Poppy Shakespeare (16 page)

26. How Brian the Butcher was late for his break and I knew before he'd told us what had happened

Later that week or early the next one, I ain't sure exactly, Tina got discharged. This is how it happened.

We was all sat in the common room, all except Dawn who was making her tables, Brian who was outside washing his hands, and
Tina who'd gone for her one-to-one with Rhona the Moaner, made Marta the Coffin look like a laugh a minute. From what I remember
the talk was about the groups they was starting up. Social Skills and Self Empowerment and Positive Thinking and Goal-Setting
Group; everything 'cept Sit On Your Arse and Do Nothing; we wasn't impressed.

'It's like being sent back to school,' said Sue, reading through her timetable. 'Look at my Wednesday: Life Skills all morning,
then Relaxation all afternoon. I'll hardly have time for a cigarette. Look!' she said and she held out the paper for Verna
to take a look at it.

'What's this "Normality Group"?' said Middle-Class Michael.

'Normality?' said Astrid. 'Where?' Middle-Class Michael pointed. ' "Normality Group",' Astrid read. 'What's that?'

'I'll hardly have time for a cigarette,' said Sue.

'I don't know,' said Michael. 'What it says on the tin, I suppose. I don't like the sound of it.'

'Are you down for Social Group, N?' said Wesley.

I give a tut. 'It's confidential,' I said. But I looked anyway and I seen I was and I glanced across and seen Poppy was too.
The groups you was in was highlighted in yellow marker pen.

'Got a light?' said Curry Bob, come slunking between the rows and everyone turned their timetables over, but he seen anyway
and he told Schizo Safid and Schizo Safid told Big-Nose Jase and Big-Nose Jase told Fag Ash Devine and soon all the flops
was pissing theirselves and jabbering with excitement 'cause if there's one thing really got them going it was bad stuff happening
to dribblers, ain't nice I know but that's the way they was.

It weren't till we turned our timetables over, we seen what was wrote on the back. This is what it said:

As we sat reading it over and over, all you could hear was the sniggers of the flops and beneath them the thundering rumble
of Fat Florence laughing.

'Hang on,' said Sue, and she read it again. 'Do we have to go or not?'

'Depends,' said Zubin. 'Not if you want to, but if you don't want to, you do.'

'Come again,' said Sue.

'We got to go,' Rosetta said. 'That's what it boils down to.'

'Why can't it just say that then?' said Astrid.

'It does,' said Michael. 'That
is
what it says.'

'Maybe if you're
educated,'
said Astrid. 'Don't say that to
me.'

Middle-Class Michael pulled at his nose and his ears turned the colour of Turkish shop strawberries.

'And anyway,' said Astrid, 'why didn't you
tell
us? I thought you was s'posed to go to these meetings, let us know what's going on.'

'It'll be in my notes,' said Middle-Class Michael. 'I don't remember,' he said.

'Not much good in your notes,' said Astrid. 'Ain't that right, Brian?' We all looked at Brian, and that's when everyone noticed
he wasn't there.

'He's late for his break,' Rosetta said. So we looked at the clock and we seen it was true. Brian the Butcher was nearly three
minutes late.

Now I ain't saying I'm psychic, but maybe I am, 'cause as we's all sat there puzzling, and wondering what could of happened,
I suddenly got this really weird feeling. And it's like I knew what had happened already - and I
mean
knew as well, not suspected — and my stomach felt like it was turning itself inside out. And do you know what I'm saying,
I weren't even surprised, it was like I been
waiting
for it, when the double swing-doors flew suddenly open and Brian the Butcher come bursting in and hurried across the common
room and sat in his chair bolt upright with his hands in his lap.

'Is everything alright?' said Middle-Class Michael.

And Brian he give this quick look round and he rubbed his hands on his trousers, and behind him the double swing-doors still
flapping, open and shut like the gills of a fish. 'Tina's been discharged,' he said.

27. How paranoia begun to spread like wildfire

It was Tina going sent everyone over the edge. One dribbler discharged could of been a mistake, but
two
dribblers, do you know what I'm saying, paranoia run round that common room like lighter fuel in the hands of an arsonist,
and with Astrid sat like a great pair of bellows belching air into the flames, it didn't take long till the walls and the
ceiling and even the windows was so black with smoke you couldn't see nothing at all hardly, except for these little squiggles
of light where Schizo Safid had sucked his finger and wrote his initials, SS, all over the glass.

Tina didn't kill herself. She gone home and slashed her arms up instead. Then she stuck them back together with steri-strips,
'stead of going up A&E get the job done proper, which was Tina all over, didn't like to cause trouble. The night they discharged
her Astrid gone round but Tina wouldn't let her in. So Astrid looked through the letterbox but she couldn't see nothing 'cept
her mac by the door and her see-through plastic hood on the peg besides it. So then she gone up to the walkway above and had
a look over the side and through this gap at the top of the curtains she seen down into the sitting room, and there was Tina
pressed flat to the wall like a cop in an action film, with her head to one side, not daring to breathe like someone tried
to shoot her through the letter-box. 'You should of seen her arms!' said Astrid. 'Slashed to ribbons! Ribbons!' she said.
'I couldn't work out what it was,' she said. 'Thought she was wearing lace sleeves; it was all them steri-strips. It was awful,'
she said and she started to cry. 'I'll never forget it, never,' she said.

Course Astrid being Astrid had to milk it for every last drop. Kept asking for extra time off of Tony on account she was so
'traumatised'. And she said she felt abandoned as well, 'cause Tina been like her best friend. And it brought up all the other
people abandoned her in her life (like, yeah . . .) and she weren't never going to trust no one again and on and on till it
done your head in and do you know what I'm saying we was
all
traumatised, and it was me used to walk up the hill with her every morning.

Astrid weren't traumatised anyway; she couldn't get traumatised if she tried, being about as sensitive as a fucking toilet
seat. Astrid was just playing her cards, do you know what I'm saying. Making sure how she got a good hand with assessments
coming up in two weeks' time.

Don't get me wrong. I ain't having a pop; I mean, everybody was doing it. The assessments was like a chrysalis. Weren't one
single dribbler weren't checking hisself and checking his neighbours either side to see how he done compared. And it ain't
nice I know, and I don't like to say it, but every time one of them spied something normal in somebody else, do you know what
I'm saying, you seen how it perked them up a bit, and every time somebody done something mad like when Elliot tried to bleach
hisself white so's the snipers wouldn't recognise him, you seen them all looking a bit kind of panicked on account of they
knew they was going to have to out-top him.

It was like a fucking mad Olympics, dirty tricks and all. And I mean dirty too, do you know what I'm saying, weren't one single
dribbler washed so much as his hands since we heard Tina been discharged, excepting of Brian the Butcher of course been washing
so non-stop his knuckles worn through, like the knees on an old pair of jeans. And I'm not being funny but some of them, it
weren't just not washing, it
couldn't
of been, they must of took extra measures I reckon, like pissing theirselves or rolling in shit, I mean that was how bad it
got. White Wesley taken a whiff of his pits to see how he was progressing and he passed out right there in front of us from
the sheer overpowering stench of hisself, while Astrid stunk so bad of gone-off fish the cats used to arch their backs and
hiss as she walked through the Darkwoods each morning.

Elliot smelled stronger than anyone; he smelled like a swimming pool. He smelled so strong, Zubin had to wear goggles on account
of his eyes started smarting, and one day as Michael was pinning his pass on, this sniff come in with a rolled-up towel, asked
Sharon how much for a lane swim.'And she wouldn't believe him,' Michael said. 'She thought he was trying to make fun of her.
Of course it didn't help he was lifting weights at the time.'

By the second week Canteen Coral wouldn't serve us, said we put the flops off of their food. And they needed their food, she
said, unlike us, up to our eyes in MAD money and never known the meaning of work, sat on our fat, flabby arses all day, and
nothing wrong with us, 'side of being lazy, which if that weren't her words exactly, was her meaning plain as she'd spelled
it out on paper.

Poppy didn't compete in the MAD Olympics, didn't do nothing at all to be honest, just sat there day after fucking day reading
this book, with a tissue held to her nose. Every twenty minutes or so she'd reach in her bag and take out this bottle, a tiny
brown bottle with a white screw-on cap and shake a few drops on her tissue.

'What's that?' I says to her.

'Lavender.'

'Thought lavender was purple,' I says.

'It's essential oil.'

'I was joking,' I says. 'I know what essential oil is.' So far she ain't even
looked
at me. Just drops the bottle back in her bag and turns a page of her book.

'Can I have a sniff?' I says to her.

She looks at me now. 'I'm sorry?' she says.

'Can I have a sniff of the bottle?' I says.

'Sure,' she says, and she gets it out and hands it over and goes back to reading her book.

'What's that you reading?' I says to her. I'm holding the bottle so close to my nose, the stopper's halfway up my nostril.

'What's that you reading?' I ask again.

'Same,' she says and she holds it up.
Assessment in
Mental Health Nursing
it's called. Got a crystal ball on the cover.

'Ain't you finished yet?' I says.

'No,' she says.

'Is it interesting?'

'N,' she says. 'Sorry; it's just I'm trying to revise.'

I give a tut. 'I was only arsking!' I says.

If Poppy didn't want to talk no more, do you know what I'm saying, I weren't bothered. 'Cause when she did it was like change
the fucking record anyway, to be honest. 'What do I do if I fail my assessment? What do I do
then!
she'd say, like twenty times a day at least, if not two hundred and twenty. And every time she said it of course I'd think
of that thing I said to Tony, start worrying case they asked her about it, and the more I thought, the more I reckoned there
weren't no way they
wouldn't
ask, so what I done was I tried
not
to think and when Poppy started going on, I'd give a great yawn and roll my eyes like tell me something new.

The others couldn't be arsed with Poppy neither to tell you the truth. They was all too busy stunking theirselves and dreaming
up new symptoms. When she come out with something extra offensive, like 'Jesus! Get me out of here or I
will
go mad! Sweet Jesus!
Please!
they didn't know whether to be relieved or pissed off with her or both. You could see the confusion all over their faces,
as they sat there trying to work it out, till they looked away and made like they hadn't heard.

It weren't like I minded but it did piss me off she seemed to think her getting discharged was so important when some of us
our lives was at stake and she just didn't get it at all. This one thing she said, I mean I thought it was funny, but it just
goes to show how far she'd got lost up her arse.

We's walking down the hill one night and right out of nowhere she turns round and says, 'You know, you should get your hair
cut, N. You got really nice hair, just needs a few layers, do you know what I'm saying, bit of body.'

I didn't say nothing.

'I mean it,' she said. 'You have; you've got really nice hair. Don't be embarrassed,' she said. She laughed.

'I ain't
embarrassed,'
I said.

'You could try a few highlights as well,' she said. 'Just here, in the front.'

'Get off me!' I said.

'It would look really good,' she said. 'You ever
had
highlights?'

'Course!' I said.

'I know a really good place. Fact I'm going this weekend. You could come if you want.'

'Fuck's sake, Poppy!' I said. 'It's ASSESSMENTS! Jesus! Do you know what I'm saying!' And I shown her the back of my head, though I couldn't help smiling.

Then just two days before the assessments, Rosetta heard something she shouldn't of, and what she heard, do you know what
I'm saying, had everyone give Poppy a second look.