The Weight of Angels

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘You’re kidding. You might as well walk about with a sign round your neck, Ali.’

  ‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea. It was a terrible time and I got through it and I’m fine.’

  ‘Aye, right,’ he said. ‘You look fine. So what’s the scoop with the rag doll?’ He put a hand out and covered mine. His felt warm because mine was icy. ‘Ask Belle,’ he said. ‘It was Maternity she got the sack from, you know. She retrained for this place. She’ll tell you how to get fine.’

  ‘Oh, Belle will, will she? Belle that got the sack for . . . What was it?’

  ‘Too much kindness and not enough rules.’ Belle spoke suddenly from the door. For such a large woman she moved softly.

  ‘Boundary issues!’ I said, the phrase coming back to me. ‘You’ve all got bloody boundary issues. You’re all bloody freaks! And let go of my hand too.’ I wrenched free of him and, clattering my chair over backwards, I was up and out of there.

  Of course I remembered as soon as I was in the front hall that I couldn’t storm out because I’d got a lift in. But I’d rather walk home than sit and listen to any more of their pity. Condescending, patronizing . . . And then, rounding a corner, I ran into Dr Ferris again.

  ‘Alison?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, don’t start,’ I said. ‘And don’t worry. I’m leaving.’

  ‘I was coming to talk to you,’ she said. ‘It appears that my husband forgot to tell you something during your debriefing.’ Her voice was clipped and she seemed to be standing even more ramrod-straight than usual, although it was hard to see how that could be since she was like a poker at the best of times. ‘The drawing. The little doodle that Sylvie made?’

  ‘So you do believe she drew it, then,’ I said. ‘Because why would I lie about something like that?’

  ‘It’s a worrying sign,’ said Dr Ferris. ‘The very last thing we want to do is to let Sylvie regress to the trauma that brought her here.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Even if going back there would maybe set her off on a different path? I mean, it’s not as though she’s getting better as she is.’

  ‘Alison,’ said Dr Ferris, taking a step closer, ‘you are a beautician. I am a psychiatrist.’

  ‘What was it that happened to her anyway? The trauma that landed her in here? That makes her draw that weird cross?’

  ‘Cross?’ said Dr Ferris. ‘Is that what you see?’

  The light was low and the house was quiet, and standing there, with her two steps closer than any normal person would come, close enough that I could smell her perfume and even the coffee on her breath, it seemed suddenly as if we were all alone. It was hard to believe there were twenty patients in the house and a shift of nurses too, with the back-shift due any minute. Maybe that was why she was talking in the corridor, private business, like she’d told me not to do. I tried to take a step away but I was pressed against the edge of a thin hall table already. I put my hand back and gripped it to steady myself, tried to talk lightly.

  ‘Cross, square, whatever,’ I said. ‘It’s not a house, is it?’

  ‘Popular culture has led to a belief that mental illness is triggered by one horrific event,’ said Dr Ferris. The words were cool and measured, but she was still speaking in that urgent, breathy way. I put the other hand round behind me and gripped the table tighter. ‘Sylvie’s descent into her illness was triggered by something you or I would fully expect a young woman to take in her stride.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘they do feel things very deeply at that age.’

  ‘She was hurt,’ said Dr Ferris, ‘and she withdrew to save herself from being hurt again. A total withdrawal from all relationships – her family, friends, all human contact.’

  ‘But today she was smiling,’ I said. ‘And drawing that . . . whatever it is.’

  ‘It’s the Mercat Cross,’ said Dr Ferris. ‘In Kirkcudbright. The square base and the cross on top. You probably know it.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘In fact . . .’ But Angelo wouldn’t want me blabbing his business at work so I bit my lip.

  ‘She was stood up,’ Dr Ferris said. ‘Well, not just stood up. Asked out on a date by a boy she liked when she was a schoolgirl. They were to meet at the Mercat Cross. But when she got there, he had sent a pack of his friends to mock and jeer at her. She ran away, boorish laughter ringing in her ears, and she started that very day to shut down. She came here shortly afterwards and she’s been here ever since.’

  I said nothing. I couldn’t blame the low light and the quiet now. Now I felt as if the two of us were wrapped in a black sack together, like puppies for drowning, no air and no escape, just her voice and her coffee breath and the glint in her eyes.

  ‘So, you see, it’s not a good sign at all that she’s drawing it.’

  ‘I see,’ I managed to say.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ said Dr Ferris, rearing back to get a clearer look at me, breaking the black sack and letting the air in. I gasped at it. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said again.

  ‘Just shocked,’ I got out. ‘Years of illness from something so small? It’s frightening. Makes it feel like anyone could go wrong.’

  ‘But you’ve actually gone white,’ she said. ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘I am feeling a bit stomachy, actually,’ I said. ‘Have been all day. And Belle said first thing I shouldn’t really be in contact with patients if I’ve got a bug.’

  ‘Belle is right,’ she said. She had taken another step away and she swiped at her face as if to get my germs off her. ‘You should go home and don’t come in tomorrow if you have symptoms.’

  ‘It might be something I ate,’ I said. ‘But, yes, I’ll go. I’ll phone my husband.’

  She frowned at that. ‘How long will it take him to get here?’

  ‘I’ll start walking and meet him,’ I told her. ‘I need the air.’

  Chapter 17

  At least the firing had stopped. If I had walked up the drive to the checkpoint with guns going off I might have lost my mind. I would have been in the next room to Sylvie, staring out at the emptiness along with her. As it was, there was just the cold light of a sinking fog and the dark sparkle of the wet road disappearing under my feet as I pitched myself forward.

  ‘But you’ve got to come!’ I said to Marco, pressing the phone so hard to the side of my head that the ridges of my ear ached. ‘I’m walking to meet you. I need to get home.’

  ‘Has something happened?’ said Marco. In the background I could hear voices and the beep-beep of someone ringing things through a till.

  ‘Yes!’ I said. Shouted, really, only the day was so close and damp it swallowed my voice. ‘Yes, something has happened and I need to get home. Now.’

  ‘Okay, Ali. Promise me you won’t overreact,’ Marco said, ‘but this thing that’s happened. Is it real? Is it outside your head or are you just upset?’

  ‘Yes, for God’s sake, it’s real,’ I told him. ‘I heard something, Marco. Something I can’t explain. And I need to get home right now.’

  His sigh came across the line as a long buzz. ‘You heard something,’ he said. ‘Did anyone else hear it?’

  ‘What? What are you asking? Why aren’t you in the car already?’

  ‘I’m at work,’ he said, soft but fierce. Then he spoke louder ‘Eh? Naw. Fine. Just the wife.’ Then quietly to me again, ‘Ali, come on, eh? There’s no need to go back down that way again. You’re finished with all that.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Running out of the pictures bawling your head off? Chucking presents straight in the bin? Walking out and leaving the shop hanging open that night? None of us needs to go back there, do we?’

  ‘When did I leave the shop open?’ I said. He had stung me. I didn’t know he had noticed the faceless angel gone from the mantelpiece the morning after the Christmas party and I thought he had believed me when I said I had rushed out of Harry Potter to throw up from too much popcorn. I had never re
ad it to Angelo and I didn’t know until it was right there in front of me and everyone was laughing. Nearly Headless Nick. Even Marco was laughing and Angelo all lit up and his eyes shining. I couldn’t hear anything, not the film or the audience, except the moan that seemed to come from all around me. ‘Mmmhmmm.’

  ‘That time one of the girls saw you running down the street in the rain in your shirtsleeves and phoned me and I went in and locked up for you,’ Marco said.

  I had never wondered why the shop was locked up when I’d got back in the morning.

  ‘One time,’ I said.

  ‘And you used to hear it at night and get up out your bed and go looking for where it came from.’

  I had no memory of doing that. Except maybe, now he’d reminded me, there were nights when I checked the house, sure I could hear a tiny humming noise, and was never able to find it, even when the telly was unplugged and all the digital clocks switched off, everything needing resetting in the morning. ‘I’ve never said a word about it for ten long years,’ I whispered into the phone. ‘Why would I start now?’

  ‘That’s my girl,’ Marco said. ‘Go back to work, eh? And I’ll see you at tea-time.’

  ‘I’m talking about something someone told me, Marco,’ I said. ‘I’m talking about something Dr Ferris just told me. Something I don’t even know how to begin to understand.’

  ‘I’m on my way,’ he said. He was walking as he talked now and his voice was all business suddenly. ‘I’ll just tell them I’m taking a break and I’ll come and meet you.’

  ‘Stop in on the way past the house and check Angel’s okay,’ I said. ‘Five more minutes won’t hurt me.’

  ‘Christ, make your bloody mind up,’ he said. ‘Of course Angel’s okay. The wee toerag’s in his jammies watching videos.’

  ‘Just don’t drive past the door without at least saying hiya,’ I said. ‘Give him a cuddle, then come and meet me.’

  I clicked off, stowed the phone, then put my head down and really started moving.

  The man on the checkpoint shouted to me, ‘Getting a lift, hen? You want to wait in here for it?’ but I ignored him and swung out onto the road for home.

  Angelo was on the drive to Howell Hall. He hadn’t just stepped off the road onto the verge or gone looking for somewhere to pee. He had put his backpack down and set off down the drive towards the hall. There had to be a reason. But he wasn’t coming to find me, because he knew I’d be at home. There was only one other explanation and it made sense of how he could tell me the story about the Mercat Cross. The story that was Sylvie’s.

  Lars had even said it: Howell Hall took referrals from the NHS. Angelo, my Angelo, must have gone to the GP all on his own and got himself signed up with someone to talk to. My son needed someone so badly he was talking to a psychiatrist without me even knowing. Dr Ferris. A cool, collected professional who wouldn’t touch him and nag him and call it love. And part of what she had done to help him was share a story about the most extreme case she knew of another kid not dealing well with trouble.

  And, that dreadful night, he tried to get more help from her. Her, not me. Walking through the rain to reach her instead of sitting on the bus to come home.

  It even made sense of her reaction to his name the day of the interview. She’d covered it with that nasty jibe about which babies get called ‘Angel’, but really she must have been surprised to find that the parent of one of her patients was sitting there having an interview. Conflict of interest kind of thing, jeopardizing confidentiality. But he was fifteen. I didn’t understand how he could be her patient without my say-so.

  Had I neglected him? Calling him daddy’s boy, trying so hard to keep myself together I never noticed my son – my only child – falling apart. My only child. I never let that thought into my head. I had a hundred different ways of dodging it. ‘Do you have kids?’ people would ask, and I’d say, ‘I do. My son is . . .’ Clever. I kept all my truth in the spaces between the words.

  ‘How many kids you got?’

  ‘Well, there’s Angelo, my boy . . .’ hugging my precious truth in the sneaky wee gaps in the meaning.

  Barrelling along the road, the hawthorns in the high hedge dripping on my head and the foggy air creeping into my bones, I said it aloud for the first time ever: ‘Angelo is my only child. I’ve got one kid. His name is Angelo.’

  As soon as the words left my lips, I heard her louder than I’d ever heard her before. It was coming from my right, the other side of the hedge.

  ‘Mmmhmmmm.’

  ‘No!’ I screamed. ‘I’m sorry! I’m coming. I’m sorry!’

  ‘Mmmmmmhhmmmmm.’

  I started running flat out, searching for a break in the hedge, a gate, a fence, anything.

  ‘Mmmmhhuuhhmmmm,’ she said, clearer than she’d ever said it.

  ‘I’m coming!’ I yelled, and suddenly there was a chorus, bellowing, a crowd of voices, and there was a gate and I threw myself at it and scrambled over.

  Then I saw them.

  Seven mothers and their calves, hoofs deep in the mud, all huddled for warmth against the hedge and lowing their alarm, scared of the rushing feet in the lane and the stupid woman shouting her mouth off.

  I sank back against the gate and let it take my weight. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told them. ‘Sorry. I’m not going to hurt your babies. You’re okay.’ The one nearest to me swished her tail, then put her head down and tugged up a mouthful of grass. Slowly, as my breath settled, all of them turned away from me.

  ‘You’ve got the right idea,’ I said. ‘Keep them close.’

  I was down on my hunkers now, my bum getting soaked on the wet ground, but I could no more move than I could laugh or even cry. And that was where Marco found me.

  The car went past, then I heard it slow and stop, and the whine of the reverse gear as he came carefully back and hitched up into the gateway. The door opened.

  ‘Ali?’ He clambered over and crouched beside me. ‘What’s up, pal?’ He put an arm round me. ‘What did that doctor tell you that’s got you in this state, eh?’

  I leaned into him, feeling his warmth begin to spread to me even through all our clothes. ‘I don’t think I can tell you,’ I said. ‘Not yet anyway.’

  ‘You can tell me anything,’ Marco said. He put his lips against the side of my head and pressed hard.

  ‘It’s just it’s nothing to do with you,’ I said. ‘It’s a secret and it’s not mine to tell. Sorry.’

  His arm fell away and he stopped pressing his lips to my hair. I looked up to see if he was angry, but he gave me a smile and shook his head, as if in wonder. ‘Someone else’s secret?’ he said. ‘All this and it’s not you and me? It’s not even Angel? So . . . you’ve heard a sad story from one of the nutters and you’ve got me stopping and landing smoochies on the boy and you’re zooming home to knit a onesie for him?’

  I didn’t say anything. So technically I didn’t lie.

  It was when I got into the car that the lightning bolt hit me. I pulled a carrier bag off the back seat to spread under my muddy trousers and remembered picking Angel up that night, soaked and shivering, the damp patch on the car seat after. Of course a fifteen-year-old kid couldn’t get referred to a psychiatrist without a parent’s consent. But they had a parent’s consent.

  I shot a sideways look at Marco. That one parent had decided not to worry the other. He trusted the doctors. But he didn’t know what I knew.

  ‘Something’s wrong at Howell Hall,’ I said, when we were under way.

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to tell me,’ Marco said. ‘Someone else’s secret and all that?’

  I almost laughed. That was it. That was what he thought I’d heard – that my son was an outpatient at a nuthouse and his dad had kept it from me. That was what got him out of work and belting over here to pick me up.

  ‘Not that,’ I said. ‘Not only that. There’s something off about the whole place. Did you know that all the staff there have been chucked out of somewhere else? Dr
Ferris takes them on. Why would she do that?’

  ‘Don’t put yourself down,’ Marco said. ‘Not all the staff. Not you.’

  I said nothing. Of course there was something wrong with me. My CV was a joke. But Dr Ferris had employed me anyway. And her own husband had warned me off the night shift. Practically.

  ‘I don’t know what all the parents and relatives would think if they knew their posh rehab place was staffed by rejects.’

  ‘They can’t be that bad,’ Marco said. Defending the place he’d agreed Angelo could go to. ‘They need to have clearance and accreditation and all that.’

  ‘I don’t think the clearance procedure is much cop,’ I said. ‘Mine came through on the nod. Dead quick.’ Marco said nothing and I found myself turning to him. ‘When was it you got me to sign the PVG exactly?’ I said. ‘Everyone seems surprised how quick it came back.’

  Marco shrugged. ‘Bit of efficiency in the system,’ he said. ‘Don’t knock it. And don’t do yourself down. Saying Howell Hall must be crap if they’ve settled for you.’

  ‘They’re hanging by a thread,’ I told him, remembering what Lars had told me. ‘Didn’t get a great rating last time the inspectors came, and they’re trying to clean up their act before the next sneak raid.’

  ‘Sneak raid?’

  ‘Surprise inspection. That’s why I’m in there, actually. To make the place look good and bump up the marks.’

  For a while Marco didn’t say anything. When he spoke again his voice sounded strained. ‘That’s what you’ve been told?’ he said. ‘Or that’s what you’ve decided out of your own head?’

  ‘I’m just glad your thing’s going so well,’ I said. ‘Hang in, eh? Because I’ll bet you as soon as the next CC’s been I’ll be out on my ear.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be so cynical,’ Marco said. ‘You’re not even doing clinical care, are you? It wouldn’t make any difference. You’re dead wrong about why you’re there, Ali.’

  I didn’t argue. I’d found out what I wanted to know. Because why would Marco know that ‘CC’ stood for ‘clinical care’ unless he’d been looking at Howell Hall’s credentials? Like a parent would. Then we were slowing at the gate and I was out and up the path. When the engine didn’t go off I turned round and bent to look in at him.