DIARY OF A COFFIN DODGER CHAPTER G

CHAPTER G

A couple of days after Jane's outburst during our lunch of fish and chips, Anne, sleepy eyed, called out, 'I had a couple of troubling thoughts overnight.'

Anne's slippered feet shuffled out from the dining

room as she stepped onto the veranda.

Anne strolled along the veranda toward the cracked glass-topped table as the raucous call of a Kookaburra interrupted the melodic notes of an Eastern Rosella's song.

I stopped writing in my journal and looked up from where I sat on a cane chair.

The journal lay on the glass-topped table in front of where I sat.

I screwed the cap onto my mottled green fountain pen and put the pen on the table beside the journal as I gazed at Anne.

A wayward cool breeze snuck around the edges of the listless green and white striped canvass blinds and rustled the pages of the journal as Anne reached the table.

The breeze died away as a cane chair scrapped across the polished wooden floorboards as Anne pulled the chair up to the table.

Anne, wrapped in a pink fluffy dressing gown, stifled a yawn and said 'sorry' as she sat down on the chair opposite to me.

The aroma of brewed coffee wafted around us as Anne said, ‘coffee smells good.'

‘Percolators on the stove,' I replied. 'The coffee will still be hot. I will get you a cup, if you like.'

'That's nice of you, but no.'

'I'll get these troubling thoughts out of my mind, then I will relax with a cup of coffee and hot buttered toast and orange marmalade.'

Anne sighed and leaned across the table.

She whispered, “Are the others awake?”'

'Up and gone,' I replied. 'Early morning breakfast and early morning swim at Neilsen Park.'

Anne nodded and sat back in her chair.

'Good. Us chatting won't disturb their sleep.'

'Or disturb their waking hours with over-heard conversations about the fire,' I added. 'Sensible to check. I take it that your disturbed thoughts relate to the fire?'

I looked at Anne with a quizzical look on my face.

She nodded as she clasped her hands on the table and looked down at them.

The day promised to be hot as the timbers of the house creaked with the rising heat of the morning sun as Anne looked up.

'Here's the first disturbing thought.'

She paused and took a deep breath before saying,

'We know Bill survived the fire, but Mike didn't.'

'Yep,' I replied.

'We know Clare knows Bill and their relationship is that of brother and sister.'

'But what we don't know is what information Bill shared with Clare about the fire and what the nature of the relationship between Clare and Mike was. If there was one.'

'Say, for example, if there was a relationship, acquaintances, friends, or something else? And what if Clare has an inkling that you and I were involved in Mike's death? So, therefore, will Clare react in a way that poses a threat to us?'

'Hmmm,' I replied, 'That is disturbing. That thought hadn't crossed my mind. Clare wrote in her journals of a phone conversation she had with Bill about the fire. I don't remember any mention of Mike.'

'At least not in the journals we read,' Anne said.

'So you think....'

Anne nodded.

'She took a journal with her to the Christian retreat at Bluey's Beach.'

A deep, meditative silence spread its way between us and flowed over the table.

A stillness broken by Anne saying, 'Here's the second disturbing thought. Remember how the journals had large Roman Numerals written on the inside front cover?'

I nodded.

'And when we returned them to the draw, we put them back in numerical order?' Anne said.

Again, I nodded.

'But when we took them out, they weren't in numerical order, were they?'

My eyes opened wide as I stared at Anne as she whispered,

'Clare, I bet, knows we've read her journals.'

Anne was spot on with that realisation because Clare, without any doubt, knew.

But someone else had read Clare's journals as she was to discover on a hot weekend at a place hundreds of miles north of Vaucluse.

A weekend that started as, several days after Clare met Rebekah at the milk-bar, the Red Buggy sped along a dusty road towards the farmhouse.

The Buggy reached the farmhouse, turned into the driveway and drove into the dim, cool, dampness of the garage. Its brakes screeched as Clare brought it to a stop and switched off the engine.

'I enjoyed that ride,' Rebekah smiled as she and Clare climbed out of the Buggy.

Rebekah reached into the back of the vehicle and took out a suitcase.

As well as a suitcase, Clare took out a large, heavy shopping bag loaded with groceries and brown paper bags of cakes and cream buns.

'I've never travelled in a vehicle with the top down,' Rebekah continued as they strolled out of the garage carrying their various items.

'I loved the brisk breeze flowing through my hair and the warm sun on my shoulders. You said the windscreen folds down?'

Clare smiled and said, 'that's right,' as they walked towards the farmhouse.

'So,' Rebekah responded with a mischievous grin, 'with the roof folded down and the windscreen folded down, the Buggy makes an ideal platform from which to preach God's word. Yer?'

Clare laughed and replied, 'Streets ahead of the wooden box I stood on to preach at The Domain of a Sunday afternoon.'

Rebekah chuckled and said, 'I noticed the Buggy has a tow bar. So, I know who will lend us a trailer. Now, here's an idea. We push that harmonium you told me about onto the trailer and ...'

Clare burst out laughing, 'Oh! Come on! Now you are being fanciful.'

Rebekah grinned. 'It's possible, Sister. The Lord has ways ...'

'His wonders to perform,' Clare added, 'like His beautiful creation of the world around the farmhouse,' and chuckled.

Rebekah laughed.

'That was not the ending I had in mind. But you are right. It's beautiful out here, the green paddocks rolling away from the front of the house towards those blue far distant hills. The ...'

Rebekah stopped as she gazed at Clare's tense face.

She followed Clare’s gaze.

A cloud of dust billowed up from the road they had travelled along in the Buggy.

A vehicle was heading towards the farmhouse.

'It will be the blokes in their ute going camping,' Clare said, her face pale.

Clare put her suitcase and the bag of groceries on the ground as her arms started shaking.

Her voice had a quaver in it as with fearful, wide-opened eyes, she turned to face Rebekah.

'But heck! Rebekah! What will we do if it's Bill?'

But, then, no one knew how to deal with Bill. Not even the male nurses he worked with at the asylum.

Because Bill operated according to Rafferty's rules.

At the asylum, the male nurses kept Bill, a volatile bastard, at a safe distance.

Not the sort of bloke they invited to the pub if they wanted a quiet beer after work rather than the place exploding in violence.

His mate, Mike, however, was a different kettle of fish.

A top bloke, which meant male nurses didn't mind having a beer with him at the pub. They admired Mike's fucked-up skills as an apex predator in the sexual exploitation of women and girls.

Admiration that moved to plaudits at the pub because Mike welcomed other male nurses to share with him in this predation.

A sharing that filled me with horror whenever I witnessed him and other nurses at work.

Working shifts with them a few years before Clare met Rebekah in a town on the North Coast of New South Wales.

Shift work in a brand new ward on the grounds of the asylum.

The design of this new ward, however, disturbed the aspirations and dreams of asylum nurses.

An earthquake like disruption that led to a near-riot a few years before the fire in Bill and Mike's brothel. One hell of a commotion that surged around me as I sat in the back row of the asylum's Recreation Hall one hot summer afternoon.

My bum ached as I sat on a battered metal straight-back chair while clouds of acrid cigarette smoke choked the stinky, sweaty air of the Hall.

Sydney's weather, hot and sticky, for that afternoon, added to the heat in the Hall; a building jam-packed with pissed-off asylum nurses.

The New South Wales Government had, five days before the meeting, released, through the Sydney papers, the plans for the design of a new ward at the asylum.

A ward to meet the mental health care needs of female adolescents. And a ward that broke with asylum traditions because it did not have a number.

Instead, 'Banksia', was the name given to the new ward, for two reasons: (one) the name's association with characters in a popular Australian children's book; and (two) 'Banksia's' are a native evergreen, flowering shrub growing in the national parks of New South Wales.

On that sweltering afternoon, the nurses had no issue with the new ward lacking a number or the name “Banksia”.

Their forceful objections lay in other areas of the design and government vision for the new ward.

The nurses had gone ballistic as the plans did not include Single Rooms.

An essential means, according to the nurses I spoke with before the meeting, of managing inmates. And therefore, an important step towards achieving the nursing staff's vision of peaceful, restful shifts.

Not only did the plans, by not including these essential components of asylum nursing care, set the nurses off on a warpath, but the male nurses were furious for an additional reason.

They were spitting-chips at the New South Wales Government's plans for staffing Banksia.

The notion that male nurses were not to have access to female inmates drove the male nurses bonkers. The government stipulated that staffing for Banksia was to be undertaken by female nurses only.

I anticipated a chair-throwing free-for-all given the noisy, abusive hall.

I readied myself for a swift exit as I stood up  and made a mental note of the nearest exist

However, the union representative sitting on the stage at the front of the hall, by shouting and firing a starting pistol towards the ceiling, brought the meeting to order.

As I sat back down on the metal chair, I thought, OK, the nurses have asked the union to call this meeting.

But the union chose the meeting’s chair. And that bloke knows something about the bolshie nature of asylum nurses when they feel their rights and privileges are being infringed.

As the meeting calmed down, two motions were proposed: (one), strike action to be considered if the government did not redesign the ward to include Single Rooms and: (two), strike action to be considered if the government did not consider staffing Banksia with both male and female nurses.

On a show of hands, both motions passed unanimously.

Several days later, the papers reported the government had caved in to the asylum nurses' demands.

A revised design included Single Rooms and, with revised staffing arrangements, male nurses had access to vulnerable young females.

A few days after the government announced the revisions, I attended a meeting in the Recreation Hall where a motion was proposed to accept the changes. The motion passed on a show of hands.

With the passing of these motions, the asylum got its own 'Banksia Men.'

But these 'Banksia Men' did not behave in the way envisioned by the children's story.

Rather, what the asylums 'Banksia Men' did reached into the darkest depths of a child's screaming nightmare.

However, this nightmare lay a few months into the future as a thunderclap shook the dust from the hall ceiling and rattled the windows as the meeting broke up.

Amidst shouts of, 'who's for the pub?', nurses backslapped each other as they filed out of the hall.

One of these asylum 'Banksia Men' was not at the meeting. He came to the asylum after the ward was built. He became Banksia's first Charge Nurse and took up his position with the opening of the building. However, he was not the only asylum 'Banksia Man' to work there.

That Charge Nurse, Mike, organised the nursing staff roster so that only male nurses worked the morning shifts. Male and female nurses worked the afternoon shifts, and male and female nurses worked the night shift together.

Apart from the over-time shifts when either a male or a female nurse filled the vacancy caused by a gap in the roster.

I puzzled over Mike's staffing arrangements for Banksia when I heard about them on the asylum grapevine.

However, I discovered why he had organised the shift allocations that way when I worked an overtime shift in Banksia.

These shift allocations tied in with a directive Mike issued to Banksia's nursing staff regarding the management of the female teenage patients.

In other asylum wards where I worked, the bathroom facilities allowed for the mass showering of inmates. Spaced along a cracked, white-tiled wall in a large open space, at head height, were six shower heads.

Banksia, however, had several en-suites. A government idea for granting privacy for Banksia's female adolescent patients.

However, the directive issued by Mike aimed to knock this idea on the head. The directive specified: Patients may use the en-suites only of a morning.

The reason set out in the directive was to keep the en-suites free of an afternoon.

Therefore, the domestic staff had access to the en-suites in order to clean them, with no hindrances, such as a patient having a shower.

But Mike's reason for the directive had a dark, twisted agenda. An agenda that linked in with Mike's staff allocations.

As only male nurses worked the morning shift, it was a male nurse, not a female nurse, who escorted young female patients to an ensuite.

When I worked a morning over-time shift in Banksia, I watched Mike carrying out one of these sick, perverted escorts. He walked beside a young woman dressed in a thin cotton nightie towards an ensuite.

She bowed her head, clasped her hands across her chest and hunched her shoulders forwards as she walked with short, quick steps towards the ensuite.

Mike's gaze roamed the girl's physicality as he walked close beside her, brushing her nightie as he left a trail of stinky stale tobacco smoke in his wake.

He carried towels, face washers, a change of clothes, including underwear and toiletries, as they walked from a four-bed room to an en-suite.

When they reached the en-suite, the teenager stepped inside. Mike looked around before handing the items he carried to the young woman.

I don't know whether he saw me.

I also don't know how frequently the male nurses shattered an adolescent's sense of privacy by entering an ensuite when a young woman was showering herself.

When I entered the staff room for my morning tea break on that shift, Mike was at the point of leaving the room.

I asked him about the practice of male staff taking part in the showering routines of female adolescents.

Mike smiled and said, 'It's my professionalism and that of my male nurses that stops anything happening.'

He then left the room.

I thought, he knows what I am alluding to. Interesting.

Despite working other overtime shifts, I only worked that morning shift. t

In the asylum, morning shifts started with nursing staff reporting to the Charge Nurse's Office.

On the morning shift I worked in Banksia, I therefore entered Mike's office at the start of my shift.

Cigarette smoke thickened the BO enriched air of the musty office as I leant against a wall and waited for Mike to allocate duties.

The male nurses ignored me as they chatted and laughed amongst themselves. Then the room went quiet.

I turned to face the doorway.

A social worker, Belinda, who I knew, stood at the doorway.

I went to say 'hi!' but she turned and walked away.

As she did so, the male nurses resumed chatting and laughing amongst themselves.

As I turned back trowards the room, I said to myself, 'Hello! Belinda's received the Silent Treatment.'

As I heard numerous times on the asylum’s grapevine  only male nurses and doctors could treat inmates effectively.

Therefore, a health professional, other than a doctor or a nurse, who took an active interest in the care and welfare of the inmates received the Silent Treatment.

I caught up with Belinda when I finished my morning shift as she crossed the car park toward her car that afternoon.

I strode past grey murky puddles, scattered across the black asphalt after a recent shower of rain as I made my way towards her.

The puddles shimmered when a cold, moisture laden breeze rushed across them as I called out, 'hi!'

Belina stopped when she reached the car, turned and said, 'Hello there!'

She leant against it as I stood to one side of the car.

'Are you alright?' I asked.

'I will be,' She replied. 'Thanks for asking. But that's me finished. I'm on my way out. That's twice now I've received the Silent Treatment. You heard about Cath....' I nodded. 'To tough it out and ignore the Silent Treatment is one thing,' Belinda paused....

'But to walk out the front door of your home one morning and see your pet moggy hanging by its neck from a tree in the front yard,.....'

Belinda, her eyes brimming with tears,  reached into her handbag and took out a hanky, 'Well, that is something else....'

She dried her eyes and blew her nose before whispering, 'who are these men? Where the heck do they come from?'

She sighed as she put the hanky back in her handbag and shook her head.

'How is Cath?' I asked.

'Getting better. She took sick leave, resigned whilst on leave and is seeing a therapist.'

Belinda paused.

She spoke, her voice trembling.

'My kids have a pet puppy. I don't want them to find it hanging by its neck from the Jacaranda tree in the front yard of my place.'

She gave me an intense stare as a puzzled frown creased her face.

'You've been here for a few years. So how do you survive?'

'I keep a low profile, do what's possible, on an individual level, and take notes,' I replied.

I tapped the notebook and biro in a pocket of my uniform.

'Good. I pray you keep surviving and that you write the place up in a book.'

'Society needs to know, not only the history of this place but also about the everyday mistreatment of clients and the misogyny that drives ... I better stop. I don't want to upset my kids with tears in my eyes and a worried look on my face.'

Belinda paused and took a deep breath.

'I did not realise how dangerous the asylum is until I started working here. And I am gobsmacked that the male nurses have a social licence to behave the way they do.'

'Anyway, time to get going. I'm picking up the kids from school. It's been nice knowing you. Keep yourself safe, but I think you will. You know how the male nurses behave, especially towards women.'

'I will,' I replied, 'And it's been nice knowing you. I hope you find a safe place to work that also appreciates your talents and skills.'

'Thank-you.' Belinda smiled, opened the car door, climbed in and drove away.

About a week after my talk with Belinda, during an over-time afternoon shift, I walked into the staff room of Banksia while on a break.

I made myself a cup of coffee.

While sipping it, I heard the voices of three trainee nurses chatting in the bleak greyish-white concrete courtyard. An open dusty wind-swept space that led out from the back of the staff room towards the black asphalt of a car park.

At one end of the courtyard, mucky discarded pages from newspapers sprawled out across the base of three grey, cracked concrete planters.

The planters, spaced at uneven distances from each other, marked the boundary between the courtyard and the car park.

The planter's once vibrant plants had given up the ghost. Their brittle stems now lay scattered amongst the heaps of cigarette butts littering the soil that had once nourished the plants.

I looked out towards the planters as I picked up my cup of coffee, stepped out onto the courtyard and went to share the company of the three trainee nurses. I had got to know Zoe, Wendy, and Agnes when I worked with them on shifts in Banksia.

The three younger females sat on nondescript wooden benches on either side of a decrepit wooden table.

I said, 'hi' as I stood near the table sipping my coffee.

They returned greetings and Zoe said, 'We're out of here. We've done our three month's compulsory training in Banksia with Pervy Mike.'

The others grinned.

'Such a pretty name, 'Banksia,' for a ward to have such an ugly man running the place. He's a real jerk, a proper creep,' Wendy commented.

'He's like those handsy, sleazy older men. The staring sad inadequates who hang around hotels where young women like to gather for a drink and be girls just having fun.'

'Other nurses on our training block warned us about him,' Agnes chimed in. 'But we stuck together and never let him get close to us.'

'It's sick what he does and lets the other male nurses do. It's disgusting when a bloke walks with a teenager to a shower, let alone a bloke who is old enough to be my father.'

'Or my grandfather,' Wendy said.

The others laughed.

'But you're right, it's disgusting,' Zoe commented. 'Mike never allowed us to help shower the teenage patients. Some girls are younger than I am. It makes me so bloody angry,'

'Anyway,' Wendy said, 'we've received our report cards. You've heard about them?'

I nodded.

'Pervy Mike, writing out a letter about how 'we performed' in the ward and giving it to us on our last day. Treating us like he was our headmaster at school,' Zoe said.

'But we threw ours in the bin over there without reading them.'

She pointed to a bleached green plastic garbage bin standing in a corner of the courtyard.

'As if we will take any notice of what that creep said,' Wendy said.

'But we are out of here! We survived!'

They cheered as I smiled and raised my coffee cup as a salute in recognition of their achievement.

'Once I'm out of here,' Zoe said, 'I never want to see Pervy Mike's face again. Or what he does when a patient asks questions about her tablets.'

Zoe shook her head, 'what right does he have to shove tablets down a patient's throat for simply asking questions ....?' She concluded.

'That's not medication administration, as we were taught in training school,' Agnes commented in a quiet voice. 'If I were ever admitted to this place...'

'But it's not the time for sad thoughts,' Wendy cut in, her voice gentle, 'we got through this placement, we survived and we celebrate tonight at the pub.'

The others smiled.

'That's right,' Zoe said. 'It's been tough, but we got there. Let's focus on the future now.'

I nodded and said, 'Agreed. Anyway, I'll move on. Look forward to seeing you again.'

I left the courtyard as I had finished my break and went back into the staff room while the three younger women resumed chatting amongst themselves.

Zoe and Wendy's comments about Mike's administration of medication were apposite. I don't think even an asylum nurse training school taught its students to administer medication the way Mike did.

A way that broke the usual straightforward, peaceful administration of medication when young women lined up to get their pills from a nurse. A procedure that occurred at the open doorway of Banksia's Medication Room.

A procedure that attracted Mike and several male nurses.

They prowled around the open doorway, watching and waiting. Waiting for a young woman to ask questions about her medication. Then they pounced.

On several occasions, while I stood a yard or two away from the open doorway, I watched Mike and his male colleagues in action.

Amidst screams and yells from the young woman to, 'leave me alone,' Mike and his mates frog marched the young woman towards one of six Single Rooms.

The poor kid's shouts of rage were to no avail. This sweaty, grunting gang of hyped up men had no intention of letting her go.

A girl being quick marched to a cell. Someone's daughter, grandchild, sister, cousin, bestie, or lover, hustled away by lascivious, handsy older males.

I found the scenes upsetting and walked away to get a breather.

However, on one occasion, to write up these horrors in my notebook, I took a deep breath. I counted to ten after the gang and its prisoner swept past me.

When I finished counting, I followed this rugby scrums stench of BO, testosterone, and stale cigarette smoke to a Single Room.

When I reached the cell, I stood at the doorway and looked at the young woman standing side-on to the doorway.

Intent on the administration of the pills that the girl asked questions about, none of the nurses in the room looked my way.

These grey-uniformed beefy men, towering over the young women, pinned her thin arms to her side.

A female nurse with a medication cup containing blue and green and yellow pills, as well as Mike, stood in front of the teenager.

A male nurse stood behind her, held her head and tilted it back.

Mike with a swift movement, then clamped the girl's nose between his fingers. In shock, the young girl's mouth dropped open.

The female nurse with the medication cup then tipped the pills into the young woman's wide open mouth.

As the pills streamed into the girl's mouth, Mike stroked the young woman's neck with a finger, forcing her to swallow the pills.

He then shoved a finger into the teenager's mouth.

And ran his unwashed boofy finger around her top gum to make sure she had not secreted the pills inside her mouth.

He then let go of her nose.

The young woman burst into tears and collapsed in a heap onto the bed as the nurses turned towards the doorway.

To keep my low profile, I hurried away from the doorway and back along the corridor.

The nurses' chatter and laughter echoed along the passageway as the nurses stomped out of the cell, while I ducked around a corner at the end of the corridor.

Though mad at myself, I knew I must not interfere.

If I was to bear witness to these actions and write

about them, I had to keep intact the mental capacity to do so.

Mike and his male nurses were ordinary blokes with women and children in their lives. Upon entering the staff room for a break, I caught snippets of their conversations about families and school fund-raising activities.

They were your average Joe, with unaccountable power over vulnerable teenage girls.

They behaved in a way I expected ordinary blokes to behave when granted that power by the New South Wales Government and the asylum administration.

And as ordinary blokes, I expected them to behave as these blokes do when challenged by a female acting on her own. With violence; as my women friends who had survived episodes of domestic abuse attested to.

Violence, like being given a thrashing and sexually assaulted in a ward cell or admitted to the asylum as an inmate and placed on the ECT list.

I waited a couple of minutes after Mike's typical administration of medication had concluded and the nurses had left the room.

I took a few deep breaths and returned to the Single Room.

When I reached the room, I peered through the glass slats of the locked cell door at the young woman, now held in solitary confinement.

My eyes brimmed with tears when I saw the girl, her face streaked with tears, curled into a ball on the bed.

Her hair was mussed up as a trickle of saliva dribbled from a corner of her mouth.