told her there was another version.

But even so, rescue would have been nice.

Yes, little one, I know. That’s what we’re working towards in Maudie. Rescue! I can’t wait! No? Not rescue. What then?

Of course! Escape! You’re right! Meticulously planned, courageous escape. And you have a plan …  The girls steal the keys to the teacher’s car. The one they sit in doing the tally chart of passing cars. Yes! Great idea! Or how about stealing the maths teacher’s bicycle and pedalling like crazy to Miseryfield to catch the train to London? That’s a bit more realistic, isn’t it?  No? OK. Then, the car it is. That’s much more exciting. It’s obvious to you, isn’t it?  In Maudie, Maudie speaks truth to power. She and her friends bring Cruel Matron to justice. Their parents see the light. And it’s delicious!

---