- THE PANDEMIC HITS HOME
2020
The old man looked up when someone burst through the door of the hospital room.
A sturdy woman wearing a starched white dress marched towards his bed clutching a clipboard.
Sister Daisy Rowbottom glared down at him. “I heard you were in here, James. How was your trip to Ireland?” She nodded towards his daughter, who was sitting in a blue vinyl chair on the other side of the bed. “Morning, Maddie.”
James Northan often bumped into Daisy in the aisles of Roses Supermarket. She had earned a reputation as a dragon before she retired from nursing some years ago, but she had mellowed. These days she liked a chat by the frozen peas.
But what was she doing here looking so fearsome again? She had to be well into her seventies. How had she even been able to squeeze into that dress! Her white cap emblazoned with its red cross looked like something she had brought back from a field hospital in the Crimean War.
“Oh, I get it.” James stretched back on his pillows, adjusted one of his hearing aids, then put his hand behind him to cradle his head. “You are on your way to a fancy dress party.” He smiled. “Let me guess what as? Florence Nightingale? Have you considered taking a lamp along as a prop?”
Daisy’s eyes became slits. “This is no time for frivolity, James. I volunteered when they put out a call for trained nurses to help get them through this COVID crisis.”
James rolled his eyes. “Oh, not someone else over-reacting!”
Daisy looked down at the clipboard. “Right,” she said. “We need to determine who needs to be here and who needs to be discharged.”
James wriggled himself further up on his pillows and made a Victory sign with two fingers. “Did you hear that, Maddie? They are letting me go home.” He turned his head the other way. “I have had a bit of cardiac trouble, Daisy. But I am tickety-boo now.”
“That’s not what it says here.” Daisy tapped the clipboard with a chubby index finger. “You’re lucky a bystander knew how to administer the kiss of life. Otherwise you’d still be dead.”
James’s smile disappeared. “Reprobates like Moose should not be allowed to learn CPR!”
Daisy spotted the dried blood on the back of James’s liver-spotted hand where the cannula had been inserted, and scowled. “Who did that?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. “I can see standards have slipped around here.” She cleared her throat. “We shall have to do something about that.”
Daisy looked down at the clipboard again. “I see this is your third time in Windy Mountain Hospital, James.” She read on, looked up and screeched. “What were you thinking checking yourself out? At your age?”
“I am only 82!” he shouted back.
James took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “As I said, I am fine now. Angioplasty worked wonders on me.”
“They wouldn’t have transferred you back here if they didn’t think you needed further bed-rest.”
“Bed-rest? You are joking! I had proper bed-rest in Hobart. I had a single room in a private hospital, with good food and doctors who speak English.” James’s left hand was tethered to an IV machine and it hurt every time he tugged it, but he was able to wave his free fist towards the other bed. “Here I am forced to share.”
Daisy looked at the smooth light-blue quilt and the clean, white pillows, then looked back blankly. “No one is even occupying that bed.”
“Maybe not. But it is a constant reminder that at any time someone might be wheeled in here in the middle of the night. That is when things happen in this hick hospital. I did not have sleep apnea until I came in here. Now I wake up every 10 minutes with the noise at night.”
“Oh, James!”
“Do they not know who I was! Who Maddie is! The great unwashed should look up to more important individuals who rise to the exalted position of mayor.”
“Public hospitals don’t play favourites.”
“I paid taxes all my life. For what? The food here is disgusting. In Hobart, dinner came with a little bottle of wine. Now I cannot even get a decent cup of tea.”
Daisy forced a smile. “I think you’re exaggerating, James.”
“Am I? Is it any wonder I checked myself out? I would still be recuperating in the tranquility of my own cottage and in the comfort of my own soft bed, if it had not been for those clowns.”
“Clowns?” Daisy frowned.
“Bert Whish-Willson and Clarence Noodle had the audacity to visit me.”
“I thought you were friends with Wish-Wash and Oodles.”
“Just because we sometimes used to sit together on the bench on the High Street does not mean we are kindred spirits.” He sounded like a deflating balloon as his breath started running out. “You will find this out soon. The older you get, the more you are forced to mix with whoever is left.”
“But didn’t you go to Ireland with them?”
“Mistake of my life!” James looked towards the ceiling. “After the way they treated me on that trip, I cannot fathom how they had the bareface cheek to come to my cottage where I was recuperating after my release from this poor excuse for a hospital. Who gives a man flowers, for heaven’s sake? To add insult to injury, they picked them from my own garden.” He breathed in, then exhaled just as noisily. “And who gives a bottle of Raki to a man who is convalescing unless they are trying to finish him off?”
Daisy spoke slowly. “I’m afraid I don’t actually know what Raki is.” She glanced at Maddie in search of a clue.
“No use looking at her. Maddie has never been to Crete. Raki is a crude alcoholic drink distilled for a certain clientele. Mainly peasants! You would know it if you smelled it. They probably market it in this country as hospital disinfectant.”
The nasty taste in his mouth intensified just thinking about it. “The final straw was when they tried to wind me up by claiming my so-called Irish cousin was on his way to Australia. I showed them the door quick smart, I can tell you.”
Daisy glanced down at her clipboard again and flipped over the page. “That’s when you had your second collapse?”
James tried to rearrange a pillow by reaching behind with his untethered hand. Maddie reacted to his grunt of frustration by getting to her feet, and sliding the pillow behind his back. But he didn’t thank her, preferring to keep up his tirade towards Daisy. “Can you blame me? I was supposed to be keeping my blood pressure down.”
Daisy kept looking at Dr Rashidmanhi’s notes. “You know, not everyone actually makes it to the Windy Mountain Hospital in the back of that ambulance. Some have to finish their trip in the back of a roadside assistance truck.”
James shook his fist. “That ambulance was state of the art when we bought it. I should know. I was chairman of the hospital board in those days.”
“You’d know it was an ice-cream van in its former life then?” Daisy said. “Why do you think they were happy to get rid of it? It’s not good for business when your ice-cream van keeps breaking down and the soft-serve all melts.”
“I’m here, am I not?”
Daisy shuffled to the end of the bed and hung the clipboard on the rail. “You’re right. You are here. We’ll just have to make the best of it.” She sighed. “I can see you’ve had a bad run, too. We all know what stress Messerschmitt caused you, now these health issues beset you.”
In the next breath, she said: “You won’t mind if we put someone else in this room? We might even have to squeeze a third bed in if things get really bad.”
“Over my dead body!” James’s eyes strained against their sockets. “I’m not sharing my room with riff-raff.”
“You won’t have a choice if it gets as bad as we’re expecting.”
“In that case, I demand to go home.”
“I think not,” Daisy said, lifting her chins. “You’re what we call an essential patient.”
“People were right about you,” James hissed. “You are nothing but a bossy old spinster who likes to control your patient’s lives.”
Daisy’s eyes darkened. For a long time, she said nothing. Then she said slowly: “You will tell me if you can’t move your bowels, Mr Northan. Perhaps the nurse who butchered the insertion of your cannula also needs to practise doing enemas.”
* * *
He watched her stride out of the room, then locked eyes with Maddie. “That is it. I’m checking myself out again.”
“Is that a good idea, Daddy? You know what happened last time.”
“I would have been fine if those fools had not come visiting.”
“I’m sure they meant the best.”
“This time I will put a padlock on the gate.”
Maddie gave an exasperated sigh. “The doctors have only just got your blood pressure back under control. You heard Daisy. They won’t let you check out so easily this time.”
“I am not — I emphasise not — sharing my room with sick people. Besides, you heard her. She has become a tyrant again.”
“You just hate being outbullied, Daddy!”
“What’s that supposed to mean? At least I have the courtesy to listen to people before telling them what to do.”
Maddie rolled her eyes.
James rotated his hand to show the dried blood. “Daisy really could not care less an incompetent nurse has used me as a darts board. She just wants to resume her reign of terror.”
“Oh Daddy.”
“Do not Daddy me. She could easily organise a line-up of nurses so I could identify the culprit. But no, she would rather humiliate the lot of them to show them who is boss.”
James sighed heavily. “That is how she operates. You heard her threaten me with an enema.”
Maddie gave a little laugh. “I think you’ll find she was only joking.”
“People thought it was a medical miracle the day she retired, and patients’ stress levels all dropped.”
* * *
Maddie steepledher fingers and squeezed her eyes shut. “I didn’t want to have to tell you this, Daddy . . .”
“Tell me what?”
“You can’t go home.”
James opened his eyes wide, so wide it hurt. “Why not?”
Maddie opened her eyes. “I didn’t think you’d mind. He said he had no where else to stay.”
James tugged at a strand of his straggly, thin hair. “Who?”
“Your cousin.”
“My cousin? Which cousin?”
“Your cousin from Ireland.”
“Conn? I thought Bert and Clarence were just trying to wind me up.” He stared into space. “Where does a bog Irishman like that even get the money to travel?”
“He arrived two days ago,” Maddie said. “The State Government insists that all new arrivals to the state self-isolate for 14 days.”
James buried his head in his free hand, and hissed: “You let him infect my cottage!”
“If your nephew hadn’t burnt down the hotel . . . ”
James looked up. “At least you know for sure Messerschmitt is yourcousin. You do not know the Irishman from Adam. What were you thinking inviting him to stay?”
“I could hardly tell him to go sleep under the bridge. How would that look? I have an election coming up. Remember?”
“What about a hotel in another town? Is it not about time Sltutz Plains took a share of Irish people?”
“He’s flesh and blood.”
“The jury is out on that. All we know for sure is his DNA matches the DNA found on my toothbrush. Bert Whish-Willson is not too fussy about which toothbrush he uses.”
“But the Irishman’s last name is Northan. You don’t think that’s a hint?”
“I don’t think it is conclusive, no.”
“I thought you’d be fine with it, especially seeing as you’d be in here for at least another two weeks.”
“Is he showing symptoms of actually being sick?”
Maddie shrugged. “He’s not answering my phone calls, or the door.”
James banged his fist down on the bed. “Just what I need? A corpse in my cottage!”
“He can’t be dead, Daddy. We can see the lights going on and off from our house.”
“So you are letting him run up my electricity bills?” He rolled his eyes. “Great!”
Maddie folded her arms. “You can’t go there now. If you insist on checking out of here, I’ll just have to make other arrangements.”
2. THE PENNY DROPS
James was pacing up and down the foyer when Maddie walked into the hospital the next morning. He was dressed in the same creased suit he had been wearing when they had brought him in, and was holding an overnight bag.
The bag carried his pyjamas, a change of underwear and his toiletries, plus his take-home medications.
“I have been waiting for you for an hour. Why are you late?”
“I told you. I had to make arrangements.” Maddie picked up his bag and turned towards the automatic glass doors, with James in tow.
“What is wrong with me staying in the big house with you?”
She turned her head. “It’s cramped enough with Norm and I, Vicki and Velda and two cats.”
“You would hardly know I was there.”
Maddie stopped, put down the bag, and turned. “I’m sure you’ll be very comfortable with the arrangements I’ve made for you. And it’s only for three months.”
”Three months? Did you just say three months!”
Maddie wrapped her arms around her torso. “That’s the period of isolation health officials are recommending for people your age. The elderly are high risk. And I have a responsibility as mayor to insist on it. No exceptions.”
“Three whole months?”
“The time will whizz by, Daddy.”
“You get less incarceration time for murder!”
“Katy says she will leave food and supplies on the doorstep every day. That way, you’ll never even have to leave the house.”
“Katy?”
“Katy McDonnell.”
“Good grief! She’s married to Jerome O’Fury.”
“So?”
The blood that had rushed to his face now drained from his head. “So O’Fury is a friend of Clarence’s.” He closed his eyes and put a hand to his forehead.
3. THE PENNY DROPS FURTHER
The drive to Oodles’s place was over in minutes. The green weatherboard house sat at the top of a cul-de-sac on the hill.
“They’re expecting you.” Maddie kept the engine running by the kerb. “I obviously can’t go to the door with you.”
“They?” James looked out the passenger window towards the house, and his voice faltered. “W-who else is there?”
“I assumed you knew. We need to keep the oldest three people in town safe. Bert Wish-Willson is part of the fabric of Windy Mountain.”
James swallowed, and hissed. “This is your idea of payback, is it not?”
“Payback?” Maddie looked at him. “For what?”
“For me sending you off to boarding school.”
Maddie stared into the middle-distance. “I had forgotten about that. Those Church of England nuns sure were strict. You would have thought they’d have gone easier on an eight-year-old girl.”
“It toughened you up.”
“Is that what you think I’m trying to do to you?”
James looked towards the house again. So it had come to this?
Oodles had once answered to his every whim but the 85-year-old former council works supervisor refused to look up to him these days.
As for that big, fat oaf Wish-Wash, he had once been the town drunk. Goodness knows how he had even made it to 83!
Until recently, they had been the unlikely co-owners of the Windy Mountain Tasmanian Tiger Museum. James could have told them how that was likely to end!
“You know those old men still call me the Mayor?” James said.
“So? It just means they look up to you. You were mayor for a lot of years. I’d call that a mark of respect.”
“Respect? Poppycock! They know you are the Mayor now. It’s discourteous, that’s what it is.”
Maddie kissed him on the cheek. “It’s only for three months. We can talk on the phone every day.”
“How can you?” James said. “Don’t you remember? Clarence had his phone disconnected when he had problems with those scammers?”
Maddie clicked her fingers. “I’ll get Tom to organise it to be connected again. I’ll ring you every day, I promise.” She paused. “That’s more than you did for me when I was an eight-year-old boarder.”
James screwed up his face. “I made sure you had everything you needed. You never went without.”
“Thanks for that, Daddy. And don’t worry: we’ll keep you well supplied, too.”
James looked out the passenger window. “Just look at that house. It is not just common, it is tiny. Do you think we will all fit?”
“I’m told it has three bedrooms.”
“It was simply demoralising when we had to share accommodation in Ireland. No one should ever be expected to see Bert naked. It was like being in the same room as a bull walrus.”
“Oh Daddy!”
“Three months? And why? It’s a big over-reaction to something that will surely blow over soon.”
“It’s not going to blow over.”
“The trouble is this younger generation just cannot handle a bit of a sniffle.”
“Oh, Daddy. It’s much worse than that. Haven’t you been watching the news?”
“Have you ever try to watch TV in hospital? The programs are sandwiched by funeral insurance adverts. Hospital patients are their target market.”
Maddie shifted in her seat. “Can’t you see I’m just trying to keep you safe?”
“You will bring my laptop?”
Maddie frowned. “Where is it?”
“In a drawer in the study. I can tell you where the key is.”
“Fat lot of good that will do me when your cousin isn’t answering the door.”
James took hold of the handles on his overnight bag, tucked the plastic bag under his arm and started opening the passenger door. “I suppose that rules out my smart phone, too?”
Crow’s feet formed at the side of Maddie’s eyes. “You’re not carrying it?”
“I think the medics were too busy trying to find my pulse to look for my phone.”
Maddie tapped her head three times on the steering wheel. “I’d buy you a new one, but I can’t think where. There’s nowhere to buy them in Windy Mountain and we’ve been told not to travel out of town unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Can you not tell them we are important people?”
Maddie opened her eyes and shook her head slowly. “I don’t think that would wash with health authorities, Daddy.”
“That reminds me.” James looked down at the chest of his shirt. “I have only got the clothes I am wearing and one change of underwear.”
Maddie smiled. “And your pyjamas.”
“They are going to be pretty stinky after three months.”
“I’m sure Oodles has a washing machine.”
James got out of the car, holding his bag, and turned around to stoop into the cabin. “It is probably a twin tub with a mangle. You think I want to do my washing in his ancient washing machine? No telling what I would catch.”
“We know what you might catch if you don’t go into isolation.”
“The day will come when you young people will regret you acted so foolishly.” James went to slam the door but stopped. “What about all the prescription meds they gave me?”
“What about them?”
“I’ve only got enough for a month.”
“It’s not a problem. I’ll get your GP to prescribe some more.”
“How will he know what I need? They have put me on a raft of medication.” It astounded him. A few years ago, the only thing he had to remember each day was to put his hearing aids in. Now he had a multitude of pills he was supposed to swallow after breakfast, and even more to remember to take before bed.
“The hospital would have sent the list to Doc Jenkins. Do you want them in a Webster-pak?”
“A what?”
“A medicine pack so you know what tablets to take when?”
He had that nasty taste back in his mouth. “I’m not senile!”
He slammed the car door shut.
4. YOUR ROOM, SIR
With one handsliding up the safety rail, he awkwardly ascended the small flight of steps at the end of the path with his overnight bag, which felt like a school bag.
The door opened ahead of him.
“Welcome, old mate.” Oodles ushered him into the spartan hallway. Clarence was not using his walking stick. He was supposed to be using it all the time. Did Dr Jenkins know he was disobeying him?
Wish-Wash put his foot out to stop the front door from closing, then poked his head out and surveyed the front yard.
James swung around and groaned. “Who else are you expecting?”
Wish-Wash turned to face him. “You might have been followed, Jimbo.”
“By whom?”
“By Messerschmitt.”
James’s voice dropped. “Oh, very droll, Bert. You know as well as I do he is languishing in a jail awaiting trial. We will not be seeing him again for many, many years.”
Wish-Wash closed the door, and broke into a smile, which showed his bad teeth. “You didn’t really mean that, did you?”
James looked him in the eye. “Did not mean what?”
“That you didn’t want to see us ever again? Because it looks like you’ll be seeing us all day, every day for the next three months.”
James dropped his overnight bag, making a thump on the wooden floorboards, and wrinkled his nose as he looked around.
The hall smelled of bleach. James knew what Oodles was like. Not only was he ridiculously practical, he had always maintained a spotless workshop when he worked at the council.
Oodles looked down at the bag on the floor. “Is that all of your luggage, old son?”
“I have come straight from the hospital, but I’m hoping Maddie will be able to gather some more things for me.”
“Not too much, I hope.” Oodles looked at Wish-Wash. “I don’t know where we’d put it.”
“No need to worry. I will contain it all to my own room.”
Oodles rubbed the back of his neck. James had seen him do that before, and he sensed there was something he needed to say.
“Maddie says there are three bedrooms here?” James said slowly.
Oodles now rubbed his temple. “Technically, yes.”
“Technically?”
“I actually use the third bedroom as a storeroom of sorts.”
“Of sorts?”
“I couldn’t even tell you what’s in there. I never go in, even to clean. It was always Madge’s place of retreat.”
* * *
Wish-Wash flashed another big grin as he pointed to the bag. “No servants here, Jimbo. Grab that, and I’ll show you to our room.”
James trudged behind him down the hall, past a black phone connected to a curly cord and sitting in a cradle set in the wall.
The room they veered into had two single beds, which were arranged in an L-shape along separate walls. Wish-Wash’s was nearest to the door. At the foot, a tower of large red leather-bound books grew like the Leaning Tower of Pisa from the solitary bedside table.
Wish-Wash pointed to the built-in wardrobe. “You’ll find a bit of space left for your clothes. If Maddie brings more, you can always bung them in Oodles’s wardrobe. Now Madge is gone, he doesn’t need all that storage space in the master bedroom. He really only needs that room so he’s nearer to the dunny on account of his Woolworths bladder.”
James sat down on his bed and threw his head in his hands.
Why was this happening?
Normally a mayor and a town drunk were unlikely even to meet, but that all changed when Wish-Wash claimed in 1967 he had been awakened in a bus shelter by a Tasmanian Tiger whose breath smelled of apples that he said came from the orchard James owned.
The newspapers and TV reported his every word to a gullible public.
The Tasmanian Tiger was finally declared extinct in the 1990s but the last one in captivity had died in a Hobart zoo in 1936. So the chances of a dead animal strolling down the main street of Windy Mountain in 1967 were even slighter than its chances of hailing a No. 2 bus at that time of the morning.
James had felt justified putting an end to the nonsense.
Wish-Wash had never forgiven him for what he did.
Now he never missed the opportunity to get one back.
* * *
When James had recovered his equilibrium, he got up from the bed and walked over to the tower of books and picked up the one on top of the stack.
It was an encyclopaedia, and the embossed gold lettering on the spine told him it was everything to do with the letters ‘Q-R-S’.
James flicked through some pages. “I thought you only read sci-fi books?”
“I had read them all,” Wish-Wash said.
James looked up sharply. “You cannot have read them all! Sci-fi is about the future, man. They are still being written!”
“Pffft. What do modern sci-fi writers know about the future? Give me Jules Verne any day.” Wish-Wash patted the next book on the stack, making it wobble. “The problem is he’s not writing any new books, so I traded in my sci-fi collection for these babies. Bet you didn’t know the Slutz Plains Op Shop traded books, too?”
James turned to the front of the book, then prodded the page with an index finger. “It says here that this set of encyclopaedias was printed in 1963. That makes them middle-aged.”
“What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?” Wish-Wash caressed the top book again. “Knowledge doesn’t change.”
“I think you will find it does,” James said. “You have gone from one extreme to the other: the nonsense of the future to the irrelevance of the past.” He snapped the book shut. “When this set of books was printed, Britain still ruled the globe. I bet the world map in this thing is coloured with lots of pink.”
“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong,” Wish-Wash said. “ If you bothered to look, smartarse, you’d see I don’t have the letter ‘M’. I didn’t get the volume with all the maps.”
James frowned. “The set is not even complete then?”
“So? Books go astray.” Wish-Wash smirked. “I held back one of my Jules Vernes in retaliation.” He pointed to the wardrobe. “I hid it in the dark where they’ll never find it.”
James returned his book carefully to the top of the pile. “Oh, very droll, Bert. Can you not see you have been had? Google is the new font of all knowledge.”
Wish-Wash banged a hand on the top book, making the tower wobble some more. “You’re just jealous, Jimbo, I’ll be spending the next three months enriching my mind. You’ll be amazed what I’m going to find in these books.”
* * *
When the other old men gave him a guided tour of the house, James was pleased to see a TV in the living room.
But it had a tiny screen encased in a large cabinet in the corner of the room.
“Does that old thing even work?” he asked.
“No reason why it wouldn’t, old cock,” Oodles said. “It went like the clappers the one time we turned it on.”
“Once?” James rolled his eyes. “Let me guess? You watched the Coronation in black and white?”
“Get away with you! Did we even have TV coverage in 1953? No, this was on July 21, 1969. Madge and I watched Neil Armstrong step on to the moon.”
“And you haven’t watched anything since?”
“Has there been anything worth watching since?”
* * *
Rooming with Wish-Wash went from difficult to unbearable.
The wardrobe rack was mostly full of Wish-Wash’s second-hand clothes he had bought from the Opportunity Shop. But he rationed himself to his elastic-banded pants and three loud shirts, which infuriated James, who barely had enough room for his one suit.
Wish-Wash solved that problem when he spilled a cup of cream soup right down the back of James’s woollen suit.
Katy took it away for dry-cleaning and James had to borrow a pair of Oodles’s overalls to wear each day. These were splattered with hard, dry green spots of paint.
Wish-Wash also had an aversion to fresh air coming in the room.
“It is so stuffy in here, can we not open the window?” James asked, night after night.
“You must be flamin’ joking. It’s freezing out there.”
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JOHN MARTIN 