“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! 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 a look of, the smartly dressed thirty-something in her sharp tailored skirt and jacket business woman ensemble: “
“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."