ALLAN MAYER
Tasting the Wind
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For my wife, Alison for all of your love, support and advice,
and without whom...
For my family- Mum and Dad (Betty and Ron,) Ronald,
Philip and Karen,
Deane,
Michael and Enid.
For Brian, Peter, Anita, Richard, Kim, James,
Philip and Sharon, and to all of those people who survive the perpetually changing care system with their spirits intact.
In memory of David Heffer
-Acknowledgements-
Thanks to my readers for their encouragement, ideas and greater mastery of spelling and grammar than my own:
Linda, Trish, Heather V.,
Heather H., Emma, Carolyn, Christine, Darren, Andy, Janet.
Thanks to Lynn, my friend and coach, for helping me realise my goal.
It is not at the greatest level, the cosmic and the eternal, that mankind is divided, but at the level of the microscopic and transient.
What unites man can be measured in universes and aeons because each and every one is made of the same stardust, given a spark of the same divine nature and a place in the same eternal pattern.
But what divides man can be measured in millimetres and seconds- the millimetres of physical proportion which are perceived as 'attractive' or 'ugly,' the microscopic gap in the chromosome or few minutes of oxygen deprivation at birth that affect the whole being.
And it is a truth beyond doubt that a man can even die for no other reason than that he looks 'different.'
‘Eddie’s Diaries’ (1962)
TASTING THE WIND
-Prologue-
24th December 1976
For as long as he could remember, Frankie Adams had worn socks as gloves. He had never chosen to wear them in this way, but was now so resigned to their presence that even in his dreams he pictured himself as a man with no fingers. The socks were always grey, but rarely a matching pair, as they were either faded to varying degrees, or had originally belonged to different owners; and he could never take them off, as they were always tightly secured at the wrist with a bracelet of sellotape.
There had been one memorable morning, Christmas morning in Frankie's forty- second year, when someone had removed his saliva-saturated night-time 'gloves' and had forgotten to put on a fresh pair. What Frankie remembered mostly was his hands feeling sensitive and vulnerable, as if they were those of a new-born baby, and that everyone who came across him that day stared at him, some of them laughing, because he looked somehow different and strange. The memory stayed with him, and every Christmas he hoped that it would happen again.
But it never did.
The evening of this particular Christmas Eve had started like any other, the day staff leaving, everyone put to bed, and the cacophony of unrequited communication gradually subsiding to a
resigned, drug- induced hum. Nurse Cahill sat at her desk, her head nodding to the tinny beat of her radio earpiece. Her heart had only just begun to settle from something that had happened half an hour previously, when she had clearly heard a woman's voice say:
'Their heads were green, their hands were blue.'
She was used to patients, at least the ones who could talk, coming out with meaningless gibberish, but as this was an all male ward it had caused her to jump from her chair, pulling the waxy earpiece from where it lodged. She inspected each bed before returning to her desk, and checking that her radio was correctly tuned. As she feasted on chocolate liqueurs a lean figure stepped from the shadows behind her and drifted forward to where he could hear her slurping the syrup from her chubby fingers. He peered over to leer at the outline of her breasts, trying not to notice how the lamp emphasised the down on her arms and upper lip. As he grabbed her shoulders she let out a yell- the word scream would conjure up something far too high-pitched and feminine- and, spinning round, landed a hefty right hook which left her attacker sprawled on the linoleum.
'Wha...?' said the stunned auxiliary, as he wiped the back of his hand across his bleeding lip. 'Merry Christmas to you too.'
'How the hell did you get in here?'
'I did ring the bell, but you didn't hear it. Anyway, I've got these' he said, triumphantly jangling a set of keys. 'They're dropping like flies with this throwing up bug; even Sister Claire has gone down with it. There aren't enough agency nurses to go round, so it looks like we're in charge.'
Laughing, the two angels of mercy kissed, and in the glow of the desk light looked momentarily devilish.
'Thank God I'm getting out of this shit-hole.' said the fat nurse, looking round at the twenty-odd sarcophagal beds.
' You got your transfer then?'
'No. I've given up on that. Haven't you heard? All of these places are closing. There’s no future in it. I'm going to retrain, go into Social Services. That's where it's at now: Care in the Community.'
Frankie listened and, unknown to them, as it would have been to anyone else who had ever worked with him, took in every word. He
wished that he was getting out, that he could be cared for in this 'community' thing, instead of being punished here for something he couldn't remember doing as a child. He let out a small groan as the pain in his stomach mounted again, but tried not to complain too loudly, as he had been chastised earlier for keeping the others awake.
Frankie had a curved spine, which meant that he could only lie comfortably on his left side. The thin boy in the next bed had the opposite problem, so every night they lay looking into each other’s eyes. Neither of them could talk, and no one ever questioned what one thought of the other, or if either of them even had the capacity of thought. All that Frankie knew was that in the five years that they had occupied those beds, the boy's gaze had been his only source of comfort, understanding and fellow feeling.
The nurse made her way down the lines of beds, tucking the patients in, the ambulant ones particularly tightly, so that they would be discouraged from wandering. The thin boy was never going to go anywhere, but noticing that his top sheet was not conforming to the hospital standard the nurse bent down to insert it tightly between base and mattress, while the other sat with his feet on the desk, guzzling a can of beer.
Frankie watched the stiff skirt rise up, revealing legs that were each as thick as the thin boy’s body. He wanted to touch where the blue uniform slid over the black mounds. He knew it was all right to do that because he had seen the boy nurse do it, so he pulled himself up using the cot-side and reached out with his shaky, grey-socked hand, guiding it like the hand of a puppet to its huge beach ball of a target.
Then an involuntary spasm sends his hand shooting out, and pinching, through the baggy material of the sock, a roll of nurse-flesh. The nurse bellows and spins round, her large hand raised like a
conductor’s as the background noise of crying and babble ceases at the recognised signal of threatened violence.
Then the hand falls, but instead of the anticipated slap it grabs the flapping toe of the outstretched sock.
'I’m sick of you, you vicious little bastard.'
She pulls at the sock until it stretches, winds it around a bar of the cot-side and ties it, then stalks over to the other side of the bed and does the same with Frankie's free hand.
'I’m sick of your pinching and whining. You can stay like that now, it might teach you a lesson.'
The thin boy watches as the male nurse, whispering and giggling, kisses the fat nurse and goes with her through the blue door opposite his bed into what they call the 'punishment room.’ He listens as the screaming and grunting sounds coming from the room mingle with the resumed din of the ward, and the first retching sounds from Frankie. He watches helplessly as Frankie struggles to turn onto his side. He hears Frankie starting to choke on his own vomit. Then he hears nothing, sees no more movement.
From the other side of Frankie's bed the long white face of a young boy rises like a new moon. The boy is wide-eyed, his expression of fright enhanced by the stiff brush of hair which crowns the top of his head. He limps round to the foot of the bed, and climbs up, patting Frankie and whimpering, stroking his face and removing vomit from around his mouth and nostrils.
When the nurses emerge, the boy is sitting at the foot of Frankie's bed, his red pyjama jacket smeared with sick, a crimson urine patch spreading on his crotch as he swings his bare feet, rocking, and chanting:
'Who’s in the cupboard?
Rang the bell,
Kissed the nurse
Made the noise,
Naughty Mr. Hill.'
Then they see Frankie's still form, and rush to untie him, their minds already fabricating a tale of how they tried to save him, as the moon-faced boy mutters 'he's gone to our Lord.'
The boy drops down from the bed, his feet slapping on the linoleum floor, 'I'm going to set my dog on you,’ then throws himself at
the fat nurse, barking and clawing and biting. Although she is so much bigger than him, she screams in fear, until her accomplice helps her to drag him to the punishment room, where he is locked in for the night.
Then one of them is desperately cleaning up the vomit- 'what the fuck are we going to do?'- as the other changes the socks on the dead man's hands- 'we tidy up, there are no witnesses'- she gestures to the thin boy, then to the punishment room- 'he can't speak, and that one's in gaga land, so shut the fuck up and bin these socks.'
Thus the ward is restored to its sterile status quo, where everything is clean, and every patient cared for, up to and beyond the line where complete care becomes complete control.
And the thin boy saw all of this. Whether he understood what he had seen or not nobody knew, or cared. Either way, he was never going to tell.
-Chapter 1-
31st October 1986
2.30 a.m.
When I was a kid I taught myself to puke at will. As an adult I've not found much use for it, but back then it was my most powerful weapon in the battle against evil. If you were to ask me why, when most kids were concentrating on using 'clackers' without bruising their wrists, I was perfecting my aim with projectile vomit, I'd say it was because of an enormous handicap I had at a very early stage of my life, in the form of an educational psychologist called 'Ricky.' Ricky had been brought in to help me when my dad was ill and my behaviour had started to register on the 'bizarre' scale. Now unless you count developing a lifelong fear of enclosed spaces and losing the ability to ever totally trust another human being, I would say that I coped well
with his behaviour modification techniques (which eventually included shutting me in the cupboard under the stairs.) What really screwed me up was discovering that if not before and during, then certainly not very long after my dad died, he was shagging my mum.
Like I said, I haven't had much call for projectile vomiting since I was a kid. Now I'm all grown up I've found a much better way to self-induce sickness, which takes longer but is much more fun. At least at the beginning of the night. As it happens, I'm at the end of the night, well early hours of the next morning actually, and I can't remember ever being this pissed. Here it comes again: whoosh, it hits the water like the result of a successful hara-kiri, the sharp sword driven in and the innards let out with a big heavy splash. One small flush, one giant leap and...
'She’s gone.'
I say the words out loud because somebody- it was probably Rick the Prick- once told me that naming the event and not just ignoring it would somehow help me to face up to it and to 'master my feelings.'
So how do I feel then?
I feel like I've just dislocated my sodding jaw, that's how I feel. And the worst thing about it is that there's nobody here to say 'there there, Martin,' or even 'you can sleep on the couch tonight you drunken git.'
Not that I could sleep anywhere yet. This is 'Stomach Clearance Sale: Everything Must Go.' I'll probably be here for the rest of the night, feeling round the toilet rim as if I’m trying to turn an egg-shaped steering wheel, THE BIG ROW- the one that finished us off- repeating again and again in my head.
'It wasn't so much your being out of work I was objecting to', she'd said, 'as your cavalier attitude towards losing your job.'
'Cavalier attitude? ' I'd said, pretending to know what the fuck she was on about, 'cavalier attitude?'
'It's just the way you treat your whole life, she'd screamed, 'you just coast along with no purpose, and I've become part of the furniture. You take as much notice of me as you do of this sodding chair.'
To demonstrate, she had picked up the chair, a wooden one with a worn green cushion, and on the word 'chair' launched it at the wall. She didn't usually do that sort of thing; usually she freaked out if anything got damaged because we rented the flat, and very little had got broken in the four years, ten months and eleven days we'd lived there.
I remember when we first moved in. It might only have been a flat over an oatcake shop in a small North Staffordshire town, but waking up each morning to the aroma of freshly griddled pikelets blending with that of Jo's perfume made it feel like Heaven. That was at first. But like everything else, eventually it's just there, then after a while you don’t even notice it. According to Jo our relationship, that is my contribution to our relationship, had gone the same way. The not noticing I mean: like not noticing if she'd had her hair done, or was wearing a new shade of nail varnish, or a dress I'd not seen her in before. If you were to ask my opinion I'd say that she'd just perfected her hobby of finding things to criticise me over to a fine art.
Funny word that, 'opinion.' We use it as if it makes things vague and subjective, when in reality an opinion can change your whole life. I can see us now, just sitting there in silence, staring at the kitchen chair with its broken, splintered leg, knowing that we were losing each other just because we had different opinions about what was important.
'Does this mean we're finished?' I'd asked.
'Wake up Martin,' she'd said, 'and smell the oatcakes.'
And that, I suppose, was the last time I saw Jo.
Until tonight...
***
I was saying goodbye to the guys at the club.
'Besht wishesh mate,' 'Thanks mate,' I'd said to Neville, as he crushed my fingers, 'I'll come back and see you.'
I've known Neville for about a year now but, if I'm honest, it wasn't through choice. I suppose it started with the bank that Jo worked for, and the negative publicity it was getting because of its
investments in South Africa. There had obviously been a brainstorming session at head office about how to put on a human face without actually risking the returns on their investment, and some bright spark had suggested that attention could be drawn from their stance on South Africa, which was, after all, a long way away, by making links with local charities. This meant not only donations, but also staff (In T-shirts with bank slogans) acting as volunteers. Jo, believing that it would not only be a nice thing to do but that it would do no harm to her chances of promotion, chose to help out at 'Breakaways,' which is a youth club for mentally handicapped kids. She said she thought it might also be good for my soul to do something for somebody else, so I reluctantly went along with her. At first it was just to prove her wrong about me, but then I found that I liked it and stayed, even after she packed it in. It would change my life for good.
Neville continued with his bone-crushing handshake, and looked me straight in the eye as if he was about to give me some really important advice. He always dressed in black for some reason, and tonight, as it was disco night, it was the black jeans and ‘Motorhead’ T-shirt.
'You sort ‘er out,' he said, 'that Mrs. Thasher'
'I don't think I'll be seeing her Nev, London's a big place, but if I do...'
'Promish?'
'I’ll do my best.' That seemed to reassure him. ' But what'll you do without me here to pull your arse out of trouble?'
'Gerra job.'
'What sort of thing?'
'An’fing. Just want to earn some...' Neville scratched the palm of his hand. 'Do your old job at the Factory if I was clever enough.'
'Clever enough?'
We were shouting over the music, and standing as close as we could without touching, like a couple of drunks at chucking out time.
'All I did Nev, was take things out of cardboard boxes, split them up, and put them into smaller cardboard boxes, then pass them on to somebody else.'
'Thatsh it?'
'You said it.'
And it was shit. And I hated it. But it was a job, although I suppose that's my dad talking. He had been a miner, and had brought me up to believe that it was better to be employed and pissed off than to be happy and idle. But since his day the employment options and the boredom factor had altered out of recognition for the unqualified youth of Stoke-on-Trent: the pits and pot banks are no longer there, just dead chimneys and old slag heaps that look like green burial mounds; it was the electronics industry that took on me and most of my school mates, all of us wondering how we could apply the stuff we'd done at school about Henry the Eighth, simultaneous equations and Eskimos to soldering things onto circuit boards, pushing pallet trucks and, in my case, opening deliveries to the stores and dividing them into numbered jobs for the shop floor.
As me and Nev talked, Vicki had danced her way round to face us. Although he had known her all through school, Nev just couldn't cope with the fact that she had recently regenerated, Dr. Who-like, into a new version who wore short skirts, make-up and perfume, and definitely had the hots for him.
'Come on Ne’ll, Dance.'
Neville’s bottom lip jutted out as he folded his arms and swung away from her. Shoulders sinking, Vicki hung around for a minute or so, before tearfully shuffling back to the dance floor.
'What’s up Nev, Do you only dance to head bangers? Why don’t you give Vicki a dance and make her night?'
'I not dance with her,' said Neville, continuing to look away, 'she an’capped lady.'
I just looked at him. The corners of his mouth were drawn down, his forehead furrowed and his eyes questioning, as if I should have understood why he wouldn’t want to dance with Vicki. Would I? Well of course I would, I had done lots of times. But that was as a volunteer at a special club, and I know that there’s dancing and there’s dancing. There’s dancing like you do with your elderly aunt so that she can join in the party, and there’s the other kind. And Vicki wanted the other kind, but when Neville looked at her his first thought was exactly the same as other people have when they see him- 'Down Syndrome', or perhaps even 'mongol'- and the poor sod didn’t realise the irony of it.
Neville also had no idea of the concept 'out of your league,' as he looked across the dance floor to where a small blonde in a little black dress had formed an arm-swinging circle. She was a new volunteer, and seemed to think it was what you did at that sort of club. Next thing, Neville was there, not too close, but close enough to be seen, hands in pockets and head down, his tongue sticking out further than it needed to. She turned around and noticed the poor lad, all on his own, nobody to dance with, held out her hand, and then bingo, the circle broke up as the smoochy section started and the new volunteer ended up in full clinch with Nev.
'I see Neville the Devil’s doing his cute little Down syndrome act again.'
Jo.
I hadn’t even seen her come in, and she was standing right next to me. The heartbeat started. The mouth dried. I took a deep breath and was about to say: don't take things seriously? Just coasting? Well I’m shipping out and I’m going to London now. I’ll show you who’s got no purpose. You’ll be begging me to come back you bitch.
But all I could manage was:
'Jo?'
'Martin.'
'How are you?'
'Fine. How are you?'
'Fine. In fact, I’m happy.'
Happy.
Well I was happy. Happy about the fact that I could speak. I glanced over at Neville, who was having fun with his little blond piece, dancing and singing along to 'Move closer till it feels like we're really making love,' his hands sliding further down the little black dress, as Vicki sat crying by the bar.
'I thought...' my words were whittling down to a dry little squeak, so I coughed, took a deep breath, and looked her full in her dimpled chin.
'I thought you didn’t come here anymore.'
She did that nervous hair-twiddling thing. 'I’d heard that you were going to be here tonight, and I wanted to say goodbye, and to ask
you...' You want to ask me to stay don’t you? You’ve realised you made a mistake and you want me back.
She turned away from me, the slowly changing disco lights picking out a well of tears, making her brown eyes blue, then yellow, then red.
'...I wanted to ask you if you were leaving because of me.'
Of course I'm leaving because of you, why else do you think I’m packing up and travelling two hundred miles away if it’s not some stupid male gesture conceived in a drunken stupor from the inside of a toilet bowl.
So I said: 'No. Well not entirely. I just haven’t got much to hang on for around here have I? And I’m twenty-five now. That’s a quarter of a century. I don’t want to spend the next forty years opening boxes.'
'But why London?'
Yes, why London? I suppose it just has more of a dramatic edge to it than 'I'm running off to Scunthorpe.'
'I couldn’t get anything I fancied round here. There were pages of jobs down South though.'
Jo looked at her watch, and then, for the first time, the penny dropped: no matter what foolhardy plans I could come up with- running off to London, holding her rabbit, Baldric, hostage, cutting off my balls and presenting them to her as earrings- she would not be getting back with me. And there was one major reason for that.
'Jo...is there somebody else?'
Sighing, she looked down and said 'Yes. His name's Ken. He's a bank manager.'
'Barbie not available tonight then?'
'Martin!'
'Sorry.'
It always used to be like that. I’d say something outrageous, she’d say 'Martin', I’d say 'sorry', but more often than not we’d collapse in a giggling heap. Not tonight.
She put her hand on mine and I felt a trail of goose bumps run from it up to the top of my spine.
'I’ll have to go.'
She hadn’t asked me to stay. She wasn’t going to ask me to stay. She took a card from her handbag and, giving it to me, leaned over and kissed me on the lips. And for once I did notice that she was wearing a different perfume, and that it was obviously a more expensive one than I used to buy her.
'I just wanted to let you know,' she said, 'that there's no hard feelings. Take care while you’re out there changing the world. Maybe you could drop me a line?'
As she left, the lights came up. I didn’t want it to end like that. I wanted to go after her, tell her how I felt, that I knew she could never be happy with Flash Harry and that she should swallow her pride and come back. I started for the door, but nearly knocked over a small figure who had positioned herself right in front of me. I looked down, and Vicki was standing there, her face pink and puffy, her hands behind her back.
'Before you go,' said the youth club leader at the mike, 'we have a little presentation to show our appreciation to one of our volunteers, Martin Peach, who is leaving us tomorrow to go on to greater things.'
A car started up outside, its headlights tracking across the curtains as it pulled out of the car park. Vicki handed me a wrapped present, about the size and shape of a pen box, then flung her arms around my neck, pulling me down so that her tears formed a warm wet patch on my shoulder.
'Do you know, Vicki,' and this one always did the trick when she was crying over one of Neville’s rebuffs, 'your face looks like a pound of tripe.'
But it didn’t work this time.
It occurred to me that we were both pretty much in the same boat, Vicki and me: found wanting and dumped. I gave her a squeeze, and felt her shoulders start to move as if they were pumping out the tears.
There was a point where I felt like I might start joining in, until I reminded myself that this was something I didn't do, couldn't do, and pulled away from her just in time to avoid making a fool of myself.
***
Back in the rat-arsed present I find myself rising, viewing the world as if through hazy polythene, which distorts and bulges as I pull myself up using the sink. I stare at the mirror until the two images of myself fuse into one. Now work this one out: I've got a pale, freckled face,
with hair that is red- tinged but murky, like clay that's just been dug out of the garden. I’ve got a good nose, which is well formed, midrange size and slightly turned. Silver rimmed glasses hide brown eyes that are so deep that you can hardly tell where the colour begins and the pupil ends. My cheeks aren’t chubby, but they aren’t hollow either. I’ve got full lips and - no kidding- a cleft chin like Kirk Douglas. So why, with all of this, am I not good looking? I've decided it can only be one thing: proportion. I've got all the right parts, but not necessarily in the right proportions.
It takes several laps of the flat, but I eventually make it to the bedroom. I identify it as the bedroom because I recognise the picture on the wall that is propping me up. It’s one of those crappy student posters that Jo put there just before she left me, which says:
Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.
The picture is of an orange sunset reflected in a calm sea.
Failing to see the straining holdall which contains all of my worldly goods, I trip over it, but luckily end up crashing onto the bed. I can see a crumpled newspaper cutting on my bedside cabinet, which is the job advert that I'd found in Jo's 'Guardian.' My efforts to focus on it are totally unsuccessful, which is a shame really, because I can't for the life of me remember what the job is. I can just about make out the bold print at the top, which says:
Wanted: Graduates.
Yes, I know it says graduates, and I've only got art 'A' level, but in my book it's as good as a degree, and I had managed to get hold of a certificate. That was the easy bit. The biggest problem had been the fact that I needed a reference. Mr. Foster wasn't going to give me one, because he'd sacked me, so I wrote my own and got Foster's secretary, Gill, to intercept the request and send out the fake. I just love it when a plan comes together.
The intention had never been to get a job. The idea was that at some stage Jo would find out that I was planning to move two hundred miles away and would come back, begging me not to go. But she
didn't, and after tonight I know why. So here I am, no girlfriend, no job, no family to speak of, and no future.
Unless I go tomorrow.
On the way from the club to the pub tonight I'd just about decided the opposite. I'd have had to disappoint my mate Dave, who was due to move into the flat with his latest lay at the weekend, but he'd have got over it. Problem was, when I got to the pub there was a surprise party for somebody, with a buffet, a pile of presents and posters saying 'Bon Voyage.'
'Looks like there's a do on,' I'd said to Dave, 'who’s leaving?'
'You are, you dozy tosser,' he'd said, 'you are.'
It was only then that it occurred to me that maybe I should go ahead with it. Maybe I did need to get away from everything I'd known, and make a fresh start. What had I got to lose?
As I begin to drift into unconsciousness, the last thing I'm aware of is the poster, which is directly ahead of me on the wall at the foot of the bed.
Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.
I'd never noticed before, but there is a yacht bobbing up and down upon the water. And it is bobbing up and down. And it is starting to sail away from me. As I watch it's progress I can see a figure on board and it takes a while before I realise that it's Jo, and that she's waving goodbye.
I sit up with a start- not an easy thing to do when you’re on the cusp of drunkenness and hang over. Bleary eyed, I stare at the orange poster. It's just a setting sun. There mustn't have been a yacht on it in the first place. The bedside lamp casts my shadow over the picture, and somehow, in the half-light, its colours have changed, giving the message a whole new meaning.
Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.
But now, instead of a bright sunset and the promise of good times ahead, dark clouds hang ominously over vast and dangerous looking seas. No longer buoyed up by the alcohol that had carried me through the evening, I look at the picture and get a deep sense of foreboding, a feeling which, if I were superstitious, I would see as some sort of premonition.
-Chapter 2-
3rd November 1986
09.05 a.m.
Through the translucent plastic strips that covered the side entrance of the hospital, small amber baggage trucks droned in and out like bees, carrying piles of bright yellow plastic sacks marked 'for incineration.' In front of the reception area, an orange brick afterthought of about one hundred and thirty years, a man in a blue overall and a flat cap was herding a group of patients onto a minibus. A short, obese woman in a grey raincoat and white plimsolls without laces struggled to climb the step. The man poked her in the back, and when she screamed in defiance swiped her across the head with an audible crack, before looking around to see if anyone was watching. When he saw Jamie approaching he ruffled her hair affectionately, then grabbed both shoulders of her coat and pushed her onto the vehicle. The door of the bus slammed shut and it set off down a slope to the right of the building, disappearing behind a line of trees.
The hospital was just one of the many Victorian giants that circled the city, huge yet virtually invisible. It had a central clock tower, a tall belching chimney, and a water tower. It had Yellowing patches of ivy that looked like an impetigo rash on its grey skin. And it was dying.
Even when he had worked there as a nursing student, Jamie had known that the arguments for its existence were as antiquated as the building itself. The Victorians had believed that the people they institutionalised were ill, and it followed that if people were ill they should be in hospital.
The right answer, thought Jamie, to the wrong question.
As was eugenics, which said that left to their own devices 'idiots' would breed and produce idiot offspring, who would cause the
average intelligence of Englishmen over the following centuries to fall, and for manners and culture to become a thing of the past. Jamie smiled as he recalled what his colleague, Colin, had said only the night before:
'The eugenics argument falls flat doesn't it, when you realise that despite separating so many so-called 'defectives' from the gene pool the average Englishman is thick as pigshit. I mean, if 'Eastenders' is meant to represent the state of the nation...I rest my case.'
Jamie made to follow in the direction of the bus, but as he passed by the hospital entrance a small man with black, greased-back hair, broke rank with the mob that jostled to be first in line for the returning vehicle, and made a limping run toward him.
'Wait a minute, please... wait.'
Despite the fact that he couldn't have been much more than five foot tall his jeans were too short in the leg, and were of a faded, nondescript colour, which blended with both the hospital and the day. By complete contrast, his jumper was lime green, decorated with a polka dot pattern that Jamie realised as he drew closer comprised of holes and cigarette burns. The man stood in front of him, wringing his hands.
'Can I help you?' asked Jamie, assuming an old-fashioned air of politeness.
'Are you a S-Social Worker?'
Easy mistake to make, thought Jamie.
His face was particularly pale today, and the cold wind had done nothing to help his eyelids, which were dry with eczema. Wearing a combat jacket and hair scraped back into a ponytail, revealing a single stud earring, he had an air about him when entering the hospital grounds of someone who was on a mission in enemy territory.
'Sort of,' he said, 'I'm a Senior Residential Social Worker, but call me Jamie.'
'Can you tell me then: when can I go home?'
Jamie looked across the void, desperately wanting to be a bearer of good news, but feeling like an apocalyptic messenger announcing the down side of the second coming: it's not for everyone.
'What’s your name,' asked Jamie.
'Timmy Weekman.'
'I’m sorry Mr. Weekman, you're not on our list, but maybe someone else will...'
'Please take me, I’ve been good. I don’t want to stay here, I will be good, please let me come with you...'
Timmy started slapping his own face with one hand, and biting the soft flesh between the thumb and forefinger of the other. As a thin stream of blood began to run down the man’s wrist, Jamie's instinct as an ex- nurse was to elevate the hand and to apply pressure to the wound, but he knew that if he tried to do that it was likely that he wouldn't just be being faced by a manic patient, but by a manic patient who was also bleeding profusely and choking on a lump of his own flesh. What he needed was a distraction.
It came with a ripple of laughter from the crowd, which quickly developed into a chorus of clapping and shouting. Timmy Weekmen switched instantaneously from mania to manic laughter, as the crowd parted to reveal a breathless middle-aged nurse, chasing a laughing man in red pyjamas across the gravel forecourt. The man had a thick mop of hair like a brush perched on his head, and a long, pockmarked chin, which reminded Jamie of the man in the moon from a childhood storybook. As he crunched his way in tartan-slippered feet across the orange gravel, he swung a holey 'Tesco' carrier-bag like an incense shaker, and called out:
'Nee naw nee naw nee naw'
And the people who were grouped around and about the old building and slouching in its doorways echoed him:
'Nee naw nee naw nee naw....'
He stopped abruptly and, looking over his shoulder, called:
' Come on Pansy, here boy.'
The pet bounded up to him. He stroked it's thick fur, then as It jumped to lick his face, it caused him to giggle and clutch the bulky carrier bag to his chest, before racing on. And although there was nothing there, the man saw the pet so clearly, and mimed playing with it so precisely, that whenever Jamie recalled the scene he could never do so without seeing a real dog.
The nurse looked at Jamie with a forced smile of recognition.
'I bet you're not taking that one.'
'No,' said Jamie, ' Actually, I was hoping that I might manage to track down Mr. Doyle today, I think he’s been avoiding me. Do you know where I might find him?'
'Your best bet, as usual, is the 'Happy Owls', but I think you’re flogging a dead horse there. Oscar is quite happy where he is.'
'I’m sure,' said Jamie 'that if we just got a chance to talk to Mr. Doyle and to put what we have to offer in an unbiased way, he'd be quite happy to...'
'It has been put to him in an unbiased way,' she snapped, 'I told him myself what it would mean. He’s happy here with the care that we provide.'
'I’m sure he is, but...'
They were interrupted by a loud 'Nee-naw' as the moon-faced man returned, this time chasing his dog. The nurse, having got second wind, pursued him back into the hospital. A minute later, the latter day 'Wee Willy Winky’ was running up and down the fire escape, singing 'climb climb up sunshine mountain,' and had inspired a popular uprising, as patients refused to get onto the newly-returned mini bus for fear of missing the entertainment.
The 'Happy Owls' Social Club was still decorated for the Halloween party, which had taken place on the previous Friday night. No trick or treating for me that night, thought Jamie, yawning. He had managed to get to bed relatively early, after rushing from the hospital to meet another new staff member at the tube station. He had been working long shifts since Ed, the manager, had had his breakdown and left. Ed had initiated and carried out the first visits to the hospital, at the same time as overseeing the building and equipping of the Bungalow. Then he had been found, crying hysterically, under his desk.
Jamie had seen people burn out before- the last mental handicap hospital he had worked at was across the road from one which specialised in mental health. It was well attested that there was a nurse who had spent most of her working life at one, and was now enjoying enforced retirement at the other. There was an overlapping period at each hospital where people coming across her for the first
time could not tell if they were dealing with a member of staff or a patient. But Ed was the first person Jamie had seen burn out before a project had actually got up and running.
Jamie had met the new Residential Social Worker on Friday night and taken him to his lodgings, where he'd had the weekend to settle in. Today he was being briefed and given rudimentary training. Tomorrow he was starting at the hospital. Since meeting him, Jamie's excitement about his mission to rescue victims of the institution, as he saw it, had become tinged with doubt regarding the quality of the staff they were attracting. The first advertisements had, at a cost, turned up only half the number needed. It was Des Machin, the area manager, who had the idea of putting, in large letters, the word 'GRADUATE' at the top of the next advertisement. The job description and reimbursement were the same, but it would, he had argued, uncover a whole new seam of applicants. Des had read somewhere that the concept of the 'graduate job' was becoming a thing of the past for arts graduates. 'What do you say to an arts graduate with a job?' asked the contemporary joke: 'Big Mac and fries please.' So there should be, Des had argued, a market for those after their first job who would value a year or two of work experience in the 'real world.'
So far, only two had turned up: there was Jane Vertue, a small, mousy theology graduate, who seemed at first reserved, but was proving to be an intelligent and incisive advocate for the rights of the patients... and there was Martin Peach.
And if he's a graduate, thought Jamie, I must be Maggie Thatcher.
But beggars, he reminded himself, could not be choosers. Word was that even the normally unflappable Des was starting to panic. Firstly he had lost his manager, then recruitment just hadn't turned up enough suitable candidates among the usual clutch of inadequates, social misfits and perverts. The level of pay was such that it would only attract two types of person: those with a real vocation or those who just couldn't get anything else. Then people were turning up and leaving after a few days because they said it hadn't been made clear to them about the level of handicap they'd be working with, so Des had taken it upon himself to phone the others to check that they knew what they were coming to. To recruit enough people to staff a whole new service may realistically mean that interviewers could not be as choosy
as they would wish, but if Martin Peach was typical of what was being attracted, Jamie had grave doubts about the future of the Bungalow.
The 'Happy Owls' had a morning aroma of burnt toast and bleach. Patients in faded blue overalls were being directed by staff in wiping tables and mopping floors, the screeching of the table legs on the tiles competing with 'the Birdie Song' on the jukebox, and with the sound of a children's counting rhyme from the television in the lounge area.
About twenty years before, the 'Friends Society' had decided to raise funds for a patients' social club. The nearby village of Oulston was home to the retired stockbroker, Church of England foxhunting set, and some of the residents were descendants of the same well-meaning Victorians who had originally backed the building of the hospital, so had a sense of hereditary ownership over it and the goings on of those who lived there. If a social centre was built on site, they felt, it would give the patients somewhere to meet, something different to do, and may also discourage them from wandering to the village pub.
At the first meeting of the 'Friends of Oulston' someone had said 'there should be a cafeteria and a lounge area.' (The possibility of a bar never arose.) Then there were hours of debate about which one should be on the left, and which on the right of the foyer. At the second meeting the issue of a name for the club was mooted. After two hours of brainstorming, the name 'Happy Owls' was agreed, at the cost of only one resignation from a 'friend' who had lobbied for it to be named after a distinguished ancestor.
So the 'Titschlinger club' was not to be. Instead it was the 'Happy Owls.' ‘Owls’ because of the name of the hospital, 'Happy' because it was a place where people could go... to be happy. A local artist contributed by painting a mural on the outside wall of three small owls and a large one, all smiling and winking in a way which made them look more sinister than happy. And since his student days this was how Jamie thought of it: the 'Sinister Owls.'
Twenty years after its creation the lounge furniture of the 'Sinister Owls' had not changed. There were several big soft chairs and settees, all covered in the same mottled burgundy plastic. Closer up the
coverings were full of holes, and the occasional attempt to wipe them exposed a much earlier, much happier light red. There was a pool table, and in one corner a large tableau with nursery rhyme figurines, which Jamie considered aesthetically and ethically offensive.
Jamie thought through his brief, which had seemed simple enough to begin with. The first task had been to meet with the individuals who had been chosen for 'resettlement' and offer them a place at the new Bungalow, but somehow, until now, Oscar Doyle had managed to completely avoid him.
Once the offer had been made the interview process was initiated, which meant that everyone who knew the patient, and in some cases the patients themselves, were questioned on their history, their routines, their likes and dislikes, their medical background, and so on, until as complete a picture as possible was built up in order to ease the transition. Another part of this was contacting family members- a feature which in many cases was not proving easy. Some families kept in touch, visiting regularly or having their son or daughter home for holidays. Others had disappeared. Either they had died, or wished to forget all about that child who had not turned out quite as expected.
Jamie was well aware that in these cases it was important to reassure families that the intention was not to reintroduce the person to the family home. It was more about 'personhood.' All human beings have a history, and an essential part of restoring the humanity of the patients was to create a picture of who they were before they had emerged out of the fog to find themselves on a hospital ward, or in the unimaginative surroundings of the 'Happy Owls.'
Sitting on one of the burgundy chairs, his stocking-feet on a coffee table, was a small stocky man with a receding hairline and thick 'jam jar' glasses. Although they were both grey, his holed socks were odd, and dangled at the toe. He was absorbed in a schools' Maths programme on the TV, which was mounted high on the wall.
'Excuse me' said Jamie, in an excited but almost quietly reverential voice, like David Attenborough coming across some lost tribe, 'are you Oscar Doyle?' Oscar was watching the TV intently, as if he was presenting a review of schools' programmes later that day, and
appeared not to notice Jamie as he sidled up to him, pulling up a spare stool which had trespassed into the lounge from the cafe area.
'Er, excuse me.'
The man turned his head slowly, trying not to miss the lesson about making up the correct bus fare from a selection of change.
'Yeah?'
'Are you Mr. Doyle?'
'Yeah.'
'Well, my name is Jamie Heffer. I’m a Senior Residential Social Worker.'
His bottom lip jutting a little, Oscar looked at Jamie over the top of his glasses.
'I’ve come to invite you to move back to the Borough where you lived before you moved here.'
Oscar’s bushy eyebrows raised, and he turned his head to face Jamie full on.
'Would you like to do that?'
Oscar took off his glasses, pulled out a shirt flap and wiped them.
'What’s it like?'
'Well it’s a lovely new purpose-built Bungalow. You’ll be sharing with five other people from the hospital. You’ll be able to learn a lot of skills that you haven’t had the opportunity to use here. What I mean is things like doing your own shopping, your own cooking and washing up, and you could even go out and do a proper job, earn some money instead of having to sit here watching the telly all day.'
Oscar stared silently at Jamie, then jiggled his little finger in his ear.
'So what do you say?'
Oscar looked him up and down, glanced back at his TV programme, then turned completely around to face him, just long enough to say 'Piss off,' before resuming his previous position.
This, thought Jamie, is not going to be easy.
-Chapter 3-
31st Oct 1986
7.30 pm
I'm a firm believer in the fact that human beings were never meant to do factory work. The problem is, I suppose, that if we continue to insist on having those microwave ovens and custom kitchens it doesn't leave us with much choice. I remember the first day I worked at the factory, looking at my watch, expecting it to be near to dinnertime and finding it was only nine o'clock. Even the first break, where I had to learn to drink a hot cup of tea in ten minutes, was a whole hour away.
As the years went on, and I learned the ropes, I got into the habit of going to the toilet at nine to break the monotony either by just sitting, or reading a page of newspaper that I'd folded and put in my pocket that morning. I'd heard of some lads who actually took drugs to get them through the boredom, but I never thought of that as a top idea. Neither was wanking. That was what I was doing on one of my unofficial nine o'clock breaks, when Foster, the boss, noticed I was missing from my bench in the stores. The first I knew about it was when I became aware of a pair of black, shiny shoes stopping outside the toilet cubicle in a position indicating that the owner was pressing his ear against the door.
'Peach, are you in there?'
'Yes,' I said, quietly folding up the Samantha Fox picture I'd got from that morning's Sun and shoving it back in my pocket.
'Are you ill?'
'No.'
'Then shift your arse out here, and get back to your bench. We're not paying you to crap.'
No, I thought, you're paying me to wank.
I flushed the chain, and did up my trousers. It was only after I’d fastened my green overall that I realised it was doing an impression of a magician performing that trick where a floating ball dances under his cloak.
'Martin,' called Foster, 'get yourself out of there... now.'
With my back to him I did this side-to-side crab walk to the sink.
'Just need to wash my hands, Mr. Foster. Health and safety and all.'When the primary school headmaster had given his boys only sex talk, he had recommended for ridding yourself of an unwanted erection (something which I had never experienced until this point) the act of washing your hands in cold water. It didn't work. I dried them on a paper towel as slowly as I could in order to buy time, but there was no change. I had to walk back through a load of sniggering circuit board assemblers, and if I had a penny for every shop floor worker who came to the hatch that afternoon complaining that I'd only issued them a two-inch knob, I'd never need to work again.
One of my teachers once wrote in my report that I had a natural sense of justice, although when I told Jo this she'd suggested it should have read ' a sense of natural justice.' Don't get me wrong, I'm not nasty, but I just can't stand it when people are and they don't get what they deserve. It’s as if they've upset some sort of natural order of things that needs to be put right. A 'disturbance in the force.'
It came for Foster almost one year later.
At weekends Mrs. Foster liked nothing better than to be driven out to quaint country villages, eat in quaint country cafes, meet quaint country people, and insult them. So on the day that the travelling book salesman came, Foster had placed an order for the 'English Rural Scenes' calendar.
'This will give her some ideas' he said, admiring the picture of Matlock Bath on the cover.
Quite by coincidence, and in complete contrast, I had got hold of a calendar called 'Bitches in Leather.' Swapping them was easy, taking the stiff white envelope from Foster’s desk and sliding one calendar out and the other in. The rest depended upon Foster not looking inside the envelope again, going home that night and saying, 'hello darling, I've got something for you; I thought it might give you some ideas.'
The next day, Foster said nothing, but I could tell by his bloodshot right eye and the bruising around it that my plan had worked. But the poisonous look I got told me that he had somehow worked out who the culprit was, and that my days at the factory were numbered.
*
And that's why I'm standing on a wet pavement outside an old folks' home in North London. I managed to get a bit of a kip on the train- long enough to miss the concrete cows at Milton Keynes- but I'm still knackered from last nights drinking marathon. A thick fog is creating small droplets on my glasses and distorting the glare of the yellow streetlights. I feel like the priest arriving in 'The Exorcist.'
'By the way,’ said Jamie, as he dropped me off, 'When you meet Kevin, your new flatmate... don't ask.'
' Don't ask what?'
He said nothing, but gave me a wicked grin as he closed the dented door of his green mini and drove off.
Jamie wasn't what I'd expected at all. Most bosses I know wear ties, but Jamie was dressed like a hippy. I shook his hand anyway when he met me at the tube station, but as I did that a pile of underpants fell through the broken zip of my bag into a puddle. Saved the day though: cracked a joke about being 'care in the community.' I think that broke the ice.
Don’t ask what?
What had once been the flat of the officer in charge at the 'Willows' old folks' home is now used as stopgap accommodation for new Social Services staff moving from out of the area. The home is warm and smells of drying laundry and piss. I unzip my leather jacket, pull out a shirt flap and wipe my specs, then an old guy with tartan 'bootee' slippers and a Zimmer-frame leads me to a door marked 'staff only', next to which is a notice board with large black interchangeable letters which reads:
Today is: 25th of June 1986.
The weather is warm
Through the door, I find myself in a dark corridor, the only light being the dimmest of slits at the far end. As the first door slams
behind me I feel for a light switch, find it and press it, but nothing happens. Holding my bag out in front of me I shuffle along- I know it's irrational, but it just seems like the sort of place where you could stumble over a dead body- and all the time I'm telling myself:
This is not a tunnel, I am not enclosed, I can get out.
There’s a clunk as my bag hits the door. And beyond the door there's somebody shouting.
'Well go and shove it up your arse, you motherfucker.'
Entering the dimly lit room, I notice a familiar smell: Christmas. It smells like Christmas: Candles and alcohol. As my eyes adjust I see a hunched figure sitting on a beanbag with his back to me, silhouetted in the light of a single tall white candle.
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