The Dark Threads

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by Jean Davison


  ‘You say your brother gets on your nerves,’ he said, adjusting his hearing aid. ‘What does he do?’

  ‘All kinds of things,’ I said uneasily.

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Well, he talks daft and bangs and taps and … and he makes silly noises.’

  ‘Silly noises? What are these silly noises like?’

  ‘Noises like animals,’ I said.

  ‘Give me an example to show me what you mean.’

  God, this was difficult. I decided to demonstrate Brian’s cow noises which he’d been treating me to outside my bedroom door in the early hours of that very morning.

  ‘OK, that’s enough of that,’ Dr Sugden said, waving his hand on my third ‘Mooo-ooo!’

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about religion,’ I said quickly, trying to get away from the embarrassing subject of my family. ‘I used to go to church but I got confused with some of their beliefs. I mean, things such as God sending people to hell to suffer for eternity. I can’t believe in things like that, so I stopped going. But when I lost me religious beliefs, everything began to seem pointless.’

  ‘Your life seems pointless?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m confused all the time. I don’t even know how to decide what’s right and wrong.’

  I was thinking that, although, for many of my generation, the pill had rendered outdated the idea of saving virginity for marriage, my decision not to sleep with boyfriends had been anchored in my Christian beliefs. Not even smooth-talking Steve, the most handsome of my previous boyfriends, had been able to persuade me, despite the physical attraction between us. But with nothing left to believe in, on what should I base my morality?

  ‘So you’re trying to sort out what’s right and wrong?’

  ‘Yes. All the time.’

  Going to pubs and nightclubs. Smoking. Drinking. Swearing. Petting. I’d rebelled against my religion enough to be doing plenty of those things – but with no real pleasure, just a head full of conflicts and confusion. I felt adrift in a meaningless world.

  I stared at an ink stain on his desk. ‘Nothing makes sense any more.’

  ‘I see.’

  I had difficulty hearing and being heard. Dr Sugden spoke softly, and he’d obviously got a hearing problem. On top of that, I felt intensely shy with him. I could scarcely meet his gaze, and a feeling that I was being prematurely and negatively evaluated added to my discomfort. How much easier it was to talk about these things to Jackie, or even to Pastor West. There was another of many awkward silences, and shyness made me fidget.

  ‘You’re not well,’ he said. How swiftly a mental illness verdict was reached by a man who had never seen me before in his life. ‘You’re heading for a nervous breakdown.’

  A nervous breakdown? I wasn’t sure what that meant but I wondered why I hadn’t had one sooner as I’d been like this for such a long time.

  ‘So do I need to stay off work?’ I asked. I’d been off work for three weeks, my longest break since starting work at fifteen. I knew I’d better go back soon but I hoped to have just a little more time.

  ‘Yes, and come back to see me next week.’

  I walked from the hospital into town where I had tea in a café. Then I went to meet Danny, my latest boyfriend. He had been my favourite singer at the Tempest Folk Club when I was fifteen, but we’d only been dating since we met again about three months before. He’d earned his living by singing in clubs since travelling from his home in Devon, though now he had few bookings and could barely manage to scrape enough money together to live on. But who needs money when you can live on dreams? I thought cynically.

  Danny greeted me excitedly. ‘I’ve written another song,’ he said, ‘and I’ve got the tune for it worked out on my guitar now. It’s dedicated to you. Wanna come to my digs and hear it?’

  Listening to Danny singing had never failed to cheer me up before. When he played his guitar and sang, his eyeballs would sometimes disappear up into his forehead leaving only the whites of his eyes showing and, while he was singing lovely romantic songs to me, I’d be trying hard not to laugh. Today, however, I didn’t even want to smile when he sang. His cold, shabby bed-sit with its hard, lumpy furniture and peeling damp walls was as bleak as my mood.

  We sat cross-legged on the threadbare rug in front of the small gas fire, an old blanket draped around us for much-needed warmth. As we shared a drink of tea in a cracked mug – the only mug he possessed – I wondered how much I could tell him.

  ‘Danny, I’ve just seen a doctor,’ I blurted out, unable to bring myself to say the word ‘psychiatrist’. ‘He said I’m not well.’

  ‘But what’s wrong?’ he asked, looking concerned.

  ‘Acute depression,’ I said, remembering the wording on the medical certificates Dr Russo had given me in the past three weeks.

  ‘What are you depressed about?’ He slipped his arm around me and I rested my head on his shoulder.

  ‘It’s hard to put into words. I’m just so confused about religion and life and … everything.’

  ‘Things are never as bad as they seem,’ he said, stroking my hair. ‘I always believe that.’

  ‘Yes, I know you do,’ I said, wondering when he’d last had a good meal as I glanced round his sparsely furnished room. The shiny guitar looked oddly out of place in the drab surroundings.

  At home, later that evening, Mum asked what the psychiatrist had said but, before giving me a chance to reply, added, ‘I bet he said you’ve to go back to work, didn’t he?’

  ‘No, he never even mentioned going back to work. He said I’m heading for a nervous breakdown.’ I paused for effect. ‘I’ve to see him again next Tuesday. I don’t know what’ll happen if I have this breakdown thing before then.’

  ‘Don’t talk silly,’ Mum said. ‘There’s nowt up with you.’

  My last weekend before I ‘put my head on the chopping block’ (as I later came to see it) was a very ‘normal’ weekend. No pills taken from Friday night to Monday so that I would feel more like doing things. Saturday morning chatting over coffee with Jackie. Saturday afternoon shopping with Mandy. Saturday night dancing at the Mecca with Danny. Sunday afternoon at the bowling alley with Danny, Mandy and her latest boyfriend Pete. Sunday night dancing at the Mecca again. It only stands out in my memory now because this was to be my last ‘ordinary’ weekend for a long time.

  Although Dad didn’t seem to understand why I had decided to see a psychiatrist he was less against the idea than my mother was. On my second visit he said he’d go to the hospital with me and then we could have tea afterwards in our favourite fish and chip café.

  Dr Sugden asked me if I still felt the same as I had last week. Of course I still felt the same. I’d been disillusioned and confused about life for the past few years and, not surprisingly, nothing had happened to change that between last Tuesday and this Tuesday. I nodded.

  ‘Right. I think it would be best for you to come into hospital as a voluntary patient,’ he said, shuffling some papers on his desk.

  ‘Which hospital?’

  ‘High Royds.’

  What? Me? A mental hospital? High Royds was a large, Victorian-built mental hospital on the edge of Ilkley Moor.

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘About a week.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘A rest and observation.’

  I was more surprised than worried by his suggestion. In fact I was hardly worried at all. I welcomed the idea of a break from my family, and thought it might be an interesting experience, if nothing else. Anyway, it was only for about a week, only for a rest and observation. What was there to lose? I was to report to Thornville Ward the next day.

  Dr Sugden asked to see my father, who he had noticed was with me this time, while I returned to the waiting area.

  Dad took the news badly; there were tears in his eyes when he came out of the consulting room. ‘Jean, you won’t believe this,’ he said in hushed tones, with furtive glances at the other waiting patients. ‘He says
you’re not well. He wants you to go into High Royds.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve agreed to it.’

  And so I had agreed to put my head on the chopping block. No, I had agreed to spend ‘about a week’ in a psychiatric hospital for a ‘rest and observation’. That was all. No fuss, no drama, no warning bell that I could hear.

  Years later I got hold of my case notes and there I could see that Dr Sugden had already decided I was schizophrenic. Written me up with that label when he first met me.

  But I could never have guessed, on that chilly, autumn day, that the system would come down on me like a steamroller; my career as a mental patient was about to take off.

  Jackie, who was now off work with her anxiety, called round later that afternoon.

  ‘High Royds? You’re joking!’ she said.

  Even after I managed to convince her it was true, she still seemed to think it was all something of a joke. With an expression of mock seriousness she said, ‘Well, yes, Jean, I can just see you basket-making with the loonies.’

  We both giggled; it really did seem quite hilarious.

  I met Danny that evening and, in the coffee bar at the bowling alley as we waited for a lane, I said, ‘Danny, I’ve got summat to tell you.’ I took a deep breath; this wasn’t easy. ‘I’m going into High Royds tomorrow.’

  His mouth dropped open. ‘High Royds? Why?’

  ‘The doctor thinks a rest will do me good.’

  ‘A rest? In that place? Why?’

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  ‘I … I don’t know what to say,’ he said, fiddling with the crucifix on a silver chain he always wore round his neck. ‘High Royds? Jesus, that’s awful.’

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ I said. ‘It’ll only be for about a week.’

  ‘You know what’s caused this, don’t you?’ Mum said tearfully as I packed later that evening. ‘It’s because of what you did last Thursday night.’

  I tried to remember what reckless deed or dreadful sin I’d committed last Thursday night.

  ‘I’ve told you before. My Great-aunt Annie died when she did that.’

  All became clear. I didn’t need to ask, ‘Did what?’ because I remembered the tale of her poor Great-aunt Annie.

  ‘Well, maybe the ceiling fell on her head while she was doing it,’ I joked.

  ‘It’s nowt to laugh about,’ Mum said gravely, but I couldn’t stop myself. ‘You should never have washed your hair when you was having a period.’

  How strange it felt to be packing my clothes into the same suitcase I’d used to go on holiday to Butlins in Skegness with Mandy four months before, when I’d made the decision to visit my GP. The sight of the half-packed case kept playing tricks on my mind, giving me a holiday feeling.

  The next day, Wednesday 4 December 1968, I wrote in my diary four little words: ‘I’m going in today.’

  ‘I’m warning you,’ Mum said, when I was about to set off with Dad, who’d offered to accompany me. ‘Once somebody sets foot inside one of those places, they can never get out of their clutches.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, mental hospitals aren’t like they were in the olden days,’ I said, laughing. ‘Some of your ideas come out of the ark.’

  ‘Take no notice of me if you like, but one day you’ll remember what I’ve just said. And you won’t be laughing then.’

  CASE NO. 10826

  Salient Psychiatric Symptoms and Signs on Admission:

  Admitted from my clinic at St Luke’s Hospital as an informal patient, where her history clearly indicated that she was suffering from a schizophrenic type of illness and had been for some months before. She had been abnormally preoccupied with questions of a religious character and was morbidly concerned about questions of right and wrong, to such an extent that she could not think in a normal way or live a normal existence. She was markedly introverted with gross flatenning[sic] of affect. She had obvious difficulty in concentrating and there was great lack of spontaneity.

  Family History:

  It seems likely that both the father and the mother are unstable persons.

  Dr Sugden *

  * Names of all medical professionals have been changed

  CHAPTER TWO

  HIGH ROYDS PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, formerly Menston Lunatic Asylum, was situated about seven miles to the north of Bradford, on the edge of Ilkley Moor. Set in spacious grounds, surrounded by sprawling fields, there was once a self-contained community here where inmates could be kept out of sight and mind of the public. I didn’t know what to expect as I walked up the long, winding driveway in the fading evening light, my father beside me carrying my case. A sense of foreboding ousted my curiosity as we rounded a bend, for there it stood: large, dark and drear. A Victorian madhouse. I clutched Dad’s arm.

  On entering, we found ourselves standing on a tiled floor in a stark corridor with high ceiling arches. The air was thick with the smell of cleaning fluid and in the distance I could hear someone crying. A nurse directed us to Thornville Ward.

  Thornville was brightly lit, and had potted plants, a radiogram, a TV, tropical fish and a noisy budgie. It was, I understood later, a ‘showpiece’ ward. I tried not to stare at the occupants of the armchairs seated around the TV, but I was curious to know what these mental patients I had come to stay with were like. They looked like ordinary women, but I thought there must be some strange and terrible sickness lurking behind the façade of normality.

  A dumpy nurse with straight black hair introduced herself as Sister Grayston.

  ‘Follow me,’ she said, waddling off down the corridor from the day room to the dormitories.

  ‘She looks like a penguin,’ my father observed.

  ‘Shh, Dad,’ I whispered back, grinning.

  She took us to an oblong room, which contained several beds down each side.

  ‘If you’ve got any valuables you must give them to me for safe keeping,’ she explained. Her manner, like her white starched apron, was stiff and practical.

  Sister Grayston left my dad and me alone. We sat on the hard bed with its crisp, white sheets and pale-green bedspread. I put the Lucozade my mother had given me on top of the small bedside cabinet next to the Gideon Bible and placed my old, familiar pyjamas, neatly folded, on to my pillow. What was I doing here? My it’s-no-big-deal attitude was fast deserting me and I wondered what would happen. But at least it was only for a week, I reminded myself. Only for a week.

  ‘Don’t worry, Dad,’ I said, squeezing his hand because he looked upset. Focusing on him distracted me briefly from those stabs of anxiety inside me.

  After Dad left, Sister Grayston took me to a room at the end of the corridor where I was weighed. I then had to give a urine sample, which wouldn’t have been a problem if she hadn’t stayed with me. I sat there, bare-arsed, on a commode-like contraption. My body tensed up in embarrassment, adamantly refusing to perform this natural function.

  ‘You said you could do a sample now,’ she complained.

  ‘I … I thought I could,’ I said, feeling myself blush.

  We both waited in silence, expectantly. Nothing happened.

  ‘Are you going to do anything or not? Hurry up!’ she snapped.

  I was thankful when she left the room but the sound of her uniform rustling told me she was near and I still couldn’t relax sufficiently, even though my bladder felt full to bursting. At last nature took its course, hitting the container noisily and heralding the speedy reappearance of Sister Grayston.

  ‘That’s a good girl,’ she beamed.

  I was sent to join the other patients in the day room, and a small, pasty-faced girl with thick brown hair tied back in a ponytail came and sat next to me. She looked very young.

  ‘It seems strange in here at first,’ she said sympathetically. ‘I’ve been in here a few months so I know what’s what now. My name’s Debbie. I’m thirteen.’

  Debbie had the same dull, heavy-lidded eyes as most of the patients, but if she was supposed to be mentally ill I could see
no trace of it.

  ‘Have you seen the Quiet Room yet?’ she asked.

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Quiet Room. Come on, I’ll show you.’

  I followed Debbie down the corridor to a small, carpeted, windowless room containing four brown upholstered chairs with mustard cushions and a low coffee table. The walls were painted that same pale hospital green as the dormitories. On the floor in the corner were a record player and a few pop records.

  A tall young woman with blonde curly hair came in. ‘Hi, I’m Sheila. Welcome to the nuthouse,’ she said, greeting me with a smile. ‘I’m glad we’ve got another young ’un here ’cos most of the others are old fogeys. But perhaps I’m an old fogey to you? I’m twenty-one. I’ll guess you’re about sixteen.’

  ‘Eighteen,’ I said, smiling shyly.

  ‘Pills time again,’ Debbie said, standing up at the sound of a rattling, squeaky trolley being wheeled past the door.

  Sheila giggled merrily and sang, ‘Shake, rattle and roll …’ as she danced down the corridor behind the drugs-laden trolley, but her sad, pale blue eyes belied her show of gaiety.

  Before going to bed I was given two large Mogadon sleeping tablets. Despite them, I lay awake for a long time staring up at the dim green ceiling light which stayed on all night. I remembered how way back in childhood we’d talked about men in white coats taking people away in green vans to Menston Loony Bin. So this was Menston. I really was here.

  The ward was stirring when I awoke at seven. I followed other sleepy-eyed, dressing-gown-clad patients, clutching plastic toilet bags, down the corridor to a white-tiled room with a row of washbasins. After washing and dressing, I again took my cue from other patients. First there were our beds to make. I pulled the sheets back and, as if I needed a sharp reminder of where I was, there emblazoned in large, black letters across the grey blanket underneath were the words: ‘MENSTON HOSPITAL’.

  Sister Oldroyd was on duty: a tall, thin woman with heavy black eyeliner drawn around tired eyes. Sitting in the day room before breakfast, a pale, gaunt, elderly patient with sunken grey eyes pointed at my slippers.

 

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