A Justifiable Madness

by AB Morgan

  ‘I may well get a mention in the local newspapers with that one,’ Mark identified with a wide grin. ‘Morning rush hour, what a sight for those poor unsuspecting souls! I think I need to at least keep my sandals on, otherwise I’ll only have one orifice left available to me in which to hide my loose change for the payphone, perish the thought.’

  Mark worked through the finer details of his plan with Lewis giving guidance. They were enjoying the creativity of the task almost as much as the banter back and forth across the room. The journalists were each insisting competitively that their own plan was the best and most certain to succeed.

  18

  An Unexpected Turn of Events

  Mark needed advice. He knew that he should call either Lewis James the barrister or John Starkey his editor, but if he did that, he would have to begin speaking in order to request use of the ward telephone. If he did speak at that stage would that be wise?

  There was a slim possibility of removing the two ten pence pieces that he had sewn into the strap of his sandals, and sneaking into the payphone booth if he could find a moment when it was left unlocked. This was highly unlikely. The staff team was meticulous when it came to safety and locking doors. Mark had watched their every move. Each member of staff carried master door keys at all times, along with a black tubular alarm that they had hanging from their belts. They were constantly watchful as to the whereabouts of each other and the patients in their care.

  Inconspicuously they used hand signals and looks or nods to indicate to each other what needed observing or attending to. This impressed Mark, as it was not something he had foreseen as being part of maintaining a calm secure ward. He had been subconsciously influenced by the belief that the staff would be wearing white coats and rushing around with straight jackets, desperate to restrain and incarcerate wailing patients. Wrong again, Mark thought.

  It looked as if he was going to have to continue pretending to take medication, and Mark fleetingly debated whether or not he should actually take the tablets in order to describe the experience. He was well aware that this would be more honest in terms of observational journalism, but he had no idea if Haloperidol or whatever it was, would be one of those tablets that would give him horrible side effects, so he thought better of that experiment for the time being.

  Elsewhere, his potential for newsworthy copy had also improved dramatically. His run-in with Dr Sharman had been far from boring or predictable, which hinted that the research team might be onto a story worth investigating after all. What if his other journalist colleagues were having the same sort of experiences and dilemmas? What if they weren’t?

  The more Mark analysed the situation, the more he realised that as a patient he was almost powerless, and therefore reliant on the staff to act in an understanding and caring manner. He needed to request an appeal, which the journalists and researchers on the project had been advised to do by Lewis James. He would need help to do this. A difficult task for a mute patient.

  Why was it that the patient had to request an appeal? Most people in this situation would, or should, be acutely mentally unwell and therefore, mused Mark, they would not necessarily be capable of realising that they needed to appeal. He had been horribly misunderstood so far, and he hadn’t even spoken to anyone, so without appealing against the Section, he could be stuck there for months.

  When he had written the note, ‘My name is Mark. Please help me’, Mark had predicted that this would nudge Monica into an interesting reaction resulting in him being miraculously persuaded to speak. Not so easy.

  However, when he gave the note to her, she delivered results without prompting, in as much as she steered him to an appeal. Mark was not in the least bothered by her obvious guidance towards a particular firm of solicitors. With these things in place, he hoped he could at last open the lines of communication to the research team and John Starkey at the Daily Albion. What he needed to know from them was: should he keep to his false identity, backstory, and occupation? These important facts so far remained unknown to all. Or, alternatively could he disclose to his solicitor the real reason he was on the ward and use his real identity? Mark didn’t know what to do for the best.

  When Monica had gone to make arrangements with Huntley and Greaves the solicitors, Mark had headed back to the large dayroom to see if there was anything worth watching on the TV. He hoped against hope that he could catch a glimpse of the news, or a decent current affairs programme. He felt excluded from the outside world already, despite having been in hospital for less than three days.

  Much to his annoyance, Mark had found the TV stuck on the usual rubbish: an American comedy series, which undoubtedly would be followed by a coma-inducing late afternoon quiz show for morons. No one was sitting watching the TV screen. There were only a handful of patients in the dayroom, but they were either asleep or, as in the case of one lady, entertaining herself by smiling and laughing in response to whatever her voices were saying to her. She’s away with the fairies, thought Mark, continuing to pass by the door.

  When he turned the corner of the corridor, he heard a bit of a rumpus happening in the opposite direction and as he swivelled around to look at the goings on, he spied that the door to the telephone booth was slightly ajar. The alarms on the ward then sounded loudly making him jump out of his skin, and which also resulted in the available staff rushing to support whoever was in need of assistance. The main ward doors were locked to ensure that no potential opportunist escapee could sneak out. The commotion at the other end of the ward afforded Mark chance to get to the payphone unseen. He had no way of estimating how long he would have to take advantage of this opportunity, but he decided to risk it. He would take the chance that someone might see him.

  He deftly released the ten pence pieces from his sandals, and dialled the number for John Starkey, who he was sure would be in his office at this time of day. He struck lucky. Pushing the first coin into the slot when the pips sounded, he spoke directly to John, shouting over the sound of the alarms. ‘I haven’t got much time,’ he explained. ‘I’ll keep it brief but I may have to cut you off in a hurry.’

  The unfamiliar sound of his own voice had startled Mark somewhat, but he was relieved that it still functioned. He confirmed with John what hospital he was in, and that he had been put on a Section 3.

  ‘Did you do something stupid?’

  ‘Never mind, but no. Take this down. I have appealed against the Section as instructed. Huntley and Greaves Solicitors are going to represent me. A solicitor named Richard Huntley. Ask Lewis James to contact me through them, please. I don’t know their number. Got it? Huntley and Greaves in Hollberry. Got to go. I’m okay though.’

  Mark put down the phone, and slid unnoticed from the phone booth, leaving the door as he had found it. His heart was pounding with tension at the possibility of being caught and he realised that he had been holding his breath for so long that he was almost gasping for air.

  The alarm was suddenly silenced, and the ward smoothly resumed its usual peaceful atmosphere, as if nothing had happened. Mark, ignorant as to what the fuss had been about, was later brought up to speed by one of his fellow patients. There had been ‘a proper punch up, like a war …’ over a bar of chocolate. Mark secretly wished all wars were as benign as that one.

  Once he had left the phone booth unnoticed, he casually meandered to his bed space in the dormitory to make notes. Mostly his notes were about the pros and cons of revealing his true identity. He was so absorbed in this that he did not hear Monica approaching, and he didn’t know how long she had been at the dormitory door when she called out, ‘Mr Trainman, are you about?’

  She wasn’t stupid, and Mark knew that was a deliberate ploy. Faster than a magician, he made his pages of writing disappear under the mattress. Even so, he was convinced that she had seen him. He only hoped that she could not read shorthand.

  19

  To Be or Not to Be the Real Mark, That is the Question

  Before he was admitted, and
well ahead of his planned naked platform performance, Mark had worked hard on his cover backstory. He had decided to call himself Mark ‘El Amin’ because ironically it means ‘the truth’ in Arabic.

  He was looking forward to revealing how he was a PhD student studying Middle Eastern politics, undertaking a thesis investigating the role and function of kidnapping westerners as the means of political negotiation. These were things he was comfortably acquainted with, and he was rather proud of how neatly he would fit his new persona. Mark El Amin the eternal student, as opposed to Mark Randall, the battle-weary and dispossessed foreign correspondent.

  He had initially devised, what he considered to be, a valid story for his bizarre behaviour on the day he was picked up naked from Hollberry railway station. Originally he had planned to convince mental health professionals that he had been abroad, and picked up ‘a virus of some kind’, which had resulted in a fever. Bizarre behaviour accounted for. His aim was to explain away his muteness by asserting that he was confused and disorientated, and had elected to remain silent until he had worked out where he was, and what was happening to him.

  However, Monica had blown his cover story wide open on the day of his admission, when she had efficiently taken his temperature with a new fangled paper stick that she put under his arm. He hadn’t realised that it was a thermometer until it was too late.

  This was not a disaster however, as Mark then had time to rethink his cover story during the long hours that he lay awake on that first night. In doing so, he had arrived at a more plausible reason as to why he had behaved so oddly on the station platform. He had ‘gone to the toilet on the train’, he would tell the psychiatrists, and there had banged his head when the train juddered violently to a halt. Thus he had experienced a temporary aberration brought about by concussion. Perfect.

  There was a hitch in the projected timing of Mark’s plans. According to Monica, his appeal could take weeks to set up. A lot could happen in two weeks and a consultant who had little capacity for care was deciding Mark’s immediate future. But, rather than wallow in frustration, Mark consoled himself that his situation would make for a good story. Unexpectedly, he had a lot to write about.

  There was one other potential storyline that Mark had stumbled upon, courtesy of his fellow patients. He was certain that the staff on the ward had no inkling of it. Although Mark was not wholly sure of the validity of the information, it had a ring of truth about it, and he was determined to follow this up.

  One of the Chocolate War combatants known as Welsh Phil, was a cheerful character on the ward, genuinely popular with the staff and other patients alike. He disclosed a few tantalising morsels of intriguing interest, shortly before Mark was to meet with his appointed solicitor, Richard Huntley. Phil was a large Welshman with a nose that was a living testament to his past boxing prowess. He was in the smaller dayroom where he was regaling a select group of patients with the dramatic details of the first battle of the Chocolate Wars. Mark sat immediately behind Phil, unobtrusively observing the scene.

  ‘Poor old Dopey Dan has convinced himself that my chocolate is poisoned,’ Phil said, turning around to Mark to explain. ‘I keep a stash in my locker, see. Can’t manage without it.’

  He turned back and faced the interested gathering in the room. ‘So there he is, Dopey Dan, trying to take my Toblerone so I couldn’t eat it and get poisoned, which if you think about it is quite thoughtful of him. But see, I wanted to keep my Toblerone. I like Toblerone and I won’t share it with anyone. I have in fact been known to eat it in bed in the dark under the covers, so I don’t have to share it.’ He continued, ‘Anyway I had to hit him with it in the end, to get him off me, silly idiot.’

  Phil then went on to make several remarks about Dr Sharman that had everyone leaning forward to hear. Mark had his radar on.

  It turned out that Phil was sure that the details of the first battle of the Chocolate Wars were going to be reported in the next ward round, and he seemed worried about the consequences. ‘That bastard is not going to let me get away with things lightly, I’m certain of that,’ he said as he then rationalised this fear.

  According to Phil, he had previously been admitted to Farley Hill Hospital back in the late 1980s. He explained to the group of patients who were still listening intently, ‘As you probably know, I’m a manic-depressive. They call it “bipolar” nowadays. I’m not always ill, see, and I’ve only had a couple of big trips to hospital. I get magnificently manic, now and again but mostly I’m fine or depressed. Being depressed is a lot worse. Anyway, back in 1987, I had stolen a lorry, huge great artic it was. I was convinced I had a big fight set up with Joe Bugner. Boxer. Used to be famous. Anyhow, I was pulled over on the motorway for weaving in and out of the traffic. The other drivers were slowing me down, see? It’s a long story, but I ended up in Farley Hill. Nice-looking place, fabulous grounds to walk in, but he was there, Dr Sharman, and I was in there for months! He left before me, mind, and there was a proper scandal. I don’t know what exactly, but the staff were whispering all sorts. A couple of patients had been taken to the general hospital seriously ill, collapsed, see?’

  Phil went on in a conspiratorial manner. ‘It was years ago now, but I’m sure it’s him. Same arrogant bastard. I shall do my time, take my medication and go, when I get let out. That was looking like next week, but I may have blown my chances now, thanks to Dopey Dan.

  ‘I advise you to keep your heads down and keep taking the tablets. If he catches you or thinks you’re not taking your meds, out comes the needle and the land of the zombie shuffle awaits, just like it has for poor Greg.’ Right on cue, Greg shuffled past the open doorway.

  Phil then turned once more to Mark and said pointedly, ‘You probably won’t need to worry too much, being the son of God, and not having much wrong with you. You should be out of here soon, I reckon. Still, keep your head down mind. You are dealing with Lucifer himself here.’ Phil laughed as if joking, but Mark was fairly sure he had been rumbled as far as not having a mental illness went.

  Phil’s story sounded a bit melodramatic to Mark but, as tired as he was from lack of sleep and no access to proper coffee, he wanted to know more about Dr Sharman’s past. He had to find an excuse to start speaking in order to get hold of the information he needed, but he required the advice of Lewis James first and foremost about which Mark he should be: Randall or El Amin.

  20

  When Mark Met Richard

  Lewis James was telephoning the offices of Huntley and Greaves, and had at last succeeded in getting through. He had tried to call three times in the last hour, only to be greeted with an engaged tone. This was at least a sign of a popular law firm.

  ‘Huntley and Greaves, how may I help?’ asked the efficient Cheryl as she picked up the telephone that Friday morning.

  ‘Ah good morning, my name is James Lewis, and I would like to speak to the partner due to represent a young man by the name of Mark El Amin at a pending mental health tribunal.’

  Lewis had been surprised to hear from John Starkey that any of the group taking part in the research project had been legally detained in hospital, let alone on a Section 3, but he was glad that Mark had made contact to let them know.

  He had supposed that Mark was using his agreed false identity, and Lewis had therefore asked for him using his assumed name. Lewis, joining in the undercover approach, decided that he was going to pretend to be the El Amin family solicitor, James Lewis, on behalf of Mark’s pretend parents who lived abroad. He was unexpectedly wrong-footed when Cheryl replied, ‘I’m sorry Mr Lewis, but we don’t have a client of that name. Can I ask what your role is and why you are contacting us?’

  Lewis gave his cover story, and also gave the details of the ward name.

  ‘I think the best thing for me to do, Mr Lewis, is to put the details of your request through to Richard Huntley, who would be the most likely partner to be dealing with this type of case, and ask him to contact you directly, if that’s alright.’

&nb
sp; The conversation had given Lewis enough time to gather his wits and take a fair guess that Mark had remained mute, and so far had not disclosed his name. Awkward. ‘Thank you very much. That would be ideal. This young man’s parents have been phoning around local hospitals trying to locate their son who has been missing for a number of days. They were told there was a man fitting his description on Pargiter Ward, but it sounds like that may have been a false hope. Unfortunately, as they live in Australia, it falls to me to follow up in person.’

  ‘I’ll ask Mr Huntley to call you as soon as he can. It would be better to discuss these matters with him.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Lewis. ‘I completely understand. Thanks for your help.’ Realising that he would not be getting past the immovable Cheryl, Lewis admitted defeat. He gave Cheryl his London office, home, and mobile telephone numbers.

  Cheryl phoned internally through to Richard to tell him about the call. ‘He didn’t sound like he was a posh London lawyer,’ she said. ’But then again, he probably isn’t one. His story sounded dubious. I think he was fishing for information.’

  ‘Thanks, Cheryl. I think I’ll wait before I get back in touch with this so-called family solicitor. I’d like to hear from our new client, Mr Trainman, if he decides to speak to me. Could he be Mark El Amin? Interesting.’

  Sitting opposite Mark in the small office on Pargiter Ward was his newly appointed solicitor. They both waited while Monica popped in and out, delivering hot drinks, and the relevant case notes and charts.