“What’s he doing now?”
“He joined the army in September and goes out to Borneo in March.”
Fred reckons one of the kitchen girls, Jill, has a thing for me. She sat opposite me at the dinner table today. I felt this foot rubbing up and down my shin. Luckily I ignored it because it wasn’t Jill at all, it was Fred.
Silly bastard. He laughed, put his shoe and sock back on, stood up and walked off.
I wasn’t a fully functional adult when I left Silverstream, but after the lows of Wellington I felt I’d made a start. Girls were still a mystery though.
Nurses
Nurses striding across the hospital grounds in their capes look like the nuns at University. When they walk in twos or small groups with their heads slightly bowed it adds to the impression. But I don’t think nuns can be much like the girls who tackle nursing as a job — a way to make money, like working in a laundry or assembling electric hair dryers.
Whatever motive girls have for beginning and sticking to nursing, it’s not devotion. For the best it’s a vocation, I think, but a happy one. You do get the martyrs and the servants but most are cheerful and energetic and bumptious. They’re rougher and stronger, and more brittle at times, than most girls. I admire them.
§
Margaret’s one of the nurses on my ward. I like how homely and motherly she is. She isn’t glamorous or sophisticated, just good humour and common sense and love. She isn’t witty, but she knows that, and doesn’t mind. She’s Victorian robustness and puritan prejudice, a loud, harsh voice, dumpy and affectionate. Works hard around the ward.
Margaret is gorgeous, ordinary and worth her weight in gold.
She and her husband have a farm outside Foxton.
§
The kitchen girls
“Come down for a cup of tea, Ian?” asks Fred.
“Where?”
“V-Block.” V-Block is the kitchen girls’ living quarters.
“Okay.”
Fred and Jill lying on the bed, talking and friendly. Jokes about sex, and predictable horse-play. Fred tickles Jill, she giggles, and the tickle ends up more to her breasts than her ribs, with their bodies joining in happily.
§
Jill’s 21 but looks younger, too thin by far, with voracious eyes and mouth. She can use her hips effectively, but actually seems sweet, gentle and rather mild. Says she doesn’t really enjoy parties or dances, doesn’t form casual acquaintances easily.
We talk quite a bit and are becoming friends, the first girl I’ve ever “befriended” like this to any extent. It’s talking that leads to friendship — discussions, confidences, attitudes and beliefs, serious arguments, jokes.
I’m as fond of Margaret and Jenny as I am of Jill, but I don’t get to talk to them.
§
Margaret and Jenny were nurses, and Silverstream was class-based. The kitchen girls, the maintenance guys, the porters and the orderlies were all lower class. We ate together and socialised together.
As we nattered in the lunch room, watched TV or hung out in V-Block, I began to feel like an honorary member of the young kitchen girls cohort. It took a while, but they helped me understand that fooling around — social, physical and verbal — helped build friendships. It didn’t have to “go anywhere”. I never knew that, and I never found it easy.
§
After finishing work at 3:30pm, I wandered off down the path by the river to swot. I stayed there until it began to get cold at 5 o’clock and made my way back to the hospital to eat. Just as I was starting my cup of tea afterwards, Jill and Carol walked in rather the worse for wear, having come from the Totara Lodge Hotel.
Jill wasn’t up to eating. Carol tried, but gave up. She wasn’t drunk, but giddy in the head. I got her a cup of tea, and myself another, and we commenced making eyes at each other across the table, with her trying to get me to come along to Jill’s farewell party. She leaves on Wednesday. Finally I was persuaded to come and promised to turn up by 8:30.
Carol is a simple, affectionate girl. She’s a couple of months older than me, blonde, slender, attractive. Expression amiable and ingenuous. Not so much brilliant as considerate, not so much intelligent as honest, not a forceful character but more likely to be happy. She’s been engaged once and she’s close to her mother. She’s a follower, not a leader, and like most people more likely to be impressed by a person than a principle. Looks a little bleary from low living at Silverstream.
She’s cheerful, but seems very young, uncertain and dependent, and happy only sometimes.
§
Fran and I watched TV until 7.30, went to the pictures, and then down to the girls’ rooms for supper. Had supper, brought out records, tried a blonde wig on Fran for her to wear tomorrow, her last day’s work, then produced a third of a bottle of cherry brandy, over sweet, and some Gin Sling. Jill and Carol danced. It was quite beautiful and rather sensual. I’m not sure whether the two are separable. We got rather lightheaded on the drink. Fran wandered off to bed, and we looked at photographs, Jill disappeared. I came back home to sleep as Carol was taking the curlers out of her hair,
§
There was a party at V-Block tonight.
“I like your face, said Mrs K. “I like your face. You’re going somewhere. Don’t let anyone get in your way. You’re drinking port. Don’t let plonk either – say no.
“You’re going somewhere. I’m not as drunk as you think I am. You think I’m cracked. Your mother would be disgusted with me, kissing you like that. I’m not drunk. I act happy and dance and sing with these young people, but it’s only acting. I act this way or else they wouldn’t have me. It’s different with them, but with me it’s bloody awful.
“I know what I’m saying. I’m an alkie, and I’ve got a grown-up family and look at me…
“Ian, you look at me, look at me in the eyes. I was a beautiful girl…
Look me in the eyes. You’re going somewhere, and every time you have someone trying to sidetrack you, you remember looking me in the eyes, and keep going.
“Hand me the whisky,” she said.
“Have a cigarette, Mrs K… Match?”
“You don’t laugh now!”
“No, no, no.”
“Look at those girls. Carol and Jill. Wonderful girls. Look at Jill. Never was a more sensible, more loveable girl than that. They’re madcap at times. But they’re good to me.”
§
Played table tennis tonight with Carol and Rae and one of the men. To think Carol was engaged! She’s too immature for marriage. Girls are a mystery to me. We make a man a friend if we want him to be a friend, but the subterfuge and tensions and desires and manoeuvrings between us and girls obscure our judgment. Mine anyway.
§
The other day I kept Carol company when she was babysitting. The father of the house, a wiry, tough, fair dinkum New Zealander, asked was it really true that the old men at Silverstream wet their beds and shit themselves as rumour had it?
“Yes,” Carol said, and grinned at me.
“Bloody hell,” said the man, whose name was Colin, “fair go?”
“Fair go,” said Carol. “Ask Ian, he cleans them up. That’s his job.”
Colin looked at me with fresh revulsion.
§
Carol has handed in her notice. She leaves in a fortnight.
After not talking with me for a few days, she asked how long I was staying. I told her some time before Christmas. She explained she had another week and then a further fortnight before leaving for England.
Having broken the ice this way, she said, “Remember the boy who was my fiancé?”
“Yes. John.”
“He’s coming here tonight.”
“Here?”
“Mm.”
“At your invitation?”
“No. I got a letter.”
“Well, are you glad?”
“I don’t know. I’m going overseas — I didn’t want to go remembering anybody.”
“The best thing to do is to not decide whether or not you’re glad until he arrives.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
§
The Purple Onion
Fred stopped work here today to go into Wellington to help out at a burlesque club called the Purple Onion, which is run by friends of his, and which he helped to found.
Fran wants to go to see the show, and also to meet Fred again. She won’t go alone because she said she would feel awful if Fred wasn’t there. So Jill and I said we’d go with her…
§
Fran, Jill and I went to the Purple Onion last night.
I thought perhaps it was a rather sad place. The club itself was a real dive, a rundown shop decorated on the outside with half nude photos, and on the inside with crudely cut black drapes and badly done paintings. Illumination consisted of one red light and candles in bottles. The canned music was very loud and unsubtle.
There were two sorts of customer. One was the timid sort who came by himself and sat primly and nervously, waiting for the show to begin. When it did begin, he watched with staring eyes, fascinated, but uneasy because he didn’t want anyone to see how fascinated he was. If he was in the front row, and the girl sat on his knee or teased him with a piece of clothing, he was shocked and dismayed, because he didn’t want it all to come that close.
The other sort didn’t come alone. He came in a group and talked loudly and obscenely and might’ve had a bit to drink. He made a show in front of his friends, and a better job of hiding his weakness. He called for action and complained about the expensive bad coffee. Knowing there were female impersonators in the show, when it did begin he yelled at the compere, who was dressed in a glamorous evening ensemble, “Show us your balls, honey!” and to the girls, “Let’s have a bit of tit!”
As for the girls, most of them were rather pathetic as far as the act went. Blonde-wigged, rather hard faced, and not voluptuous — anything but voluptuous — of body. How they could stand the ribaldry and insults of the men I don’t know. I admired their courage. We knew some of them were male, but I wasn’t sure which were which, and neither were Fran and Jill.
One girl, advertised as coming from Soho, knew the art of bump and grind rather well, and was ably assisted by the music — The Stripper by David Rose. She really was attractive, a little heavy in the face, perhaps, but with an attractive and abundant figure.
One other act was striking. All the lights were turned out except a blue strobe that illuminated nothing but the dancer’s disappearing pure white clothes. Everything else was as dark as midnight.
Afterwards, when Fred asked what we thought of the show, I said that the girl who danced to The Stripper — her name was Kim — was easily the best. Fran and Jill agreed. When Fred told us that she was actually a he, the thought hadn’t occurred to the girls any more than to me, even when she was grinding out the action in g-string and pasties. There were three men in the show – Kim, the compère and one other. It was strange to shake hands with them like men after the show. Suzy the compère told us some of his adventures. All of them, male and female, were friendly, and sat chatting with us, smoking cigarettes. All were furious at the audience, which they said was the worst they’d ever had — and Suzy added, “anywhere!”
I got more fun out of Jill and Fran than anything else. Next morning they were still perky, and singing Let Me Entertain You. But last night they didn’t know where to look, the only women customers there. Fran didn’t look half the time, and Jill sat in curdled silence, accusing me afterwards of looking too much. They marveled at the smallness of the G strings and the daring of the girls, sneered at the pretty poses “especially for the gentlemen”, wondered at Suzy and Kim, the female impersonators, and kept up the conversation in loud voices all the way home on the train, naive and excited as children — fascinating for the other passengers and amusing for me.
§
§
Margaret isn’t all peaches and cream. Today she lashed out at three of the patients. Stan for telling her to clear out when she was looking at my photos, and losing his temper in the process. Paddy for getting the sulks when she didn’t jump to obey him in an instant. Snow for telling her that she was spending too much time with certain of the patients.
Her anger was justified, but she certainly doesn’t possess what the major powers call the capacity for a limited response. I could do with her aggressiveness.
§
Sister M. is strikingly beautiful. High brow, clear skin, fine features, her hair a sandy ginger colour, fine and peppery. Her eyes are reserved, the brows arched but not disdainful, her nose small and straight with slightly flared nostrils, her mouth firm and controlled. When she looks at you she’s polite but not engaging, a little distant. More efficient than gentle. She’s in her late 20s, her voice light and confident, but she’s still not entirely a picture of strength.
I don’t think she’s terribly good at mixing, certainly not in business hours. And certainly not like Sister E., who is a complete egalitarian! Nobody could imagine two people less alike, but they’re both marvellous.
§
Sister M’s getting married soon. She was apparently popular as a Staff Nurse and Ward Sister — used to come and show the old women her gowns before Balls and so on.
§
“Carol, how did the outing with John go?”
“Oh… Not what I expected.”
“How?”
“We were miles apart.”
“No feelings?”
“No.”
“What did he want?”
“To marry me.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t care if I hurt him. He hurt me enough.”
“Yes, I know.”
“He did too!”
“What’s he doing now?”
“He joined the army in September and goes out to Borneo in March.”
“You’ve forced him to join the Foreign Legion!”
“Mum will be angry when she finds out I went out with him again.”
“Why? She should be glad it’s made you realise you don’t love him any more.”
§
Last week four kittens were born in Carol’s wardrobe. Today Sister P. discovered them and demanded they be destroyed. So Carol came and asked if I would have one to save it. I said yes. The Night Sister and our Night Aid both want one, and the Sister in Ward Six is said to be a clearing house for such waifs. But they’re too small to be taken off their mother yet. Operation Save The Kittens. I’ll pick mine up when I leave.
§
How people’s opinions change. Carol used to say of Jill, “I don’t know what I would’ve done without her here.”
Now she says she never liked her — “I’m glad I was out when she called.” But the reasons for her change of heart aren’t funny.
After Jill left a few weeks ago she went home to Gisborne and, as predicted, fought with her stepfather, so came back down to Wellington and shifted into a flat with some boys. She was supposed to be sleeping with someone called Dave, but soon she was spending more nights with the others, anybody willing to climb between the sheets with her. Furthermore, she refused to work or help around the flat. So they threw out.
Carol heard this from a mutual friend. She doesn’t know where Jill is now, and Jill doesn’t want her to know any of it.