The Dark Threads (25 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I
TRIED TO HIDE
with make-up the signs that I'd been crying all night in my sleep, but knew I looked awful as, self-consciously, I entered the crowded, noisy dining room. There were about seven tables, each holding eight people, and a long, narrow table at the front for cutlery, crockery, a packet of sliced bread, a dish of margarine and a toaster. After waiting my turn to use the toaster I sat at the nearest vacant place: a table with seven Chinese girls engrossed in conversation in their own language.

Many of the others had bacon and eggs with their toast, so I went through to the kitchen and found that cartons of eggs and rashers of uncooked bacon had been put out for us. A few girls were standing, laughing and chatting, around the large frying pan but, hungry though I was, the simple act of joining them to fry some bacon was too daunting. Instead, I returned to the dining room, gingerly poured some coffee from a large metal jug, and toasted another two slices of bread.

I ate my breakfast quietly amidst the clatter of cutlery and noisy chatter. When Marianne passed my table I made an effort to smile but my lips twitched nervously. I was getting the sweats and shakes again. It's no good, I thought, panic increasing my heart beat to an alarming rate. I can't make it. I can't. I breathed deeply several times: I can't but I
must.
I
must
and I WILL.

After breakfast I sat in my room, wondering what to do. I didn't want to go to the day hospital. But what might happen if I didn't show up, especially in view of my panicky phone call to Mrs Stroud last night? On no account must I agree to admission. But could they section me? Oh God, no! I washed my face again, bathed my eyes gently and then sat on the bed hoping that if I waited a while my eyes would become less puffy and I'd look less ill. It would be too dangerous to let mental health staff know how bad I was feeling. But how could I hide what showed so clearly in my face?

I looked in the mirror again. No improvement. Oh yes, here's a patient who's definitely in need of drugging and shocking. Be a good girl and drink this nice Largactil syrup. Sit still, dear, while we rub conducting jelly in your hair and clamp these electrodes on your head. Don't be a naughty girl, we're only trying to help you.

I brushed some pink blusher onto my chalk-white cheeks, blended it carefully with my fingers as it said in the magazines to try to achieve a natural healthy look, and forced a smile onto my lips. They're not going to look so closely at me, I thought. Perhaps I looked at least passable from a distance. I stood back, and stared in dismay again at the mental patient in the mirror. Oh shit! Well, it was the best I could do. I'd have to set off now. And for heaven's sake, I told myself as I fumbled to fasten my coat buttons, don't let them see how much your hands are shaking.

After getting lost and wandering around town, I toyed again with the idea of running away. It did seem a safer option than risking being admitted. Where could I go to lie low for a while, be anonymous, and keep away from psychiatrists, at least until I felt stronger? Had I enough money to get me to London or somewhere? Yes, just about. I headed for the railway station. But the prospect of trailing the streets of London cold, hungry, homeless, alone, held only slightly more appeal than returning to the hospital and saying, ‘OK, you win. I'm sick. Do what you like with me.'

I sat on a bench, watching a tramp scavenging in a rubbish bin.

Hours sneaked by.

I moved on to the station buffet, ate a cheese sandwich, and then back to sit on the bench. The tramp I'd seen earlier returned. He sat down beside me, muttering unintelligibly. More time passed. The sky darkened and spat upon us.

Finally, I returned to the hostel and ate my tea, shyly, amidst the chattering crowd, feeling isolated and alone. Then I went to bed.

Next morning I woke early, pulled on my jeans and T-shirt, and breakfasted on coffee and toast before the dining room filled. I wanted to lie on my bed all day but feared Mrs Stroud might ring the hospital to say I wasn't functioning. Perhaps I should go to the day hospital, especially after missing yesterday? But supposing the staff there decided I looked ill enough to require admission? My dilemma was the same as it had been yesterday morning: I was in no fit state to allow myself to be seen by psychiatric staff. I counted the money in my purse. Train fare to London? No, that was a crackpot idea. I went off out to find where to catch the bus to Menston.

I arrived at the day hospital, feeling desperately sad and vulnerable. The two student nurses moved on every few months. Andy, whom I liked, was working on a ward now, replaced by Clive who had been nagging at me for the last couple of weeks to wear a ‘nice dress' instead of my usual jeans and T-shirt. As if what I chose to wear was any of his business.

Instead of going to OT we'd been staying at the day hospital recently to do some unpaid work called industrial therapy, which this week was packing greetings tags for a local firm.

‘We've got enough packers at the moment,' Clive told me, ‘so you can sit at that other table and do something else.'

I sat at the table where Maud and Ethel, two elderly patients, were sitting staring blankly while rocking back and forth, their mouths working in that constant chewing motion I'd seen in many patients. I thought these were symptoms of mental illness but learnt later they were indicative of a drug-induced disease called tardive dyskinesia – caused by the same drugs I'd been prescribed for the past few years. Last week Maud had shown me a photograph of the attractive young woman she used to be. I wondered, with a shudder, what the future held for me.

Clive placed a child's colouring book in front of me, opened at a picture of a duck, then went away to return a few minutes later with a jamjar of water and a paint box. I picked up the brush but resentment, unsuppressed by drugs, rose inside me. I was a woman who was being treated like a child. Why?

Clive was looking over my shoulder. ‘Don't forget to paint its beak,' he said. ‘There's some yellow paint here, look.'

Obediently I dipped my brush into the water-filled jamjar, and then into the yellow paint in the box labelled ‘Children's Rainbow Paint Box
'.
But then something I'd once read somewhere jumped into my mind, jolting me out of my pathetic compliance: ‘If they give you ruled paper, write the other way
.'
Clive was pointing to the beak telling me to paint that. I daubed the paint on the duck's webbed feet instead.

‘There, that's the beak done,' I said when I finished painting the feet. ‘I'll paint its feet now. Ducks have bright blue feet, don't they?' I began painting the beak blue while persisting in calling it the feet. Clive looked puzzled.

‘But those are the feet and that is the beak,' he said, pointing them out to me.

‘Oh, really?' I said in mock surprise. ‘Are you certain of that? Things aren't always what they appear to be, you know.'

I continued to purposely mix up the various parts of the duck's anatomy, and the perplexed look on Clive's face made me want to laugh in spite of myself.

‘You're doing this on purpose, aren't you, Jean? You
do
know the difference, don't you? You're playing games with me.'

But he didn't seem sure whether I was or not. I knew my behaviour was dangerously foolish, but I think my reasoning was along the lines that if I was about to go mad anyway, then I might as well squeeze my last bit of fun out of life first, instead of continuing to stifle myself by conforming to the wishes of the staff.

Clive took the paint brush from my hand, filled it with yellow paint and gave it back to me, telling me to finish painting the duck with that, then he went away to watch other patients. I tried to resign myself to the idea that it must somehow be my own fault; perhaps I deserved to be treated like a child to punish me for acting like one or something; perhaps I didn't understand because of my sickness that this hospital really was giving help. But as I tried to understand, anger swelled up into a big black pain inside obliterating all else. I loaded the brush with paint as black as my feelings and, in a few swift strokes, the duck disappeared in blackness.

Clive returned and looked over my shoulder at the page.

‘Why have you done that?' he asked.

‘Go and look in your psychiatric textbooks and see if they will help you to understand why I've done that. Then you can come back and tell me.'

Dr Shaw arrived and I was called into his office. In a rush of words before my courage failed me, I told him my case notes were wrong, my treatment was wrong, and being asked to paint pictures in a nursery child's colouring book was an insult to my intelligence.

‘Of course, painting a duck is no worse than many other forms of so-called therapy,' I added. ‘Like being asked to stand in the grounds shouting “Hot Peas” or jumping around saying “I am silly”.'

‘I've no idea what you're talking about, and I am fed up of your silly talking which has gone on for too long,' Dr Shaw told me, banging his pen on the desk, a tap to emphasise each word of ‘which-has-gone-on-for-too-long'.

‘You've just said you've no idea what I'm talking about. So how do you know it's silly? Why do you form opinions on things you've no idea about?'

Brave words but I was quaking inside. We faced each other across the desk like gladiators in an arena. For some reason, we always seemed to annoy each other.

‘I'm not here to play games with you,' he said sternly. ‘Where did you get to yesterday when you ran away?'

‘I didn't run away. I'm here, aren't I?'

‘Are you going back to the hostel? Or shall we admit you to Prieston Ward?'

Prieston? I'd heard that was worse than Thornville. I thought of the hostel dining room full of bright, chattering students, and felt too weak and ill to face going back there that night. I felt trapped, unsure of myself.

‘Come along now. Let's have your decision,' he said, looking at his watch. ‘Shall we arrange for your admission?'

Memories of my experiences in Thornville flooded my mind with pain. Never again, I resolved. Summoning up my last ounce of rebellious strength, I told Dr Shaw I would
never
go back into hospital unless I was unconscious, that I would sooner die than be admitted, that I should have learnt my lesson long ago, and, yes, of course I would go back to the hostel. I wish I could say that after this brave speech I held my head high and went back to the hostel where all ended well. Instead, I sat there close to tears, afraid of how bad I was feeling.

‘Are you ill?' Dr Shaw asked. I hung my head. He could see I was unhappy, could see that he'd won. What more did he want?

‘Come on, Jean, answer me,' he said, in a way that reminded me of my brother trying to rope me into some nonsensical argument. Dear God, I must be ill so why not admit it? I thought.

‘Yes, I'm ill,' I replied, skulking lower in my chair and feeling painfully exhausted and defeated. ‘I'm mentally ill.'

‘Right then. I'll arrange for you to be admitted.'

No, no, no, a part of me was screaming. But if I'm not well enough to get back to the hostel, where will I sleep tonight? I tried to compromise.

‘If I agree to being hospitalised, could it be without having any drugs or ECT?' I asked. I believed my prospects of healthy growth depended on establishing this, but it seemed a tall order if I was admitted. Dr Shaw apparently deemed this question, which was so important to me, as no more deserving of an answer than when I'd asked him if I could have a glass of water during the Case Review Meeting. He frowned and looked at his watch again.

‘It's getting late,' he said, ‘so stop this game-playing and make your mind up. It's back to the hostel. Or Prieston. Which is it to be?'

‘I'll go back to the hostel,' I said, standing up.

Tony came over while I was putting my coat on. His lips were moving but I couldn't hear him properly; the sound kept blanking out so I was only catching snatches of a sentence, odd words here and there. I went outside feeling panicky and walked quickly down the drive. I
had
to get away or I might be lost for ever. When first admitted to Thornville, I'd been stronger and more stable than now, but still they broke me. I'd never survive experiences like that a second time, especially not in my present vulnerable state.

Although hungry, I was not sure I could face the crowded hostel dining room, so I went to the little café near the hospital where I used to go occasionally with Vera and Georgina. Aware that my money had to go far, I bought an egg sandwich, the least appetising but cheapest meal on the menu, and a cup of tea. Parts of the conversation I'd just had with Dr Shaw kept running through my mind. I'm ill, I'm mentally ill, I said to myself, feeling utterly weary and demoralised. From my table near the window I could see it had started to rain again. Didn't it do anything but rain these days?

A couple approached me at the bus stop and the man asked for directions. ‘How to get to where?' I asked, trying to be helpful, but when he started repeating his question the woman tugged his sleeve and said in a voice which I did manage to hear only too well: ‘Don't talk to her, David, let's go. She's one of
those
patients.' The mixture of fear and contempt on her face as she said this and pulled him away both angered and saddened me.

The bus was late, which gave me time to worry about not being able to find my way back. I felt too fragile to wander the streets looking for the hostel that night. Courage drained out of me, whatever bit was still left. I plodded towards the hospital.

On rounding the bend in the long, winding driveway and catching a glimpse of the hospital looming up large and dark ahead of me in the pale light of evening, I stopped dead in my tracks. No. No. I
won't
allow this to happen to me. If I lose this battle now, everything will be lost. I
must
get back to the hostel.