‘Somebody found you?’
‘My daughter, Megan.’
‘Christ... ’
‘When I was in hospital - that's mental hospital, they had to section me, I was still raving - I decided I would make this quilt. I think that’s how I put myself back together again. I sat weeping and sewing... for months.’ Rose smoothes the quilt, stroking it repeatedly.
Calum is silent for a few moments and then says softly, ‘And tears shed there shall be my recreation.’
Rose looks up. ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s from The Winter's Tale. Leontes, after he’s driven his wife into an early grave. It’s one of Shakespeare’s serious puns. Recreation. Re-creation.’
‘I like that. That’s good.’
They sit in silence. Eventually Rose says, ‘The design is known as A Thousand Pyramids. I sewed it all by hand after I’d managed to convince my psychiatrist that I could be trusted with needles and pins. But they wouldn’t let me have scissors. I had to bite the thread with my teeth, which was tedious. And humiliating.’
Calum lays a reverent hand on the quilt. ‘So much pain... yet it’s beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’
After a while he asks softly, ‘D’you think you’re still a suicide risk, Rose?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Not now. Oh, I don’t know.’ She says wearily, ‘I suffer from bipolar affective disorder - that’s the label.’
‘Manic depression?’
‘Do you know much about it?’
‘Some. The teaching profession has its share of manic-depressives. They’re one of its strengths.’
She smiles at him gratefully and continues. ‘I’ve been on medication for many years now and that has stabilised me, but I can’t work properly while I’m on it. My feelings become blunted, I don’t see things, there’s just no joy, it’s a kind of living death. I’ve tried reducing the dose - I’ve even stopped taking it once or twice - strictly against doctor’s orders - but then I get ill, sometimes with dire consequences. I’m being a good girl again and taking the damn stuff, but probably not enough. So, mood-wise, I’m a bit unstable... I’ve been learning about self-management techniques and I’m trying to take control of my illness myself. I think if I live quietly and simply and monitor my moods, I may be able to keep on an even keel on a reduced dosage. But it’s risky. Coming here is an attempt to simplify my life, focus on work. I have to be able to take care of myself as there’s nobody else to do it.’
‘I think we demonstrated this morning that you don’t have to go it alone. The emergency services round here are pretty efficient,’ he says, indicating the bottle of whisky on the bedside table.
‘You’ve been wonderful.’
‘It’s nothing special, we do this for anyone - even folk we can’t stand!’ Calum shakes his head in mock dismay. ‘Indiscriminate generosity - it’s terrible!’ He takes another bite of his sandwich and frowns. ‘But do you not have any family - apart from Megan, I mean?’
‘No. I threw Gavin out. Megan’s grown up now and lives in Carlisle. I don’t see her very often. We’re not particularly close. In fact we have a rather stormy history.’
‘What about her father?’
‘He left us when she was a baby.’
Calum chokes on his mouthful. ‘Your life’s been one long party, hasn’t it, Rose?’
‘I’ve no idea where he is now and no desire to know. My parents are dead. I’m an only child. I had some good friends in Fort William but we lost touch while I was ill, in and out of various hospitals. Some people just can’t deal with mental illness, they don’t know what to say. Then when Gavin and I split up - well, some of my friends belonged to the climbing world and they tended to side with Gavin, naturally. Some moved away... So I’m pretty much alone. But I’m used to it now. It means I can keep to my little routines. Life springs no surprises and I can be utterly selfish about work. It probably sounds a pretty dull life to you.’
‘I don’t think you could ever describe the struggle to survive as dull. I think you deserve a bloody medal. And a lot more besides.’
‘Oh, I’ve got everything I want - a new start, new friends, a new identity almost. And I have peace and quiet... You’ve no idea how noisy mental hospitals are! Awful places... The TV’s always on and the radio... There are Hoovers going and trolleys rattling... People moaning and weeping in corridors, shouting, hallucinating.’
‘Aye, and that's just the staff... Look, Rose, I’ve got to go. I’ll drop by later. I’ve got a planning meeting after school and I can’t really cut it.’
‘I wouldn’t hear of it. Don’t worry about me, I’ll probably sleep now. I feel exhausted!’
‘All the talking, I expect. I’ll bring some food in for you this evening. You might have got your appetite back.’
‘I don’t want to be any trouble.’
‘It’s no trouble, it’s a pleasure, so will you quit spoiling my fun?’ He stands up and strokes a tendril of damp hair away from her cheek.
Rose looks up at him. ‘Shona says you used to like playing Doctors and Nurses when you were little.’
‘Did she now, the cheeky wee besom. Rose, you have no idea how lucky you are to be an only child.’
~
Pink
Pink little girl, pink dress with pink ribbons, pale pink skin, clean and scrubbed, like sugared almonds, like coconut ice, powdery soft, pink and white.
Inside my pink skin: a mess, a mass of slugs and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails. (No, that’s what little boys are made of.)
I watch the boys, bright-eyed boys, moody and mean, with their long brown limbs and blood-stained knees, their white wolf teeth, muscle and bone, climbing, falling, shouting, laughing, pointing at the pink girls.
I am not one of them.
I am not pink.
I am orange.
~
When Calum returns with a carrier bag of groceries he finds Rose sitting on the floor of the workroom, still in her nightdress, surrounded by heaps of fabric and empty shoeboxes. She doesn’t look up.
‘Rose! You shouldn’t be out of bed! What is it that you want? Will you let me help?’
‘I can’t find the green I want. I know it’s here somewhere. I remember saving it. It’s a particularly nasty green... acidic, like that seaweed, you know, the stuff on the beach I was looking at the other day. It's that sort of green, a lime green with a sulphurous tint to it. Chartreuse. But I just can’t seem to find it. Sit down and help me look.’
Calum is aware of a cold churning in his stomach. He kneels down beside her. She dazzles him with a playful smile, her eyes shining, but unfocused.
‘I’ve had a brilliant idea, you see - another brilliant idea! I’ve been lying in bed thinking and I’ve decided I’m going to make a map of my mind. A mind map! Don’t you think it’s a wonderful idea? Then perhaps I won’t lose it any more. My mind I mean, not the map. And if I have a map, I can’t get lost, can I? But the colours...’ She starts to rummage through the fabric again. ‘They have to be exactly right... They must be here somewhere! I need a diseased sort of green... but not putrid.’ She laughs. ‘I don’t think I’m that bad, do you? Not yet, anyway.’ She picks up a fragment of russet silk and examines it. ‘I remember when I was this colour. But that was years and years ago... ’
Calum’s heart is thudding. He lays his hands gently on her shoulders.
‘Rose, look at me... When did you last take your medication?’
‘What?’ She frowns. ‘Oh. After lunch, I suppose. I always take it after meals.’
‘You didn’t take anything while I was here. You didn’t eat any lunch. You said you weren’t hungry.’
‘Of course I ate lunch! We sat together in the café.’ She looks confused. ‘Didn’t we?’
‘That was yesterday, Rose. Have you taken any since then?’
‘I don’t remember. I don’t think so... Oops.’ She screws up her face. ‘I don’t think I took it yesterday either... Well, I did but th
en I was sick.’
‘What do you need to do, Rose? Will you let me ring Dr. Kerr?’
‘No, no, I’ll be fine!’ She bows her head and starts to examine fabric scraps again.
‘Rose —’
‘Just get me my tablets, Calum, will you? They’re in my handbag - on the sofa probably. There’re two types. Bring them both - and a glass of water.’
Calum calls out from the sitting room. ‘You’re still running a temperature. Away up the stair to your bed - I’ll bring everything up.’
‘But I want to find that green!’
Calum reappears at the door with the handbag, ‘Rose, do you want me to carry you?’
‘Ooh, my very own Rhett Butler! But the handbag spoils the macho image a bit.’ Calum takes a threatening step towards her. ‘All right, all right, I’ll come quietly.’ She looks down at the scraps of fabric and pats them. ‘Don’t touch anything - I know that green is here somewhere...’
~
‘Look - another nice autumn day, Rose!’
They assail me, assault me with their cheerful lies.
I look through their glass...
A garden. A formal garden. Neat, well-kept, like a park.
Dead.
Look closer...
Daisies lounge presumptuous on the lawn. Petals have dared to fall from the rose bushes.
Rebellion.
Birds have crapped on the wrought-iron benches, livid, magenta shit, stained with the juice of elderberries. Leaves are beginning to fall and not in tidy piles. Life is dying. Messily. Gloriously.
Look closer still...
Leaves, the colour of disease. Blistered arteries craze a jaundiced parchment of decay, withering, crackling, recoiling from my gaze...
Beautiful death.
‘Your illness is a terrible gift, Rose...’
Happy Deathday to you
Happy Deathday to you
Happy Deathday, dear Rosie
Happy Deathday to you.
~
Rose swallows tablets watched anxiously by Calum. ‘I think it’s you who need the tranquilliser, Calum. Don’t look so alarmed - I know what I’m doing! I’m just a bit high that’s all. These will soon bring me down to earth. This one will probably send me to sleep - which is a shame because I was having such fun.’
‘Get into bed, Rose.’
‘Oh, I thought you’d never ask. Are you joining me?’ She hooks her fingers over Calum’s belt and pulls him towards her, reaching for his mouth with hers.
‘Rose!’
‘All right, all right - I’ll be good.’ She scowls and climbs into bed.
‘Are you sure we shouldn’t get Dr. Kerr?’
‘God, no! I couldn’t face another lecture from him about the folly of living alone and trying to reduce my meds!’ She giggles. ‘That would be a fate worse than death.’
Calum takes off his jacket, pulls up a chair and sits beside the bed. She registers his neatly pressed cords, crisp white collarless shirt and waistcoat. ‘Gosh, you look nice! Are you going somewhere special?’
‘The Burns Night Supper. At least, I was. I'm not sure you should be left alone.’
‘Oh, stop fussing, I’ll be fine. It’s not the getting high that is so very dangerous anyway. That can be great, a lot of laughs. It’s the coming down afterwards. After all the flashing coloured lights comes the darkness. And by the time the darkness descends you can’t really see the point of taking the tablets - that’s if you haven’t already thrown them away while you were looping the mental loop.’
‘I think I’ll stay.’
‘But they’re expecting you.’
‘Och, I’ve two left feet and one fiddle more or less won’t make any difference.’
‘You play the fiddle?’
‘Aye. Very badly.’
‘I bet you don’t. Do you have it with you? Would you play for me now? I’d love to hear you.’
‘Maybe later.’
‘It might calm me down,’ she wheedles. ‘A bedside serenade - how lovely! I shall feel like Cosima Wagner on her birthday, being woken by the Siegfried Idyll.’
‘Should you eat something, Rose? All those tablets on an empty stomach. I brought you some tinned soup.’
‘Yuk!’
Calum persists. ‘Look, I’ll do a deal - you eat some soup while I play to you.’
She wrinkles her nose. ‘It's not oxtail is it?’
‘Scotch Broth.’
‘But of course!’ Rose claps her hands. ‘Music, Maestro, please!’
~
Calum stands at the foot of my bed, rolls up his sleeves and tunes his violin. I lean back against my freshly plumped pillows and feast my wandering eyes. The soup and drug cocktail is beginning to hit me. The sharp edges are gone, the harsh lights dimmed. Fog begins to descend.
Calum looks up grimly from under his dark fringe of curls.
‘You’re going to regret this.’
‘Can’t wait.’
‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Shona’s the musical one in the family.’
‘Really?’
‘Voice of an angel. Especially when she’s drunk. Aye, you’ve missed a rare treat tonight at the supper.’
‘Never mind - I’m in for a treat now.’
‘Did you finish that soup yet?’
‘Yes, and it was a truly horrible experience.’
‘Well, here’s another...’
And Calum begins to play a slow, mournful air, a look of fierce concentration on his face. His hands and bowing arm are fluid and relaxed, his wrist flexes elegantly, holding the bow poised above the strings. I am hypnotised by the way the lamplight catches the pale protruding bones of his wrist, the play of shifting muscles in his forearms. I see rather than hear him play.
He lowers the violin.
‘That was beautiful, Calum. What was it?’
‘A traditional tune called My Laggan Love.’
‘Thank you. It made me want to cry.’
‘Aye, it used to have that effect on my violin teacher, but for a different reason. Are you feeling sleepy yet?’
‘A bit. If I do fall asleep —’
‘I’m staying, whether or no’. It’s that or I fetch the doctor, Rose.’
I find I am flooded with relief, have to fight back tears of gratitude. ‘But - won’t Shona be worried about you?’
‘I’m over twenty-one. And she knows where I’ll be. I said I’d look in on you this evening. She’ll know I’ve been... waylaid.’
~
Gavin
falling
somersaulting
like a string-cut marionette
limbs flailing
ropes flying
a dance of death
accompanied by jingling karabiners at your waist
till
you
hit the rocks
and bounce
then hit some more
and split
your helmet open
like an egg
and your blood spills out
sticky and red
mixed with sharp white fragments of bone
grey gobbets of brain
oozing on sun-warmed rock.
.
You lie broken at the foot of the mountain
your limbs pointing to the four corners of the earth
your lips drawn back in a perpetual grin.
.
What a blast
what a way to go
the ultimate, Gavin
the highest high
the biggest turn-on
the hardest hard-on
.
Death, Gavin.
Yours.
~
Rose wakes with a loud cry and sits up. The room is dark but for a small pool of light. Calum has been reading by torchlight. He switches on the bedside lamp. Rose is shaking violently.
‘A nightmare?’
‘Yes.’
‘A bad one from the sound of it.’
>
‘Yes... What time is it?’
‘A little after midnight.’
‘Have you been sitting there all evening?’
‘No. I made myself something to eat a while back. I’ve been reading and drinking Donald’s whisky. Can I get you anything?’
‘I’m thirsty.’
He hands her a glass of water. She swallows greedily. ‘You really don’t have to stay.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you going to sit in that chair all night?’
‘Probably not. When I get tired I’ll go down and sleep on your sofa.’
‘You’ll freeze.’
‘No, the stove is burning nicely down there. I’ve been feeding it.’
‘You think of everything.’ Rose looks distractedly around the room, then puts her hands over her eyes and starts to cry.
‘What is it, Rose? The dream?’
‘Gavin... He’s here. Now.’
Calum sits on the edge of the bed and takes her in his arms, a chaste, almost brotherly embrace, yet Rose flinches. He releases her. She utters a sound, something between a laugh and a cry. ‘I don’t remember the last time anyone touched me!’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t remember... what it feels like.’
‘It feels like this.’ He takes her carefully in his arms again.
Rose sags against him and cries. ‘I have such terrible dreams!’
‘I know, I was watching while you slept. I didn’t know whether to wake you or not. D’you want to talk about it?’
‘No... But will you please keep holding me?’
‘Aye.’
‘I’ve soaked your nice shirt.’
‘No problem.’
Her head against Calum’s damp chest, Rose listens to the sound of his steady breathing, counter-pointed by the distant rumble of breakers on the shore outside her house. She begins to feel drowsy again.
‘Calum?’ she whispers.
‘Aye?’
Emotional Geology Page 9