The Dark Threads (24 page)

On my way back from the post box I went into a phone booth and, true to my resolve, dialled the number of the Leeds YWCA which I got from Directory Enquiries.

‘Hello, YWCA.'

Was I strong enough to do this now that thoughts were buzzing around my head like a swarm of angry bees? Supposing I was bordering on madness, about to tip over the brink? The way I felt now made that easy to believe.

‘Hello! Hello! This is the YWCA.'

Supposing I did need the drugs? Dr Prior had warned me never to stop them. Oh, Lord, supposing he was right after all?

‘Can I help you?'

I couldn't speak.

I'm crumbling, I thought with horror. I can no longer think straight. I'm mad!

‘Can I help you?'

Speechless, I replaced the hot, clammy receiver that kept saying, ‘Can I help you? Can I help you?'

Who in the world could help me now?

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A
FEW DAYS AFTER
giving up the pills I was sitting facing Tony across the desk, the letter I'd sent to Mr Jordan in front of him beside the ominous manila file.

‘What do you want me to do with this?' he asked, pointing to the letter.

‘Do what you like with it,' I said, wishing he'd at least take it off the desk out of my sight. It embarrassed me.

‘I've been reading your case notes,' Tony began.

‘You'd be wasting your time less if you read the
Beano
.'

‘And if it's any consolation to you, there's nowhere in your case notes that says “This patient has got …” There's no diagnosis.' He stabbed the blotting paper with his pen. ‘That's lucky, you know.'

‘Lucky?'

‘Many patients have things written about them, a schizophrenia diagnosis, for instance, that could go against them for the rest of their lives – in terms of jobs and things.'

No diagnosis? I didn't know until many years later when I read my case notes that Dr Sugden had given me a schizophrenia label right from the start and, in the letter from Dr Armstrong referring me to the day hospital, I had been described as suffering from chronic schizophrenia. So why did Tony say this? I don't know. All I knew at that point was that I had suffered greatly during the past years, was still suffering, and that my suffering had been very much worsened by my treatment.

‘Lucky? Oh yes, aren't I a lucky girl?'

Tony either didn't notice or chose to ignore the angry sarcasm in my voice.

‘Actually Dr Copeland and Mr Jordan believed your problems weren't mental illness at all, but just the normal turmoils of an intelligent teenager, and … and I'm inclined to agree with them.'

‘I'm not a teenager now,' I said, unconsoled.

‘Are you feeling better than when you wrote that letter?'

‘I'm OK,' I said guardedly.

‘Are you sleeping all right?'

‘No, but I'm OK.' I was biting my fingernails and aware I could hardly manage to sit still. ‘I'm OK,' I said again, trying to convince myself, as well as him.

‘Are you?' Tony said, with a look that frightened me. He fingered the letter. ‘Anyway, what do you want me to do with this? I could put it in the bin if you like and that would be the end of it.'

‘What does it matter what I want? You'll do what you like with it anyway.'

‘I'm asking
you
what you want me to do with it.'

I tried to remember what I'd written in it about Dr Shaw, aware that, unless it was binned, it would be there for Dr Shaw to read. Still, what did it matter?

‘What do you want me to do with it?' Tony asked again.

I looked steadily at Tony, decided he meant well and that I liked him a lot, but felt irritable.

‘Do what you like with it. Why are you going on about it? Put it in the bin, stick it on the wall, staple it to my blasted case notes or … or wipe your backside with it for all I care!' I heard myself say.

‘I don't think you're quite yourself, are you?' he said quietly, his eyes watching me intently. ‘You've been rather agitated for the last few days. We could prescribe some extra pills to calm you down and help you sleep.'

‘Stuff the bloody pills,' I retorted, wondering why it had taken so many years for me to say that. ‘I've finished with pills.'

‘Jean, love, you're not making this easy for me,' Tony said, brushing his forehead. ‘Do you realise you're not well physically? Your blood-test result shows you're anaemic and your urine sample showed up a urinary infection. Then there's this weight loss, which is becoming very worrying.'

‘Well, I will keep taking the Complan,' I conceded.

I'd been steadily losing weight for several months even though my appetite remained good. And this despite me eating bigger dinners and substituting tea or coffee at breaks with the large mugs of Complan, a nutritious milky drink the nursing staff gave me three times a day. I was down to less than 7 stone, which was definitely underweight for my height of 5 feet 5 inches. The nurses had been weighing me each week for some time, and noting the steady decrease. In the few days since coming off drugs, the rate of the weight loss had become alarmingly rapid.

Later that day Dr Baines-Bradbury, the hospital superintendent, came to the day hospital. Tony sent me to see him in one of the consulting rooms upstairs.

‘Sit down, Jean. I'd just like a chat with you,' he said. The manila file was open in front of him and the letter I'd written to Mr Jordan was on top of that.

Fortunately for me, I found him approachable and was able to explain calmly how I'd like to leave home and was thinking of trying the YWCA in Leeds. He asked if I'd like him to arrange for a social worker to help me with this move. I hadn't even known there were social workers at the hospital. I hesitated. I wanted to do it myself, but remembered my abortive phone call, and my self-confidence was low, so I accepted his offer.

Finally, he asked if I felt better than when I wrote the letter to Mr Jordan.

‘Yes, I do,' I replied, while taking care to keep my hands below the desk level where he couldn't see that I kept tensing them up, showing the whites of my knuckles. ‘Does it seem … Do you think I'm …'

‘I don't think you're on the brink of a serious psychotic illness,' he said, with a twinkle in his grey eyes.

‘Don't you?' I said, feeling greatly relieved because during the past few days this had been my biggest fear. I'd forgotten for the moment that I'd decided not to take any notice of what a psychiatrist might think of me.

‘No, not at all,' he assured me, smiling at my obvious relief. ‘One day you'll look back on this, wonder what on earth all the fuss was about, and laugh.'

At last things were moving. I saw Mrs Winters, a psychiatric social worker, who rang Mrs Stroud, the warden at the YWCA in Leeds, while I was with her in her office. Apparently Mrs Stroud had some apprehension about offering me a room, but she agreed, after making it clear that the hostel could give no kind of ‘after care'. Mrs Winters, a grey-haired, bespectacled woman, beamed at me after her negotiations.

‘Mrs Stroud's a bit wary about accepting patients but I've persuaded her to give you a try. She says you must leave immediately if you present any problems that might distress the other residents.' She fingered the pearl necklace which hung over her grey twin-set. ‘We don't need to worry about that, do we?'

‘No, of course not,' I said, feeling heat rising to my cheeks.

That evening I went into Brian's bedroom to get the suitcase I'd be needing. My eyes rested on a huge pile of Denis Wheatley books on the floor. I shivered. Could people or places really become possessed by evil? And wasn't Brian a bit too interested in the occult? An eerie sensation crept through my body.

‘What's up?'

I jumped. Brian was standing by the door watching me, grinning. ‘I saw that look on your face just then. Don't you like me books?'

I said nothing, picked up the case and left the room.

Again, sleep didn't come easily to me that night. I was thinking about good and evil, and back on the old restless search for meaning. I tossed and turned until the morning light was streaming through my curtains and I still hadn't found any answers – for how can one possibly even begin to understand?

The following evening I was packing my case as Mrs Winters was due to call in the morning to drive me to the hostel. Brian was laughing, jingling coins and clinking with a spoon on a milk bottle. Mum was crying and telling me she'd get a lodger to have my bedroom who would be more grateful than me, her own daughter. This was a repetition of the scene when at seventeen I'd announced my intention of leaving home. Oh, if only …

I was still feeling delicate since stopping the pills, and the way my skirts swivelled round my waist reminded me I was still losing weight. I hurriedly packed my case, then decided to escape the commotion by getting out of the house for a while.

I caught a bus into town and sipped Coke in a coffee bar. I thought that if I could hold myself together for just another week or two I might be OK, but I was scared by how bad I kept feeling. Shaking, sweating, insomnia, aches and pains, and most frightening of all, difficulty in thinking clearly. Did that mean I really did need the pills I'd been swallowing in handfuls each day for the past few years? Was it a choice between a zombie-like existence or … or what? Surely I couldn't remain like this for much longer. Something was bound to happen if I stayed off the pills. Sanity or madness? In which state would I surface?

I gazed out of the window, battling with fears that I was losing my mind. I marvelled at how well I was hiding it. Here was I teetering on the precipice of the dark pit of madness but looking for all the world as if I was just another customer sitting enjoying a Coke. No doubt the other people in this coffee bar thought I was gazing out of the window thinking what other young people thought about. And what might that be? Boyfriends, pop songs, clothes, trying out a new hairstyle perhaps? Oh, it would be lovely to be wrapped up in things like that, instead of having to put all my energy into trying so hard not to fall apart.

My pride at how well I was managing to hide my unease suffered a blow when Kenny, the proprietor, tapped on my shoulder and asked if I was all right. I'd liked Kenny ever since I'd seen him go outside before he locked up one night to give a sandwich to a tramp who was leaning against the window. Glancing up, I realised the coffee bar had emptied. It was eleven o'clock and he was waiting to close.

‘Yes, I'm OK,' I said quickly, standing up.

‘Wait,' he said as I opened the door. ‘Are you
sure
you're all right, luv?'

‘Yes. Why?'

‘You're as white as a sheet.'

Another night of restless thought, punctuated by snatches of fitful sleep, but in the morning I was up and ready early, waiting for Mrs Winters. Some hasty cleaning and tidying had taken place in anticipation of her visit. When she arrived, Mum bustled about in a nervous manner, handing me my suitcase and fetching my handbag. Then, after commenting that I wouldn't stay at the hostel long and would soon be back home, she burst into tears and disappeared upstairs. She just couldn't accept that her baby should grow up and leave home. (Brian was to continue living with my parents until he got married at the age of thirty-six and then he ceased all contact with his birth family).

I hurriedly buttoned my coat and left with Mrs Winters. My mother came back downstairs and stood looking through the window, her face streaked with tears, then she watched from the door. As I walked down the path with my case, Mrs Winters turned to her and said, ‘She'll be back.'

CASE NO. 10826

MEMORANDUM

Ref. Miss Jean Davison Date. 18
^th
July 1972

From. Mrs D Winters To Dr E Shaw

P.S.W. Dept.

On 12
^th
July I called at this patient's home to escort her to the Y.W.C.A. Hostel in Leeds. The home is a semi-detached house which I think is owned by the Corporation. It is comfortably furnished, with wall-to-wall carpeting, a television and a modern gas fire, but had the rather neglected look which houses tend to have where all the members go out to work. Both house and garden were very untidy.

Only Mrs Davison and Jean were at home when I called and Mrs Davison was helping Jean to get her things ready to go to the hostel. She had very little to say, in fact was rather distressed and said ‘Of course she won't stay there – she will be back soon', after which statement she burst into tears and left me and went upstairs. As we left the house she was standing in the window mopping her eyes. Because of her co-operation in helping with preparations for Jean's departure, I think her emotion was caused by her daughter's illness and not by the fact that she was leaving home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

‘H
AVE YOU WORKED OUT
your finances regarding this move?' Mrs Winters asked as she drove me to Leeds. ‘Of course, your parents will have to give you some financial support.'

I didn't know what to say so I said nothing. I wasn't expecting or wanting my parents' financial support, and intended managing on my DHSS money until I got a job.

‘Do you go out at nights?' she asked, changing the subject.

‘Yes, but not as much as I used to,' I replied.

‘Where do you go?'

‘Pubs.'

‘Now come on, Jean. You go to more interesting places than pubs. You go dancing at the Mecca. I happen to know that.'

Recently, a secretary at the day hospital had seen me at the Mecca. I felt like a schoolgirl who had been caught out telling lies. But I wasn't a schoolgirl and I wasn't lying. Perhaps I should have been more explicit and said ‘usually pubs but sometimes we go to dances afterwards'.

‘Do you go out on your own at nights?'

‘No, with friends,' I said, then wondered if I should qualify this by saying ‘but I did go out on my own last night to a coffee bar'.

‘You've got friends? That's lovely. Have you thought of sharing a flat with a friend?'

‘Yes, I'd like to do that, but my friends live with their parents and they don't want to leave home yet,' I explained. ‘A girl rang me a bit since to discuss sharing her flat, but she … Anyway, I don't fancy sharing with someone I don't know.'

‘But you
must
know her if she rang you,' Mrs Winters said.

I stiffened. ‘No, we've never met. She asked a friend of mine if she knew anyone who might want to share her flat. My friend gave her my number, so then she – this girl called Nikki – rang me.' I paused, wondering whether to say more. ‘She seemed very much taken aback when I told her I was a patient,' I added.

‘Oh, but you're not a patient.'

‘What?'

‘You're not a patient.'

At first I couldn't think what Mrs Winters meant because of course I was a patient. Then I got it.

‘When I told her I was a
day
patient,' I corrected myself.

I wondered why Mrs Winters was querying everything I said throughout the journey. Ought I to be more explicit? By the time we reached the hostel my nerves were in shreds and I found myself being excessively precise in reply to her questions.

‘Have you packed some soap?' she asked as we got out of the car in a street lined with large old terraced houses.

‘Yes. I mean no. Well, it's not really soap,' I stammered. ‘I've got some face-cleansing lotion that lathers like soap and some foaming body wash to use instead of soap.'

I drifted through the form-filling, the preliminary chat with Mrs Stroud the warden, and my goodbyes to Mrs Winters. I was thankful to be left alone in my room on the second floor. It had a long shelf across one wall, a tall, narrow wardrobe, a large old-fashioned chest of drawers with an oval mirror on a stand on top, a small table beside the bed, and a gas fire with a slot meter.

I unpacked a few things, then bolted the door and lay on the bed. I'd hardly slept since stopping the drugs about a week ago, but now I slid easily into an exhausted sleep. I dreamt someone was frantically rattling and banging on a door.

‘Open the door, Jean! Open it at once! Jean!'

Mrs Stroud? Her tone was frightened, urgent, insistent. Perhaps there was a fire! I rushed to the door. Mrs Stroud looked first at me and then past me into the room, then back at me. ‘Are you all right? What are you doing?'

‘I … I was asleep,' I mumbled apologetically.

‘Well, you don't need to bolt the door. Please leave it unbolted in future.'

I nodded, feeling puzzled at the fuss. Then I remembered how Tony had told me that her initial reluctance to accommodate me at the hostel was because a previous resident, a former High Royds patient, had locked herself in her room and attempted suicide.

‘I'm painting the window frames in a bedroom down the corridor. Come and watch. It's no fun sitting in there on your own, is it?'

I followed her down the corridor, knowing she meant well, although there was nothing in the world I would have liked more than to be left alone to sleep.

‘The other girls are out now. A few of them have jobs but most are students. We're well situated for the college, polytechnic and the university, you see,' she explained as she stirred a pot of rich brown paint. I was sitting on the mattress of the stripped bed, screwing my eyes up in the harsh glare of the sunlight streaming from the uncurtained window. ‘We've a girl living here now who was in care.' She loaded the paintbrush. ‘Her name's Marianne and she's a lovely girl. I'll introduce you.'

There was silence for a while except for the swishing noise of the brush on the window frame. The overpowering smell of paint was giving me a headache, and I searched my mind for an excuse to go back to my room for some much-needed sleep.

‘Marianne might be in now,' she said, putting her brush down on a wad of newspapers on the windowsill. ‘Let's go see if we can find her, shall we?'

Marianne, an auburn-haired, freckled-faced girl of about sixteen, was in the lounge watching horse-jumping on TV. After introducing us, Mrs Stroud left us sitting together on the old fashioned, high-backed settee.

‘Oh, look. Isn't it funny?' Marianne said, giggling and pointing to the TV. ‘Just look at that horse's tail.'

I laughed, too, but wasn't sure what I was supposed to be laughing at. A clip of film was repeated in slow motion a few times showing some horses jumping over fences, and each time Marianne roared with laughter, pointing gleefully at the horses' tails as they slowly swished up and down. I stayed in the lounge just long enough, I hoped, not to be impolite.

‘I'd better go to my room now,' I said. ‘I've a letter to write.' I stood up self-consciously. ‘See ya later.'

I was lying on the bed sleeping again, dreaming about horses' tails this time, when there was a knock at my unbolted door. I sprang up at once, feeling guilty for lying there. ‘Do you know your way round Leeds?' Mrs Stroud asked. I shook my head. ‘Well, this street map should help you. I've put a cross to mark where this hostel is. We're about fifteen minutes walk from town. To get to the town centre you take this road…' She traced her finger on the map, but I couldn't take it in. My head felt to be stuffed with cotton wool and my eyes just wanted to close.

When she left, I spread the map out on the table and tried to work out how to get to the road where I'd be catching my bus to the hospital tomorrow. I knew the name of the road and eventually found it on the map, but couldn't work out how to get there from the cross marking the hostel. Did I turn right or left from here? The more I stared at the map, the more it looked like a maze that didn't make any sense. My mind seemed to be slowing down, switching off, blanking out. Dear God, I whispered, I'm losing my faculties. Help me.

I was about to lie down on the bed again when there was another knock at the door. ‘Marianne will show you where the shops are,' Mrs Stroud said cheerily. ‘The weather's lovely so the two of you might as well go for a walk. She's waiting for you in her room. Bring your map.'

Mrs Stroud led me down the corridor to Marianne's room where the three of us pored over the map. I couldn't take in anything to do with the directions and could barely make sense of ordinary conversation. Without warning even to myself, I broke down and cried. Mrs Stroud put an arm around my shoulder and led me back to my room.

‘I'm OK,' I said between sobs. ‘Just tired. I'd like to sleep for a while if that's all right. I won't bolt the door.'

When Mrs Stroud left me alone, I thrashed about on the bed, now unable to sleep. I was too worried about what was happening to me. And of what I feared would happen if I didn't manage to get a hold of myself.

Later that afternoon, I went out alone for a walk. It only took me a few minutes to get lost, then I spent what seemed ages wandering the streets, exhausted, trying to get my bearings. It was then that something frightening happened, which seemed to confirm my worst fears.

Turning round a corner into a cul-de-sac I saw some big white letters chalked on a wall, which said Psychiatrists are nuts. I smiled to myself. What a coincidence that I should come across these words now of all times. I turned back down another street and walked along for a while. Then suddenly it hit me. Surely there had been no such words on a wall? I stopped dead and leant against some railings. ‘Jesus, I'm hallucinating now!'

I don't know how long I stood there, leaning against the railings. This is the end of the line. I've gone crazy, I thought despairingly. Soon they'll take me away to a mental hospital, and I can't stop it happening. I can't alter the script after all. I've tried. I've tried so hard.

When I started walking again, my legs held me up even though they felt like paper. I felt thoroughly wretched – weak, distressed, aching, shivery and weary beyond belief. I wondered again if I'd got flu, but feared it was something far worse than that. I was curious to see if the writing was still on the wall but I couldn't remember how to get back to it. That's if there even was a wall … Hallucinations were a brand-new experience and the thought of them terrified me. How could I tell what was real if I couldn't trust what I saw with my own eyes? Was this street I was in now real? Were these houses in front of me real? Was anybody else out there real? Was I real? I pinched the flesh on my arm; something could feel it, something must be real. But what is reality when we only have our perceptions?

I continued to wander aimlessly until a telephone kiosk loomed up in front of me. I found the number of the hostel in the torn, worn directory, dialled with trembling fingers and got through to Mrs Stroud.

‘I can't find my way back. I'm lost,' I said. How true of my life, I thought wryly.

‘What's the name of the street you're on?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Doesn't it say so in the phone booth?'

‘Oh yes, it's Clayton Street.'

‘Well, Jean, you're only a few minutes away. Take the first turning on your left then the next on your right and …'

It was useless. I couldn't understand the simple directions.

‘Will you ring High Royds for me, please. Tell them I … I need to be admitted because …' I gulped back my tears and brushed aside a remaining speck of pride, ‘because I'm mentally ill.'

I could hardly believe I'd just said that. If I was mentally ill, then the last place on earth I'd be safe in would be a mental hospital. I'd be safer roaming the streets and sleeping wrapped in newspapers.

I'll have to run away, I thought. But where to?

‘Stay right where you are, Jean,' Mrs Stroud's disembodied voice crackled through the telephone wires. ‘I'll be with you in one minute.'

A few minutes later I was in the brightly lit dining room of the hostel eating roast beef and potatoes amidst a crowd of chattering students. I was ravenously hungry although I hadn't realised that until I'd started eating. My last meal had been a small piece of toast over twelve hours ago.

After tea, I went to bed, taking care to leave my door unbolted. Mrs Stroud had said nothing about my request for her to ring the hospital to admit me. I had requested it in my most despairing moment of weakness, but wouldn't agree to it now. OK, so I might have experienced a hallucination when roaming the streets stressed, hungry, exhausted, probably physically ill. And also (perhaps most significantly, though I lacked full awareness of this, then) while I was in the throes of a ‘cold turkey' withdrawal from drugs.

I felt I was living on borrowed time. It was as if after years of remaining static, I was on the brink of getting a lot better or a lot worse. I was still sustained by the way everything had flashed so clearly in my mind when I'd realised the destructive effects of my treatment and stopped taking the pills. Why, then, I wondered, after facing myself with undiluted truth that had at last prompted me to take necessary steps for my well-being, had I become more unsteady, more emotionally strained, more psychologically vulnerable, than ever before? Was I wrong to stop the pills after all? Had I really got some kind of mental illness that had only been held in check by drugs? Why was I getting a frighteningly good vantage point of those cliffs about which Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote? I'd once bought a second-hand poetry book and knew the words by heart from some of the poems I could relate to.

O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there.

As I was drifting off to sleep I heard someone crying in the next room. Her bed must be parallel with mine up against the other side of this thin wall, I thought sleepily, and she's crying in bed. I was much too tired to be kept fully awake by this but, throughout the night, I kept hearing this sobbing. Whatever was wrong with the poor girl in the next room?

In the morning, as I was getting dressed, I caught sight of my face in the oval mirror, and froze. A pale face stared back at me with very red, very swollen, eyes. I looked, and felt, as if I'd been crying for hours. All night perhaps? I gasped. That girl I'd heard crying was
me
!