The Dark Threads (27 page)

Iris, as usual, was not saying anything but was causing the most disruption. She was a tall, well-built woman who was probably in her mid-seventies. She walked with a stoop and looked as if she was carrying the whole world on her bent shoulders. Her deeply lined, ashen face, with a permanent frown, was a pathetic picture of woe. Her eyes revealed the depths of misery and despair. I had never seen such sad eyes. She rarely said anything and spent her time plodding up and down, back and forth, pacing the ward, much to the annoyance of staff and patients alike. The nurses would shout at her to sit down and keep still, but really they were asking the impossible. She was so restless she could not sit still for more than two minutes. I think she really did try and, at times, I felt indignant at the nurses' lack of patience with her, but I tried to accept that they had a difficult job.

This day, Iris was pacing about as usual and the ward sister and another young nurse were talking about her. As psychiatric staff sometimes do, they were talking about her as if she wasn't there, or as if they assumed that she was too ill to be fully aware of what they were saying.

‘She used to be a dancing teacher,' Sister was saying.

‘Really?' said the other nurse. ‘Well, who'd have thought that?'

‘Oh yes, it's true,' continued Sister, ‘and some of her pupils became well known. She was really good, you know. She won lots of medals and trophies.'

‘Good heavens, she never did, did she?' said the other nurse, who seemed to me to be unbelievably naïve. Surely she didn't think that all the patients here had always been in their present state?

I glanced anxiously at Iris and I knew she was listening. She was listening and remembering. I wished the nurses would go away to the office if they were to continue this conversation.

‘Hey, Iris,' the sister called to her. ‘It's true, isn't it, that you used to be a dancing teacher?'

Iris didn't answer. She just kept pacing about looking utterly forlorn and dejected as the nurses continued talking.

Suddenly, she stood still and, for a moment, the expression in her eyes changed, and I thought her memory had awoken to something connected with happier times long ago. Almost at once, however, her eyes seemed to cloud over with bewilderment and confusion. She stood there as if in a trance and then she said in a flat, apathetic voice before she continued her wanderings: ‘My dancing days are over.'

I thought about her dancing when she was young, happy and healthy. I thought about her being presented with those medals and trophies, which she was once, no doubt, so proud of. Where were they now? Of what use were they now? ‘My dancing days are over,' she had said. I thought about those words …

… I still do.

Outside, life was going on. Outside, people would be laughing, crying, hurrying to and fro about their business or strolling in the sunshine. Babies would be crying; children would be playing; all would be living. I had been part of that world once and, ‘God' willing, I would be part of it again. Most of the poor souls in this ward never would. ‘I'm scared of the outside world,' Edith said over and over again. ‘It frightens me.' Hadn't it once frightened me? Hadn't I once said I was more scared of living than of dying? Certainly, life outside held many problems and there was, indeed, much sadness there. But had I been so blind as to see only the sadness and not the happiness, the evil and not the good, the wrong and not the right? What a distorted vision. Now just as Edith was afraid of the outside world, I was afraid of this inside world. Surely, a sick mind, depression, could never be healed in a place such as this hospital. A place where hope is destroyed, aspirations frustrated, light and humour repressed. A place where people die and yet their bodies live.

I wandered out of the dull, stuffy ward into the bright sunshine. The contrast to the depressing atmosphere of the ward was enormous. The sky was blue with not one cloud in sight. The occasional breeze, which rustled the leaves on the trees, cooled the baking air. Overhead, the birds were chirping, and in the distance in the fields the baby lambs were playing.

I walked as far as the bench shaded by the tree near the day hospital and sat down. I still felt weak and ill physically, but inwardly I could feel a deep sense of peace, and sitting there in the bright sunlight, watching the birds fighting over their food, and feeling the gentle breeze ruffling my hair, I was aware of a sense of balance, harmony, perfection, which was far beyond the comprehension of us creatures bound by earthly restrictions.

It was a feeling to be enjoyed, not thought about and analysed. If it was merely ‘a feeling' then perhaps it would burst like a bubble under the critical eye of analysis. No, I dared not dwell on what I was feeling, or even think about it at all, lest by thinking about it, it would be lost. God? Does He exist? I still did not know and, at that moment, it did not really matter. It was enough to feel that there was ‘something'. In a world of many wrongs, some things were right, beautifully right. I wanted to be in this world and to take my rightful place within it. With all my heart, I wanted to live and be whole. And with so strong a desire for this, a natural healing process was able to work unhindered.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

S
OMETHING TREMENDOUSLY IMPORTANT HAD
happened to me, something beyond the grasp of my understanding. How could I ever be the same again? But here I was, back as an in-patient, back on drugs, and feeling as fragile as a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. So where was the victory? Yet I was sure that a turning point had been reached. It was all up to me now but, having stumbled upon a reserve of inner strength and serenity, I
did
have the ability to make it. I knew I did. Be careful, Jean, I warned myself. Don't get too optimistic. Remember that old joke about the light at the end of the tunnel being the headlamps of an oncoming train.

I still saw getting off pills as a necessity but decided that next time I would cut down gradually. Meanwhile, I directed all my energy into preparing for a future in the ‘outside world'. I got my parents to fetch me the shorthand textbook I'd bought years ago. Office work might be boring but I was hardly in a position to be choosy. And now that I was facing myself with clear-sighted honesty, I would delay no longer in being honest with Mike. I wrote to him in New Zealand and told him everything.

While the other patients were sitting around the TV in the evenings and weekends, I went into the Quiet Room with my shorthand book and set about the task of forcing my brain to work. I had to start from the beginning even though I'd supposedly been learning shorthand at OT for quite some time. As when I'd been a schoolgirl trying to do my homework, there were certainly distractions to learning here. One such distraction came in the form of a tall, slim young woman called Annabel.

Annabel wore an immaculate bright red trouser-suit with black patent leather high-heeled shoes and a crisp white blouse with a ruffed neckline and a black bow at the front. Her fair hair was cropped short and fell in a fringe over her pale face. The bright red lipstick she wore, which matched her suit, did not detract from her blue eyes, which gleamed with intense brightness. She paced about while keeping up a constant monologue as she acted out her personal dramas, often reaching a frightening pitch of aggression with threatening words and gestures.

‘This is a brothel! Why have they taken me to a brothel? I will not remain here. Mother! Fetch my coat at once. I wish to go home immediately. Do you hear me? And you, young lady, with your oh-so-saccharine smile,
you
are the owner of this brothel!'

When Annabel wandered into the Quiet Room where I sat alone with my shorthand book I tried to ignore her and carry on learning.

‘Did you hear what I said?' Annabel shrieked.

I looked up to find her advancing towards me waving her arms. She stopped only inches away from me and launched into a flood of hysterical verbal abuse. Her anger crackled and flared while I braced myself in the heat ready for her to fly at me as Rosie had done at OT. But it seemed Annabel's aggression was only verbal. Her eyes were fixed not on me – she was probably unaware of my presence – but slightly to my right as if she were talking to someone else. A tirade of angry words bounced around the little room that was inappropriately called a ‘quiet' room, as she pointed and shouted at imaginary people.

‘You! And you! Stop laughing at me. I do not belong in this den of iniquity, I tell you. I've been tricked. Where is my coat?'

I looked back down at the shorthand book and began checking the exercise I'd just completed with the answers at the back of the book. If I could learn in this environment, perhaps I could stop worrying that ECT and drugs had damaged my brain?

‘You're a whore! That's what you are! A whore!'

I was getting the hang of it but there were just certain phrases and vowel positions I needed more practice with before I could move on to the next chapter.

‘I hate you! You're a whore!'

‘Annabel, come here for your injection,' a nurse called, popping her head round the door. It took two nurses to lead the distraught Annabel away. This gave me time to practise a few more phrases before she returned to continue her argument with the owner of the brothel who was now cowering on the floor behind me.

When a thick airmail envelope with a New Zealand stamp arrived for me at the hospital, I tore at the flap impatiently, eager to learn Mike's reaction to my ‘secret life'. It was a long, caring letter in which Mike expressed great surprise to hear I was a patient and that I'd been receiving psychiatric treatment for all the time he'd known me. It didn't alter his feelings for me, he wrote, since he knew me well enough to know I wasn't ‘mad'. He wished I'd felt able to tell him before but said that it must have been very difficult for me to write that letter and he'd been moved to tears at how painfully honest and open with him I was now.

After reading Mike's letter a second time I slowly folded it, enjoying the crinkly feel of flimsy airmail paper, and replaced it in the envelope. Declining Hilda's offer of a mint, I leant back in my armchair in the day room to think about my relationship with Mike. I had never felt I loved him, but then what did I know about ‘love' when a large part of my emotions had been dampened down for so long? I had so much to learn and relearn that it seemed almost like learning to live again.

My thoughts were interrupted by the little old lady known to us as ‘Gran' nudging me and whispering, ‘You see that woman over there?' She was pointing to Hilda. ‘She pinches things from my locker. She's wearing my knickers today.' I couldn't help chuckling to myself at the thought of Hilda, a very fat woman, trying to squeeze into a pair of knickers belonging to the thin, frail Gran.

‘I don't think she is,' I whispered back.

My weight was still causing concern. I was down to about six and half stones and my clothes hung loosely over my thin frame. But around this time, my weight stabilised and then steadily began to increase.

What to do? Where to next? I didn't want to live with my parents and I didn't want to live at the hostel. Nor, of course, did I want to linger in the hospital. But I'd been in Prieston for about a month before I managed to make my decision. I would go back to living with my parents – at least for a while. It was far from ideal, but I thought perhaps I should consider myself fortunate to have this option. It seemed that many people were remaining in hospital because they had nowhere else to live.

I asked Sister when I could be discharged. ‘Today, if you like,' was her casual reply. ‘But where will you live?'

‘With my parents for now.'

‘OK. I'll have a word with the doctor when he does his rounds,' she said, scribbling a note to remind herself. Later that morning, without further ado, I was discharged – back to living with my parents and attending the day hospital.

Back at home no mention was made of my time away. I might just as well have returned home from a shopping trip. Nothing had changed. Mum and Dad went to bingo that evening. Brian stood behind me jingling the coins in his pocket. It jarred on my nerves but I flicked through the pages of a magazine and pretended I couldn't care less.

I went to bed early and lay in the half-light, pondering over those three words of Mrs Winters that had sent shivers through me when I'd been leaving for the hostel.
She'll be back.
Had she meant back to visit my mother? Or had it been, as it seemed to me, a tactless remark in anticipation of my failure? Tears of frustration dampened my pillow while I said to myself, OK, what now? Where do I go to next? I meant where to with my life, but there was no satisfactory answer to that. Stuck again. It seemed the only place I was going was back to the day hospital. Tomorrow.

On my first day back at the day hospital I sat in the armchair next to Arnold who immediately made the effort to turn and speak to me.

‘Are you feeling better now, Jean?' His words came out laboured but clear.

‘Yes, thank you, Arnold.'

‘Good. I am pleased.'

Arnold, who spent his time sitting mutely staring into space. Arnold, who had great difficulty in speech and movement. Arnold, who had more reason for despair than I had ever known, had remembered my name, noticed my absence and shown concern for my welfare. Dear Arnold.

After the Prieston episode I was still keen to get off medication. I wanted a life. Dr Shaw refused to agree to, or even discuss, my request for a reduction, with a view to coming off. ‘But you've tried doing without medication,' he had pointed out. ‘And you couldn't cope.'

The way I saw it, Dr Shaw's attitude gave me no option other than to reduce the pills myself in secret. At the day hospital we were given our tablets in small plastic containers each lunchtime, just enough to tide us over until the following day, with extra on Fridays for the weekend. We were entrusted to take them ourselves; no one there snatched at my hand as in Thornville. But before I'd started my intended reduction, an extra pill kept appearing with my supply. Thinking the student nurse was miscounting I'd meant to discreetly (not wanting to get her into trouble) mention it to her. But before I did so, Dr Shaw called me into his office.

‘How many tablets are you taking?' he asked.

That was easy. I knew by heart what I was supposed to take and when to take them. I'd decided I would start reducing them soon by missing out the morning one first. But at the moment there was no need for me to lie. I was taking them exactly as prescribed.

‘We know you're not taking them properly,' Dr Shaw said.

‘What?'

He leant back in his chair, looking smug. ‘Don't think you're fooling us.'

‘Look, I know I told you a bit back that I want to stop taking them because they make me feel dull and drowsy,' I said, ‘but you strongly advised that I continue with them, and that's what I'm doing.'

‘Well, we have reason to believe you're not.'

‘What reason?' I asked.

He didn't answer.

I left his office feeling puzzled. Later that day, I asked to speak to Tony, the charge nurse.

‘Dr Shaw accused me of not taking my tablets,' I said.

‘And are you taking them?'

‘Yes, I am. Why does he think I'm not?'

Tony smiled. ‘Can you think of any reason why he thinks that?'

‘Well, I did tell him a while ago that I want to stop. Is that why he thinks it?'

Tony's smile was irritating me. He knew something.

‘OK, I'll tell you,' Tony said. ‘The staff have been instructed to slip an extra tablet into one of your containers now and then.'

‘Whatever for?'

‘To test you. It seems you hadn't noticed, so Dr Shaw thinks that shows you've been tipping them out instead of taking them properly.'

So that was it? How ridiculous, I thought.

‘I
did
notice.'

‘You didn't say anything.'

‘No, I didn't, did I? Silly me for not thinking the staff would be playing some kind of stupid game to test me.'

Tony laughed.

‘It's not funny,' I said. ‘No wonder patients get paranoid.'

I thought afterwards about the way Sister Oldroyd had clutched at my hands thinking I wasn't taking my tablets. And now this. The staff's attitudes also showed in their words ‘compliance' and ‘non-compliance'. It didn't seem right to me. If we wanted to reduce or stop our medication, why on earth couldn't we have the opportunity to discuss it, be given honest information, and our decisions be respected?

I began to reduce my pills. As my body gradually adjusted to taking fewer drugs, some of the drowsiness lifted and I was able to take more interest in things. But one of the nurses used me as an example of the need to persevere with drugs. This was when Lizzie complained that her new tablets were making her feel awful and drowsy.

‘But look at Jean,' the nurse said. ‘She used to complain of being too drowsy on her tablets but now she's adjusted to them and she feels a lot better. So just keep taking them and after a while you'll be much better, too. That's right, isn't it, Jean?'

Lizzie looked at me with questions in her eyes. I winced, averted my eyes and said nothing. I had given up hoping I could get the day hospital staff to understand that it was right and important for me to reject my treatment, so I just wanted to lie low and get myself off the drugs with as little hassle as possible. But I felt terribly guilty for betraying Lizzie with my silence.

Several more months passed, during which time I'd been slowly reducing my pills, before I expressed my desire to try living at the hostel again. I squirmed in my chair in Mrs Winters's office while she telephoned Mrs Stroud to try to get her to agree to me returning to the YWCA.

It was 1973. Precious time was slipping by and I still hadn't secured a job or accommodation. My heart leapt when I heard Mrs Stroud at the other end of the phone finally say, ‘Oh, all right then, we'll give it another try. After all, we are supposed to be a Christian organisation.'

Mrs Winters put the phone down and smiled. My relief at being offered a room helped me relax enough to make a jokey comment. Mrs Winters threw her head back and laughed. ‘Oh, Jean!' she exclaimed, her eyes wide with wonder. ‘You're almost normal!'

She looked pleased with me. Perhaps she thought calling me ‘almost' normal was giving me a compliment, upping my self-esteem? I stared down at the carpet, retreating back into my shy mode.

At home that evening I began packing, while trying to ignore my mother's negative comments and tears. I kept telling myself that I was doing the right thing. But behind my brave front lurked the fear of winding up in Prieston as before.