The Drying Rooms - Chapter Four

'I'm a believer!'

The raised bank rising above the lawn

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Catch your breath. Here we are. We’re at the gagging place. The large dining room with the lead-paned windows overlooking the raised bank rising above the lawn, where the hedge hides the view of the rubber-sheet washing line. Stand in the doorway. Have a look. Can you see the ghost rows of fresh faces, like yours? For what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful. Can you hear the cutlery? The bursts of chatter? The sudden fearful silences? Can you smell the soggy dark green of the cabbage?  Can you taste the watery scrambled egg, the crumbly grey-yellow of it? We’re not going in; we have another dining room to get to. But take a peek. Look. Those mud-brown lumps on the white plates are overcooked ox liver. Can your tongue feel the gristly ligaments, the tiny shiny lumps in the mashed potato?

Now, let’s go back out into the hall, past the little annexe on the left where I wet my pants in front of the music master and into the corridor straight ahead. There is another, smaller, dining room, on the left. I want to take you there. I don’t think there are any doors off to the right, but, hang on, are we actually in another building now? Where are we?

At least I don’t think there are any doors, but where does that put the Censored Letter Writing classroom? The Censored Letter Writing classroom has to be the other side of the corridor — otherwise where would it be? —  and congruent with this realisation is a door appearing on the right, also leading into that letter writing classroom?  Is that correct? Could there have been two doors into that classroom? Oh, for fuck’s sake! What a muddle! Sorry, little friend, I know it’s getting boring now, because frankly who cares.

But I must show you this other dining room. Why don’t I conflate the two dining rooms? It would have been easier, but I can’t, I just can’t. It’s not how the memory is working, and why does it matter?

BECAUSE THE DEVIL IN THE DETAIL OF THIS FUCKING THING IS WHERE THE TRUTH OF THE FEELING LIES!! Sorry, I’m shouting. I’m sorry, dear one, I’m sorry.  Come on, let’s go in, shall we?

This was an overflow dining room I think; I certainly sat there alone chewing and gagging over cold plates of food during lunchtime play – who supervised this? I see Cruel Matron standing in the doorway waiting until I had finished.

In Maudie, Axe the matron stands in the doorway while Maudie sits miserably chewing the last piece of meat on her plate.

The lump of meat was cold and sinewy like a limp bunch of tangled string. Maudie couldn’t bring herself to swallow it in one go. It felt like her whole mouth was clogged with it. Even the few threads that she had managed to get down her throat had made her silently gag. She leaned forward and casually put her hand over her mouth.

“Elbows off the table!” Axe had spotted her.

But just at that moment, the new dinner lady arrived to clear the plates and in the second that Axe looked away, Maudie quickly spat the gristly lump into her hand and tucked it under the waistband of her skirt.

But this was not just the overflow dining room, it was also the Birthday Room.

This memory is definitely connected to Cruel Matron – Cruel Matron dispensing her power to be kind. I must grab it before it slips.

It wasn’t like having a birthday at home but it was definitely a treat and we were allowed to invite seven chosen friends. The choosing was fraught, but it’s a nice memory.

Or it was.

Now it seems unutterably sad. Looking down on to a table of excited little girls (for I think I only invited girls) thrilled by the rare fizz of red Tizer and the rough tang of twiglets on their tongues. Eight candles on a birthday cake; plates of sandwiches — white bread triangles with the crusts cut off: spam, Marmite, jam and sandwich spread. The birthday girl and her seven allowed friends singing their hearts out — along with Cruel Matron joining in gustily.

For sheeza jolly good FELLOW

for sheeza jolly good FELLOW

for sheeza jolly good FE-ER-LOW!

andsosay

all of us

andsosay all of us

andsosay all of us

For she’s a jolly goo 

Did Cruel Matron really join in? 

There were times – there really were – when Cruel Matron’s small cold blue eyes twinkled. They twinkled at the hay parties. The hay parties are a recurring memory. Cruel Matron was genuinely good fun at the hay parties. Wasn’t she?

She can see Cruel Matron in the hay with her and the other girls from her dorm, jumping and tumbling in the sunshine.  

Cruel Matron with her robust walk and no-nonsense shoes. Her all-weather sturdy, bare legs.  Her short, grey curly hair. Her scornful words. Her terrifying power — witnessed only by the powerless. Cruel Matron. Such a known figure to her.

Cruel Matron who had control over her small naked body, who inspected her teeth close up, who smelt her piss-sodden sheets — a feared yet strangely intimate presence, still in the depths of her. She hates this. Cruel Matron doesn’t deserve such a spot in the line-up of her life.

Maybe it was just one hay party. Was it? Whatever they were, the hay parties shine like a jewel in the shit.

Yes, I know, I’m ready.

To get to G-Block, we have to go down the corridor, past the Wall’s ice-cream chest, past the common room. At the end, facing us, are a pair of doors with pale green wire-meshed glass in the upper panels so you can’t see through clearly — just moving shapes.

Hold my hand tight.

Please!

Thank you.

OK, here goes …

I’m opening

No!

I’m flinging

I’m flinging open those swinging glass-panelled wire-mesh doors

And

We are in.

                     I’m sorry, am I hurting your hand?

It smells different.

It’s that residual cleaning smell that comes off stone floors when they have just been washed down with old fashioned disinfectant – whatever people washed floors with then; but the thing is we aren’t on a stone floor. We are on a polished wood floor in the corridor (one of the ‘sitting out’ corridors) outside Cruel Matron’s sitting room. Cruel Matron’s sitting room is the first room on the left after the glass-meshed doors swing shut behind us. It’s the room nearest the top of the stone stairs that wind down to the washrooms.

Look! Her door is slightly ajar. She’s listening. Listening for a creak. She’s watching. There’s a mirror outside her door. She’s a predator waiting for prey … waiting to pounce on a little girl in pyjamas creeping past, desperate to pee in the night.

Unlike the draughty wooden floorboards of the corridor and the dorms, Cruel Matron’s sitting room is muffled, carpeted, beige and neat. In the corner is the telly.

On Thursday nights we were allowed to watch Top of The Pops in that sitting room. This is a cosy memory with safety in numbers — sitting cross legged in our dressing gowns on the carpet, stroking Cruel Matron’s two yellow Labradors.

I preferred smiling Alan Freeman to creepy Jimmy Savile with his big grin and fat cigar, each arm around a giggling girl with eyelashes and a mini skirt. His weird page boy hair cut was a pale white against the bopping grey background. And the music? I loved the music! Walking back to hap-p-i-ne-e-ss, woopah! oh yeah yeah … Said goodbye to lone-li ne -e-ess, woopah! oh yeah yeah. We danced to that music. Not in Cruel Matron’s sitting room. In a school hall somewhere in the grounds. I see strewn Autumn leaves by an open doorway. I can hear the beat, the blasting electric thrill of guitars.

Then I saw her face! … Now I’m a believer! … I’m in love! I’m a believer!

In the flyleaf of her still extant hymn book, in her blue-ink child’s handwriting are the words: I love the Monkees! I love Mike Nesmith!

Oh, how she loved to dance! It transported her to a carefree place of wild abandon that she continued to experience throughout her life .

Again (and again) — in a slightly pissed state of grace.

Off Cruel Matron’s sitting room, there’s a windowless room, more of a space than a room, with the tuck cupboard, kept padlocked; this was a punishment place. Another ‘sitting out’ spot. For hours in the night. Just a thin line of light glowing in the space under the door.

There is another room too. Cruel Matron’s bedroom. We never went in there. At least I didn’t. And then there was The Surgery. This was where the large stone sink was – or was it in fact white porcelain? This indelible 60-year-old memory, is becoming … what? Delible.  And into this memory comes a mangle for squeezing the water out of sheets.

It was the room where Cruel Matron gave us pills and checked us for things. What pills? What things?

Come, darling. Let’s join the line for Haliborange tablets.  You’ll like these. Bright chemical orange, hard and shiny. Vitamin C. Tangy. They taste like a treat.

There is a lot of lining up in G-block. Nail inspection, teeth inspection, bed-making inspection (hospital corners). Breast inspection. What? Were her pre-pubescent breasts really checked? Darling, leave me here for a while. Go and play on the zipwire in the tall evergreen trees.

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