by Jean Davison
When Annabel wandered into the Quiet Room where I sat alone with my shorthand book I tried to ignore her and carry on learning.
‘Did you hear what I said?’ Annabel shrieked.
I looked up to find her advancing towards me waving her arms. She stopped only inches away from me and launched into a flood of hysterical verbal abuse. Her anger crackled and flared while I braced myself in the heat ready for her to fly at me as Rosie had done at OT. But it seemed Annabel’s aggression was only verbal. Her eyes were fixed not on me – she was probably unaware of my presence – but slightly to my right as if she were talking to someone else. A tirade of angry words bounced around the little room that was inappropriately called a ‘quiet’ room, as she pointed and shouted at imaginary people.
‘You! And you! Stop laughing at me. I do not belong in this den of iniquity, I tell you. I’ve been tricked. Where is my coat?’
I looked back down at the shorthand book and began checking the exercise I’d just completed with the answers at the back of the book. If I could learn in this environment, perhaps I could stop worrying that ECT and drugs had damaged my brain?
‘You’re a whore! That’s what you are! A whore!’
I was getting the hang of it but there were just certain phrases and vowel positions I needed more practice with before I could move on to the next chapter.
‘I hate you! You’re a whore!’
‘Annabel, come here for your injection,’ a nurse called, popping her head round the door. It took two nurses to lead the distraught Annabel away. This gave me time to practise a few more phrases before she returned to continue her argument with the owner of the brothel who was now cowering on the floor behind me.
When a thick airmail envelope with a New Zealand stamp arrived for me at the hospital, I tore at the flap impatiently, eager to learn Mike’s reaction to my ‘secret life’. It was a long, caring letter in which Mike expressed great surprise to hear I was a patient and that I’d been receiving psychiatric treatment for all the time he’d known me. It didn’t alter his feelings for me, he wrote, since he knew me well enough to know I wasn’t ‘mad’. He wished I’d felt able to tell him before but said that it must have been very difficult for me to write that letter and he’d been moved to tears at how painfully honest and open with him I was now.
After reading Mike’s letter a second time I slowly folded it, enjoying the crinkly feel of flimsy airmail paper, and replaced it in the envelope. Declining Hilda’s offer of a mint, I leant back in my armchair in the day room to think about my relationship with Mike. I had never felt I loved him, but then what did I know about ‘love’ when a large part of my emotions had been dampened down for so long? I had so much to learn and relearn that it seemed almost like learning to live again.
My thoughts were interrupted by the little old lady known to us as ‘Gran’ nudging me and whispering, ‘You see that woman over there?’ She was pointing to Hilda. ‘She pinches things from my locker. She’s wearing my knickers today.’ I couldn’t help chuckling to myself at the thought of Hilda, a very fat woman, trying to squeeze into a pair of knickers belonging to the thin, frail Gran.
‘I don’t think she is,’ I whispered back.
My weight was still causing concern. I was down to about six and half stones and my clothes hung loosely over my thin frame. But around this time, my weight stabilised and then steadily began to increase.
What to do? Where to next? I didn’t want to live with my parents and I didn’t want to live at the hostel. Nor, of course, did I want to linger in the hospital. But I’d been in Prieston for about a month before I managed to make my decision. I would go back to living with my parents – at least for a while. It was far from ideal, but I thought perhaps I should consider myself fortunate to have this option. It seemed that many people were remaining in hospital because they had nowhere else to live.
I asked Sister when I could be discharged. ‘Today, if you like,’ was her casual reply. ‘But where will you live?’
‘With my parents for now.’
‘OK. I’ll have a word with the doctor when he does his rounds,’ she said, scribbling a note to remind herself. Later that morning, without further ado, I was discharged – back to living with my parents and attending the day hospital.
Back at home no mention was made of my time away. I might just as well have returned home from a shopping trip. Nothing had changed. Mum and Dad went to bingo that evening. Brian stood behind me jingling the coins in his pocket. It jarred on my nerves but I flicked through the pages of a magazine and pretended I couldn’t care less.
I went to bed early and lay in the half-light, pondering over those three words of Mrs Winters that had sent shivers through me when I’d been leaving for the hostel. She’ll be back. Had she meant back to visit my mother? Or had it been, as it seemed to me, a tactless remark in anticipation of my failure? Tears of frustration dampened my pillow while I said to myself, OK, what now? Where do I go to next? I meant where to with my life, but there was no satisfactory answer to that. Stuck again. It seemed the only place I was going was back to the day hospital. Tomorrow.
On my first day back at the day hospital I sat in the armchair next to Arnold who immediately made the effort to turn and speak to me.
‘Are you feeling better now, Jean?’ His words came out laboured but clear.
‘Yes, thank you, Arnold.’
‘Good. I am pleased.’
Arnold, who spent his time sitting mutely staring into space. Arnold, who had great difficulty in speech and movement. Arnold, who had more reason for despair than I had ever known, had remembered my name, noticed my absence and shown concern for my welfare. Dear Arnold.
After the Prieston episode I was still keen to get off medication. I wanted a life. Dr Shaw refused to agree to, or even discuss, my request for a reduction, with a view to coming off. ‘But you’ve tried doing without medication,’ he had pointed out. ‘And you couldn’t cope.’
The way I saw it, Dr Shaw’s attitude gave me no option other than to reduce the pills myself in secret. At the day hospital we were given our tablets in small plastic containers each lunchtime, just enough to tide us over until the following day, with extra on Fridays for the weekend. We were entrusted to take them ourselves; no one there snatched at my hand as in Thornville. But before I’d started my intended reduction, an extra pill kept appearing with my supply. Thinking the student nurse was miscounting I’d meant to discreetly (not wanting to get her into trouble) mention it to her. But before I did so, Dr Shaw called me into his office.
‘How many tablets are you taking?’ he asked.
That was easy. I knew by heart what I was supposed to take and when to take them. I’d decided I would start reducing them soon by missing out the morning one first. But at the moment there was no need for me to lie. I was taking them exactly as prescribed.
‘We know you’re not taking them properly,’ Dr Shaw said.
‘What?’
He leant back in his chair, looking smug. ‘Don’t think you’re fooling us.’
‘Look, I know I told you a bit back that I want to stop taking them because they make me feel dull and drowsy,’ I said, ‘but you strongly advised that I continue with them, and that’s what I’m doing.’
‘Well, we have reason to believe you’re not.’
‘What reason?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer.
I left his office feeling puzzled. Later that day, I asked to speak to Tony, the charge nurse.
‘Dr Shaw accused me of not taking my tablets,’ I said.
‘And are you taking them?’
‘Yes, I am. Why does he think I’m not?’
Tony smiled. ‘Can you think of any reason why he thinks that?’
‘Well, I did tell him a while ago that I want to stop. Is that why he thinks it?’
Tony’s smile was irritating me. He knew something.
‘OK, I’ll tell you,’ Tony said. ‘The staff have been instructed to sli
p an extra tablet into one of your containers now and then.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘To test you. It seems you hadn’t noticed, so Dr Shaw thinks that shows you’ve been tipping them out instead of taking them properly.’
So that was it? How ridiculous, I thought.
‘I did notice.’
‘You didn’t say anything.’
‘No, I didn’t, did I? Silly me for not thinking the staff would be playing some kind of stupid game to test me.’
Tony laughed.
‘It’s not funny,’ I said. ‘No wonder patients get paranoid.’
I thought afterwards about the way Sister Oldroyd had clutched at my hands thinking I wasn’t taking my tablets. And now this. The staff’s attitudes also showed in their words ‘compliance’ and ‘non-compliance’. It didn’t seem right to me. If we wanted to reduce or stop our medication, why on earth couldn’t we have the opportunity to discuss it, be given honest information, and our decisions be respected?
I began to reduce my pills. As my body gradually adjusted to taking fewer drugs, some of the drowsiness lifted and I was able to take more interest in things. But one of the nurses used me as an example of the need to persevere with drugs. This was when Lizzie complained that her new tablets were making her feel awful and drowsy.
‘But look at Jean,’ the nurse said. ‘She used to complain of being too drowsy on her tablets but now she’s adjusted to them and she feels a lot better. So just keep taking them and after a while you’ll be much better, too. That’s right, isn’t it, Jean?’
Lizzie looked at me with questions in her eyes. I winced, averted my eyes and said nothing. I had given up hoping I could get the day hospital staff to understand that it was right and important for me to reject my treatment, so I just wanted to lie low and get myself off the drugs with as little hassle as possible. But I felt terribly guilty for betraying Lizzie with my silence.
Several more months passed, during which time I’d been slowly reducing my pills, before I expressed my desire to try living at the hostel again. I squirmed in my chair in Mrs Winters’s office while she telephoned Mrs Stroud to try to get her to agree to me returning to the YWCA.
It was 1973. Precious time was slipping by and I still hadn’t secured a job or accommodation. My heart leapt when I heard Mrs Stroud at the other end of the phone finally say, ‘Oh, all right then, we’ll give it another try. After all, we are supposed to be a Christian organisation.’
Mrs Winters put the phone down and smiled. My relief at being offered a room helped me relax enough to make a jokey comment. Mrs Winters threw her head back and laughed. ‘Oh, Jean!’ she exclaimed, her eyes wide with wonder. ‘You’re almost normal!’
She looked pleased with me. Perhaps she thought calling me ‘almost’ normal was giving me a compliment, upping my self-esteem? I stared down at the carpet, retreating back into my shy mode.
At home that evening I began packing, while trying to ignore my mother’s negative comments and tears. I kept telling myself that I was doing the right thing. But behind my brave front lurked the fear of winding up in Prieston as before.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I WAS GIVEN AN attic room with a sloping ceiling. It contained most of the things I needed and some things I didn’t, such as the dead cockroach I found beneath the bed and the cheeky mouse which I awoke to find sharing my pillow. The window was too high to see through unless I stood on a chair which wobbled precariously as I stretched up, gripping the windowsill, to either gaze down at chimney pots and grey slate rooftops or up at the sky.
Occasionally, during my first couple of weeks at the hostel, hysterical laughter rang out in the middle of the night from the room next to mine, which housed a woman whom the other residents called ‘Nutty Norah’. She gave me such a fright one night when I awoke to find her standing in my room, though I guessed she had innocently wandered there after going to the toilet. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, and fled. They put us mad ones up in the attic as in Jane Eyre, I thought, smiling to myself.
There was a gas fire in my room and a hungry meter which was forever running out of money. How quickly the room would turn cold. Orange, glowing flames shrank to white apparitions, flickering and dancing to that annoying popping sound – phut, phut, phut – as I searched for the appropriate coin. I hadn’t much money but my parents did help by giving me ‘money for your meter’ which they saved for me in little polythene bags. (My mother had soon forgiven me for being so ungrateful a daughter as to leave home.)
Shyness was still a major problem. At mealtimes if anyone spoke to me or if I tried to join in conversation, I could hardly swallow, the cutlery shook in my hands, my heart hammered and I felt hot and sticky: all those old, familiar feelings that froze me into silence. After the evening meal I either retreated to my room in defeat or ventured into the communal TV lounge, only to find that once inside I could do no more than sit quietly among the chattering crowd. Would I ever belong anywhere? But I remained optimistic about building up a life for myself, though I knew it would take time. I wasn’t expecting a rose garden.
The next stage towards leaving the hospital had to be getting a job. I applied for a clerical post with the Civil Service, passed the written examination and was called back for an interview. It began to go badly when I tried to answer, with scrupulous honesty, the questions of the man and woman who were interviewing me. This meant explaining about my lengthy period of unemployment. The man in particular seemed extremely embarrassed at my revelation that I was a day patient at High Royds, His pale face flushed crimson and he shuffled about in his seat. After a silence, he cleared his throat. ‘I … I won’t prolong this interview,’ he said, straightening his tie. ‘I don’t believe in, er … in prolonging things because … because prolonging an interview only makes things get rather embarrassing. I mean embarrassing for both parties.’
I knew before he managed to stutter out, ‘We’ll let you know’ that I had no chance of getting the job.
I recounted the interview to Len, the new charge nurse.
‘Never mind, Jean,’ he said. ‘You did well to pass the written test and to attend the interview.’
‘How will I ever get a job? What am I supposed to write on application forms?’ I’d received two application forms in the post that morning for low-level office jobs and, on each, I was supposed to give ‘full details’ of my ‘previous employment’ and ‘explain any gaps’. Shit! If only I could cancel the last five years of my life and start anew. Pretend I was five years younger or something. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ I said again, realising for the first time the immensity of the problem. ‘It’s as bad as having a criminal record. Nobody’ll ever want to employ me.’
‘We’ll see what we can sort out for you,’ Len said.
A Disablement Resettlement Officer who liaised with the hospital made arrangements for me to attend an Industrial Rehabilitation Unit in Leeds. But there was a waiting list.
I sat next to a woman called Vivian in the YWCA dining room, and she invited me for a coffee. Her room looked cosy in the glow of the gas fire but I realised, with a pang of remembered pain, it was the same room in which I’d cried through the night.
It did look different though. On the small table beside the bed sat a portable typewriter with a half-typed sheet of paper inside. Piles of plain and typewritten sheets, along with an electric kettle and an over-stuffed ashtray, cluttered the floor. The oval mirror on top of the chest of drawers vied for space in between two metal filing trays and several wallet folders. A large box-file and a ring-binder occupied part of the bed. Two half-open drawers revealed more papers and binders. The long shelf across one side of the room housed a row of books.
‘These are my friends,’ Vivian said, pointing to the books.
Vivian picked up the kettle and, while she padded barefoot down the corridor to fill it in the bathroom, I sat on her bed and glanced at her friends on the shelf. They had names such as The Bell Jar, Wide Sargasso Se
a, The Razor’s Edge, A Room of One’s Own, The Four-Gated City …
Vivian sat cross-legged on the bed, propping herself up with the pillow. In her long blue dressing-gown and usual dark glasses she looked fortyish, much older than the other residents.
‘Are you a student?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette.
‘No. I’m a patient at a psychiatric day hospital,’ I said boldly, then in somewhat cowardly fashion added, ‘but please don’t tell anyone here. Only Mrs Stroud knows.’
‘I’ve been in a mental hospital,’ Vivian said. ‘A long time ago.’ She handed me a sheet of paper. ‘This is the synopsis for the novel I’m currently working on. The theme is alienation.’
The synopsis outlined the story of Catherine, a young woman who married a Nigerian law student and went to live in Nigeria. Marital problems relating to the culture clash proved insurmountable and Catherine returned to England with their two daughters. The couple divorced, and Catherine underwent a traumatic identity crisis, which led to a suicide attempt and admission to a mental hospital.
‘Yes, it’s autobiographical,’ Vivian said as if in answer to my thoughts. She pulled open a drawer and showed me a photo of a distinguished-looking black man in ceremonial robes. ‘My ex-husband. He’s a barrister in Nigeria.’ Another photo depicted two smiling young women. ‘My daughters. They live in London.’
Hours later I cleaned my teeth in the communal washroom with the big old-fashioned sink and antiquated bath. In my attic room, I undressed, swallowed a Melleril and got into bed. By now I had cut the pills down to amitriptyline 25 mg twice a day, and Melleril 25mg at night. The Infirmary was close to the hostel and I drifted to sleep listening to ambulance sirens and thinking about Vivian, suicide, alienation. Vivian and I shared ‘outsider’ feelings. Perhaps that’s what drew us together.
In the autumn of 1973, I had reached the top of the waiting list for the Industrial Rehabilitation Unit. At last I was leaving High Royds. But first there was something I had to do.