Walking Tall
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday June 27, 2015

“The last time I saw you, you were about four,” says a voice over my shoulder.

I twist in my cafe seat.

“Your mum and I were best friends at school. Your grandad had a marvellous shoe shop,” the speaker continues, pointing to a trousered left leg attached to a callipered foot.

“He once split a pair of shoes for me so I could wear something prettier than a big black lace-up. This foot’s three sizes smaller.”

The owner of the Eartha Kitt voice is boxed in behind a walking frame. She’s a handsome woman with a shock of blonde hair, a vivid scarf and an apple-green jumper. I remember Mum talking about a childhood friend with polio.

“Margie,” she says by way of introduction, squeezing my hand in her vice-like grip. We begin to chat in earnest. I order her a coffee and push a chair aside so she can park her walker. She braces her sturdy arms on the table-top and adroitly pilots herself into the chair opposite mine.

“I was five when it happened,” she says, anticipating my next question. “In the middle of the night, I crawled into mum and dad’s bed with shooting pains down my back. By morning, I couldn’t move the leg. Paralysed from hip to toe.”

“So fast?” I ask, incredulous.

“In one night. The hospital had no infectious diseases ward – it was 1942 – the middle of the war. The doctors asked Mum to take me home.”

“Do you know how you got it?”

She shakes her head: “No-one in the street had it, no-one at school. That’s the weird thing: you had to ingest the polio virus. Who’d I get it from? I’ll never know. But Mum said there were people who wouldn’t come to our house after I got it.”

We exchange frowns.

“My little sister got whooping cough the same year,” she continues. “Lightning struck twice.”

Her gaze wanders to the window.

“Not once did I feel ashamed of being crippled. It was all I knew. I dragged my gammy leg around until I got a splint. Dad taught me to swim. He even made me a bike. With hand brakes. I was so desperate to know how it felt to go fast. My good leg had to do all the work, of course. My bad leg just went along for the ride.”

She guffaws at the memory.

“I went to work at sixteen. Trained as a shorthand typist at Underwood Business College in Murray Street. I met my husband at a dance at the Claremont Showgrounds. I’d gone on a blind date with someone else. He’d just played a rugby game and done his knee. It was meant to be: we had matching limps!”

I ask how many children she had.

“Four. In six years.”

I’m bowled over but she just grins.

“At night, when my babies cried, I’d hop straight out of bed, tuck them under my arm and hop back to bed. I never once thought what’d happen if I fell.

When they were bigger, I’d walk the pram to the shops, trailing three little kids. My oldest daughter dragged one foot, because that’s how Mummy walked. In the end, with all the neighbours’ commenting, I had to de-limp her.”

I giggle at the thought.

“I feel so lucky.” she says firmly. “I could’ve been one of those kids in an iron lung. But all I lost was the use of a leg.”

She slaps her robust right thigh. “This leg has kept me upright for 74 years. And you know what?” she whispers, craning forward. “I might’ve got polio, but I’ve never had a sick day since. Except ten weeks ago, I had my gall bladder out. The doctor asked me, ‘How do you go with antibiotics?’ I said: ‘Dunno. Never had any.’”

“Don’t you worry now about falling?” I ask, pointing to her walker.

“I never wanted to be seen with a frame,” she replies. “But I thought: Well, you’re nearly 80. Stuff your vanity. It’s a safety thing now.”

It’s time for me to collect the kids.

She lurches up from the table and repositions herself behind her walker before steering it between the crowded tables.

Out on the grassy verge, I promise to remember her to my mum.

“See if she can still do this,” she says.

Sidestepping her walker, she bends smoothly from her waist, folds herself in half and places her hands palm-down on the lawn by her feet.

“You’re a gymnast!” I say, amazed.

“Kind of,” she says, with a hint of pride.

“When you’re missing a knee you get very good at bending your back to pick things up. Though I’d give my right leg to run up a flight of stairs.”