CHAPTER 9

SANATORIUM CONFINEMENT

As much Alice feared being ‘put on tether’ she feared more being transferred to the care home’s infirmary sanatorium. One way or another she had learned - or rather, been encouraged to learn - that the sanatorium section was run with an iron fist by a particularly domineering matron (or House Mother, as was her given title) under the guidance of an extraordinarily authoritarian psychotherapist. At least here in the workhouse she could wear relatively ordinary and real and proper clothing, even if the garb did go to make up an extraordinarily ugly and unflattering institutional uniform. In the sanatorium the poor unfortunate inmates wore sensible striped pyjamas seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day - sensible in that the masculine looking button-through jacket and trouser ensemble was devoid of waist elastic or drawstrings for ‘safety’ reasons. But of course what that was really all about was yet another method of exercising control over a girl, imposing constraints and imposing discipline.

It was far easier to control a group of difficult-to-handle teen girls when they were dressed in deliberately outsized pyjamas, with arms that dangled way past their fingertips and trouser legs that extended so far past their ankles as to present a serious tripping hazard. A girl could not cut much of a figure, nor present much of a problem, when both her hands were kept occupied in hitching up a waistband that continually threatened to fall around her knees and tugging up trouser legs continually tangling around her feet and ankles like a hobble. And she’d even heard whispers that a girl could easily find herself placed in a straitjacket once they had her there in the infirmary sanatorium, if she wasn’t careful, if she was particularly petulant, if she was foolish enough to fight back against the régime!

And that was what the sanatorium was all about in reality, she’d heard, dealing with those more difficult-to-handle girls that came along ever so once in a while. That tiny section leading off the infirmary had little to do with sickness or disease; unless of the course rebelliousness and disobedience could be labelled as illnesses. But then there was that school of thought adhered to by certain members of the staff that held that behavioural aberrations of any form could be considered as a type of mental illness. And it was a school of thought that the woman doctor who ran the place definitely subscribed to.

Everything about the institution, the care home or industrial school or however one cared to term this place, was about instilling conformity and unquestioning obedience to authority.

Where the cane and the strap and the over-the-knee spankings failed or left off, the sanatorium with its tedious medical procedures, constant rounds of psychological testing, questionnaires and intimately probing interrogative interviews would take up the slack. In fact they didn’t actually do much at all to a girl there, not physically. Yes, there was the cane and the strap for talking and other forms of non-compliance - and there was a strict rule of absolute silence enforced on the ward - but the rest just came down to making a girl sit and wait, and wait, and wait...

Alice knew all about that firsthand now; her worst nightmare had now come true. Alice, you see, had tripped up once too often. She’d got caught out trying to talk to that Welsh girl, Gwyneth; feeling sorry for her, feeling sorry for having gotten her in to that private walking psychological torment called ‘the tether’ she’d tried to make contact, catch the girl’s eye with a wink and a raised eyebrow, whisper her own name across when the woman supervising the girl had had her back turned and the girl was down on her hands and knees in her overall and matching tabard, scrubbing brush in hand. And Alice’s approach had been duly flagged up - by the girl herself - that blessed elfin Welsh pixie!

Alice had failed to take into account the effect residing in this establishment could have on a teenage girl. She hadn’t taken in to account the way in which the unrelenting régime of punishment, discipline and psychological manipulation could leave a girl turned against and competing with her peers, vying for favouritism, striving to please this or that nun, mistress or overseer while distrustful of her comrades, those around her who were in the same boat. She should have known better: Betrayal, snitching, was commonplace among these unfairly confined girls; or at least it suited the powers that be that it should appear so.

If ever a girl was ‘tripped up’ or caught out over an infringement of even a minor rule or stipulation you could be sure that a hint would be let slip at some point, inferring that some manner of treachery had been to blame, that someone had put her hand up or ‘blabbed’. Often for a while afterwards it would become noticeable that some girl or other appeared to being treated with some degree of favouritism; perhaps an extra ration at mealtimes, a noticeably lighter workload or reduced emphasis on meeting her quota in the sewing room or a smile from a certain nun - usually the one who had done the catching-out - an encouraging pat on the head or an affectionate pat on the bottom.

The thing was; at other times these little tokens of favour were apt to be dolled out in a quite random fashion in any case. A girl could find herself fawned over, patted, smiled at, encouraged, at one moment, then find herself pulled up over some really tiny, insignificant petty infringement the next by the very same staff member. And in such a situation, more often than not, a punishment would be awarded out of all proportion to the crime; a half dozen or so with the cane, say, knickers down, for having her school tie slightly crooked if under instruction in the school room, or the top button of her uniform work dress unfastened if in the workroom, or even something as simple as having caught the eye of another girl; and all while the woman concerned would mutter about how let down she felt, how he girl had disappointed her.

But Alice herself had unwittingly fallen foul of that first approach, found herself set up as the Judas of the group. Another girl, a serious-eyed but winsome plump blond with an over-broad behind and an upturned nose - one of the vast majority whose name she had no idea of - had tried to appropriate a tool from her workbench; the silly thing should really have known better, since all such implements were each attached to the back of the workbenches by fine but strong stainless steel linked chains. In the event the desperate girl’s surreptitious attempts at twisting off the chain from the handle of an awl - presumably intending to put the tool to use in some sort of escape attempt - had been thwarted, both by the unexpected resilience of the chain and by having been spotted.

It had most probably been one of the eagle-eyed overseers who had seen it; certainly Alice hadn’t seen anything untoward as regards any of her fellows having drawn attention to the girl’s activities. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that as they had filed out of the workroom - the girl concerned having been treated to a prolonged and drawn-out thrashing with a heavy leather strap across her bare behind while fastened by her wrists and ankles over the so-called ‘flogging horse’, this being a prologue to being placed on tether - a nun had patted Alice’s bottom, smiled and treated Alice to a cheery “good girl”.

It had been the fresh-faced and decidedly pretty young nun, Sister Evangeline; unlike the inmates, nuns had names; the girls were only ever ‘the girls’. Even the eldest of them - a tall, slim brunette with high cheekbones and an out of proportionally-large bustline whom Alice estimated to perhaps be in her mid-twenties - was only ever referred to or addressed as ‘’girl’. Alice had seen her wince once or twice when patronisingly told she was being a “good girl”, but she wouldn’t dare open her mouth of course; unless it was to suck on her thumb. She had tried to abscond and been sent to the infirmary’s sanatorium for a period; she had been sucking her thumb at intervals ever since she’d returned.

Sister Evangelina and one of the other nuns seemed to take a particular interest in Alice’s welfare for a while after the incident with the girl in the workroom, praising her work, patting her bottom. And Alice had found herself lapping it up. It had cheered her... until that is she caught the withering, hateful glances from the other girls; then it had started to sink in. One particular girl had seemed to glare more intently, more hatefully, at her than the rest and when in time it had been Alice’s turn to be pulled up - one of the buttons fastening the front of the skirt of her work dress had come undone and she hadn’t noticed - it had been that girl who seemed to have suddenly come in to favour. Alice for her sins had suffered a dozen agonizingly stinging swats with the Scottish tawse across her bottom while upended over Sister Evangeline’s lap.

Then the fragrant Sister Evangeline had turned her attention to another of the girls - the new girl, Gwyneth - and Alice had experienced first the pain of rejection, then pang of jealousy, and then... well, downright irrational hatred towards the blameless girl herself. And as over time she did actually witness certain acts of betrayal - and come to suspect others - Alice found herself growing to actually despise her fellow detainees; she certainly trusted none. It was part of the reason that when that girl Gwyneth had whispered her name to Alice and then asked Alice in return for hers, had offered her hand in friendship, Alice had shot up her hand, reported the girl for breaking the no-talking rule. It was how the game was played; mutual distrust locked each of them into her own little cocoon, and the drive to please made each one of them part of the establishment, each becoming in essence one of the links in her own chain.

Doubtless that girl, Gwyneth would have been led to understand that Alice was one of the ‘pets’, one of the eager-to-please lapdogs who could be relied upon to inform. Doubtless too, therefore, the girl would have seen any approach by Alice as a potential trap, being set so that she might be punished further. And even if she didn’t fall for it, even if she ignored Alice’s overtures, how could the girl have been certain she wouldn’t then be punished for not ‘flagging up’ their agent’s (i.e. Alice’s) behaviour? In that manner, then, the girl might well have reasoned it out as a potential double-trap, a trap within a trap. Or perhaps simple revenge.

But despite all this reasoned scenario, the fact remained; how could Alice have been sure, how could Alice be sure now, that Gwyneth herself wasn’t part of some trap, had been reporting back her every move - and those of the other girls - all along? Perhaps she was just making excuses for her. Whatever the truth, the fact of the matter was, she realised, that her last few sparks of compassion had landed her in her nightmare, here, in the sanatorium.

At night she waited tucked up in a hospital bed, sedated into a deep dreamless slumber. By day she waited sitting in an upright plastic chair by the side of the bed - at least until the mid-afternoon nap came, along with another handful of sedative capsules. She sat endlessly waiting for mealtimes, for the arrival of the bedpans, for the trundle of the wheelchair to transport her to yet another one-to-one therapy session with the psychotherapist - a mindless trip down unending twisting and turning featureless white passageways to an equally mindless and featureless white office where a single inset ceiling lamp burned above a white desk. There a condescendingly smiling and attractively made-up woman, a tight black leather skirt and fitted white shirt-blouse and tie showing under her open-fronted white coat, would probe and prod and pick at mental scabs still forming over the scars of uncountable previous grilling sessions.

And the worst that could happen to a girl was to have that woman doctor take a personal interest in her ‘case’. Then there wouldn’t even be the distraction of the routine of the ward to alleviate the tedium; the bell that rang to signify mealtimes, that other of a different pitch that signified the distribution of the bedpans and that jingled continuously throughout their use, the somnolent low resonant mournful gong that accompanied their going off to sleep and the harsh rasping buzzer that would wake them to another mindlessly boring day of waiting, and waiting, and waiting.

Somewhere in between there would be an embarrassingly detailed and intimate bed bath, performed by a nurse with a white plastic apron over her royal blue uniform dress, or there might come a shrill whistle. The latter, blown by the House Mother in her calf-length navy-blue hospital matron’s dress and starched white apron was the signal to gather in the narrow gangway between the ends of the two rows of bed, to be shepherded in single file past the usually-locked security gate and into the windowless room beyond, where a semi-circle of white plastic stackable chairs would be waiting gathered around a freestanding blackboard adorned with some words or phrases.

The doctor would be there too, of course, her white coat flapping about her customary leather skirt, cotton blouse and black tie, her high-heeled court shoes tip-tapping on the white lino as she strolled about brandishing a crook-handled traditional school-style cane in her hand as a pointer to the words chalked on the board. Then she would start them off in a gently lulling singsong voice reciting the words on the board like a sort of hypnotic mantra, all the girls being obliged to follow word by word, note by note softly singing over and over whatever the particular phrase of the day happen to be:

“Obedience makes for satisfaction, conformity makes for happiness...” The doctor herself, having started off the flow, set the cadence and dictated the melody would then herself stop. She would simply stand there tapping one word at a time in sequence with the tip of her cane, her deep blue eyes magnified behind her horn-rimmed glasses roving around the crestfallen and glassy-eyed faces, constantly checking that no girl took her eyes off the blackboard; not even for an instant. Then, from time to time and without breaking the rhythm she would softly yet commandingly sing out some instruction or other: ‘hands-on heads, left index finger to your nose, right index finger to your nose, hands overhead, fingertips touching, hands on knees, touch left breast, touch right breast...’

And so it would go on, the girls chanting in strange singsong unison voices, the doctor issuing seemingly random instructions and then singing out ‘good girls’ as she would watch her little captive group obey her. Her cane was of course always close at hand to correct the unwary; the girl whose attention might perhaps wander or the individualistic rebellious freethinking type who might perhaps be foolish enough to try to retain some degree of recalcitrance. But after several months her need to bare a girl’s bottom would have dwindled to practically never. And as for freethinking side of it; that was exactly what this type of group therapy exercise was designed to work against.

The constant stream of instructions, sometimes contradictory, while the girls were obliged to continue with their singsong recitation, was designed to distract their conscious minds, allowing the content of whatever the mantra happened to be that day to worm its way into their subconscious while at same time serving to instil unquestioning obedience. After an hour or more she would have them in a trancelike state, even the most independently minded of them blank-faced and glassy-eyed - and not one girl would return to her bed free of the little rhyme or slogan running around inside her head.