JOURNAL OF A COFFIN DODGER CHAPTER F

Chapter F                             

'Stuff happened at the farmhouse last night, crazy, nasty stuff,' Rebekah exclaimed as she walked out from behind a chrome edged Forest Green Formica counter.

Her shoes clacked across shiny square black and white Lino floor tiles while high above her, four fans whirred along the length of a grimy pressed metal ceiling.

The fans ruffled the hot, dusty morning summer air of a town on the North Coast of New South Wales as Rebekah strode towards the only customer in the shop.

A woman praying and reading as she sat beside a window in a booth, one of twelve spaced along the walls of the milk bar. A booth with two vinyl benches: one coloured Scarlet Red and the other Avocado Green.

Rebekah held her dark blue skirt in place as she slid onto the red vinyl bench.

And looked across a Coral Skylark Formica table towards Clare, sitting on the green vinyl bench.

'What do you mean 'stuff happened at the farmhouse?' Clare replied, raising her head from reading a Bible lying on the table.

And then, with an abrupt movement, Clare swung her head to the side and looked out, through the window at High Street, the town’s main road.

Where a blaring car horn followed a loud, panicked shout.

Clare flinched as a dog's yelp accompanied the screeching of a car's tyres.

She took several deep breaths before moving her gaze from the window.

'Sorry,' she said as she turned and faced Rebekah.

'That car horn... I'm a bit twitchy about Bill.'

She shook her head.

'That, plus his talk yesterday of the asylum, which sent nightmares of that place raging through my sleep.'

With a worried look, Rebekah moved her hand across the table.

'Well, given what you shared with me last night at my place before evening prayers, I think you have every reason to be jumpy,' Rebekah replied.

With a gentle warm touch, she squeezed Clare's hand.

'What happened to you at the asylum sounded horrific, on top of what you shared about Bill. Though we don't know where Bill is, or what he is up to, let’s praise the Lord for your rescue from the asylum.'

She took her time before withdrawing her hand, leaving Clare confused.

She didn't know whether she regretted Rebekah removing her hand or whether she welcomed Rebekah removing her hand.

Thoughts interrupted, though, by Rebekah continuing her story.

'So, about ten minutes ago, as you prayed and concentrated on studying God’s word, six blokes strode into the shop.'

'They swaggered up to the counter like cowboys entering a bar in some Hollywood movie.'

'I knew a couple of them from primary school because we sat in the same classes. That is, before they were expelled by the headmaster for playing spin the bottle with girls from my 6A class.'

'Anyway, these blokes pushed their Akubra hats back from their faces and leaned over the counter.'

She paused and whispered, 'I felt like telling them, like your mother, I speak with my mouth not my…'

Her voice gathered strength as she continued, 'So, I served them meat pies, sausage rolls, a bottle of milk and a packet of Iced VoVo biscuits for later. As well as cigarettes, matches, and chewing gum for now.'

It helped to settle her mind by focusing on that list before taking a deep breath.

'When they weren't leering at me and talking to my, you know…' Rebekah's cheeks flushed as she pointed to her white blouse and indicated her chest.

'Sorry for interrupting,' Claire looked with concern at Rebekah. 'That's shocking. How dare those men treat you like that? That must be so upsetting!'

'Yes, it is, but it doesn't happen every time blokes come to the counter, but when it does, I don't like it. It makes me feel uneasy,' Rebekah whispered with a quaver in her voice.

Taking a deep breath, she continued.

'Anyway. They boasted and chuckled about chasing the 'sexy lesos' out of the farmhouse at Danvers's old dairy before they gathered up the items they had bought and left the shop. But that dairy is where your place is, right?'

Clare nodded.                                           

'I thought so,' Rebekah replied.

'But that's weird,' Clare said.

'What on earth were they chasing? I stayed at your place last night. My car, the VW Buggy, is in your driveway. And, several days ago, the others left the farmhouse. So, there’s no one out there.'

Clare shrugged her shoulders.

'The VW Buggy was still in your driveway this morning when we set off, walking to your place of work, chatting and laughing like two schoolgirls.'

Clare stopped as the bell above the shop door tinkled.

Rebekah turned towards the door as the aroma of perfume and sandalwood soap wafted around the shop.

Three women stepped through the open doorway.

As the door closed, Rebekah stood up and called out as she faced the women, 'Hi! I'll be right with you.'

Anyway.' Rebekah said leaning towards the table as she turned back towards Clare. 'The blokes. They were laughing about how they shone their ute's spotlight on a speeding Holden as they chased it…'

Rebekah stopped and stared at Clare's white, drawn face.

'Heck! I bet that Holden is Bill's car! What the blazes was he up to! And where is he now?' Clare exclaimed, her hands trembling.

'Oh! Dear! Look! Give us a minute. And I'll bring you over a cuppa. And a plate of cream buns?' Rebekah replied.

Clare savoured the taste of the buns as she whispered, 'that would be wonderful.'

Rebekah turned and walked towards the three women now standing at the counter as Clare closed her eyes in prayer and clasped her hands together to stop them trembling.

I read about this incident, a couple of years after that conversation, in Clare's autobiography. We got to know each other when we houseshared in Vaucluse before she left for the farmhouse on the North Coast.

We kept in touch even after I travelled to England to pursue a career in nursing, six months after Clare moved to the farmhouse.

She sent me a signed copy of her autobiography to where I was living in England.

On the flyleaf, she gave me permission to use that incident, as well as others, in the autobiography I was writing. And she expressed her thanks for my part in the rescue mission that Rebekah mentioned.

A mission that occurred about eighteen months before that conversation between Rebekah and Clare.

An assignment also to rescue another woman, Jane, on a cloud-swept moonless night.

A night for a fervent imagination to conjure up narratives about whispering ghosts.

And a night in which the souls of memories of what lives had once been to slip in and out of the dreams of over a thousand people.

Dreams animated on that night by a lonely breeze as it ruffled the unkempt grass over unmarked graves and whistled grim dirges along dank, gloomy corridors. A sad, pensive breeze wandering through the dark, watchful shadows cast by fifty asylum buildings scattered across two hundred acres of ground. A perturbed breeze that shook the drainpipes and windows of the asylum buildings which housed those people.

The breeze that rattled the rusty window bars of the buildings which held Jane and Clare as I strode towards a Burnt Orange VW Kombi.

I thought about their reasons for incarceration as I reached that vehicle.

Both imprisoned for different justifications. But the underlying motives had more to do with men's attitudes towards women than for any claimed purpose.

Clare’s incarceration, therefore, started a couple of months before her imprisonment, when she joined a group of fellow university students.

A group, led by a professor, who volunteered to take part in a social experiment to evaluate the veracity of the admission criteria to the asylum.

They volunteered to be pseudo-inmates to ‘hoodwink’ the admitting medical officer into having a volunteer admitted to the asylum as a ‘genuine’ inmate.

As I found out later, Clare joined this group as she saw an opportunity to witness to the inmates and open their hearts to Christ. A mysterious part of her faith journey which is beyond my comprehension.

Though not beyond my comprehension is the retaliatory power of pissed off men.

A power unleashed as the experiment got under way as one by one, spaced over several hours the volunteers, as pseudo-inmates, entered the asylum.

An experiment, however, that disturbed the rightness of the worldview that governed the asylum.

A belief perpetrated by the groups who ran the asylum. Groups who valued misogyny and male-centric expressions of power. The male nurses and male doctors who had nurtured into existence, throughout the asylum, a bloke's world.

The sort of world which, over the centuries of human history, has a well-documented history of violence against anyone who challenged that world’s hegemony.

In challenging that authority, therefore, the professor and the students were to be the unwitting participants in another episode of that violence. Horrified witnesses when they heard what happened to Clare and another student, Tim.

For Clare, this meant clinically unjustified sedation and the abrogation of habeas corpus when male nurses locked her up in a Single Room.

An event I was not aware of on the day before my leave.

Unlike the activities of the other pseudo-in mates who self-presented to or were taken to Ward 7, the asylum’s Admission Ward.

On the morning of that day, a Pied Butcher Bird's melodic call drifted through the chilly shadow of a building. My rostered ward, Long Stay Rehabilitation Ward 6, as I approached the ward entrance.

I entered the ward and walked along a corridor towards the back veranda of the building after my breakfast break.

When I reached the veranda, I stood in the bright morning sunlight spilling along the length of the open veranda, watching two black and white magpie-larks.

They bobbed and weaved as they strutted their way along the dull red tiles of the veranda floor.

Movements unperturbed by acrid cigarette smoke spiralling out from a row of chairs crammed together, in a line, along the veranda.

A male inmate, puffing away on a durry, occupied each one of those blue or green or orange vinyl armchairs, jammed against the dull brown brick wall of the ward.

I moved my gaze from the smoky veranda, distracted by a bright Blue Wren flying towards a row of bushes.

A row of nondescript shrubs, about six yards away from the veranda, which marked the boundary of the unlocked ward.

A scruffy green lawn, littered with butts, covered the ground between that boundary and the veranda.

As the wren landed on a branch, I looked towards the far end of the veranda where, near a toilet block, three inmates and another person chatted.

The person's spontaneity, their ease of manner and ready laughter enlivening the edgy morning air piqued my curiosity.

Therefore, I walked towards them as the inmates moved away towards the toilet block.

As I drew near to the person, I said, 'Hi! Are you a visitor? If you are, sorry to say, you're outside visiting hours.'

The person grinned and said, 'No! No! No! Do you know what? I have interacted with at least half a dozen uniformed nurses since my admission to this ward last night. You are the first one to challenge me.'

'You're an inmate? Pull the other one! But if so, female inmates are supposed to be next door, in the building’s other wing.'

The person laughed and said, 'You’re right. I’m not an inmate. I’m a pseudo-inmate and my name is Robin.'

'You little beauty!' I replied. 'This admission business is bullshit. But tell me, how did you get yourself admitted?'

After I introduced myself, Robin chatted about the professor's social experiment.

She discussed the group sessions she attended where the professor facilitated instruction and role-playing about admission procedures and the alleged symptomology of mental illness.

I interrupted our chatting as I took a notebook and biro from a pocket of my uniform and wrote my contact info. on a sheet of paper, I tore from the notebook.

I handed the page to Robin and said, 'I’d like to keep in touch in case we’re interrupted.' 

She pocketed the page, smiled, and said, 'I’d like to do the same.'

I handed her the notebook and pen.

She wrote on it and handed the notebook and pen back to me.

While returning the items to a pocket of my uniform, I heard the magpie-larks screaming harsh alarm calls as they flew off the veranda.

I turned towards the other end of the veranda and watched, with trepidation, five male nurses, not rostered to Ward 6. They filed onto the veranda from the doorway I walked through about ten minutes ago.

The male nurses' shoes drummed out a loud, frightening rhythm on the red tiles as they strode towards Robin and me.

I knew the jig was up.

As inmates cowered in their vinyl armchairs, I whispered to Robin, 'run! And don't look back.'

'Why?'

'Back along the veranda,' I replied.

Robin's face went pale when she looked towards the male nurses. They had clenched fists and a pissed-off expression on their faces.

Robin whispered, 'thanks' and squeezed my hand before sprinting from the veranda.

She dashed across the lawn, past the shrubs, and belted out of the ward's confines.

I turned from watching Robin racing away and yelled, 'smoko!'

For many years before, during and after my time at the asylum, the New South Wales Government provided free cigarettes to the asylum's inmates.

In Ward 6, the locked shabby off-white wooden cabinet for these smokes stood against the veranda wall behind where Robin and I had been chatting.

My allocated duties as a registered nurse included that of 'smoko' nurse. Therefore, I had the key to the cigarette cabinet.

The throng of thirty-five male inmates gathering around me and the opened cigarette cabinet impeded the progress of the male nurses.

Though I felt their glares burning into my back, I did not look in their direction. I continued to dish out cigarettes and lit them as asked.

I locked the cabinet door as the throng of inmates dissipated.

And took several deep breaths as I watched the magpie-larks fly back onto the veranda as the last of the male nurses filed through the doorway.

The rest of the shift was uneventful.

My four weeks of paid annual leave started the day after those five male nurses charged along the veranda.

But on that first day of leave, the phone rang in the hallway of the house where I was staying. A commodious double storey brick and tile dwelling in Wentworth Avenue, Vaucluse.

I walked to the phone placed on the top of a narrow green wooden table resting against a cream-coloured hallway wall. Phone books lay on a shelf underneath the phone. A pen and notepad were on one side of the phone. Standing on the floor on the other side, a brown, straight-backed wooden chair with a padded white seat rested against the wall.

A friendly 'Hi!' greeted me after I answered the phone.

'It's Robin. I spoke with you yesterday in Ward 6.'

'Yep! I remember,' I replied.

Robin had a quaver in her voice as she continued.

'I got away, thanks to you. I've had nightmares over the looks on the faces of those male nurses. That, and their body language, terrified me.'

She paused, 'but it's not me I am worried about. Clare, a member of our group, hadn't returned to uni. And we hadn't heard from her. However, early this morning, we found out she is being held at the asylum.'

Robin started crying.

'They released another member of our group, Tim, a few hours ago. But what they did to him...' Robin's sobs grew louder.

When the sobbing eased off, Robin said,

'Unbelievable. The professor and the rest of us are shocked. No one expected the level of violence Tim was subject to.'

'The professor has stopped the experiment. He had tears in his eyes when he spoke with us this morning in his rooms at the uni.'

'So, of course, we're scared witless at what has happened to Clare.'

'I spoke with the professor after he spoke with us. I told him how you saved me yesterday. We wondered if you will do the same for Clare.'

I took several deep breaths as I held the smooth black Bakelite telephone receiver in my hand as I sat on the straight-backed chair.

The carolling calls of currawongs flowed into the house as I fiddled with the long telephone cord linking the receiver to the phone.

A faint whiff of beeswax drifted from the chestnut brown polished floorboards of the hall as I gazed towards the open front door at one end of the hall.

I looked across a sunlight filled porch towards the distant sound of a lawn mower. That sound and the smell of mown grass wafting into the hallway evoked memories of languid conversations. Unfocused convos., cool drinks and reading paperbacks with a settled mind on somnolent summer days. Like the holiday I had planned, but now….

'Are you still there?' Robin enquired.

'Yes,' I replied, returning with a jolt. 'Sorry. I got wrapped up in my thoughts. It's blown my mind what has happened.'

'I share your concern about Clare's safety. She’s been there, for what, almost twenty-four hours now. That’s unconscionable. Yep! Count me in.'

Drifting into the hallway, from beyond the porch, came the sound of a barking dog and a child’s voice calling, 'catch!'

'I'm on leave,' I continued, 'and therefore cannot make enquiries at the asylum. But leave it with me. I'll contact you after Clare is out.'

After we chatted about Tim's incarceration, Robin thanked me as we ended the call.

Considering what Robin had said about Tim’s experience at the asylum, I had genuine concerns for Clare’s safety. Placing her on the list for ECT later in the week was a frightening possibility.

Despite my holiday dreams, therefore, the asylum and the safety of others now dominated my thoughts.

A weighty preoccupation as I drove a friend's Burnt Orange Volkswagen Kombi out from Wentworth Avenue on a moonless night. The first night of my annual leave.

I took a fleeting glance at the grey outline of the Harbour Bridge as I descended a hill into Double Bay.

A view obscured as I drove through the shopping centre and onto Kings Cross.

I left the lights of the Cross behind me as I drove along Oxford Steet until I reached Hyde Park and turned into the back streets around the city centre. I left those streets and joined the mid-evening traffic flowing towards Pyrmont Bridge.

That stream flowed at a steady pace as I crossed the bridge, swung onto Victoria Road, and headed for the asylum.

I entered the asylum via a back entrance and drove around the grounds at a slow pace, guided by the vehicle's parking lights.

Samantha, who I shared the house in Wentworth Avenue with, whispered as she sat in the front passenger seat.

'How does anybody find their way around this spooky place unless they live or work here? I haven't seen a name on the side of a building or a sign giving directions.'

'That's deliberate,' I replied. 'A bloody-minded way of discouraging friends and family from visiting those they care about. To visit a loved one becomes a frustrating, aggravating battle, so why bother?'

'That's nasty,' Samantha responded.

'Like Jane's parent's having the family doctor at their house waiting to section Jane when she arrived to have lunch with her mum and dad today.'

'I started crying when I phoned her parent's place after your phone call from Robin.'

'I wanted to know whether Jane was staying at her parent's place or whether we will go to the movies. Jane's mum answered the phone.'

'She sounded happy, so happy she let slip where Jane is. Her mum bragged about breaking up Jane and me. What a bitch. But it will not happen. Jane and I will stay together and tonight, we’ll fix that bitch of a mother, won't we? '

'Yep, we will.' I replied.

'A mongrel dog receives better treatment than what's been dished out to Jane. It's an inhuman bastard of an act. Like what’s happened to Clare. Therefore, I'm only too pleased to help them both get the hell out of here.' 

A mission I started with the search for Clare.

Because, given what was dished out to Tim, I thought Clare might need medical attention. Therefore, it became a priority to find her before rescuing Jane.

Also, the manner in which Tim was treated showed the brutal enforcement of the asylum's male-centric values. An imposition that meant Clare’s punishment had to be a misogynistic lashing out.

Therefore, solitary confinement in a Single Room, a ward cell, had to be the place where she was confined.

These were the rooms I had searched in several wards a couple of hours before I pulled over, yet again, to the side of the road.

I switched off the parkers and the engine and gazed through the windscreen at leaden, grey-coloured windows.

The windows of another shadowy cheerless building in my search.

'Hmmm.' I said, 'no light showing through the windows means the night station light is off. Looks like the night-staff have gone beddy-byes.'

Samantha turned towards me, grinned and said, 'works to our advantage.'

As I had disconnected the internal lights of the van, no light showed when I opened the driver's door and climbed out.

After whispering, 'I’ll be back in five,' to Samantha, I closed the door and made my way towards the ward.

I had a spring in my step after searching the cells and walked out of the ward.

I headed towards the Burnt Orange Kombi and, when I reached it, opened the driver’s door.

With tears in my eyes, I whispered, 'Clare’s here!'

With a sigh of relief, Samantha replied, 'thank heavens!'

She opened the front passenger door, climbed out, and joined me at the front of the vehicle.

'Ready for this?' I asked.

'As right as I will ever be,' Samantha replied.

'Good on ya.' I tipped Samantha a wink as eerie grey fingers of mist gathered around the van.

With the light of our torches shaded by the cloth we had wrapped around them, we walked towards the ward.

'Where are the cells?' Samantha whispered as we approached the rear entrance to the ward.

'Downstairs,' I replied as the dim light from our torches reflected off the peeling green paint of a door.

'And the night staff have gone beddy-byes?'

'More than that,' I replied.

'Crashed out in chairs, upstairs in the night staff office, snoring the place down with a couple of bottles of booze at their feet.'

I had left the rear entrance door unlocked after my reconnoitre, so I pushed it open.

Samantha and I crept through the doorway and made our way to the cells.

'The inmates are locked in the upstairs dormitory. There's only one occupied cell out of the six in this ward.'

'Poor bloody Clare,' Samantha whispered.

'I’ve never met her, but I recognised her when I shone the torch through the glass slats on the door,' I said.

'She and her group of Christians preached at The Domain on a Sunday afternoon.'

'I admired Clare’s courage, as on many occasions, I watched her preach in front of jeering, laughing crowds.'

'So, Clare preached at the 'Soap Box Corner' across the road from the Art Gallery?' Samantha asked.

'Yes.'

'I've been to that place a few times but never to listen to the Christians. So, I too have never met her,'

Samantha said as we reached the corridor leading to the cells.

We walked along that dank, murky passageway as trembling shadows fled from the dim light of our torches.

When we reached Clare's cell, I unlocked the door with the set of keys given to asylum staff.

The door creaked as I pulled it open.

I looked at Samantha as we switched off our torches.

We waited, but neither the neon hallway lights flickered on, nor torch light sent shadows fleeing in our direction. The creaking sound had not provoked an obvious response from the night staff.

'Phew!' I whispered.

'My heart is beating so fast I think it will burst,'

Samantha responded.

'OK!' I said. 'Let's get Clare back to a world of sanity.'

We switched on our torches and entered the cell.

I went to the bed and tried to shake Clare awake.

She responded with a groggy snore.

'Bastards!' I exclaimed, 'Cruel bastards! There was no need to medicate Clare.'

I looked at Samantha, whose eyes, in the torchlight, gleamed with tears.

I curled my lip in disgust.

'Let alone turn her into a zombie! What total shits! Come on. We’ll have to carry Clare out. Bloody hell!'

Therefore, after Samantha had dried her eyes, we half-lifted, half-dragged Clare out of the bed and up to the doorway.

'I won't worry about locking doors. Let's chance it and focus on getting Clare to the van,' I said.

'Great idea,' Samantha replied. 'I don't want to stay any longer in this nasty, creepy place than I need to.'

With Clare's arms around our shoulders and an arm each around Clare's waist, we dragged Clare out of the cell and out of the ward.

With our free hands, we held our torches. We made steady but exhausting progress until we jumped as a scream stopped our journey.

I watched the upstairs windows as my nerves settled.

'What the heck?' Samantha whispered. 'That has set my heart racing again.'

'Believe it or not,' I replied, 'a Barking Owl made that freaky scream.'

'God! I wish on a night like tonight it had just kept bloody quiet,' Samantha replied.

I grinned and whispered, 'There’s a faint single light on upstairs. But it's not moving. Come on, let's get Clare into the van.'

We reached the Kombi as a cold, damp mist settled around the vehicle.

As I held Clare against the side of the van, Samantha opened the sliding door.

We lay Clare down on a mattress on the floor of the van.

As Samantha stepped back out of the vehicle, I rolled Clare onto her side. I put a pillow under her head and drew a blanket over her.

After wiping the drool from Clare's face with a tissue from my pocket, I stepped out of the Kombi.

I straightened my back as Samantha closed the sliding door.

We switched off our torches, climbed into the front of the Kombi, and closed the front doors.

'Holy crap! I'm buggered!' I said as I took slow, deep breaths while resting my head on the headrest.

Samantha chuckled and said, 'I am so totally wasted.'

After I caught my breath, I said, 'Come on! Let's get Jane,' as I started the engine.

I switched on the parking lights and checked the rear vision mirror as I drove back onto the road.

For a minute or two, the red glow of the taillights reflected from the downstairs windows of the ward as we drove away.

Up on the second storey, a male nurse stood in front of a window across a passageway from the night nurse's office.

The stench of urine slashed the stuffy air of the passageway after the male nurse unzipped his fly.

As he pissed on the wall below the window, he saw two moving red lights.

'Nah! Not happening,' he muttered as he leant in closer to the window and gazed at the red lights.

'It is!' he whispered as he watched the red lights move away from the ward.

'Nah! It can't be! Must be the flamin' booze. It's time I gave it up.'

He shook himself and did up his zipper as he staggered back into the night nurse's office.

He switched off the office light, tripped over a bottle, and slumped into an armchair.

Weeks later, after I returned from leave, I heard about this incident from the asylum grapevine. An incident, however, the male nurse did not mention to the police when they interviewed him the next day.

As the vehicle’s parking lights illuminated our road to the ward where Jane was imprisoned, Samantha said, 'I’m worried sick about what they might have done to Jane now that I’ve seen what they did to Clare. It’s damn disgusting to do that to another human being. And to think nurses did it …,' her voice lapsed into silence.

I nodded as Samantha asked,

'And you said there was another pseudo-inmate whom the male nurses caught?'

'Yep! A bloke, Tim,' I replied, 'who the male nurses kept in the Male Security Ward, Ward 29, last night.'

'And the male nurses released him, when, this morning?'

'That's right!' I paused and took a deep breath.

In a quiet voice I said, ' after they paddy whacked him.' 

'Paddy whacked?'

'The nurses' name for beating a person with a phone book.'

'Oh! God! This place is truly evil. Let's hurry and get Jane out of here.' Samantha replied.

When we reached the ward where the male nurses also put Jane into solitary confinement by locking her into a cell, I parked the Kombi on the side of the road.

I switched off the lights and stopped the engine.

I looked through the windscreen and exclaimed, 'Holy shit!'

'Look!' I said as I pointed towards the building, 'At the second storey windows.'

Samantha stared, wide eyed, through the windscreen.

‘Oh! My God! What are we going to do now?’

She exclaimed, despair drenching her voice as she and I watched the building.

Where blazing light cast moving shadows across the curtains of the second storey windows.