You Left Early

by Louisa Young

  And there was a terrible echo of his separation from his father in the situation with his son, with whom he had not been able to be in touch. ‘I’ve checked that he’s OK but I am increasingly petrified by the idea that I’ll lose him. He loves me, I love him more than anyone on earth but I’ve not been mentally or physically fit enough to see him. I feel so guilty and sad and remorseful that as we speak I am due to my alcoholic state incapable of having any positive influence on him. I hope to God (despite being an atheist), that I can resurrect our good relationship. This situation, excuse the pun, is crucifying me.’ Kath sent Robert some photos. As a little child, Jim had been blond: now he was dark-haired. Robert was shocked. ‘I feel as if I’ve lost him. I’m daunted by trying to rebuild.’

  I felt that Robert should always see his son, whatever his own health; that Jim would want to see him, and needed to see him and know him, and that was what mattered. Jim’s mother and her family had been saintly in keeping the channels open and making contact possible. What I didn’t get at the time was how deeply Robert felt the pain of having to part from Jim, and his terror that he would drink after having left him – and sobriety has to be the alcoholic’s first goal, because without it there is nothing. In fact, loving Jim and wanting to do right by him kept Robert alive and sober more than anything else.

  And he was worried about money. He had royalties coming in, and savings, but chaos ruled: a savings account had gone missing, tax was unpaid, his rent was still going out and things were a mess. More to the point, he had a proud loathing of not earning, and of not working. Work was where he had always proved himself, and coming back to reality he feared that he wouldn’t be able to work, creatively, and that even if he could he wouldn’t be able to handle the stress of the world of work, and that even if he did nobody would want him; nobody would forgive him. (See p. 389 for more of Robert’s own words from this period.)

  What I hadn’t noticed, because I was so deep in the woods, was that because I had been aware of Robert’s problems for years, I was almost inured to them, whereas Robert, coming out of his drunken blindness, was seeing clearly for the first time what he had been like, and what he had done. ‘Is part of my insanity the belief that my addiction is my only problem?’ asked his workbook. ‘Addiction was in many ways avoidance of other problems,’ he answered. ‘Inferiority, insecurity, confusion as to who I was or why I was here. Indefinable fear.’ No wonder he was terrified now, looking on his works and despairing.

  *

  On 20 May, something magical happened. We went out for the day, to Rousham, a quiet country estate that he used to visit from Oxford, a bucolic heaven. We sat on the stile at the end of the lane, his sticks leaning against the wooden fence, looking over the fields and the parkland with its great cedars and brown cows, the shafts of sunlight lying across the landscape like blessings. And we sat on the bench in the corner of the old wall, by the river, where the branches hung low, their leaves dappling in the light. And in the folly, like a tiny temple. We learned together how to walk together, him needing help but not wanting to lean; me wanting to help but not wanting to carry him or look – for his dignity and for mine – as if I were carrying him, arm in arm on the paths of the formal garden, trying ways of taking the weight between us. I remember the utter beauty of the English summer’s day, the weight of the leaves on the trees, the grey walls and green lawns. The sense of the wreck of a man returning from somewhere terrible; a quiet, chastened, wounded tough man beginning to conceive of the existence of healing and forgiveness. It felt like the bloody First World War, like 1919. In my mind, in my heart, it was at that moment, at that stile, that we got back together. Of course it was. We kissed. If you kiss, you’re together, right?

  ‘Louisa and I didn’t really discuss the state of our relationship,’ he wrote, ‘just enjoyed the day. Exquisite sun. Happy – being in a beautiful place having a great time with my (?) girlfriend. Sad – very sad – to leave her tonight but will see her next week. Enjoying having felt happy – yes happy!’

  Renewal approached me. Images I had found when I was writing The Book of the Heart crept into my mind: washing the heart, baptising it in a clear flowing river. Upspringing. Meadows. Sweet waters. Moss. I listened to Al Green singing ‘Take Me to the River’, washing me down. Renewing and refreshing. I dreamt about a green heart with little new green leaves, and heard the line from The Wasteland about coming back from the hyacinth garden, your hair wet and your arms full. Perhaps in the midst of winter I would find there was within me an invincible summer; perhaps we could do to each other what spring does to the cherry trees. That was the day when it began to roll off me, and I began to think all things were possible. Perhaps I would be able to trust my own judgement again one day. My own judgement which said: He is really doing this.

  First I wanted to see less of him: ‘She wants more defined temporal limits – because I’m more together, looking (a bit) healthier – it confused her (her remark!),’ he wrote. Then he wanted to see less of me: ‘We went up to Parliament Hill and sat over the view, seeing the windsheer under the clouds, and talked. I mentioned that it was going to be easier not to see her until at least the end of the first three-month phase here – no phone calls etc. She agreed, we went out for a meal and just as she dropped me off she said “I still fancy you, you know”. Thanks a fucking bunch. Turmoil, anger, great sadness, despair but strange form of relief.’

  We were trying, we really were.

  He couldn’t go places on his own. But the relief – my God, the relief – that he was not after all a textbook WKS case. It is hard, even now, to estimate what damage was left by the WKS. He was not as articulate – at least on the page – but then his peripheral neuropathy made it physically difficult and shaky for him to write, and he was constantly tired. His dates are all over the place. This seems to me some kind of metaphor for his state of mind – confabulating, though on so much lighter a level. Looking for order because he knows it is necessary. Even when it is not entirely accurate.

  But he couldn’t play the piano. ‘The brain is telling the fingers what to do,’ he wrote, ‘but they won’t do it.’ He tried to play piano duets with a friend, a fairly capable amateur, and just couldn’t play any more. ‘It was one of the most important things in my life.’ The neurologist said there was nothing she could do about his deteriorating condition. ‘As you can see,’ he wrote, ‘I can’t even write properly now. Never mind speak or walk or see properly. The condition is incurable. Will never get better …’

  Where the SES asked how he dealt with his feelings, he wrote: ‘I can’t.’

  *

  In August, his Target was to ‘ascertain exactly what nature of relationship will exist with Louisa, now that the amorous aspect has, we assume, cessated.’

  Specific needs/concerns #4 Relationships/social: On-off girlfriend – friends since 17, want to retain friendship

  Action strategies/resources: Talk about feelings and issues, and explore legacy for future relationships.

  Desired outcome: To have a good relationship with myself. To have a close loving and supportive relationship with my son and others I love. To make amends where appropriate, and where not, let go of regrets. To be aware of beliefs and behaviours that do not help me.

  Legacy! ‘Future relationships’? With WKS, remember – though I didn’t remember – ‘the person may show … lack of emotional reaction’.

  I was often confused, reading these papers. His moods flung around the place like a pinball, pinging off all and sundry. One day he’s writing ‘Happy? I can hardly spell it’. And then soon after: ‘Up at 7.30 – saw a robin feeding her young!’ or ‘Determined. No reason I can think of – oh yes! I want to live, and live well’ or ‘My significant event 2 blackbirds (adult male and female) in the kitchen on the floor during group’, or ‘I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve smiled, I’ve frowned, I’ve skipped + jumped, I’ve fallen over flat.’ What I didn’t understand was the phenomenal sensitivity of someone who is pe
ering and blinking at reality for the first time after years in the dark, anaesthetised cellar of drunkenness. I gave him Oliver Sacks’ books The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Musicophilia. I wanted, really to give him to Oliver Sacks. I thought they might be right up each other’s streets.

  I was in Italy. I had no idea the amorous aspect had ‘cessated’. I was, I thought, being delicate. I thought we were good.

  *

  In September we went to see Bill Bailey at the Riverside studio. ‘The good bits were mesmeric,’ he wrote, and gave him ‘hunger for creativity. Went with my ex-girlfriend and her daughter to whom I said “SORRY”. “What for?” she said. “For not being as good a person as I am slowly becoming.” …?!’

  I desperately needed him to be sorry. What I didn’t see was that in wanting things from him I was, from his point of view, finding him wanting. The obsessive perfectionism which so illuminated his music could in other areas define anything less than perfect as worthless, humiliating even, and therefore jettisonable. By wanting things from him I was finding fault with him, which by the flawed logic he still lived in made him jettisonable. My desire was to support him while maintaining my integrity and independence. When I wrote letters about how much I loved him, my intention was happiness, possibility, togetherness. Now I see that any complaint, weakness, grief or anger on my part was unbearable to him. I was looking forward to the step where he could make amends. Christ, I dreamt of amends. But meanwhile, yes, I was still chopped liver.

  But – he was not drunk. He was tough, determined and amazing. I hadn’t failed him. He was coming back to life. Hope and relief were dancing about casting spangly fairy-dust all over everything. The grievances were details, because there was so much now to live for.

  For six months he talked about his condition, in groups, in pairs, one-to-one with his counsellors. There was an acupuncturist for whom he started writing a piece of music, a fifteen-minute meditation piece, and he wanted his keyboard, could I bring it up (YES!!!!) and he wanted his assistant and he wanted a shedload of sushi and could I not bring him posh Duchy organic elderflower, it was a bit embarrassing, could I just bring Lucozade? Yes I could, and I could get over the fact that Lucozade bottles made me shake because they were what he used to hide his vodka in. He was really really doing it, a thousand per cent more than he had done at Clouds. He was talking, telling the truth, being straight, admitting failings, investigating complexities, making jokes, making friends. He sobered up, straightened up, stood up and strode about. His brain regained quite enough of its original intelligence and natural glory. He was gallant. And he was unbelievably fucking sorry.

  Now, though, I can see how the things that were wrong with him gave him more pain as they became clearer, and as new ones rolled up. Not being able to play the piano, dear God. Because I was trying to stand back, I didn’t see how much these things were hurting him. ‘What has made it difficult to achieve your target?’ reads one of his work-sheets. His answer? ‘Fear and dread of the pain of complete self-honesty.’

  ‘A terrible day,’ he wrote, towards the end of his stay. ‘One of the worst. I am so grateful to all here for turning my life around. There is respect, admiration and great fondness for the staff and some of the peers, past and present. Even at this increasingly delicate, frightening time I have to balance “here, now” with “what, when?”. I have neglected one of the most important things: finding a safe, secure, conducive home. I am now almost in a state of panic. Seeing my flat – the bad state could be reversed, but not my feelings towards it. I’m going backwards tonight. But tomorrow I’ll go forward again.’

  I didn’t know he was concerned about housing. He could stay with me – I thought he knew that. I thought he understood the basic premise which for me had always been the same, and which God knows I had told him often enough: sober, I love you; drunk, you’re out. Sweet Twin; you’re the love of my life; Evil Twin, piss the fuck off. (That’s one of his. He could always be relied on for lucid profanity.) At the time I thought he wasn’t asking to come home with me because he didn’t want to, because he needed to stand on his own two ataxic feet. Now I see that he didn’t know that I wanted him home. I didn’t get it through to him. And was that because of alcohol/WKS-related memory and understanding issues? Or my failure to be clear? Was it residual muddiness from years of him not saying what he meant, and me trying to make sense of that while also being a dingbat romantic? Or his exceptionally friable and delicate state as he began to approach reality for the first time in years?

  The fact was, apart from Robert’s illness, I had a secure life, full of things he did not have: a home, a close strong relationship with my child, good health, capable legs, an iron digestion, a good professional reputation, command of my faculties, own teeth and eyesight, a regular sleep pattern, earning power, friends, two parents, nice siblings. I was OK. He was not. I should not have waded in so early with my desire for him to make things right re me. I was not the most important thing – either for me or for him. Me needing him to appreciate all I had done and be really sorry his illness had hurt me so much was all well and good, but it was not the first step.

  (Actually, it is Step Nine.)

  Chapter Twenty-One

  In meetings, Autumn 2007

  He was coming out for the third time. It didn’t look like a pattern. It didn’t look like a minefield. We really were very very very very very very very very very very very optimistic.

  He went for a few weeks to a dingy third-stage support place in a street called Lymesdale something (which he immediately christened Limescale Gardens), hated it, and came home, back to mine. On his first return, he sat down by the piano, ran his creaky neuropathic Wernicke-Korsakoffs (Wear Knickers Corsets Off, it had become by now) fingers over the keys, and said, with a rueful little snort, ‘Well, just have to start again then.’ That, for me, sealed the silent promise I’d made when he had stood up in front of the couch in Chalk Farm. That gallantry. That humility. That determination. You don’t desert that.

  *

  From me to Robert, Sept 2007

  I have been reading about the seven basic plots of western culture on which all stories are based, and came upon this one. It is a variation on tragedy, and it is called Rebirth.

  A hero, as a young man, falls under the shadow of a dark power;

  As the poison gets to work, it seems at first amusing and empowering; it takes some time to get the upper hand and to show its full destructive effect;

  Eventually the darkness emerges in full force, plunging the hero into a state of total isolation;

  This culminates in a nightmare crisis which is the prelude to the final reversal;

  The hero ‘wakes from his sleep’, and is liberated by the power of knowledge and love.

  In Tragedy, the hero, caught irrevocably in the dark side of himself, plunges on to final destruction. In Rebirth, light steals in on his darkness, and he can escape his frozen, lonely state and return to the world a transformed man.

  Just thought you’d like to know Xx L

  *

  Both of us had to relearn help altogether – because it was all right to help him now he was a cripple, ‘a fuckin’ RARSberry’, he said (cockney rhyming slang: raspberry ripple). He needed helping. Now, he was coming to terms with the paradoxes of early recovery, and with his disability. He had graduated from the walking frame to his two NHS sticks, metal and adjustable with grippable handles like shiny worn black vertebrae, on which he would ease himself about, crabwise. The piano was worse. He would sit, play a few bars, stop, crack or stretch his fingers, try again. He might look up and make a tragicomic face for my benefit, then glance down again, cough, and continue, more seriously, attentive, listening to himself and feeling his way. ‘I must learn that,’ he’d mutter, and sigh and push himself up, and go outside for a fag.

  He accepted that he had lost his mind, and been psychotic; that he had been in a coma, that he nearly died – that his mind and body had done all this to itse
lf. All his previous nadirs faded in the darkness of this one, and the miracle of surviving it. Gratitude rose off him like a summer mist, constantly: for not being dead, for being forgiven, for being loved still by people he’d assumed had forgotten about him, and by new people; for the burgeoning understanding he was getting about what had happened to him, and what his future could be.

  We talked about loving yourself. Before, he’d sneered and made faces: ‘Oh yeah, he loves himself, he thinks he’s just great’, as if he were still in a primary school playground. Now he could see that everyone can love themselves like they love other people, as an active thing. Be kind to yourself. Help yourself out. Or even just don’t consistently undermine yourself and tell yourself you’re shit and deserve everything you get; don’t abuse and attack yourself. Don’t fill yourself with poison and lock yourself in a dark room and starve yourself. Understand yourself. Listen to your fears. Make yourself a cup of tea.

  He could not believe his luck.

  Sometimes he invited me along to an open AA meeting. I loved going, because the meetings were full of people who were getting better, clear-eyed cynics, former miserable wrecks, who had decided to save their own lives and were making a bloody good go of it.

  Here is something I learnt at a meeting. Twenty years earlier the speaker, a healthy, cheerful woman, had been jobless, thrown out by her husband, banned from seeing her children, depressed, insomniac, skint, hopeless, sick, shameful, in constant pain. Suicidal. She thought it through and made her decision. She spent her last money on two bottles of gin. Back at the flat she was about to be kicked out of, she drank one bottle, and put the plastic bag it had come in over her head, and tied it, and prepared to die. But through the clear plastic she could see the other bottle, sitting on the side. The alcoholic in her couldn’t just leave it there. She had to drink it. She tore the plastic bag off her head, drank the remaining gin till she passed out, was found by her flatmate and rescued. So, her compulsion to drink had saved her life.