The Drying Rooms - Chapter Fourteen
The Drying Rooms
Audio version of Chapter Fourteen
Yes. All right. I know. We’ve got to go there. The Drying Rooms. We’ve got to go there. I know the way. I can do it with my eyes shut. Just give me a second.
So many times.
In the helpless dark.
Fighting sleep.
In the solitary punishment zone.
For what crime?
Talking.
That’s what she remembers.
The Drying Rooms were just a utilitarian boot room by day, but by night they were Cruel Matron’s punishment for the crime of talking; it was the location that topped the hierarchy of ‘sitting out’ spots. If anything was going to silence us, it would be several hours in the Drying Rooms.
Hours before rescue came in the form of the captor, Cruel Matron, releasing her from the sentence and escorting her back to bed. But sometimes the hours turned into being forgotten. She has a memory of Cruel Matron never appearing. What happened then? Did she just fall asleep on the bench and wake up in the dead of night? And did she dare to creep back up the cold stone stairs to the sleeping dorm?
In Maudie, she calls the school Bock House Juniors. She wanted a monosyllabic word with hard consonants. Bock finally came to her. It collided in her mind with bok, the Turkish word for shit.
Extract from Maudie
“Who was talking?”
Axe was standing in the doorway, her grey frizzy hair lit up by the striplight in the corridor.
Silence.
It was as if the dorm itself had stopped breathing.
“I know you’re not asleep. Who was talking?”
Silence.
“Right. Out! Line up in the corridor. The lot of you!”
“I was,” said Maudie quickly. It was only fair – Axe had appeared just as Maudie was asking Buzz if she’d rather eat a bowl of snot or swim in a lake of Axe’s wee.
“I - who? Speak up girl!”
The bodies in the other beds remained perfectly still.
“Me. Maudie,“ said Maudie.
“What a surprise,” said Axe sarcastically. “Get out of bed and go straight to the Drying Rooms.”
Maudie felt a rush of fear. She reached for Big Ted who was on her pillow.
“Leave it! Go. Now! And don’t fall asleep!”
Two hours later, Maudie was in a dark windowless room sitting cross legged on a bench that ran the length of the wall, desperately trying to keep her eyes open.
Ready? Let me take you by your comforting little hand and lead you there for real. Maudie isn’t afraid. Not really. She and her friends have agency. We didn’t.
Was it really so frightening? Maybe she’s hamming it up for effect. She certainly didn’t cry in front of Cruel Matron. She knew that was a sign of weakness. She had boarding-school resilience. But this faulty membrane acquired sixty years ago, still sometimes punctures in her adult life when she’s least expecting it, prompting a well-up of tears disproportionate to the cause. And what about the dreams? What about the dreams that still make a bee-line straight to the Drying Rooms feeling. The feeling of being at the cold centre of unheard, helpless solitude.
Yes. I’m ready. Put your hand in mine. I want to feel the soft, living warmth of it. There are two ways we can go. We could go in daylight. That would be the easy way. Down the short flight of steps, after exiting left out of the small birthday dining room.
Why does she even remember the day way?
Jacks!
She’s suddenly remembered Jacks.
Did she play Jacks down there? Could that be why she remembers it in daylight? Almost as if it is an entirely different place. Because the stone floor was perfect for Jacks. She thinks she can remember sitting cross legged on the floor playing game after game by herself and with others. Bouncing the gob-stopper sized rubber ball. Scooping up the Jacks on each bounce. The sensation of the jagged light metal pieces in her hand. Addictive, satisfying, competitive.
No, we won’t go the day way.
The Drying Rooms that still stir in her gut are at night. We’ll have to go back to the dorm and start from there …
with breath-holding tiptoes
leave the dorm
avoid the creaky floorboard outside Cruel Matron’s door
go down the cold stone stairs
barefoot
down, down those cold stone stairs
past the washrooms
down another flight
in to the dark bowels of the building
along a cold corridor leading into
the dead of night
a weak light
might be the moon
or a bulb somewhere
in the gloom
low ceilings
no windows
warm pipes
a clank
a creak
And here we are. We have entered the big room with hidden corners.
Sit here. The allocated spot. On the bench that runs the length of the wall.
A wire-mesh shoe rack underneath —receding into the dark.
There are other rooms off it — aren’t there? — in the dark, warm, unseen spaces. Not divided by doors, just by walls and arches. Is that right?
She can feel the bench. Its splintery grooves and penknife scars. Its scuff marks, made by the lacing of boots landing on wood.
She can smell the silent gymslips hanging on their metal hooks, the wellington boots and the plimsolls.
I can see her.
Can you see her, little one?
The small girl in pyjamas dimly illuminated by the slice of light coming in through the open doorway. Look. She’s staring straight at us, with her legs dangling from the bench.
In the slow passing of time she shifts her position to
cross-legged
to
one leg tucked under her
to
the other leg tucked under
to
fast asleep, lying on her side, knees pulled up, with a folded gymslip under her head.
Can you smell the sweat of older girls on the gymslips hanging on the hooks? And that faintly dog shitty smell of compacted mud and strands of rotting grass in between the studs of football boots? Football boots! That meant the boys must have used these drying rooms too. But only in the daytime. Kind Boys’ Matron would never have sent them to ‘sit out’ at night.
And what about those hockey and lacrosse sticks? Are they really there? Lacrosse was much later. She knows this. It was later. After Cruel Matron. Lacrosse was at the senior school. So why does she remember lacrosse sticks in the Drying Rooms? What a mess she’s making of this! But she doesn’t care.
She welcomes the reprieve of the air on her face as she runs full throttle down the side of the lacrosse pitch, positioning her stick for the catch. Her whole body thrills with the surge of competitive adrenalin at the thwack of the ball landing in her net. She continues to tear down the pitch, madly cradling the ball against attacking stick-bashing opponents as she runs like the wind towards the goal.
Extract from Maudie
In the gloom, Maudie could make out the bench opposite. There were gymslips hanging from the pegs and plimsolls and hockey boots in the open metal cages underneath the bench. But what was that poking out of one of the boots? Maudie got off the bench and lifted a small cloth bag tucked into the boot. Jacks! It wasn’t allowed, but it would keep her awake.
Maudie emptied out the contents of the bag – ten metal jacks and a small, red rubber ball. Her movements were practised, automatic. With each bounce of the ball and grab of the Jacks, she planned her escape from Bock House Juniors.
There were other smells in those dark, warm rooms.
Those navy-blue games knickers hanging with the gym slips. How about the musty smell of them? Big, thick things, like an old woman’s underpants. They hardly ever got washed, because they went over our real underpants. Our actual flesh-touch, pee-drip-catching underpants. She had the regulation three pairs (“One on. One off. One in the wash”). She remembers brown streaks in another girl’s pants; she knew who the girl was because their pants were name-taped, and she has a memory. A horrible, guilt-loaded, self-hating memory. She exposed the girl and her shit smears because she wanted to make the other girls laugh. Did she really perform that cruelty?
And what about that mysterious yellowy-white stuff that started to appear when she was ten or eleven — a worrying thing that could never be talked about. Certainly not with Cruel Matron, despite her control over their naked bodies. And, she thinks, not talked about with the other girls even though they enjoyed looking at ads for sanitary towels and providing each other with the little they knew about the thing that their mothers called The Curse.
Sorry little one, the yellowy-white discharge stuff is a bit disgusting, I know, but it’s what the truth is made of and for a moment I forgot that you are still here. But I’m happy to be here with you, happy that we’ve come to the Drying Rooms together at last.
Amazing powerful writing -- we are dragged down into the drying rooms whether we want to go there or not!
The smell of the hockey boots, the damp-then-dried PE kit, the horrible PE knickers... God, what were they thinking of? Thank you Emma for today's time travel memories!