Huts79

My head must have being going a bit soft, because I was glad to be going to work, to get away from mum and dad and their endless sniping about staying up, and out too late, and spending too much money, and stinking like a whorehouse. Well that was dad that said that, rather than mum. Anything other than bleach for the sink and carbolic soap for the body was a needless waste for him, and I wasn’t sure he sometimes mixed up the two. At least the noise that battered your ears first thing in the morning at work was meant to be nonsensical. A question. A request. A warning from Wullie the Pole. Apart from that everybody kept themselves to themselves, and it gave you time to think.

Peter Davinport dangled the keys over the lock to Ailsa ward, his long jaw chewing over why it didn’t fit, before he selected the right one to let me in. He stood to one side, holding the door open, like an honour guard, letting the cacophony of sounds and smell of pish and shite delicately play on my synapses and acclimatise me after my long weekend away.

‘Wait to you see this,’ he said, his grey eyes glinted out from behind the sweep of a fringe and hinted, unusually for him, at some kind of boyish enthusiasm.

‘What?’ I asked, stopping to face him.

‘You’ll see,’ he said, locking the door.

He jangled past me, with a childish sprint to the office. Usually, he took his time with chores such as walking. During work hours even his voice slowed down, so that he acquired the drawl of a gunslinger, with each word carefully measured out like a bullet.

Most of the residents were already up going to toilet, walking about half naked and getting their breakfast, the same as other normal people. Pea-head was in the kitchen behind the counter, with a Barbie sized hair net over her little head, standing in front of the hot plate. Carol stood beside her, in her supervisory capacity, leaning back against the freezer. I couldn’t see her expression because she was flipping through the newspaper.

Carol should have been on maternity leave, but her mum, fat Jackie, was watching her baby. My mum thought that was scandalous. I didn’t see what the big deal was. You just stuck a bottle in the baby’s mouth and changed its nappy, until you sent it to school when it was five. We were doing much the same thing here, only with bigger bums and no school at the end of it. But at least Carol was getting paid for it. I could also see my mum’s point, and I’d of thought the same, if I didn’t get to like Carol because of the time we’d worked together on nightshift.

Wullie the Pole was sitting in his usual chair, but his bulk was spread out over the top of his desk, as if an ogre was sleeping at a children’s desk. Double-glazing, of the office window, would have been needed to dampen down his snoring. Peter nudged his head in Wullie the Poles direction and the big childish grin on his face said, look at him. The smell of banana rum, or whatever kind of rum he’d drunk, was enough to make me feel queasy.

‘He was steaming when he came in this morning,’ said Peter, ‘I tried to make him go home, but you know what he’s like.’

‘Yeh,’ I said, commiserating with him. We all knew what he was like. ‘So what we going to do with him?’ I asked.

‘What you goin’ to do with him,’ Peter said, rolling the sleeve of his checked shirt up to up to look at his watch. ‘There’s only wee Sadie and Maureen off . And Pea-head. Everybody else is going to work. Just give them their tablets at twelve-ish and that’s it until the back shift comes on at two. You think you’ll be able to hold the fort until then?’

I shrugged. I didn’t see why not. I’d done it practically every other day, whilst Wullie the Pole gallivanted. The only difference was he was actually here in body and with spirits.

Peter took in a deep breath. ‘I really shouldn’t leave you here alone. I should phone that prick Dr Fleming and say that Wullie the Pole didn’t come in, or that he came in drunk and you are on yourself. But that would be sticking him right in. And I’m not willing to do that. If anybody comes to the ward just say that Wullie the Pole came in late.’

‘But they’ll see that he’s steaming,’ I said.

‘Och, don’t worry about it,’ said Peter, flinging his hands up in the air and looking at the big wall clock over the top of my head. He twanged the ward keys down on the desk.

‘What will I tell the back shift?’ I asked, picking up the keys to let him and Carol out of the ward.

‘Eh, just tell them that eh, his mum died,’ he said, striding purposefully ahead of me.

‘What age was she?’ I said. ‘Not that it makes any difference,’ I quickly added in case that sounded too callous.

‘About 100,’ said Peter, not breaking his stride.

Carol was standing at the junction between the dining area and the hall, already waiting for Peter. He tapped her on the shoulder as if they were in a relay and she put an arm through his and they raced away from me. I scrambled for the right key to let them out.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Peter standing in the cloakroom foyer and looking back at me, ‘you know what the Poles are like, any excuse to get drunk.’

‘And the Irish,’ said Carol, looking up at Peter.

‘And the Irish,’ mouthed Peter looking down at her.

I set up the med trolley just off the kitchen. I was an old hand, balancing the pills on the lids of the their containers, so that I didn’t need to touch them and carefully measuring each spoonful of medication. I kept a careful watch on the more crafty ones such as Max Arthur, who were more likely to spit out or hide their pills, not that I really cared, but it was just easier to make him drink a gulp of water in front of me and after filling in the yellow sheets, be done with it.

Even when I was wheeling the meds trolley and fishing for the right key to lock it in its cupboard I kept expecting Wullie the Pole to appear at my elbow and ask to see the sheets, or ask me a question about something totally unrelated to anyone but him. But he was still sleeping in the same position. The only difference was his snoring had taken on a whistling quality. I left him in the office and picked up the paper that Carol had left and went away to hunt down breakfast from the kitchen. I didn’t know what to say to Wullie the Pole about his mum and wondered if I could get away with kidding on I didn’t know about it, and just look suitably surprised when, or more likely in his case, if, he told me.