Narrator Character Analysis

“Matron's got to you, has she?”

“Sorry, but yes.”

“Dunno what's gunna kill me first,” he mutters. I give his breakfast tray an ineffectual rub. He hasn't touched his poached egg, and I can't blame him—it's sitting there like the eye of a giant squid. Mr. Moreton has an oxygen mask, but tells me he hates using it. “Feel like that thing's choking me,” he says. “Like in the war.”

“I know you're a friendly girl,” says one of the nurses in low, embarrassed tones when she stops me in the corridor a few minutes later, “but it's best not to fraternise too much with the patients. If you're a cleaner, I mean.”

“Right,” I say. “Sorry.”

“Just do your work.”

“Sorry, I will.”

I trudge, my face burning, down towards the corridor of elective surgeries. It's OK, I tell myself. At the end of the summer holidays I will have saved enough for three months in Europe, where I will walk the streets of Paris and London, absorbing culture and life and fraternising with whoever I like.

Each idle post-op girl, surrounded by hothouse flowers, watches me with the same bored, incurious gaze as I move about their rooms, spraying and wiping. I pump mist over the immaculate mirrors, catching sight of my own reflection there—my unreconstructed nose and studiously neutral face. Like these girls, I'm filling in my own allotment of time here, except that when I leave, it'll be to buy that plane ticket to London, and be gone. My hand holding the yellow cloth rises and falls, cleaning pointlessly, searching for a splash of toothpaste or cup ring mark on the laminex's spotless, glossy surface.

His uniform's blue and mine's an ugly mauve, clearly designating our status in the hospital pecking order, but he's still asked me to the staff Christmas party. The other cleaners, when they hear this, behave as if it's a doctor-nurse romance from Mills & Boon. They speculate on what table we'll all sit on, what they'll wear, whether there'll be door prizes this year. When I say I'm not sure if I'll go, they look at me flabbergasted. “But it's free,” Dot says,” and there's a whole three-course meal!”

“That nice young man asks you to go, I reckon you go,” says Noeleen. “He's from overseas somewhere, isn't he? Play your cards right and you might get a trip OS!”

“These things happen,” he says. He surveys his empty hands bleakly. “I marched, last Anzac Day,” he adds. “Hard to believe, isn't it?” He looks morosely out through the sealed window to the courtyard garden, where the five iceberg rosebushes struggle to survive their pruning.

I'm remembering my directive about fraternising, but I hate standing here beside his bed, like some official. I sit down and peel off my glove, pick up his hand. It's like a bundle of twigs. That hand, I tell myself, held a rifle, tried to stop itself trembling with terror, worked all its life.

Here's another mistake I make: I think Len will be chastened, satisfyingly disconcerted, forced to eat his words. When he hears, though, he is radiant with pride. As he congratulates his wife it strikes me for the first time that, with their odd shifts, this fifteen-minute tea-break is one of the few times the two of them see each other all day.

“Do you know,” he says, “I haven't had a bath in I don't know how long. Used to having to sit on a plastic chair in the shower. Or stand there clutching those bloody grab rails. Haven't been like this for years.”

“Like what?” I say. My heart is jumping into the back of my throat.

“Weightless,” he says finally. “Completely weightless.”

As I put away his shaver in his toilet bag I see an unopened bottle of aftershave with a sticker saying Happy Christmas, Grandad! still on the box. I raise my eyebrows enquiringly.

“Why not,” he says when he sees me holding it up. “Pass it over here!”

It's the recklessness in his voice that decides me. I help him change his pyjama top for the shirt and sweater he has hanging in his cupboard, and I hold out my hand to help him into his wheelchair again.

“You look very nice,” I say.

“Do I? I feel bloody great,” he says, stretching with a contented yawn, and there's a little zephyr of morning breeze that washes over us, warm and fragrant with the faint scent of blossom, and I'm about to speak again when the propped-open door slides slowly shut behind us on its hinges. There is a terrible echoing click as it closes on its own deadlock, and I recognise the sound as soon as I hear it. It is the sound of a plane door closing without me, ready to taxi down a runway and take off for London.

Down in the kitchen the other cleaners will be pouring their cups of tea out of the urn now, Marie remarking coolly on my absence, and Matron will be waiting for us, I am certain, at the nurses' station, in the no-man's-land of the hospital's thermostatically cool interior, its sterilised world of hard surfaces, wiped clean and blameless. Someone else's jurisdiction now.

“Matron's got to you, has she?”

“Sorry, but yes.”

“Dunno what's gunna kill me first,” he mutters. I give his breakfast tray an ineffectual rub. He hasn't touched his poached egg, and I can't blame him—it's sitting there like the eye of a giant squid. Mr. Moreton has an oxygen mask, but tells me he hates using it. “Feel like that thing's choking me,” he says. “Like in the war.”

“I know you're a friendly girl,” says one of the nurses in low, embarrassed tones when she stops me in the corridor a few minutes later, “but it's best not to fraternise too much with the patients. If you're a cleaner, I mean.”

“Right,” I say. “Sorry.”

“Just do your work.”

“Sorry, I will.”

I trudge, my face burning, down towards the corridor of elective surgeries. It's OK, I tell myself. At the end of the summer holidays I will have saved enough for three months in Europe, where I will walk the streets of Paris and London, absorbing culture and life and fraternising with whoever I like.

Each idle post-op girl, surrounded by hothouse flowers, watches me with the same bored, incurious gaze as I move about their rooms, spraying and wiping. I pump mist over the immaculate mirrors, catching sight of my own reflection there—my unreconstructed nose and studiously neutral face. Like these girls, I'm filling in my own allotment of time here, except that when I leave, it'll be to buy that plane ticket to London, and be gone. My hand holding the yellow cloth rises and falls, cleaning pointlessly, searching for a splash of toothpaste or cup ring mark on the laminex's spotless, glossy surface.

His uniform's blue and mine's an ugly mauve, clearly designating our status in the hospital pecking order, but he's still asked me to the staff Christmas party. The other cleaners, when they hear this, behave as if it's a doctor-nurse romance from Mills & Boon. They speculate on what table we'll all sit on, what they'll wear, whether there'll be door prizes this year. When I say I'm not sure if I'll go, they look at me flabbergasted. “But it's free,” Dot says,” and there's a whole three-course meal!”

“That nice young man asks you to go, I reckon you go,” says Noeleen. “He's from overseas somewhere, isn't he? Play your cards right and you might get a trip OS!”

“These things happen,” he says. He surveys his empty hands bleakly. “I marched, last Anzac Day,” he adds. “Hard to believe, isn't it?” He looks morosely out through the sealed window to the courtyard garden, where the five iceberg rosebushes struggle to survive their pruning.

I'm remembering my directive about fraternising, but I hate standing here beside his bed, like some official. I sit down and peel off my glove, pick up his hand. It's like a bundle of twigs. That hand, I tell myself, held a rifle, tried to stop itself trembling with terror, worked all its life.

Here's another mistake I make: I think Len will be chastened, satisfyingly disconcerted, forced to eat his words. When he hears, though, he is radiant with pride. As he congratulates his wife it strikes me for the first time that, with their odd shifts, this fifteen-minute tea-break is one of the few times the two of them see each other all day.

“Do you know,” he says, “I haven't had a bath in I don't know how long. Used to having to sit on a plastic chair in the shower. Or stand there clutching those bloody grab rails. Haven't been like this for years.”

“Like what?” I say. My heart is jumping into the back of my throat.

“Weightless,” he says finally. “Completely weightless.”

As I put away his shaver in his toilet bag I see an unopened bottle of aftershave with a sticker saying Happy Christmas, Grandad! still on the box. I raise my eyebrows enquiringly.

“Why not,” he says when he sees me holding it up. “Pass it over here!”

It's the recklessness in his voice that decides me. I help him change his pyjama top for the shirt and sweater he has hanging in his cupboard, and I hold out my hand to help him into his wheelchair again.

“You look very nice,” I say.

“Do I? I feel bloody great,” he says, stretching with a contented yawn, and there's a little zephyr of morning breeze that washes over us, warm and fragrant with the faint scent of blossom, and I'm about to speak again when the propped-open door slides slowly shut behind us on its hinges. There is a terrible echoing click as it closes on its own deadlock, and I recognise the sound as soon as I hear it. It is the sound of a plane door closing without me, ready to taxi down a runway and take off for London.

Down in the kitchen the other cleaners will be pouring their cups of tea out of the urn now, Marie remarking coolly on my absence, and Matron will be waiting for us, I am certain, at the nurses' station, in the no-man's-land of the hospital's thermostatically cool interior, its sterilised world of hard surfaces, wiped clean and blameless. Someone else's jurisdiction now.