All in the Mind (36 page)

He tried to separate his mind from his body, see his penis as something entirely separate from him. If he let his mind influence his body,
he
would be here all day, thoughts about where he was and what he was doing making him shrink and wilt and long to be away. He had to let her carry out a purely physiological act. But then he found it was Hafsatu Sesay who was the thought crowding in on his space, and he didn’t object. He was desperate not to think about her, even more desperate that he could not stop himself. His mind linked back to his frantic hunt of the Internet, the time he thought he found her there, and he was so happy, but then on closer examination he noticed the girl in the film had a chain tattooed around her ankle. It wasn’t her. He gave up looking. But the mind could summon up images too, and as Angelica sucked away, he had only Hafsatu in mind, no matter how hard he tried to push her aside.

He was glad when it was over, even gladder when he was dressed and out of there. Gladder, but not happier. Ever since he’d left the hospital, his mind had felt as though in a vice and the two ends were closing in on each other. He had vaguely hoped the visit to Mizzi’s might stop the vice from tightening, release tension, give him space to recapture his balance. But it hadn’t worked. If anything, he felt worse, more tired, more stressed, less sure he could work out what was happening to him or where it was leading.

He looked at his wrist. The elastic band was still there, digging into the flesh. He’d noticed it when he’d held on to Angelica’s hair in the final moments before he came. Slowly, deliberately, he took it off and dropped it into the gutter.

This isn’t right, he said to himself. Come on, come on, you’re an expert in this, you know what it is, it’s like a psychosis, you’re undergoing some kind of psychotic attack, you’ve seen people, hundreds of them, you’ve helped them through this kind of thing, well, not through but after, you’ve helped them recover, you’ve heard them describe what it’s like and it’s like this, you know that, but you’re different from them because you’re an expert, you know what’s happening, you know what it’s about, so come on, deal with it, get a grip of yourself, calm, calm, try to calm it and then take stock. But there’s no room for calm because even saying ‘calm, calm’ to yourself is just like a prod, a hot prod, a prod to the other part of your
wiring
that is saying sod the calm, no to calm, you’re not going to do calm, we’re taking this all the way to the brink, my boy, you are not calm and you’re not going to be calm any time soon because you don’t deserve it, you useless little fucker.

He was still standing outside Mizzi’s, on the pavement, his briefcase between his feet. He put his hands to his head, hard against his temples, and bent over to get his head down towards his knees.

‘Shut up, shut up, leave me alone,’ he shouted, and a young boy walking by thought he was talking to him. The boy looked scared, and hurried along quickly. A man came by, weighed down by two shopping bags in either hand. He looked tired and dejected. ‘Why is it happening?’ Sturrock said to him. ‘Why is this happening? Is it because I don’t do the shopping? Have you escaped because I didn’t do the shopping and you did?’ The man shook his head, and pulled close towards the buildings, away from the kerb. A bus passed and on the side was an advert for a new Kellogg’s cereal, and as it sped by, he shouted at the man as he walked away. ‘It’s not you. It’s not because of the shopping. It’s the cereal. It’s because I eat the wrong cereal. So don’t worry.’

He thought about going back into Mizzi’s and asking if he could have a bed to lie down on. No sex, no girls, just a bed. He would be happy to pay full price just for a place to lie down in. That’s how tired he felt. He took his phone from his pocket. He scrolled down to the Ds in his address book and found David Temple. He hit the call button. Three rings, then into voicemail. Why was he not answering? Was he on a downward curve and he had thrown the phone away, knowing he was incapable of speech? Was he calling Phyllis again and trying to get through to him? Was he trying to call Amanda? Had she agreed he could go out with her? That would be good.

Out there, somewhere, unless he had killed himself, which Sturrock doubted, David Temple was doing something, standing or sitting somewhere, or walking, or lying down, looking at something, thinking something, breathing in, breathing out. He might be coughing. He might be writing something. He might be sitting downstairs at home
with
a book on his lap wishing his mum would be quiet. He might be out by the canal, or in the park, wishing he had put his coat on, because where he was, it might be starting to rain, like it was here. And Sturrock couldn’t reach him. They were blocked. No contact was possible. And there was nobody else he could turn to. Nobody who would understand the same. They were all out there, all his patients past and present, but he didn’t have the same relationship. If he called Emily Parks now, and told her he felt tired and stressed and he didn’t know how he was going to get home, she wouldn’t understand. She would think it very odd, even though she was always nice and polite. Arta wouldn’t get it. She found Britain a strange place to live, and this was beyond her range of comprehension, he thought. She didn’t have David’s depth of understanding.

David was the only one who would understand and be able to help. David knew this feeling. He knew the lows, but he also knew this, the racing from thought to thought, each thought worse than the last. He knew what it was like when the mind was like a giant paper-thin stained-glass window full of beautiful images in beautiful bright colours, and inside his mind he had just two little hands and he was trying to hold the glass together and carry it safely as the body moved and jangled everything in the mind, but the longer his hands inside his mind were holding on, the heavier the stained-glass window became, though paper-paper-thin, and then the arms and shoulders inside the mind started to ache and it became God’s own struggle to hold on, and the images started to crumble one by one. There goes Jesus. There goes God. He’s gone. He’s disintegrated. The disciples are there at the edge of the glass and they’re starting to go, and then he sees old friends from university, where are they now, crumbling into shards in his mind, and old teachers, they’re crumbling, and then he can see past girlfriends, and there in the corner a multicoloured mountain of prostitutes lying naked on top of each other, and the mountain crumbles and there are the pictures of his patients, some are dead but they come back to life in the stained glass, some younger than when he knew them, some older, but all there, dozens, hundreds, and their families too, so there’s David Temple and his mother Nora,
but
they’re crumbling too and the glass is shattering, and then there’s his own family in the corner, holding on, but now they’re gone as well and all he can make out is his father, looking on stern and not a flicker of worry in his eyes even though all around him the glass is crumbling, and David knows that feeling, David alone of his people knows that feeling but he’s not answering his phone, so what to do, what to do? And now the glass is in thousands of little pieces and the fragments are flying into every corner of his mind and they hurt because they’re sharp and they cut and graze, and even though he can hear music now, it doesn’t help because it is layer on layer of music, not just one calming symphony which might give him space, and help him breathe, but song upon song, symphony upon symphony, and how can it be that music can be so beautiful, so soothing, so calming when played in its own space, yet so terrifying when as now it is layer on layer of clashing sounds, beautiful song crashing into beautiful song, and the result is ugly, and it hurts and the songs are crashing into the glass and now it feels like the glass will cut right through his head, go out from in, and holes will appear in his head, and his brains will start to pour out on to the street, and he really didn’t want his brains to pour out here, in the road outside Mizzi’s, it was demeaning and it was bad, so he had to calm himself somehow, just be calm and try to buy time.

‘Are you all right? Can I get you anything?’ A woman tapped him on the shoulder. She was a large version of Mrs Temple, short but stout with symmetrical black hair.

‘I’m trying to find David Temple,’ he said. ‘Once I find David, I’ll be fine.’

‘Is there anything I can do in the meantime?’ she asked. ‘You don’t look at all well.’

He read genuine concern in her face and for a few seconds, he calmed. He was suddenly embarrassed to be causing a scene, sufficient to attract a little crowd of people who were standing outside the bakery.

‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘I’ll be fine. Thank you for your concern.’

Only even as he said it, and as he walked slowly away and up the
gentle
incline of St Leonard’s Hill, the traffic heavier and noisier now rush hour was in full swing, he knew he wasn’t fine. He wondered for a moment if it was too late to go back to the hospital and ask for help. But he had no money and there were no cabs to take him and it wasn’t right to call an ambulance, not when there were so many others who needed them. The fat version of Mrs Temple had soothed him for a moment, brought him up short, but it was just a lull in the storm, and by the time he had passed the bakery and then the pharmacy with the single word ‘Prescriptions’ lit up in red, and then the charity shop for St Giles’ Hospice, which made him think of the Le Gassick wing where he worked, because Le Gassick was an anagram of ‘sack Giles’, and he was sure he didn’t want to end his days in a hospice, and his mind was back to racing mode, and though the music had quietened, the glass shards were still cutting into the side of his head, and he was trying to put the glass back together again, and the hands inside his mind were getting cut to shreds and now the blood was running over the fragments of glass, and he just had this great mess inside his head and he didn’t know how to clean it up.

He didn’t want to die in a hospice, all alone but for nice caring staff just counting the days till you’re gone, and he didn’t want to die in a care home like Aunt Jessica, they were no different to hospices, just places where people were sent to die because their families couldn’t cope so they paid peanuts to others to do it for them. How on earth was he going to collect his mother if he felt like this, and when, for God’s sake, when was he going to write the eulogy? And now the crowd outside the baker’s had dispersed, though one or two were keeping an eye on him, including the stouter version of Mrs Temple. He had passed the charity shop and next on the parade there was an ironmonger who did keys and shoe repairs, and he passed that and then a fruit and flower stall and then a little cafe serving Arabic coffee and one or two old men were outside smoking and after that there was a butcher’s and then a bookshop, a tiny scruffy bookshop which specialised in children’s books, and then there was a tanning salon, then a hairdresser’s, and he wondered if they were owned by the same person because the shopfronts looked similar, then a phone and
Internet
access shop full of foreigners, then a laundry, then another cafe, which was empty but for a man playing on a fruit machine, then the funeral directors and the instant he saw the word ‘funeral’ he felt this was where everything that had gone before had led him, and he decided he couldn’t face tomorrow, he couldn’t face collecting his mother, he couldn’t face thinking any more what he should say about Aunt Jessica, he couldn’t face the prospect of standing in front of dozens of people and speaking to them with his head full of glass shards and music that clashed with the funeral march. He looked through the window. A single candle was burning alongside a Bible opened at the Book of Job. He took out his phone and called David Temple. It went into voicemail. Staring directly into the tip of the flame from the candle, he said, ‘Hello, David, it’s Professor Sturrock again. Sorry to bother you. I’m not feeling too great, and I wanted to say that if anything happened to me, I would like you to say a few words at my funeral. Thanks. Take care.’ Then he texted him. ‘
PS I have never known anyone better describe how this feels
.’

He felt he should call Stella, but what would he say? It was beyond her range of comprehension too. He scrolled down to the Ss in his address book, clicked on her name, called up her number and looked at it for a while. He couldn’t face speaking to her. He decided to text instead. ‘
David Temple to do main eulogy, Ralph Hall to say something about need for improved psychiatric services, and Hafsatu Sesay on evils of prostitution
.’ He hit the send button. Then it struck him that apart from Ralph Hall, Stella had not heard of any of these people. He sent her another text. ‘
Phyllis knows how to get hold of them. You can choose hymns and rest of order of service
.’ He pressed the send button again. Then he sent her another text. ‘
PS Sorry. Not just about Ralph. About everything
.’

He knew it ought to bother him that he had no desire to speak to her, or to his children, or to his mother who he felt would be stoic whatever happened to him. Stella would be shocked, then feel liberated. The children would be shocked, but once the shock subsided and all the rituals were over and done with, it would give them something to talk about forever more. It would make them more interesting in
the
eyes of friends and colleagues. He was doing them a favour, he told himself.

He thought he would have a better chance of a clean hit if he crossed the road to face vehicles coming down the hill. St Leonard’s Hill was a bus route and they picked up a fair bit of speed in their own lanes. He waited for the next lull in traffic and crossed the road. The noise in his mind seemed to have stopped. He felt almost serene. He knew he was doing the right thing.

Beyond the traffic lights, he could see a lorry behind a line of three cars. The lorry driver’s life was going to change for ever. Sturrock felt bad about that. He might be far from home. He might be speeding home to a family who love him. He might be late making a delivery. He was going to be further delayed. The police would need to talk to him. He wouldn’t be able to move his lorry for hours. There was nothing he, or Sturrock, could do about that. He was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn’t personal, Sturrock told himself as he stepped from the pavement on to the red lines in the gutter. He waited until the first car had passed and then stepped into the bus lane itself, and began to inch towards the road. As the second car passed him, he picked up his pace a little. He timed it to perfection. The third car passed as he crossed from the bus lane to the road. The lorry driver slammed hard on his brakes as soon as he realised the smartly dressed grey-haired man carrying a brown leather briefcase was not going to stop. But it was too late. The lorry hit him so hard he was dead by the time the nearside front wheels rolled over his neck, and the lorry veered onto the kerb and into the front garden of 148 St Leonard’s Hill where, later that evening, Angelica would be the first to lay flowers. The exact time of death was recorded at 18.04. David Temple called at 18.06, but the call went straight into voicemail. ‘This is Martin Sturrock. I am sorry not to be able to take your call. Please leave a message after the tone.’