“Right, that’s long enough
out in the sun for one day – it’s time to go back to your room. One hour, weather permitting, once a… well
how often is not your concern. Just
remember; being allowed out in the garden is privilege – being allowed out of
your wheelchair to sit on the grass, even more so. And privileges are easily taken away – so
let’s have you up on your feet, back in your chair and safely strapped in, no
argument, no fuss and…
Get that hand
away! Right now! Right this minute. You KNOW you’re not to touch yourself! I turn my back, just for an instant, speak to
your stepmother for a second or two, and the next thing I know you’ve pulled open
your top and are trying to play with yourself – DISGUSTING behaviour!”
Turning to the
other woman present with an unmistakable expression of revulsion on her face – the smartly
dressed blonde thirty-something in her sharp tailored skirt and jacket business
woman ensemble – she spoke with urgency, a practiced note of shock in her voice:
“Look! Mrs…. She’s playing with herself, your
stepdaughter is trying to masturbate, right in front of you – and you wondered
why I have been talking about having to be still MORE stringent with her care! If you need to ask about her mental state, I
don’t think you need look much further for your answer. Too much fresh air, if you ask me – I think
it is high time we thought about curtailing these garden visits altogether –
they get her too excited… Oh, look – now
she’s burst into tears, she’s crying…
She does that a lot nowadays.”
Squatting down
at the quietly weeping girl’s side, placing a supportive arm around her
shoulders, her broad haunches filling out the close confines of her dress,
pulling at the seams of the skirt: “Well
it’s no good you doing all that weeping now, missy-moos – it’s not as if you
get to see the trees, grass and flowers all that often, and… What’s that?
Did I say you could speak? You
know how strict our no-talking rule is! Are
you’re nodding – yes? Good! And you’ve
broken that rule, one of our ‘golden rules’ – haven’t you? Good girl, you’re nodding again. So you know what that means when we get you
back to your room – yes, that’s right; the cane! Good and hard!”
Regaining her
full height, smoothing down her snowy apron the uniformed woman fiddles with
the clasp securing her tippet, at her neck, the short grey ribbon-trimmed
royal-blue cape she has on over the similarly-hued long-sleeved dress, the
latter part and parcel of what unequivocally identifies her as a member of the
nursing profession. The abbreviated
little cape is overly-warm in the mid-summer sun, despite being open at the
front and terminating only a little way below her bustline. The stiffened white cuffs at the wrists do
little to improve matters, three-button deep like something off a Victorian
costume and the full-length open bottomed girdle that provides the otherwise
over-plump buxom woman with her almost waspish outline, supports her dark
seamed stockings and raises her bust to a startling extent, is doing nothing to
improve her temper. But here is a woman
to whom – as out of date as it may seem - ‘standards’ are everything. Perhaps even younger in years than her
companion, her charge’s stepmother, the combination of the out-of-date-looking
uniform with the raven bun pinned up so severely as to seem to stretch the skin
of her forehead like a badly-judged facelift and full breasted, broad-hipped
figure conspire to make her look perhaps ten years older. The cap on her head, a traditional if
nowadays old-fashioned form of headdress, dazzlingly white in the sun draws the
eye from a face that despite the functional bare-utility of everything else about
her has benefited from a modicum of subtly and expertly applied makeup,
outlining large coal-dark eyes that hide a hypnotic intensity, bringing out
high refined cheekbones only slightly submerged by the excess weight she
carries, her surprisingly sensual – given everything else - full lips painted
with deep ruby lipstick helping to play down the hinted-at double chin, the
latter minimised by her habit of holding her head erect, a habit undoubtedly
encouraged and enforced by the dress she wears with its stiff high collar.
There is
something of a triumphal expression on her face as she turns her head to the
other woman, the flickering dawning of a barely-suppressed smile twitching at
the corners of her mouth – it is something she is not entirely sure she
particularly wants the other woman to be aware of; not really ‘the done thing’,
not ‘professional’. And she is VERY keen
to be perceived as professional – she had once been so much more than
this. But that panel… What did THEY know? And that run-in with social services… and all
that legal business… and being struck off – THAT had been the worst; having to
change her name, her whole identity – start over. And her name was recorded on some god-damn
register now – a damning indictment indeed.
But among those that didn’t know there were those that didn’t care. And sometimes, just occasionally – seemingly
impossibly rare, one might be forgiven for thinking – there were certain roles
for which such an indictment, such a stain, could actually stand as a qualification. And she was VERY good at what she did – the
best:
“You see that,
Mrs….. She’s nodding. She knows what to
expect, so why does she keep doing it, insisting on talking without
permission? I – we – have tried so, so hard to persuade her to desist –
and through a firm but fair hand I thought we were getting somewhere; until
today. But we have to have that rule in
place for her, otherwise she disturbs everyone else, forever insisting that
there is nothing wrong with her, trying to catch the ear of all and sundry –
basically trouble making… Oh well…”
She sighs. She
shrugs resignedly, absentmindedly toying with the bright silver filigree ball
clasp fastening the blue elasticated belt over the top of her apron, an ornate
thing shaped like the spreading wings of a butterfly, then checks the fob watch
pinned to her breast, before turning her attention back to the girl:
“Oh well.” She repeats with an irritated puff,
almost sighing again. There is a sense
of excitement growing within her somewhere now, within her belly like the
‘butterflies’ many a child has reported feeling when on a playground swing, a
warmth she can feel in her cheeks. She
has already planned what she is going to say next - and it is that anticipation
that is rising within her now like sap, from the tingling ache flowering around
her groin area, spreading outwards from the pit of her stomach, up, up, up,
rising like a fountainhead to her heavy breasts hot in the elevated satiny
confounds of her corselette’s bra cups, seemingly swelling them like water
rushing in to a pair of already over-tight balloons: watching the girl snivel
she can feel her nipples stiffening, a moistening where she would rather not
admit to:
“Place your
hands on your head like you’re meant to when you have got something to ask -
you might as well now. That’s it, that’s
better… come on out with it then, quickly… and try not to stutter, for heaven’s
sake, child. We haven’t got time for all
that spluttering and stammering. Oh for
god’s sake, try again. All that
b-b-bu-bu-bu… If you can’t say a word
try a different one, a simpler one…
What’s that? You’re getting very
difficult to understand nowadays. Don’t
YOU think she is getting difficult to understand Mrs….? Lord only knows what she is going on about… Come along, child, out with it – some excuse
I suppose, for your filthy behaviour in front of you stepmother and
myself… You weren’t touching yourself? All that polythene is sweaty and making you
itch? Where is it making you itch? Use the proper word. Ha,ha,ha – sorry Mrs…. But did you hear that? She says the plastic is making her fanny
itch, making it go all red… Stupid girl;
it’s probably red because you’ve been playing with yourself… Oh, now you say it’s because you were shaved
this morning, where the razor burned?
Well, you HAVE to be shaved, for hygienic reasons – and if it itches, it
itches; but that is still no excuse for touching yourself.
You don’t touch
that thing – that filthy thing between your legs - you don’t touch your bottom
and you don’t touch your breasts; not EVER.
But you cannot be trusted – that is why you have to undergo supervised
toileting, be given sponge baths rather than be allowed to wash yourself, not
even be allowed to wipe your own bottom lest your fingers be tempted to wander,
sleep with your hands in mittens; all to break this vicious cycle of you
continuingly masturbating. Do you think
I LIKE having to stand there in front of you watching you strain and wince with
your big fat bottom all hanging over the edge of the bedpan, having to pull on
a plastic apron and rubber gloves to wipe you clean afterward with you slumped
over my lap like a big pink beached
whale?
What? You STILL claim you weren’t touching
yourself? But both your stepmother and I
both watched you masturbating right in front of our eyes. So are you saying we’re both liars? You’d better not be! Good, sensible girl – you’re shaking your
head. So you WERE masturbating, then –
it’s best to admit it; I’m sure you’ve learnt THAT much by now. Good, good, you’re nodding. See that Mrs….? She’s nodding. Then say it out loud – and watch that
stammering – say you were masturbating, AND in front of people, right out in
the open… There. See?
That wasn’t very hard, was it?
But it makes you think, doesn’t it?
I mean just think about it for a moment.
You keep insisting that there is nothing wrong with you, that you don’t
need to be in care, that you could live on your own, fend for yourself that
you’re not mentally defective – but there you were just now masturbating away
furiously like some… I don’t know what – in front of everybody. Isn’t that the sort of thing only the
mentally ill would do?
Don’t start all
that again, saying that you were sweaty and itchy and just moving the plastic
about to get some sort of relief – you’ve just admitted to us that you were
playing with yourself. Well I can do
nothing about you having to be kept shaved, so if it is the polythene making
you sweaty ‘down there’ then I can only assume that the sun will be making it
worse – another reason to curtail these trips outside I think. Oh now look at you – you’ve started that
rocking back and forth again. Ahh you
look startled, you’ve just noticed yourself doing it. Rocking – you need to stop yourself doing
that; even you must know that is a sign of mental instability… So there you are rocking backwards and
forwards, stammering and stuttering, masturbating in front of people. And you expect people to believe you to be
mentally competent?
She’s been doing
that rocking thing a long time now too, Mrs…… Yes I thought
that would convince you of the need to keep her under our care longer. And the need for more stringent
measures? So no more trips outside for
her, a tightening up on her discipline – and a more structured, more
institutional way of life. I know you
have many business trips coming up anyway, but I’d like to suggest leaving her
in our care to a greater extent, by which I mean far fewer visits, or better
still we can arrange for you to see her progress on a regular basis without
being seen or making actual contact. The
less contact she feels she has with the outside world, the easier she will find
it to let herself be assimilated in to institutional life – and then this
question of her mental competence needn’t ever arise. But if you have any papers that need signing
today, I think you’ll find that once we have got her back inside - and she has
faced the disciplining she has earned herself for today’s unseemly kafuffle –
she’ll be more than amenable to your wishes; I think you’ll find she’ll sign
anything you put in front of her… Unless of course she wants to claim to be
mentally incompetent to deal with her own affairs, in which case we have
paperwork already drawn up that will deal with that eventuality…
Look she’s
shaking her head – I didn’t think she’d want to go down that route."