Owls Do Cry (23 page)

—Open a window, for goodness’ sake, said Flora Norris. No, there was no magic slipper lying anywhere on the floor. If there had been, imagine the excitement, with Flora Norris and Sister Dulling and the nurses arguing to say,

—It’s mine, it’s mine, it fits me well,

and not knowing that to walk in its glitter they would need to hack their heel of reason till the blood flowed and they cried out with the torture of it.

The day after the strange time and the sitting among the dry beans in the ashes, counting two and two make five, a nurse peeped through the door of Daphne’s mountain room, and seeing Daphne safe on the straw mattress, opened the door,

—Daphne, she said.

She was the Maori nurse, with a bag of toffees in her pocket. She gave Daphne a toffee.

—Here. Catch. Come with me, Daphne, the matron wants you.

She took Daphne to the office where the matron sat at her desk, busy with charts and books and half-opened parcels.

—Ah, Daphne dear.

The matron drew from the corner a screen that slipped along on wheels and had a pattern on it of roses and rose leaves, two roses to each flap of screen.

—For greater privacy, explained Flora Norris. You wait there, nurse, in case I need you.

Flora Norris seemed to want everything very private. She put out her hand and touched Daphne on the shoulder. The girl shivered and drew back nearer the door and Flora Norris advanced, grim, like a close-up, her hand extended with its fingers hung like icicles.

—Now Daphne, this all comes to us sooner or later, you know, and we have to bear it, haven’t we?

Daphne did not answer. She was tearing the giant roses to shreds and casting the petals in the face of Flora Norris, each petal slicing the matron’s skin so that blood flowed to make a real rose blossoming upon the screen that seemed not a screen any more, for hiding behind, though who could be looking and why, except God, who may or may not be at home. Ah, thought Daphne, what is matron going to tell me?

—Are you listening, Daphne? We all have to bear it.

Daphne looked slyly at her, and smiled, because she knew what Flora Norris was taking her behind a screen to tell her. It was death. You have to hide behind a screen to talk of death, the way you cover your face with a handkerchief, ashamed, to hide your crying. Daphne knew it was death, and her mother was dead, and she waited for the matron to tell her.

—Yes, Daphne, it comes to us all, and we must be very, very brave.

Why do I talk this way, like a parson, thought Flora Norris. I’m talking to a half-wit, a loony, though one doesn’t use that term now, not officially. I don’t think
she can understand what I’m telling her, and it’s almost morning tea time, and I’m dying on my feet for a cup of tea and a bun filled with cream. I seem to have had no sleep last night, with all that dancing to take charge of, and the fuss afterwards to get them back to their wards and undressed, and then, on my rounds, seeing the rouged and powdered women, unwashed, sitting up in bed like gargoyles, with the night running down their faces and a dream smearing their eyes. Oh hell.

—Daphne, there’s a telegram to say your mother died last night. Peacefully. All is well.

The matron signalled to the nurse to be ready, in case. Daphne smiled gently, and danced the foxtrot, or was it the destiny or maxina that Francie said you dance with your heartbeats matching? Was it the maxina or destiny? Or foxtrot? Daphne could not remember. She knew it was some kind of dance but she could not remember; so she pushed the overpowering roses and the screen out of the way so God could see, and danced her dance, to music, up and down the office and then out the door while Flora Norris called

—Nurse! Nurse! Whatever are you thinking of? Get her, get her, she’s desperate.

They grabbed Daphne, as she danced the last of the foxtrot, and not even picking up her dropped satin slipper, they hurried her to the mountain room where she sat alone, in the pouring rain, with no coat on, while her mother called anxiously from the door

—Daphne! Daphne! You’ll get your death of cold. Come in out of the rain.

And then her mother sang the song they all knew, Francie and Daphne and Toby and Chicks; half-wailing it so that it seemed tragic and terrible

Come in you naughty bird

the rain is pouring down

what would your mother say

if you stay there and drown?

You are a very naughty bird

you do not think of me
,

I’m sure I do not care
,

said the sparrow on the tree
.

Daphne stayed many days in the mountain room while the snow fell outside in a shuffle and whisper of white, and waxeyes with tiny stalks of bones sat on top of the snow-grass and swayed backward and forward in a green and yellow cloud. And then one day somebody opened the door of the room. It was the man they called the doctor, there were a tribe of doctors, in white, whirling round and round the chief, like merry-go-rounds about a tall white pole that commanded, in the centre, and we shall go to the show, yes we shall, Francie, Toby and Chicks, after we have been to the rubbish dump; to see the fat woman with fifteen men having to carry her up and down the stage, and the midget who lives in a doll’s house, cooking from a tiny electric stove and sleeping in an oak bed covered with a pink frilly eiderdown made with feathers from – from, I think, from the wild swan that flew for one year and a day across the
snow to the palace. No, I am not making it up, it is real. We shall go to the show and throw marbles to knock a little man from his shelf, or a toy dog that will be wrapped in silver and blue paper and given to us by the showman who smells like mattress ticking and homebrew and the inside of gumboots.

—Ah, said the doctor, politely. May I come in?

He need not have pretended, why, there was the nurse opening the door to let him in, and no one could stop him. He walked over to Daphne. She was cosy under the blankets in the corner. The homberg was full, and was covered with a page from a magazine that Olive, the goddess, had poked through the hole in the door.

On the page it said —The Lost Plantation. Chapter five of this thrilling novelette of power and passion. Then in small print it said —The Story so far.

And told of the countess who travelled, for her health, to the tea plantation owned by her cousin in Ceylon. To find her cousin dead, and a usurper, a bronzed millionaire called Gerald Whittaker, ruthlessly commanding the plantation. That is what the magazine page said, that covered the homberg, but the doctor did not glance at it.

He smiled at Daphne,

—Well, and how is Daphne today?

Daphne did not answer. The doctor rubbed his hands.

—We’re feeling a little better today, aren’t we?

Then he leaned nearer, as if to tell a secret, and said,

—How would Daphne like to make something, a scarf or basket, wouldn’t Daphne like to make something, and go up to the class in the park with the other
people; and knit and weave and sew, and not be here alone all day with no one to talk to?

Daphne did not answer, so the doctor turned to the nurse and said,

—I think we’ll try her with some handwork. It will keep her mind occupied until we arrange everything.

But it was like the woollen mills and Daphne screamed to see the mounds of wool and the dazed people picking threads, like red and yellow worms, and sewing, and digging needles in canvas, embroidering a rose, because there seemed a rule, everywhere, that roses do not grow in gardens any more but upon tablecloths and cushions and fire screens and hearth rugs, where red and green worms of wool are needled through their petals and eat their heart out, like a cancer. So the room was filled with roses and wool and people picking, unpicking, threading, stitching, weaving. And the scissors were counted and watched, and kept on a special table, and you had to have permission to touch them and hold them and use them, with a nurse at your elbow in case you decided to snip away the acknowledged and secure treasure of the real world, in one snip, leaving all of the people, the doctors and nurses and clerks and waiters and salesmen and cabinet ministers and everybody lost and severed and clinging to an unintelligible pattern of dream. So they had to watch you. But Daphne screamed at the wool, so they sat her in a corner, in the outside quiet, while her mother gave her a buttered pikelet with raspberry jam on top, and promised another, if she sat still and behaved.

It was near dinnertime when the door of the work room opened and a woman limped inside. She wore a white
smock and held a bundle under her arm, wrapped in a white cloth. She went to the nurse and whispered something, and the nurse went to the sewing woman and whispered something to her. Everything was very secret. Then the woman with the hair coloured like old clay and the white bundle under her arm limped over to Daphne and took her hand.

—Come with me, dear.

But why?

Daphne did not want to go. She had been sitting quietly, watching and smiling and waiting for her mother to bring her another hot pikelet with black-currant jam on instead of raspberry. Then perhaps she would go with Toby to the rubbish dump where they would find treasure, and write their names on the wall of the flour mill on the way, or watch the bags of flour travelling down the chute, and wondering

What if we stood beneath it, what if?

—Come Daphne.

The limping woman took one arm, and the nurse took the other arm.

But why?

They led her to a room, shining and clean and white like a kitchen and sat her on a chair in the middle of the room, and the limping woman with the left heel thicker than the right, carved thick and black like a block of licorice, unrolled her bundle upon the table, carefully, as if it were very precious, but why? It was only a piece of cloth and a pair of scissors for cutting hair and another piece of cloth like a white tea cosy. Then the limping woman whom the nurse addressed as Mrs Flagiron, spread a plastic cape over Daphne’s shoulders and began to cut her hair until the
floor was covered with hair, and Mrs Flagiron seemed not to know when to stop. Once, Daphne put her hand up to feel how much was left, but Mrs Flagiron gripped her arm and thrust it under the cape.

—She guesses, Mrs Flagiron whispered to the nurse.

Daphne sat still then, waiting for the limping woman to finish. She thought, This woman is from Greece. No, she has come from the underworld. I can tell from her thick arms that she has rowed herself across many rivers of the underworld, snipping the hair from the floating bodies and collecting it in her stainless white cloth, and storing it in her home that has many many rooms, yet she is able to use only one room, and soon will have nowhere to live for every room is filled with hair. I know her. I know her.

And Daphne struggled once more, and once more Mrs Flagiron gripped her by the arm and whispered to the nurse,

—She guesses.

And when the time came for the limping woman to finish, and shake out the frilly plastic cape, and rub a sweet-smelling oil over Daphne’s hair, and find a hand-mirror to give to Daphne and say, smiling and pleased,

—Well, and what do you think of that? Do you think it looks all right? You know they are wearing their hair more this way now,

or this way,

or this way,

or

—Do you think a little more off this side would help? Or perhaps a thinning? Or do you prefer it tapered or poodle or urchin?

Well, when the time came for the limping woman to give Daphne the mirror and ask her advice and recommend this or that for dry scalp or reconditioning, Mrs Flagiron did no recommending or asking of advice. She had taken off all of Daphne’s hair, and to make sure, she shaved the top of Daphne’s head.

And there was no mirror to look in.

—And now, said Mrs Flagiron, we’ll put this cap on.

And she fixed the tea-cosy piece of cloth over Daphne’s head; and found a brush and swept up the hair and gathered her bundle together, and was gone, limping on her licorice foot, and Daphne never saw her again.

That afternoon the doctor came again to see Daphne. He was very cheerful.

—Well, he said, and how’s Daphne?

Daphne did not answer. Her head felt naked and damp like a white hazelnut lying in the rain and snow. She kept putting her hand to feel her scalp but the last small dark shoots of hair pricked her hand with the venom of wanting to grow and having no time. She had taken off the tea cosy and put it over her chamber, over the picture of Gerald Whittaker, the bronzed millionaire.

—Well Daphne, the doctor said. You’re going to have some visitors. Your brother and father. You’ll like that, won’t you? And tomorrow we’re going to take you for a ride in a car, to another hospital, and you’re going to go to sleep, and wake up better. We’re going to change you so that you’ll be able to live in the world and be just like other people, and you’ll like that, won’t you?

He drew nearer, smiling kindly,

—And who knows, in a few years’ time you’ll be living in a little house of your own, with your family around you? A normal life, eh Daphne?

Then smiling all the time, and patting Daphne on the shoulder the doctor went out, the nurse following, locking the door, and peeping through to make sure the patient was behaving.

Daphne sat on her mattress in the corner and listened to Mattie singing. Mattie was in bed always and crippled, with a lump on the back of her neck and her face twisted so that it did not look like a face, and she sang like marbles rolling in water, knocking and gurgling, not real singing, yet it was all her speech. Daphne listened to her, and fell asleep listening, and awoke when the door opened again and the nurse came in with a letter from Chicks.

The nurse smiled,

—What a fuss we’re making of you today, she said. You’d think it was your birthday, with the doctor coming to see you, and visitors, and letters, we’ll have to make you nice for visitors and put a hat or beret on your head so your father and brother cannot see and be upset.