All in the Mind (38 page)

Mrs Sturrock led her to the sitting room after asking Michelle to make them some tea.

As she looked at the pain etched in Mrs Sturrock’s face, witnessed the subdued organising going on around them as the children made and took calls, each one requiring emotional energy or practical acumen, Hafsatu felt the rage inside her growing.

How dare he presume to invite her to do this, and invite along with it the fear of being tracked down, and the shame of admitting what she had done? Yet she did not want to upset Mrs Sturrock.

‘How well did you know my husband?’

‘I was a patient. I saw him every week.’

‘And you knew him only as a patient?’

‘Yes.’

Hafsatu knew the real meaning of the question. Both were embarrassed by the silence which followed.

‘Your husband was helping me to recover.’

‘Ironic,’ said Mrs Sturrock. Hafsatu nodded.

‘I am sad he has died. I am angry at what he did,’ she said.

‘Yes, I think we both have cause for that.’

‘He seemed to understand. It was like slavery and I told him everything, the rapes, being made to work in brothels, my escape, and then having to live in fear, and trying to start all over again. I thought he understood.’

‘I’m sure part of him did understand.’

Hafsatu looked unyielding. ‘It is such a shameful thing for a woman like me. He was helping me overcome that. Now I learn this …’

‘At least he was trying to help.’

‘Yes. But he harmed others.’

Mrs Sturrock nodded.

‘He talked a lot about demons and angels. He once said I had been full of angels, but others had filled me with demons. Nice thing to say. He said nice things …’

Michelle brought in the tea, and silence fell once more, which gave them both time to reflect. Michelle stayed, sat on the arm of her mother’s chair, took her hand.

‘Hafsatu is the patient Dad wanted to speak at the funeral,’ said Mrs Sturrock. ‘She’s quite worried about it. And angry about things he did.’

She and Michelle looked intently at their guest, who seemed to be fighting back tears.

‘My father was clearly not well,’ Michelle said to her. ‘Perhaps for far longer than anyone knew.’

‘To take your own life – what is it the coroners say?’ said her mother. ‘“He killed himself while the balance of his mind was disturbed.” I don’t think he meant any harm in asking you to speak at the funeral. He was disturbed.’

Hafsatu looked crushed now. Mrs Sturrock knew what she had to say, and was relieved to do so. She didn’t particularly want the issue of prostitution raised at the funeral.

‘Hafsatu, if you don’t want to speak, I’ll understand. So would Martin.’

‘I really don’t want to. I’d be too scared. I could say good things. He helped many people. But I would have to say he did bad things.
He
called prostitution evil in the message to you. It is. It does not mean he was an evil man. But he encouraged some who are.’

‘I understand that. I hope you will come to the funeral. But you don’t need to speak.’ Hafsatu nodded, and promised to be there.

The Funeral

Stella Sturrock picked Ramsey & Sons, undertakers for five generations, to handle the arrangements. They had done several high-profile funerals in the recent past, covering as they did an area full of well-known people, and suggested setting up a ‘media pool’ outside the church, but not allowing any cameras inside.

The hearse and two cars arrived at the house just after eleven on Monday morning, a week to the day since his death. Since waking up, Stella had been busying herself, making and taking phone calls, checking everything was ready at the church. She had decided on a public funeral, private burial, then family and close friends back to the house for refreshments. The girls were following her lead, trying to find things to do and people to speak to, as much to kill the time as to achieve anything worthwhile. One or two neighbours had popped in to see if there was anything they could do to help. Jack was the one who seemed most detached.

As the funeral cortège arrived outside, all the chatter of fuss and preparation slowed to a halt till all that could be heard was the sound of wheels turning on gravel. Michelle had been chattering away but gasped when she saw the coffin; Stella Sturrock put her hands to her mouth, then shed her first tear of the day.

In the hours since Martin’s death, she had felt sad at times, lonely, confused, hurt, bitter. She had also had the occasional moment of culpability, feeling there must have been more she could have done to spot what was happening to him. But then as those waves of guilt came over her, she would tell herself
he
was the psychiatrist, not her. He was the one who understood the human mind, not her. It was at
the
sight of the coffin that, for the first time, she felt sad for him, and sad too for a marriage that had given neither of them the happiness they thought it would.

The undertakers stood at the cars and waited, as they did several times a day. Michelle and Suzanne walked out with their mother, Lucio and Jack following on behind, and they all squeezed into the first car. Jan, Stella’s brother and sister-in-law, and the Sturrocks’ next-door neighbour, got into the second car. The second car was a bit of an extravagance. It had been ordered on the assumption that Sheila Sturrock would attend. But the senior nurse at the care home had decided she was too frail.

It was as the cortège pulled to a stop outside the entrance to the church that Stella realised she had not asked the printers for enough orders of service.

‘My God,’ said Suzanne, ‘I’ve never seen so many people.’

‘We’ve rather underestimated the turnout,’ said Reverend Fletcher, coming over to the car.

‘Will they all get in?’ Stella asked.

‘Some may have to stand, but we’ll do our best.’

He gave her and the children an order of service. There was Martin on the front, smiling, wearing his favourite old sports jacket.

‘Lovely photo, Mum,’ said Michelle. Stella nodded.

In the emails she and Phyllis had sent out about the funeral arrangements, she had said they would like people to bring a flower to lay on the coffin at the end of the service. Dozens of the people queuing to get into the church were clutching single roses, lilies and sunflowers. Suzanne was carrying the flowers for the family.

‘Florists are doing well,’ she said. Stella nodded again. The undertakers were standing ready to carry in the coffin. The vicar and his team had just about squeezed everyone in. As Stella stepped from the car, she noticed for the first time the little gaggle of journalists by the fence. She turned to find the hand of one of her children. Jack gave her his.

The organ increased in volume as they stepped into the church.

‘Jesus,’ said Jack. It was the first time he had spoken since they left the house. ‘Who are all these people?’

Every space on every pew was taken. People were standing two-and three-deep down the sides. Stella was well into the nave of the church before she saw a face she recognised, one of Martin’s friends from university. Then she spotted colleagues from work, doctors and nurses, whom she had met in the days when she and Martin socialised more. Towards the front were all the cousins and the rest of the family, and she was glad to see they had brought their children too. But who everyone else was, she had no idea.

The organist played even louder as the coffin was carried in. They had thought about having medical colleagues as pall-bearers but there was too much politics involved in the choice, so she decided to let the undertakers do it. Mr Ramsey himself walked ahead of the coffin. As it passed her, she began to cry again, and so did Jack.

Reverend Fletcher didn’t know Professor Sturrock well, but he knew Stella and addressed his opening remarks to her and the family. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if Martin ever wondered if he was loved, I think this would give him the answer, would it not?’

It was meant to help, but it made Stella feel even more distant from the event. He had killed himself, she imagined, because he didn’t feel loved by the people he most wanted to love him. She sensed her children feeling the same. She leaned over Jack to take Suzanne’s hand.

The chance to stand, clear throats and blow noses during the first hymn, ‘Abide With Me’, helped calm things a little. Then Ralph Hall came up the aisle.

Although Ralph was used to speaking in public, he had never felt more nervous. He’d been allowed out of the rehab centre for the funeral, provided he had a ‘minder’ to take him straight back afterwards. He had never felt more in need of a drink, yet already, just one week into his treatment, he was getting strength from the ‘one day at a time’ approach to abstinence. He walked slowly to the front of the church, bowed his head to the coffin, then to the image of Christ on the cross on the huge stained glass that dominated the back wall, then went to the pulpit. He had no notes. He’d left the piece of paper on which he’d prepared what to say on the worn ledge of the
pew
in front of his. He stared out at the sea of faces before him, and took a deep breath.

‘My name is Ralph Hall. I am an alcoholic.’ He bowed his head again, this time because of the effort it had taken to say it. He had been thinking about whether to admit to his alcoholism in public for days, had weighed all the arguments for, all the arguments against, but he knew it was one of those decisions he wouldn’t make until the very last minute. Now, having made it, and having uttered the words, he felt as if he was going to cry. But as he stared at his feet, and breathed deeply, he heard the beginnings of applause at the back of the church. He looked up, and the applause spread through the congregation towards him. He stood up straight again.

‘That’s the first time I’ve said it, publicly. I am an alcoholic. And the man who taught me to say it is the man inside that box. When I heard he was dead, I vowed I would never drink again. I have gone seven days. I will dedicate every day without the demon that is drink to his memory. Because he took my drink problem and he made it his problem. When my world was crashing around me, he took me in. He didn’t have to, but he did.

‘It has taken me a long time to be able to say this to anyone, even to my wife, whom I told far too late, but I was a patient of Martin Sturrock’s. And I know there are many of his other patients here today.’ He paused and took a deep breath out of relief that he was going to get through it, and because he felt strong and confident in what he was saying.

‘Stand up,’ he said. ‘Stand up if you have ever been treated by Martin Sturrock.’ A murmur went round the congregation and there was a lot of rustling as dozens of people got to their feet. It took courage, he thought, to stand up and be counted, but they were prepared to do it. About a quarter of the congregation was now standing.

‘Now stand up if you’re a relative or friend of one of the people he treated.’ Now over half the congregation was standing.

Stella craned round to look. Never in her life had she felt such conflicting emotions. She saw all these people whom her husband
had
cared for and felt excluded. She spotted Hafsatu standing at the back of the church, and felt shame. But amid her shame at his use of prostitutes, and any failings in her that led him down that path, not to mention the anger at what lay ahead for her and the children, she also felt so very proud of him.

‘In all my years as an MP,’ Ralph went on, ‘I have never felt so much part of a community as I do now.’ Stella turned back to the former minister as he continued, struck by how well he looked compared with the day she met him.

‘And now stand up if you were a colleague of his, or a student, and you feel he taught you something that helps you to help others.’ Apart from the few rows of family and friends at the front, virtually everyone in the church was on their feet. After a brief pause, he motioned to them to sit down, and waited for them to settle.

‘So we all owe something to Martin Sturrock. He gave, and we took. And I don’t know about you, but I never for one second thought he had problems of his own. He seemed so strong, so in command, so clever and compassionate. That’s why we were all so shocked, is it not? We saw our problems, with his help, but we never saw that in taking our problems, he added to his own.

‘If there is one group of people who should know that human beings are not machines, it is us. Yet do we, as patients, and in my case as a politician also, do we not expect those who look after us, and those who carry out our bidding, to be machine-like, to have all the answers, all the solutions, be there when we want them, how we want them, regardless of what they are as human beings?

‘In his text message to his wife, who I also thank for her kindness, Martin said he wanted me to call for extra resources for psychiatric services. I happily do that, and will press my successor in the Health Department to fight for them too. But perhaps more important is a call for greater understanding of the pressures on those who handle pressures on our behalf.

‘None of us will ever know what was going through his mind as he decided to take his own life. But if I knew him at all, he would have been thinking about every single person who stood up. I hope
I
am speaking for all of you when I say to him, thank you for easing my burden, and sorry for adding to yours.’

A fresh round of applause accompanied Ralph to his seat, and as he sat down, moved by the reaction but glad it was over, he wished Sandie was there. But Sandie Hall was at home watching the news, where a reporter was being filmed talking excitedly outside the church above a ‘breaking news’ box declaring ‘Ralph Hall funeral confession – I’m an alcoholic’. And she was thinking that, given that he was finally facing up to his problems, perhaps she should collect him from the clinic after all, once his treatment was finished. After that, they could see.

Reverend Fletcher introduced the next hymn, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’. Emily Parks hung on every single word. She felt the hymn spoke to her and her situation. She had to fight the urge to go up there herself and tell Professor Sturrock’s family how much she owed him. Her mother was standing to her left, from where she could see only the burnt side of Emily’s face. The headscarf was gone, and as Emily sang loudly of her soul being restored again, she had a smile that had Lorraine Parks weeping with a joy she had feared she would never feel again. She could scarcely believe the change in her daughter in the last few days. Emily had told her that she planned to go back to teaching next year, possibly after doing an RE teacher training course.