Stranger Than Kindness

by Mark A Radcliffe

  ‘Cassells does like to get involved,’ said Adam. ‘Wonder why? I mean, he can’t simply want to spread misery wherever he goes.’

  ‘Maybe it’s like you said, he’s conducting an experiment? Good sandwich.’

  ‘Divide and rule, I suspect. Or he’s a psychopath.’

  ‘Tim was really upset, he said he felt undermined. It was a pride thing I think, but I also thought there was more to it then that. He’s not the sort of bloke you imagine being angry, but he was very angry.’

  ‘Did he say where he had been all morning?’

  ‘Headache apparently. Migraine.’

  As Anna chewed, Adam thought. He didn’t want to, but he did anyway. He could feel a tingling anxiety in the tips of his fingers. Worry? Anger? Fear? It was partly about Maureen. It was the nature of the cruelty that disturbed him. Framed by good intention, rational, spiteful. But there was something about Cassells that made him alarmed, almost made him fearful.

  ‘What would happen if Maureen refused to go?’ asked Adam.

  Anna shrugged. ‘She would be persuaded, I imagine, or put on a section.’

  ‘She isn’t sectionable.’

  ‘I’m sure Peach could find a couple of people to say she is.’

  ‘I’ll talk to Peach.’

  ‘Hey, I don’t mind you making me sandwiches but I don’t want you fighting my fights.’

  ‘Not your fight, it’s Maureen’s. And, in case you hadn’t noticed, she is my patient.’

  ‘Mostly mine,’ Anna said quietly, mocking.

  Adam offered her a cigarette.

  ‘No thanks, I’m giving up,’ she said. Anna got up and went to the window.

  ‘You being followed?’ asked Adam.

  ‘Yeah, maybe. I didn’t come to talk about that though.’

  Adam stood behind Anna and looked out of the window. He couldn’t see anyone. She was probably being sarcastic.

  Adam noticed that he quite liked Anna. He didn’t think she made sense and he wasn’t sure that he would ever trust her, but he quite liked her. That was, he thought, the advantage of having slept with her. People find it harder to lie when they don’t have their clothes on, and anyway it’s easier to make sense of someone when they are lying on top of you.

  ‘So, apart from the yoghurt and the surveillance opportunity, what is it you wanted to talk about?’

  Anna turned around and smiled, a really big smile, right up to her eyes. ‘I’m not sure what order to say this in, so can I just ask you to suspend judgment until I’ve finished? It won’t take long.’ Adam shrugged, stepped aside and let her walk past and sit down.

  ‘I liked the sex, it was good sex. I don’t want to have a conversation about it meaning anything because we both know it didn’t, beyond being good, er… , well done. I may be pregnant; I make it a 50/50 chance it is yours. I sort of wanted to get pregnant, well not sort of, I did want to get pregnant. The bloke who may be following me, but probably isn’t, was sort of a boyfriend who I split up with. I wanted to get pregnant, so I slept with him and then left him. I didn’t and don’t want any involvement from whoever the father is, but I thought it might be OK to tell you, rather than make myself really dislike you. Which I could do, in fact I may have begun trying it out in the kitchen earlier, and I have done it with people in the past. Then I thought maybe I didn’t have to do that. Erm, sorry.’

  Adam looked at her and nodded. It was the sort of nod you offer when you are choosing to demonstrate some sort of acknowledgement that something has been said but you don’t really know what you think or feel or should say. He nodded again. He was still nodding when he sat down on the armchair facing the sofa.

  ‘It was only three weeks ago?’

  ‘Yeah, twenty-four days actually. Does that sound obsessive? You might be thinking I’m weird. Actually I am weird, I suppose, but you might be thinking psychopath. Are you thinking psychopath?’ Adam half shrugged. ‘Look, you know the story I told you about dancing? You get that, right? I left home young and I tend to live a very contained life. I am a serial monogamist, I haven’t ever really fallen in love, not incurably and I want a baby. I don’t want the relationship that goes with it, I don’t want money or weekend visits. I think I wanted the father thing to be wrapped up in anonymity and it was a nice evening and you’re quite cute when you aren’t hungover.’

  ‘That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me,’ said Adam. He pointed to the window. ‘And the other guy knows and that is why he is following you around?’

  ‘No, no, he doesn’t know. I had no intention of ever seeing him again but he… Well, he thinks he may be having a bit of a breakdown. He isn’t, well, I don’t think he is, he’s just been smoking too much weed. He didn’t know what to do and knew that I worked in the industry, so to speak.’

  ‘So you wanted to get pregnant without any complications and chose to sleep with a dopehead beginning a nervous breakdown, and me? Were none of the Muppets available?’ Anna laughed. ‘The sex was nice,’ said Adam.

  ‘It was,’ she nodded.

  ‘I’m in no shape to be a dad.’

  ‘I don’t want you to be a dad.’

  ‘Why are you telling me again?’

  ‘You’ll notice at some point and I don’t want to move and I thought if I got it out of the way early you might not… Hell, I don’t know. I think I thought you might be OK about it.’

  This time Adam laughed. ‘I don’t know if that says more about you or me.’

  Black hadn’t followed Anna. He left her with a low-lying sense of relief. It was the drugs that had made him think everyone at work was looking at him oddly. That his idea to dress up some bloke as a bear in a floppy hat to sell beer had made people talk about him behind his back and in the case of Angela and Sheryl laugh in his face, or at least at his trousers. It was the drugs that made him scared on the tube and made him want to eat biscuits more than he wanted to have sex. It was the drugs. Anna would know that sort of thing. Although she had looked at him a bit oddly and she seemed hostile, certainly not pleased to see him. Like she knew something about him. Maybe someone had said something? He wondered about the tall bloke she had been talking to at lunchtime, the guy who had looked at him funny when he was leaving the hospital. Perhaps Anna was sleeping with him? Perhaps Anna had been sleeping with him all the time? He wondered why he cared. He didn’t care, but it made him anxious anyway. And as he wandered reluctantly to the tube station to head home he heard a voice in his head that sounded a lot like his father’s—as far as he could remember, because he hadn’t heard his father’s voice since he had died when Black was ten. It said: ‘Just because you’re paranoid it doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.’ And Black noticed a woman walk past him and shoot him an odd look as he nodded to the voice in his head and must have said out loud: ‘Ain’t that the truth.’

  Adam had tried to distract himself with press-ups after Anna had left but it hadn’t worked. He put on a record. Otis Redding. It was wrong. Chumbawumba: lively but not subtle. Orange Juice. Nope. The floor was littered with LPs. He tried the radio: it was rubbish. He wanted to phone Grace, who had worked a long shift, and ask her what was going on, but she had just done fourteen hours’ work. To call her when she got home to talk about it was too much. Although if he phoned her before she left work that wouldn’t be so bad… It was 8.17. She would leave at nine. Anna had left at seven.

  Pregnant? She couldn’t be sure. Didn’t he read that 20% of pregnancies didn’t make it past twelve weeks? And if there was only a 50/50 chance he was the dad… What was 80% of a 50/50 chance? ‘Don’t say 40%’ he said out loud to nobody but himself. ‘It isn’t 40%.’

  Isaac Hayes’ version of Walk on by helped, or at least he didn’t take it off after less than a minute as he had with the others. It was 11 minutes 52 seconds long. ‘Sod it,’ he thought and phoned the ward.

  ‘W
hat’s going on?’

  ‘Are you psychic?’ asked Grace.

  ‘Anna popped round for a cheese and tomato sandwich.’

  ‘Is that what it’s called?’

  ‘No, really. Anyway, what is going on?’

  ‘Tim is behaving like a hormonal twelve year old girl; Maureen is being put in a home for Barbie; Michael is asking for drugs to help him sleep. Mary is still sitting in the same chair you left her in eight hours ago. Norman wants me to marry him, despite his already being married and no, he hasn’t told his wife he has proposed to someone else. Oh, and Cassells wants me to do my psychotherapy training. He told me this while he was telling me how outraged he is that Maureen isn’t being allowed to live as George. He says I have a naturally calming yet neutral presence, apparently. I think he has a naturally slimy yet wouldn’t-trust-him-as-far-as-I-could-throw-him presence, personally.’

  Adam didn’t say anything for a moment, mostly in case Grace hadn’t finished but partly because he didn’t know where to start. The polite thing would have been Norman; the thing he wanted to talk about was Maureen.

  ‘You would make a good therapist. I have to say I don’t think Cassells is pointing that out for altruistic reasons.’

  ‘He’s a psychopath,’ she said. ‘The psychopath light went off in my head when he was talking to me.’

  ‘Yeah, he is. Out of control too, I fear. He is the one who allegedly persuaded Peach to put Maureen in the home for Barbie.’

  ‘Bastard.’

  ‘Yeah. And Tim?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s a psychopath… He may be a bastard.’

  ‘No, I meant what is going on there?’

  This time Grace paused. ‘I’m not sure. There is something he isn’t telling me and he’s hiding it behind the fact that there was something I didn’t tell him.’

  Adam waited to see if Grace was going to continue. Relieved that she didn’t, he said: ‘And Maureen, does she know?’

  ‘No, of course not. She’ll be the last to be told.’

  ‘What do you think would happen if we told her?’

  ‘Do you mean what would happen to her? Would she do something stupid? I don’t know. I don’t think so, but wouldn’t bet my life on it. Or do you mean what would happen to us? We’d get called unprofessional, I suppose.’

  ‘Funny idea, really,’ mused Adam. ‘That keeping a patient informed about their future and the discussions and decisions made about their lives is unprofessional.’

  ‘I think we’d be told that causing undue stress or anxiety is unprofessional, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yeah, definitely’, agreed Adam. ‘But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something.’

  ‘No, of course,’ said Grace. There was a pause before she added, ‘So what are we going to do?’

  Later, Adam was failing to sleep. He had taken two diazepam, drunk three glasses of cheap whisky and smoked a joint. He felt as though his outer layers were ready to sleep but his innards wanted to go dancing. It was 10.53 and he wasn’t even going to pretend to try to read. He thought about Anna. He knew, somewhere, that the madness she had brought round earlier was important but he couldn’t process it, not through the drugs. His mind kept turning back to Maureen Marley. It wasn’t the fact that she was being moved into the wrong home, well it was, that was madness, but it wasn’t that that made his liver rage. It was the reasoning behind it or, worse, the way the reasoning had taken place. It was essentially some blokes messing around, playing games, and part of him felt as if perhaps they were inviting him to play. More: demanding that he join in, stand in line with Cassells and Peach and goodness knows who else and see who can piss up the wall the highest. He didn’t want to play. He wanted to be seen not to play, which was a way of playing. And he didn’t want Maureen to live in a doll’s house. He sighed, put on his shoes and jacket and decided to go and see Libby.

  Anna had not gone home. David Cassells was hosting a lecture by a ‘colleague and friend’ at what was laughingly called the Academic Centre—a room with a drop-down cine screen, a slide projector and 23 plastic chairs—in the new annexe. The talk began at eight o’clock and was called ‘The Therapy of Disdain’. It was by a German called Heinreich Ruber, whose position seemed to be that kindness or even good manners in any therapeutic exchange is less about building a relationship with the patient and more about trying to feel better about oneself as a therapist. Anna wasn’t interested in the talk or the wine. She wanted to know why Cassells had gone out of his way to invite her and then follow the invitation up by phoning her in her office to remind her, and tell her how much he was looking forward to seeing her.

  She got there at 7.30. There were six people there and Cassells came bounding over to greet her. He offered her wine in a plastic cup; she took orange juice and asked him who else was coming.

  ‘Mostly psychologists and junior doctors, I am afraid. It is so hard to get the nurses engaged in this sort of discussion, that’s one of the reasons I am so glad you are here, Anna.’ All the time he was smiling.

  ‘Shiftwork.’

  ‘Of course. But you are here. Perhaps you have the sensibilities of a therapist.’

  Anna ignored that and asked: ‘So how are you settling in?’

  ‘Oh, you know, slowly. You haven’t been here yourself very long have you? How did you find it?’

  Anna smiled. The game was clearly to get the other person to talk about themself. I can play that, she thought. ‘Is it different here to the Bethlem?’

  ‘In some ways, yes. In other ways, not so much.’

  ‘Why did you make the change?’

  ‘You are very direct, Anna.’

  ‘You’re a tad evasive, David. I’m curious, why leave there to come here?’

  ‘I felt ready for a change.’

  And for the first time it occurred to Anna that David Cassells wasn’t coming somewhere new as much as leaving something behind. ‘You seem to be settling in quite quickly, and influencing things, too.’

  ‘Well, that’s my job.’

  ‘Are you enjoying working with Dr Peach?’

  ‘He’s a very experienced doctor and a very welcoming colleague.’

  ‘And the nurses?’

  ‘They are interesting. Your friend Mr Sands is a hard man to read; I rather like him. And Grace is delightful. And you of course, clearly destined for great things, Ms Newton.’

  Anna ignored him. ‘Am I right in thinking that you think Maureen Marley should be discharged into the all-women’s house on Wade Avenue?’

  ‘Really, Anna.’ He was still smiling but his lips quivered slightly. He may, she thought, be ready to blush. ‘This isn’t the time or place is it?’

  ‘Just interested, David, in your opinion, in an academic sense if you like.’

  ‘Well I think…’ As he spoke he pulled his shoulders up, shifting from lascivious to professional. ‘It’s slightly more complicated than it looks.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ murmured Anna.

  ‘Now now, you did ask. I think that you are right, and so was Dr Leith eventually, who incidentally I find a little too easily distracted for my tastes, don’t you? Not prepared to comment? OK, anyway, if we are not going to cure her—whatever cure means—we need to ensure she lives happily. However, we also need to be careful not to abandon hope that she may recover, and pretending that she is not a woman does that doesn’t it?’

  ‘Well, no,’ said Anna quickly. ‘Moving her into a mixed home lets her be whatever she happens to be.

  Cassells reddened slightly. ‘A mixed home, you say? I thought it was a men-only house you and Dr Leith were recommending?’

  ‘No, it’s a mixed house. Men and women, just like the real world.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Dr Peach told me… Well, never mind. In that case, no, you are right, of course you are right. I will talk to Dr Peach about it
first thing tomorrow. Carla, Carla…’ He turned and beckoned over Carla Tandy who was holding a handful of crisps in the palm of her hand, as if, thought Anna, that was fooling anybody.

  ‘Carla, did you know that the house where Ms Newton wanted to move that patient you want to do a case study on was a mixed house, not an all-male house?’ He exaggerated his surprise.

  ‘Yes David, I did. We did.’

  ‘I certainly didn’t!’ Cassells raised his voice just enough to get the attention of the three people standing nearest.

  ‘But we talked about it…’ Tandy looked embarrassed and then contrite. ‘I’m sorry, I thought you knew, David.’

  ‘Well I didn’t.’

  ‘Nice dress.’ Anna smiled at Carla Tandy in a thin if heartfelt gesture of female solidarity.

  ‘Thanks,’ muttered Tandy, who had the look of someone who found her life to be an absolute misery.

  Anna stayed for half of the talk, but when there was a break she made her excuses and left. Cassells popped out before her and he hadn’t come back when she left. She had no idea what Cassells would say to Peach, if anything. She had no idea what he would do next, or why, and she rather doubted that he did. But she had done all she could do for now. She walked up to the tube station. It was 9.14 and she got half way before changing her mind and going back to the ward. If she wrote up her notes now, even if it meant she didn’t get home until midnight, she wouldn’t need to come in tomorrow morning; she could pop in to see her doctor instead. And anyway, she hadn’t stayed late for a while and she still liked the hospital at night.