Friday morning, Elsie waved Thomas off to work and then stood in the hallway, swallowing nervously.
Aida had been absent for five days.
She picked up the telephone handset, thrust it down again. Hurrying to the living room window, she drew the curtains closed. Then she changed her mind and shoved them open.
Returning to the phone, she stood in front of the stand and wiped her palms on her skirt. Perhaps she should do the breakfast dishes first. Or hang out the washing. Or pop down to Mrs Pellarin’s to show her that six-stitch cable she had repeatedly been asking about.
‘Stop procrastinating,’ she said aloud. ‘Just start somewhere.’
Elsie picked up the phone.
‘Calvary Hospital, please,’ she told the operator.
Her heart beat faster while she awaited the connection. What was she doing? She had no right to be poking into other people’s business like this. No right whatsoever. It felt like spying through a keyhole, watching the intimate movements of someone else. An invasion of privacy. Overcome with shame, she was about to hang up when the line was connected.
‘I’m looking for a patient,’ she blurted, before she could change her mind. ‘In maternity.’
‘Name?’ the lady barked. The hassle expressed in that word only deepened Elsie’s embarrassment.
‘I . . .’ Elsie didn’t know Aida’s surname. Heat flared up her neck. ‘Her name is Aida.’
After a few moments the lady replied with intense annoyance, ‘No listing for a Mrs Aida here.’
‘I’m sorry, it’s not . . .’ Elsie stuttered. ‘It’s not Mrs Aida. Aida is her Christian name. I . . . I don’t know her surname.’
The line clicked and warbled.
‘Uh – her husband works in the mines, if that helps.’ Elsie supposed that the lie Aida had told Thomas could also be extended to hospital staff.
‘If you don’t know the patient’s name, I cannot help you. Goodday –’
Much to her own surprise, Elsie said, ‘Can you please check?’
A huff blew into the earpiece. ‘There’s no Aida in maternity here, by any name. Goodbye.’
The line went dead. Elsie set the receiver down. She picked it up again.
‘Queen Victoria Maternity Hospital, please.’
The person she was connected to this time was equally brusque. ‘I’m looking for a patient,’ Elsie said. ‘First name is Aida. Surname is –’ she feigned a cough and rubbed her sleeve over the mouthpiece.
‘We have no lying-in patients of that name,’ the lady on the end of the phone told her. Elsie asked her to double check, yet when she returned to the line the answer remained the same. No Aida. Elsie managed to thank this one before being disconnected.
‘McBride Maternity Hospital, please.’
Over the background noise of the exchange, the operator said, ‘Please repeat that.’
Elsie wanted the floor to open up and swallow her. What is wrong with you? she demanded inside, while what came out of her mouth, clearly and loudly, was, ‘McBride Maternity Hospital.’
When the call was answered she repeated the process to no avail.
Elsie asked the operator, ‘Um . . . are there any others?’
‘Please repeat that.’
‘I said, are there any others?’
The operator paused. ‘Other hospitals?’
‘Yes. Other maternity hospitals.’
‘Which hospital?’
Elsie said, ‘I don’t know any others by name.’ There were other hospitals, of course: the Women’s and Children’s, Royal Adelaide, even one here in Gawler. But those weren’t the places where unwed mothers crept and hid.
‘Which hospital do you want?’ the operator yelled down the line. ‘You’ll have to speak up. It’s very loud here.’
It was the pinprick Elsie’s brazenness needed. Humiliation finally overcame her. ‘Never mind,’ she said, and set the phone down. Anxiety churning inside, she went to the kitchen to do the breakfast dishes.