by Jane Asher
So I had to hold back from giving Stacey a good old lecture. It’s the parents I blame, you see. I thank God – frequently – for my own upbringing, where I was taught old-fashioned values and good plain common sense.
‘Quite apart from whether I can sanction the necessary time off, Stacey,’ I said to her, ‘are you sure this is a good idea? Doesn’t it seem a little drastic to be cutting yourself about and messing with your body when it may be just a simple matter of a healthy diet?’ (I thought it my responsibility to at least make an attempt to put her right.)
‘It’s the only way, Mr Chipstead,’ she answered, looking back at me across the desk. I was pleased to see that she was, at least, managing to look me in the eye. I’ve long been aware that she fancies me, of course – heaven knows, there are enough jokes about it in the canteen – but she does seem to be less nervous these days when I need to talk directly to her. There’s no doubt she’s acquired a bit more confidence since she began the curious liaison with Mr What’s-his-name.
‘And does it really work, Stacey? I mean, you certainly don’t want to put yourself through all this unless it’s going to be effective, do you? And maybe it’s dangerous – there are generally all sorts of horror stories behind these kind of miracle cures.’
‘It does work. It really does – and it ain’t half as risky as it used to be. It’s three-pronged, you see. That’s what the surgeon told us.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘They staple up your stomach so that it’s really small. About the size of – I’m sorry – you probably don’t want to hear none of this, do ya? You don’t wanna hear about what goes on in –’
‘That’s all right, Stacey. You won’t find me squeamish – it’s very important to keep ourselves abreast of what is going on in the world, you see – without knowledge we –’
‘Yeah, OK – whatever. Anyway, if you’re sure? They make your stomach about the size of a lemon, so you can’t eat much. By stapling it across the middle – or across part of it somewhere – I’m not sure if it’s exactly the middle, ’cos I don’t know how big it would be normally, come to think of it. Anyway, it ends up much smaller, so you feel full really quickly. But then there’s more to it than that: they bypass part of the tube – you know, the intestine – so whatever food you do manage to eat gets absorbed less.’
‘Really? How clever.’
‘Yeah, it is. And then there’s a third thing that happens – which I don’t quite understand, although he did explain it to us, but if you eat the kind of food what you shouldn’t it makes you feel really horrible. Fatty stuff, I mean. If you eat that then you feel terrible, so you soon learn to eat the right kind of vegetables and that. So you lose weight in three different ways.’
I must admit I was quite impressed by the way Stacey described it to me. She’s quite on the ball really, when she can drag herself out of her usual lazy attitude to life.
‘Well, Stacey.’ I smiled. ‘Rather you than me. I find it hard to believe nature intended you to have staples in your stomach, but if you really do feel it’s the only way forward then I shall do my best to sanction your sick leave with head office. You’re a valued member of the SavaMart team here in Victoria, and you know the company policy on staff care and wellbeing. I’m sure we all wish you the best and you must let me know as soon as you have a date. Hopefully you’ll be back at the checkout in next to no time. Perhaps even see a little less of you once you’re back, eh?’
I gave her a tiny wink to show I had made the joke intentionally – just in case she thought I might have been unaware of what I had said. I stood up and moved around the desk to let her know the session was over, then hesitated at the door as I saw her struggling to prise herself out of the chair.
‘Do you need some –’
‘No, no. I’m fine.’
She glanced up at me and I noticed she had turned bright red with the effort – or with the embarrassment – of heaving herself up. Stacey has very unusual eyes – one might almost say they were attractive in a smaller setting – but on this occasion their rather pretty colour was entirely lost amid the shiny redness of her large, sweaty face. I am ashamed to say that as I stood waiting for the poor girl to manoeuvre herself out of the chair, I found myself not entirely sorry that she was going to be absent for a while at some point in the next few weeks.
Judy
I’m feeling quite proud of myself the last few days that I’m managing without slipping up to the bedroom for a quick flutter. It’s not easy – if I tried to describe it to someone it would sound so silly – but I do miss it dreadfully. The temptation is so strong, especially at the moment: with Sally out most of the time and Ben staying with a friend it would have been so easy to spend time up there. And doing my cards was something I always kept in the corner of my mind as a possibility – a sort of escape route, something I could always turn to for a bit of excitement, and that I could get an answer to straight away. I think that was part of it: the fact that so many of my worries and problems, however small they were, seemed insoluble and permanent. My tickets gave me an instant answer – even though it was usually a bad one. At least there was always another chance.
I’ve taken to watching a lot of television. I never used to watch much in the evenings, especially if Charlie and the children were out and I was on my own; I would read or work on a report, or maybe do a bit of tapestry while I listened to the radio – or, of course, slip upstairs for a while. But since Charlie left – and especially since Sally caught me in the bedroom and I’ve been trying to cut down on my cards – I’ve found it a great comfort. I can absolutely understand now why elderly people see it as a friend in the corner of the sitting room. It certainly does help to fight the loneliness that I feel creeping up into my head if I stop too often to think. Who’d have thought how terribly I would miss him? It’s completely unexpected.
So when I became aware of the banging earlier on I didn’t feel frightened – merely curious. At first I thought it was part of the background noise to the programme I was watching, and when it became clear it wasn’t, I assumed it was coming from another, distant, television set or radio. A kind of muffled thumping, but not like when there are builders next door or someone is playing a record upstairs: this was too dense and regular for that, and it went on far longer than the two or three minutes one might expect from the average music track. I thought it must be either some background music to a thriller or perhaps someone beating a drum on a march a few streets away. As it went on, though, I began to feel uneasy, and I turned down the television to try and isolate it.
Once I’d turned off the loud chatter the noise changed character – or at least my perception of it did. Although it was still a slow, drumming beat, I noticed now that it was less regular than I had thought and was no longer a background accompaniment but seemed much closer – as if the sound was being made by someone in the house. I got up out of my chair and put my glasses down on the small table next to it, then stood still, unsure what to do next. The strange thumping continued, and at one point I thought I heard a faint cry, but it was very hard to work out from which direction it was coming. I walked over and pressed my ear to the wall that adjoins the next-door house, but was still none the wiser – the sound just seemed to be part of the fabric of the building, and when I tried listening in the same way on the opposite wall it was just as loud and just as directionless. I wished Charlie was there – well, I wished that all the time, but at that moment I needed him as a physical presence.
I pulled back a curtain and looked out of the window, vainly hoping that I was still misjudging the distance of the noise and that it could, after all, be coming from outside – perhaps from a lorry or a large piece of machinery – but the street was empty. As I turned back from the window I heard the cry again – and this time there was no mistaking it. A sound of human misery and possibly pain, without doubt coming from the same source as the thumping. I was trembling a little now, partly because I was beginning to feel
frightened, but also because the unmistakable evidence of someone’s desperate unhappiness, so startlingly and unavoidably close and real, was shockingly sad.
I used to think how ludicrous it was in thrillers or horror films when the heroine sets herself up to be murdered/raped/scared out of her silly mind by walking back into the haunted house, or up the stairs towards the killer or by locking the back door when it’s quite obvious the maniac is already inside the house. You know the kind of thing – completely unbelievable.
But I was wrong. I know now that such action is perfectly possible, and I know why. I suspect there must be some in-built genetic predisposition in all of us (for if it is in me, the most physically cowardly person I know, then it must surely be in everyone) to seek out possible sources of danger. One is drawn towards it, in the same way one is drawn to scratch at a sore that would be better left alone, or to ask of a loved one, relentlessly, the question one doesn’t want answered. I walked out of the sitting room, opened the door in the hall at the top of our cellar stairs and slowly walked down them, in spite of the obvious increase in the volume of the noise as I did so. There could be no doubt that the origin of the sound was somewhere down there, yet I didn’t hesitate to make my way towards it.
I could see clearly, because the single bulb that lights our small cellar was already switched on, and the varying brown shades of the familiar mess of boxes, old lamp standards and other accumulated clutter were outlined by sharp shadows like a cubist painting. I realised I was holding my breath as I neared the bottom of the steps: the thumping still went on, and, as I looked around to try and identify its source, suddenly and awfully came another of those devastating cries.
It was then I saw him, as I walked into the small storeroom to one side of the steps. He was kneeling on the floor in the far corner of the wretched little room, his back towards me, his head pulling back rhythmically and regularly before it snapped forward and hit the wall in front of him with a loud, dull thud. Even from where I stood I could see the blood running down the side of his face, and when his cry came again it was the more terrible for seeing the miserable creature that made it. Ben, my darling son, my baby, my little boy.
The shock of seeing him made me release the breath I had been holding in a noisy spasm, and he turned and looked at me. His hair was dark and wet at the front from the blood and his eyes were red from crying, and I moved towards him and knelt beside him. He felt cold through his shirt and I rubbed him vigorously without thinking as I kissed him and whispered to him.
He was still half-heartedly trying to bang his head against the wall, and I kept one hand pressed firmly against his forehead and tensed each time I felt the muscles of his neck pulling against my shoulder. After a minute or two the movements slowed until they eventually stopped completely, and he relaxed back against me like a broken toy. I stroked his forehead, avoiding the patch of grazed, mashed skin, and murmured a few loving, calming words into his ear.
‘Why darling?’ I said at last. ‘Sweet, dearest Ben, in God’s name, why?’
‘I just thought – oh Mum, Mum!’ he said, and he bent his head down into his chest and his shoulders began to shake against me. I shushed him gently until he was calm again and I was able to wipe his eyes and the worst of the blood from his face with the edge of my sleeve. ‘I just thought,’ he went on, ‘that I could help things – change things – if I just – no, it’s no good – I can’t explain. It’s too difficult.’
Charlie
‘But don’t you feel any responsibility?’ she asked, quite reasonably, I thought. It was hard to explain that I didn’t feel anything at all, apart from the obvious, so I kept quiet, which I could see infuriated her even more. ‘They’re still your children, Charlie,’ she went on, ‘and it’s just not on to abandon them like this.’
‘Oh, come on, Judy,’ I answered, ‘they’re virtually adults, you know. You really can’t use words like “abandon” in this context – it’s not like you to be so melodramatic.’
‘It’s not like me to be in this melodramatic situation! You have a son who is seriously disturbed – and even when we had no idea where he was you took absolutely no interest – and you’ve walked out on your family with no warning whatsoever and shacked up with some grotesque tart from the corner shop. I think I have every right to be as melodramatic as I like, as you charmingly put it.
‘I freely admit I still love you desperately, Charlie – God knows why – but it doesn’t mean I’m blind and stupid. I can still see what a bastard you’re being. I just can’t believe it – you were always so wonderful to the children – and to me – and now you’re behaving like a complete stranger; no, worse than a stranger. A stranger wouldn’t let us suffer like this – any normal, humane person would have to do something to stop all this pain. It’s not as if it’s difficult; it’s terribly simple, Charlie: just come back home and we’ll talk about all this. I’m not saying I’ll ever be able to forgive you – only a saint could promise that – but I do know we can work things out and maybe even get together again if we can just talk. But this silence and this – this – disappearance are cruel and unworthy of you. Christ, don’t you remember how you always used to talk about the terrible effect that people splitting up had on their families? When you and I used to compare notes about the children we both came across in our work and how stupid and selfish and cruel their parents were being? And now you’re doing it yourself – don’t you see that? I just can’t believe it of you, Charlie, I really can’t.’
She was crying now, and I tried hard to make myself feel as I knew I should on watching my wife in tears, but it was impossible. If I took an objective view of the situation I could see that, of course, she was absolutely right, but the fact that my heart was now disengaged from the rest of me and belonged to someone else was having a fascinating effect. I suppose I can understand now why murderers and rapists are able to behave in the way they do: if I, a supposedly humane person, could stand back and calmly evaluate the harm being done to the family I had always loved and protected, and yet experience no pangs of guilt or unhappiness, then anything was possible. I tried to look suitably sympathetic, but knew I was failing.
‘And why the hell didn’t you tell us you’d moved out of that wretched hotel? Where are you staying? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. But you could at least have had the decency to let us know you weren’t at that number any more, and given us some means of contacting you. You bastard.’
I hadn’t thought to tell them I wasn’t at the hotel any more: I suppose I should have, but there were all kinds of things I ‘should’ have done that I hadn’t. (In any case, I certainly wasn’t about to give them Stacey’s home phone number – I could imagine that leading to all sorts of unwanted conversations.) When Judy had phoned me at work she’d been, understandably, furious and upset – she’d clearly had the most terrible shock on finding Ben in that way, and not being able to get hold of me till the next morning must have just about put the lid on it. I’d reluctantly agreed to come round and see her, supposedly to talk about Ben and Sally, and this one-sidedly hysterical meeting was the result. I still wasn’t quite sure it was going to achieve anything, but felt I had to stay for a while longer to at least go through the motions of taking an interest.
‘Did he – was he able to say what he was doing?’
‘It was perfectly clear what he was doing. He was banging his head repeatedly against a brick wall until he made it bleed. He was crying. He was –’
‘Yes, I know that, Judy – you know perfectly well I mean “why”. Why he was doing it.’
‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you it’s a classic symptom of extreme distress and frustration.’
‘No, indeed you don’t, Judy. But Ben is a level-headed boy – are you really telling me that because of my leaving he has suddenly flipped and become a neurotic?’
‘Don’t say that! Don’t sound so casual about your own son – I can’t stand it! No, he hasn’t suddenly “flipped
”, as you put it. He’s been – unsure – about things for some time, although you obviously haven’t noticed. His work at school has been getting on top of him and he’s always been sensitive. Don’t flatter yourself that your action has been the only cause of all this. It’s just been the – the wonderful icing on the cake, I suppose.’
‘Sarcasm really doesn’t suit you, Judy. And I can hardly be accused of being the only parent to behave oddly – enjoyed spending our savings on all that gambling, did you?’
God knows why I said that – just the truth popping out, I suppose. I thought she’d explode, but, much to her credit, I must concede, she controlled herself and closed her eyes for a moment, before taking a deep breath and continuing, ignoring my unhelpful interjection.
‘What are we going to do? He was talking some nonsense about getting into a parallel universe or something. I’m really frightened for him, Charlie – he’s just at the age when something like schizophrenia could be starting, and I don’t like the way he is at all. What shall we do – how shall we help him?’