Golden Words

3: Tonsils

Patricia

Rita and Oscar leave after two days, as Cathy comes down with a fever and their mother insists on rushing home immediately.

Mum and Dad thoroughly enjoy lazing on the beach, though I think Mum preferred when she could gossip with Mary. Rosemary mopes around the sand, unwilling to get wet and not doing anything. I think she misses Cathy, who was (to my knowledge) the only child to ever befriend Rosemary. It's not as though she talks to me, but from what I can gather she's snubbed at school, viewed as an imbecile by the teachers and pupils alike.

I try to help her with her blessed sandcastles but I don't have little Cathy's nimble fingers (or her Minnie Mouse bucket) and on the second day on the beach without Cathy she has a fit of temper and kicks my sandcastle down. It's really just a crumbly pile but I feel hurt all the same. I love Rosemary but I can't understand half the things she does and I don't feel that I know her at all.

Her behaviour is even worse over the rest of the holiday. She throws her plate of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding on the ground, smashing it. She pokes her tongue out at the elderly woman in the hotel room next to us. When Dad tries to get her to come to a dance put on by the hotel, she screams and hits out at him, but then clutches at his arm, trying to stop him leaving. When Mum smacks her for waking us all in the night by seizing hold of our heads and shrieking like a banshee, she smacks right back and bites me when I try to pacify her, and then cries into her pillow for the rest of the night. She whines and whimpers constantly, despite my efforts to please her, and when Dad gives her an ice-cream cone despite Mum's insistence that she doesn't deserve it, she crumples it all up in her hand and then starts wailing. She won't even smile for the seaside photographer, glowering stormily out over the ocean and ignoring the photographer when he tells her to "watch the birdie".

By the end of the holiday we're all fed up, and Mum refuses point blank to get her soup for the coach journey back to London and our little flat in Lewisham. "She's been so appalling these last few days she doesn't deserve it," she says firmly. "And anyway, she'll probably throw it all up again."

I have a sideways glance at Rosemary, expecting her to yell in bitter protest. She doesn't even muster a grizzle, and that worries me. She's scarcely eaten this last week, and now she seems to be losing her spirit. Maybe she's starving? She's always been thin but now she suddenly seems particularly pinched and scraggy.

On the coach Rosemary is equally subdued. She doesn't mutter or hum or flap her rabbit about. She slouches, sliding around in her seat listlessly. Once she coughs a little, and for a brief moment I see her wince and get a whiff of her foul breath.

I touch a hand to her head.

She's burning. I feel it instantly even as she recoils from my touch.

"Mum, I think Rosemary's sick."

Mum sighs, dragged from the wondrous world of her Women's Own. "She's fine, Patricia. In all likelihood she's just tired out from all her howling."

"No, Mum, look. She needs a doctor."

"Patricia, really, don't make a fuss over..."

She drops off, her words dead on her lips, as she feels Rosemary's forehead. She peers at her, and when I see Mum's red lips purse, I know it's bad.

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Doctor Taunton looks like a photograph of a person. His skin is so pasty it looks grey, and his sticky, heavily gelled hair is as white as the good paper Ms Cork at school keeps in her desk and only lets her especial favourites use. He assesses Rosemary like a butcher checking the quality of steak, his bulging grey eyes scrutinising her from behind his thick black bifocals.

He commands her to open her mouth and inspects her throat. She's too tired to protest as she undoubtedly would if she were well.

"Ah!" he says, loudly. Rosemary jumps and her jaw snaps shut. He curtly commands her to open her mouth again. His voice is as colourless as he is, and very disinterested. "See here. Her tonsils are the size of plums- it's definitely tonsillitis."

Mum leans in, trying to look at Rosemary's throat.

Doctor Taunton stretches his lips over his teeth- a smile, though it looks like a grimace. "We'll just get those out- adenoids, too- and then she'll be good as new."

Rosemary makes a hesitant noise.

Once we're outside of the office, Mum starts talking distractedly. "Sutton Hospital is all the way over in Wembley. We'll have to catch a bus- probably two hours or more just to get there- just as well we came here in the morning -"

"Mum?" I interrupt anxiously.

She smiles at me kindly, though it's clearly an effort. "Patricia, darling. I think it's best if I take Rosemary off to hospital now. I think you'd best go home now, though. It will probably take an awfully long time."

"I thought that Blackburn was about twenty minutes bus ride away." I gesture vaguely in the direction I think Blackburn Hospital is.

"I know, but I've heard such horror stories about it. Peggy- your friend Evelyn's mother, you know- said she sent Evelyn there for pneumonia when she was eight. Evelyn was practically starved and neglected!"

Rosemary whimpers.

"Which is why our Rosemary won't be going there," Mum adds hurriedly. "Sutton apparently has the best children's wards in London. Janet- another secretary, at my work- she sent her son to Sutton and he just had a whale of a time."

This perks Rosemary up a bit. She rubs her nose into her rabbit toy.

"I want you to go home now, Patricia, while I take Rosemary to the hospital."

I arrange my face into what I hope is a firm expression and shake my head. "I want to go with Rosemary to the hospital."

Rosemary grabs my hand and squeezes it. She looks at me with such admiration and gratitude with her big shiny chestnut eyes, and I feel mean for ever disliking her.

"Nonsense," says Mum brusquely, seizing hold of Rosemary's arm. "I'll take her now. Patricia, Miss Boxall is at home in the basement flat and I'll give you what for if she tells me you weren't in by half an hour's time."

I try to think. There must be some way I can convince her! But already she's dragging Rosemary down the street.

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Author's Note:

Thanks for reading. I'm sorry I'm saying this so much, but I've never written a nonverbal character before and it's so important to me that I get it right as there's so many harmful stereotypes out there, and it's kind of difficult to portray Rosemary the way I feel is true to her character (e.g. moody, unpredictable, high-strung) without contributing to the stereotypes. I think I'm a bit too anxious about this, probably obsessing too much, but I worry about buying into ableist narratives.

Sorry I keep saying that. I'm also sorry it took so long to update- I'm going to try and put up the next chapter in the next few days. Am I apologising too much? Sorry if I am.

Thank you for reading, and here: a heart, for you ♡!

-Pixie B