Poppy Shakespeare

by Clare Allan

  Second-Floor Paolo always worn pyjamas, or if he didn't these scaggy old jeans so worn and faded they looked like pyjamas anyway. But today he had on this crisp white shirt, all clean and ironed, like fuck knows where from, and these shiny black trousers, creased down the front, and his hair like slicked back and I couldn't see his shoes but I'll bet they was shining too. He weren't looking over-comfortable, kept glancing up at the clock with no hands, and his lips was moving but no sound come out and I reckoned he must be praying to hisself, else going through his lines of what he had to say.

  'He's got a nerve,' said Astrid Arsewipe, perking up like instant. 'She ain't hardly cold, and he's eyeing her chair!' And they all joined in how bad it was and how insensitive and that and there's me thinking any second now... as Tony Balaclava walks over our end and he goes right past Paolo without even stopping, and all the flops are like 'Eh?' all at once, and they turn their heads to follow Tony, then they turn back to check on Paolo; then they turn to look at each other, like gobsmacked, and then they turn back to Tony, and all of these heads turning this way and that like some giant machine gone mad.

  Tony come and stood between our two rows of chairs and he kept sort of nodding and trying to be friendly and not meeting nobody's eye. And he crossed his legs so one foot was over the other, then he crossed them again so his legs was like in a plait. And he tried to stick his hands in the pockets of his jeans 'cept they wouldn't go in further than the tips of his fingers on account of his jeans was so tight. And once they was in he couldn't get them back out. So he's stuck with his elbows bent outwards like wings sort of flapping and trying to get free.

  'I gather you've heard about Pollyanna,' he said. 'I just want to say that if anyone needs time, you only have to knock on the staff-room door. I realise it must have raised difficult issues for many of you.' His arms flapped again. 'And we want to support you as much as we can.'

  'So why d'you kick her out?' said Sue. Astrid rolled her eyes.

  'I can't discuss Pollyanna,' he said. 'It's not appropriate.' And he give such a tug I thought his fingers come off, but they stayed where they was anyway.

  'We do our best to help,' he said, 'but we can only do so much. Sometimes, tragically, that's not enough.' I looked at Rosetta. She didn't say nothing. Tony gone red, but that could of been his fingers.

  'On a happier note,' he said, looking down at the carpet. 'A decision has been taken to admit a new patient.' Well that was it with the flops, I tell you. All fucking hell broke loose. Above our heads started raining fag butts, dirty old slippers, anything they could get their fag-burnt hands on. But Tony didn't move, just carried on talking like he never even noticed, and the weird thing was, crap flying all sides, not a single piece ever hit him. Not a MAD money form, not a screwed-up Coke can; nothing even come within six inches. It was like he had this invisible body and everything just bounced off of it. And it did as well: this bottle of Lonzadine bounced off what would of been his shoulder and I reached out my left hand and caught it like that and I downed them quick before anybody seen me.

  White Wesley started throwing things back and Rosetta told him to stop but he just thrown harder, and he tried to get Elliot into it too but he'd hid underneath the chairs, reckoned the snipers might see their chance to take a shot at him.

  Verna, down the other end, was going for it full throttle. Every time she thrown something, she shouted, 'Get that! Yeah!' Candid started lobbing CDs, and even Sue the Sticks joined in till she thrown her crutches and had to sit down again.

  And through it all Tony kept on talking, how Poppy was starting on Monday and stuff and how he was sure we'd make her feel welcome and I'm bracing myself for the bit about me but just exactly as he said it, like you couldn't of timed it more perfect, this filthy great trainer come flying past my ear and hit the panic alarm. And I know I said my luck's been bad, but you know what I'm saying, I'm like maybe there is a God.

  I ain't into violence, however it calls itself, and general speaking I'm pretty much a pacific. But there's violence and violence, you got to admit, and some of it has its uses. That riot, I tell you, by the time Tony left us, the last few flops was just being injected and stacked to go back to the wards. And instead of us dribblers all scrapping and fighting, the sun come out and the birds started singing and we weren't even sat in the common room no more, but lounged in the park in deckchairs and we felt like we'd had a few beers as well, least I did anyway, on account of all that Lonzadine begun buzzing around my system.

  And as the sun come out all the frostiness melted. Astrid and Sue made up and was friends and Sue said she never even meant it like that, but just that she did have a bit of a headache on account of her meds and nothing to do with Astrid; and Astrid give her a pill out her handbag and Sue the Sticks took it, said thanks very much. Verna the Vomit was on such a high she never even bothered with throwing up her lunch, and Elliot crawled out from under the chairs, sat laughing and smiling as Wesley described him all of the flops he'd knocked out. And then, I couldn't believe I was seeing it, Astrid, right, she turned to Rosetta and said how she could of been wrong. She said maybe the letter did rhyme after all, just not what she'd thought of as rhyming, and Rosetta reached over and give her her hand and Astrid took it and give it a squeeze, like right in front of my nose. Even Brian the Butcher was happy, going around tidying up. Said some ways it worked even better than washing his hands.

  It was Michael said about Poppy first, and just for a second I felt a chill as a cloud come over the sun, but I needn't of worried. Turned out there wasn't a single dribbler hadn't run into Poppy before, and no one had a word to say against her.

  Middle-Class Michael met Poppy at the MAD symposium. Said she'd come up to him in the bar and told him how much she'd enjoyed his speech and how well it gone down. 'She said I'd have made a politician,' he said and his ears gone red, then he coughed, said of course he knew she was just being kind.

  Rosetta said Poppy had shown up at church and she'd been in a terrible state. And she didn't have no support at all. And it just shown how Good could come out of Evil and the Dorothy Fish was a sheepfold or something like that.

  Elliot reckoned he known her at school. 'I'm sure she was called that,' he said. And he said how everyone picked on her and taken the piss and that, but he'd got them all to stop and they'd been like friends. And when he was up on the ward, he said, she visited every day and brought him presents and stuff. But then he begun to worry he'd got her name wrong, and maybe it weren't Poppy after all, and he must of got confused with his medication.

  Astrid reckoned he must of done, 'cause she'd met Poppy up on the wards and she was far too old to of been with Elliot at school. Said she couldn't remember that much about her, on account of she'd been so ill at the time, she couldn't remember nothing; and she started on about how ill she'd been and she gone on and on and on; and she gone on so long they all fallen asleep, on and on about how ill she'd been and everyone round her sleeping like corpses till I was the only one wasn't asleep on account of all that Lonzadine still buzzing around my insides. But she could of been talking to herself s'far as I was concerned. All I could think of was Poppy Shakespeare and how we was going to be friends. 'Cause I'm not being funny, I knew even then, I known all along we was going to be friends; it was like a premonition. And all down the hill I was showing her things and cracking jokes and stuff, and beside me White Wesley, who'd just woken up, rattling on how she'd fancied him, but he'd had to say no 'case his girlfriend got jealous, 'cept he couldn't remember if maybe he'd dreamt it, he said.

  14. A bit about the weekend you can skip if you want, and what happened Monday morning

  Unbefuckinglievable! I finally get there and look where I am with my chapters! Now I'm not being funny, but d'you know what I'm saying, that ain't coincidence. When I started writing about me and Poppy, I reckoned I'd do it all in one go. I made up a cafetiere of coffee, taken some Penguins from out the cupboard and sat myself down with an exercise book and an old Marie Claire
to lean on. But that weren't how it happened 'cause once I'd begun, it was like it just kept on coming. It was like - I'll tell you what it was like - it was like Fifth-Floor Fran, right, sat in the toilet, she drops her ball of wool. And it rolls out from under the cubicle door, and she can't go and get it on account of she's sworn she ain't never leaving her toilet again, or not this side of paradise, and she ain't even going to open the door till the priest comes to give her her ticket. So she just got to keep on pulling her end, but the more she pulls, it just keeps on coming and she's wrapping it round and around her hand and the wool just keeps coming and coming.

  I didn't choose the chapters, that's just how it come; all I done was keep on winding and hoping like Poppy'd show up in the end. Which finally, do you know what I'm saying, I can see her under the door, maybe two, maybe three loops maximum, and that's when I realise: chapter**; I mean what are the chances of that! It give me a shiver, right through my insides, which if you think I'm being paranoid you ain't heard nothing yet! By the time I finished you'll be too scared to think, case they've planted bugs in your brain.

  Poppy never stood a chance. But I ain't making things no worse by starting her off in a chapter like that. Fact thinking about it the least I can do . . .

  15. A bit about the weekend you can skip if you want, and what happened Monday morning

  At the time this all happened, I was living on the Darkwoods at the bottom of Abaddon Hill. It weren't such a bad estate to be honest, packed full of dribblers on account of being so handy for the Abaddon, and sanity-free 'cause no sniff in his right mind would take a flat so close to a mental hospital. It weren't exactly what you'd call peaceful. There was always music thumping away, and tellies blaring so loud the windows rattled. You had schizos on balconies hurling plates whilst beneath them old ladies pissed in the gutter and alkies threw beer cans at passing cars as naked rappers tried to direct the traffic. In fact the only time the noise stopped was at night and then it stopped altogether, and the whole of the Darkwoods gone quiet, I mean really kind of spooky kind of quiet, 'cause everyone was zonked with medication.

  Personally I never minded the noise. I liked the feeling of all of them people around me. And even at ten when it all gone quiet, it weren't like you felt on your own, 'cause you knew all around to your right and your left, and above and below and behind your back wall, there was all of these dribblers just a few feet away, laying there like you was, waiting for their meds to kick in.

  The only thing I would say about was the numbering system. They must of had dribblers design it, I reckon, 'cause it definitely didn't make no sense. I lived in 17B Rowan Walk, which was in between 66D and 17F. Above me was 36DD and the whole of the Darkwoods was numbered like that, like they ordered it flat-packed and screwed it together all wrong. The thing with the Darkwoods was you just had to trust your instincts. You couldn't afford to stop and think, 'cause the moment you thought was when you gone wrong, and once you gone wrong it taken forever to find your way back where you was. Like Rapper Rashid upstairs from me, he gone for a can of Tennent's and didn't come back till two years later and he never even got the drink anyway, on account of the offy was shut by the time he got there.

  That weekend, it seemed like it gone on forever. I mean, dribblers always hate weekends; bank holidays is extra bad and Christmas and Easter is worst of all, you can wind up with four fucking days on the trot and nothing to do 'side of laying in bed or watching TV till your eyes start to melt in their sockets. Sometimes I gone up Paradise Park with a couple of cans, seen the ducks and stuff, and Sundays I gone down Cafe Diana; I always gone down Cafe Diana (Sunday Special £ 3.95, meat, roast potatoes, veg and pudding) but it still seemed to leave like a million hours to fill up with doing nothing. Even the Darkwoods' drop-in was closed, used to be open eight till eight, but now 'cause of staffing they only done two to five-thirty Saturdays, and the queue stretched right down on to Borderline Road, circling around the estate like a giant 'No Entry' sign.

  But that weekend before Poppy arrived, it felt like the longest ever. I even thought of going up the tower, score some Minozine off of Banker Bill to knock me out for a bit, but in the end I couldn't be arsed. I couldn't be arsed with doing nothing at all, 'cept for sit on the sofa and wait for Monday morning.

  By the time Monday morning finally come I felt so fucking shattered, was all I could do to light up a fag and drag myself through to the bathroom. And what I seen in the mirror when I did, it didn't look much like a guide at all, not even a mentally ill one, but I give my face a bit of a splash and checked again and splashed some more and the thing in the mirror, it grown a nose and a couple of ears and a pair of eyes blinked roughly in time with my own.

  I gone through, put the telly on and made a cup of tea. The only thing was now I'd woke myself up, I'd woke up my nerves as well. I sat there watching the GMTV, staring at the numbers in the corner of the screen as they marched through the minutes to the time when I'd have to go out. If you've ever watched GMTV, you'll know how it keeps going round. And they give you the news every fifteen minutes and it's always the same unless something's happened like exactly the same I mean, word for word — so even if you ain't really watching, you start to know it by heart. Well I'm sure they had something on that morning about that Mad Tsar woman, Veronica Salmon. She was stood outside of this hospital and all these reporters asking her stuff, and as soon as they said like 'Veronica Salmon' I remembered what Middle-Class Michael said. I'm like, 'know her! Ain't she Minister for Madness!' And two seconds later they said it theirselves, and when they did, I felt pretty smart, I can tell you.

  I got to the Abaddon ten past nine. Sharon was sat at his desk by the entrance. 'You're early,' he said, and he give me my pass. He never looked up on account of he didn't, just carried on reading his fitness mag, turning the pages with his huge right hand while his left one pumped a dumb-bell up and down above his glistening black head.

  The lobby weren't big, maybe twenty foot long with double sliding doors either end. The only place to sit was this black leather sofa with a trailing plant beside it on a stand. It weren't the sort of sofa you sat on easy. With its smooth leather cushions and its soft leather arms, there was dribblers I could think of I'd of sat on more easy, but there weren't nowhere else so in the end I just gone ahead and done it. Well as I sat down it done this fart, ain't no nicer way I can say it. And I swear I seen Sharon smirk to hisself, but he never looked up and he never said nothing, just tossed the dumbbell over his head, caught it like a rattle in his huge right hand and carried on reading his mag. And it didn't stop there, do you know what I'm saying, 'cause every time I moved it done another. And I sat so still I weren't even breathing, but each time the sliding doors slid open, I just couldn't help it, it give me a jump, and each time I jumped, it let off a thumping stunker. So then all I could do was like look at the floor and sit and hope and pray it wouldn't be Poppy.

  I don't know how long I stayed sat in that lobby, but I seen Sharon's hair grow from bald to a number four. I tried counting nurses to pass the time, but with so many of them, they all seemed to merge, till I couldn't no more count them than counting the drops in the Thames. Dr Clootie gone past and Dr Azazel, and Dr Neutral, wheeling his bike, with the veins in his legs stood out like thin blue worms. I even thought, being sat there so long, I might get to see Dr Diabolus, 'cause I only ever seen him twice and that was from a distance. Some dribblers never seen him at all, reckoned he must have a separate entrance, either that or he never gone home at night but covered hisself in MAD money forms and slept on his desk with a pile of psychiatry journals for a pillow. I seen Rhona the Moaner, looked suicidal, and Malvin Fowler, red in the face, with his fat pink fingers wedged down the back of his trousers. I seen the day dribblers coming in too, all of them in order, and, after Tina gone through, I wondered if Poppy might come next, in the gap where Pollyanna should of been, but there wasn't no one. As the dribblers gone past me, I nodded and said 'Morning', and most of them give me a 'Morning' ba
ck, and Middle-Class Michael wished me luck, and Astrid as well, though you seen how much it cost her.

  What I couldn't get was how Sharon knew who was who. He never looked up, just reached out his hand and give them a pass, red, purple or green, depending on what they was. And he never once made a single mistake. He never give a doctor a dribbler's pass or a dribbler a nurse's pass or nothing like that, and I couldn't work out how he done it.

  So after that Dawn come in with her son - he walked her right into the lobby - and she kept trying to tip him 'cause she thought he was a cab and he kept going 'Mum!' and giving it back. And after Dawn the flow begun to slow down.

  So after Brian the Butcher come in for his seventeenth time that morning and taken his pass off Security Sharon and pinned it on, and taken it off and pinned it on, and taken it off so many times I lost count, after he'd finally disappeared on his final climb up the stairs I begun to worry. I started to think I should go up and check, 'cause maybe I'd missed Poppy somehow. Or maybe I'd just imagined it all, do you know what I'm saying, just made it up, 'cause I weren't uncapable. And the more I thought, the more it seemed weird that Sharon didn't know nothing.

  'Cause Poppy's name should of been on the list, and I couldn't believe I didn't check. So then I thought I'd better ask Sharon, but just as I was about to get up he tossed the dumb-bell over his head and started again with his left arm, and I made up my mind I'd wait till he finished his set.