Stranger Than Kindness

by Mark A Radcliffe

  ‘The Specials,’ Anna said quickly.

  ‘They’re from Coventry.’

  ‘Same sort of area’.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ said Adam. ‘I bet when Birmingham play Coventry on a Saturday afternoon the fans are pretty ambivalent about who wins, them both coming from the same sort of area.’

  ‘Oh, shut up and put some more money in the jukebox. Did you put this miserablist nonsense on?’

  ‘I may have.’ He smiled. ‘A little known B side from White and Torch.’

  ‘Who?’ said Tim.

  And so it continued: music, television, has anyone seen any good films? Identifying a tone and a sense of who was who until they had all had three drinks and shared two packets of dry roasted peanuts.

  ‘My round,’ Anna said. ‘Same again?’

  Tim raised his empty pint glass; Grace and Adam nodded. They all knew by now that they were staying longer than they had each intended.

  When Anna returned Tim had removed his silk-lined paisley waistcoat and released his paunch, making space for the real ale that lent him an animation they had not seen before. ‘No, no really, it is quite absurd,’ he was saying. ‘My father assumed I would be a GP like Mother. My mother assumed I would be a surgeon like Father. I, however, may have had some rather grandiose ideas about psychoanalysis or some such thing. When I specialized in psychiatry I thought they were going to disown me. If my sister hadn’t come out as a lesbian at around the same time I could have been cast out.’

  ‘But you are excused because she is a lesbian?’ asked Grace.

  ‘Well, mostly because she is a lawyer, to be fair, but the lesbian thing was a compounding factor,’ he said without blushing. ‘So what about you lot? What brought you to the lunatic asylum?’

  ‘I came on the bus,’ Anna said, sitting down.

  ‘I hate psychoanalysis,’ said Adam. ‘Or mostly I probably hate the people who practice it. So bloody evangelical.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Tim. ‘But maybe you are in denial, Adam. And very good Anna, using distraction and humour to prevent me from finding out about you. But I am trained to see through such strategies.’

  ‘Are you?’ smiled Grace ‘I thought that mostly you were trained to give labels to people and prescribe them drugs? Aren’t we the ones trained in all the people stuff?’ Tim blushed and went to speak but stopped and chose instead to relish the fact that the gorgeous Grace was gently mocking him.

  I want to know what love is by Foreigner came on and Adam shivered theatrically. ‘No. I need more change.’

  ‘OK,’ said Anna. ‘But only if I get to choose with you.’

  Adam eyed her suspiciously. ‘Do you like this nonsense?’

  Anna winced. ‘Good God, no.’

  ‘OK,’ said Adam. ‘But we go together and have to both agree on each song. Deal?’ Adam winked at Grace as he left.

  The juke box was on the other side of the pub, beside the toilets. It was backed by deep red flocked wallpaper. The nearest person to it was an older thin man in a brown raincoat sitting on his own, smoking a roll-up and drinking Guinness. He looked as though they had modernized around him. He didn’t look up when Adam and Anna walked past him.

  ‘You can pick first,’ Adam said.

  ‘Are we over here to give Grace and Tim a few moments alone?’ asked Anna.

  ‘Mainly we are here to stop Foreigner, but if some other good might emerge from standing outside the toilets looking for tolerable songs, then so be it.’

  Anna smiled. She hadn’t seen Adam like this before: alive, warm, unsedated. ‘The Cure, In between days?’ offered Anna loudly.

  ‘Oh yes, didn’t see that. Bowie, Heroes?’

  ‘Of course. There is some rubbish on here…’

  ‘There is,’ agreed Adam. ‘I have a theory though: I think they keep a check on how many times certain songs are played and when they come to restock the records they keep the ones that have been played the most. Which means we have a responsibility to ensure that the good songs, and the little obscure ones that make people stop and shrug, get played more. If we don’t, we condemn future pub goers to Foreigner, Phil Collins and Nick bloody Berry.’

  ‘So essentially we are performing a public service?’

  ‘Everything we do touches the world in some way.’ He smiled. ‘Ohh, Joy Division? Yes? Bauhaus: no. Your go.’

  ‘That is quite a burden,’ Anna said as she surveyed the songs.

  ‘What, not liking Bauhaus?’

  ‘No, believing everything we do touches the world. How about Dionne Warwick? And Otis Redding.’

  Adam nodded. ‘Good choice and it isn’t a matter of belief, it’s pretty much a fact isn’t it? Whatever we do has consequences, even if they are tiny or seemingly insignificant. We can argue about whether or not that matters very much or if it is a healthy thing to think about, but that doesn’t make it any less of a fact.’

  Anna looked at him. He was staring intently at the jukebox as he spoke. ‘We’re out of songs,’ she said.

  ‘Just as well. Let’s get drinks. I think we’ve given Tim enough time to get past blushing every time Grace speaks.’

  When they got back to the table and put down the drinks Grace was leaning toward Tim conspiratorially. ‘Sshhh,’ she pantomimed. ‘They’re back.’

  ‘Aha, there you are,’ Tim slurred. ‘Don’t imagine I have forgotten the question I asked before you chose to take some ‘alone’ time.’ Tim mimed inverted commas in the air when he said alone.

  ‘What question was that?’ Adam asked.

  ‘It will come to me in just a moment,’ laughed Tim. ‘Ah yes. What was it that brought you all into this business. Did you grow up wanting to help the sick but didn’t fancy the hats your general colleagues wear?’

  ‘Psychiatric nurses tend to be refugees,’ smiled Anna. ‘Well, there are probably some who will tell you that they have a fascination with the human psyche and wanted to try to understand what happens to the fried and fragile, but they don’t tend to stay very long.’

  ‘Fried and fragile, I like that,’ murmured Tim. ‘And do we all hate psychoanalysis or is it just Mr Denial over there?’

  ‘It’s more self indulgence for the analyst than help for the patient,’ said Grace.

  ‘It’s for the rich,’ added Anna.

  ‘So you prefer drugs?’ Tim smiled.

  ‘Two sides of the same coin,’ Adam said.

  ‘Polar opposites surely,’ countered Tim. ‘One is about investing deeply in understanding an individuals psyche and looking to repair it, the other about a generic response to a chemical imbalance: an attempt to crush symptoms and offer solace.’ Tim sounded like a doctor, albeit a slightly drunk one.

  Adam said: ‘They are both industries built on the opportunities presented by other people’s madness. They are both about the assumed and largely made-up expertise and self-regard of the saviour, whether he be analyst or doctor. They both lay claim to a science that gave us aversion therapy, lobotomies and treatment by water cannon and have as much real scientific credibility as crystal healing, not that scientific credibility is as important as it thinks it is.’

  Grace and Anna both nodded as if Adam were simply stating the time of day.

  ‘But… no, hang on… so what do you believe in, if not psychoanalysis? Other types of therapy? Psychoanalysis isn’t the be all and end all, is it? Letting—what was your term, Anna?—the fried and the fragile run unrestrained toward their own destruction? Agonized by misery, hallucinations? We have to act, to help, don’t we? What should we do?’

  Adam shrugged. ‘Dunno,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Oh come now,’ said Tim with a flourish. ‘You can’t abdicate responsibility for what we do like that. Claiming to despise it all, to be above it all, while offering nothing as an alternative.’

  ‘I think you can,’
Anna said. ‘You can be a critical presence.’

  ‘Or just present,’ nodded Adam, adding as if surprising himself: ‘Maybe being a witness to it all is the only important thing we do?’

  ‘So if they came to you tomorrow and put you in charge of everything you would stop the drugs, stop the psychoanalysis and do what? Put what in its place?’

  Adam shrugged again. ‘I don’t think they are going to do that.’ He smiled warmly. ‘So I don’t feel the need to prepare.’

  ‘Hypothetically then,’ said Tim.

  ‘Tim, I don’t know. I don’t know because I think not knowing is the best position to take. I think that when you decide to believe in one thing over another in a place like that you become an acolyte, or worse a collaborator. You become part of an interest group and at the risk of being crass and drunk I think that interest groups are insidious. This Thatcherite nonsense means they exist to make money or power or careers for people and that becomes the point of them quite quickly.’

  ‘Vile,’ said Anna. ‘Lots of blokes jostling for validation.’

  ‘And an increasing number of women mimicking them,’ added Grace.

  ‘That’s a Thatcher thing,’ nodded Anna. ‘Act like a man and call it feminism.’

  ‘Confuses uniformity with equality,’ offered Adam. ‘Easily done.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tim, draining his glass. ‘Do you lot all live together in a big house somewhere, where you practice this stuff?’

  Anna laughed. ‘Actually this is the first time I’ve sat down with either of them.’

  ‘You’re doing very well though,’ smiled Adam.

  ‘I’m just agreeing with you ‘cos you let me put Dionne Warwick on. Me, I’d love to be a psychoanalyst. Some of them are charging £20 an hour. No, I don’t trust any of them, therapists, doctors, half the nurses… Present company excepted, of course.’

  ‘Er… thanks,’ said Tim.

  ‘I’m teasing,’ said Anna. ‘You are no more responsible than the rest of us. You get better paid, of course, and you write the scripts but we draw up the injections, we enforce the rules, we hold the whole thing together.’

  ‘Yes, but you all seem to do things differently, no? Actually, wait, I shall get more drink, unless we are going to eat? Should we eat? I am happy to carry on drinking but some people like food… I like food…’

  ‘Drink is good,’ said Anna.

  ‘Food would be good too,’ said Grace, ‘but not pub food. Curry?’

  ‘Hurrah for curry,’ said Tim, standing up and heading toward the bar. ‘Should I get a drink while we’re deciding anyway?’

  When Tim was out of earshot Anna turned to Grace and said: ‘Blimey, he likes you doesn’t he? He blushes every time you speak.’

  ‘He’s quite sweet,’ said Adam.

  ‘He is, isn’t he?’ said Grace. ‘If he’s for real.’

  ‘I suspect he is thinking the same about you,’ smiled Adam.

  Tim returned with a flurry, spilling beer on his sleeve as he put all four drinks down on the table. ‘So,’ he said loudly, ‘it occurs to me that you have used your cynicism to distract me from my original question, which was what brought you into this business in the first place?’

  ‘Needed a job,’ said Adam.

  ‘I was going to be a singer,’ said Grace. ‘But so was everyone else, so I found myself doing this instead.’

  ‘Oh,’ squealed Anna. ‘I was going to be a dancer: dancer, psychiatric nurse, dancer, psychiatric nurse, it could have gone either way really.’

  ‘Speaking of people ending up here,’ said Adam. ‘That psychologist Peach wheeled in today, what’s his angle?’

  ‘Does everyone have to have an angle?’ smiled Tim.

  ‘Does everyone have to answer a question with a question?’ countered Adam.

  ‘Fair enough,’ Tim conceded. ‘He’s some sort of whiz from The Bethlem apparently. He’s probably sleeping with that trainee you upset the other day.’

  ‘That’s a given,’ said Adam. ‘’What is he selling, do you think?’

  Tim drank his beer and thought for a moment. ‘Hope?’

  ‘Oh-oh,’ said Adam. ‘He’ll want a lot for that.’

  Tim thought for a moment. ‘I know what you mean. There is something a bit sleazy about him, isn’t there?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Adam. ‘He’s a psychologist, so that too is a given, but I was curious about why now. This place is in its death throes, Peach is old school, coming here is no career move…’ He turned to Anna. ‘No, really…’

  He caught her eye and she smiled and said: ‘The recruitment process I was part of talked about exciting and expansive career opportunities, which on the face of it looked silly but it seems there is a lot of research money attached to this move to Community Care. And where there’s research money there’s a heady mix of psychiatrists, no offence Tim, and psychologists carving it up. Cassells is chasing the money because with money comes careers. Written all over him.’

  ‘Hang on, hang on, hang on,’ Tim said, spilling part of his fifth pint down his chin. ‘Am I to understand that you are so cynical that you believe research is somehow inherently evil?’

  ‘Yes,’ smiled Adam.

  ‘Is evil a bit strong?’ Grace looked at Adam, who smiled at her.

  ‘Psychiatry is still in the dark ages. Research is progress, research is hope, a chance to make things better, a chance to lend a bit more thought and sophistication to what we do,’ said Tim with a flourish.

  ‘No,’ smiled Adam. ‘Research is a career opportunity wearing a T-shirt with the words ‘New type of legitimacy for the same old shit’ written on the front. Research at its best is simply organized curiosity. At its worst it is an exercise in making our squalid little industry appear more respectable than it is. Of course, I may be drunk.’

  ‘That’s a big T-shirt’ said Anna.

  ‘Yeah, we’re going to need fat people,’ said Adam. ‘Or a snappier slogan.’

  ‘Worked for Wham,’ said Anna quietly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Tim. ‘Are you two flirting or debating?’

  ‘Er, I appear to be flirting with her and debating with you. I don’t want to debate with you, although the flirting is nice.’

  ‘You are very cynical,’ observed Tim, with shrugging disappointment rather than irritation.

  ‘Yes,’ acknowledged Adam. ‘But I still draw the wage, so I think it’s important to note that even I don’t take what I say remotely seriously.’

  They were quiet. Adam sipped his whisky and coke.

  ‘Curry? Grace suggested.

  ‘Indeed,’ said Adam. ‘Enough of this festival of self-loathing. Let’s buy food, go to my house, gossip generally and be mean about psychologists.’

  ‘Oh count me in,’ said Tim. ‘I can’t stand them. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but they don’t actually know anything.’

  As they left the pub Adam said to Anna: ‘So tell me your story.’

  ‘What, all of it?’

  ‘Tell me what you don’t mind sharing. I’m interested.’

  Anna eyed him and grinned. ‘No you’re not; you’re just setting up Tim and Grace.’

  Adam laughed. ‘I am interested, but I quite like the idea of them hitting it off. She’s a good woman is Grace, deserves some attention from someone normal.’

  ‘Did you two…?’

  ‘Us? No. I like her too much.’

  It was still early evening, a little past seven; a cool late summer grey hung over North London. People were still going home from work, but the late afternoon drinking had made them slightly immune to the pace and noise of the traffic.

  ‘So what brought you north of the river? Please tell me it wasn’t a career move?’

  Anna laughed. ‘I wanted a change, I was getting a bit bored and probably a b
it stale.’

  ‘What’s wrong with stale?’ said Adam sarcastically.

  ‘Actually, I think I might want something a bit different.’ Anna surprised herself a little; she wasn’t given to reflecting out loud.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know.’ She hesitated. ‘It probably seems stupid after everything we were saying in there, but I think I want to do something different. Still in psychiatry but something different, something that might change things.’

  ‘Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Not sure about the ‘still in psychiatry’ bit, but you don’t seem as jaded as me.’

  They walked in silence. The grey was darkening and there was an orange tinge to the clouds.

  ‘How far to the curry house?’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ said Adam.

  ‘So, why do you go to Libby?’

  Adam sighed. ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘I’ve known her a long time.’

  Anna didn’t say anything and they walked on. It was cooler now, that turning point that always comes in September where you know the summer is gone and people walk a little faster with their shoulders hunched.

  ‘She spoke to me once,’ Adam said suddenly. ‘About five years ago, completely out of the blue, weirdest thing that ever happened to me.’

  ‘And you are waiting to see if she does it again?’

  Adam laughed. ‘No. But that would be the nearest thing to an acceptable answer, wouldn’t it? Unless I told you she was my Gran.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said: “Just because you weren’t here, it doesn’t mean you aren’t guilty.” She said it quietly, looked me straight in the eye.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  Adam may have blushed. She saw him swallow and try to smile. ‘I said “I’m sorry Libby.” She just looked at me and walked away. Weird’.

  ‘Not that weird.’

  ‘No? Felt weird.’

  Anna shrugged ‘Weird it is then.’

  They caught up with Grace and Tim outside the curry house.

  ‘I’m not really very good with women of the opposite sex,’ Tim was saying.