No Way to Say Goodbye

by Rod Madocks

  Bartram and I both wrote reports recommending his discharge. I met him a few weeks later as he was escorted through the open air courts to the tribunal room. The air was fresh and still after autumn rain with just a hint of wood smoke and damp earth from the fields beyond the wire. Leaves came drifting off the birches and poplars within the enclosures and a machine came buzzing along the paths to suck them up, for the hospital disliked untidiness.

  I sat with Mattie in the waiting room to the tribunal chambers. His solicitor looked up from the copies of our reports and shook his head with amazement.

  “You clinicians have made it very easy for me today.”

  Mattie was cheerfully gazing about as if at a new world. He had plaited beads into his hair for the occasion. He turned to me and asked, “Are you a believa doctor? Do you believe?”

  I looked back at him and just then his eyes looked suddenly serious and penetrating and his hair was shot through with a reddish aura from the autumnal sunlight slanting through the reinforced window glass.

  “Yeah, I guess so Mattie. In my own way,” I replied.

  “Good, so do I!”

  He smiled warmly at me before we were summoned by the clerk to the tribunal.

  “Let’s do it,” said Mattie.

  We briefly passed through an open air court to get to the tribunal room. As we swept down the path with the escorts Mattie reached down and plucked a handful of grass from the side of the path.

  We assembled before the three man tribunal, which consisted of a bluff, red-faced, retired psychiatrist, a probation officer with a world weary air and a High Court judge, out of his robes, in a blue Saville Row suit and a neatly pressed three cornered handkerchief in his breast pocket. He dictated the proceedings with crisp authority. Mattie’s solicitor addressed the judge and asked for an absolute discharge on the grounds that his client was not insane, nor dangerous. A dance of arguments then ensued with the panel questioning Bartram and I and Mattie’s solicitor also weaving in his points. We willingly conceded that Mattie did not pose a demonstrable risk to the public.

  All the while Mattie remained silent, staring down at the clump of grass that he twirled in his fingers.

  “What is it that you have there, Mr Dread?” the judge eventually enquired.

  Mattie showed the tribunal the vivid swatch of verdure.

  “What is this, sah? It is grass or some might say the flag of my nature for green is a hopeful colour. Or mebbe these leaves are little children of all vegetation? Or the hair of my ancestors perhaps? Or again just the sign of sameness for it grows around black folks as well as white!”

  “I see, Mr Dread.”

  The judge looked momentarily uncertain. In an attempt to recover his poise he asked, “Perhaps you can let us know what your plans are if we decide to release you from your detention order?”

  “Takin’ it easy, sah!” replied Mattie.

  They agreed to release him in the end although it was unusual. He took his discharge immediately and declined help with funds for bus fare or even a lift to Redford station.

  “I’ll be fine. I’m just walkin’!”

  Bartram and I stood together in the lodge house that autumn afternoon and watched him go down the five steps with his black knapsack, his dreads bobbing as he bounded away with a springy tread. He never looked back and we watched his figure disappearing down along the hedge line and through the drifts of fallen poplar leaves, then he turned at the gates with their pineapple-topped finials where we, at last, lost sight of him.

  Author’s Note

  In a sense we are all waiting for someone to come back from the past, bringing a lost happiness, and this book describes that state of being. Writing it has been like carefully fashioning a mask to fit a face whose features I could just barely make out. It has been shaped by twenty years work in mental health services, where I have learned so much more from patients and from staff, but I must insist — this work remains firmly fiction.

  I owe much to individuals — particularly to the Three Graces at the inspirative heart of the novel: to C.D.O. for kind permission to use materials in this book, to S.G. for all those wild times and to A.S. who remains in pectore. I also owe a debt to the late Roger Poole — an inspirational lecturer.

  Warm thanks to Derek Thomas for early purgation of the text and to Antonia Owen for her advice. I am grateful to Paul Tribe for lending his image and to Ross Bradshaw for taking a chance on this frail barque and for his editorial work.

  Last and first, I thank Sharon for helping with this book and with so much else.

  No Way To Say Goodbye

  by Rod Madocks

  Published in ebook format in 2013 by Five Leaves Publications,

  PO Box 8786, Nottingham NG1 9AW

  Published in paperback format in 2009 by Five Leaves Publications

  www.fiveleaves.co.uk

  ISBN: 978-1-907869-91-4

  Copyright © Rod Madocks 2009/2013

  Cover image © Rod Madocks

  Let’s Get Retarded

  Words and Music by Will Adams, Allan Pineda, Jaime Gomez, Michael Fratantuno, George Pajon Jr. and Terence Yoshiaki Copyright © 2003 Cherry River Music Co. (BMI), Jeepney Music Publishing (BMI), Nawasha Networks (BMI), EMI Blackwood Music Inc.(BMI),El Cubano Music (BMI) and Hisako Songs (BMI), Worldwide Rights for Will.I. Am Music Inc., Jeepney Music Publishing and Nawasha Networks Publishing. Administered by Cherry River Music Co. All rights for Cubano Music Controlled and administered by EMI Blackwood Music Inc. (BMI) International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved

  Five Leaves acknowledges financial support from Arts Council England

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents portrayed in the work are drawn from the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, with the exception of contemporary events which are in the public domain.