JOURNAL OF A COFFIN DODGER CHAPTER D (1)

Chapter D (1)

A breeze caressed the unmarked graves lying between me and the abandoned medical research building.

'That building,' Anne said, as we sat together sometime during the 1970s, 'was abandoned, what, about fifteen years ago?'

I nodded as I followed her gaze and looked at the derelict building.

'Because...'

'The scandals were multiplying,' I replied. 'And the asylum administration were shit scared that the Sydney papers would take an interest in those scandals.'

'Scandals ...?

'That include the reasons for the bodies in graves lying between here and the building,' I finished as I lowered my voice.

I felt the chill from the stone bench we were sitting on seeping into my bones as Anne muttered,

'Bloody hell! And given the hundred yards or so between us and the building there would be quite a few graves,' Anne finished, shaking her head.

'With no headstones.' I added, 'The New South Wales Government had them removed and dumped into Sydney Harbour. The government also wanted to avoid any scandals through any suggestion of deaths linking them to what went on in that building.'

'That's a bastard of a thing to do,' Anne replied. She paused and then continued, 'So, the top floor, the second storey..' '

'I wandered through the building,' I said, 'about a year ago, taking photos to add to my album of pictures about this place. On the second floor there were signs saying things like 'Eugenics Museum,' storeroom, etc. So I guess it once housed specimens, diagrams, photos etc supporting the dubious ideas of Eugenics.'

'And on the ground floor...'

'I took photos of signs saying theatre, examining room, seminar room, Medical Director's Office etc. So, it looked like that floor housed the administration offices, a theatre, teaching rooms, and a ward at the far end of the ground floor.'

I paused before concluding.

'But that floor now houses a brothel.'

'What!' Anne yelled.

'That's what I wanted to show you,' I said. 'Because I have an idea for revenge after what happened to you.'

'Oh! Count me in. No matter what is involved. But you heard about the brothel...'

'From Agnes, a female patient.'

'Oh, bloody hell!' Anne exclaimed. 'And that person is now...?'

'Well, this is the shortened version. I'll tell you the complete narrative some other time as there is something else we must do this afternoon.'

'In summary then: One night duty a couple of weeks back I helped Agnes escape. Her parents picked her up outside the asylum. They were moving inter-state, so there was little chance of their daughter being returned to the asylum.'

'Jesus give me strength.' Anne replied. 'The asylum where I did my nurse training in England was so different to this place.'

'I guess Agnes was expected to provide services for the customers of this brothel?'

I nodded.

'Gawd! I feel sick! And who runs this brothel?'

'Brace yourself.' I said gently. 'The two blokes who raped you.'

Tears welled in Anne's eyes.

She clenched her fists and spat out the words.

'I hope your plan for revenge includes murdering those bastards.'

'It could do.' I replied.

Anne's eyes opened wide as she turned towards me.

'Really! Tell me more.'

We chatted for a while as a warm summer's breeze rustled the brown grass around the stone bench.

At the of our chat, I said, 'let's now enter the brothel and have a look at its layout.'

We stood up from the bench and made our way to the building as the breeze tugged at our skirts

Though the front entrance was boarded up, we found a side-door opening onto a shed.

Before we pushed the door open, Anne looked around the shed and said, 'this looks like the ideal place to start the fire. Those grease stains on the shed's concrete flood tell me 'customers' park their cars here.'

Anne grinned, 'There's not time at the moment to tell you why I know, but I will draw a diagram to show you how to set a car alight.'

She looked around the shed and went to a double-hung window to one side of the door.

She lifted the window and it opened easily.

Anne chuckled and said, 'if you open this window before torching the cars, the flames will definitely enter the building.'

With a spring in her step, she said, 'let's look inside.'

After we entered the building, we walked past the furnishings of the brothel.

Like the room that once housed the ward office, going by the staff rosters still pinned to a notice board on the far side of the room.

Furniture which included a garish vinyl Burnt Orange sofa and four lime green vinyl lounge chairs.

Similar to items found in the asylum's Furniture Store. Like the varnished round plywood table in the centre of the room.

Reeking cigarette butts overflowed four ashtrays on the table. Each ashtray had a New South Wales Government Public Service logo fixed to the side of these clear glass receptacles.

A ruby-red portable transistor radio now sat in the middle of the plywood table amidst a variety of scrunched-up lolly and chocolate wrappers.

The male nurses who ran the brothel also furnished two of the abandoned building's ground floor cells.

In each, there was a wide, metal-framed bed. A once-white, grotty sheet, greasy grey cotton blanket, and a malodorous, dark stained pillow lay on each bed's lumpy mattress.

The faint stench of kerosene drifted from a lamp perched on the vinyl top of a small square grey metal cabinet beside each bed.

A butt-choked round ashtray added to the sordid vibe of these rooms. A pongy dark red Bakelite receptacle that lay on the seat of a Sapphire Blue straight-backed vinyl chair that stood a couple of feet away from each grey cabinet.

We continued our walk through the building past unfurnished cells and bathroom furnished with green enamel basins and green enamel bathtubs.

When we reached the operating theatre, we paused at the entrance.

I looked at the operating table as Anne said Anne continued 'So, a surgical theatre which carried out ...'

'According to the asylum grapevine, abortions on female patients and dubious medical experiments to do with the failed science of Eugenics.' I replied.

'But given what happened to me,' Anne said, 'I am beyond being shocked. So, abortions because...,'

I responded in a soft, firm voice, 'Again, according to that grapevine, because of a sexual assault on a female patient by a male staff member.'

'Far out!' Anne replied. 'This place is so different from the places I trained and worked at as a nurse overseas. I've only been here about two months and during that time, I've reported a male nurse for hitting a patient, I've been sexually assaulted, I've seen patients locked in cells with no reference to the principle of habeas corpus as my lawyer father used talk about ....' Anne sighed deeply.

'So me being raped by two male nurses the other week while making a bed in a cell in Ward 24 is just another horror this Sydney asylum wants to cover up,' Anne whispered. We then returned to the room that had once been the Charge Nurses Office.

'Fucking hell! Anne,' I said, as we sat on the lime green chairs.

'What a debauched, disgusting place. It reeks of exploitation and the pits of human depravity.'

I agree with what you said, as we looked into the cells. It's not only the furniture that is stolen from the Furniture Store. So are the lives of women forced to take part in the degenerate goings on in this place.'

'Yer!' Anne replied. 'It's fucking way past the time to get these bastards and burn their bloody cesspit to the ground. And hopefully take out both those bastards as well.' 'You're OK with the part you play in my plan?' I asked. 'To be honest, if it didn't offer the chance of getting back at those two blokes, I would have refused. I have never seen myself as being flirtatious or of offering myself for paid sex. But I'm willing to give it a go.'

A pensive silence descended between us as dust motes frolicked in the light that seeped through a dusty, cracked window smeared with grey spiderwebs.

The room's damp air reeked of stale cigarette smoke, kerosene, and cheap pomade.

I glared with disgust at the creatures crawling on the pie crusts scattered across the table.

A trail of black ants snaked across the table, from its edge, past the crusts, to a cracked teacup and up the side of the receptacle to its lip.

The cup was one of six on the table, spread around an empty clear glass whisky bottle and a brown sherry bottle. Both with their stoppers missing.

I shifted my gaze and looked at the light sparkling on the blue kerosene in the glass bowl of a lamp on the table. One of two alongside a torch.

The torch lay beside the Ruby-Red transistor radio and two open packets of diazepam tablets, both with the Asylum Pharmacy logo on the sides of the boxes.

With the power cut off, the lamps and the dim light gave the room a perverse, sensual vibe.

My stomach churned as, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rat scurry across the scabby, patterned vinyl floor. It ran up the side of the Burnt Orange sofa and disappeared into a hole in the seat of that item of furniture.

'Let's get the fuck out of here before I vomit,' I said.

I got out of my chair as Ann said, 'Yep! Time to split. I'll draw a diagram of a cars engine and the position of the carburettor. And I'll give it to you tomorrow, yer? I nodded. We gave each other a hug after we stepped outside.

We then separated and went to our wards. We did not meet again until the night of the fire.

On that night, the insipid light from a crescent moon cast creeping shadows across the cold iron corrugations of the shed's roof.

Moonlight that lit my way as I walked beside my bike with Anne's diagram in the top pocket of my coat. I pushed my bike rather than riding it, to keep a low profile, as I snuck through the crisp night air.

I heard a soft, repeated 'mopoke, mopoke,' the call of the Southern Boobook Owl and the hoarse bark of a fox as I drew close to the brothel.

I stopped underneath the branches of a Moreton Bay Fig Tree a distance from the building. A position that gave me a view of the shed as I parked the bike beside the tree's massive spreading root system.

Above me, twigs creaked as an eerie breeze rustled leaves lying in the watchful shadows of the tree as I eyed the open shed.

I took a torch out of the pocket of my coat, and with stealthy tread, approached the brothel.

I turned the torch on when I reached the shed.

The torches' dim light, shining through the piece of cloth I had wrapped around the torch, lit my way into the musty depths of the shed.

The two cars in the shed, a two-toned HR Holden Special Sedan and a dark blue Riley Pathfinder, were like vehicles my cousins owned.

Anne, on a day off, had phoned me that evening as I was finishing my shift and told me she had snuck into the bordello that afternoon. She had opened the double-hung window that looked into the shed and left the building unchallenged.

The window she opened was the sole window for a storeroom that I noticed on my visit. A disused room lined with wooden shelves across a hallway from the former ward office.

That night, having parked my bike, I walked between the cars and the shed wall towards that opened window.

I heard Anne's voice and laughter drifting into the shed. I also heard two male voices; voices I recognised as I had worked with the two male nurses who had raped.

According to the plans Anne and I had planned, the three of them were in the former ward office. The two men who ran the brothel, now drinking alcohol Anne had laced with chloral hydrate.

I gave Anne a small brown bottle of that liquid the previous evening. I had removed the bottle from the asylum pharmacy the other day when I went to collect medications for the ward where I was working.

As the laugher and the talking progressed, I reached the window.

I heard laughter and a DJ talking on the radio before the sounds of a pop song drifted into the shed.

I walked beside the cars, parked nose to tail, until I reached the vehicle nearest the shed's entrance.

The front passenger side window of this vehicle, the Holden Special, was open. I therefore opened the Holden's bonnet without difficulty.

With the dim light of the torch guiding me, I leaned over the warm, smelly, greasy engine. By using Anne's diagram, I located the carburetor. I turned the petrol inlet screw until petrol started dripping.

Leaving the bonnet open, I walked towards the back of the vehicle.

I paused outside the shed, a short way from the Holden’s rear bumper bar. I turned towards the vehicle and lit a cigarette as petrol dripped onto the concrete floor of the shed.

Petrol fumes drifted around the dark depths of the corrugated iron shed's interior and through the open window into the building as I stared into those dark depths. Depths with several meanings I meditated on as I watched the smoke rings I created drifting in the moonlight.  

I turned my gaze towards the shed floor and saw, in the torch's light, petrol flowing towards the wall.

When the petrol reached the wall and flowed towards the window, I switched off the torch and put it into my coat pocket.

I watched the cigarette make a beautiful glowing arc when I flicked the cig towards the spreading stream of fuel.

I turned towards the bike and ran like hell away from the shed, so I missed seeing the cigarette landing.

My knees were knocking together as I stood beside my bike, underneath the shadowy, whispering branches of the Moreton Bay Fig. I watched the fire flare and lick the flapping curtains on either side of the open window.

The Holden went first, followed by the Riley in a booming ball of flames.

With a ferocious roar, amidst the clashing sounds of cascading corrugated iron, the fire finished with the shed and tore into the building as I heard the window breaking. 

While roof tiles exploded in the heat and the stench of burning rubber, vinyl, and wood choked the night air, Anne bolted out from the flaming building.

I raced towards her and threw my arms around her. She held me tight as we burst into tears. The sense of relief was enormous.

As the sobs subsided, I took a hanky from my jeans pocket as Anne took a handkerchief from the sleeve of her nightie. After we dried our eyes and blew our noses, we walked in silence to the bicycle.

In the light of the flickering flames of the fire, I took a set of clothes draped over a brown leather suitcase.

A thick leather strap secured the suitcase to the bike’s rear carrier. I had untied the string attaching the clothes to the suitcase before I walked to the shed.

I handed the clothes to Anne.

After she changed into the fresh clothes, I handed her a bottle of perfume I took from my inside coat pocket. She gave her hair a soaking with the spray from the bottle to mask the stench of smoke and returned the bottle.

As she returned the perfume bottle to me, I muttered,

'Fucking hell!' and I shook my head.

'It was a bloody near thing!' Anne grinned as she squeezed my hand.

She kissed me on the cheek and whispered 'thank you,' before turning and striding towards the asylum's main entrance.

She left an aroma of sweet smelling perfume trailing in her wake as I secured the leather strap to the bicycle carrier.

Once out of the asylum, Anne, as she told me later, caught a bus on Victoria Road to Wynyard Park.

From there, she made her way to the underground station and caught a train to Central Railway Station.

On reaching the station, she transferred to a train travelling to the North Coast of New South Wales.

As Anne disappeared into the night, I picked up from the ground the clothes smoky clothes she had discarded.

I strode towards the fiery, crackling building and tossed the clothes into the flames, as sirens screamed across the sinister asylum grounds.

As blues and twos drew closer to the fire, I returned to my bike, hopped on, and rode to a call box.

I phoned my housemates who, when I was on leave, I shared a farmhouse with on an abandoned North Coast dairy farm.

When the phone was answered, I said a friend, Anne, who I had known since high school, was on leave from the private clinic where she worked as a nurse. She was coming to spend a week or two with us and was travelling on the overnight mail train from Sydney.

My housemates agreed to meet her in the sleepy early morning hours of the next day at the station close to the farm.  

With that task completed, I returned to the place in Putney where I boarded in a house owned by a married couple. And, after I worked three shifts at the asylum, I went on leave.

When I returned to work after that fortnight's leave, asylum gossip filled me in with details of the fire.

Dental records identified the body dragged out from underneath the up-turned green enamel bathtub. The body was that of one of the male nurses who ran the brothel.

The other male nurse failed to report to work after the fire, leaving his whereabouts a mystery.

I nodded my head as I listened to this gossip flowing between staff members as I sat in the Staff Dining Room, enjoying my meal, while suppressing the occasional smile.

But a couple of weeks after returning from leave, I no longer listened to this gossip because I, too, left the asylum.

I left during my breakfast break, as I had no reason to return to the ward.

The day before I left, I collected, from the Pay Office, my salary envelope containing a fortnight’s pay. I had used up my recreational leave entitlements with the fortnight's leave I took after the fire.

My manner of leaving I had heard mentioned on the asylum grapevine as, 'gone to Victoria.'

It alluded to Victoria Road, the busy main road that ran past the main entrance to the asylum and into the city.

A reference also, according to that grapevine, to the dozens of nurses over the century of the asylum's existence who had walked out of the place. Walked out during a meal break and did not return to their wards to finish a shift.

After I signed out for my breakfast break on the day I left the asylum, I rode my bicycle to the house I boarded at in Putney.

I entered the house, and, after taking off my blue nurse's uniform and the white leather lace-up shoes, I had a shower, and put on a shirt, slacks, and sandshoes.

I wrapped my blue nurse's uniform around the garbage from the bin in the kitchen and pushed the greasy, rancid bundle into the incinerator in the backyard. After I shoved the shoes in beside the bundle, I set the bundle alight. I grinned with happiness as flames gobbled up the shoes and the uniform.

Returning to the house, I entered the kitchen.

I wrote a note with a biro I took from my shirt pocket to the married couple on a sheet of paper I tore from my notebook. They worked long hours at the fish and chip shop they owned in Drummoyne.

I informed them I was leaving; the bicycle became theirs.

After I returned the pen to my pocket, I placed the note on the kitchen table. I put the money I owed for board and the house keys on top of the note.

With the battered leather suitcase from my bedroom, which I had packed the previous night, I left the house.

I caught a bus to the city, and from there, made my way to Central Railway Station.

I bought a single first-class ticket from the Booking Office.

As well, I bought a caramel malted milk-shake and two pies with sauce from a milk bar at the station.

When I finished the milk-shake, I took the two meat pies with me and ate them on a train to the North Coast of New South Wales.

I had phoned Anne a couple of nights before leaving the asylum.

I left a 'catch up' conversation until we met and had the time and leisure for such a chat. Therefore, I told Anne only of my travel plans, and when she saw me get off the train, rushed to greet me.

We held each other tight and, after separating, amidst laughter and war-whoops, hand in hand, we strolled out to the Buggy.

A bright red Volkswagen Country Buggy I and my three house mates, Samantha, Jane, and Clare, had found in a shed on the dairy farm. A discovery about a year before Anne joined us.

Anne climbed onto the driver's seat and switched on the engine. We sat in the Buggy with the engine idling. I looked at Anne, puzzled.

'Why aren't we moving?'

Anne gripped the steering wheel and stared through the windscreen.

'I must inform you of something. I keep the engine running to mask what I am about to say.'

Alarmed, I asked, 'Anne...'

'No! It's not that. I am not about to respond to voices I hear in my head. Not that I have any. But normal conversations between people carry in this still, quiet country air.'

She paused, and, with a rush, blurted out, 'Clare knows one of the guys!'

'What...?' I stared at Anne's pale, drawn face.

With my heart pounding, I exclaimed, 'Fuckin' Hell! Holy Mary! Mother of God! What are we to do?'