Burnt Not Broken

Burnt Not Broken By Michael Davis

Burn and Turn - But do not break.

Published by SmashWords

First published in 2013

Copyright Michael Davis Sydney 2013

The right of Michael Davis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Right) Act 2000

All rights reserved: This work is copyright No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means - - electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording or by any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the permission of the author under the Copyright Act 1968

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to any person living or dead or places and events are used fictitiously and any resemblance is purely coincidental.

DEDICATION

This piece of literature is dedicated to the truly wonderful doctors, nurses and staff of the Royal North Shore Hospital, Sydney.

I, and many other fortunate people, owe to these dedicated professionals the simple fact that I am alive and have been able to write this modest book which I hope you will find entertaining.

Michael Davis

Manly, New South Wales

2013

Chapter One

I put my head out of the car door preparatory to alighting. A row of old gentlemen in armchairs smiled and waved. Two separate white-haired individuals smiled and waved even harder. ‘I’m Kate and this is Joe,’ they called. ‘Hi Kate, hi Joe,’ I replied. ‘Jonali not Joe,’ said one of them indignantly.

‘There you go stuffing if up already,’ said my daughter.

‘They’ll forgive me I expect,’ I said getting out.

I had arrived at the Benedicto Battlers’s Seehow residential establishment. My welcome committee were suddenly responding to an intercom call requiring presence for luncheon at noon. I took stock of the surroundings. At first sight they seemed very pleasant. Whilst the residents, about fifty elderly men and women were manoeuvring sticks and hand walkers to queue up at a door marked Dining Room. The spring Australian sun shone benignly on a scene straight out of a Victorian country house. Green and gold paint marked gables and wrought iron balustrades. A rather weed-encrusted flowerbed in front of the management building seemed a bit odd but who was I to find fault? The entire establishment spread over several acres of gently sloping hillside. All that was missing was a pair of cricket umpires in sharply striped blazers, an ideal place to convalesce from horrific burns in a house fire that had nearly taken my life.

I bade farewell and thanks to my daughter and went to investigate.

A man wearing a nautical peaked cap and smoking a pipe was sitting in the shade.

‘Gidday I’m Jonty. I’m new’.

I can see that, he said gruffly, tapping his pipe. ‘I’m Bjorn’. And I’ll bet the other half is Andersen, I said to myself in view of the broad Swedish accent. ‘Great, I said, and are you a boatie?’

‘I am indeed,’ he replied proudly. ‘And what’s your problem?’

‘I’m here for a few weeks to recover from burns. This is a convalescent home isn’t it?’

He looked at me and laughed long and hard. ‘You idiot. This is a thinly disguised lunatic asylum. The only way out is in a wooden box. Forget about your burns, digger, and start thinking about your will.’

‘Oh, I said faintly. ‘I don’t believe this.’

‘Oy kids this ain’t reco arvo. Which one of you charming bastards is Jonty?’

‘Me.’

The vision which arrived out of the blue looked at me with disgust. ‘Might have thought so. Don’t even have a hat do ya? Bloody nerve, get off your arse, kido you’re going to your bedroom.’

She trotted ahead, small bottom wiggling saucily in skin-tight shorts. She looked about sixteen.

‘Didn’t know they employed school kids.’

She paused half way to a large cottage. ‘Get real will ya. Me kids are taking HSC. It’s a High School exam.’

The Beebs were definitely proving full of surprises…

A shambling figure loped down the admin corridor. I was receiving my new boy’s briefing from mother Molly. ‘We’re bulging at the seams,’ she said. Looking at her I could believe it. She was a lady of some presence. Round as a rubber ball, double chin, icy blue eyes, fiercely white hair and a vague strangely cold gaze. She spoke quickly and never seemed to draw breath.

‘Food is good, she said. Light breakfast, heavy lunch. Light dinner. Can’t overload the elderly gut at night.’

‘Night?’ I asked. Dinner was timed for 5 pm. (Even little children don’t eat as early as this. It leaves 15 hours until the next meal which again is listed as light).

The cold blue eyes focused on me. ‘We don’t like trouble-makers, Jonty. I cut their trust account advances.’

‘I haven’t got a trust account, I argued. Your ninety percent of my pension is all you’re getting.’

The pale gaze warmed into genuine laughter. ‘That’s all you know, mister’.

A loping figure down the corridor diverted her attention momentarily.

‘Pull your trousers up Duggie,’ she called sharply. ‘I’ve told you before. Privates are for private places.’

The figure obliged and disappeared round a corner.

‘Poor dear Duggie,’ said mother Molly fondly. ‘Such a baby.’

‘Do his parents visit?’ I asked foolishly. They would both have been over 90.

‘Don’t be stupid. Just be good. Breakfast is lovely: coffee or tea, cornflakes or porridge, toast and marmalade or vegemite. Twice a week we have a splendid cooked breakfast; baked beans, spaghetti, scrambled or boiled eggs. You’ll put on weight. Duggie doesn’t talk. He’s on the heavier end of our low care.’

‘In that case why don’t you hand him over to the proper hospital?’

‘We have our reasons,’ she declared vaguely. ‘Off you go, Mister. Go and unpack that ducky little suitcase of yours. It’s half an hour ‘til lunch. Lonnie’s cooking roast beef today. Just melt in your mouth. It’s Friday and even the Holy Romans have a go.’

Thus dismissed I retired back to the cottage and small prison cell optimistically called a bedroom. Down the long cottage corridor many rooms were vacant. Half the place was empty. I wondered why.

The Residence was built at the front of a rolling hill and overlooked the suburb of Seehow. Residents up and about to catch the early morning sunshine could squint eastward against the light and see glimpses of a blue Tasman sea beyond the inevitable CBD high rises, all developed with an eye to profit rather than inspiring architecture.

The Benedicto Battlers’ administration offices, surgery, public rooms and living quarters had been constructed in the manner of many early Australian homestead settlements. That is to say, a collection of single storey buildings with green corrugated iron roofs, whitewashed brick walls and verandahs - each connected to the next by means of a covered walkway, the tin overhang a partial protection against the elements. Round the various buildings trees large and small, but mainly gums and pines, sat stolidly on small lawns and provided a vaguely botanical garden setting.

Below the establishment a busy main road with its stream of thrusting traffic - trucks, vans, taxis, private cars and the occasional daring, sweating cyclist pedaling madly uphill on his tenth gear - all this mechanical noise and bustle separated what appeared to be a bucolic oasis of quaint charm from the harsh realities of existence in a crowded metropolis. Altogether the kind of peaceful hideaway to which one would happily consign an elderly relative recovering from a knee replacement or a spot of prostrate trouble. And so it was with considerable optimism I looked around me as I joined the queue for lunch on that first day.

The Dining Room was airy and spacious; large enough to accommodate up to one hundred or so hungry convalescents at tables for four or six. At one wall a hatchery was open to show a spotless kitchen fronted by a large European in whites and chef’s hat busily using a steel to sharpen a rather useful looking carving knife. In the Dining Room in front of the hatchery a row of similarly white clad Asians stood silent in various poses as though starring in a photographic calendar. One of them stepped forward, beckoned and silently ushered me to a vacant chair at a table for four. I found myself opposite a small individual with a scarred and distorted face. The eyes, however, were warm and intelligent.

‘Hi, said the small man, I’m Bertram. Who are you?’

‘Jonty,’ I replied.

‘If you say so,’ he commented.

After this exchange he fell silent and I noticed the whole room was very quiet. Expectant somehow. Against one wall was a large steel trolley on wheels manned by an extremely pretty girl who was without doubt Philippino. Ah, she’s the pill peddler, I thought. They’d had one of those at the Rehab Centre. But she too seemed expectant, waiting for something or someone.

‘Bertram,’ I asked quietly, ‘What are we waiting for?’

‘Scout Cathy. She does the honours.’

‘Do you mean she says Grace or something?’

‘If you say so,’ came the reply

The other two men at my table gave a grunt and stifled a laugh at this but remained otherwise silent. Further speculation was cut short by the arrival through the door of a mousey looking, grey-haired lady sporting a brightly coloured Benedicto Battler’s t-shirt. In two short seconds she managed to give the impression she had been late for everything all her life. Straight out of Alice in Wonderland.

‘Scout Cathy,’ said Bertram with a knowing grin.

‘Is she always late?’ I whispered.

‘If you say so’...

Scout Cathy came to a halt and fixed her gaze on a rotating ceiling fan above my head. This caused her eyeballs to circulate and added to her somewhat weird appearance.

‘Good afternoon everyone. I’ve come to say Grace with you. Oh great Jamboree Chief in the sky. Look down on his humble campers and grant that the meat be sweet and the pudding gooding. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ came the grateful reply from half a hundred hungry throats. And action commenced.

The chef behind the hatch dropped the knife he had been sharpening, produced a long handled omelette flipper from somewhere and commenced dishing portions of what looked like pie onto plates at great speed. These were whizzed away by the servers and then trollied off to the various tables. The pretty Philippino carer consulted a chart and pushed her cart round, disbursing large quantities of pills at each stop. At my station she dropped no less than twenty-four medications of varied colours and sizes on my side plate and with her free hand slid a glass of water in front of me.

‘You new? You Henry?’

I nodded.

‘You take. Now. Pliz.’

I figured I did not have much option at this stage and dutifully swallowed away.

In the background Scout Cathy took a quick look at her wristwatch and scuttled through the door. No doubt late for her next appointment. Possibly another astonishing appeal to the god of campfires. It was all every stimulating. I took the opportunity to have a glance around at my new fellow residents and see if I could get some sort of a handle on what they would be like to consort with about the place.

The first thing to be noticed was that although the overwhelming majority of the men and women present would never see sixty-five again there were some who looked quite youthful middle-aged - in their early forties perhaps. I was to learn later that appearances are deceptive and that the young looking were almost without exception those to who nature had not allowed the ups and downs of life to enter their consciousness and wrinkle the skin.

The second observation I made was that segregation of the sexes seemed to hold sway even at meals. Both women and men were divided into two rather similar camps. Those who conversed with each other and those who did not. The quiet tables exuded a somewhat mournful air; the silence of those whose intake of valium and other potions is dulling their perception of what is real and actually happening. It was quite a shock. These human beings seemed happy enough. Happy enough, that is, to lift a food laden fork to the mouth. But the spark of human intelligence which separates us from cockroaches, so we are told, seemed to be totally lacking. It was rather chilling and brought back memories of Jack Nicholson and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

At the tables where conversation was in full flood I became aware of another interesting human condition. There was always a chief wolf. Someone whose personality dominated his or her fellows. For good or ill. At one table a very large and swarthy lady had her fellow females in stitches of laughter. At another, an absolutely enormous short man dressed, almost unbelievably, in brown workmen’s overalls was laying down the law to a cowed and humble audience.

It was all very intriguing. At first glance, everything totally normal. Just a bunch of fairly elderly men and women mainly clad in casual but obviously very clean clothes, having a bit of lunch. Somewhat boring really. And yet, as I was to discover in short order, what lay one inch beneath the surface was in many ways surprising: sometimes horrifying, sometimes sad, sometimes happy