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The title Intensive Care focuses upon the endeavour to save life; with the know ledge we now have of Frame, we may suspect irony. The narrative has the appearance of a family saga spanning three generations of Livingstones and continuing beyond their demise into a future era. Accidents, illnesses, love affairs, family resentments maintain a steady interest in events that, overall, progress chronologically but include many flashbacks. The fact that the language is often cryptic seems, at fIrst, to relate to the need to hide a particularly shameful situation within the Livingstone family. Criticism of this novel has tended to ignore the cryptic and subtle aspects of the work's fIrst two sections and to concentrate upon the "anti-utopian vision of the future"2 offered in the third and fmal section.
Tom Livingstone, his daughters, his grandson, and those who will live in his neighbourhood at some future time demonstrate patterns of cruel behaviour. The narrative is concerned with "the development of brutalizing instincts,,3 during one man's life, and the effects of his conduct upon others. The work foregrounds the question 'why'?
d
er her marriage, Tom' s daughter becomes Naomi Whyborn, encouraging us to ask why she should be born to suffer the pain and violation which is her destiny. The setting for most of the novel is Waipori City, a place with the geographical locationIntensive Care 1 87
of Dunedin; the name evokes the English homophones 'why' and, perhaps, 'poor' .
In Maori, Waipouri means 'sad or dark water' or 'dark memory , .4
Part One, "KINDNESS ITSELF, HAPPINESS ITSELF AND DELPHINIUMS " has a sickly-sweet title which is surely ironical. Tom Livingstone is the central character. The focus of Part Two "A KIND OF MOSS, A SUDDEN CRY" is upon Tom's brother Leonard, his daughter Pearl and his grandson Colin. Part Three, entitled "PEAR BLOSSOM TO FEED THE NIGHTMARE" , is set in the future. The members of the Livingstone family have died, though Tom's pear tree and a descendant of his cat survive. Milly Galbraith, who lives next-door to Tom' s old property, now becomes the central character.
Parts One and Two are third-person narratives . Part Three is shared among three f""trst person narrators. However, the whole novel is interspersed with poetry and prose in the first person. The speaker / writer is most often Tom's daughter Naomi. Alternatively, it is his other daughter Pearl, or his "first and only love" (p. 14) Ciss Everest, or Pearl' s husband Henry, or Milly Galbraith' s friend Sandy Monk. Sudden changes of perspective, at times confusing to the reader, foreshadow the postmodern freedom that Frame enjoys in her later novels.
While equivocal language makes many of the book' s happenings uncertain, some events are not in doubt. Tom was married and sent to the First World War at eighteen. There
/
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he learnt to kill; he "trampled the body of the dead dead dead / enemy enemy into the mud! " (p. 1O) He was gassed and wounded, and then nursed back to health by Ciss Everest, with whom he fell in love. After the war, he returned to his wife in Waipori City, where he became the father of two daughters. The novel opens with a sixty-five
year old Tom,who, after the death of his wife, returns to England to fmd Ciss Everest.
By a remarkable coincidence he does so, but learns that she is dying of cancer. She
wears a wig, a "transformation" (p.26) , because radiation treatment has left her bald.
In anger at her changed appearance, her failure to recognise him, and the ruination of his dream image, Tom smothers her to death. No criminal action is ever suspected.
According to Naomi and Pearl, Tom relived the War throughout their childhood. On
occasions he would don his hideous gas mask or work it like a puppet. He sang war
songs, told stories of the war and enacted games of war with his daughters. In his
memory and imagination, the War and his love for Ciss Everest became interwoven: "Ciss Everest alias the War" , "Miss War, Miss Everest. " (p. 12) Meanwhile, his wife was " eaten by his own impatience and coldness and his longing for another woman. " (p.24) Pearl affirms that she and her sister grew up in a house where "Mum and Dad showered unhappiness like climate, not passing weather, on them both" . (p. 85) We are, therefore, prepared to read as part of a negative dialectic Naomi' s remarks addressed to "Dear First Dad" :
Alfred who teaches history at a local college is always pestering me to 'write down' something of my early life and again and again I confront
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life? Why wasn't I raped as a child? Why didn't you and mother beat me? Why were not Pearl and I brought up in poverty . . . (p.88)
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Naomi claims that she and her sister learnt dancing, music and elocution. In response
to the question " 'Father may I learn . . . ? ' " (p. 88) she says, "There was no furious raging
about money money money and who did we think we were" . (p. 89) Pearl has already
made it clear that learning dancing, singing and elocution were the privileges of "the
other children of the neighbourhood" . (p. 86)
Naomi characteristically speaks in riddles or with an irony that reverses the truth; she
declares what did not happen, but this may be exactly what did happen - as we can
sometimes discover by cDmparing her story with that of Pearl. For some reason,
Naomi is unable to speak openly. The reader is initially unaware that the poetry which begins the novel is spoken by Naomi; it includes images that haunt her - the " sleeping doll" , the bonfIre, and "orgasm" . (p.9) Naomi identifIes herself for the fIrst time in
the fIfth chapter, in which she addresses, not the reader, but "Dear First Dad" . (p. 1 7) She pretends to have an affection for Tom, her father, but there is much to suggest an
attitude of resentment and hatred which she feels compelled to conceal.
Naomi ' s thoughts , impressions and memories are most often conveyed through poetry
that does not relinquish its meaning easily. Writers of critical commentaries have
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throughout the novel. When spoken by Naomi, it is characterised by intensity of
feeling and a bitterness which is difficult to reconcile with its ostensible themes. The following example is taken from Chapter Twenty-six which is entirely in verse form:
Dear First Dad, it is Christmas, family-time. Pain and Santa, white and red are In,
getting down to it, distributing upon branches of green pine the gifts guaranteed to break, fit, keep warm,
beautify, harm, amuse. The favour is
we never grew out of Christmas . . .
. . . green crickets swarm
in the grass
with their arse as men and women are doing on the lupined beach. Our Christmas was
enjoy, swim, eat, sleep, wake to of destruction. What was it? We had it. It is Tears then, tears . . .
The annual lesson
of trying to throw a saltstorm of tears to catch time
or spreading a sticky mess like cake icing, pretend it is bird lime.
like fmger and toenails; you cut us to the quick . . .
is brown
like the earth and the singing cicadas and an old man's or woman's sparse pubic hair and skin
like the fallen pears. (pp. 156-157 , my emphases)
The events of Christmas Day convey the "Pain" of Christmas. The reason for the pain is carefully hidden. To "wake to grief of destruction" suggests an anguish that would
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of tears" . Something is happening that Naomi fmds "unhealthy" ; something produces "decay" together with "harm " , "grief" , "tears" and a belief that "growing up we grew in" . What is on Naomi's mind can only be guessed at by examining the images she chooses. She speaks of men and women on the beach " carrolling with their arse" , a
less-than-positive view of copulation. In referring to an old person' s "sparse pubic hair" as "decay-spotted" , she is envisaging the gradual ruin of the genital area of the
body. As if solving a cross-word quiz question , we must try to imagine what is "sticky
like cake icing" and like "bird lime" . The words " The favour, your favour is" are followed by a non-sequitur: "we never grew out of Christmas" . Naomi does not say what kind of favour is being exacted or won. No playing for time, or tears, can
prevent an anticipated, dreaded event. An option, taken up, it seems, after the dreaded
event has taken place, is to pretend the "sticky mess" is something else. Bird lime was commonly used during the depression years to trap the feet of small birds. Though cake icing takes many fonns, pure bird lime is a sticky white substance which could be likened to human semen. The ensnared, helpless creatures would be Naomi and her sister Pearl.
Naomi' s reluctance to speak openly is in keeping with the nature of sexual violation of
a girl by her father.
The dilemma of sexual abuse of children has provided a system of foolproof emotional blackmail: if the victim incriminates the abuser, she also incriminates herself. The sexual abuse of the child is therefore the best-kept secret of the world. S
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One can re-read with new alertness the passages of prose as well as poetry which
Naomi narrates. "Why wasn't I raped as a child?" (p. 88) acquires new significance.
In another direct reference to sexual abuse, Tom is challenged by Peg Warren whom
he plans to marry.
'You mean . . . no bed . . . no love-a-dove? What have we been leading up to these afternoons on the sofa I'd like to know. '
'I've a father's responsibility, ' Tom said confusedly.
'Father's responsibility my foot. Your girls are out of it . . . [ .. . ]
Anyway what have they got to do with bed? Surely you didn't love-a dove them?
Tom reddened. 'I'll have none of that talk in my home. ' (p.68) Tom avoids a direct denial of the charge. He reacts visibly and involuntarily.
Naomi asks, again as part of the negative dialectic, "why were we not subjected to
subtle cruelties that I could describe in detail?" (p.88) She does indeed describe subtle
cruelties in such detail as to affrnn what is being denied. In the hope that he would
invite her to the school dance, Naomi aged fourteen invited a believable Donald Parker to attend the Livingstone's Guy Fawkes bonfIre. He was "not handsome, his cheeks
being too ruddy and his eyes too small and his hair too much like straw, but he was
clever and I admired his cleverness and his eyes were shy and gentle when he said hello to me. " (p.92) Tom had made a guy. After a 'performance' in which Naomi was
compelled to bayonet the guy, it was placed on top of the bonfIre. Once alight, the fIre
revealed the guy to be a crude representation of Donald Parker; he was, in a sense, burnt in effIgy: "it was only my imagination that Donald's face lost its rosy blush and
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became as pale as the face of a dead man, and I did not cling to him, sobbing, digging
my fmgers fiercely into his wet shirt-covered flesh" . (p.97) Naomi does not go to the
dance with Donald. "I knew I had to be loyal to you, dear First Dad" . (p.98) Among fathers who abuse daughters sexually, it is commonplace for them to display excessive jealousy towards boyfriends.
For some the father becomes very possessive and attentive but the restrictiveness of this may not become apparent to the girl until adolescence. Then she will not be able to go away on school trips or to the school dance unless her father is able to remain close by. 6
One critic has described the Donald Parker episode as "hallucinatory" .7 However, it
is more likely that a minutely recalled event is interspersed with obvious fictions to make the entire happening seem fictitious. As Tom watches the effigy of Donald
burning, he is "still" wearing the gas mask. "Then you took it off. Your face was
kind, so kind. " (p.97) It is unlikely that Tom's expression was "kind" at that moment.
By his own admission, he donned the mask to frighten his family. "I showed it to my
wife and two daughters, by God I showed it to them, and it scared them all " . (p.25)
The words "kind" , "kindly" , and " smiled" form an ironic refrain: " 'Don't worry,' you
said kindly. . . And you laughed in that kindly reassuring way you had, and our happiness brimming over we all smiled, smiled, smiled. " (p.95)
As part of an emerging pattern of sexual abuse, the gas mask has a special significance. It is closely linked to Tom's memory of Ciss Everest, for while she nursed him, she
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understood his need to keep it beneath his pillow or bedrug. The fourth letter to "Dear
First Dad" includes an italicised verse: Breathe in the gas mask, father, or poisonous life like a scorpion stings your lung. (p . 65)
The verse occurs six more times as a refrain in Naomi's letters, though on subsequent
occasions , the word "air" replaces " life" . The lines have the ring of an incantation
�
voking misfortune or serious harm . They are spoken by one who is powerless toretaliate by other means. In "the dark dream " , Naomi sees the father as "a terrible
child-eater / masked to perform the celebration of death. " (p. 78) To Naomi, the mask
is a death image; she speaks of her own imminent death as a "grey mask" (p. 65) that will soon cover her face. Tom' s mask has a "grey face" . Naomi visualises its " grey
cheeks inflating, deflating, closer and closer. " (p.27) As well as serving the same
function as any mask in allowing constraints and inhibitions to be put aside, the mask brings together the passion for Ciss and the violation of Naomi and Pearl; the
"celebration of death" becomes synonymous with a sexual experience.
To communicate what is unmentionable, requires a new language. Naomi tries the
strange signs found among the letters in the John Bull printing set: " ****** * ! ! ! !@@@CCCCCCC ... " (p. 1 1 8) She continues in this vein for some eight lines.
Generally, both Pearl and Naomi hide their experiences in the equivocal language of
metaphor. When Naomi prints the words "how / now brown Kewpie doll
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'girl' or 'woman' in this novel; Tom labels the ailing Ciss Everest the "Cancer Doll" (p.22), referring to her as "doll" fourteen times. Naomi reports that the "love-sleep" followed a Christmas meal "in the embrace of toys" (one a Kewpie doll) which are "deformed and blind and dead. " (p. I I S) All three adjectives describe the way Naomi
regards herself. After her 'blindness' as a young child, "a spring morning will uncover
the eyes". (p. 134) A recurrent pattern of imagery involves a reluctance to see winter
giving way to spring. Naomi cries, "Bring back the petrifying hand of snow! " (p. 107) The transition from winter to spring parallels Naomi' s emergence from ignorance to the intense pain of knowing.
Naomi says to "Dear First Dad" , "you gave us knowledge" . (p.49) The statement,
placed among cross-word quiz questions, is quickly followed by a description of nineteen different kinds of physical pain. But, as Oedipus discovered, physical pain
cannot destroy thought indefInitely. Naomi speaks of "the pain of grief brought to birth
by thinking " . (p.50). As a result of her experiences, Naomi rejects her physical being.
She is obsessed by a death-wish, imagining herself in the grave or entering the door of death. 8 She indicates that she is suffering from cancer and dreams that the surgeon
brings her the various parts that he has removed:
. . . raw , dead, ugly objects to be flushed away, I thought, with the lid shut.
'Here's your me' , he said. That made me smile. My me!
'It's easier, ' he said, if I treat you as a flower and name the returned parts of you as petal, stalk and so on. ' [ . . . ]