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Lovely Girls

By

Suzanne Conboy-Hill

Amy watches the door; that

grimy finger-stained gobbed-on

portal to fleeting respite from

the chronic stink that makes her

eyes water. She tries to shift her

bottom, to hold her limbs still

long enough to hover above the

puddle of cold pee that has

settled in a trough of rucked up

rubber sheeting. She subsides

again, arms threshing, mouth

grimacing, spit flying, onto the

wet sandpaper of the twill draw

sheet.

Edie, inches away in the next cot, lets out a guffaw and shrieks at the air, her hands

grappling at something under the sheets. Amy thinks it is probably a turd as the night orderly

had been too busy with his pet to do his rounds. She glances over at Julies cot in the corner

and convulses in a spastic ripple of vicarious revulsion.

Amy knows what is going on because she is smarter than they think, those people

with their white coats, their blue epaulettes, and their shiny black, metal-heeled shoes that go

clicking and clacking along the mop-damp, foot-stamped corridors. That and she has been a

pet.

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There is a sliver of enlightenment stealing in through the barred and encrusted god-

high windows of the institutions, but not as much as there will be soon. For now though, the

smog of crass ignorance in these places is impenetrable to the evidence that would have

plucked Amy and her like out of the gloom, re-written their histories, and expunged the

references to subnormality and idiocy that legitimised their abandonment. Instead here she is,

re-living the crawling nausea of repeated assaults while looking at poor Julies tiny frame,

scrambled in its wet sheets where spots of blood are spreading forensically into the soaked up

urine.

Morning girls. Theyare not girls and what is morning in a place like this where

constipated time passes in bullet-hard boluses of boredom? But this is Phyllis and Amy has a

soft spot for Phyllis. She convulses again, this time with pleasure, and Phyllis waves. As she

does, the waistband of her starched apron rides up with her arm, billowing out the bib so that

she looks like a sailing ship. She pulls it back down again, fusses with the fastenings, then

smooths over the crisp white sheet so it wraps sedately around the sea green pleats of her

uniform.

Phylliss arrival triggers a storm of howling, wailing and clattering as the cot-bound

patients seek her attention. Edie hurls the faecal missile she has excavated and it lands with a

soft plop on the scuffed linoleum floor. Julie is not howling but she is sitting up; rocking and

humming, twiddling the fingers of her left hand in front of her face and gouging at her eye

with the thumb of her right.

Dont do that, my lovely, or Ill have to give you sedation and you dont want that,

do you? Big needle in your bum? Course you dont.Phyllis has lots of these one way

conversations and does not seem to worry about the lack of response. She pushes Julies

hands down and carefully hooks the right one into a leather restraint attached to the side of

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the cot. Now Julie does howl and starts to hit her face with her free hand, but Phyllis has seen

the shit on the floor.

Mop! she shouts over her shoulder, and heads off towards the sluice to get a rag.

We should care about this; we should be shocked and outraged, and we will be in

time, but not now, not in 1963. In 1963, this place is a flagship of progress and it receives

unctuous praise for its modern attitude to the subnormal from the political aristocracy who

hope never to meet one of its dismal inmates.

Amy knows it is a sham, but like others here who are witnesses, she cannotbear

witness because she cannot speak. Her body has a brain that makes her look like a marionette

in the hands of a four year old because Amy has cerebral palsy. But no one will appreciate

that for another decade, so no one will ask her how she got pregnant in 1945.

The ward door opens again and two men appear, trailing a clanking string of rusty

wheelchairs with stained seats. It is bath time. Soon, all Phyllissgirls are stripped naked,

dumped into a chair each and trolleyed along the corridor to the industrial checkout of the

bath room.

There, a man approaches Edie to heave her out of her chair and deposit her in a vast

tub just vacated by someone else. The murky water slops over the edge and pools in the

cracks between the stone flags of the floor. Allyoop, lass,he says, his breath fogging briefly

in the teeth-chattering chill. This is Derek and while Derek is not quite the full shilling, he is

a High Grade; a patient savvy enough to be employed but not to notice he is never paid. He

helps with general duties which, incredibly, include stripping and washing mute women -

Low Grades, insensate, sexually and intellectually oblivious. Except they are not, but again

the few that could object will not be able to do so for many years and by then they will be

numb. Not dumb any more, lacking communication and an understanding audience, but

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numb of heart and will and soul, which will allow hell to freeze in their throats without

expression.

Amy knows she is Low Grade because she was told so on arrival.

Wheres this one going?

B32 with the other basket cases.

Shes a Low Grade?

Dead from the neck up, nothing in the attic. A proprietorial pause. Plenty going on

in the cellar though, if you know what I mean. The orderly cast her a lingering, lascivious

look that Amy understood well enough to know that it was deeply unwelcome. Her body

failed her though; juddering and jigging, twitching and lunging by way of idiot confirmation,

while her mind shrieked horrified impotence. One of her flailing limbs struck the orderly and

he turned his gaze back to her from his barren paperwork. Hard eyes scanned her up and

down and hard knuckles cracked across her face, streaking red blood smears from the tear

made by his heavy signet ring. Youllbehave yourself around me, Missy. Then he felt

under her clothes, explored the breasts that had just begun to push out from her chest, and ran

his fingers down into the soft new nest of sunlight pale pubic hair that had also just appeared.

Youll behave yourself very well with me, he added, probing a little further and winking

inclusively towards his colleague. And if he plays his cards right, Ill let him have a go too.

So Amy discovered two things that day: first, that she was a Low Grade and of no

account anywhere in this bleak, terrifying world; and second, that she had embarked on a

career as an orderlyswhore, a pet.

The girls are back, rattling into the ward to be parked around the immense wooden table at

its centre. Amy is steered into a gap next to Maureen whose eyes glitter as if with constant

amusement while she picks holes in her head and eats the trophies. Amy is beyond nausea,

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which is fortunate because lunch has arrived and it is being dished out by Phyllis and a new

probationer nurse.

Who wants mash and peas? the probationer is asking over the hubbub of random

squawks, hawks, smacks and slaps.

No need to ask, love, Phyllis intervenes; her voice kindly, almost mumsy, they all

have everything.

And they do. Mash, mince, peas, rhubarb, custard, and a cup of tea. Except it is not in

a cup, it is in the bowl along with everything else; a crude palette of organic slop slowly

blending into a homogenous morass of choleric shade and consistency.

Saves on washing up. Phyllis is nipping the tender bud of objection about to emerge

from the round O of theprobationers mouth. All goes down the same way. Go and feed

Amy now, be sure she eats it all.

Amy watches as the young woman approaches. She flinches when the spoon appears

suddenly to the left of her involuntarily averted face and pushes into her mouth. Amy has

been choked before by novices and then slapped for choking. She has spent two days tied,

hungry as a street dog,to a pillar in the middle of the ward as punishment. Amy does not

want to choke.

But this girl is gentle. Her eyes are kindly, like Phyllisseyes, and she looks often to

Phyllis as if for reassurance. Amy wonders if this is Phylliss daughter but they do not look

much alike. If Amy could, she would say that Phyllis had the round, ruddy look of a middle-

aged Welsh woman for whom hard graft had been her lifelong companion, while this girl was

slight with a daintiness about her. Instead of Phylliss faded cassock black crown, there was a

powder puff of fair curls fluffing out from beneath her neat nurses cap.

She your favourite, is she? Derek has sidled up to them and is giving the probationer

a look he learned long ago. Amy knows that look and she propels the bowl o ut of the nurses

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hand in a sudden paroxysm of disgust. She knows the look and she knows Derek. Oh yes, she

knows Derek.

Phyllis comes rushing over, shouting for mops and buckets and telling Derek to look

sharp and get his backside moving; there are canteen trolleys to be shifted. Derek himself

shifts from leery to laconic then mooches off, casting a vaguely hopeful glance over his

shoulder at the three women. Phyllis is soothing the probationer and smearing gravy down

her apron as she scrubs ineffectually at the mess with a handkerchief.

You just wipe your eyes, Carrie, nothingsbroken, just a bit of dinner on the floor.

She turns to Amy, You too, my lovely, and she reaches out to both of them, her hands

momentarily resting on their shoulders and rubbing that comforting rub mothers employ as a

universal healer. She looks at Amy and Carrie, My two beautiful girls.They all pause there

for a tick of the clock that bridges a new moment when the truth will be known, and an old

one when Amy barely knew it herself.

A crash. Edies wheelchair has capsized, and the world ticks on. But Amy has seen

something, remembered something; caught the tail of something that has been suppressed by

the horror and tedium, nihilism and victimisation of life in the asylum, the safe place, the

prison.

A deep darkness broken by a flood of light; a bed flooded by a sluice of hot, salty fluid. The

light comes from a torch; the water from inside her, at first hot then cooling rapidly in the

sharp cold of the tiled bathroom with its ranks of silent, drowning tubs. Amys body

contracts, heaves and flails while a deep, deep pain turns her inside out and cascades more

hot fluid out of her onto the rough sheet.

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Dark faces flit in and out of the light as the torch is waved around. There is a hissed

exchange that comes from another universe as tides of pain pull Amy in and out of

consciousness.

Get her knees out of the way.

Well, hold the torch steady. Not up there, down here, stupid. Where do you think its

coming from, her ear?

Can I look?

Piss off, moron!

Another voice, softer. Ssh, youre frightening her. Then more loudly, Try to stay

still, Amy love, so we can see what were doing.

Hush your voice; do you want the Night Super down here? Jesus!

Then Amy howls; a lupine cry from the soul that marks a primeval rite of passage. By

the time the echoes have faded, a man unknowing becomes a father, a woman becomes a

mother, and a mother loses a child.

Image adapted fromJohn Donovans 1991 photograph,Friern Barnet Archivehttp://www.friern-

barnet.com/picture/number2361.asp.Attempts to contact the website, the photographer, and the

person who posted the image have been unsuccessful.

Suzanne Conboy-Hill 2014

http://www.friern-barnet.com/picture/number2361.asphttp://www.friern-barnet.com/picture/number2361.asphttp://www.friern-barnet.com/picture/number2361.asphttp://www.friern-barnet.com/picture/number2361.asphttp://www.friern-barnet.com/picture/number2361.asphttp://www.friern-barnet.com/picture/number2361.asp