The Shock of the Fall (Special edition) (18 page)

I’d not been sleeping well myself.

I felt envious.

That afternoon I asked if someone could take me to my flat. I hadn’t been home in weeks and I needed to check my post. That’s what I told them, anyway.

The nurse with the bicycle clip unlocked the main door. I held it open for Nurse This, because Nanny Noo calls me a gentleman.

‘Honestly, Matt. This taxi company. They call the office to say they’re waiting, you come out, they’re nowhere to be seen. Every single bloody time.’

If you know Bristol, you probably know Southdown Hospital. It isn’t an asylum or mad house, or whatever you call them. It’s a regular hospital, but it has a psychiatric unit too. Before I went there I never knew such places even existed. We walked through the tunnel, separating Crazy Crazy NutsNuts Ward from the general wards, and were alongside the maternity wing, where taxis stop.

It was cold and the sky was grey and overcast. It felt nice to be outside though. Nurse This pulled her scarf above her chin. She shivered. ‘Sorry. I don’t know why I’m venting at you. It’s certainly not your fault.’

‘It looked like a difficult morning,’ I offered.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Well— I don’t know, the thing with Thomas.’

She shook her head, ‘I’m so sorry you saw that. It can’t be nice to see something like—’

‘Is he okay?’

‘He’s fine, Matt.’

A man hurried past, clutching a bunch of flowers, a huge teddy bear gripped under his arm.

‘Did you sedate him? Is that what it’s called?’

‘Um— I can’t talk about other patients. I don’t mean to be rude, but I wouldn’t talk about you either.’

There was nothing else to say, but the silence felt too heavy. Too uncomfortable to hold. So I tried, ‘I was born here. Is that the building where babies are born?’

‘Mm-hmm.’

‘Then I was born in there. That was the last time I’ve been in hospital, before now.’

‘Really. No broken bones?’

‘Nope.’

I could have told her about the countless hours spent at hospitals with Simon, about our Saturday trips to Old Lane Hospital, waiting in the car with Dad, sitting beside him in the front, playing I spy, whilst Mum took Simon in for his Speech Therapy.

Eventually I’d spy them coming back out, skipping across the car park with Simon practising his vowel sounds. Dad would pretend not to notice them coming, and I’d say, ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with
M
and
S
.’

He’d make deliberately stupid guesses like, ‘Hmm, Marks & Spencer?’ Or, ‘Let me think. Mouldy Spuds?’ It wasn’t even funny, but he made it funny, or else I just wanted it to be. I would howl with laughter.

I could have told Nurse This about that, but a taxi pulled up and she said, ‘Here we go, let’s get your post.’

I buckled my seatbelt, still holding a memory of Mum turfing me into the back with Simon, kissing Dad on the cheek, asking, ‘Will you ever let us in on the joke?’

Saturdays after Speech Therapy was when we went to see Grandma. Dad’s mum. She was older than Nanny Noo. She died a long time ago. I think I told you that.

X.

I can’t picture her face.

There was a room at the back of her house, which she called the library. It was too small to place a chair, and there were no windows. The door and a tall free-standing lamp took up the space on one side, but the other three walls had shelves lined with hundreds and hundreds of books. I didn’t go in often because it was claustrophobic, and a bit scary. It was cold and gloomy, and too far from the reassuring warmth of adult voices in the lounge. I did go in once though, when Simon was annoying me with his vowels, and I wanted to be by myself. I remember running my fingers across the books, reading the authors’ names with the lamp light and playing a game in my head. I decided each name on each spine was the person who the book had been written for, rather than who had written it. I decided everyone in the world had a book with their name on, and if I searched hard enough I’d eventually find mine.

I can’t have believed it was true, but later, eating cakes and malt loaf at the kitchen table, I told the grown-ups as though I did believe it, like it was my firmest conviction.

Grandma said, ‘Isn’t he lovely?’

Dad said, ‘If you want a book with your name, sunshine, you’ll have to write it yourself.’

Nurse This stood at my door like a security guard as I rifled through all the credit card offers and Domino’s Pizza flyers piled up on the mat. There was no important mail for me. I wasn’t expecting any. I hadn’t really come home to pick up the post.

I walked through the coolness of the hall, past the kitchen. Cleaned-out bottles from my Special Project were standing, upturned on the draining board. There was still more of it in the living room, but it had been pushed up neatly against the back wall. Nothing had been thrown away though. That was the deal.

The carpet had been cleaned, and there was a faint smell of fresh paint lingering in the air.

From my small wooden table I picked up one of my A4 ruled notepads. I flipped through it and tore out the pages I’d already scribbled on. I didn’t want to see them. I couldn’t let myself get sucked back in. About a quarter of it was blank, and that would have to do. Mum had brought me good drawing paper to the ward, but I didn’t want to waste that for writing on. I figured I might start taking some notes. Just a few observations – what the nurses looked like, if they had wonky yellow teeth trying to escape their mouths, that sort of thing. Just in case I ever wanted to write about it all properly. You have to be careful taking notes in a mental hospital though, that’s what The Pig says. It was him who would teach me about Writing Behaviour, but I didn’t know him yet.

The notepad wasn’t why I’d come either.

What I’d come for was in my bedroom. I hoped it was, anyway. The paint smell was more powerful in here. I don’t like to think about how my dad must have felt. Alone in my room, quietly painting over the madness that I’d covered the walls with. Mum would have offered to help, of course – to come with him. But he would have played it down. He would have said it wasn’t so bad. Just a quick lick here and there is all that was needed, she should go and see her parents. He’d manage fine on his own.

Hardly any daylight made it through the small window. I flicked the light on. It was then that I saw he’d written something himself. I can’t say this for certain, but I’d bet any money this was the first and only time that my dad has ever graffitied on a wall. You probably don’t know him, but you will know people like him. Everyone knows people who would graffiti on walls, and people who would never. Not even in a toilet cubicle or a phone box. I like that my dad is someone who wouldn’t.

But beside the light switch, he had written something. I was never meant to read it. I know this because he would paint over it when he came back to do the second coat. And he had no way of knowing that I’d be brought home on this one day to collect my post. I ran my fingers across the words, written lightly in ballpoint pen. What he’d written was:

We’ll beat this thing mon ami. We’ll beat this thing together.

I was fairly dosed up on the pills to relax me, but still a tightness gripped at my chest. It was the thought of his sadness. It was the fear that he was wrong.

As fast as I could, I rummaged through my drawers. I needed to get out of there.

‘Is everything okay?’ Nurse This asked.

I practically knocked her over, I came out so fast. ‘I want to go. Sorry. Can we go now?’

She looked at my single carrier bag, clutched to my chest. ‘Is that all you’re collecting?’

‘Yeah. Thanks for bringing me. Can we go?’

‘Of course. But might it be an idea to—’

‘Please. This is all I want.’

‘Okay. The taxi’s still waiting. We can go right now.’

‘Sorry. Thank you. Thank you.’

Thomas didn’t answer when I tapped on his door again. He was still sound asleep.

I walked in as quietly as I could, but I don’t think I would have woken him up if I’d gone in with drums.

I took out the shirt from my carrier bag. I don’t even like football. God knows how I ended up with a Bristol City shirt. It had been scrunched up in with my other T-shirts for as long as I can remember. Perhaps waiting for this very moment. It must have been a hundred seasons out of date, but it was a hundred seasons out of date without a huge rip through it.

I carefully draped it over him, ‘There you go, mate.’

He didn’t even stir.

Only fifteen minutes today, then puncture time. I have a few compliance problems with tablets, the answer – a long, sharp needle.

Every other week, alternate sides.

I’d rather not think about it now. It’s best not to think until the injection is actually going in.

Repetitive, aren’t I?

I live a Cut & Paste kind of life.

There’s a strange atmosphere here today. It’s hard to explain. You could cut it with a knife, that’s what Nanny Noo would say. The staff keep disappearing into the back office, where it’s all whispers and grave looks. It’s not like we can’t see them; there’s a fucking window. Then they’re out here being extra bright and breezy with us, like everything is tickety-boo. Except they look like shit. I don’t mean that to sound nasty. I mean they look tired is all. Or stressed. I feel a bit sorry for them if anything. Right now Jeanette, who runs Art Group, is talking to Patricia in her whispery enthusiastic way, but you can tell that it’s sort of put on, like she’s just going through the motions.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it all. I was up too late last night, drinking with The Pig. We’ve had a couple this morning too. The Pig isn’t a name, The Pig is a label.

That’s what I’ve been thinking about.

It’s a label he’s given himself, to slap over the labels that other people give him. He’s stuck it over HOMELESS and PISS ARTIST, to cover them up. He’s dead clever. He slurs a bit and gets distracted, but if you take the time to listen, he’s one of those people with a million facts lodged in his head. It was The Pig who taught me about Writing Behaviour. He first mentioned it one time we were drunk together, when I let my guard down, rambling on about the hassle I get from Denise and
Click-Click-Wink
and Dr Clement and the other big shots who get paid to control my life.

Now he talks about it a lot. He gets fairly repetitive when he’s been drinking, and he drinks fairly repetitively. I guess he lives a Cut & Paste life too.

He took a swig of Special Brew, ‘It was back in the seventies, Lad. Before you were born. But don’t let that fool you. Nothing changes.’

Here’s what happened

In the 1970s, a group of researchers got themselves deliberately confined to mental asylums across the United States. They did this by pretending to hear voices. They pretended to hear a voice saying, Empty, Dull and Thud.

But as soon as they were admitted to the wards, they stopped pretending, and never mentioned the voice again.

And here’s the mad part

The hospital staff outright refused to believe they were better, and kept them locked up anyway – some of them for months on end – each forced into accepting they had a mental illness, and agreeing to take drugs as a condition of their release. This is what labels do. They stick.

If people think you’re MAD, then everything you do, everything you think, will have MAD stamped across it.

One of the researchers kept a notebook – he wrote about how he was holding up, what the food was like, that sort of thing. When the experiment was over, he got to read his other notes, the notes his doctors and nurses had been making. They’d observed him scribbling away in his notebook, and recorded it as: Patient is engaging in writing behaviour.

What does that even mean?

I’m not playing dumb. I honestly don’t have a clue what that means. Is it what I’m doing? Am I engaging in writing behaviour? I draw pictures too. Is that drawing behaviour? Between you and me, I might take a shit in a bit. Is that engaging in shitting behaviour?

All I know is what The Pig says. We say it together, like a mantra, like a special handshake. We open a fresh can, and as it froths over our fingers, The Pig snorts, ‘You might not beat the wankers, Lad.’

Then we tap our cans together and shout as loud as we can, at the night, at passing traffic. ‘But you can’t stop fighting!’

I know it’s stupid, but it kind of helps.

Anyway, I have to go.

Denise has just appeared at the end of the corridor, ‘Whenever you’re ready, Matt.’

I’d usually keep her waiting. Keep on fighting. But she looks stressed out, and to be honest, I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for her. I’m serious, you could cut it with a knife here today. You could cut it with the crappy blunt scissors they give us in Art Group. Something definitely isn’t right.

We watched EastEnders on the big green couch.

Mum and Dad and me sitting together, which is how it always was because Simon preferred to sit cross-legged on the carpet – with his face right up close to the television.