Beside Myself

by Ann Morgan

  After lunch, you escape to the art room. At least it’s quiet in there. At least you can be alone. The easels stand and look at you, waiting. At first you think of scribbling something violent and spiky, of letting the black fury inside you score its way out through rips and smears on paper. You flip open the A3 sheet on the stand nearest the door with this in mind. But then, as a hush spreads over the unit – people shut away in their rooms trying out their presents or watching some Christmas rubbish in the common room – the kind of focus you remember from the art projects you did in Miss Hogan’s class settles over you. You are filled with that old sense of absorption, that sense that everything is fair game for you to manipulate and present as you choose, powerful and strange. The thick, creamy paper beckons, offering itself to you, and you pick up a pencil in answer.

  You start off by drawing a Christmas scene: a family sitting round in a living room watching TV, with a big decorated tree in the corner. The thing with the scene is, when you glance at it, you think it’s all normal. It’s only when you look closer that you see things aren’t what they seem. Like, the Mother has AIDS, for example. You can’t show this explicitly in the picture, but what you can show are her sunken cheeks and hollow eyes and the scars on her spindly arms from injecting. The unwrapped Christmas present on the table beside her turns out to be a needle and the food in the bowl in front of her is vomit. There are scars and bruises on the little boy: the daddy hits him when no one else is around. And as for the teenage girl, well, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out from her ripped clothes and haunted expression what he does to her.

  You drape the Christmas decorations with cobwebs. The thing about this tree, you realise, is it’s up all year. No one can be arsed to take it down. That means that what looks special at first sight is actually a bit like torture, all its specialness leached away to be replaced by boredom and shame – another thing the girl has to hide from her friends at school. In fact, if you look closely, you can see it’s June in the world outside. The sun is shining even though it’s after 21:30 on the VCR. It’s the longest day.

  Then there’s the question of what’s on TV. Instead of the usual schmaltz you’d expect – Noel’s Christmas Presents or a repeat of Morecambe and Wise – there’s something hardcore and nasty. Something utterly unsuitable for kids. Blood and guts and actual injuries, like one of those snuff films Hailey up the corridor is supposed to have escaped from, where they were going to rape and kill her live on camera (at least that’s what she tells everyone – personally, you think it’s more likely she just got felt up by a few perverts and is trying to make it more than it is). You work hard to get as much gore on to the small screen as possible. It’s tricky to balance it so that it still makes sense to the eye, but you spend a lot of time focusing on the spurting stomach, getting the hand twisting the knife just right.

  You’re so absorbed that you don’t notice Ange until she’s next to you. She leans over to look at the screen, the fat around her middle pressing into your side.

  ‘That’s really good,’ she says.

  You shoot her a look, annoyed that someone’s intruding on your private thing without being invited. She doesn’t take the hint.

  ‘I like the way you’ve caught the faces,’ she says. ‘And how all the details in the house are there. It’s really smart.’

  Her jaw churns, working a piece of gum as you watch her, wondering quite what sense her brain is making of the things in front of it on the sheet of paper. After a moment her expression clouds.

  ‘It’s quite dark, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘Not your average Christmas. Still it’s really good, Ellie. Really good.’

  Looking back at the easel, you suddenly see what you’ve done through her eyes: not as a great, sprawling mess of pain, but as something complete and organised that you can stand outside and judge. A picture that can add something – even give pleasure – to the world. A realisation lands that stretches your brain like a piece of elastic: you see how a drawing can be both a private, coded thing and have something to say to the rest of the world. It’s fucking mental and it could be dangerous, but it’s also great.

  After Ange goes, giving you a pat on the shoulder, you sit and stare at the page. A quiet feeling that you haven’t experienced for ages – maybe ever – settles into you. It’s weird to name it, sitting here in the scuzzy art room with snot smeared on the desks and swearwords scratched into the walls, but it feels a bit like peace.

  35

  In the days that followed, Smudge kept to the attic. There was nothing she could say to account for the shameful state in which Nick had found her. There were so many layers of stories that the explanation was unplayable, like multiple songs recorded one over the other on a worn-out mixer tape. She could only stay in the little room, inhabiting her silence, staring at the ceiling, pacing round and round. She tried not to think but when images from those escapades in Hellie’s party clothes came at her, the smashed logic behind them made her shiver. The idea that she could muscle her way into Hellie’s grown-up, fully fledged existence by sheer bluster was hideous. It frightened her to think that her brain – the very apparatus with which she was apprehending the stupidity of the whole thing now – had cooked up the wheeze and presented it in such glowing colours. It made everything she thought dubious, every idea a potential lie. There were hours when she lay on the bed, her hands pressed over her face, afraid to trust even her eyes.

  When she passed the attic studio, the memory of the easel, paints, pencils and charcoals within jabbed at her. The outrage of the other evening came back with all its horrid force and made her ashamed to think of Nick buying those things and arranging them in the hope of tempting her into something productive and good, something worthwhile. His faith in her felt like a reproach. Mother had a point: she was broken, she was ruined, she was poisonous. She should leave now before she infected him and warped his way of seeing. She should let herself out of their lives for good.

  But something about the cleanness of the paper on the easel would not let her go. Through the aimless hours of the afternoon, the possibility of the colours and textures it could hold tugged at her. She could not bear to leave the pad blank, so one night she let herself into the studio and made a tentative sketch. Then another. Before long, she was attacking the easel as though her life depended on it, working through sheet after sheet. The images came crowding into her brain, like passengers waiting to board a bus, and she worked urgently to deal with them one by one. She drew pictures of Ellie and herself as children, complete with plaits and bunches the right way round; she drew a bungalow with broken engine parts littering the lawn; she sketched Bill the budgie lying stiff at the bottom of the page; and she made a whimsical wash painting of three figures skipping along a pavement clutching bags of colourful clothes. Some of the pictures were of things the significance of which she didn’t want to examine: a forest with a wolf-like figure peering through the trees, clutching a scrap of red cape; a woman staring out from the banks of a vast river as a boat pulled away; a smashed traffic light stuck on red.

  Days and nights passed. She forgot about sleep. Her hand worked on, drawing the rest of her with it. Now and then food and drink appeared on the landing outside and when she noticed it she ate it. For the most part, though, she didn’t know whether she was hungry or thirsty. The past and future ceased to exist. There were only the lines and the colours and the ridged texture of the pages. She had no history and nothing to plan for. It was all over for the time being. She just was.

  36

  The year unfolds. New people come to the unit, others leave. They move the drug-spitting girl out to somewhere else.

  At some point, they make you sit exams. GCSEs. It’s a joke. You don’t even bother to read the papers – you just turn them over and stare at the wall. What do they expect you to do? How could anyone relate what’s written on the paper to what’s going on in here? Fools.

  You refuse to think about Hellie, sitting at a little square d
esk in the Bridge Oak assembly hall, scribbling furiously, her rounded handwriting covering line after line.

  Another Christmas. Another birthday. You don’t pay much attention. Every moment you can, you spend in the art room, trying things out with charcoal and paint. After they realise you’re not going to get anywhere with the exams, they encourage you to focus on that. Ange buys you a notebook that you can scribble ideas in as they come to you. You probably remember to say thank you – you’re not sure.

  You fall into a rhythm. Every morning, after breakfast, you go to the art room and start work. The pictures are what’s real. Everything else is far away. That’s probably partly the drugs they keep giving you – the pills that rinse you blank as though the tide has gone out on your emotions, leaving you high and dry. The pictures are the only way you feel these days.

  Then one afternoon, Ange takes you aside. She’s wearing this beaming, pleased look that makes you want to run to the art room and shut the door, but she grips your arm and won’t let you. They’ve entered your work into a local art show at the town hall, she tells you. You’ve got a spot. The exhibition’s next week and she’s got special permission to take you.

  You stand there, feelings fighting inside you. Part of you is pleased, part of you doesn’t care and part of you is, well, like, a bit affronted if you’re honest that they went behind your back and didn’t ask. You can’t decide which part to let win, so you just stand there and stare at a big zit on Ange’s double chin.

  ‘Isn’t it great?’ she says, grinning, giving your arm a squeeze.

  You see that it’s easier if you let it be great for now, so you nod and jerk a smile. By and large these days, you do your best not to be a bitch.

  You go to the exhibition. It’s in this big, olde-worlde hall – the sort of place Akela and Mother would visit for fun on the weekends – and all the pictures are hung round the walls like in a proper gallery. There’s a bit of a mix-up on the door because of your tracksuit and baseball cap and the MONSTER tattoo. It’s clear they think you’re there to cause trouble, but Ange smoothes it out and then they’re all smiles. Someone goes so far as to use the words ‘star guest’.

  The place is full of people. If you’re honest, it’s all a bit mental after the unit – too much going on at once and all in your face. Anxiety bubbles through you, but you keep a lid on it for Ange’s sake and pretend to look at the other pictures.

  What you enjoy most, however, is standing near your own paintings and hearing the crap that people say about them. There are two of your things in the show – both called ‘Untitled’ because you never gave them names. One is a big canvas showing a car that’s been smashed up in an accident and the other one is a small line drawing of a teddy bear that’s rotting and falling to pieces, with maggots crawling out of its eyes. You’re secretly pleased they chose these ones because you had a good feeling about both of them when you did them – a sort of rightness that carried you through, not like some of the other things you’ve worked on, where you have to scrub things out and force your way.

  It’s amazing the rubbish these pictures bring out in other people, though. Like, there’s this one couple who stand there for ages, looking at the teddy bear, saying how it’s got all these connections to Paddington Bear and some shit like that. Then there’s this pair of old ladies who huddle together making clucking noises about the car and saying how it’s evidence of a disturbed mind and shouldn’t be allowed. Someone else makes out it’s got to do with the recession in the early-nineties and the economic crash. Then another says some nonsense about the Berlin Wall – apparently they think the car looks German.

  These comments make you snigger to yourself because the truth is, nothing like that was on your mind when you did these pictures. For the most part you were too busy focusing on getting the ears right on the bear and trying to find the right colour combination for the car’s mashed-up paint job to worry about anything as wanky as meaning. You just wanted them to fit, that’s what concerned you, nothing grander than that.

  Hearing all this makes you realise something too: what you put out there and what people take away are two totally separate things. People’s minds process things in diverse ways. Everyone lives in different worlds, which is sort of sad but also has potential if you can work out how to turn it to your advantage.

  After a while there’s a speech: some bigwig from the council in a crumpled suit bores everyone for, like, twenty minutes with what a great occasion it all is and isn’t everyone having fun? He has a crumb from a mini sausage roll on the lapel of his jacket and you focus on that, so you miss the moment when he says there’s been some sort of competition and, well, the thing is, you’ve won. But suddenly they’re all staring and you realise the way to play it is to look a mixture of pleased and sort of like you expected it all along.

  After that, everyone wants to talk to you. Lots of people come and make intense eye contact, like they are trying to winkle your brain out from behind your face so they can inspect it at close range. Mostly, they are older women in colourful scarves, with posh, blustery voices. You catch a few of them staring at your tattoo, but for the most part everyone’s nice. There’s even someone from the local paper who asks to take your picture. He gets you standing between your two exhibits and tries a few poses – once with you pointing at the walls, once with you holding the little glass trophy, which it turns out is what you’ve won. If you’re honest, you think the poses are cheesy, but you don’t say anything, you just stand there and try and give him a smile.

  Then, all of a sudden, the hall is emptying out and it’s time to go back to the unit. Ange comes and takes your arm.

  ‘Well,’ she says, and she gives you a squeeze. You can feel the pride radiating off her like the heat from the old cast-iron radiators in the canteen that got so hot last winter some girl got her face scalded in a fight.

  ‘Yeah,’ you say.

  ‘You see?’ she says.

  You don’t know what she expects you to see, but you’re not really up for a big discussion. It’s been exhausting talking to all those people and being in a new place. You’re not used to it. Your mind has shrunk to the limits of the unit and it’s hard work stretching it to make room for the world beyond.

  ‘Yeah,’ you say again.

  ‘Come on,’ she says, and she takes you to the van they’ve let her borrow for the evening. ‘You can sit in the front if you like. I won’t tell anyone.’

  You climb up into the cab and buckle the seat belt. You stare forward out of the windscreen. A thought blows into your mind: the last time you sat in the front of a vehicle was the day you knocked Ellie down. You suppose you should feel traumatised. If you were one of the other kids you’d be having a panic attack about now – wheezing and swearing and making to vomit. But you don’t. Nothing touches you. You don’t feel anything at all.

  37

  A knock at the door. Nick standing there.

  ‘You’ve been busy,’ he said, gesturing at the sheets of paintings laid out to dry around the walls and heaped in drifts in the corners.

  Smudge shrugged, impatient at the interruption. Irritation sizzled along her nerves. She didn’t know why he was here. Couldn’t he fuck off and leave her alone?

  He coughed and a sliver of a memory of the other night glinted in the surging waters of Smudge’s thoughts. She ought to be civil. By rights, she ought to be ashamed. She crossed her arms to contain the energy crackling through her, pressed her lips together and tried to look receptive.

  ‘So, I have a bit of news.’ Nick nudged a study of a rotten bowl of fruit out of the way with his foot. (She hated the way he looked at everything as if he owned it. This might be his house, but this was the inside of her mind. It was private. He had no right.) ‘The Hairpin has got the green light. It’s all going ahead.’

  Smudge blinked. Like a swimmer trying to surface from great depths, her brain struggled towards the light of his words.

  ‘The Hairpin?’ she said. She broke
the surface and was in the world again. She remembered the tall, twisted towers. ‘Oh, that’s great. You must be—’

  He nodded. ‘Actually, it’s a bit of an odd feeling.’ He put his hands in his pockets and tapped his foot. ‘Usually I get a bit down after these big projects. Before Heloise, Helen used to take me away when I finished them, to help me through the initial funk.’ He looked at her, sidelong. ‘Anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to have dinner tonight, to help me celebrate? Nothing fancy, just low-key. I’ll cook. I thought maybe it could be a fresh start. A clean slate.’

  The silence stretched. Smudge coughed.

  ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘I mean, to be honest, I’m not sure I’m in a very dinner-companionable place right now.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I think I might be ill again.’

  Nick nodded. ‘I understand. But seriously, you’d be doing me a favour.’

  Suddenly the atmosphere in the room was too intense.

  She fidgeted, impatient to get rid of him. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Whatever.’

  As soon as the door closed after him, she knew she’d made a mistake.

  She went down at about ten to seven, unable to sit in the little box room any longer, staring unseeingly at a book. The afternoon had been a washout: since she’d agreed to dinner all inspiration had deserted her, leaving her mind filled with fog. Twice she’d stood up determined to quit the house for good, but both times she’d stopped and returned to the bed, hemmed in by the image of herself as Hellie blundering about the streets. She could not trust her fluid, ill-defined, volatile being out in the world. Beside, after he’d put up with so much of her crap, she owed Nick the courtesy of eating a meal with him at least.