The Dark Threads (4 page)

My heart was thudding wildly as I stared at the closed door. It was about to begin.

A few minutes after the nurse and Number One left, a scream like something out of a horror film resounded from the adjoining treatment room.

‘I'm going home,' announced a middle-aged woman, standing up. She was Number Two.

‘Home? Like that, in your dressing-gown and slippers? You won't get far, luv,' smiled the male attendant who had been assigned to watch over us. It was Number Two's turn next but she had run off down the corridor and was trying frantically to open the outer door to go ‘home'. The attendant brought her back. ‘Sit down luv. You
are
home.'

Number Two sat down in her allocated position, placid now, saying, ‘This is my home? Oh Lord in heaven, help us all.'

One by one we were led through the door from where the screams came. Never before had I felt more vulnerable than I did lying on my back, with a white-coated man bending over me, ready to interfere with my brain. I must be far sicker than I realised, so I've just got to trust them, I thought achingly, through the Largactil haze.

‘Count to ten,' the white-coated man said as he pricked the vein in the back of my hand, which stood up prominently after the heat of the hot-water bottle. One. Two. Three. Four … A strange, onion-like smell clogged my nostrils and filled my head, sending my senses reeling violently. Up till then I'd been lying co-operatively and still, but now this dreadful sensation brought on a surge of panic and I struggled like a demon.

‘Naughty, naughty girl,' a distant voice was saying – just like the school dentist had said when I'd fought him while being given gas. Don't let them do this to you, don't let them do it, a part of my mind was screaming. I was rigid with terror, knowing I
must
stop them. I
must.
I
must …
But someone or something was holding me down firmly in a suffocating blackness as dark as the grave. I couldn't move, couldn't see, couldn't breathe. Powerless, overcome, I was hurled into oblivion.

CHAPTER FOUR

I
T WAS NEARLY
C
HRISTMAS
and I wanted nothing to do with it. Brightly coloured paper trimmings, streamers and balloons were festooned on the walls and ceiling, looking as false to me as the false hope they symbolised. If we need an excuse for eating too much or getting drunk, then why not call it celebrating the birth of a long dead Saviour, I thought cynically as I gazed at the large Christmas tree in the hall at OT with its silly baubles and stupid star on top; this farce called Christmas left me cold. But when we made trimmings – coloured paper chains from strips of gummed paper just as I'd done as a child – I wanted to cry: it was the happy, not sad, memories of the past which now pained me most of all.

One afternoon at OT we were herded into the main hall to sing carols. At break Joan stood in front of me. ‘If they had known Jesus was the Son of God, they wouldn't have crucified him, would they?' Her fists were clenched ready to thump me if I didn't answer.

‘I don't know.'

‘But they wouldn't, would they?'

She was making me think, damn her. I was too tired to think.

‘I don't know, Joan.'

She raised her fists higher. ‘Yes, you
do
know,' she shrieked. ‘They wouldn't. Would they?'

‘No, Joan, I don't suppose they would.'

‘Then why didn't they know He was the Son of God?'

And so it went on.

After break we resumed singing. Joan, who was sitting next to me now, was laughing and muttering senselessly as one possessed. My mind travelled back to two Christmases ago when I had sung these same carols in the bright, cheery atmosphere of the church Youth Leader's house. I hadn't thought then that I would end up in here. But I hadn't thought a lot of things then.

I had leave from the hospital for a few days at Christmas. My parents were given little plastic containers of pills to last me until my return on Boxing Day.

At home my brother the bus conductor sneered. ‘People think you're a nutcase when I tell them you're in High Royds. The bus drivers and conductors on this route all know, 'cos why should I keep it secret?'

‘You can shout it through a loudspeaker from the rooftop for all I care,' I said wearily, ‘but they'll think it's you who's the nutcase for wanting to tell everyone.'

‘It's not just you he talks about,' put in my father. ‘He tells people when me and your mum haven't slept together. Everyone knows our business, whenever we row, everything. People do think there's summat wrong with Brian, and I think so too.'

‘Well,
I'm
the one who's in High Royds.' I was aware that a note of bitterness had crept into my voice.

‘I can't understand why,' Dad said. ‘You're the sanest person in this family. Brian's certainly got no sense.'

‘I've got more sense than Jean.
I'm
not a mental patient. Tell me, Jean, how does it feel to be a mental case?' He grinned fiendishly then began tapping with a spoon on a milk bottle, but stopped when Dad threatened to knock his head off his shoulders.

I went upstairs and transferred what I'd written on scraps of toilet roll at the hospital into my diary. I'd kept a diary for many years. Writing things down helped me to sort out my thoughts and feelings. It seemed important to try to continue doing this.

I spent Christmas in bed sleeping, or sitting around the house in my dressing-gown, face unwashed, hair unkempt. I was aware that my life was drifting downhill, but lacked the energy or motivation to exert myself. In this state I just took it for granted that I would return to the hospital after the holiday. My parents also accepted this, as was their way. There was one bright spot. Jackie called to see me. She had stopped taking her tranquillisers and looked well and happy. I was worlds of experience away from the teenager I'd been when I'd last seen her before my admission only three weeks ago, so it was encouraging to find I could still relate easily to her. My old sense of humour even peeped out of its hiding place. Perhaps things weren't really so bad, I began to think hopefully. But the hope was stillborn.

Back in hospital after Christmas, far from my drugs being decreased as I'd hoped, they were intensified, and I felt like a zombie. Truly, I had never felt worse, never even realised before that it was possible to feel so low.

My parents visited and I could barely keep awake when trying to talk with them. I asked them to tell my psychiatrist that the drugs were too strong for me and he needed to decrease them.

‘But what can we do now you're in here?' Mum said. Her face looked pale and strained.

I turned to Dad, but he shook his head. ‘Jean, love, he's the doctor. We can't tell him what to do.'

Apparently my parents hadn't even thought of asking to speak to my doctor. Danny had told them he felt they should do, and I think they were genuinely puzzled at Danny's insistence. This was the sixties and my parents' attitude towards the medical profession was probably no different from many working-class parents of that time.

A few days later Dr Prior saw me in the Quiet Room for a consultation.

‘
Please
will you lower my drugs?' I pleaded with him.

‘Not yet,' he said.

‘I can't stand it!' I said, a note of despair creeping into my voice.

‘What can't you stand?'

‘The way the drugs make me feel. Being in this place. I can't mix with people so I feel isolated.'

‘Why can't you mix with people?'

‘Shyness. And I'm so drowsy I can't think straight.'

‘Are you still confused about religion?'

‘Yes.' What did he expect me to say? I'd probably be confused about religion for the rest of my life.

‘Do you still feel as if you don't know who or what you are?'

‘Yes, I do,' I admitted, though I wished I'd never mentioned this or religion in the first place. He wrote something down.

‘Will you reduce my tablets?' I begged again. Having to endure this drug-induced lethargy while not being allowed to lie on my bed and sleep all the time was too much to bear. I was desperate. But he just sat there, cold and unmoveable, as he observed my distress.

‘Can I be discharged?' I was a voluntary patient but I felt like a prisoner. Living with my family was no real freedom either but it had to be better than this. Yet so subdued was I that I seemed to have acquired a prisoner mentality: it didn't even occur to me to attempt to leave the hospital without permission.

‘You're not ready to be discharged.'

‘But I can't stand it!' I said again, unable to contain my anguish.

He added something to his notes, replaced the cap on his pen and stood up. ‘I'll see you again soon,' he said.

Staying awake while doped up with drugs was like an endurance test and my reward for getting through the day was being allowed to go to bed. Sometimes, curled up in bed, I would stare at the green light above and wish I could stay awake long enough to try to understand what was happening to me. But the drugs deadened my brain. I would fall asleep almost immediately unless there was some kind of night-time distraction, such as, for instance, the night Connie left her bed next to mine to climb in with me, subjecting me to sexual advances. She was heavy, physically stronger than me and I was too tired to fight. She lay on top of me, fondling my breasts and kissing my lips while I, loathing every moment, waited for her to shift.

In the morning when making my bed I couldn't remember how to do the corners of the bedspread, which had to be folded a certain way. Sister Grayston came and stood beside me with hands on her hips, watching my fumbling attempt.

‘Oh, for goodness' sake!' she said. ‘I've already shown you.'

I watched closely while she showed me again, but I felt so heavy and slow that even learning this simple task was difficult. Dr Prior had promised the shock treatment wouldn't impair my intelligence but I knew something was having a detrimental effect.

It had been decided that I would spend most of my OT time in the ‘office skills' class to practise typing and learn shorthand. I usually missed this on ECT mornings but once, when I arrived back at the ward after ECT a bit earlier than usual, Sister Oldroyd sent me to the OT department. ECT might cast out conscious knowledge of
some
experiences, whether good or bad, driving them into a deep, secret place beyond recall. But never, never, will I forget the horror and dismay of staring at a page of shorthand symbols that day with the realisation that my ability to think clearly and retain information had been severely, and I feared permanently, impaired.

I kept forgetting how to make those ‘hospital corners' with the bedspread, so the routine became that each morning when Sister Grayston was on duty she would stand at the door of my dormitory watching me try. This made me nervous, increasing the likelihood of my getting it wrong.

‘Don't you know how to make a bed?' her voice would boom across the room, grating its way into my groggy head. ‘How old are you?'

She knew my age, of course, but always pressed me to tell her at this point, then she would tut and say: ‘What? Did I hear you right? Eighteen years old and you can't even make a bed?'

I think after a while it must have really got to me; I remember answering ‘Eighteen' in a barely audible voice, feeling full of embarrassment and shame at what a stupid girl I must be.

Sister Grayston was a strict, school-marm type, and I didn't like her for humiliating me over the bedspread corners, but I still preferred it when she was on duty rather than Sister Oldroyd.

Sister Oldroyd stopped me one morning while I was walking past her office on my way to the bathroom.

‘I'm sick and tired of your attitude,' she snapped. ‘You must be in need of help or you wouldn't be here.'

‘I am in need of help,' I agreed, feeling bewildered.

‘There you are. You're in need of help. You've just said so yourself now. You've admitted it.' She said this gloating in the way of people who feel their opponents in a debate have just tripped themselves up and ruined their own argument. It made no sense to me. I'd sought help myself and agreed to be admitted against the wishes of my parents. Since my admission, I had co-operated with whatever treatment had been prescribed. Not once had I denied I was in need of help.

‘I've never said I don't need help,' I said.

‘Well, if you admit it, then why have you got that attitude?'

‘What attitude?'

‘Thinking you're better than everyone else, for one thing.'

This hurt. Penny, a girl at school and Joanne at the television factory, and no doubt countless others, had mistaken my shyness for something else.

‘I've never thought that.'

‘You've been aggressive since you came here. You've got a chip on your shoulder. Your trouble is that you think everyone is against you.'

Abruptly, she turned and walked away.

I was attacked by a patient at OT. Rosie flew at me, shrieking and scratching like a wild cat. She yelled that I'd been staring at her, but I hadn't even noticed her until then. The rest of the noise died down at once and only Rosie's screams of fury could be heard. She was a tall, stout woman but apparently not very strong and, by grasping then holding firmly both her wrists, I was able to restrain her until two white-coated male attendants, who suddenly seemed to appear from nowhere, led her away.

The Head Therapist, Mrs Burton, sat down beside me. ‘I'm terribly sorry about this,' she said. ‘We know it wasn't your fault. Rosie thinks people are against her. She can't help it because she's very sick. This incident will be reported and Rosie will be punished.'

I wondered why Rosie should be punished for being ‘sick'.

I was called from OT because my ‘vicar' was waiting to see me. When I arrived back on the ward, Pastor West had been shown into the Quiet Room. I paused with my hand on the doorknob, suddenly feeling nervous. How much had I changed since he'd seen me at home before my admission only a few weeks ago? Did I
look
like a mental patient now? Or was the change only on the inside?

Then a strange thing happened to me. I began shaking all over, as if a pneumatic drill was at work inside me. Feeling embarrassed, I sat in the chair opposite him while he looked surprised and concerned.

‘How long have you been like this?'

‘It's just started now,' I said, panic rising in me as I tried in vain to regain control over my shaking body. ‘It's because you're here.'

‘Why do you think that?' he asked, his eyebrows arching into a puzzled frown.

‘Because my mind associates you with church, and church with conflict,' I replied unhesitatingly, convinced this was the reason.

‘Yes, perhaps so,' Pastor West said slowly. He looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘But you weren't like this when I saw you recently at home, were you?'

He was right. I searched my mind for another explanation. Was it a subconscious way of trying to say to him: ‘Look at me. See how desperately I need help now. Why won't your God help me?' Or was it the drugs?

‘Well, perhaps it's a side effect of the drugs that's just started up,' I said.

Although not usually so visible, the shakiness was to continue. I came to see it as a symptom of illness but learnt, much later, it was caused by neuroleptic medication.

‘Have they put
you
on drugs?' he asked.

‘Of course,' I replied, wondering at his surprise. Everyone in my ward was on drugs and I'd already forgotten how I'd been surprised when first given them.

‘I'm also having electric shock treatment,' I announced flatly, staring at the floor.

‘Shock treatment? But, why?'

‘I'm in need of help.'

This conversation was strained, difficult, unlike all our previous chats when I'd entered into lively discussion. I must have looked a total wreck shaking like that and I was aware that I was nervously twisting my long, greasy hair around my trembling fingers as Beryl had done. But what did it matter if I was looking and behaving like a mental patient? I was one.