The Dark Threads (14 page)

Another memory of that Christmas dance. Me ‘waltzing' around the hall with a man with vacant staring eyes. I hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings by refusing to dance. It might have taken him courage to ask. He held me stiffly and moved like a robot. We shuffled around the polished, wooden floor, out of step with the music and, as I looked at those strange, lifeless eyes that were close to my face, I felt as if I was trying to dance with a corpse.

‘Uncle Lionel enjoys those hospital dances,' Mike said, putting our drinks down on the table, ‘though he can't keep pace with the music. He shuffles around the dance floor like death-in-life.'

‘Ooops!' Back in the present with Mike, I fumbled in my handbag for a tissue to mop up some drink I'd just spilt on the table.

‘Relatives can go to these dances. I got invited to one and went along for a laugh,' he said.

‘For a laugh? Oh yes, of course. I expect it was very funny.' I don't think Mike even noticed the angry sarcasm in my voice. ‘What were the patients like?' I asked.

‘Some really sad cases. But others seemed perfectly normal on first impression. I asked a girl to dance. Looked about nineteen, quite pretty. Thought she was a nurse in civvies. It turned out she was a patient.' He shook his head and raised his eyebrows at remembering his mistake. ‘Amazing. You wouldn't have thought anything was wrong with her.' He paused to take a swig of his beer. ‘Except she talked a load of rubbish,' he added with a smile.

‘Oh, did she?' I said, feeling disappointed that he hadn't managed to talk to one of the many patients who didn't talk rubbish.

‘Well yes,
of course
she talked rubbish,' he said, sounding surprised at my naivety. ‘Don't forget she was a mental patient.'

I finished off my drink quickly. It left a bitter taste. Had the girl really talked rubbish or had it just seemed so to Mike because that's what he'd expected of her? I was definitely not going to tell him about me.

On the night before I was due to start at the day hospital, I went to bed late after spending the evening with Mike. I was sitting up in bed sipping Horlicks and thinking about my life as I gazed through the gap in my curtains at the pale moon, a silvery disc suspended for aeons in a vast expanse of dark sky. The future looked bleak. Tomorrow an ambulance would be drawing up outside our house to take me to the day hospital which stood in the grounds of the main hospital.

‘I'm a sick girl,' I whispered into my mug of Horlicks, warming my face in the comforting steam. ‘A sick girl. What does that mean? Will I ever get well? Have I ever been well?'

LOOKING BACK 5

‘
L
OOK AT THIS
,' J
ULIA
said, thrusting a
Daily Mirror
at me. There were just the two of us in our kitchen. I looked. It was a photograph of a football crowd.

‘
I've been thinking,' she said, pushing a stray lock of unruly red hair out of her eyes. ‘We could pick one person in the crowd, anyone at all. Take her for instance.' She pointed her finger at a young woman's round, smiling face. ‘She's a person just like you and me. She thinks and feels and eats and sleeps and laughs and cries and… Everything about herself and her day-to-day living is as … er … as big to her as what our own lives are to us. It's
her
world. Yet to us she's nothing but a face in a crowd, just as we would be to her. And what I've just said could apply to any single one of the billions of people in the whole world.'

‘
Yes, I know what you mean,' I said excitedly. Off we went into one of those delightful conversations in which we were cresting the same waves.

And then we began thinking about ‘time'. We were thirteen. Soon, tomorrow would be today, and today – this very day now – would be yesterday. Years would pass. We would die. More time would pass. One hundred years. Two hundred years. Today would belong to history. Nobody on earth now would be alive then. And nobody could do anything about time. It just went on and on.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly.

‘
Look, it isn't half-past six yet,' said Julia, her greenish-grey eyes wide and serious. ‘But it soon will be and there's nothing anyone can do to keep hold of this minute.'

‘
But it isn't half-past six right now, this very second,' I said. I realised I was clenching my fists as if in a futile attempt to capture and hold that minute; to hold in abeyance the past and the future, retaining the NOW. That's when we started working ourselves up into a frenzy, gesticulating madly and raving about it being now, right now, this very second now. Never before had now seemed so now-ish.

But even as we were experiencing this heightened awareness of the present, the clock kept ticking, the minute was spiralling beyond our reach. The red second-hand on the clock moving quietly, steadily, reached and passed the number twelve. We leaned our heads back, exhausted at our wrestling match with Time, and laughed at the way our feelings had reached a pitch of intensity as we'd tried – almost literally – to hold infinity in the palm of our hand.

Time wouldn't stop. Of course it wouldn't. And things were about to change. At age thirteen, the pupils in our class had the option of transferring to a new comprehensive school where we could sit for GCE exams. Notes were sent to inform our parents. My mum and dad, with their usual lack of interest in my schooling, said I could please myself. I tingled with excitement. Rossfields was a ‘posh' new school. It even had tennis courts and showers. I loved the idea of bringing books home to do homework. My friends, like most of our class, didn't share my enthusiasm and wouldn't be going. I'd be forced into making new friends and this, I told myself, would be good for me. I planned to try very hard to overcome the painfully intense feelings of shyness I experienced with everyone except my five best friends.

On my first day I knotted my maroon and grey striped tie with pride. It matched the grey skirt and maroon cardigan. I'd never worn a school uniform before and I liked the idea. A uniform, I thought, gave a sense of belonging. I picked up the brown leather satchel I'd bought from a jumble sale, and set off with a mixture of anxiety and optimism. A hole in the bottom left corner of my satchel proved just the right size for my ruler to keep dropping through as I hurried along the paths in the cemetery taking a handy short-cut.

There were about thirty pupils per class, a fairly even mix of boys and girls. The school seemed so big and impersonal, though at my previous schools I'd been in classes of forty. I spent my first week at Rossfields trying to find my way round endless staircases and corridors, trying to remember the names of teachers who wore strange black gowns. And, most important to me, trying to find the courage to speak to my new classmates. Standing alone in the playground, I missed my friends so much.

I did manage to make a new friend in my class. Her name was Mandy; a tall, slender girl with large brown eyes and black curly hair. My hand shook as we held a book we were sharing, and conversation was so hampered by my social anxiety, until, very gradually, my shyness with Mandy lessened. Then, just before the results of the end of term exams were given out, we were told the pupil with the highest marks would go up into the A1 class. That was me!

After the holidays I went to join my new classmates in Room 10. The noise I could hear before entering the room told me the teacher was absent. A girl sitting with her feet up on the desk greeted my arrival by shouting: ‘We don't want you in this class.' I sat down self-consciously at the nearest vacant desk and was promptly told to ‘shift' by a girl who claimed it was her desk.

Later that day I held back my tears as I walked home through the large cemetery. Crippled by shyness, I became the only pupil sitting alone in every lesson at a double desk; in Cookery I worked alone at a table for four.

Our house was dirty, smelly, and untidy, and, I'm afraid, so was I. I can picture myself with my greasy hair, just long enough to hide my mucky neck, straggling over the grubby collar of my crumpled school blouse. My grey socks were meant to be white, and I wore scuffed hole-in-the-sole shoes. At my old school, who cared? There I'd watched kids as scruffy as myself playing at pulling nits out of their hair, lining them up on their desk, and giggling at the popping sound each egg made beneath the pressure of a thumbnail. But no one cracked nits on the spanking new desks here.

When the schoolgirl teasing turned vicious I was ill-equipped to deal with it. My self-confidence in social situations was smaller than a peanut. I was bullied constantly. Without one single friend in my new class, I drifted away on a piece of flotsam and became an outcast.

And I was losing touch with my five best friends. We'd grown up together: played, laughed, cried, quarrelled, fought, hugged, shared secrets for so long. How could it all just end? I read a Charlotte Brontë poem that reminded me of Rainbow Land days, sensed something precious was fading, and wept.

We wove a web in childhood,
A web of sunny air;
We dug a spring in infancy
Of water pure and fair…

Of course, there was my new friend, Mandy, with whom I spent summer Saturday afternoons sitting by the lake in the park eating crisps and drinking orange juice. But it wasn't the same: none of the imaginative games or the shared intimacies or the giddy fits of giggling, the whoops of sheer joy.

My diary, the red-bound book with a silhouette of a girl with a ponytail on the cover, became my best friend and confidante. ‘I hate being in this class,' I wrote. ‘I'm so lonely and miserable.' Around the time I was writing this, my new form teacher was writing on my report: ‘Jean is coping admirably with her work and has settled down well in her new class.'

CASE NO. 10826

27 January 1971

Dr T Smith

Consultant Psychiatrist

High Royds Hospital

Dear Dr Smith

re: Miss Jean Davison age 20

…………………………………………….

I should be very grateful if you would consider taking Miss Jean Davison over as a day patient.

She suffers from chronic schizophrenia and has been working until three months ago. She is not well enough to go back to work but not ill enough to necessitate admission to hospital. Dr Dean has been consulted in this matter and he would be very pleased if you could find your way clear to accepting her as a day patient.

Yours sincerely

R Armstrong

Medical Assistant

CHAPTER TWELVE

W
HEN THE AMBULANCE ARRIVED
at our house I noticed the curtains of a bungalow opposite being pulled to one side. Another neighbour kept turning to look while walking past as a nurse opened the rear door for me. Well, let the nosey parkers stare if they've nothing better to do, I thought irritably.

My old wounds smarted as we turned into the familiar driveway and I saw again those thick stone walls, the imposing frontage of the grim institution. But, instead of bearing left to continue up the main drive, we took a sharp turn to the right and jerked to a halt on a gravel path outside a small, whitewashed building that looked like a detached house enclosed in a neat garden.

A smart-suited man of about forty greeted me at the door. He shook my hand warmly, and introduced himself as Mr Jordan, the day hospital charge nurse. He took me into a room where about ten other patients were sitting round a large table. They were drawing or knitting. Bob Dylan's voice floated out from the radio in the corner singing one of my favourite songs: ‘Blowin' in the Wind'
.

A young woman was humming along to the radio and I noticed that she, like some of the others, looked to have what today would be called ‘learning difficulties'. I felt saddened at the thought of what kind of life people like her must have. It was only when she stopped and looked at me that I realised I'd been staring. I felt uncomfortable.

‘Hi! My name's Caroline. What's yours?'

‘Jean.'

Caroline had a bad squint and the whites of her eyes kept showing; that's when you could see her eyes at all, for they were hooded with heavy lids. Despite her loud, extrovert manner it seemed she was heavily drugged. A small, turned-up nose looked to have been stuck on to the pale face. Her short, dark-brown hair, which fell over her forehead in a longish fringe, had been given a ‘basin' cut. She was wearing a grey skirt with a white blouse, which reminded me of my old school uniform, and white ankle socks.

‘How old are you, Jean?' she asked.

‘Twenty.'

‘Get away with you! You're pulling my leg, aren't you? You look about sixteen. Only sweet sixteen. Guess how old I am?'

Mr Jordan smiled. ‘This one will talk you to death,' he said to me, nodding at Caroline. ‘She's driving me crazy.'

‘Take no notice of him, Jean. He's only jealous 'cos I beat him at dominoes.'

Some good-natured bantering went on between the two of them, then Caroline returned her attention to me.

‘I'm twenty-one and I'm a bit backward,' she said. This last bit of information was given in the same matter-of-fact way as the first. ‘I live over yonder in the big hospital. I've lived there a long time. But I
have
got a dad. He's a Youth Leader. Not that he cares owt for me or else he wouldn't have put me away, would he? Mr Jordan got me my job here. I come over every day to make the tea and coffee, wash up and keep the place tidy.'

She started humming the tune of the Dylan song again. After a while she stopped and stared at me. ‘I'd like us to be friends, Jean,' she said.

‘Yes, I'd like that too,' I said, clasping the trembling nicotine-stained hand, which had been thrust across the table at me. Caroline had the kind of loud voice and raucous laughter that could grate on your nerves, but there was something endearing about her. I liked her for her acceptance of me. She was open and friendly.

Among the patients who were drawing, there was a lad of about nineteen with dark, bushy hair and grey eyes that glittered like steel in the sun. He was trying to draw me. I was given paper and a pencil and told to draw Melvyn, the fair-haired young man sitting opposite me in a trance-like state with his eyes half closed. Melvyn had a fixed smile upon his thin lips, which I found later was his permanent expression.

‘He's a happy lad is our Melvyn,' said Mr Jordan. ‘Never stops smiling.'

This latter point was proven at lunchtime when Melvyn was sick into his plate and he just sat there retaining his Cheshire cat grin while Sue, a pretty, auburn-haired student nurse, groaned as she cleared his plate away. ‘Oh not again! If it's not Geoff, it's you, Melvyn.'

‘What do you mean if it's not me?' Geoff, the lad who had been drawing me, looked up indignantly from shovelling huge spoonfuls of sponge pudding into his mouth, using his spoon and his thumb in a way which reminded me of my brother.

‘Well, you're often sick, Geoff, through being greedy.' She brushed some crumbs from her lilac woollen mini-dress.

‘But if I don't eat the food it goes in the bin,' Geoff said, becoming agitated, ‘and I don't believe in wasting food. I've been brought up never to waste food. It's a sin to throw food away when people are starving.'

‘Oh, here we go again,' Sue said, smiling.

None of the day hospital staff wore a uniform, and the patients addressed Sue and the other student nurse, Ray, by their first names. This did help to create a better atmosphere than over on the wards but, even so, I couldn't help wondering what I was doing in such a place. What would Mike think if he could see me now?

After lunch and pills we sat in the lounge and most of the patients leant their heads back in the easy chairs and slept. Geoff came and sat in a chair opposite me, studied my face carefully, and continued his drawing. Every now and then he tore up his sheet of paper, strode round the room muttering, banged his fist down heavily on the coffee table (much to the annoyance of the sleeping patients), then started trying to draw me again. During the next hour or so, whenever I glanced across at Geoff I found him studying my face for his sketch. I was relieved when Mr Jordan sent many of the patients, including Geoff, over to the OT department in the main hospital. He told me to stay at the day hospital for today and play draughts with Elsie.

Elsie was an elderly patient, a frail, thin woman who frequently rocked back and forth, and her jaws were constantly engaged in a chewing motion. The draughtboard had been assembled on a small coffee table when Mr Jordan called me over.

‘Jean will play draughts with you,' he told Elsie, who looked up and gave me a gummy smile. ‘Do you know how to play draughts, Jean?' I nodded. ‘Good. I'll leave you to it then,' he said, and left the room.

Elsie had already moved a black draught so I moved a white one but then Elsie also moved a white one.

‘Are you black or white?' I asked.

‘Oh, I'm sorry,' she said, moving another white one before also moving a black one.

At first I tried to keep the game in some sort of order and teach her to play, but she was too confused. Finding it impossible to get her to understand, I started letting her move whatever and wherever she wanted when it was her turn. Sometimes she thought she'd won, sometimes she thought I'd won. The rules had been turned upside down, abandoned, and, as game after game proceeded in the same haphazard way, I began to feel like Alice in
Alice in Wonderland.
The more fed-up I was getting, the more Elsie seemed to be enjoying herself. Her sad, wrinkled face became animated, she chuckled merrily each time she ‘won' and, with the excited enthusiasm of a child, she kept setting the pieces up for another ‘game'. About an hour and several games later I'd had more than enough.

‘Let's have a rest now,' I suggested, as yet another game came to an end, but Elsie was happily rearranging the pieces.

‘This time you can be black and I'll be white,' she said.

I stared at the draughtboard with aching eyes. When I didn't move, Elsie looked at me expectantly.

‘Oh, I do like playing with you,' she said. ‘I haven't enjoyed myself so much for ages. Go on, Jean. I think it's your turn to move first this time, isn't it?'

Of course I hadn't the heart to refuse.

I was eventually rescued by Caroline's appearance with the tea trolley. After tea break Sue said we'd got time for a few group games before the ambulances came. The patients who had been to the OT department returned and we played a game where Sue asked each of us a question. If we got the answer wrong we had to do a ‘forfeit' decided on by Sue. When my turn came to do a ‘forfeit' Sue told me to go outside and shout ‘Hot peas!' six times. There was nobody nearby in the hospital grounds, thank goodness, but I still felt stupid and stood hesitating on the gravel path by the door.

‘Hot peas,' I said self-consciously; it came out in a soft, hoarse voice.

‘I said shout it, not whisper it,' Sue reminded me.

‘Oh well, it's only a bit of fun,' I told myself, trying to enter into the spirit of the game.

‘HOT PEAS! HOT PEAS! HOT PEAS …!'

Everyone laughed. But then the game took a darker turn.

We went back inside and Betsy, a plump, reticent patient, was told to stand in the middle of the floor and jump up and down, turning round, while repeating the words ‘I am silly!' She smiled coyly, turned crimson, and looked down at the carpet.

‘Come on Betsy. Start now,' Sue urged her.

Poor Betsy began jumping and turning, obviously feeling embarrassed. ‘I am silly,' she mumbled.

‘No, you've got to keep on saying it until I tell you to stop,' Sue said, giggling. Betsy, looking terribly uncomfortable, paused to catch her breath, then she started jumping round again. ‘I am silly! I am silly! I am silly! I am silly …!'

This ‘therapy' was interrupted when Mr Jordan came into the room. ‘Jean, your ambulance has arrived. Sit down, Elsie, it's not yours. Now, is there anyone else for Bradford? No, it looks like there's only you today, Jean. See you tomorrow.'

The ambulance driver, a balding man with a paunch, winked at me as I climbed inside the rear door. When we rounded the bend in the drive he pulled up, opened the door and beckoned to me. ‘Come and sit up front with me, luv,' he said.

He helped me up on to the seat beside him, and resumed driving.

‘No point sitting in the back on your own, is there? It's nice to have some company, especially when it's a pretty girl like you.'

His eyes wandered briefly from the road to my knees and I knew I should have stayed in the back. He chatted in a pseudo-friendly manner, swiftly bringing the conversation round to sex.

‘Attitudes towards sex have changed, haven't they?' he said. ‘When I was young, lasses of your age were mostly virgins but nowadays it's … well, that's not the fashion today, is it? I bet you've had lots of lovers, haven't you?'

Of course I should have told him to mind his own business and insisted on riding in the back. But I was much too passive in those days. I let him prattle on, wondering if this was his usual ‘patter' for any young woman or whether he was trying to take advantage of a mental patient.

‘A lot of the lasses I've carried to and from that place are bonkers and sex mad.'

‘Are you sure it's them and not you?' I asked coolly.

‘Aw, come on luv, don't be offended. I know you aren't like that, but you wouldn't believe what some of them are like. I've lived a lot in my time but some of them can even make
me
blush! I'd a young girl in here a bit since, only about sixteen she was, and she'd had it more times than I've had hot dinners. She kept going on about the size of the penises she'd seen. She said, “You should've seen the cock I saw last night. It was a whopper! I've seen some big 'uns before but, blimey, nowt like this! People tell me I've got a big mouth but I had a job on getting it in that, never mind anywhere else!” Yep, you should've heard her and she couldn't have been a day over sixteen.'

He began to laugh loudly and I gripped the sides of my seat as the ambulance swerved.

‘A whopper!' he said, between bursts of foolish laughter. ‘Can you imagine it? A whopper!'

The whole world's gone mad, I thought, as his senseless laughter continued. And I've got to learn to live in this sick, crazy world.